Welcome to House With No Name. I write about everything from books and films to education, family and France.
Like most people, I’ve done loads of my shopping online this Christmas. Instead of flogging round the shops in the freezing cold I’ve sat in the warmth of my office sipping coffee and choosing presents from Amazon, Topshop and other shopping emporiums. It’s so quick and easy that I wasn’t surprised in the least to read that online sales have doubled to ten per cent since 2000 and are predicted ...keep reading
With Christmas exactly eight days away there are still presents to buy, food to organise and a snowboarding course to do (no, thankfully not me, my son). He, by the way, has set off this morning in jeans and a shirt – still no coat! I may have to try novelist Veronica Henry’s approach. “I can be quite scary,” she tweeted. “… and there was money involved.” On the plus ...keep reading
Virtually every journalist I know dreams of emulating Robert Harris and writing a bestseller. But few stand a chance of being as successful as the former Observer political editor. To date he’s written eight novels, sold millions and seen his books translated into 37 languages. Harris switched from journalism to novels with the publication of Fatherland in 1992 and has never looked back. The Ghost, seen as a thinly disguised ...keep reading
“All I want for Christmas is a No 1. I like the idea that a group of women singing in a church with a speccy choirmaster is Simon Cowell’s greatest threat. I’m sure he’s quaking in his boots.” Those are the words of Gareth Malone, the nation’s favourite choirmaster, in an interview to be published in ES magazine tomorrow. And I reckon he’s right. As Simon Cowell sits in the ...keep reading
Christmas is full of conundrums. How long to cook the turkey for? Whether to make bread sauce (I loathe the stuff)? What to buy the in-laws? But the trickiest puzzle by far is… what to do with the Christmas cards. Lots of people have stopped buying cards altogether or opted for e-cards ages ago – but not me. I love sending Christmas cards and I love getting them back. The ...keep reading
Twenty years ago today, at 9.44am precisely, our lovely daughter was born. It seems no time at all since we were driving to St Helier Hospital in the early hours of a frosty December morning. Our good friend Alex Lester played Cry Me a River on Radio 2 and we were in such a panic we couldn’t find the hospital’s maternity wing. Now, in the blink of an eye, our ...keep reading
Every Saturday the House With No Name blog features a few of the week’s highlights – and with Christmas exactly two weeks away, the posts are getting more and more festive. The best thing that happened this week (apart from picking up a copy of Stylist’s gorgeous and much-talked about Nigella edition) was that I wrote my first ever guest post. I met the lovely Marion Poerio at the Cosmo ...keep reading
I’ve written about my new-found liking for crime novels before. For some reason, even though I’m ultra-squeamish, hate blood and gore in novels and avert my gaze from crime dramas on TV, I love books by writers like PD James, Ian Rankin and Jeffery Deaver. But crime writer Martina Cole is my guilty pleasure. Why? Because she’s such a brilliant story-teller. I start her novels thinking I’ll just read a ...keep reading
Moving out of London was bliss. Except for one tiny detail. The shopping. Years of London living, with a friendly deli down the road and the bright lights of Oxford Street just a bus ride away, had definitely spoiled me. The farmhouse on a moody, windswept hill we moved to was heaven but the local shops were dire. I could have cried the day I pitched up in the nearest ...keep reading
Arctic blizzards are set to battle the UK this week, the north is blanketed in snow and even here in the soft south there’s a wintery chill in the air. Bearing all that in mind, it seemed perfectly reasonable to ask my son whether he planned to wear a coat to school this morning. “No,” he growled, hardly glancing up from his bowlful of Frosties. (At least he eats breakfast ...keep reading