Mary Berry is one of the undisputed doyennes of British food cooking, writing and presenting, an amazingly talented person who has achieved a considerable amount in her 87 years on earth. But is she role model material? You get the feeling that Mary herself would demur any suggestion that you Continue Reading
Books
Book review: This Winter (A Heartstopper novella) by Alice Oseman
It’s a rare thing these days to have anything become a water cooler hit. For one thing, we are far less likely, in the wake of the pandemic, to be in an office these days, much less one with a water cooler, but for quite another, we are living digitally Continue Reading
Book review: Holiday Romance by Catherine Walsh
Is there anything more wonderful than falling in love at Christmas? The twinkling of festive lights on the streets, trees decked in all manner of baubles and tinsely garb and the general sense of being in a luminously light place once-or-twice removed from the manic hubbub of everyday life – Continue Reading
#Christmas book review: Just Like Magic by Sarah Hogle
Christmas is supposed to be rose, cosy and oh-so-festively nice. Well, that’s the luminously lovely PR anyway; the truth is, it doesn’t always live to the pitch, no matter how hard we try and we arrive at the festive season feeling ill-prepared, all-at-sea and unsure if we have what it Continue Reading
Book review: Lessons by John Purcell
Is there such a thing as a happy ending in real life? We clearly to think so – how else do you explain the prevalence of romantic comedies and gushy love stories in just amount every storytelling medium there is? But it’s that very ubiquity which fulsomely nods its longing Continue Reading
Book review: Devotion by Hannah Kent
Hannah Kent is one of those infinitely talented writers who takes the gloriously supple words of the English language and wields them with such beauty, meaning and emotional impact that it’s impossible to read one of her novels and not feel something shift deep down inside you. Her rare gift Continue Reading
Book review: World Running Down by Al Hess
A review copy was provided by NetGalley; available 28 January 2023 in print and digital from Angry Robot Books You could be forgiven for wondering whether a fractured, desert-plagued dystopia is the place to find and be true to yourself. After all, it’s hardly a quiet couch in an air-conditioned Continue Reading
Book review: The Hemsworth Effect by James Weir
Is it possible to be too popular? You wouldn’t normally think so since who doesn’t want to be universally loved and adored – surely there can be no downside? – but in The Hemsworth Effect by debut author James Weir, the who, and for that matter, the what, of Byron Continue Reading
Book review: Annie Stanley All At Sea by Sue Teddern
At one key point in the sublime but emotionally honest loveliness that is Annie Stanley All At Sea, the eminently assured novel of Sue Teddern, our far-too-hard-in-herself protagonist sagely observes that there are simply some chapters in your life to which you cannot add a definitive “The End”. Given our Continue Reading
Book review: Meet Me in the Margins by Melissa Ferguson
There is, they say, nothing new under the sun. Hyperbolic spin artists may beg to disagreed, seeking to convince that their new x, y or z is totally, excitingly, thrillingly new, but the truth is pretty much everything has been done before by someone somewhere, or usually some when, and Continue Reading