In deciding to write a book about her forebears and herself, Juliet Nicolson follows in their footsteps. Given that her grandparents were Harold Nicolson and Vita Sackville-West, and her father was Nigel Nicolson, that they all wrote copiously about themselves, that Knole and Sissinghurst are stuffed with family records, and that she is herself a publisher turned writer, it proved impossible to resist adding her voice to the already substantial record of her family’s powerful social and literary connections.