This book is a studiously edited version of the eleven volumes and more than three thousand pages of the diarist's original work. Ella Bickersteth began to put it together for her six sons, because one of them was in Australia at the outbreak of the 1914-18 war. The book reflects upon church and politics, theological musings and matter-of-fact details of how an anxious mother, who was also a busy vicar's wife, kept going through the huge upheaval of war.