In my eighties, my best friends are in their fifties, and I have many friends at university. It keeps one young, and up with the vocabulary. That's terribly important, especially for a writer.

Following the death of her father in 1961 her mother said: "I'm not going to let that lingering death happen to me. Her style has been described as "arsenic without the old lace". Her brother called what Mary Wesley wrote "filth" and her sister with whom Mary Wesley was no longer on speaking terms strongly objected to The Camomile Lawn claiming that some of the characters were based on their parents.

Mary Wesley CBE (24 June 1912 – 30 December 2002) was an English novelist.