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

Enchanted April.
Sadly, I agree about the anti semitism in MPLFAD, an otherwise wonderful book.

Nice to meet another Provincial Lady fan, definitely my desert island book.

My first suggestion would be Miss Read, Village Diary gets a mention above, none of the others are in diary form, but to my mind they share some of the type of character observations of the Provincial Lady.

For dealing with the pre war and war time period try Monica Dickens' loosely autobiographical books, One Pair of Hands, One Pair of Feet and My turn to make the Tea. Lots of her fiction is also very enjoyable.

Again for wartime stories, Nevil Shute. A Town like Alice is the most famous, but also Requiem for a Wren and the Pied Piper.

Looking forward to sampling some of the ideas up thread.

I not normally a culture warrior and think that books should be judged in the context of their time, but A Town like Alice is racist

A bit different, but there's some rather lovely Provincial Lady fanfic. I particularly like this in which the PL visits the Lake district.

I hope you have read all four of the diaries, they were published all together by Virago. I go back to it again and again - although you do need to remember it is 'of its times' in some bits. For completeness as a previous poster said, her daughter also wrote a book and there's a Provincial Lady goes to Russia book but that's a bit different as it's about her in her real professional/charitable life.

I came across the books when I shared a house with a friend whose Mum had given her a whole pile of books written by women in the 30s and beyond, and she'd carried on collecting the era through Virago. I read all the way through them. For humour I what I liked very much at the time and might read again are Cold Comfort Farm (there's other lesser known books by the author) and The Egg and I which is American but I, personally, felt the humour was not dissimilar (and it is similarly first in a short series of semi-autobiographic books).

Again for wartime stories, Nevil Shute. A Town like Alice is the most famous, but also Requiem for a Wren and the Pied Piper.

And Pastoral, a gentle romance set on an RAF bomber station.

Thanks for the continuing suggestions. I'm now reading MPLFAD and will get to the sequels for DOAPL. Tbh I'm jewish and antisemitism in books doesn't bother me as I read a lot of old books and I just think of it as "of its time". It's in loads of books I love.
I LOVED the Barbara Pym bbc dramatised documentary with Patricia Routledge x love that it ended with Aubade by Phillip Larkin too

Oh and the Adrian Mole books are THE BEST

Some great suggestions above - I would add
Invitation to the Waltz - Rosamond Lehmann
In the Mink - Anne Scott-James
Anything by Molly Clavering - v gentle humoured novels, sometimes with a bit of romance, mostly set in the Scottish lowlands

Look up the books published by Furrowed Middlebrow on Kindle, @Babycatsarenice (you can also buy them as hard copies but the kindle books are easy and inexpensive). They specialise in women’s fiction of the 40s and 50s; there are loads and I’m sure you’ll find something you’ll enjoy there. Elizabeth Fair’s novels make very enticing reading.

The owner is an American who’s mad about English fiction of the first half of the 20th century.

Mrs Tim of the Regiment (and subsequent sequels)! So good and also written in journal style so very similar in feel to Diary of a Provincial Lady.