His masterly account of a cruel flight from invasion.
Paterson, manager of a small rice mill, organizes the evacuation of a small English community when Japanese forces invade Burma. Paterson takes with him his Burmese mistress and her young brother. The rest of the party take along their prejudices, their pettiness and their squabbles, aand a small enclave of English insularity moves north through Burma.
Swiftly and inevitably the journey becomes a tragic working out of tension and insoluble conflict.

Can love survive the dangers of occupied France?

Introducing the Larkins, a family with a deserved place in popular mythology.
Here tey come, in the first of their hilarious rural adventures, crashing their way through the English countryside in the wake of Pop, the quick-eyed, golden-hearted junk dealer, and Ma, with a mouth full of crisps and a laugh like jelly.

Compared with bony Miss Garfield, his new nanny, Gilly, was a welcome vision of youth.
Left behind by his uncaring father in the decaying house, James had hoped that Gilly would enter his imaginary world and meet his 'mates', Mr Pimm and Mr Monday.
The only trouble was that Gilly appeared more interested in playing games with the good-looking Mr Ainsworth - games that did not include him.
James wasn't to know that one of the gamblers was playing for the biggest stake of all.

Four short stories......
The Simple Life: Stella and Barty 'escape' to their country cottage every weekend. Stella hates it until she meets Roger, a shy and beautiful adolescent.
The Four Beauties: A man looks back on his affairs with the lovely Davenport sisters, Tina, Sophie and Christabel....
The Chords of Youth: Aunt Leonora, that amiable crackpot, takes up the cause of Anglo-German relations
The White Wind: The story of a South Sea Island community and the crisis that restores Fat Uncle's will to live.

Includes three long elegiac stories and two short ones featuring an 'irresistible' female eccentric, the jealous relationship between a mother and daughter and the success of a sluttish Delilah in robbing a middle-aged woodcutter of both his hoarded wealth and his inner serenity.