Miss Bunting

By: Angela Thirkell

Narrated by: Elaine Claxton

Barsetshire in the war years. Miss Bunting, governess of choice to generations of Barsetshire aristocracy, has been coaxed out of retirement by Sir Robert and Lady Fielding to tutor their daughter Anne, delicate, sixteen years old, and totally lacking in confidence.

When Anne makes friends with Heather Adams, the gauche daughter of a nouveau riche entrepreneur, her mother is appalled. Miss Bunting, however, shows an instinctive understanding of the younger generation - perhaps, having lost so many of her former pupils to the war, she is more sympathetic to their needs. She may be a part of the old social order, where everyone knows their place, but is wise enough to realise that the war has turned everything on its head and nothing will ever be the same again - even in rural Barsetshire.
First published in 1945, Miss Bunting is a charming social comedy of village life during the Second World War.©2016 The Estate of Angela Thirkell (P)2026 Little, Brown Book Group Limited

Critic reviews

You read her, laughing, and want to do your best to protect her characters from any reality but their own

The novels are a delight, with touches of E. F. Benson, E. M. Delafield and P. G. Wodehouse

Charming, very funny indeed. Angela Thirkell is perhaps the most Pym-like of any twentieth-century author, after Pym herself