I’m haunted by an awful dread, said Raine. It was a wedding Mysie once went to. The bridegroom never turned up and the bride swooned at the altar.

Have you practised swooning?

It’s 1948 in the Scottish Highlands, with postwar austerity and rationing in full effect, but Mr and Mrs MacAlvey and their family and friends are too irrepressibly cheerful to let it get them down. There’s Raine, newly engaged to the brother of a local farmer, and Cleo, just back from three years in the States, along with their brother James, married to neurotic Trina, who smothers their two oversheltered children. There are also three MacAlvey grandchildren, orphaned in the war, whose hilarious mishaps keep everyone on their toes. There are wedding preparations, visits from friends, an adventurous hike, and frustrated romance. But really the plot of the novel is, simply, life, as lived by irresistible characters with humour, optimism, and affection.

First published in 1952 and inexplicably out of print for decades, Apricot Sky shows the author of the classic Lady Rose and Mrs. Memmary in a decidedly more frolicking mood. This new edition includes an introduction by Candia McWilliam.