This book celebrates the charisma of a singular woman, Shoe, who started life as a butcher's daughter in Oldham, took the hippie trail to Europe and the East in the 1960s and then led a life rich with colour and incident. She went to prison in Tunis, sang for Salvador Dali in Spain, sat at the feet of gurus in India and Japan, rode an elephant in Beirut, worked in an orphanage in Sri Lanka and a health farm in Ireland. She survived eight months in prison, the trauma of a gang rape in Morocco and struggled for seven years against the ravages of bulimia. Jonathan Guinness has also written a biography of the Mitford family called The House of Mitford.