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“... successor, Civil to Strangers, is the fourth novel to appear since Barbara Pym’s death in 1980. Hazel Holt, her friend and literary executor, has also added to it parts of three other novels and some short stories. When this hoard from the bottom drawer is put alongside the nine books published during Pym’s lifetime and the autobiographical material ...”

“... of Pym letters and diaries, A Very Private Eye, which she coedited with Barbara’s sister, Hazel Holt has now done a highly competent and admirable job as biographer. A colleague at the International African Institute in London, where Barbara worked, she understands well the ins and outs of the ramifying Pym background, and her book is a valuable ...”

“... Pym’s ‘image’ from being again lost to public view, that her friend and literary executor Hazel Holt, and her sister Hilary Pym, have put together from the writer’s journals and letters what they call an ‘Autobiography’, A Very Private Eye. Its very title suggests a joky apologetic gesture towards what is seen as the problem of being a ...”

“... and began to think about the novel that was to become Quartet in Autumn. Her sister Hilary and Hazel Holt have skilfully married the two manuscripts into a novel as readable and characteristic as any in the Pym canon. As in the other posthumous novel, Crampton Hodnet, which dates from an earlier period, and all the previously published ones, there are ...”

“... soon followed.After Pym died in 1980, her sister, Hilary, and Pym’s close friend and colleague Hazel Holt, put together an ‘autobiography’ from her letters and diaries: A Very Private Eye (1984). Holt’s biography proper was published in 1990. She was lavish with quotation, relying on Pym’s endlessly ...”