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BIOGRAPHY: ROBERT O'BYRNEreviews The Surprising life of Constance SpryBy Sue Shephard, Macmillan, 337pp, £18.99

OVER THE HALF-CENTURY since the death of Constance Spry, her reputation has suffered grievous damage, not least from feminists, many of whom would regard her as promoting precisely the kind of stultifying domesticity they seek to eradicate. That Spry made her name as an arranger of flowers seems only to confirm the widespread impression of her as an anachronism any intelligent person should abjure. Six years ago the vacuum-cleaner inventor James Dyson resigned as chairman of London’s Design Museum when the institution’s director, Alice Rawsthorne, insisted on organising an exhibition dedicated to Spry, whose career was dismissed by one of the museum’s founders, Terence Conran, as nothing more than “high-society mimsiness”.