This book is heaven. Elspeth Barker writes like no one else’OLIVIA LAING’Deserves to be permanently on the bedside table – to cheer, reassure and inspire’OBSERVER’Gothic, poetic and exuberantly funny. What a pleasure it was to read’ESTHER FREUD’Joyous, startling, funny, lush, dark and complex’THE TIMESIn Notes from the Henhouse, you will find:A Gothic castle, a draughty Norfolk farmhouse and a malevolent AgaA pet pig, Portia with a penchant for drama, an obsession with geraniums and an addiction to wine (the Bulgarian vintage)George Barker, poet and beloved husband, warbling cowboy songs into his glass and declaiming Hopkins and Houseman in The Drinking RoomFive entrancing baby cherubimos, rolling and bouncing about in a big brass bed, before growing up at breakneck speedThe ecstasy of writing, the dither of procrastination, and the endless adventures to be had in the wild realms of the imaginationThe outrage of death, the loneliness of widowhood, and