London, 1971. A nineteen-year-old secretary is perched in a BBC office high above Portland Place. She keeps a diary, in which she describes her life at work and at home, living between a girls' hostel in Victoria and her parents' house in Surrey. When she stumbles into a secret relationship with a man much older than herself, her conservative upbringing leaves her unprepared for the bitter-sweet nature of an extraordinary first love affair. Set against a backdrop of miniskirts, the IRA, T. Rex, decimalization, The Female Eunuch , Edward Heath and Morecambe and Wise, Sarah Shaw's year-long diary contrasts the humdrum of the day-to-day in the early 1970s and the sexual awakening of an innocent young woman. Honest, funny and perceptive, Portland Place is an evocative journey back to the seventies, a decade not long gone, but often a million miles away. 'A curious, candid chronicler .

and it's oddly soothing to read about the drabness of everyday life at a moment when the psychedelic Sixties had faded and the flashy Eighties were still a decade away' Mail on Sunday 'Entertaining story . a constant delight' Belfast Telegraph.