[2] Waugh grew up from the age of four at Combe Florey House, in Somerset, of which she has written: "It's an impressive-looking place: big and quite grand and pleasingly symmetrical, set at the top of a long, winding drive, with an Elizabethan gatehouse at the bottom and a small lake with a private island halfway up... With forbidden attics and vast cellars chock-a-block with hidden treasures, there was never any need for a nursery... My memories are of a house, underheated (to put it mildly), but always full of noisy cousins and glamorous, clever people, eating well and talking quickly.
[citation needed] On television, she has presented Channel 4's Travelog show and was a contributor to the BBC Radio Four programme Afternoon Shift.
[4] A Small Town in Africa (1994), a book about Waugh's experiences while living for six months at Isiolo in the Eastern Province of Kenya, was well received.
[7] In 2005, the Literary Review described Waugh's novel Bed of Roses as "Cold Comfort Farm meets Goodbye, Mr Chips".
This phase came to an end when she gave up the rural idyll and returned to London to write The Desperate Diary of a Country Housewife (2008).