Anne Scott-James has known and loved village life since childhood, when she walked and cycled and searched for wildflowers in the woods of Berkshire and Hampshire. She was educated at St. Paul's Girls' School and Somerville College, Oxford, where she was a classical scholar, and then went into journalism, where she was at one time editor of Harper's Bazaar and later a columnist for the Daily Mail. She now specializes in garden writing. She was married to the late Osbert Lancaster and has both children and grandchildren.