The autumn of a selfish life

Diana Athill says that, when sex has faded away, women can become more individual because, before then, their personalities are dominated by the inbuilt drive to bear children.

This old-fashioned view is expressed in the concise, lively prose appropriate to a former publisher's editor who has written four other books of memoirs.

She expects to feel grief as death approaches, not because she is an atheist, but because she will not want to let go of a pleasurable life. She does not share the pessimism of old people who say that everything around them is getting worse.

She had lovers but never married and had no interest in children. Books have been her life, apparently insulating her from the wider world.

Writing almost wholly about herself, Athill is honest about her complacency and her very limited concern in the past, even for family members who helped her.

It is sad to think that selfishness may be a key to survival into advanced, sprightly, agreeable old age.

JOHN MOORE