Stella Gibbons detestation of pomposity and pretence. Truss has described Gibbons as "the Jane Austen of the 20th century", a parallel which the novelist Malcolm Bradbury thought apt; Flora Poste in "Cold Comfort Farm", with her "higher common sense", is "a Jane-ite heroine transformed into a clear-eyed modern woman". Bradbury also observed that many of Gibbons's novels end in Austen-like nuptials. Truss highlights the importance that Gibbons places on detachment as a necessary adjunct to effective writing: "Like many a good doctor, she seems to have considered sympathy a peculiar and redundant emotion, and a terrible waste of time." This matter-of-fact quality
Simon Gibbons Simon Gibbons Simon Gibbons is Professor of Medicinal Phytochemistry and Head of the Department of Pharmaceutical and Biological Chemistry at The UCL School of Pharmacy. He was the 2005 recipient of the Phytochemical Society of Europe Award for Phytochemistry, the 2012 Pharmanex Prize and was a Fellow of The Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health. In 2010 he was appointed to the Home Office Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) as the Chemistry Council member and is Chairman of the ACMD's Novel Psychoactive Substances Work Group (NPSWG) which is tasked to look at the area of 'legal high' Novel