At Home in Thrush Green

There are newcomers to the village of Thrush Green...

Charles Henstock, vicar of Thrush Green, is living in his new vicarage after the old one burned down. In its place are eight retirement homes, but there's heated debate in the village about the new residents. How to choose who will live there? How will they get on together? And how will they accommodate all the pets?

Meanwhile the old residents have their worries. At the school Miss Watson learns that her brother has had an accident; an argument flares up between Edward Young and Dr Lovell; and Dottie Harmer becomes dottier by the day.

Miss Read, or in real life Dora Saint, was a teacher by profession who started writing after the second world war, beginning with light essays written for Punch and other journals. She then wrote on educational and country matters and worked as a scriptwriter for the BBC. Miss Read was married to a schoolmaster for sixty-four years until his death in 2004, and they had one daughter.

Miss Read was awarded an MBE in the 1998 New Year Honours list for her services to literature, She was the author of many immensely popular books, including two autobiographical works, but it was her novels of English rural life for which she was best known. The first of these Village School, was published in 1955, and Miss Read continued to write about the fictional villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green for many years. She lived near Newbury in Berkshire until her death in 2012.