There’s no loo paper … And what’s more there ain’t no stopper for the barftub. The ‘ot water runs cold and the cold water runs ‘ot and the shower don’t run at all. When yer pulls the flush nuffink ‘appens. Yer call this a ‘otel?

There are only four Mrs Harris books, but I’ve been gradually working my way through the series since 2012. Mrs Harris Goes to Moscow– known as Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Moscow in the US – is the final one of these, published in 1974, an impressive sixteen years after the first in the series. That is a harsh conclusion. Mrs Harris Goes To Moscow is of a distinct type of story. If you want something comfortable, easy-to-read, and faintly ridiculous, then it is fine — it’s a cold Sunday afternoon, put the heating on, make a cup of tea, may be a slice of Dundee cake, and curl up on the sofa with Mrs Harris Goes To Moscow. That will while away an hour or so pleasantly enough, taking you to the attitudes and assumptions of England in the 1970s, and to a view of Moscow and the Soviet Union through that particular lens.Mrs Harris is one of the great creations of fiction - so real that you feel you know her, yet truly magical as well. I can never have enough of her' Justine Picardie

Mrs Harris is a London char lady whose exploits started (in Flowers for Mrs Harris, or Mrs ‘Arris Goes to Paris, or indeed Mrs Harris Goes to Paris) with saving up money to buy a Dior dress in France. After that, she went to America and became an MP (in separate books, naturally). And, finally, she’s off to Moscow to reunite one of her employers with his long-lost Russian love. That’s when things start to get ridiculous. Paul William Gallico was born in New York City, on 26th July, 1897. His father was an Italian, and his mother came from Austria; they emigrated to New York in 1895.

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Though his name was well-known in the United States, he was an unknown in the rest of the world. In 1941, the Snow Goose changed all that, and he became, if not a best-selling author by today's standards, a writer who was always in demand. Apart from a short spell as a war correspondent between 1943 and 1946, he was a full-time freelance writer for the rest of his life. He has lived all over the place, including England, Mexico, Lichtenstein and Monaco, and he lived in Antibes for the last years of his life. There is a charming account of the awe felt by Mrs Harris when she looks out of her fictional central Moscow hotel window (presumably what was then the National and is now the Marriott) … As was the real-life fate of too many couples caught in such East-West relationships, the Soviet authorities would not let Lizabeta leave the country. (Owen Matthews wrote about his parents’ troubles in this regard in Stalin’s Children (Bloomsbury, 2009)). Mrs. Butterfield has serious reservations about the trip and once she finds out about the letter her anxiety grows. She's right to worry, as unbeknownst to Mrs. Harris, the two London ladies are incorrectly taken for spies and get into some very compromising situations. All sorts of complications eventually arise, especially once they realize their status and Liz becomes involved, much to her own peril.

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urn:lcp:mrsarrisgoestomo0000gall:epub:14244689-4796-44c5-9b5e-71e181a4d521 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier mrsarrisgoestomo0000gall Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2fxgzb54pb Invoice 1652 Isbn 0440059054 Lccn 74019062 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-1-g862e Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.14 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA14623 Openlibrary_edition every sign in a wholly unintelligible foreign alphabet, the Cyrillic lettering. Different sounds, different smells, a kind of combination of cheap soap and disinfectant and the clothes basket containing last week’s wash, different tempo, rude and hard looking officials, lumpy sheep-like ill-clad crowds mrs harris goes to moscow, p.69