The Tumbrel Diaries

Mum again, at around the age of eight or nine: We always went for a walk with the governess in the afternoon, usually along th...

I have been re-reading Mum’s reminiscences, written about twenty years ago in her neat, self-disciplined longhand. Mostly they c...

Among the many papers she left behind, Mum kept a photograph album, a souvenir of her beloved older sister Anne (center), who sailed with f...

According to the brief but lively memoir she wrote towards the end of her life, Granny described the thrill of sailing to England for the fi...

Together, in 1938, our dear cousin slash aunt Mollie Bruce-Pearson (Mongie) and Mum (aged eleven) collaborated on a second work of roman...

Mongie, pronounced “ Mungie, ” and the G is soft, not hard, was a genius with children. Towards the end of the summer of 1937–38, ...

The Australian novelist Mary Grant Bruce (1878–1958) was the second daughter and fourth child of Eyre Lewis Bruce and Mary (Minnie) Atki...