Winifred Fortescue was born in Suffolk in 1888. At the age of 17 she decided to help the family's ailing resources by taking a career on the stage, and starred in a number of productions. In 1914 she married John Fortescue, the King's Librarian and Archivist, and in spite of a huge age difference theirs was an exceptionally happy marriage. The couple lost nearly all their money in the stockmarket crash of 1929. Selling what little they had left, they bought a tumbledown cottage high on a mountain outside Grasse in Provence, where they settled for life among the Provencals - with all the trials and tribulations of sulky workmen, flamboyant villagers and learning to drive Provence-style - and with all the pleasures that their new-found neighbours and way of life brought them. Lady Fortescue's account of their life in Provence, where she died in 1951, was first published in 1935. This reissue retains the drawings of E.H. Shepard, the "Winnie the Pooh" illustrator.