When not lunching or shopping she occupies her time, somewhat guiltily, with occasional "good works", particularly at the instigation of Sybil, her slightly eccentric mother-in-law, whose house Wilmet and Rodney share.

She also gives support to Mary, a ‘mousy’ worshipper, who goes to live for a trial period in a convent after the death of her mother, but later marries the handsome curate.

The novel was published in Germany in 1995 as Ein Glas voll Segen, in Spain in 2010 as Los hombres de Wilmet, and in Italy in 2012 as Un sacco di benedizioni.

In the case of A Glass of Blessings, the title is taken from a line in George Herbert’s poem "The Pulley", which is quoted and commented on in this novel’s final chapter.

Their stiff conversation then dissolves "into helpless laughter, so that an elderly woman, coming into the lounge to retrieve the knitting she had left there before dinner, retreated quickly and with a look of alarm on her face."

Julian and Winifred Malory from Excellent Women (1952) are also mentioned in A Glass of Blessings, as well as Rocky Napier, whom both Wilmet and Rowena remember as a love interest during their war service in Italy.

Commentators frequently point out that the focus of Barbara Pym's earlier novels is limited to the world of middle class women.

Without children, with no job or meaningful social function, she is largely cocooned from reality and only comes to an understanding of her situation through exposure to the fascinating Piers and his "slightly common" homosexual partner.

[8] Nowhere is Pym's sympathetic permissiveness more clear than in her attitude to homosexuality, particularly in this novel, although, given the time at which it was published, that is usually referred to in oblique and subtle ways.

The former is found Wilf Bason (and possibly some of the clergy), which led a contemporary reviewer in The Daily Telegraph to note how the "queer goings on of male housekeepers are described with catty accuracy".

[9] A Glass of Blessings was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 1991 in an adaptation by Valerie Windsor, produced by Barbara Pym's sister Hilary and the actress Elizabeth Proud.