During the ten years she lived at the edge of Putney Common, Jilly Cooper walked it daily. For most of the time she lived there, she kept a diary, noting the changing seasons and her many encounters with dogs and their owners. This is a distillation of those diaries - a warts-and-all portrait of life on the Common combining the splendours of the natural world with the gossip, illicit romances and jealousies of life in a small community.