W At the start of my (still new!) TikTok journey, I decided to do a post about my favourite cover, which meant that I spent a happy hour or two going through my back list in my bookcases. After about sixty books and novellas, I'd forgotten a lot of them - in fact I couldn't …
Continue reading "Backlist Books – A Forbidden Liaison with Miss Grant"
I’ve been methodically working my way through the Lord Peter Wimsey series by Dorothy L Sayers with varying degrees of satisfaction. I’ve commented before on the dated nature of the language and views in several, and in particular the racist attitudes that really jump out of the page to a modern reader. In The Nine …
I have been visiting the Isle of Bute all my life on family holidays, and as you’ll know if you follow this blog, I am still a regular visitor there to visit family. My latest trip coincided with the Glasgow Fair holiday, when traditionally hordes of Weegies go ‘Doon the Watter’ for a break – …
Continue reading "A Tour of Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute"
I have always looked much younger than my age. When I was in my late teens and early twenties, this was a huge issue for me. I got refused entry to the cinema to see films that my younger brother had no problem being admitted to. I was forever being asked for proof of age …
The paperback of Her Heart for a Compass, the first book I co-authored with Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, was released in May this year. To celebrate, Mills&Boon hosted a live Historical Book Club event at the News Building, so for the second time in the space of a few weeks I paid a visit …
Continue reading "London – For Business, But Mostly Pleasure"
My mum is a beautiful seamstress who once had her own made to measure dress shop. When I was wee, she used to make matching outfits for me and my doll (Tiny Tears at first, later Cindy – never Barbie). I got a toy machine when I was about five that did a simple chain …
Continue reading "The Great British Sewing Bee – A Hive of Inspiration"
My first experiences of Brighton were literary, and though read around about the same time in my late teens, their depiction of the fashionable seaside resort on the South Coast were poles apart. Graham Greene’s Brighton Rock was set in the sleazy underworld of the town in the 1950s, a stark contrast to the Regency …
Back in April this year, once I had finished with my cat-sitting for Simba, I finally got some time to spend with Peter, one of my oldest friends, at his home in Hythe near Folkstone (which is near Dover on the south coast). The sun shone blindingly every day of my visit. We share a …
