Many of us look back on our schooldays with loathing, but not Diane Langdon. Her years at Fyfield County Boarding School in Essex were among the happiest of her life, and in this book she explains why, from the pranks and the (occasional) punishments to the various subjects and the teachers who taught them (good and not so good), the formidable Matron and the fun and comradeship of school life. “I hope some parents who read this understand that it was neither cruel nor thoughtless to ‘pack your child off to boarding school’. It was in fact a privilege and the opportunity of a lifetime… It has given me very happy memories and friendships to treasure all my life.”

When Louise Wren spotted a tiny animal moving in the gutter as she was driving near her home one night, she screeched to a halt to find it was a fox cub, just a few weeks old, which had been hit by car. Louise has become something of an expert on foxes, having made friends with a whole family of them in her back garden, so she rescued it. The cub’s hind legs appeared lame. Would it have to be put down or would Maddie, as she called the cub, survive with the specialist care of a vet’s family who had other rescued foxes living with them? This is her story.

After National Service in the Royal Navy, Bernard Donovan embarked upon a career in science, becoming a leader in research on the interactions between the brain and the endocrine system -neuroendocrinology. His work on the control of reproductive function, concerned with the timing of puberty and the control of ovarian activity, was particularly innovative. As the editor of a leading scientific journal, the Journal of Endocrinology, and later as Secretary-General of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers, he contributed substantially to the betterment of the academic publishing industry. His final professional achievement was the writing of an authoritative biography of Solly Zuckerman, one of the twentieth century’s most influential biologists. This is the story of Donovan’s professional and personal life, from growing up as a schoolboy in wartime London to marriage (thrice), fatherhood and the many thrills of a scientific career.

Ellie Rohm grew up in wartime Austria with warring parents who thought nothing of assaulting each other, and her, for the slightest misdemeanour. From childhood she was expected to spend all her waking hours in menial labour. Finally, in her teens, she found the courage to escape from her brutal family and start a new life in England. That was where she learned that her parents’ marriage had come to a brutal and shocking end.

“If Mother didn’t have a rod or a stick, she would go outside and cut one from a hazel bush, and then she would hit me until she got tired or until the stick broke. The more I cried, the more she hit me…”