Emily Hahn is most famous for her memoirs of pre-revolutionary China. This book, a compilation of articles written for the New Yorker magazine tell of her life in England in the years immediately after the end of World War II.

Han, her husband ( whom we only know as The Major) and their young daughter return to England from the far East to live on the Major's family estate. The England that Han describes is the austere postwar England where rationing still existed (and would exist until 1954), winters were freezing cold and none of the amenities that Americans (even in those days) were used to existed.

Hahn writes about it all in a jocular style, but living through those days would have been no picnic - even with the servants who seem to have still existed for the Major's class. This is an England that has disappeared forever, and that is probably a good thing. Still, it's fun to read about it now. ( )