This is a chronicle Frances Partridge's life in the mid-1960s, when she was still struggling to come to terms with existence after the double blow of the deaths of her husband Ralph and her son Burgo. An indefatigable traveller, endlessly observant of nature and human beings, Partridge is passionate for ideas, for conversation and for her friends. It is this passion for life in the face of adversity which is one of the most attractive qualities of the woman the reader comes to know through these diaries.