[6] Her 1946 novel, Private Enterprise, explored discontent with the bureaucracy of the Attlee government – something echoed by Orville Prescott in his poem-review beginning "In Barchester all is not well".

Barchester and Barset were used as names for the fictional county in which St Trinians School was supposedly located in the original films.

Kevin Kwan's novel Rich People Problems names Barsetshire and the village of Barchester as the family home of Lucien Montagu-Scott and his wife, Colette Bing.

HMS Barsetshire, an obsolete County class cruiser, is the training ship for officer candidates in John Winton's We Joined The Navy (1959).

William Golding refers to Barchester and its cathedral in passing in his 1967 novel The Pyramid, set in the small fictional market town of Stilbourne.