Love Nina: Dispatches of Family Life by Nina Stibbe. "20 year old Nina Stibbe moved from Leicester to London in the early 80's to become a nanny. And how fantastic is it that she moves in with Mary Kay Wilmers, the editor of the London Review of Books (and exwife of director Stephen Frears), who just happens to live across the street from Alan Bennett and next door to Claire Tomalin. Now all this name dropping would be irrelevant if these people were not intelligent, witty, and prone to interesting kitchen banter. Even the kids have a terrific dry sense of humor that they obviously learned from their mother. Lucky Nina and lucky us. I especially fell in love with Mary Kay with her ability to sound completely unfazed at all times. Nina is very far from the perfect nanny but she seems to be the perfect fit for this slightly unconventional family. I'm always a fan of the epistolary format and long for the days when my friends and I would write letters chronicling the daily details of our ordinary lives. I'm so glad that Nina's sister saved all these letters. I was very sad when it ended and I realized that I was not going to get another update on the Gloucester Crescent crew."
