Instead of a Letter. In , when she was in her mid-forties and one of the best-known book editors in the English-speaking world, Diana Athill published Instead of a Letter , the first of the nine memoirs she would write before her death in , at the age of It is to my mind the only one of the lot that is fully realized. Athill was born in into an upper-middle-class English family and raised on their country estate in Norfolk, amid a crowd of relatives about whom she either speaks well or remains silent.
In just one regard does she pass judgment. Though most members of the family had neither power nor money, what they did have—in spades—were the smugness and arrogance of class certainty. They all knew they were the best, which meant that everyone not like them was more than slightly unreal.
When Diana was fifteen years old an exciting young man whom she calls Paul came to the estate as a tutor to her younger brother, Andrew.
She instantly fell in love with him and, in time, he with her. When she was seventeen they became engaged to be married. But before this would come her university degree. She always counted a happy childhood as her first formative experience, and her years at Oxford as her second. In , during her final year, Paul, who had joined the Royal Air Force, was posted abroad to Egypt.
The plan was for Diana to join him upon graduation, when they would marry and live happily ever after. For a few months there was a great deal of ardent letter writing between them, after which the unthinkable happened: Paul, suddenly and without explanation, stopped writing. Diana sent him letter after letter, begging for a response. None came. She never saw him again. Two years later she received a formal letter pleading for his release from their engagement—he wished to marry someone else.
