This title features unexpected tales from the master of short fiction. The Shielding of Mrs Forbes". Graham Forbes is a disappointment to his mother who thinks that if he must have a wife he should have done better. Though her own husband isnt all that satisfactory either. Still this is Alan Bennett so what is happening in the bedroom (and in lots of other places too) is altogether more startling perhaps shocking & ultimately more true to peoples predilections. " The Greening of Mrs Donaldson". Mrs. Donaldson is a conventional middle-class woman beached on the shores of widowhood after a marriage that had been much like many others: happy to begin with then satisfactory & finally dull. But when she decides to take in two lodgers her mundane life becomes much more stimulating..."