144p PERSEPHONE BOOKS ISBN 190315524X
WITH A PUBLISHER'S NOTE

This companion volume to Persephone Book No. 8 contains ten stories describing aspects of British life in the years after the war. 'Minnie's Room' itself is about a family who are unable to believe that their maid wants to leave them to live in a room of her own. An elderly couple emigrates because of 'the dragon out to gobble their modest, honourable incomes.' The sisters in 'Beside the Still Waters' grumble because 'Everything is so terribly difficult nowadays.'

These 'acute, funny and poignant stories' (Daily Telegraph) reveal 'an unerring observer, with a stunning gift for economy of description' (The Times). Mollie Panter-Downes, said the Spectator, 'is discomfortingly good at anatomising the crudities and subtleties of snobbery - but she is never unkind.'

The endpaper is a fabric bought at John Lewis in the late 1950s. It is both traditional and modernist, while the sombre colours suit the mood of the stories.