Barbara Pym

INTRODUCED BY ALEXANDER McCALL SMITH 'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' RICHARD OSMAN Mildred Lathbury is one of those excellent women who are often taken for granted. She is a godsend, 'capable of dealing with most of the stock situations or even the great moments of life - birth, marriage, death...

When Barbara Pym died in 1980, she left a considerable amount of unpublished material. This volume contains an early novel, Civil to Strangers, three novellas and an autobiographical essay, 'Finding a Voice', Pym's only written comment on her writing career....

Dulcie Mainwaring is always helping others, but never looks out for herself—especially in the realm of love. Her friend Viola is besotted by the alluring Dr Aylwin Forbes. Aylwin, however, is smitten with Dulcie's pretty young niece....

Formidable Miss Doggett fills her life by giving tea parties for young academics and acting as watchdog for the morals of North Oxford. Anthea, her great-niece, is in love with a dashing undergraduate with political ambitions. Of this, Miss Doggett thoroughly approves....

In a provincial university town, Caro Grimstone, a dissatisfied faculty wife, becomes the unwilling accomplice to her husband Alan's ambitions. When she volunteers to read to a blind esteemed anthropologist in a nursing home, Alan seizes the opportunity to steal his papers....

Included in this collection are the BBC Radio dramatisations of some of her most beloved books - plus bonus material....

Over the years, as Barbara Pym replaced Nancy Mitford, Georgette Heyer, even Jane Austen, as my most loved author....

It was odd that Harriet should always have been so fond of curates....

Less Than Angels follows the loves, works and hopes of a group of young anthropologists....

Wilmet Forsyth is well dressed, well looked after, suitably husbanded, good looking, and fairly young - but very bored....