' January 22nd
- Robert startles me at breakfast by asking if my cold
- which he has hitherto ignored
- is better I reply that it has gone Then why he asks do I look like that? Feel that life is wholly unendurable & decide madly to get a new hat' It's not easy being a Provincial Lady in Devonshire in the 1920s juggling a grumpy husband mischievous children & a host of domestic dilemmas
- from rice mould to a petulant cook But this Provincial Lady will not be defeated; not by wayward flower bulbs not by unexpected houseguests not even by the Blitz She will continue to preside over the WI endure rain-drenched family picnics & succeed as a published author all the while tending to her strawberries The Diary of a Provincial Lady is a brilliantly observed comic novel as funny & fresh today as when it was first written Widely regarded as one of the funniest English authors & an heir to Jane Austen EM Delafield was born in Sussex in 1890 She took the name Delafield to distinguish herself from her mother (De la Pasture) also a novelist & wrote over 30 books which could be 'as laugh-out-loud funny as PG Wodehouse' before her death in 1943