My guest today at ‘Porridge & Cream’ is novelist Jane Cable.

“If I say that my Porridge & Cream book is Long Summer Day very few people will recognise the title. If I say it’s the first volume of RF Delderfield’s Horseman Riding By trilogy most readers will know exactly the book I mean.  
In all honesty this book has been with me so long I can’t remember the first time I read it. What I do know is it was after the BBC made the TV series in 1978, which I didn’t watch, being far more interested in punk music. At a guess it was while I was studying for my A-levels or my degree. I’m pretty sure it was a library copy, but I asked my father to buy me the whole trilogy for Christmas. The reason they don’t match in the photograph [below] is because I lost Long Summer Day in a house move and my father replaced it for Christmas in 1988.

I don’t often read books twice but A Horseman Riding By comes out if ever I’m ill. The last time was Christmas a few years ago when I caught flu and was too poorly to travel to my mother’s house. It was the first festive season my husband and I had actually been in our home and we spent it curled up with our noses in our books. The main thing which draws me to this book (okay, these books) is the setting. The trilogy charts the life of Paul Craddock from the moment he arrives in “the valley” in South Devon in 1902 until his death in 1965. But it’s not only his life and loves, but those of his family, his tenants and his neighbours woven into a wonderful tapestry which bridges the generations as English country life changes forever.”

Jane Cable’s Bio
Jane Cable is the author of the multi-award winning romantic suspense novel, The Cheesemaker’s House. In 2015 the book won Jane the accolade of Words for the Wounded Independent Novelist of the Year and she was signed by Felicity Trew at the Caroline Sheldon Literary Agency.

Jane’s latest book is The Faerie Tree, a second chance novel about Robin and Izzie who meet again twenty years after their brief affair and realise that their memories of it are completely different. But how can that be? And which one of them is right?

About The Faerie Tree by Jane Cable
How can a memory so vivid be wrong? In the summer of 1986 Robin and Izzie hold hands under the faerie tree and wish for a future together. Within hours tragedy rips their dreams apart. In the winter of 2006, each carrying their own burden of grief, they stumble back into each other’s lives and try to create a second chance. But why are their memories of 1986 so different? And which one of them is right? With strong themes of paganism, love and grief, The Faerie Tree is a story that will resonate with fans of romance, suspense, and folklore.

Read my reviews of Jane’s two novels The Cheesemaker’s House and The Faerie Tree

Jane Cable’s links
Follow on Twitter, through her Facebook page or at her website.

What is a ‘Porridge & Cream’ book? It’s the book you turn to when you need a familiar read, when you are tired, ill, or out-of-sorts, where you know the story and love it. Where reading it is like slipping on your oldest, scruffiest slippers after walking for miles. Where does the name ‘Porridge & Cream’ come from? Cat Deerborn is a character in Susan Hill’s ‘Simon Serrailler’ detective series. Cat is a hard-worked GP, a widow with two children and she struggles from day-to-day. One night, after a particularly difficult day, she needs something familiar to read. From her bookshelf she selects ‘Love in A Cold Climate’ by Nancy Mitford. Do you have a favourite read which you return to again and again? If so, please send me a message via the contact form here.

Discover the ‘Porridge & Cream’ books of these authors:-
Claire Dyer
Shelley Weiner
Lisa Devaney

‘Long Summer Day’ by RF Delderfield [UK: Hodder] 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
LONG SUMMER DAY by RF Delderfield is the comfort read of @JaneCable http://wp.me/p5gEM4-23Z via @SandraDanby #books