Period piece: a Cambridge childhood

PERIOD PIECE is Gwen Raverat's account of her Victorian childhood in Cambridge. The granddaughter of Charles Darwin, she was later famed for her wood-engravings, many of which illustrate these stories, and her associations with the Bloomsbury Group. In this masterpiece of comic writing, Raverat brings to life her eccentric aunts and uncles with snapshots of an extremely individual family. There was Aunt Etty, fussy and "far from calm" and Uncle Richard with his egg-shaped waistcoat and fuzzy, waggly beard, whose socks always fell down. It is also a great social memoir, describing life in the late 19th century, growing up amid the fads and fetishes of academic and Victorian England. It is clear why this witty and irreverent book became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic when it was published in 1952.