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Cold Comfort Farm
Conference at Cold Comfort Farm
Robert Poste's child is back at Cold Comfort Farm. But all is not well. Flora finds the farm transformed into a twee haven filled with Toby jugs and peasant pottery, and rooms labelled 'Quiete Retreate' and 'Greate laundrie'. It is, Flora winces, 'exactly like being locked in the Victoria and Albert Museum after closing time'.Worse, the farm is hosting a conference of the pretentious International Thinkers Group - a group made up of the 'sadistic owl' Mr Peccavi, loathsome Mr Mybug and the overpowering Mrs Ernestine Thump.And worst of all, there are no Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm. All the he-cousins have gone abroad to make their fortunes and the female cousins are having a pretty thin time of it. Once again the sensible Flora decides to take the situation in hand.
166 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1949
24 people are currently reading
896 people want to read
About the author
Stella Gibbons
57 books412 followersStella Dorothea Gibbons was an English novelist, journalist, poet and short-story writer.
Her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm, won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for 1933. A satire and parody of the pessimistic ruralism of Thomas Hardy, his followers and especially Precious Bain by Mary Webb -the "loam and lovechild" genre, as some called it, Cold Comfort Farm introduces a self-confident young woman, quite self-consciously modern, pragmatic and optimistic, into the grim, fate-bound and dark rural scene those novelists tended to portray.
Her first novel, Cold Comfort Farm, won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize for 1933. A satire and parody of the pessimistic ruralism of Thomas Hardy, his followers and especially Precious Bain by Mary Webb -the "loam and lovechild" genre, as some called it, Cold Comfort Farm introduces a self-confident young woman, quite self-consciously modern, pragmatic and optimistic, into the grim, fate-bound and dark rural scene those novelists tended to portray.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews
June 11, 2023
It's good to be back in the wonderfully absurd world of Cold Comfort Farm, but this one doesn't quite reach the heights of the original.
November 10, 2007
"There have always been Starkadders at Cold Comfort Farm!" but now the unthinkable has happened. With Cousin Amos leading The Church of The Quivering Brethren in America, sukebind declared a protected species, and Reuben turned off the farm by the government, Cold Comfort Farm has been turned into a conference center. Can Flora Poste (now Mrs. Fairford and mother of five) set the farm to rights again?
Reading this book is a little like meeting and old friend whose life has not quite met its early promise. One can't help but be fascinated by the change. A lunch, a drink, a chance to catch up with old times is all quite pleasent, but can you help yourself wondering if you'd have chosen to be intimate with this shabbier version of your former friend? And when you say good-bye, don't you feel a little relieved?
Conference at Cold Comfort Farm doesn't really stand on its own, but it is enjoyable to find out what Stella Gibbons imagined happened to Flora and the Starkadders.
Reading this book is a little like meeting and old friend whose life has not quite met its early promise. One can't help but be fascinated by the change. A lunch, a drink, a chance to catch up with old times is all quite pleasent, but can you help yourself wondering if you'd have chosen to be intimate with this shabbier version of your former friend? And when you say good-bye, don't you feel a little relieved?
Conference at Cold Comfort Farm doesn't really stand on its own, but it is enjoyable to find out what Stella Gibbons imagined happened to Flora and the Starkadders.
November 21, 2013
Glad I got this one from the library. Like everyone else who picked up this book I was attracted by the promise of a return to Gibbons' prior Cold Comfort Farm. That novel, though holding unusually conservative sentiments as the basis of its still very funny send up of all things Modernist, especially in the vein of D.H. Lawrence, was an especially liberating read. Flora Poste was a brilliant machine of inhuman order amid the catastrophically neutered excesses of the rustic Starkadders and the balance of the book, including the timing of its jokes, seemed perfectly elegant. Thus it was that as a stylist Gibbons successfully challenged a vein of writing much more intelligently theorized than her own pragmatic realism and came away seeming not just momentarily victorious but acutely evenspirited. That she did it in the form of a novel; itself one of modernism's weapons of culture, makes the achievement particularly pleasurable.
