Mark Girouard selects and reproduces 29 letters, ranging from his early childhood during the war to recent years, and uses them to memorialise their diverse authors. In the process a selective autobiography emerges as he discusses his relationship with the diverse crowd, painting a riveting picture of Bohemian cultural life in post-war Britain and Ireland. And the point of it all is to show that friendship has nothing to do with fame or wealth, but entirely with that sudden click of reciprocity, or pleasure in companionship, that makes life worth living.