Stella Gibbons "Cold Comfort Farm"; it mentions none of her other works—while providing her "bêtes noires" Morgan and Mary Webb with full entries. To Gibbons, "Cold Comfort Farm" became "That Book" or "You-Know-What", its title never mentioned. Despite her growing irritation and expressed distaste for it, the book continued to be lauded by successive generations of critics, Boston described it as "one of those rare books of comic genius that imprints itself on the brain and can never afterwards be eradicated". A more negative view of the book has been expressed by the literary critic Mary Beard, who considers it "a rather
The Water Gipsies (novel) The Water Gipsies (novel) The Water Gipsies is a romantic comedy novel by the British writer A. P. Herbert, which was first published in 1930. It portrays the adventures of Jane Bell and her sister Lily, who operate a barge along England's rivers and canals. Jane enjoys several romantic entanglements during the story. The novel is Herbert's best-known work, and reflected his lifelong love of British waterways. He lived in Hammersmith Terrace, and a thinly disguised version of "The Dove" pub appears as "The Pigeons". In 1932 the novel was made into a film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring