The last surviving member of the Bloomsbury Group, Frances Partridge published her first book in 1978, many years after the war. She edited the diaries she had kept of hers and her husband Ralph’s life at Ham Spray House throughout the Second World War. They both hated war but did not suffer outwardly for their pacifist views. At their house in rural Wiltshire, the Partridges hosted a string of Bloomsbury friends, providing refuge from bombardment, food shortages, and general war-weariness. The diary extracts give an intimate account of the lively activities at Ham Stray as they are held together by the underlying story of an atrocious war.