It Goes with the Territory

A prolific author of novels, poetry collections, plays, biographies and translations, Elaine Feinstein is one of the towering literary figures of the last few decades. In this, her first memoir, she tells the story of her journey from a Jewish childhood in Leicester into the undergraduate world of post-war Cambridge, the excitement of friendships in the literary world and the tensions of a poet's writing life inside a long and sometimes painful marriage. This book, however, is not only the intimate memoir of one of Britain's finest poets and novelists: it is also the story of a rapidly changing country and of an entire generation of authors. Told with the precision of a biographer and the finesse of a poet, and peppered with witty literary anecdotes, It Goes with the Territory is an absorbing read from beginning to end.