A few years ago I compiled a selection of the UK’s best places to take a short cookery course for Allaboutyou.com (the online home of Good Housekeeping magazine). Anyway, I’ve just updated it for this autumn for the site. My editor Carol has blogged about it here, including details of a mysterious 13th cookery school which you […]

Jean de Brunhoff – does this name ring any bells? No? Well, you’re sure to have come across what he’s famous for – writing and illustrating the touching stories about Babar, the elephant.

Feature on the mistresses of reinvention – why have one career when you can just keep changing them?  

The more children’s classics I rediscover, the more I realise I never actually read many properly in the first place. Perhaps it’s a sad reflection on reading standards over the last 40 years, but the fact remains; I didn’t read Anne of Green Gables as a child…  

For many first-time parents, taking the baby on his or her first holiday this summer is a fantasy and also a bit of a nightmare. You so want it all to go right, and you find yourself worrying about how exactly it’s going to work. After all, if it’s hard just to leave the house […]

Page 65. That was the page the girls whispered to one another in the last year of primary school as we passed the dog-eared copy of Forever around under the desks. It’s the cringe-inducing bit where Katherine meets Ralph for the first time. And yes, you remembered right – Ralph’s a penis. Literally. Click here […]

I’ve been writing for Cam, the magazine of the University of Cambridge, for several years now, and this is the second time I’ve had the priviledge of writing the summer reading feature. It’s  fascinating to work on – the book recommendations of leading Cambridge academics are so well thought-out. This year I’ve picked up Josephine […]

When I met a young, female rabbi I was intrigued and thought she’d be perfect for How I Make It Work in Style – here’s my interview with her.

For some reason it was the main characters’ names which stayed with me – all I could recall 30 years on was that there was someone called Dickon, as well as someone called Colin Craven who never got out of bed; a Mary Lennox and, yes, that’s right, a Mrs Medlock and a Martha…Read more […]