Dedicated to her friend Tirzah Garwood, this is a deliciously charming and funny mix of commonplace book and diary from the 1950s, illustrated with woodcuts not by Tirzah as intended (she had just died) but by Malcolm Ford. September begins with ‘That Awful Basket of Fruit’; there are the most disliked domestic chores, seasonal excursions, the arrival of a French child, snippets of Katherine Mansfield’s letters, a few recipes, all mostly – and magnifently – outdated.
