INTRODUCED BY LOUIS DE BERNIERES’I’m a huge fan of Barbara Pym’ RICHARD OSMAN’I’d sooner read a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen’ PHILIP LARKINFormidable 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. However, Anthea’s father, an Oxford don, is carrying on in the most unseemly fashion with a student – they have been spotted together at the British museum! But the only liaison Miss Doggett isn’t aware of is taking place under her very own roof: the lodger has proposed to her paid companion Miss Morrow. She wouldn’t approve of that at all.’Brilliant, hilarious and so very, very English’ DAILY MAIL’My favourite writer . . . I pick up her books with joy’ JILLY COOPER