Not so this novel. Tepid writing evokes the forms of Flora and the farm without the spirit that had previously energized them, and the targets are not lamed with predictable ease as Mybug was in the previous novel, but positively manufactured as an obvious dream of the ultimately reactionary unconscious. The humour, finding no true target, falls flat. Having travestied her own achievements Gibbons presents instead an abbreviated and predictable plot, cardboard names that do not seem to even merit names, and insipid writing.
Overall this book stands as a warning sign of a particularly vapid nadir for sequels everywhere, and, at its worst, casts a weak poison over the book which preceded it. Too bad, that.
Not so this novel. Tepid writing evokes the forms of Flora and the farm without the spirit that had previously energized them, and the targets are not lamed with predictable ease as Mybug was in the previous novel, but positively manufactured as an obvious dream of the ultimately reactionary unconscious. The humour, finding no true target, falls flat. Having travestied her own achievements Gibbons presents instead an abbreviated and predictable plot, cardboard names that do not seem to even merit names, and insipid writing.
Overall this book stands as a warning sign of a particularly vapid nadir for sequels everywhere, and, at its worst, casts a weak poison over the book which preceded it. Too bad, that.
August 6, 2016
It was great to be back at Cold Comfort Farm with Robert Poste's Child. Not quite as hilarious as the first one, but I really appreciated the throwbacks, such as Adam Lambreath's little mop, and Feckless the cow's 3 legged great granddaughter.
Stella Gibbons is so much fun.
Stella Gibbons is so much fun.
December 7, 2018
A pesar de que encuentro otras novelas de Stella Gibbons entretenidas, no he acabado de verle la gracia a la hija de Robert Poste ni al sentido del humor que le da la escritora.
Si la primera parte me pareció rara, esta ya directamente es prescindible.
Me quedo con el libro de relatos que lleva el nombre de la granja y que es la única que me ha gustado.
Si la primera parte me pareció rara, esta ya directamente es prescindible.
Me quedo con el libro de relatos que lleva el nombre de la granja y que es la única que me ha gustado.
January 26, 2018
I was given a copy of Conference at Cold Comfort Farm for Christmas by someone who said that I reminded them of Flora Poste (which I took, as I'm sure it was intended to be, as the nicest compliment I have ever received) and they were sure I would have read the original so they were giving me the sequel instead. I think I had actually read it some years ago, but I didn't remember much about it, and didn't have a copy in any case, so I thought it was an excellent present.
Conference at Cold Comfort Farm is set sixteen years after the original Cold Comfort Farm. Flora Poste, now Flora Fairford, is living quietly in London with her husband and five children when she receives a letter from Mr Mybug asking her to help with the organisation of a conference he is running at Cold Comfort Farm, which is now bereft of Starkadders and transformed into a conference centre owned by a heritage trust, full of twee rustic charm and complete with rooms named the "Greate Barne" and the "Quiete Retreate". Flora, of course, can't resist the challenge, and heads for Sussex to spend a week organising a motley collection of artists, intellectuals and "Managerial Revolutionaries" (apparently this was a real political philosophy, even if Gibbons makes it seem so absurd it's hard to believe) and restoring the Starkadders to their proper place at Cold Comfort Farm at the same time.
The sequel is undoubtedly not as good as the original, and despite featuring several of the same characters and having the same setting is really a very different book; apart from anything, the main target of Gibbons's ridicule here is not the rural novels of writers such as Mary Webb but modern artists and intellectuals. I can see that it wouldn't find favour with readers looking for more of the same, but Irather enjoyed it. I thought Gibbons did a lovely job of skewering pretentious intellectualism in the Conference and its attendees (including the artists Hacke, Messe and Peccavi and the leader of the Managerial Revolutionaries, Mr Claud Hubris) and I loved Flora being just as calm and unflappably capable as ever.
Conference at Cold Comfort Farm is set sixteen years after the original Cold Comfort Farm. Flora Poste, now Flora Fairford, is living quietly in London with her husband and five children when she receives a letter from Mr Mybug asking her to help with the organisation of a conference he is running at Cold Comfort Farm, which is now bereft of Starkadders and transformed into a conference centre owned by a heritage trust, full of twee rustic charm and complete with rooms named the "Greate Barne" and the "Quiete Retreate". Flora, of course, can't resist the challenge, and heads for Sussex to spend a week organising a motley collection of artists, intellectuals and "Managerial Revolutionaries" (apparently this was a real political philosophy, even if Gibbons makes it seem so absurd it's hard to believe) and restoring the Starkadders to their proper place at Cold Comfort Farm at the same time.
