People on Privilege Hill, The

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Jane Gardam's delightful short stories range from the Lake District to Dorset; from Wimbledon, where an old Victorian mansion has been converted into a home for unmarried mothers, to wartime London, where a hospital is the scene of a job interview in the middle of the Blitz. In 'Pangbourne' (not, in this instance, the place, but the name of an ape), a lonely woman allows herself tenderly to fall in love with a gorilla; 'Snap' is about a loveless one-night stand - and its ironic punishment. Two of the stories are ghost stories; and fans of Gardam's most recent novel, the bestselling Old Filth, will be overjoyed to encounter Filth himself and his ancient enemy and sparring partner, Veneering, among the umbrellas at a luncheon party on a soaking wet day. Jane Gardam is a writer at the height of her powers, well-known for her caustic wit, free-wheeling imagination, love of humanity and wicked powers of observation - as well as the hint of the bizarre and the surreal that she brings to her fiction. Her new collection of short stories is a delicious treat.

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Jane Gardam is the only writer to have been twice awarded the Whitbread prize for Best Novel of the Year (The Queen of the Tambourine and The Hollow Land). She also holds a Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a lifetime's contribution to the enjoyment of literature. Her novel God on the Rocks was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and made into a film, and Old Filth was shortlisted for the Orange Prize 2006. Born in Yorkshire, Jane Gardam is married with three grown-up children. She lives in Sandwich, Kent.