When it comes to housework the one thing no book of household management can ever tell you is how to begin. Or maybe I mean why.

Early life
She was educated at the private Roedean School in Brighton Glasgow High School for Girls (closed in the 1970s) and Newnham College Cambridge. Personal life
She married the novelist Gavin Lyall in 1958 in Marlborough a marriage that lasted until his death in 2003.