E F Benson 
Mapp and Lucia 

Look out for the new BBC adaptation starring Anna Chancellor, Miranda Richardson and Mark Gatiss!
Miss Elizabeth Mapp reigns supreme over the village of Tilling…until the advent of Mrs Emmeline Lucas, or »Lucia» to her friends. No one could compete, surely, with Lucia»s formidable armoury: her duchesses, her Italian, her financial speculations, her celebrated recipe for Lobster à la Riseholme. But Mapp will not relinquish her supremacy in local society so easily, and battle is joined between these two indomitable queens and their rather fickle allies.