Home & Garden

Home & Garden

I’ve lived in the Cotswolds for over forty years. My first house was a big old house with a ramshackle garden with the bones of good design still visible in the trees and hedges. When we took possession, I couldn’t tell an oak from an ash, had never grown so much as a tomato plant, and had little idea where to begin. But ignorance truly is bliss, and gardening quickly became addictive. I loved all my attempts at tree planting, making borders, growing veg – until they failed.

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Once a friend told me “Gardening is all hard work and disappointment.” Well yes to the hard work, but along with the disappointment you get some successes too: the fantastic buzz of picking your own broad beans, the smell of the lawn just cut, or burying your nose in that wonderful rose with the crazy French name “Cuisse de nymphe emu” (Aroused nymph’s thigh — generally more prudishly labelled “Great Maiden’s Blush” in the UK).

Summer Gardening
Home & Garden

Summer Gardening

SUMMER GARDEN I used to think cooking much more satisfying than gardening because a morning’s work produced results by lunchtime. But as I’ve got older and wiser I’ve realised that...

My latest Novel ‘The Lost Son’ – out in paperback now
Home & Garden

My latest Novel ‘The Lost Son’ – out in paperback now

O the relief of seeing, The Lost Son, the third and final novel of my Angelotti Chronicles, finally out!   I was warned by my publisher that a trilogy is...

A new garden trend the ‘she shed’
Home & Garden

A new garden trend the ‘she shed’

No longer brown, dull and full of tools. Sheds, once the domain of men have had a makeover. The ‘she’ shed has arrived. Heard of the big gardening trend for...

My favourite books from the Costa Book Awards shortlist
Home & Garden

My favourite books from the Costa Book Awards shortlist

My dream holiday in the Maldives was made totally perfect by the fact that, as a finalist judge of the Costa Book awards, I was obliged to read five wonderful...

Books perfect for Christmas presents
Home & Garden

Books perfect for Christmas presents

TOP FIVE BOOKS I’m often asked for books recommendations, and my heart sinks. Where to start? I read a bit of everything: fiction, thrillers, history, travel, anything. So I’ve divided...

Party Time
Home & Garden

Party Time

It’s party time! Not something I hugely look forward to as I’ve got the age when (a) I can’t knock back the booze like I used to and I had...