Meanwhile, Edward comes looking for Nenna, but ends up drinking with Maurice, before trying to board Nenna's barge (she's not in, because of the storm) and possibly falling into the cold and turbulent waters. Eventually she lived with him and their three children on a houseboat on the Thames in a chic part of London; the boat sank twice, and her family was homeless for a while, then given public housing. I compared that with the Elizabeth Taylor novel I had just read, in which I had marked passages on every few pages and had quotes of stunning elegance and wisdom to revisit when I had finished.

Her characters are - well, they're living in old rotting barges stuck in the mud by the side of the Thames, is what they’re doing.

John Wilson is a lifelong enthusiast for London the city and for London in literature, art and film.

As some of you may know, a few years ago I set myself the challenge of reading all the books that had ever won the booker prize. On seeing Fitzgerald being ‘down in the dumps’, he took her out for a day of fun and frivolity; only a few days later, he walked into the sea and drowned himself. In fact, tradition dictates that owners are addressed by the name of their boat, though that doesn't happen all the time, and one owner thwarts it by changing the name of his boat to match his own name. In describing a group of people rather than zooming in on just a few individuals the story loses its impact.She really wants to get together with Edward, who, after spending 18 months in South America supposedly to save up, comes back to find Nenna and the children aboard Grace and freaks out. It's in the way we float in and out of each other's spaces, wafting airs of unknowable lives and unimaginable baggage, and leaving us with momentarily vivid yet inevitably vague images of the other. In 2012, The Observer named her final novel, The Blue Flower, as one of "the ten best historical novels".

The tidal flow of the river, the rise and fall of the boats, the mud along the river bank – the interactions of her characters come together to create a wonderful sense of time and place. There was never a minesweeper, but there was a torpedo boat, which has long gone from Chelsea but is apparently still intact and being made seaworthy again. Tilda in particular knows the meaning of every flag and light carried by the ever-present tugs, and the signals they make with their hooters. The everyday life of Fitzgerald with her husband and children on Grace sounds remarkably similar to that of their fictional counterparts, Nenna and her children. The characters relationships are altered by the changes in their circumstances, the world of this disparate little community is under threat.i really wanted to like this book and hesitate to give this just three stars, but for me the book was flat and a little too understated. It even has the occasional inadvertantly amusing double-entendre that adds entertainment value to many vintage books.