cover image Everything to Lose: A Diary 1945 to 1962

Everything to Lose: A Diary 1945 to 1962

Frances Partridge. Little Brown and Company, $19.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-316-69285-4

Following Love in Bloomsbury and A Pacifist's War, Partridge here offers the third volume of her diaries, in which she records her doings at Ham Spray and in Wiltshire, and her continuing happy relationships with her family and friends. These latter included seemingly hundreds of England's leading cultural figures: the Bells, Garnetts and Stracheys, Gerald Brenan, E. M. Forster, Cyril Connolly, Frederick Ayer, V. S. Pritchett, Philip Toynbee. What they talked about is interspersed with reports on botany and gardening, walks to the village, teas and lunches, visits in London and Spain, meetings of the famous Memoir Club, weddings and funerals, the atomic bomb, political developments and, at the very end, the death of her husband, Ralph. An almost idyllic life, whose events are beautifully told. Photos. (April 4)