She nodded and, turning her back, stared out into the street with her dark unhappy eyes. These were my favourite sections – here’s how we first meet Miss Hoad, coming into the tobacconist and meeting Miss Linsey: Lassiter, and later as a sort of governess for a household with very strict rules on not telling the child stories and always calling everything by its proper name. In Miss Linsey and Pa, she has her sights on spearing Bloomsbury – because Miss Linsey finds work first as a cook-housekeeper at the home of Dorothy Hoad and E.V. But there are also plenty of opportunities for Gibbons’ satirical streak, that I haven’t seen have such a delightful outing in any of the other non- Cold-Comfort-Farm novels.

There is quite an emotional core to this novel, particularly in Len’s storyline of the woman he loves in France – I found a lot of it very moving. Mr Petley is quite hardened and wants little to do with his in-laws, and is affectionately controlling of his son – whose life, and love, was left in France in the First World War two decades earlier. Pa is happier than she to get to know the Fells, but is also drawn to know the local pub. Miss Linsey is resilient, managing to be both enthusiastic and rather sad. Gibbons has given us a wonderful cast here, even if we got no more (and we get some great other people). Mr Fell, meanwhile, keeps birds in the upper rooms and seldom communicates with anybody at all. Mr Petley doesn’t trust any accommodation outside of Radford Street, and thinks that Miss Linsey and Pa will manage to make do with the dingy, beetle-infested home run by Mrs Fell. They are emphatically not invited to live with Mr Petley and Len above their tobacconist’s shop, but Mr Petley goes as far as to find them accommodation at the nearby home of the Fells. They leave behind an idyllic countryside home that comes with plenty of beautiful trees and green spaces, but no source of income. Miss Bertie Linsey and her Pa move to London to be near Bertie’s uncle – Mr Petley – and his son Len, realising that they need family connections now that they are falling on harder times. And yet it’s my favourite of her non- Cold-Comfort-Farm novels that I’ve read so far. Having read it for the 1936 Club, I can sadly see why it wouldn’t fit into 21st-century publishing. Lots of Stella Gibbons’ novels have come back into print in recent years – from Vintage and from Dean Street Press – but Miss Linsey and Pa (1936) has been notably missing from their lists.

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