Battles at Thrush Green - Couverture rigide

Miss Read, or in real life Dora Saint, was a teacher by profession who started writing after the second world war, beginning with light essays written for Punch and other journals. She then wrote on educational and country matters and worked as a scriptwriter for the BBC. Miss Read was married to a schoolmaster for sixty-four years until his death in 2004, and they had one daughter.

Miss Read was awarded an MBE in the 1998 New Year Honours list for her services to literature, She was the author of many immensely popular books, including two autobiographical works, but it was her novels of English rural life for which she was best known. The first of these Village School, was published in 1955, and Miss Read continued to write about the fictional villages of Fairacre and Thrush Green for many years. She lived near Newbury in Berkshire until her death in 2012.

The peace of the Cotswold village of Thrush Green is about to be disturbed...

Children's voices ring out from the school playground; in the distance there is the gentle hum of a lawnmower; and all around the village, birdsong can be heard. But despite all evidence to the contrary, in the village of Thrush Green feelings are running high...

The rector has a plan for the neglected churchyard which doesn't meet with universal approval; there is a clash of personalities at the local school; and someone has returned to the village after an absence of fifty years.

Before long, the tranquillity of the Cotswold village is shattered.