I don't usually recommend book's to people - one person's meat is another's poison and so on - but this novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, I'm nearly evangelical about. Get a copy, lock the door, turn the phone off.

It's an absolutely charming late love story and a beautiful comedy of manners set in England. I can't get over it.

It will tell you more about the social frictions, difficulties, and nuttiness about modern England than I could do in a lifetime, with a wit ten times better than Jane Austen and it makes Martin Amis look like a cartoon scribbler.

Character lovers, this book is heaven. I've not come across such well dimensioned and lingeringly memorable characters as the eponymous Major or Mrs Ali. This is the level of writing I aspire to.