The sequel is undoubtedly not as good as the original, and despite featuring several of the same characters and having the same setting is really a very different book; apart from anything, the main target of Gibbons's ridicule here is not the rural novels of writers such as Mary Webb but modern artists and intellectuals. I can see that it wouldn't find favour with readers looking for more of the same, but Irather enjoyed it. I thought Gibbons did a lovely job of skewering pretentious intellectualism in the Conference and its attendees (including the artists Hacke, Messe and Peccavi and the leader of the Managerial Revolutionaries, Mr Claud Hubris) and I loved Flora being just as calm and unflappably capable as ever.
June 3, 2015
Es una pena que aunque me gusta como escribe esta mujer, no me acaba de interesar ni lo que cuenta, ni sus personajes..
December 4, 2018
Flora regresa a la Cold Comfort Fram para desfacer los entuertos que se han producido con el Congreso de Artistas.
October 8, 2022
Not as good as Cold Comfort Farm, but fun to revisit old friends.
August 7, 2022
Segundas partes nunca fueron buenas y a ésta en concreto no le encuentro ningún sentido.
May 1, 2023
Creo que le hubiera puesto menos de 2 estrellas...¿1'5 ⭐?.
No lo abandoné porque es corto sino posiblemente lo hubiera hecho...🥱
No lo abandoné porque es corto sino posiblemente lo hubiera hecho...🥱
April 30, 2023
This book is awfully putdownable. After reading "Cold Comfort Farm", a work that I immensely enjoyed for its humour and writing style, I picked this book, hoping that Gibbons would still entertian me. I was wrong.
June 6, 2018
Amusing, but not in the same league as Cold Comfort Farm, and much more dated.
April 21, 2020
Sukebind and the unabashedly coarse, tetchy, and heavily accented Starkadders of Stella Gibbons’ first novel about Cold Comfort Farm were bound up in a Laocoan struggle with contemporary, popular culture circa 1932 (Freud and Lawrence), and it required the no-nonsense interventions of Robert Poste daughter’s Flora to bring about peace and order.
In this return to Cold Comfort Farm seventeen years on, the Starkadder men have all skedaddled to Australia and left only the women, who have allowed the farm to become a ward and care of the National Trust, subject to use as a twee site of a grand conference hosting international figures in the sciences and arts. Stella, now married to a vicar and mother of five children, is persuaded to return to Cold Comfort Farm, and in the process of assisting the pretentious Myburg she confronts the newest assault on common sense: such highfalutin figures as Picasso, Rodin, Britten, AS Neill, de Beauvoir, and leagues of scientists and political strategists who mean to re-shape the world.
The humor is very breezy, and the target of Gibbons’ gentle satire is gossamer thin, as it’s difficult to take seriously the figures she creates to represent the contemporary forces encroaching on good English common sense. Stella’s breezy way with all and sundry is amusing, if a bit sketchy and cavalier, but she is able by novel’s end to send up (and repulse) all of Myburg’s cultural myrmidons and place Cold Comfort Farm back in the familiar (if not wholly competent) hands of the Starkadders. The entire novel is more a matter of style than substance, a haughty sniff of disapproval to dismiss the riffraff without (too much) incident.
There are some droll moments, and these entail grace notes and glimpses of the chaos unfolding during the conference’s more orgiastic moments; for instance, an arm suddenly appearing from under the longue, flailing as it grasps at Flora’s ankle.
In this return to Cold Comfort Farm seventeen years on, the Starkadder men have all skedaddled to Australia and left only the women, who have allowed the farm to become a ward and care of the National Trust, subject to use as a twee site of a grand conference hosting international figures in the sciences and arts. Stella, now married to a vicar and mother of five children, is persuaded to return to Cold Comfort Farm, and in the process of assisting the pretentious Myburg she confronts the newest assault on common sense: such highfalutin figures as Picasso, Rodin, Britten, AS Neill, de Beauvoir, and leagues of scientists and political strategists who mean to re-shape the world.
