In these trying times, sometimes you just want a book that makes you laugh and nothing else: one that’s devoid of serious political issues and carries not a smidgen of emotional heft. Cold Comfort Farm is one such book. Published in 1932, it’s a pitch-perfect parody of the doomy rural romances popularised by authors such as DH Lawrence and Thomas Hardy, in which every flower is a metaphor for sex and uneducated maidens are regularly seduced by brooding farmhands.

The novel opens with 19-year-old Flora Poste learning that her parents have been killed in an accident. With minimal fuss, she leaves London and moves to the Sussex farm owned by her cousins, the Starkadders, who seem straight out of one of the dramatic rural novels she detests: the men are variously violent, sex-crazed, monosyllabic or mad with religious fervour, while the women are manipulative, manipulated, away with the fairies or constantly getting knocked up.

Every practical, Flora rolls up her sleeves and determines to organise the lives and love affairs of her unrefined relatives. The whole thing is deliciously tart and uncomplicated, like a glass of homemade lemonade.

Key quote: “Flora sighed. It was curious that persons who lived what the novelists called a rich emotional life always seemed to be a bit slow on the uptake.”

Penguin, £7.99

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