Christian Miller, the youngest of a family of six, was born in 1920. Brought up on her father's estate in the Scottish Highlands, she was educated by governesses. After the death of her father, the estate was inherited by her elder brother, and the rest of the family moved to London, where - at eighteen - she became a debutante. During WWII, having started as an aircraft fitter working on heavy bombers, she became a technical adviser in the Ministry of Production.
She married during the war and had two daughters, and it was not until the 1960s that she started writing, beginning with short stories, which were widely translated. Her first novel, The Champagne Sandwich, was published in 1969, and was followed in 1980 by Daisy Daisy, which told the story of a bicycle ride across America which she did on her own when she was 58. A Childhood in Scotland first appeared in The New Yorker, and received a Scottish Arts Council Book Award in 1982.

'When I was a little girl, the ghosts were more real to me than the people.'
In this perceptive and unpretentious autobiography Christian Miller recalls her privileged but at the same time deprived upper-class childhood in a castle in Scotland.
Through the eye and ears of a 1920s child who seems to have seen and heard everything within the massive granite walls of her home, she gives us a unique insight into what must surely have been one of the last relics of feudal life.