Lawrence died in the year the Burns biography was published, and almost at once she was plunged into the controversies over his memory with a letter to the press denouncing the obituarists who had condemned him as a “dark and sinister failure”. She put her collection of letters at the disposal of Aldous Huxley for his edition of Lawrence’s correspondence, and in 1932 published what is probably her best-known work: the memoir of D. H. Lawrence which she called The Savage Pilgrimage.

It would never have been written but for John Middleton Murry’s strange “destructive hagiography”, Son of Women, against which she felt bound to mount a defence. Of all the early biographies of Lawrence hers is the most clear-headed in that it assesses him as a man, not a prophet. But at the same time she was one of the very few to emphasize the new key that Lawrence had struck and the probability of his lasting literary – and social – influence as a writer.

Catherine was fifty-three when The Savage Pilgrimage was published and a well-known writer with many friends. But of coteries and circles she had an instinctive fear. Her closest friends were Scotswomen with whom she had grown up and who had engaged in professional careers: two doctors, Maud McVail and Isobel Hutton, the sculptress Phyllis Clay, and Maggie Mather (the Phemie of Open The Door!) who became a professional musician. So far as she was concerned they had as much claim on her as the newer friends she made through her work – Vita Sackville-West, Storm Jameson, Athene Seyler and Rose Macaulay.

When one contrasts John Buchan with Hugh MacDiarmid her friendships were indeed wide-ranging. She shared neither the cautious conservatism of one nor the eccentric nationalism of the other, but was a friend of both, as correspondence shows. What is more, both Catherine and Donald were close friends of Edwin and Willa Muir, whom MacDiarmid regarded as his arch-enemies.

During the 1930s Catherine produced three anthologies, much literary journalism, and a third biography: a life of Boccaccio, which she called The Tranquil Hearts chosen, as she said, because Boccaccio was the first author to write avowedly for women. By now she was earning almost all the money that came into the house.

Her closest friend during these years was Daniel George, the critic and publisher’s reader, whom she came to know when he was still Daniel Bunting, the talented, self-educated manager of a firm of geyser manufacturers. He was already an accomplished writer and critic, and in the middle thirties became literary adviser to Jonathan Cape. With him Catherine collaborated on two of her anthologies – A National Gallery and The English in Love. The first was shared with her husband Donald. It is a collection not only of poetry and song (all of course Scottish) but of recipes, legal hints, and everything that might equip, amuse or instruct those pending a brief holiday in Scotland.