At the age of 21, Monica Baldwin - the niece of Stanley Baldwin - entered one of the most strictly enclosed contemplative orders of the Roman Catholic Church. At the age of 48, and after struggling with her vocation for many years, she left the convent. But the world Monica had known and forsaken in 1914 was very different to the world into which she emerged at the height of the Second World War. This is the fascinating account of one woman's two very different lives, with revealing descriptions of the world of a novice. Interwoven with these are the trials and tribulations of coping with a new and alien world, as the author is confronted with fashions, interventions, politics and art totally unfamiliar to her.