The English author Celia Dale died in 2011, just shy of her 100th birthday, and during her lifetime she published thirteen novels. The first of these was ‘The Least of These’ (1943), which shone a light on a family as they lived through The Blitz. Her final novel was ‘Sheep’s Clothing’ (1988) – a deliciously dark tale relating the travails of a pair of female con artists. There’s been a revival of interest in her work in recent years and that’s chiefly down to Daunt Books who recently re-published ‘Sheep’s Clothing’ along with her 1966 novel ‘A Helping Hand’. For their next re-issue they’ve dipped further back into Dale’s oeuvre for her 1960 novel ‘A Spring of Love’. It begins with Esther and her weekly highlight: a Thursday evening visit to a tea-room. Esther is 30, has worked all her life in the accounts office of a department store, and lives with her Gran in London. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to describe her as mousey. She’s never had a romantic partner, but during her tea-room sojourn a man, unable to find a free table elsewhere, sits down beside her. Raymond. A courtship begins and Esther unearths feelings she’s never really experienced before: love and happiness. But is Raymond about to let other, darker, feelings cloud their relationship in ways Esther never thought possible? ‘A Spring of Love’ showcases Dale’s observational powers at their height as she plunges readers into a pre-swinging sixties world of saloon bars, two channel TV sets, and beetroot salad high-teas. You really need some Celia Dale in your life. RM

Published by Daunt Books