Miss Read

Miss Read, or in real life Mrs 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 has written on educational and country matters, and worked as a script-writer for the BBC. Miss Read is married to a retired schoolmaster and they live in a tiny Berkshire hamlet. She is a local magistrate and her hobbies are going to the theatre, listening to music and reading. She was made an MBE for her services to literature in the 1998 New Year Honours List.

Miss Read is the author of numerous books, which have gained immense popularity for their humorous and honest depictions of English rural life, including, most recently, The Year at Thrush Green and A Peaceful Retirement. Many of her books are published by Penguin, together with nine omnibus editions. She has also written a cookery book, Miss Read's Country Cooking, and two autobiographical works, A Fortunate Grandchild and Time Remembered, published together in one volume as Early Days, with a new foreword by the author.