The essays in ‘Moving On’ trace Barker’s life from her Scottish roots to her first encounter with George Barker, her life in Norfolk with the poet and the profound sense of loss following his death in 1991. ‘Thoughts in a Garden’, hilarious and moving by turn, read like dispatches from the front line. Not for her the Farrow & Ball-tinted view of country living but the vagaries of raising a large family and assorted pets in a damp and draughty farmhouse.

Rounded out with introductions to East Anglian writers and painters and with reviews of the work of her contempories – Angela Carter, A S Byatt, Toni Morrison, Beryl Bainbridge and William Trevor among others – Dog Days is a wonderful anthology for anyone who loves the art of literature.