Here is Glyn, charismatic telly don, searching the landing cupboard for an offprint to illustrate an article he is now writing and a photograph of Kath falls out of a folder marked, 'Don't open - Destroy.' Not quite the author's words, but a similar, jerky present tense runs all through Penelope Lively's latest book, which is about death and memory and how we get people wrong, how we see people after they die. This is familiar Lively territory. She is, after all, a historian. Like Glyn the landscape archaeologist, time is her most essential tool. Organising perceptions of people and events is her trade. Glyn is less good at it. The Photograph is his quest for the real Kath, who was his wife. Until she died.

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