THEY'RE a funny lot the English.

Stick them in foreign climes and they will rally together and assert an Englishness that dare not speak its name in their own land.

But what makes the English uniquely funny is their natural inclination towards irony. Innocently, perhaps, the everyday becomes charged with humour.

Although American by birth, Okehampton author Karen Nelson — more familiar to readers as Karen Hayes — perfectly captures that English sense of irony in her latest book, Foreign Fields.

This witty and entertaining novel centres on three groups of English people who, separately, decide to up sticks and start new lives in Umbria in Italy. Not as twee as Tuscany, but with affordable properties.

The three groups, unknown to each other, turn up in the same cluster of cottages.

Put the English in a strange land and strange things will happen. Admiring glances are read and miss-read and comical confusion soon reigns supreme.

The maternal Mary desperately clings to her Englishness. Examine this: Mary washed out the mugs and dried them carefully on her National Trust bluebell tea towel.

This is funny. Why? Search me. It is also, very English. And the sentence was not thrown together. Karen (I cannot call her Nelson) chooses words with skill. The use of that word 'carefully' tells us much about Mary. And that tea towel is not just a National Trust one; it is 'bluebell'. Good stuff.

Later, Mary, whose larder in Italy is packed full of English produce, is described as mixing P G Tips and Earl Grey so that the Earl Grey 'will last until Christmas'.

There are other well-rounded characters such as Fabrizio, an Italian, who is a combination of Latin lover and Frank Spencer. Compare his 'go get 'em' attitude towards women with that of the reserved Bernard, a Devon-born farmer in whom lust silently burns.

The action spins around Henrietta, who has escaped the high-life of the fashion world, moved to Umbria with older sister Isabel and adopted baby Krishna.

There is also a gay partnership, but Karen resists the temptation to make them high camp and in doing so makes them more credible.

The humour does not always come from the characters but from the author's skill such as when two of them finally get it together in bed: He answered in kind, with much moaning and groaning and sighing in Italian, and the night was spent very satisfactorily by both parties.

Those final nine words, like a policeman's notebook, have an hilarious pomposity that punctures the passion of the scene.

The trouble with some humorous books is that they go on piling gag upon gag until you become immune.

Karen avoids that trap by some sharp chapter endings — they cut away the fancy frills and bring us back to earth.

It is rare a book makes me laugh out loud. This

one did.

Enjoy.

l Foreign Fields by Karen Nelson is publisbed by Piatkus Books, price £6.99.