A powerful, evocative memoir of an Anglo-Irish childhood set in the vanished world of 1940s Southern Ireland. Where the emotional chill of an aristocratic drawing room is contrasted with the warmth of the servant-filled kitchen. Of the battles to maintain a decaying mansion with a leaking roof and freezing corridors, while the stables must be filled with hunters and no expense spared when it comes to racing. The affectionate humor with which the author describes her eccentric upbringing is interwoven with her acute perceptions of the remorseless social, political and intellectual eclipse of the Anglo-Irish. She has created an enduring portrait of the Anglo-Irish, more than a class but not quite a nation.