Book description
The people of Thrush Green and Fairacre celebrate Christmas in a
traditional style which has hardly changed over the generations.
Children eagerly hang up their stockings, families go to Church
together, and everyone enjoys Christmas cake and other treats of the
festive season.
For heart-warming reading there is no writer to rival Miss Read, and
this delightful Christmas collection of novels is packed with
unforgettable characters, enchanting stories and festive cheer. 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.
