First published in 1938, this follows one day in the life of a governess, a day that changes her forever. Read on Radio 4 by Maureen Lipman, it has now been made into a film by Focus, which will star Frances McDormand, Amy Adams and Ciaran Hinds. 'Miss Pettigrew is irresistible,' Tracy Chevalier

Watson wrote and published six novels in the late 1930s, and was something of a celebrity in her day. Miss Pettigrew - a kind of aberration not at first welcomed by her publishers, but later a bestseller - is a fairy story. Guinevere Pettigrew, the 40-year-old daughter of a north-country curate, is ...