If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practise which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of […]

When I was about four I can remember a rather dreadful thing happening, it was very early in the morning and for some reason I had been put to sleep in the same bed as Granny, but I woke up and found she wasn’t in bed but walking up and down the room with her […]

What a blessing it is to love books. Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden. And how easy it would have been to come into the world without this, and possessed instead of an all-consuming passion, say, for hats, […]

”Have I insulted you? Have I really got through? Well, listen to me, then. Listen while you’re conscious.” Hostility dawned at last. ”Don’t speak to me like that,” she blazed, and added ”please” with a trembling underlip. Her anger was not womanly, it was like a hurt little boy and its quality was as dangerously […]

She had never cared much for books, because they did not seem to be about her, and she thought that she would rather write a book herself, to a pattern of her own choosing and about a beautiful young girl with a startling white skin, heiress to great property, wearing white piqué at Osborne and […]

She could not have said exactly when she had become aware of how often their neighbour Blanche Silcox’s name occurred in Evelyn’s conversation as that of a woman immensely knowledgeable on rural topics, whose opinions on the ethics of tied cottages, drainage and poultry-keeping for profit called forth respectful agreement. To all such topics Imogen […]

He was one of the various men Flora invited to the house whenever Meg was expected. She eagerly waited to hear Meg’s reactions, when next they met alone – sometimes in Meg’s lunch hour when Flora was shopping. If she could get Meg settled, Flora had decided, she herself would be quite happy, but her […]

Tory Foyle unwound the black chenille scarf from her hair. She was what was once held to be the typical English Beauty, her pink face, bright hair and really violet eyes. ’I had a letter from Edward.’ She took a small piece of lined paper from her pocket and smoothed it. Beth poured tea and […]

Lady Asperley, at whose home years ago Kate and Alan had first met Dermot, had been lukewarm about a marriage – disastrous as she believed it must be – for which she held herself responsible. She had known Dermot was a drifter, but his voice reminded her of his father’s – a man she had […]

’I am consumed by a desire to see your house,’ Amy read. ’Laurel House, Laurel Walk sounds so English.’ Martha’s spidery, American hand-writing. Ernie, bringing in a pot of coffee, asked, ’Everything all right, madam?’ His new teeth clicked badly. If they were to do it for ever, she felt that she could not bear […]

How to announce the return of comfort and well-being except by cooking something fragrant. That is what her mother always did. After every calamity of any significance she would fill the atmosphere of the house with the smell of cinnamon rolls or brownies, or with chicken and dumplings, and it would mean, This house has […]

Desmond did not come. The sweater Mrs Palfrey was knitting for him neared completion, and everyone knew that he had not come to claim it. Saving face had been an important part of life in the Far East, and Mrs Palfrey tried to save hers now. Trouble usually comes from doing so, and it came […]

I wanted to go on sitting there, not talking, not listening to the others, keeping the moment precious for all time, because we were peaceful all of us, we were content and drowsy even as the bee who droned above our heads. In a little while it would be different, there would come tomorrow, and […]

Oliver Davenant did not merely read books. He snuffed them up, took breaths of them into his lungs, filled his eyes with the sight of the print and his head with the sound of words. Some emanation from the book itself poured into his bones, as if he were absorbing steady sunshine. The pages had […]

There’s a shimmer on a child’s hair, in the sunlight. There are rainbow colors in it, tiny, soft beams of just the same colors you can see in the dew sometimes. They’re in the petals of flowers, and they’re on a child’s skin. Your hair is straight and dark, and your skin is very fair. […]