The large gathering of personal friends who attended the memorial
service to Winifred Holtby at 'St. Martin's Church last Tuesday, representative as it was of strangely diverse social groups, testified to the extra- ordinary range of her interests and sympathies. Many of her friends often wondered how she found time to write the books which came swiftly, one after another, written at fever-heat and with intense earnestness, from her pen. She found time somehow Or other to respond to appeals to speak at meetings for the League of Nations Union, for friends who were candidates for Parliament, or for social causes which fired her imagination, to interest herself actively on behalf of the native popula- tions of Africa, to keep in touch with distant relatives, or to take charge of a friend's children, But she was one of those rare authors to whom, the task of writing is a joy. When once she had started on a book her zest in the work carried her through to the end. Seldom has 'so much energy; with so much radiant delight in self-immolation, been compressed into a life. At the pace she lived it could not have been a long one.
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