Mary Elizabeth Haldane was Naomi Mitchison's paternal grandmother ('Granniema'). Like her granddaughter, she lived to be a centenarian, raised a large family, exhibited varied talents and died beloved by a wide range of family, friends and admirers. Her children included her son Richard, who was Secretary of State for War, and then Lord Chancellor, Mitchison's father, a great scientist whose work saved many lives, and the author/editor of this slim volume, originally compiled really for family and friends, Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane, an outstanding woman who became Scotland's first woman...

Louisa 'Maya' Haldane was the widow of physiologist John Scott Haldane, and the mother of J. B. S. Haldane and Naomi Mitchison. In these memoirs she gives a remarkably detailed account of the life of the well-to-do in the second half of the nineteenth century - in Ireland, Scotland and the Continental spas as well as in England - as seen through the eyes of a growing girl and an independently-minded young woman. The story continues up to the time of the First World War, with chapters focusing on particular topics: her education, her husband's early career, the position of servants in town and...