"Have you ever taken anything back out of the dirty-clothes basket because it had become, relatively, the cleaner thing?" This question, as satisfying today for surreptitious sluts everywhere as it was when it was first published in the Observer in 1963, is probably the most remembered sentence written by Katharine Whitehorn, pioneer of the personal column and author of a series of short survival books - most famously Cooking in a Bedsitter, which proved essential reading for anyone wanting to cook for one in the 60s. Whitehorn's frank and quick-witted autobiography takes in her childhood in Mill Hill, her career in journalism - which helped to end the distinction between "women's writing" and anything deemed serious - and a long marriage to the thriller writer Gavin Lyall, successful despite his dependence on alcohol. It defies the theory that a happy existence is never quite as fascinating as a miserable one, and proves that a selective memory, which allows you to look back on life with contentment, is indeed a precious gift.