In ‘Lark Rise To Candleford’ and ‘Heatherley’ Flora Thompson wrote the story of her Victorian country childhood and her youth in village post offices. She was sixty when she wrote her well-known books but she had spent a lifetime serving her apprenticeship as a naturalist and a writer. This biography tells the story of her life and her struggles as a writer. Flora Thompson’s books opened windows on to the lost world of the hamlet, the village and small country towns.