In her fourth memoir, Diana Athill evokes a traditional English childhood unfashionably filled with happiness. Her memories include a Norfolk country house, servants, the pleasure and companionship of horses, and the ever mysterious unfoldings of the secrets of adults and sex. Her candid and unsentimental account brings 1920s England vividly to life as it asks readers the question: Does a privileged and loving childhood equip one for happiness? Athill has added importantly to those works of literature which illuminate the vagaries of human emotion. Daily Telegraph (London)
