If I LOVE Diary of a Provincial Lady...

[Babycatsarenice]

What should I read next?
Done Pursuit of Love and Cold Comfort Farm (also highly recommend)
Thanking you

Ohhh I adored Diary of a Provincial Lady.
Have you tried Mapp and Lucia by E.F. Benson?
Or anything by Barbara Pym?
As an aside I saw this recently and loved it. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0022nnt/miss-pyms-day-out-bookmark

Isn't Diary of PL fabulous! I didn't realise it was tbe template for so many of the modern female humorous fiction I love.
Amazing suggestions thank you! Love Patricia Routledge / Mrs Bucket

I loved Diary of a Provincial Lady too.

You might like Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce, and other books by Rachel Joyce too.

To state the bleeding obvious, have you read the sequels?

Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day by Winifred Watson. Lovely book!

Mrs Miniver

You could try E M Delafield’s other works. None of them are like The Diary but they are still very enjoyable.

Otherwise I echo the suggestion to try Barbara Pym and the Mapp and Lucia novels.

Miss Buncle’s Book
Mrs Palfrey and the Claremont and other Elizabeth Taylors

The Cazalet Chronicles, Elizabeth Jane Howard. Not the same humour, but brilliant.

Try Diary of a Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith

You might also enjoy Provincial Daughter, by Rosamond Dashwood (E M Delafield's daughter in real life). This is a 1950s humorous account of family life, very much in the style of Provincial Lady. Not sure it's currently in print, but was a Virago Classic reprint in the 80s so should be available secondhand.

Thank you all very much!
Off to download to my Kindle!

I love the Provincial Lady ( the Provincial Lady in Wartime is my No 1!)
I actually have both my mother's and my maternal grandmother's copies now
I had Covid a few months ago and listened to the Diary of Adrian Mole ( Sue Townsend) and it was a surprisingly similar experience to listening to the Provincial Lady!

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

The Balkan Trilogy by Olivia Manning

Both

Village diaries - Miss Read
I capture the castle - Dodie smith

feel similar to me

This immediately sprang to mind, although if I recall correctly there are some anti-Semitic sentiments in it that might have been considered acceptable when it was written but, well, aren't.

Miss Buncle’s Book

And the Mrs Tim books by the same author, D.E. Stevenson.

Completely agree. Santa Montefiore's character Flappy is straight out of Diary of a Provincial Lady.

Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels. They start with High Rising and go on for about 25 years. I’ve been reading them out of order which doesn’t particularly spoil them.

Maybe some Ann Bridge's novels, particularly Illyrian Spring and Peking Picnic?

Oh, and absolutely E. F. Benson!

Great thread, thanks! Lots of great suggestions.

Mrs Harris Goes to Paris (Moscow, New York, Parliament) gave me the same feel.

There are. It brought the lovely cosy feel screeching to a halt for me. I'd recommend Miss Buncle's Book and its two sequels, Miss Buncle Married and The Two Mrs Abbotts (unfortunately those two titles are a bit spoiler-ish ).

Following with interest as Provincial Lady is my ultimate comfort read and listen and am always on the lookout for anything similar.

I really enjoyed Love, Nina by Nina Stibbe which, although not a diary, is a series of letters with a similarly warm and funny author "voice".

Also if you can get hold of them, the Eliza books by Barry Pain, written in the early 1900s. The narrator is very like Mr Pooter in 'Diary of a Nobody', but his pretensions are usually quashed by his wife Eliza. The first book is free on the Project Gutenberg website, but you might have to look for the others second hand.