The Provincial Lady in London — E.M. Delafield

These highly acclaimed, delightful novels are written in diary form by the Provincial Lady, who lives in a country house with her husband, two children, the children's French governess, Cook and a few assorted helpers. The era of the 1930s is wittily and shrewdly recreated with amusing illustrations. The P.L. finds herself slogging through the mud of a collective farm, coping with Soviet trains and hotels and almost literally rubbing shoulders with robust citizens at a public beach.