Contents

Acknowledgements

Family Trees

Notes on Historical Characters

PART ONE: Where the Nice Girls Live

1 Christmas at ‘Clare’, 1956

2 The Connotations of Sausages

3 Perpetual Succour

4 More about Mottoes

5 Family Trees

6 The Nice Girls

7 Correspondence

8 If

9 Respect: the Odyssey of the Walnut Table

10 Our Father’s Daughters

PART TWO: Mad Meg

11 The Art of Bamboozlement

12 Encroachment

13 The Politics of Kite-Flying and the Elusiveness of Cash

14 Dadda’s Beginnings

15 Reason, Religion and Folly

16 Mad Meg’s Basket

17 History and Moving into It

PART THREE: Good Intentions

18 Christmas and an Explanation

19 Uncle Nicola

20 Displacement and Despoliation

21 David

22 A Table in the Presence of Enemies

23 The Crushing

PART FOUR: The Promised Land

24 Translating

25 Modernity and Obsolescence

26 Allegra

27 Relations

28 At Harry’s Beach House

29 Paris

30 Faking It

31 Justice and Liberty

32 Homage to Bruegel

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