An Author's Notebook

Dubrovnik, jewel of the Adriatic, once a prosperous trading hub, now a tourist's dream. Our half-term visit in October to this beautiful...

Today I'm sitting at my computer in three jumpers, looking through the window at snowflakes swirling around the garden. As ever, I'...

Here we are again in Covid country. Either I've become habituated to lockdowns, or I secretly crave a quiet existence, as I'm not f...

An intriguing nugget I've learnt from my two weeks of #litfest indulgence? The novelist Ann Patchett slipped into her favourite ballgow...

The Black Lives Matter protest came to the small market town of Henley yesterday, a mark of how widespread the movement has become. We were...

When the sun comes out at this time of year, I want to lie outside and soak up rays like a solar battery. This year, I got an early charge w...

This time last week I dropped off my 15-year old daughter at school for her French exchange trip. In the dark, lamp-lit morning (4:30am), se...

At long last, spring is in the air! I can't say I feel the urge to spring-clean, but all this lovely sunshine is raising my energy level...

A friend and I were discussing what I should buy her little girl for Christmas. We hit upon Lego. "Friends Lego, the pink stuff?" ...

What secrets does our house keep? Credit: William Lam Archaeologists recently found a fragment of Roman pottery in my home town, in the...

Travel diary WWI sites in Belgium and France Every evening in the Belgian town of Ypres, people of all nationalities gather at the Menin ...

Notes from the Henley Literary Festival 2017 My son meets children's author Katherine Rundell, who researched her latest novel Th...

As a family, we have hit that magical sweet spot where the kids are becoming interested in the same kind of stuff as the grown-ups. In other...

Hermaphrodite Mum Three kids and a single mum "Blow winds and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!" was King Lear's famed reactio...

A visitor to the Skybar, Grand Hotel Central So I have a friend who is currently sailing around the world in a yacht with her husband an...

Just on my way, Ross... ©  Mammoth Screen / BBC Last week I saddled up my horse and galloped off to find Poldark . Well, in a manner ...

A few months ago I had the pleasure of shepherding a group of excitable seven-year olds around the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. The highligh...

Dame Stella: MI5's first female head Credit: James Gifford-Mead We had a marvellous day out last Saturday: we went en famille to an...