Stella Gibbons's 1932 satire of English country life might not, on the face of it, seem to have much to offer a contemporary audience, but if the "ooh, aar" jokes sometimes set the teeth on edge, at least it's elegantly written. The self-consciously old-fashioned text has an amusing lilt, as has the author's trick of marking the "finer passages" with one, two or three stars - and for sheer weirdness, the Starkadders beat strange families of more recent vintage hands down.
Addams Family, eat your heart out.
