The Persephone Classics edition of short stories which explore many aspects of l
ife on the Home Front during the Second World War. From her writing hut in the w
oods near Haslemere in Surrey, Mollie Panter-Downes wrote a regular 'Letter from
London' for The New Yorker, as well as book reviews and short stories. Only two
of the twenty-one stories in Good Evening, Mrs Craven had ever been reprinted,
and all were for many years unavailable to English readers, who have praised the
ir humour, deft portraiture and the depiction of aspects of wartime life not usu
ally uncovered. 'The mistress, unlike the wife, has to worry and mourn in secret
for her man; a middle-aged spinster finds herself alone again when the camarade
rie of the air-raids is over.' (Ruth Gorb, Hampstead & Highgate Express).
