INTRODUCED BY LISSA EVANS<\/b><\/p>\n
‘I envy anyone yet to discover the joy of Monica Dickens. She’s beady eyed, big hearted and blissfully funny’ Nina Stibbe<\/b><\/p>\n
Poppy, newly recruited cub reporter at the Downingham Post<\/i>, 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 which never fails to fall to the only female reporter.<\/p>\n
What Poppy lacks in experience, she makes up for in spirit and ambition. She’ll make the Downingham Post<\/i> 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.<\/p>\n
If you enjoyed My Turn to Make the Tea<\/i>, you will love One Pair of Feet<\/i>, Dickens’s novel of being a wartime trainee nurse, also published in Virago Modern Classics.<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The third of Monica Dickens’ autobiographical books describes her time as cub reporter on the Downingham Post, a long established small-town paper with a steady circulation and not much sympathy with the innovations of its junior reporter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[68],"product_tag":[284,127],"class_list":{"0":"post-92402","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","5":"product_cat-general-fiction","6":"product_tag-humour","7":"product_tag-modern-contemporary-fiction-post-c-1945","8":"pa_book_author-dickens-monica","9":"pa_cover-paperback","10":"pa_dewey-823-912-edition23","11":"pa_edition-new-edition","12":"pa_imprint-virago","13":"pa_language-english","14":"pa_pages-9065","15":"pa_publisher-virago","16":"pa_readership-general-trade-code-k","18":"first","19":"onbackorder","20":"taxable","21":"shipping-taxable","22":"purchasable","23":"product-type-simple"},"yoast_head":"\n