Description

Look out for the new BBC adaptation starring Anna Chancellor, Miranda Richardson and Mark Gatiss!

Miss Elizabeth Mapp reigns supreme over the village of Tilling…until the advent of Mrs Emmeline Lucas, or ‘Lucia’ to her friends. No one could compete, surely, with Lucia’s formidable armoury: her duchesses, her Italian, her financial speculations, her celebrated recipe for Lobster a la Riseholme. But Mapp will not relinquish her supremacy in local society so easily, and battle is joined between these two indomitable queens and their rather fickle allies.

Publisher Review

No matter how appalling, malicious and pretentious the behaviour of Lucia, the reader is always lured into a sense of affectionate complicity with this comic monster * Daily Telegraph * Bitchily observant novel of small-town life * Independent * Sparkles with wicked wit...provides some pointed digs at social one- upmanship and the genteelly disguised venality of the upper classes. But, on another level, it can be hugely enjoyed as class-war subversion * Sunday Times * The pleasure of Mapp and Lucia is summed up, surely, in Alice Roosevelt's bon mot. "If you have nothing good to say about anybody, come and sit right by me." -- Philip Hensher Oh the joy of seeing Lucia again! These magic books are as fresh as paint. The characters are real and therefore timeless -- Nancy Mitford * The Times *