Imprint
- Orion
- Orion
Fairacre, Fiction, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Sagas
The third novel in the bestselling Fairacre series
On a blustery March day in the village of Fairacre, Miss Clare sees two strangers, 'pacing slowly, side by side, along the edge of Hundred Acre Field which lay on the other side of Miss Clare's garden hedge...'
So begins a story which brings all the villagers of Fairacre together, as they face the prospect of developers who hope to build new houses on the fields adjoining old Mr Miller's farm. Everyone has an opinion - but not everyone is in agreement about the development.
Under the watchful gaze of Miss Read, the school teacher, we meet old characters and new, from retired teacher Miss Clare and the surly Mrs Pringle, to the new assistant teacher, Miss Jackson - who brings with her problems of her own...
Miss Read
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.
Four plays based on her work have been written by Ron Perry, Miss Read's Thrush Green, Miss Read Remembered, Return to Thrush Green and The Village School.
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