RETRO READS   | Daily Mail Online

CIRCLE OF FRIENDS

By Maeve Binchy (Arrow £8.99, 736 pp)

If any author can help you survive lockdown, it’s Binchy. Reading her whopping door-stopper is like eating salted caramel yum-yums . . . sheer bliss from every page as a group of Dublin students in the 1950s cope with social awkwardness, class differences, sexual discovery, love, betrayal, tragedy and friendship. And have a great time.

Its star character is vibrant Benny, a deeply self-conscious chubby girl with over-protective parents. She is unexpectedly sought out by the college Romeo, a self-absorbed cad if ever there was one.

Benny’s sleepy village seethes with nosey-Parkers who see Dublin as a sink of depravity.

Reach the end and you feel as if you are saying a weepy farewell to a bunch of dear friends.

THE FORTNIGHT IN SEPTEMBER

By R.C. Sherriff (Persephone £10, 336 pp)

This mesmerising literary treasure is almost beyond praise. It’s about an ordinary suburban family’s annual trip to Bognor, their utter happiness during a brief freedom from the daily grind. Each year they stay at the same shabby guest house, spending precious days enjoying simple delights such as beach cricket, sand castles, brass bands, deckchairs, strolling on the pier. Ginger beer is a treat, a teashop splurge a pleasure.

Dad may be a loveable bore, mum a timid worrier, but their small adventures, private ponderings and regrets, their contentment and enjoyment, are almost heartbreaking.

Radiating goodness and decency, this 1930 masterpiece offers magical glimpses of English seaside fun long gone.

MY CARAVAGGIO STYLE

By Doris Langley Moore (Dean Street £10.99, 212 pp)

The scandalous Lord Byron wrote a memoir so shocking that his appalled friends burnt it to prevent publication.

Fast forward to the modern day and meet nerdy, unsuccessful author and bookshop assistant Quentin, who plans to fake the notorious memoir and flog it to a gullible American Byron scholar.

Quentin needs cash to keep up with his fashion-model girlfriend’s expensive tastes. Faking antique ink and practising Byronesque handwriting with quills, he little suspects that his girl’s astuteness could wreck his scheme.

The eventual uncovering of the forgery before a gathering of nutter Byronists is the perfect bang-and-whimper ending to this crazy caper.