Don't Let the Sun Go Down on This Book

I am more or less compelled to write a review of Bricks and Flowers, a memoir by Katherine Everett, because it seems to me a kind of cosmic injustice that a work of this quality should slide into obscurity. Everett wrote this book in her mid 70s and it was first published in 1949. She lived a remarkable life in remarkable times. She was a daughter of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy with an impeccable pedigree but that never got in the way of her using her own considerable brains nor did it shield her from life's difficulties. She was a poor relation to some very grand people and a friend or acquaintance to many famous people (Augustus John and W.B. Yeats moved in her circle). A bad marriage left her on her own with two sons to fend for and fend she did by becoming a contractor in the building trades and a garden designer. There is a remarkable tale in here of her bicycle ride through miles of territory occupied by the Irish rebel army in 1916. (She was riding out to check on the home of her very grand and good, if somewhat clueless, relation the Baroness Ardilaun. The Irish, alas, had burned the mansion to the ground). Everett was a fine and lively writer and a very wise woman. At the time of its initial release, this book was very well reviewed by A.A. Milne in the (London) Sunday Times and Milne knew what he was about.