Daphne du Maurier of the "nation's best-loved novel" on the BBC's 2003 survey The Big Read. Other significant works include "The Scapegoat", "The House on the Strand", and "The King's General". The last is set in the middle of the first and second English Civil Wars, written from the Royalist perspective of Du Maurier's adopted Cornwall. Several of Du Maurier's other novels have also been adapted for the screen, including "Jamaica Inn", "Frenchman's Creek", "Hungry Hill", and "My Cousin Rachel". The Hitchcock film "The Birds" (1963) is based on a treatment of one of her short stories, as is the film "Don't Look
Daphne du Maurier Scapegoat", which she partly financed. Du Maurier was often categorised as a "romantic novelist", a term that she deplored, given her novels rarely have a happy ending, and often have sinister overtones and shadows of the paranormal. In this light, she has more in common with the "sensation novels" of Wilkie Collins and others, which she admired. The obituarist Kate Kellaway wrote: "Du Maurier was mistress of calculated irresolution. She did not want to put her readers' minds at rest. She wanted her riddles to persist. She wanted the novels to continue to haunt us beyond their endings." Du Maurier's