Portland Place is Sarah Shaw's diary for 1971, in which year she was working at the BBC as a junior secretary.  While vividly recreating daily life for an office worker in the days of manual typewriters, Gestetner stencils, rail strikes, IRA bombs and decimalisation, it also traces the development of an extraordinary romance with a much older Irishman.

Sarah talks humorously and frankly about what it was like to be a young, working woman at the time as well as the difficulties of navigating her first romance. She is funny and self-effacing with a self-knowledge that only few attain. Her innocence and naivety are hugely charming and the diary forms a valuable snapshot of a time not so long ago but now lost to us.

"Evocative ... vivid and joyous diary" Joan Bakewell, Daily Telegraph

"A curious, candid chronicler" Mail on Sunday