Diana Hardie’s autobiography ends at the point when she and her husband, David, settled in England with their young son and daughter and started a silk-screen printing business.

However, their adventures were far from over.

Diana continued to write and was a regular contributor to magazines as well as having plays produced both on radio and television.

David never forgot his beloved circus and spent much of his spare time building an intricate, animated model of it. As they grew older, the children, also called David and Diana, became enthusiastic modellers too, and the family dreamed of exhibiting their miniature circus to the public.

Eventually, after a successful season in Torquay, the family bought a derelict school set in fourteen acres of overgrown parkland with the intention of transforming it into a tourist attraction.

The family expected to face challenges, but they didn’t expect them to include a demolition order, a deranged neighbour with a shotgun, a plague of rats and a resident ghost.

You can read the family’s continuing adventures in a series of three books written by Diana Hardie’s daughter, Diana Townsend, called Me, My Family and the Poltergeist.