Falling truly, madly, deeply in love with one animal after another was a recurrent theme of the author's childhood, actively encouraged by her beautiful, impetuous mother as she single-handedly held the family together during the war's darkest days.While her husband's regiment battled through the Tunisian desert to Italy and Austria, she criss-crossed beleaguered Britain with children, ration books, and an unwieldy train of rabbits, dogs, cats and ponies, dreaming of land of her ow...

It Happened in Gloucestershire is a vibrant and compelling account of the county's diverse heritage; its heroes, its battles, its inventors, its outlandish sports.Phyllida Barstow's lively prose transports the reader across the county: from its stunning cathedral to its swan lake at Slimbridge, taking us surfing the Severn Bore, tumbling down Cooper Hill on the notorious Cheese Race, round the challenging course at Badminton and to Imjin Hill, site of the tragic stand of the Glorio...

Many smallholders have plunged in at the deep end and learnt the hard way, through experience.But Phyllida Barstow, author of the childhood autobiography My Animals and Other Family, was already involved in animal husbandry when, as a young woman, she embarked on her own smallholding enterprise.Here is her lively, informative and witty account of her first-hand experience throughout her lifetime in Gloucestershire, with chickens, dogs, cats, horses, sheep, peacocks, alpacas...