Any of the Mapp and Lucia series are a must for their wicked pin-pricking social satire of pretensions of a kind which still exist even today. These books go onto my short list as among those which make me not just smile but convulse with mad laughter. Tilling and Riselholme are forever England, or rather that synthetic of our own century, Olde Englande. There's a deadly truth in everything Benson writes. Review by Sir Roy Strong, whose works include 'The Story of Britain' (Kirkus UK)