I write these recommendation posts for paid subscribers once a week, and for free subscribers once a month. This becomes a PAID post in a bit. All the other posts like this are here (there are loads). Posts auto-paywall after 2 weeks.

If you’re looking for FREE things to read, here is food writer and novelist Felicity Cloake’s marvellous Me & My Desk, and here is Sarah Jossel, beauty editor extraordinaire, making a special film of some of her favourites just for us.

And window-shopping is also FREE, though not without risk.

Good morning! There is nothing I love more than coming home. Nothing. You could give me a diamond the size of my head to persuade me to stay away for long and I would say no thank you. (And anyway, I prefer semi-precious stones like peridots and cornelians and aventurines and tourmalines. You could string all those names together and make a poem).

Anyway: I love dear ole London, where I spent much of the week, but I love coming home. The weather has been grimly unseasonal but there was a double - if you look very closely - rainbow on the way home…

And then later there was the kitchen table and lilacs and candles and sighs of CONTENTMENT.

The order of service among the lilacs is from Rachel Cooke’s memorial service, which took place at St Bride’s, the journalists’ church in Fleet St, on Thursday. God, it was sad. It was so sad and so beautiful. It is mad that she is dead. I tell myself she’s just somewhere else, away, which I suppose she is, with other friends who died stupidly young. I mean literally away, like in Tonga or the Arctic Circle, out of reach with no signal, but in this world somewhere. It is jolting to be reminded that that’s not necessarily true.

But what a lovely celebration of her life it was. The people who read and gave eulogies give you a flavour of how full of interests and curiosity she was: the architect Dycella Cummings-Palmer, The Observer’s Tim Adams, Professor Dame Hermione Lee, Alan Hollinghurst, Delia Smith, and her friend Jeremy Langmead, of this parish. Rachel’s husband Tony Quinn read from her interview with Gore Vidal. The music was extraordinarily affecting. We sang ‘He who would valiant be’ changed to ‘She’.

Guess how much Mounjaro costs in the pharmacy in Selfridges? FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS. The guy didn’t even blink telling me. While I was gawping at him like a fish, he helpfully added that they had a supplement that he really recommended to anyone who was taking the jabs. Herbal, marvellous, so good for one in… quite vague ways. Guess the price of it for six months’ supply? SIXTEEN HUNDRED POUNDS.

What is going on? Who are the people who pay these prices, and why are they so careless with their riches? (Once again London Falling popped into my head).

What with interviewing Sarah and Rachel’s memorial, I was in London for most of the week. Today’s weekend supplement is slightly short [edited - it’s in fact massively long] for this reason - but I have made you a little list of the obvious and less-obvious (hopefully) places I particularly like in and around Marylebone. It’s a pdf at the bottom of this post. I don’t know what possessed me to start writing it - it’s hardly an unknown neighbourhood full of secret corners - and it took me HOURS. I hope someone finds it useful!

Right, onto the things I liked this week. They include excellent new makeup, a great new gardening book, gorgeous dinner plates, the very French, or rather very specifically Parisienne en vacances cotton bag I post every summer (but now available on Net A Porter), a great coffee table, the aforementioned guide to Marylebone, some particularly interesting articles, and a few other bits. Let’s start with a quote from this post by :

‘The thing I love most about country living is that joy materialises right in front of me suddenly and often’.

Me too.

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I write about beauty every week as an enthusiastic amateur. I’m merely the foothills. My colleague Sarah Jossel is Kilimanjaro. She is MAJESTIC. She was the beauty editor of The Sunday Times for eight years, is now Beauty Director At Large, and writes a beauty column in Style; she’s also the beauty person on This Morning. There’s nothing she doesn’t know.

Now Sarah has put all of her knowledge into a truly excellent book. As she was saying at the event we did together on Tuesday, she is not someone who felt beautiful as a teenager or young woman - that didn’t happen until she learned what to do with her insanely frizzy hair, her eternally bumpy skin and so on. So the book is written from the likeable and relatable point of view of someone who had to really investigate what worked and what didn’t in terms of making her feel happy and confident. She’s grafted to look how she looks (ravishing) and the book tells you exactly how she got there.

The book shares everything she knows. It took her five years to write, partly because small children came along, but partly because it is so comprehensive. At the Times event on Tuesday night - thank you for coming, if you came, we had such a fun time - we could have carried on chatting for at least another couple of hours. She’s like a walking encyclopedia.

The book is published today - here on Bookshop, here at Waterstones and here on Amazon UK - and I COULD NOT recommend it more. It’s so good and so user-friendly - and, obviously, it’s rammed with the best advice and the products that really, properly, scientifically-demonstrably work.

I thought it would be fun to ask her to show us what she’s currently using on herself, and here she is!

