Book Society

Love in a Cold Climate enjoyed great popularity. It was the first novel to be simultaneously chosen as Book of the Month by the Book Society , the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard.

The reviewer in British Book News wrote: This admirable volume forms a valuable complement to [Smyth's] own autobiographical works, which are minor masterpieces of English prose. The biography became a Book Society book...

The novel was a Book Society choice, and received accolades from reviewers for its brilliantly successful attack on . . . the spiritual and physical relationship of married life.John Betjeman called it...

This was the first book LR published with the new firm of Arthur Barker in London. She took some trouble to disguise identities, since Barker was worried about potential libel actions. The Book Society backed...

She wrote it in 1946, and revised it in a state of dissatisfaction with her first version. Chatto and Windus were enthusiastic about it and offered her an advance of £150 and a royalty of...

LC 's Fenny (a Book Society choice, and sometimes called her finest novel), was set in or near Florence during the Second World War and the years just before and after it.