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The joke in the first two chapters, set firmly inside that bubble, is that Flora is going to write to all her living relatives in order to avoid having to seek work. This is Evelyn Waugh territory, where bright young things like Flora will do anything to avoid engagement with a world outside their particular London bubble. Everybody knows about it, especially the line about ‘something nasty in the woodshed,’ and I was worried that the archly knowing tone of the first few pages was indicative of some fairly self-satisfied attitudes. I wasn’t particularly expecting to enjoy this book. She aims to keep things exactly as they are-and I’ll come back to her later. She knows Flora would like to meet her, but so far she’s kept her away for a month.

Her favourite grandson has told Flora how women are like spiders-the female likes nothing better than to eat the cock-spider-and old Mrs Starkadder has been in control, at the centre of her web, for 20 long years. Meanwhile, in the chapter I’ve reached, we finally get inside not only the room of the materfamilias but right inside her head. Flora, Stella Gibbons’s super-resourceful heroine, wants to ‘tidy up’ the labyrinthine family mess that is Cold Comfort Farm, and she’s sure her plans are going well…. Nearly half-way through, and it feels like a good place to pause.