Over a period of nearly thirty years Sir Dirk Bogarde established himself as a unique and compelling voice in English literature. This, at times heart rending, always compelling and immensely readable book is his finest hour. It charts the disintegration of the idyll that Bogarde shared with his former manager Forwood in Provence for twenty years. How the onset of old age in both of them and cancer in Forwood made a return to the UK a necessity. The central relationship is a complex one which has been typically and one-dimensionally assumed to be gay by the popular press. I suspect that the relationship was asexual, that of two bachelors by circumstance rather than confirmation who rather drifted to together and melded like the best of marriages. The treatment of the confusion wrought by disease and infermity is moving in the extreme. Bogarde's unselfpitying struggle to rebuild his life in small flat in Knightsbridge can only engender the sympathy of the reader. Interlaced throughout is a eulogy to the friends and life that he left behind in Southern France. This events charted are actually heroic and this book is a real contender for my favourite read of all time.