The frustrating thing about my aunt’s memoir is that, because it was written for her grandchildren, it hops lightly over some of the more interesting aspects of her life – probably a deliberate strategy in order to avoid discussing them:  that is, how was it that, as a student of literature at Yale, she met Ronald Bottrall, a poet many people think wrongly admired by T.S. Eliot, at Princeton, and then married in Singapore where he was appointed a Professor at Raffles College;  what her life was like in Thaxted where she came under the influence of the radical Conrad Noel and stood as an Independent for Dunmow District Council;  and how after the war, when her marriage broke down, she moved to a life of writing and teaching in Cambridge.   There’s too much about the aunts and not enough about her.