Aged 70, widowed for 10 years, and still mourning the loss of her son Burgo, Partridge still manages to write and live with an extraordinary passion for her friends, travels abroad, the opera, playing in string quartets, walking in the country, having long conversations, and enjoying life in every way. This volume of diaries takes her to Russia, to Spain to visit Gerald Brenan, once a lover of Carrington, to Poland, Tuscany and France. Friends include the composer Lennox Berkeley, the Duke of Devonshire, L P Hartley, Cyril Connolly, the Spenders. Partridge lives and writes with an acute sensitivity to all things in life whether it is the first fall of snow in winter, a desperate love triangle of one of her friends, a mesmerising performance of an opera, the dazzling wit of a friend.