Instead of a Letter Author:Athill, Diana Diana Athill wrote Instead of a Letter as a therapeutic exrcise, in an attempt to discover what life, and she herself, were all about. A colonel's daughter, she had a happy childhood in the country. At fifteen, with an adolescent's folly and exuberance, she fell in love with the undergraduate who was employed as her brother's tutor. She went ... more »up to Oxford and they were engaged to be married. But this idyll was to sour in a most unexpected and cruel way. This is the story of her recovery.« less