Diana Athill has written three memoirs which have been acclaimed as classics for their insight, candour and wit: Instead of a Letter, After a Funeral, and most recently, Stet - an editor's life. Here she goes back to the beginning, in a sharp evocation of a childhood unfashionably filled with happiness - a Norfolk country house, servants, the pleasures of horses, the unfolding secrets of adults and sex. This is England in the 1920s, seen (with a clear and unsentimental eye) from the vantage point of England in 2001. It was a privileged and loving life: but did it equip her to be happy?