I’ve put all the products she mentions in my shop.

Thank you to Sarah! The book is exactly like the video - insidery, funny, stuffed with knowledge, and really useful whether you’re 15 or 75.

Have a lovely Thursday even though THE WEATHER IS BROKEN and politics is Groundhog Day. Do please really kindly leave this post a ❤️ if you liked it, thank you, and I’ll be back on Saturday for paid subscribers, when my weekend supplement will include a few recent beauty finds that I only discovered because I was having my makeup done. One of my favourite things is deep-quizzing makeup artists, it always throws up gems.

Felicity Cloake has been writing the invaluable, award-winning ‘How to make the perfect…’ column in The Guardian since 2011 (it is an enormous amount of work - she wrote about how she goes about it here).

She is in total the author of eight cookbooks and food-oriented travel books, the most recent of which is Peach Street to Lobster Lane: Coast to Coast in Search of Real American Cuisine, which saw her cycling 2,064 miles around the States in the months leading up to Trump’s second term. She has also cycled round France in search of the perfect croissant, here, and around Britain in search of the perfect breakfast, here.

And now she’s written a novel. No one who’s read any of her non-fiction will be remotely surprised - she is a properly good writer. I ADORED The Underdog, which was published last Thursday. It’s about Katy, 36, recently dumped by her boring fiancé, freshly self-liberated from her sensible job, and who has rashly decided to pursue a career in cooking. Things aren’t quite going according to plan when she meets a sexy doctor, hooray, who is devoted to his dog, Alan. You would think double hooray, but Anna hates dogs. You know really superior, charming, funny rom-coms? This is a shining and highly recommended example and exactly the thing to read if you’re in search of cheer.

(PS There the most delicious recipe for roquefort, walnut and honey cheesecake in An A-Z of Eating. Also some of the Perfect recipes are collated here).

What is the desk?

The desk is my kitchen table, my dining room table, and genuinely the only surface in my flat large enough to open even a tabloid newspaper. It’s a battered gate-leg number I bought in a hotly contested auction (while several large and handsome Georgian rosewood tables failed to meet their reserve, which says something about average London square footage), and though I seem to recall it is, like my flat, early Victorian, I’m afraid I haven’t treated it well – the top is covered in water and wax stains.

(In the spirit of full transparency I must confess I also write quite a lot in bed first thing; I love having a cocoon of focus, just me and the sleeping dog, before the emails start coming in.)

Where is the desk?

In my dining room which is also my sitting room and kitchen (handy – from my desk I can keep an eye on pots on the stove, or check if I need to buy more cinnamon for the recipe I’m writing).

I live in central London, and though it’s useful to be able to buy everything from Ethiopian injera bread to Chinese chicken ovaries within a five-minute radius, the downside is there’s barely space to stretch, let alone have a dedicated workspace.

What do you look out onto?

The garden, which is a lovely thing to have in zone one. I’m a very inept gardener (can’t even keep rhubarb alive, despite my best efforts) but the few plants that thrive on benign neglect, including a vast fig that is aspiring to world domination, bring me a lot of pleasure for the six or so months they’re in leaf.

In an ideal world, however, I’d either have a view of a large body of water or some distant mountains… something epic in scale and spirit, but free of distracting detail. Failing that, some sort of dark cupboard or sensory deprivation chamber would also be welcome, as I am very easily diverted from the business in hand… for example, as I was writing that last sentence there was a cacophony of barking from every dog in the vicinity and a large fox shot through a hole in the fence, streaked past my eyeline and vaulted on to the fire escape pursued by a terrier. How am I supposed to concentrate with drama like that outside?

How does sitting down at the desk make you feel?

I generally sit down full of hope and good intention, having cleared the table completely of crumbs and gas bills to put myself in a clearer, more creative frame of mind, though in truth when I’m really deep in something it’s absolutely chaotic and covered in tottering piles of cookbooks and notebooks and half-empty mugs.

Because I’m so easily led astray, when I’m writing a book I usually try to go somewhere else for a couple of weeks to break the back of it, ideally somewhere I know absolutely no one; I wrote my American travelogue in the French Alps out of season, and The Underdog, my novel – which required even deeper concentration because how on earth does one go about creating an entire imaginary world and ensure no one changes their name or their hair colour halfway through? – in Broadstairs in midwinter. Just me, the dog and the wind: bliss.

When do you write - are there set hours?

I like to start early – I’m not very good at hopping between projects, so when I’m writing a book I have to carve out the space by filing lots of Guardian columns in advance and saying no to absolutely everything else; the knowledge that this break from real life is both brief and finite is great for productivity.

