My Animals (and Other Family): A rural childhood 1937-1956

Falling truly, madly, deeply in love with one animal after another was a recurrent theme of the author's childhood, actively encouraged by her beautiful, impetuous mother as she single-handedly held the family together during the war's darkest days.

While her husband's regiment battled through the Tunisian desert to Italy and Austria, she criss-crossed beleaguered Britain with children, ration books, and an unwieldy train of rabbits, dogs, cats and ponies, dreaming of land of her own.

But far...