Just in time for Mother’s Day comes Trisha Ashley’s entertaining new novel, The House of Hopes and Dreams. The Lancashire-born novelist has garnered plenty of plaudits over the years – Katie Fforde describes her as “one of the best writers around” while Carole Matthews praises her novels as “warmhearted and comforting”. The best thing about Ashley’s writing in my view is that she’s utterly original. She doesn’t follow the crowd, always ...keep reading
Moving On, my second novel, is published as an ebook today – and I’m over the moon. It’s the novel I’m most proud of so I’m hoping that new readers will enjoy it. When the book was first published it had a lurid pink jacket with daisies scattered across the front but now publishers Piatkus Entice have given it a gorgeous mauve cover (I must say I rather covet the ...keep reading
Line of Duty is absolutely the only thing worth watching on TV right now. Jed Mercurio’s script is witty, exciting and leaves you wanting more at the end of every single episode. The BBC2 drama has a stellar cast that includes the likes of Adrian Dunbar, Gina McKee, Lenny James, Neil Morrissey and Vicky McClure. But up-and-coming Martin Compston gives a standout performance as DC Steve Arnett, a young copper ...keep reading
What is Victoria Derbyshire thinking of? After giving her boss a hard time on her BBC Radio 5 Live programme about not “properly moving” up north, it turns out that she has only broadcast 60 per cent of her shows from Salford since the station relocated there. Most journalists would give their eye-teeth for a job like hers. Her two-hour show, a mix of news, comment and interviews, goes out ...keep reading
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a trip to the theatre. My mum always took us to the panto in Bournemouth and I’ve carried on the tradition with my two children. Over the years we’ve seen everything from the RSC’s The Secret Garden (fantastic) to Matthew Kelly in Peter Pan (not so fantastic.) I first took my daughter to a show when she was two. We were living in a remote, ...keep reading
When my son was born 17 years ago, we lived in a remote, draughty farmhouse halfway up a Lancashire hillside. The house didn’t have any heating, just a temperamental wood-fuelled Rayburn that was hell to keep alight. We all joke that the reason my son is so tough is because he spent the first two years of his life there. A long, bumpy track led to the house (which we ...keep reading
My daughter was a year old when I got obsessed with the idea of moving to the country. We lived in Camberwell, south London, at the time and even though I loved the house, with its pocket-handkerchief garden and scruffy Georgian facade, I hated the traffic and noise. In the space of a few weeks, one neighbour was mugged in the next alley-way and another had her bag snatched while ...keep reading
Sitting in my study watching the Oxford traffic trundle past my window (above), I yearn to work in a sleek sky-scraper, with a state-of-the-art coffee machine, decent photocopier and the buzz of working alongside other people. There are lots of brilliant things about working from home – no commuting, no boss breathing down my neck and, until my children turned into ultra-independent teenagers, no last-minute panics when they were off ...keep reading