We remember [[:Category:Margery Allingham|Margery Allingham]] as a novelist from the golden age of crime, perhaps not as famous as Agatha Christie or Dorothy L Sayers but certainly well regarded by those who appreciate good writing and excellent plotting. Her last completed book was not a novel but ''The Relay'', a combined account of caring for three elderly relatives, (Em, Maud and Grace) between 1959 and 1961 and suggestions as to how other people might achieve a good old age for their relatives. Margery died in 1966 and ''The Relay'' was never published in the form in which it was written.
[[:Category:Julia Jones|Julia Jones]] is Allingham's biographer and a dementia carer herself, as well as the co-founder with [[:Category:Nicci Gerrard|Nicci Gerrard]] of [http://johnscampaign.org.uk/#/ John's Campaign] which is pressing for people with dementia to be able to have their carer with them in hospital when required. She's perhaps uniquely placed to bring Allingham's ideas to a wider audience and to intersperse them with her own views and experiences of caring for her mother who has dementia. I wouldn't normally warm to this sort of approach, but Allingham's experiences are interesting but decidedly dated, whilst Jones has current observations and the elegant contrast brings both views to life whilst allowing us to see what has changed in the interim.
Allingham identified 'protection', 'companionship' and 'care' as ''the human requirements for a contented old age''. I've thought long and hard about this and it's difficult to disagree or add anything else which is absolutely essential. My own experiences (of which more later) tally with those of Jones: the most difficult of these to fulfil is companionship. Allingham's idea was of a dower house system where the young would look after the old who once looked after them and they, in their turn would be looked after by the young whom they brought up with care being the baton passed on in the titular relay. That does make it seem rather formulaic but Allingham and, increasingly, Jones are of the view that there's a great deal of benefit to all parties in the relationship, that there's a gain other than the purely material passed to the young. As Allingham says, the ''dower house permits the family, by uniting its strength into a bundle of sticks, to afford their old people the care and protection which it is its privilege to supply and their right to accept.''