An arterial road is going to go right through the heart of the quintessentially English village of Dingleford and so begins D. E. Stevenson’s charming and funny novel – never before published because it was considered too old-fashioned even in the 1930s. Entrepreneurial Jane Fortune buys Dingleford Cottage, considered too near the new road by its owner, in order to open a tearoom. With the support of her redoubtable old Nannie she sets to work and manages to charm almost the entire village. There is Charles Weatherby who is wonderful with a water tank. Then there’s Harold Prescott the only one able to mend the unreliable doorbell and who understands that ‘Tea was as balm in Gilead to feminine troubles’.

Stevenson is at her comic best with a young man stripped to his underwear in Miss Fortune’s kitchen: ‘convention decrees that whereas bathing suits are proper garments in which to appear before a young unmarried lady, vests and pants are not.’ Nannie too is taken with him. ‘She took a glance at his legs as she bustled around the kitchen and decided that they were just right ... It wasn’t often you saw legs like that.’ There’s a car called Edgar, a horrid Frenchman and stuffy but rather nice Colonel Staunton and lovely clothes – from Jane’s tweed and pullover to her dance dress. Miss Fortune’s rival is the difficult but beautiful Erica Manley desperate to escape village life: ‘Father won’t let me go, won’t let me have a penny. Oh it’s so unfair, so absolutely Victorian. Sometimes I feel I can’t bear it a moment longer.’ The village shop itself is the setting for a scene straight out of an Ealing comedy. Fair Miss Fortune is light, frothy and very sweet.

D.E. Stevenson writes the perfect soothing book. Many of her books seem dull when reduced to a sentence - for example, 'Jane Fortune causes a stir when she arrives in Dingleford to open a tearoom.' - but her books are not dull to read at all. It's part of the charm of a Stevenson novel that you enjoy it, and continue reading with pleasure, even though the characters are rather one dimensional and you have a fair idea what will happen to them.

Stevenson excels in depicting the small communities created by geography, employment, or by a shared history/ family relationship. In The Fair Miss Fortune, the community is the small town of Dingleford, and its inhabitants are agog to meet Miss Fortune and to hear about the alterations made to her new cottage. Local gents Charles and Harold are very pleased to meet the new arrival, very very pleased indeed, but as the story progresses they become confused as to why their fair Miss Fortune can at times appear to be a complete stranger. The twist to this tale becomes very obvious - and some of the characterisations are quite stereotypical - but overall, the book is very sweet, with a little tangy vein of gentle ridicule.