Losing a partner or wife can be devastating and more, have a devastating impact on a child's life. Many books go into how the ramifications can bleed through on the child's life - but what about the children who can lead happy lives, despite such a momentous loss? Brought up by her middle-aged father, after her mother's death when she was barely five, Sue Bathurst reveals in her new memoir, Laughing and Splashing, how she revelled in the gamut of experience afforded by the combination of an almost feral rural childhood to living in London's possibly most exclusive address, enjoying fine dining, opera, and art. Sue follows the path from her great-grandparents' working class lives to her own marriage into, out of, and back into one of the great British landowning families. She writes about the early days of Farmers Weeklyand farming in the first half of the twentieth century. She describes trying to find out about her mother's family and not always liking what she found. Life in boarding schools in the 1950s and '60s is described in vivid detail, before moving on to the experience of being an art student in Marseille and London in the '60s. She rebelled zealously but then realised that conforming opened exciting doors. She became a foxhunter; skirted the edge of the debutante season; worked in TV film production; as an agricultural interpreter; a farmer and a historic property management consultant.

"In 1995 I read the much-hyped book - 'Motherless Daughters - The Legacy of Loss' by Hope Edelman," explains Sue, who is based in Gloucestershire. "I could not identify with it at all and ever since I have wanted to write a counterbalance, a book about the wonderfully happy childhood and life I have had despite losing my mother to cancer two months after my fifth birthday. I wanted to give people in similar circumstances - including the surviving parents - hope and encouragement. Over time it has broadened into a covert tribute to my father and a brief family history for my granddaughter." Her father encouraged her to grab the moment, which she did, many of them, all without regret. This is a cheerful book for anyone who enjoys memoirs, and more, reading about the vast array of experiences Sue has been through. There is something for everyone and if anyone who loses or has lost a parent reads it, it should hearten them. Laughing and Splashingshows that such tragedy need not be the end of the world, but the beginning of a different one to be enjoyed.