Dora Saint

Born in April 1913, she grew up in Kent and London. She wanted to be a journalist, but her father forbade it so she trained as a teacher at Homerton in Cambridge.

She wrote “light essays” for newspapers and magazines such as Punch while teaching full-time in London, then moved to West Oxfordshire during the Second World War after marrying her husband Dougie, who was in the RAF.

She expected her first book, Village School, to appear under her own name but publishers Michael Joseph persuaded her to present it as an account of a school year by spinster headmistress Miss Read, her mother’s maiden name.

Published in 1955, it was set in Fairacre, an amalgam of several villages she remembered from her childhood in Kent, and became an instant success.

She then decided to write novels about Woodgreen, based on real places where she walked her baby in a pram.

Despite moving to Berkshire, she continued to write about Thrush Green, producing at least 30 books about her two fictional villages. They include two memoirs – A Fortunate Grandchild and Time Remembered – children’s titles and a recipe book, Miss Read’s Country Cooking (1969).

In 1960 she started working as a magistrate in Newbury, Berkshire, which she continued for 23 years. She was made an MBE in 1998 and finally retired from writing at the age of 83.

Her books continued to be popular, particularly in the USA, and were reissued in 2005 to mark the 50th anniversary of the first publication.

A final book was published in December 2010, when she was 97. The story, Christmas at Thrush Green, was co-authored with her long-time editor Jenny Dereham, who put the story into words based on Mrs Saint’s original idea.

It is full of local detail from Witney’s surrounding villages and towns like Woodstock.

Mrs Saint died on April 7, 10 days short of her 99th birthday, in Great Shefford, near Newbury. She leaves a daughter, Jill.

A memorial service for Mrs Saint will be held at St Mary’s Church, Great Shefford, on Thursday, May 17, from 2.30pm