I’ve been thinking about my mum a lot this week. She would have been 80 on May 2 and ten years after her death I still miss her more than I can say. She was glamorous, fun, a brilliant journalist and the wisest person I’ve ever known. As many of her devoted Daily Mail readers said after she died in 2004, she had the rare gift of summing up exactly ...keep reading
It’s Mother’s Day tomorrow and I hope that sons and daughters everywhere will be telling their mums how much they love them. My mother died a decade ago so I’ve decided to re-run one of my earliest blogs, explaining what the day feels to me now. Walking past the florist’s shop at this time of year makes me sad. They’re getting ready for Mother’s Day and the pavement outside is ...keep reading
Gill Hornby’s first novel has attracted the sort of coverage that most debut novelists dream of. A former BBC producer, ex Daily Telegraph columnist and wife of superstar writer Robert Harris, she’s now written The Hive, a novel set at the school gate. Publishers were falling over themselves to buy it and after a bidding war Little, Brown snapped it up for a six-figure sum. It’s out today so I downloaded ...keep reading
I’ve been looking forward to reading Lucy Boyd’s book, Kitchen Memories, for ages. The daughter of Rose Gray, the inspirational co-founder of the River Café, Lucy is now head gardener at Petersham Nurseries in Richmond, Surrey and an accomplished chef herself. I met Lucy at HarperCollins last autumn when I was invited to the publisher’s Fulham HQ to give a talk about blogging. Kitchen Memories is a captivating mix of recipes, ...keep reading