Peaceful Retirement
Miss Read looks forward to her retirement - but it doesn't go quite as planned...
When Miss Read took early retirement, she anticipated days of relaxation and calm. She couldn't have been more wrong! Instead she finds herself as busy and in demand as ever: on holiday in Florence, helping with church and school affairs and offering a kindly ear to her eccentric neighbours.
As village life continues as always, Miss Read embarks on a local project and discovers a new talent, opening up an exciting chapter in her life.
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.