7 AUGUST 1999, Page 36

Since writing this review, Natasha Spender's house and garden at

Mas St Jerome have been devastated by fierce bush fire, whipped up by the mistral and needing 1,000 pompiers to control it. Most of the house, much of the interior and all the books are apparently destroyed and published pictures of the garden show a black and incinerated desert. The owner bravely vows to remake the garden, but she is 80. This tenible disaster makes the reader more than merely grateful that she wrote this book which must, for now, be her memorial.