Gossip from Thrush Green - Tapa blanda

Change is afoot in the beautiful Cotswold village of Thrush Green...

As the early sunshine begins to warm Thrush Green, it looks as if it is going to be a golden summer. But in this apparently sleepy village, there is a flurry of activity.

As Molly Curdle prepares for her new baby, rumour has it that a retirement is planned, and the village schoolteacher is about to make an important decision. And as Thrush Green's vicar sits down to write his sermon, he has no idea of the potential disaster which is unfolding...

All is not as idyllic as it seems for the unsuspecting villagers, for change is never far away.

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.