Notes compiled by Kate Varney in 2008 about the creative domestic life of her mother, Q D Leavis. Arranged in sections as follows:
1) Pets and Animals;
2) Shopping: includes local detail about the Chesterton Road area of Cambridge, mostly during the 1940s;
3) Economy, Food, Hospitality, Kitchen and Garden: mentions various members of extended family, including cousins; also comments on various details and 'stories' mentioned by Ian MacKillop in his biography of F R Leavis, often refuting them. The last paragraph of this section includes the comment 'My mother did much of her thinking while making jam and doing the myriad other household jobs. Whereas my father worked in the solitude of his study in peace and quiet my mother never had the luxury of her own room in any of the three houses.';
4) Health and Illness: covers the acute and chronic illnesses which Q D Leavis suffered for a large part of her life and the heart condition from which she died; also covers the nursing of F R Leavis with 'what we now know as Alzheimer's';
5) Junk Shopping and China: again, this section includes local detail about shopping in Cambridge;
6) Furniture and Fabrics.
The file also includes a copy of a 2 page letter from Kate Varney to Jean Vacher at the Surrey Institute of Art & Design, 20 April 2004, giving her 'information about the Cardew pieces which I donated in 1981/2 to the Crafts Study Centre at Bath and which had been owned by my parents'.