Charlie Lovett, Summer Reading Guide author of The Lost Book of the Grail and said on a recent podcast that he loves Angela Thirkell, calling her books "great fun." He says if the term "beach read" had existed in the 1920s, Thirkell would have been all over it.

Publisher's description: "A summer to remember . . . When Fanny Harcourt and her best friend Emily Dacre arrive in London for the Queen Victoria’s coronation they are swept up in the hustle and bustle of city life. Leaving her ailing mother behind, Fanny and her father set out to make the most of the big city. But almost at once Fanny is caught up in an impossible choice between two young suitors and cannot decide whether she will choose with her heart or her head. Mr Vavasour, boyish and charming, steals her heart when she spies him through her bedroom window, and his poor reputation is not enough to keep Fanny away. Mr Darnley seems like a much safer choice, but with her heart already swayed he'll have a hard time winning Fanny over. That is, if Fanny’s father hasn’t driven the two of them away by then . . ."

Alexander McCall Smith writes in the introduction: "We are caught up by precisely those questions that illuminate the novels of Jane Austen: who will marry whom? Who will neatly be put in her place? Which men will escape and which will be caught? These are not the great questions of literature, but they are diverting, which is one of the roles of fiction. Angela Thirkell creates and peoples a world whose note can be heard today only in the tiniest of echoes, but in her books it comes through loud and clear, reminding us that the good comic novel can easily, and with grace, transcend the years that stand between us and the time of its creation."