The Swan in the Evening: Fragments of an Inner Life, by Rosamond Lehmann (Virago, £6.99 in UK)

Rosamond Lehmann wrote these slightly fragmentary memoirs in the last decade ofher life, which was a long one (1901-1990). There are glimpses of her Edwardian-Georgian childhood, governesses and all, a privileged era in many ways though clouded by her own apparent hypersensitivity. The great and sombre cloud over the entire book, however, is the death of her adored daughter Sally, beautiful and gifted, at the age of 25, a blow from which Lehmann seems never to have recovered emotionally. Her desperate efforts to find some form of spiritual consolation or assurance make the final sections sad and moving.