Maggie

''She was small, she was slight, with limber hands and fingers and white and consonant teeth; hazel was the colour of her eyes, and she wore size three shoes on her high-arched feet. There was more, though, more than pigmentation, more than fineness of form and feature: she was the repository of winning ways, as if all the graces had devolved on her…''

Thus did John Sanford write of Marguerite Roberts, the ''Maggie'' of this lyrical and moving memoir. His wife for more than half a century, she was a screen-writer of much distinction and one of the highest-paid in Hollywood. With uncommon generosity and with an unflagging belief in Sanford''s ability, she supported him through the writing of his twenty books, all of them acclaimed by the critics but overlooked by the public. He has been called ''the undiscovered treasure of American literature''.