Last Landlady

Laura Thompson read English at Oxford. Her first book, The Dogs, won the Somerset Maugham Award. While living in Newmarket she wrote two books about horse racing, followed by a biography of Nancy Mitford (reissued 2019), a major study of Agatha Christie and a book about Lord Lucan. The Six, a group biography of the Mitford sisters, published in the US in 2016, was a New York Times bestseller. Her most recent book, Rex v Edith Thompson, was shortlisted for a CWA Gold Dagger award, and her biography of Agatha Christie – recently published in the US – was nominated for a 2019 Edgar Allan Poe Award.

'A lyrical portrait of a fast-vanishing way of life ... Thompson is a terrific writer, and her detailed evocation of the day in the life of the pub ... has all the visual richness and emotional power of a Terence Davies film' New Statesman 'Just occasionally a book comes along that leaves you breathless with pleasure, admiration and a dash of envy too. The Last Landlady is Laura Thompson's exquisitely observed and brilliantly written memoir of the life and times of her grandmother, the first woman in England to hold a pub licence in her own right... Simply delicious' Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday 'You really mustn’t miss Laura Thompson’s brilliant The Last Landlady … A wonderfully observed story about female agency in the post-war period' Guardian 'It is about the pub as theatre … A typically eclectic mix of social history and elegy, ironic comedy and indelible Englishness' The Spectator, Books of the Year 'The award-winning Thompson turns her acute eye for detail on her own family in this gorgeous memoir of her indomitable grandmother, Vi, the first woman to hold a pub licence in England' Independent