Love on a Branch Line (novel)

First edition (publ. Hutchinson)

Love on a Branch Line is a 1959 comic novel by John Hadfield. It involved Jasper Pye, a diffident member of the British Civil Service being sent to Arcady Hall in Norfolk to close down a government department there. He finds it to be a rural idyll, and encounters a number of problems with closing the place down.

The book was critically acclaimed and sold very well. It was adapted for a television series in 1994, Love on a Branch Line starred Michael Maloney as Jasper Pye with a number of leading British actors appearing.