 Gibbons 's first postwar novel was Westwood ( 1946 ) . The book incorporates a comic depiction of the novelist Charles Morgan , whose novel The Fountain Gibbons had reviewed before the war and found " offensive as well as wearisome " . In Westwood , Morgan appears in the guise of the novelist " Gerald Challis " , a pompous , humourless bore . Oliver considers this characterisation to be one of Gibbons 's " most enjoyable and vicious " satirical portraits . In her introduction to the book 's 2011 reprint , Lynne Truss describes it as " a rich , mature novel , romantic and wistful , full of rounded characters and terrific dialogue " that deserved more commercial success than it received . The public 's expectations were still prejudiced by Cold Comfort Farm , which by 1949 had sold 28 @,@ 000 copies in hardback and 315 @,@ 000 in paperback . Anticipating that a sequel would be popular , that year Gibbons produced Conference at Cold Comfort Farm , her shortest novel , in which the farm has become a conference centre and tourist attraction . There is much mockery of contemporary and indeed future artistic and intellectual trends , before the male Starkadders return from overseas , wreck the centre and restore the farm to its original primitive state . The book was moderately successful but , Oliver remarks , does not compare with the original . 
