Myself when young

Daphne du Maurier, whose fiction has long drawn on her family's past, turns that same curiosity on herself in this memoir. Drawing on diaries she kept between 1920 and 1932, she traces her life from her first childhood recollections through the publication of her first book and her marriage.

The account is candid, and at times painful, about her strained bond with her father. It also covers her schooling in Paris, her early romances, and her dislike of London and of the theatre. Her deep attachment to Cornwall and her determined drive to make it as a writer run throughout. Together these pages build a detailed and layered picture of the woman behind the novels.