The Growing Summer, which inverts the idea that children really want a ruleless, clockless, back-to-the-primitive life, shows Miss Streatfeild in excellent form. Father's only relative (his parents having been killed by a bomb) is legendary Great-Aunt Dymphna, who lives in Ireland. Mother's family is in the antipodes. So, when father is stricken by illness in the Far East, and mother is summoned to join him, it is to Aunt Dymphna's that the four … are hastily dispatched….

To know this towering character is an education: she should be remembered long. Not so the spoilt young film-star runaway boy…. This dreary cardboard intruder should never have found his way into the book; he should be quickly forgotten.

"The Lighter Side," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1966; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), No. 3378, November 24, 1966, p. 1074.∗