Just as Lucy Boston describes here, as we passed her garden gate many years ago, hoping only for a distant peep at "Green Knowe", she invited us in to look at the magical garden of yews and willows. She must have been well approaching one hundred, but was still sprightly and very much with it. The most special "famous person" I have met, apart from Desmond Tutu many years later at St Albans.

Another interesting second chapter-type memoir, this from the author of the Green Knowe series. I strongly suspect that Lucy Boston was a truly dotty woman, and quite possibly as bristly and unapproachable as a porcupine. She certainly was a decisive character. I was a little worried since she made some comment in her first memoir about her unsuccessful marriage that there would be bitterness here about it. But she merely alluded to it as something in the past, and told more about her fascinating house. I missed hearing more about her lively family, and how their lives turned out.

It was an odd book, rather unsettling for all its craft. ( )