July 2024
Hello! TL;DR: this is a newsletter about all the enjoyable things in life. It is a place of enthusiasms - books, food, home life, interiors, gardens, interesting things I’ve come across and liked, plus whatever you’d call the newsletter equivalent of general pottering about. When I first thought of doing it, I was going to call it Things I’d Tell You About If We Knew Each Other, and that’s still very much the general idea. It’s like we’re all sitting chatting round the kitchen table and everyone’s in a pretty good mood.
When I launched Home back in September, I wrote the below - do read it if you’d like to, but I thought it was probably time for something snappier. More on who I am if you keep scrolling - novelist, journalist, bestseller this and that, yada yada yada. The main thing to know is that on here I am just me, wearing no hats, writing exactly what I like, how I like, and whenever I feel like writing it (which is often). This newsletter is hands-down my favourite thing to do with a keyboard - I love writing it, and I love the community that has built up around it.
Thanks for reading! Do join us! Last thing - I write one free post a week. One is a long post about food/cooking and one is a short post about a painting. For everything else, you need a paid subscription, so do consider that if you’d like to.
September 2023
What’s this?
It’s my newsletter about the things that improve everyday home life. You know how birds go to some trouble to pick all the good twigs, moss and grass for their nests, and then sit in them feeling chipper and thinking about dinner? Me too.
So this is me sharing my life-enhancers with you. I’ll give you suggestions about what to cook for supper, what to watch afterwards and what book to read next. I’ll tell you about a non-saccharine pink paint that makes rooms glow with warmth and cosiness, point you to somewhere lovely for a weekend away, to the best lettuce to grow for winter, to a quilt I’ve had my eye on for the past three years, and to pies by post.
I’ll tell you what I’ve loved during any given week, like this sweet table lamp, or like this extraordinary piece in The New Yorker about using AI to talk to whales. I’m planning a podcast about country life too, though that won’t be up and running for a bit.
Substack is also the new home of my Sunday Times kitchen column - HELLO, if you’ve landed here in search of that. That column is no more (gloomy bong sound), but a version of it will now appear here once a fortnight (hark! sound of tooters!). It will be free to read. I will of course continue to give you kitchen tips and suggestions, but on here I’ll also very usefully be able to link directly to loads of my favourite recipes, like this chicken of dreams from Diana Henry, which I’ve been making since 2019 (honestly, subscribe or don’t subscribe but just make that chicken).
New to Substack? Here’s how it works
There are two versions of this newsletter. The basic version is free. If you subscribe to this free version, you can read my kitchen column once a fortnight, plus see a short preview of everything else. Think of it as me waving at you cheerfully from across the street.
The full-fat version is paid. If you subscribe to this paid version, you get access to my kitchen column AND to every single other thing I post on here, as described above, and including podcasts. I will be posting for paid subscribers twice a week. Instead of waving across the street, we’ve kissed hello, linked arms and gone for coffee. There are functions on Substack for Threads, Notes and Chat, whereby I sometimes talk to you in real time - that will be for paid subscribers only. You also get full access to the archive, currently non-existent but soon to be bursting at the seams, like Meatloaf’s faded Levis.
If you choose to support my work by becoming a founder member, you get extra-special benefits but I haven’t finalised what they are yet because it depends on numbers. Private group chats? Invites to my book events? Boxes of luxey makeup samples in the post? Dinner? I’ll gauge interest for a couple of weeks and then work something out to adequately reflect the depth of my gratitude.
You can read my posts in the emails you receive, in your browser, or on your phone or tablet in the Substack app. You can unsubscribe at any time.
About me
I write journalism and books. I’ve written five novels - the most recent one is called Darling - and seven non-fiction books, all published in the UK by Penguin Fig Tree. I am about to start on novel number six.
The journalism is for The Sunday Times, where I wrote comment pieces for millennia, and more recently the above-mentioned column about home cooking. I also write book reviews, and a beauty column for Sunday Times Style. I have a beauty bookcoming out in November, about what works for older women who can’t necessarily be arsed to overthink cosmetics but who’d rather their face didn’t collapse entirely.
I’m 57. I have three fantastic grown-up children. The eldest is about to turn THIRTY ONE. My father was Belgian, my mother is Pakistani and I am more or less culturally English, though not English enough for washing-up bowls or salad cream.
I spent the first nine years of my life in Brussels and the next 40 years in London. Then eight years ago I moved to an old farmhouse in rural Suffolk, and went from being a person who knew their way round the fun bits of town to a being a person who is interested in birds and lives in a field with three dogs, five goats, 40 sheep and 15 hens (yes, it is a lot of eggs but luckily one of my food mottos is ‘put an egg on it’). If you’re considering moving from the city to the country I have info aplenty, which I will be turning into a podcast for paid subscribers: all the stuff you need to know and that no one really tells you, from a variety of people who’ve done it.
Why Substack?
Because I love it. I read Substacks like I used to read magazines. And because I also love the idea of cutting out the middlemen - writing whatever I like, whenever I like, at whatever length I like, creating and engaging with an intimate community of like-minded people, and still earning a living from doing it. Keeping my copyright! Owning my own words! The freedom of it feels thrilling.
Anything else?
Yes - the main thing is that I am unbelievably grateful to anyone who subscribes, free or paid, and supports my writing.
Think of this newsletter as a mood-boosting and hopefully informative chat at my kitchen table over a cup of tea. We have toast. It is lavishly buttered. We are wearing elasticated waists - I nearly called this newsletter The Elasticated Waist - because life’s too short to not breathe properly, plus the toast won’t eat itself.
