Diana Athill has corresponded with the American poet Edward Field for over thirty years freely sharing jokes pleasures & pains with her old friend & writing with an intimacy & spontaneity even more revealing than the candour of her celebrated memoirs. Edited selected & introduced by Athill & annotated with her own delightful notes this collection of those letters reveals a sharply intelligent woman with a keen eye for the absurd a brilliant turn of phrase & a wicked sense of humour. Covering her career as an editor the adventure of her retirement her immersion in her own writing & her reactions to becoming unexpectedly famous in her old-age & including gossip about mutual friends sharp pen portraits & uninhibited accounts her relationships
- & ailments
- Instead of a Book gives a wonderful description of a woman growing older without ever losing her zest for life.