'In spite of the old adage, I often judge a book by its cover and this one rates rather well. It features a charming family photograph of women and children taken around 1920. There is not the smallest hint of the glamour of the jazz age decade to come, but it is arresting all the same. For it captures a fleeting moment of relaxed domestic joy and is the sort of rare photographic relic any family would treasure. The family in question is the Hewetts, and they are chief among Graeme Davison’s cavalcade of Lost Relations.' (Introduction)