Nina Stibbe is the writer who made her name with the hilarious Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life. If you haven’t read it yet you’re missing out. It’s a collection of letters Nina sent home while working as a nanny for the children of London Review of Books editor Mary-Kay Wilmers and it’s laugh-out-loud funny. Alan Bennett lived across the road and often popped in for supper while other neighbours included ...keep reading
The brilliant Stylist magazine has just run a feature about “the most addictive page turners to chomp through in one weekend or less.” As the magazine says: “An addictive book is like a particularly tempting hunk of crumbly cheddar cheese. We know we should step back and take time to covet it over a series of slow, delicious weeks. But we can rarely resist the urge to dive straight in and ...keep reading
I nearly fell off my chair when I read this morning’s report in Stylist magazine about the UK’s favourite books. My friend Constance clearly did too. “If The Da Vinci Code is really one of the UK’s best-loved books then I’m emigrating,” she tweeted. Her reaction reminded me of Salman Rushdie, who in 2005 described it as “a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name.” But ...keep reading