Conference at Cold Comfort Farm: Stella Gibbons

Robert Poste`s child is back at Cold Comfort Farm. But all is not well. Flora finds the farm transformed into a twee haven filled with Toby jugs and peasant pottery, and rooms labelled `Quiete Retreate` and `Greate laundrie`. It is, Flora winces, `exactly like being locked in the Victoria and Albert Museum after closing time`.

Worse, the farm is hosting a conference of the pretentious International Thinkers Group - a group made up of the `sadistic owl` Mr Peccavi, loathsome Mr Mybug and the overpowering Mrs Ernestine Thump.

And worst of all, there are no Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm. All the he-cousins have gone abroad to make their fortunes and the female cousins are having a pretty thin time of it. Once again the sensible Flora decides to take the situation in hand.