The humor is very breezy, and the target of Gibbons’ gentle satire is gossamer thin, as it’s difficult to take seriously the figures she creates to represent the contemporary forces encroaching on good English common sense. Stella’s breezy way with all and sundry is amusing, if a bit sketchy and cavalier, but she is able by novel’s end to send up (and repulse) all of Myburg’s cultural myrmidons and place Cold Comfort Farm back in the familiar (if not wholly competent) hands of the Starkadders. The entire novel is more a matter of style than substance, a haughty sniff of disapproval to dismiss the riffraff without (too much) incident.
There are some droll moments, and these entail grace notes and glimpses of the chaos unfolding during the conference’s more orgiastic moments; for instance, an arm suddenly appearing from under the longue, flailing as it grasps at Flora’s ankle.
February 27, 2020
Ya que es la secuela de 'La hija de Robert Poste', el libro comienza con una breve introducción del traductor en la que nos mete en materia. En ella simplemente nos recuerda sucesos que ocurrieron en el anterior libro, y que resultan muy útiles de recordar para la lectura actual. Para quien no haya leído el primer libro, lo recomiendo igual que este, ya que es muy divertido.
Tras esta introducción corta pero necesaria (innecesaria si se ha leído el primer libro hace poco tiempo, lo cual no es mi caso), comienza la nueva aventura de Flora. En ella se reencontrará con personajes del primer libro y conocerá a nuevos, todos ellos inútiles y sin sentido común, que harán que Flora de uso de su gran paciencia y sabiduría.
Este libro, al igual que la anterior novela, es una sátira de la sociedad inglesa de entonces. Creo que los ingleses saben reírse de sí mismos de una manera muy divertida, y este tipo de libros me engancha totalmente. En este caso concreto, no solo crítica como en el anterior a la sociedad rural, sino también a la burguesa y a la comunidad científica y artística. Todo en un tomo, para desternillarse.
Aquí no se salva nadie, ni la propia Flora, que resulta ser como siempre, una sabelotodo que se mete en la vida de los demás y cotillea como el que más. Su familia del campo es como siempre una inútil e ignorante, con tradiciones absurdas. Los científicos que aparecen en este libro son pintados como oscuros, siniestros y aburridos, y los artistas como unos soberbios a los que nadie entiende pero que se creen superiores al resto de los mortales. Toda esta crítica, como bien he dicho, se desarrolla dentro de una vorágine de absurdeces que hace reírte a cada rato a lo largo de la lectura. Este es un libro muy recomendable para pasar un buen rato, pero no olvidéis que es una secuela: 'La hija de Robert Poste' es igualmente divertido y crítico.
Tras esta introducción corta pero necesaria (innecesaria si se ha leído el primer libro hace poco tiempo, lo cual no es mi caso), comienza la nueva aventura de Flora. En ella se reencontrará con personajes del primer libro y conocerá a nuevos, todos ellos inútiles y sin sentido común, que harán que Flora de uso de su gran paciencia y sabiduría.
Este libro, al igual que la anterior novela, es una sátira de la sociedad inglesa de entonces. Creo que los ingleses saben reírse de sí mismos de una manera muy divertida, y este tipo de libros me engancha totalmente. En este caso concreto, no solo crítica como en el anterior a la sociedad rural, sino también a la burguesa y a la comunidad científica y artística. Todo en un tomo, para desternillarse.
Aquí no se salva nadie, ni la propia Flora, que resulta ser como siempre, una sabelotodo que se mete en la vida de los demás y cotillea como el que más. Su familia del campo es como siempre una inútil e ignorante, con tradiciones absurdas. Los científicos que aparecen en este libro son pintados como oscuros, siniestros y aburridos, y los artistas como unos soberbios a los que nadie entiende pero que se creen superiores al resto de los mortales. Toda esta crítica, como bien he dicho, se desarrolla dentro de una vorágine de absurdeces que hace reírte a cada rato a lo largo de la lectura. Este es un libro muy recomendable para pasar un buen rato, pero no olvidéis que es una secuela: 'La hija de Robert Poste' es igualmente divertido y crítico.
