The Pattern in the Carpet

In The Pattern in the Carpet Margaret Drabble tells the history of the jigsaw a uniquely British form of mediation from its earliest incarnation as teaching tools to the extraordinary variety of cut-outs that have continued to amuse children and adults until the present. Woven through Drabble’s account are intimate memories of her aunt Phyllis - her childhood visits to her aunt’s Lincolnshire house in Long Bennington on the Great North Road their first visit to London together the books they read and above all the jigsaws that they completed. A unique and personal history of remembrance and growing older and how we rearrange objects into new patterns both to make sense of our past and to ornament our present.