Siblings Sophia, Harry and Francis have lost both their parents in the last six months. Attending the funeral for their estranged father, they wonder what will become of them now that the last connection to their difficult childhood has been severed. What have they inherited – financially and emotionally – to guide them to adulthood, and build a new home together?

Enbury Heath is a semi-autobiographical account of the years which Gibbons and her brothers spent living in a cottage in Hampstead Heath: a wonderfully astute, bittersweet novel about family, grief, money, and the pleasures of London.

‘Brilliant … very probably the funniest book ever written’ Sunday Times

When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly-named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last twenty years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organise other people. Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand. A hilarious and ruthless parody of rural melodramas and purple prose, Cold Comfort Farm is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time.

‘Screamingly funny and wildly subversive’ Marian Keyes, Guardian

The Penguin Classics edition of Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm is introduced by Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

If you enjoyed Cold Comfort Farm you might like George and Weedon Grossmith’s Diary of a Nobody, also available in Penguin Classics.

There she is confronted by an exceptionally odd cast of characters: grief-stricken Judith, fervently religious Amos, the lusty smouldering Seth, wild and mysterious Elfine and, of course, the invisible tyrant Great Aunt Ada Doom who saw something nasty in the woodshed. Many would be overcome by the simmering passions of the Starkadder family, but not Flora. All they need is a little organising.

Stella Gibbons’ deliciously witty parody has been delighting readers since 1932 and retains its original sunny charm in this BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation. Duration: 2 hours approx.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH

The title story tells of a typical Christmas at the farm before the coming of Flora Poste. It is a parody of the worst sort of family Christmas: Adam Lambsbreath dresses up as Father Christmas in two of Judith’s red shawls. There are unsuitable presents, unpleasant insertions into the pudding and Aunt Ada Doom orders Amos to carve the turkey, adding: ‘Ay, would it were a vulture, ’twere more fitting!’

‘Stella Gibbons is the Jane Austen of the 20th century’ Lynne Truss, author of the Constable Twitten series.

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.