January 15, 2019
Some books simply do not call for a sequel (or a prequel). Obvious examples: Dune; Pride and Prejudice; Lonesome Dove; even Gone With The Wind, to name but a few. Add Conference at Cold Comfort Farm to the list. Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons is one of the funniest books ever. Flora, Robert Poste’s child, once again sets things right but without the clever machinations and manipulations of the original. The targets here are easy ones - intellectual wannabes, angry young writers, existential poseurs, artists of the “my child could do that” variety, a guru, etc. - gathered for an intellectual conference at the highly gentrified (a modern term to be sure: all Toby mugs, framed samplers and rooms labeled “Ye Olde Kitchene” and the like) Cold Comfort Farm. All dated and just not that fun or funny. Read Cold Comfort Farm instead.
January 14, 2021
I did enjoy this sequel, but unlike Cold Comfort Farm the humour felt much more rooted in the time of writing - I was left with the feeling that many of the artists and thinkers in the books were parodies of Gibbon's contemporaries and because of my unfamiliarity I could sense the jokes flying over my head.
What does remain from the earlier book is the neat, and often sharp, turn of phrase and that ultimately made this an enjoyable read. And made we want to go back and read Cold Comfort Farm.
What does remain from the earlier book is the neat, and often sharp, turn of phrase and that ultimately made this an enjoyable read. And made we want to go back and read Cold Comfort Farm.
August 26, 2021
It’s many years since I read and very much enjoyed the original novel. In my opinion, this sequel falls far short of the original and perhaps remains in print only because of the title. I am all for 1940s satire on progress, technology and socialism and also on the pretentious of movements in the arts, but Gibbons appears to be heavy handed on this occasion and this short novel lacks coherence and drama. Robert Poste’s child seems less charming.
January 22, 2022
“In this brilliant sequel” begins the blurb somewhat optimistically and the book itself ends on triumphant note, but as for everything in between… the problem is I don’t recognise many of the arty types depicted, and the dialect is a trial, so despite the odd brilliant line the rest feels like rather a mess. I can see why no one recommends the follow-up, although it was nice to find out what happened to Cold Comfort Farm.
October 18, 2020
Even though this is pretty slight and I feel like I probably didn't get a lot of what/who Gibbons is poking gentle fun at here, it was delightful to visit Cold Comfort again and see a handful of the familiar characters. Still very funny and so glad I finally got to it.
December 12, 2020
I really can't tell if this book is a fifth as good as Cold Comfort Farm, or if it is actually good but only makes sense to people who lived through the 1940s because it's 90% period-specific pop-culture in-jokes.
February 7, 2021
Debí haberme contentado con el 1o...en esta secuela casi ni aparecen los personajes del primero, y si aparecen no mantienen su "rol"(el discurso de los personajes no encaja con la descripción del 1er libro)....En cuanto al resto de personajes no me pudo interesar menos, al igual que la trama
December 20, 2021
Unfortunately took a break of a couple of days a third of the way in. Was already struggling with the huge number of characters and their relationships. Decided not worth the effort if re reading. Not a patch on the original. Shame
February 9, 2022
Ay! Si es que no es que esté mal escrita, es que no he conectado nada. Si en la primera novela veía la gracia en la parodia de la estructura, aquí, la crítica a los intelectuales y artistas me ha dejado fría.
December 22, 2023
Just about entertaining enough to get through but not as energetic and engaging as the first one and with the irritating flaw that the entitlement of characters to be at Cold Comfort Farm was not explained satisfactorily
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 1, 2024
Listened to the audiobook while doing a puzzle. Finished it to the end but I can't think of one think I actually liked about this sequel. It was very boring and not a crumb funny, although it tried very hard to be.
July 3, 2024
It was lovely to revisit Flora Poste and some of the characters from the original Cold Comfort Farm, but although the wit was there, and plenty of satire, this just didn't live up to that first masterpiece. It still made me laugh though, and there is still a 3-legged cow.
July 18, 2024
Couldn’t understand what was going on and the dialect was so tedious to read . I confess I didn’t finish it. Life is too short. Very disappointing as lots of her other books including cold comfort farm are lovely I particularly like her short stories.
August 15, 2025
Much the same tone as the original, though dated a little, because the objects of the satire - modernism, efficiency for its own sake- don't now have the same currency. A pleasure to be reacquainted with the all the wallowing Starkadders, headless and headstrong.
May 22, 2018
The jokes from Cold Comfort Farm have become a bit stale in this sequel.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 79 reviews