Am I really admitting that my sister is determined to marry a man she has only seen once and doesn't much like the look of? It is half real and half pretense - and I have an idea that it is a game most girls play when they meet an eligible young men. They just...wonder.

What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?

Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.

There was a wonderful atmosphere of gentle age, a smell of flowers and beeswax, sweet yet faintly sour and musty; a smell that makes you feel very tender towards the past.

It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.

Ham with mustard is a meal of glory

Rose doesn’t like the flat country, but I always did – flat country seems to give the sky such a chance.