My Turn to Make the Tea: 'I envy anyone yet to discover the joy of Monica Dickens ... she's blissfully funny' Nina Stibbe

One Pair of Feet is a semi-autobiographical novel by Monica Dickens, recounted with her wit, warmth, and wry observation. It follows Poppy, a newly recruited cub reporter at the Downingham Post, who is determined to prove to the editor that Women are a nuisance in the office. She lacks experience but makes up for it in spirit and ambition, making the Downingham Post the best regional newspaper there is.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 07 July 2022
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

INTRODUCED BY LISSA EVANS

I envy anyone yet to discover the joy of Monica Dickens. She's beady-eyed, big-hearted, and blissfully funny.

NINA STIBBE

Wherever her eye falls, it finds the exact, significant detail, and her ear for dialogue is unerring.

OBSERVER

Monica's naked curiosity and general bolshiness are easy to identify with.

LISSA EVANS

Poppy, newly recruited cub reporter at the Downingham Post, is determined to prove to the editor that he's wrong in his belief that Women are a nuisance in the office. He certainly doesn't think she's a nuisance when it's time for the tea round—a job that never fails to fall to the only female reporter.

What Poppy lacks in experience, she makes up for in spirit and ambition. She'll make the Downingham Post the best regional newspaper there is—even if she occasionally gets the names wrong in court hearings.

Life for a single professional woman in the post-war years certainly has its challenges—from finding a room, when the tyrannical landlady doesn't consider Poppy to be quite respectable, to changing her editor's deeply entrenched ways. This semi-autobiographical novel, recounted with Monica Dickens's wit, warmth, and wry observation, will charm all who read it.

If you enjoyed My Turn to Make the Tea, you will love One Pair of Feet, Dickens's novel of being a wartime trainee nurse, also published in Virago Modern Classics.

Weight: 206g
Dimension: 126 x 198 x 21 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780349015996