My most memorable New Year's Eve -- Note on my story "The gentile Jewesses" -- The celestial garden party -- What images return -- Comment on "The poet's house" -- The poet's house -- Footnote to "The poet's house" -- John Masefield -- The writing life -- My Madeleine -- How I became a novelist -- London exotics -- A drink with Dame Edith -- Living in Rome -- Tuscany by chance -- When I was ten -- My book of life -- Pensée: Scottish education -- The desegregation of art -- The art of verse -- Pensée: T.S. Eliot -- The wisdom of Mr T.S. Eliot -- The short story -- Pensée: Biography -- The book I would like to have written, and why -- Pensée: the supernatural -- The books I re-read and why -- Robert Burns -- Emily Brontë -- The Brontës as teachers -- My favourite villain: Heathcliff -- Mrs Gaskell -- Mary Shelley: wife to a genius -- Frankenstein and The last man -- Mary Shelley (author's note and proposal for a critical biography) -- Shelley's last house -- The essential Stevenson -- Robert Louis Stevenson -- Celebrating Scotland -- Simenon: a phenomenal writer -- The Golden Fleece -- Eyes and noses -- Love -- How to write a letter -- Our dearest Emma -- Venice -- Ravenna: city of mosaics -- Fuzzy young person -- Decorative art -- Daughter of the soil -- The first Christmas Eve -- A pardon for the guy -- Ritual and recipe -- Letter from Rome: the elder statesmen -- The sermons of Newman -- An exile's path -- Newman's journals -- The religion of an agnostic -- An unknown author -- The mystery of Job's suffering -- The only problem -- Ailurophilia -- The next world and back