Images and shadows : part of a life

The lucidly written memoir of Iris Origo, the writer of the bestselling War in Val d'OrciaIt has only been through my affections that I have been able to perceive, however imperfectly, some faint "intimations of immortality"Images and Shadows is the story of those affections: for a loving, shy father, who died when his daughter was very young; for a vital, headstrong mother; for friends and family, alive and dead. And for the places Origo lived: Ireland, America, England; the childhood home in the hills above Florence; and her own beloved La Foce - the desolate, deforested estate which she and her Italian husband bought, and into which they poured the energy and patience of their best years. Iris Origo (1902-1988) is best known as a biographer and war diarist.

But in Images and Shadows she writes with characteristic grace, wit and humility, almost reluctantly, about herself.

Reissued with newly discovered photographs, it is both a moving insight into a lost age, and an illumination of the life and loves of an endlessly curious and thoughtful woman.