Polly, Dennis, Angela, Adrian and their peers were bound to lose their spiritual innocence and their virginities on the way from the 1950s to the '70s. On the one hand there was the traditional Catholic Church, on the other the siren call of the permissive society. It was inevitable that things would change radically. But how far could it go?

Artist's daughter, Penelope can look back on a full and varied life: a Bohemian childhood in London and Cornwall, an unhappy wartime marriage, and the one man she truly loved. She has brought up three children - and learned to accept them as they are. Yet, she is far too energetic and independent to settle sweetly into pensioned-off old-age.

*A witty and ecstatic tale of transforming a wilderness into a garden *By the author of The Enchanted April *Introduced by Elizabeth Jane Howard

In 1970, Harold Stamp, a retarded twenty-year-old was convicted on disputed evidence and a retracted confession of murdering his grandmother - the one person who understood and protected him. Less than three years later he is dead, driven to suicide by isolation and despair. A fate befitting a murderer, perhaps, but what if he were innocent?