Do you love a well-told Yuletide tale? I must admit I do. One of my favourite festive books last year was Tidings: A Christmas Journey by Ruth Padel (Chatto and Windus, 2016). This moving narrative poem has all the hallmarks…
To celebrate the recent BBC adaptation of this wonderful book, I'm republishing a review I wrote some years ago. If you didn't see the series — or even if you did — read the book! A sumptuous tale of magic…
Thanks to The Journal's Culture magazine for inviting me to write an article for their June Readers' Lives feature. Writing about books that inspired me was a real pleasure - the challenge was limiting myself to just five books! Read…
What if you could taste the emotions of the person who made your food? A few days before her ninth birthday, Rose Edelstein bites into a piece of chocolate lemon cake and tastes her cheery mother’s despair. It is a…
I overdid it this winter. Hunkered down. Feasted. Forgot to move. A whiff of spring and I’m waking up. My body craves soup, my heart, simple nourishment. No doorstep sandwiches or difficult novels for me. I’m writing haiku and reading…
I received a gift. A mysterious parcel in the post. I knew it was coming, but not what it was, nor when it would arrive. I waited by the letterbox like an eager terrier. I wanted to know what this…
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” So begins Rebecca’s Tale, echoing Daphne du Maurier’s haunting romantic thriller Rebecca. Twenty years has passed since Rebecca de Winter drowned off the coast of Cornwall. Now a different dreamer is…
Billy Dean is a boy, locked in a room for the first thirteen years of his life. He emerges into a broken and beautiful world. The butcher, Mr McCaufrey, shows him how to use a knife. Mrs Malone encourages him…