Welcome to House With No Name. I write about everything from books and films to education, family and France.
A dynamic writer friend called Emily Carlisle is one of the organisers of a brand new literary event due to launch next year. The Chipping Norton Literary Festival takes place in April 2012 and promises to be a treat, packed with writing workshops, author talks, book swaps, readings, signings and debates. Over the weekend I’ve been helping (in a minuscule way) with the website and as I worked I got ...keep reading
It seems another world now but my first job in journalism was as a reporter for a small weekly newspaper in the West Country. Golden weddings, flower shows, parish councils, you name it, the news team had to turn the comings and goings of country life into scintillating copy. Well, do our best, anyway. After two years I escaped to London and became a feature writer on a women’s magazine. ...keep reading
Every Saturday the House With No Name blog features some of the highlights of the week. The picture above, by the way, is the cover of Lauren Kate’s eagerly-awaited novel, Fallen in Love, which will be published in January 2012. If the gorgeous jacket is anything to go by, her legions of fans are in for a treat. House With No Name on tooth fairy inflation: How much does the ...keep reading
Formidable – that’s the best word I can think of to describe PD James. She’s written 19 novels, created the much-loved Inspector Dalgliesh and two years ago hit the headlines when she gave BBC director general Mark Thompson a grilling about the large salaries paid to executives. She’s now 91, yet she still has the capacity to surprise her fans. Instead of producing another Dalgliesh story, her latest novel is ...keep reading
Over the last few months I’ve stuck up for Liz Jones left, right and centre. I even defended her in this blog back in June, saying “…she writes so well and with such disarming frankness that her diary is a must-read.” But this week she’s gone a step too far. Even for me. She’s hit out at a whole generation of young women, castigating them for everything from taking maternity ...keep reading
It’s a much-loved custom, passed down through the generations. When children’s baby teeth fall out they tuck them under their pillow at night, then wake in the morning to discover the tooth fairy has left some money. How exciting, only it turns out that the tooth fairy is an awful lot more generous in some parts of the UK than in others. In London a child receives an average of ...keep reading
My teenage daughter arrives home for her university reading week laden with history books, files, an enormous bundle of washing and these sky-high Topshop shoes. “Try them – they’re really comfy,” she says. So I do, and amazingly they are. Well, until you wobble and fall off, when you’re liable to be carted off to hospital with a broken ankle. And as for hobbling round London on the tube or ...keep reading
“I wouldn’t last very long here,” admitted Sandy Nairne, director of London’s National Portrait Gallery after spending the morning at a primary school in Hackney, east London. Nairne was visiting Jubilee Primary School as part of a “job swap” organised by the Cultural Learning Alliance, an initiative where senior staff working in education and the arts spend a day shadowing each other to see what different jobs entail and to ...keep reading
“Journalism is alive and well and feisty, especially at the New York Times.” Those were the upbeat words of journalist John Lloyd after a special screening of Page One: Inside the New York Times at Oxford’s Phoenix Picturehouse last week. With the hacking scandal still unfolding and journalists universally unpopular, many critics would take issue with his view. But there’s no doubt that Page One shows journalism at its very ...keep reading
Every Saturday the House With No Name blog features some of the highlights of the week. I took this picture, by the way, as I walked along London’s Marylebone High Street and spotted Emma Bridgewater’s gorgeous shop window. House With No Name Book Review: David Walliams’s Gangsta Granny House With No Name Music Review: Laura Marling plays Birmingham Cathedral House With No Name Culture: Where you can buy a work ...keep reading