Good Company: Diaries, 1967-70: 5

Francis Partridge's diaries are the record of a woman who not only participated in the lives of the legendary Bloomsbury group, but was the circle’s oldest surviving member until her death in 2004. Good Company opens up Frances Partridge's life between 1967 and 1970, as she attempts "to get a better seat on [my] bicycle." Confronted by times of great adversity, she refuses to indulge in self pity. A patient listener to other people's troubles, she can also be pungently outspoken in her criticism of her friends and their beliefs, in the name of truth. Her thirst for travel and her love of her friends are inexhaustible. In this volume she goes to Sicily with Rosamond Lehmann, to Spain to visit Gerald Brenan after the death of his wife, to Italy with Bunny Garnett, and to Cyprus with Heywood and Anne Hill.