HELEN PEACOCKE profiles the life of former publisher Diana Athill, a guest of the Oxford Literary festival, who is still writing at the age of 90

There is a postscript to Diana Athill's book Somewhere Towards the End which is worth reading first. It states that the small tree fern dscribed on page one, which disappointed her so much when it arrived by post as it was too small to mature in her lifetime, now has nine fronds, each 12in long.

While this doesn't mean she will ever see it develop into a tree, she says it was worth buying as she had underestimated the pleasure of watching it become a fern.

Yes, Diana accepts that at the great age of 90 she has reached a point in her life when she can no longer anticipate certain things. Age has its limitations. Owning a puppy, for example, would be impossible now as she is too old to take it for walks, just as she is too old to see a small fern turn into a fully fledged tree. But that doesn't mean her life is over. As readers soon discover, however, this remarkable woman, who read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, before helping to establish the publishing house Andre Deutsch where she was hailed as one of the country's top editors, is still full of life and still achieving things others would not dream of at her age.

Looking back on a life well lived, she discusses the events, the relationships and the lessons she has learned. Throughout her sixties Diana felt she was still within hailing distance of middle age, but when her 71st birthday arrived she realised the time had come to size up her life.

On moving into her seventies, she knew she had ceased to be a sexual being, a condition which had always seemed central to her existence even though it had gone thorough several stages and had not always been a happy one.

Despite her loss of sexual drive, she remains a fascinating woman who has lost none of the charisma which made her stand out from the crowd when younger.

Somewhere Towards the End is a rare book, written with the sharp wit and intelligence that has permeated the many books written by this grande dame of publishing. It addresses what it means to be old, yet still have the strength to strive for life with an unquenchable curiosity.

The death of her mother is particularly moving because of its honesty. She admits that while she was not afraid of her mother being dead, she was terrified of the process of her dying. She talks of the way one has to suspend one's own life when living with an old person, - cooking food which suits her and eating it at her set mealtimes and not your own as an old person is no longer able to adapting to other people's needs. She stayed with her mother as got in order to enable her to indulge her own whims as she got a little older and a little more helpless with every week that passed. She speaks of it being as if death was in the attic of her mother's house, waiting to do something cruelly and fatally painful to her.

Of her own death, Diana doesn't deny that moving through advanced old age is a downhill journey, and states that what dies is but a worn-out (or damaged) container of the self, together with the self-awareness of itself. Once, when she was near death due to a miscarriage many years ago and lying in a pool of blood, she remembers someone being asked to run for more blood for a transfusion as the patient was very near 'collapse'.

"What a bloody silly euphemism," she had thought, knowing he really meant death. Having heard this and Recognising what might be happening to her, Diana admits trying to think some sensible 'Last Thoughts' but the best she could come up with was: "Oh well, if I die, I die."

Diana says it seems that anyone looking back over 89 years ought to see a landscape pockmarked with regrets. After all, one knows so well one's own lacks and laziness, omissions, oversights and the innumerable ways in which one falls short of one's own ideals, to say nothing of standards set by other and better people. However, her words in Somewhere Towards the End are free from inhibitions and tumble out with such an admirable honesty that the landscape is far from pockmarked.

You can hear Diana discuss her book at the festival on Friday, April 4, at 2pm at Christ Church, and on Saturday, April 5, the writings of V.S.Naipaul.