Blog

Welcome to House With No Name. I write about everything from books and films to education, family and France.

Retail guru Mary Portas and her Pret-a-Portas code

Published by Emma Lee-Potter in on Tuesday 11th October 2011

“Avoid dressing like a teenager, edit your trends, work with your proportions, keep it low maintenance and don’t buy crap.” These are the no-nonsense words of the inimitable style guru Mary Portas – or as she calls it, her Pret-a-Portas code to buying clothes. Mary Queen of Shops talks such retail sense that I reckon I should have her advice stamped across my wallet whenever I go shopping. If I’d ...keep reading

Working the night shift – and memories of Fleet Street

Published by Emma Lee-Potter in on Sunday 9th October 2011

On Saturday and Sunday mornings I wake in the grey light of dawn, fretting that my student daughter has got home to her flat all right. She’s working weekends in a chic Shoreditch bar from seven pm till six am and I can’t help worrying. Actually, I didn’t even realise bars stayed open till six, but then again I don’t think I’ve been inside one since about 2002. The upside ...keep reading

Bicester Village – like Bond Street in the country

Published by Emma Lee-Potter in on Saturday 8th October 2011

When I moved to Oxfordshire a few years back I was amazed to discover we had the out-of-town equivalent of Bond Street on our doorstep. Bicester Village looks like a quaint New England street, all white clapboard shop-fronts and tasteful landscaping, but in reality it’s a shoppers’ paradise just two miles off the M40. The 130 or so shops include all the names fashionistas worth their salt dream about, from ...keep reading

FRIDAY BOOK REVIEW – Clara Button and the Magical Hat Day by Amy de la Haye and Emily Sutton

Published by Emma Lee-Potter in on Friday 7th October 2011

I’ve got lots of happy memories of the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington – from interviewing the Oscar-winning screenwriter Colin Welland on the front steps (see below) to visiting a Kaffe Fassett exhibition with my great aunt and watching her inspect the back of every tapestry to check how neat the stitching was. I wasn’t planning to include children’s books in my regular Friday Book Review feature but ...keep reading

Empty nests and the lovely new Kate Spade shop

Published by Emma Lee-Potter in on Thursday 6th October 2011

My lovely teenage daughter’s just started her second year at university so I should be used to her being away by now. Except I’m not. In fact I’m missing her even more this year. Why? Because she’s moved off campus, rented her own flat in gritty east London with friends and doesn’t come home much. Last year she’d hop on the Oxford Tube bus home every few weeks, but now ...keep reading

The house that wasn’t called anything at all

Published by Emma Lee-Potter in on Tuesday 4th October 2011

This autumn it’s five long years since I first clapped eyes on the House With No Name. But even so, I can still remember every detail of that first extraordinary visit. As the tyres of our rented car crunched up the pot-holed track I took one look and gasped in horror. I hadn’t expected to fall in love at first sight but the tumbledown farmhouse ahead of us was a ...keep reading

The art of writing a novel – Penny Vincenzi at the Henley Literary Festival

Published by Emma Lee-Potter in on Monday 3rd October 2011

After snapping up tickets for loads of literary festivals in quick succession, I’d resolved not to blog about them for a while. But then I went to a talk by Penny Vincenzi at the Henley Literary Festival and she came up with such good advice for would-be novelists that I’m reneging on my promise. Vincenzi is a big hitter in the novel-writing stakes. A former journalist who cut her writing ...keep reading

Kay Burley and Bella Pollen at the Henley Literary Festival

Published by Emma Lee-Potter in on Saturday 1st October 2011

I bet the organisers of the Henley Literary Festival could scarcely believe their luck. Of all the weeks to host their five-day event, they’d chosen the glorious last days of summer, when the sun shone, temperatures soared and we all bared our legs again. Sitting on the terrace at Bix Manor, a pretty country hotel two miles up the road from Henley (above), everything seemed right with the world. I ...keep reading

FRIDAY BOOK REVIEW: The Summer of the Bear by Bella Pollen

Published by Emma Lee-Potter in on Friday 30th September 2011

The first of my regular Friday book reviews. There’ll be a mix of paperbacks and hardbacks, old and new, grown-ups and children’s reads – so watch this space every Friday. Back in the 1980s Bella Pollen was one of Princess Diana’s favourite designers, famed for her sharply-cut jackets in jewel-bright colours. Then she decided fashion wasn’t for her and switched to writing novels instead. Over the years she’s written about ...keep reading

Pining for France – and worrying about the dormouse in the attic

Published by Emma Lee-Potter in on Thursday 29th September 2011

Six weeks after leaving the House With No Name in friends’ capable hands, I’m pining for my tumbledown farmhouse in the middle of rural France. I’m worried about the fate of the loir, the sweet-looking dormouse that kept us awake scratching in the attic all night. Will it have outwitted Monsieur Noel, the charming pest man, or will it have departed this world once and for all? I’m anxious that ...keep reading

1 62 63 64 65 66 71