Stolen honeycombs, a fiancé training to be a missionary in Africa, a picnic marred by quicksand and fog, a fundraising party for pig pensions: these are just a few of the plot points of The Native Heath (Dean Street) by Elizabeth Fair, published in the UK in the 1950s and available again after many decades of obscurity. It is a satire both gentle and barbed about village life after the war. But these modest domestic and social interactions speak volumes about human nature and the effect of landscape and environment on the English psyche. Some things are changing, like newly planned towns, aristocratic eccentrics who espouse yoga and natural medicine, and girls who think for themselves. But other things are the same, like the eponymous ancestral home passed down to Julia Dunstan, the widowed heroine of this novel. Elizabeth Fair came from a pretty typical upper middle-class background, but her time driving ambulances during World War II and then working overseas with the Red Cross widened her vision and allowed her to see her own people more clearly. This is smart English comedy in the very best tradition of Jane Austen.