All in One Basket (John Murray) brings together two earlier collections, (Counting My Chickens and Home to Roost) by Deborah, dowager Duchess of Devonshire.
Short, entertaining pieces that range from being overheard talking to a frog and reflections on her sister, writer Nancy Mitford, to buying clothes at agricultural fairs and Christmas at Chatsworth, her husband's ancestral home. Now 90, Debo, the youngest of the Mitford sisters, writes with such verve that Nancy might have envied her. Not for reading at a gulp, All in One Basket is for dipping into at odd moments, so keep it on the bedside table or in the lounge when TVs offerings are more boring than usual.
- Gillian Vine
