‘The sheer fun, the light-heartedness’ in this wonderful 1938 book ‘feels closer to a Fred Astaire film than anything else’ comments the Preface-writer Henrietta Twycross-Martin, who found Miss Pettigrew for Persephone Books. She came in to the shop one day with her mother’s copy, knowing that it would make lots of Persephone readers very happy. ‘It was my mother’s favourite book’, she continues, ‘sophisticated and niave by turns, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is also charmingly daring.’