Fortunately the dog has never been an early riser, so I can get a good few hours done before he’s up and about, but I’m less disciplined about finishing at a reasonable hour, not because I’m a workaholic but because, despite having not worked in an office for 15 years, I can’t quite kick the habit of presenteeism, which means I become gradually less productive until it feels acceptable to knock off, and then feel guilty about not spending my time more wisely. (Is this therapy session free?).

Daily word count, or as the spirit moves you?

For the books, I tend to try and write say, 2,000 words a day, deliberately stopping in the middle of a paragraph so I have something to pick up again in the morning, rather than waiting for inspiration to strike before I’ve had my first cup of tea.

Almost all of my books have had incredibly tight deadlines, so to be honest the spirit doesn’t get much of a say, but I suspect I need a certain amount of panic to focus the mind, or I say yes to everything but the book.

Do you wander to and from the desk, or stay at it until you’re done?

I generally stay at it until I’m done, with occasional breaks to harass the dog and replenish drinks.

Are there pens? Are there notebooks? Are there photos? Are there small weird talismanic items?

There’s a venerable Lyle’s Golden Syrup tin commemorating the Diamond Jubilee full of pencils (my preferred writing medium) in various stages of bluntness, Sharpies and a stamp of Wilf’s paw print, both of which I use for signing books, and an out-of-date Kings and Queens of England ruler that gets more use in the kitchen than it does at my desk.

I find it much easier to process information when I write, rather than type it, so I always have several notebooks on the go, as well as a desk diary which people think is hopelessly antiquated. I buy them from a Spanish brand called Octagon and they’re nice to look at and allow me to physically see a whole month at a time so I don’t take on too much. (Plus no one can put you on the spot with an invitation because you can say you’ll get back to them when you’ve checked your diary, which is very useful if you struggle to embrace the life-changing magic of the word NO.)

I also have a weekly planner pad which my friend Sam bought me last year because he was worried I was having a nervous breakdown – when I actually remember to use it, it’s surprisingly effective.

I don’t really have room for talismans on the desk given it also has to function as a kitchen table, but I’m overlooked by three slightly sinister dog toys that Wilf has lost interest in (Trump, Johnson and a tiny Nigel Farage since you ask), my childhood bear Tedward fresh from a tax-rebate funded seaside break at the Leith Toy Hospital after an unfortunate sequence of events involving moths, and my grandmother’s tiny one-legged bear. (No wonder I can’t keep plants alive if even stuffed animals aren’t safe in my care.)

Is there a dog or a cat?

There’s a dog, my 13-year-old cairn terrier Wilf, who inspired The Underdog, and occupies a space somewhere between a pet, a boss and a non-romantic partner; I’ve had him since he was eight-weeks old and we’re now in an entirely co-dependent relationship in which he has the upper paw.

Being a terrier, he’s only needy when he’s hungry, so I spend more time bothering him than the other way around until I’ve really got the bit between my teeth workwise, usually about half-past four, when he starts nudging me meaningfully for his dinner, and then a post-prandial game of tug of war, and then a treat…. and so it goes on until I finally relent and take him to the park. My favourite sound in the world is him snoring under the desk.

Longhand, Scrivener, Word, Pages, something else?

The basic Pages program that came loaded on to my laptop - I did invest in Scrivener a couple of years ago, but I couldn’t understand what it offered over and above a blank page, and I lack the patience to sit through a YouTube tutorial (what’s wrong with a physical manual? Or a PDF?) so it’s just me and my free word processing app.

Occasionally I remember to put a manuscript on to a google doc in case I lose 45,000 words, but I rarely actually work on it online.

Do you listen to music, and if so what?

It depends what stage I’m at; if I’m just drafting I’ll probably have the radio on, either BBC Radio 4 or 6 but when I’m writing any speech, even lyrics, interferes with the narrative in my head and can actually make me feel murderous, so I’ll put on a white noise playlist instead. I find bad weather in particular very calming, the aural equivalent of a small dark room. Heavy Rain on Tent (eight hours) is a particular favourite, though I’m not averse to a snowstorm either.

Whatever happens, I pause just before 2pm so I can listen to the Archers over lunch and message people about how ridiculous the latest storyline is. (Don’t we all secretly think we’d be an amazing scriptwriter, despite having had zero experience in the field?)

Do you use internet-blocking apps like Freedom?

No, because I maintain I need to check things online as I go, even though I know deep down I’m only fooling myself here.

Are there desk snacks? Is there desk tea?

There’s almost always desk tea or coffee (black earl grey first thing, then black coffee, then Barry’s strong Irish tea with milk in the afternoon) and a pint of water. I’m very good at not eating before lunch for the sole reason that once I start I can’t stop, so all afternoon I’ll be up and down to get myself pieces of fruit or Easter egg or handfuls of salty nuts.

When a deadline is looming I’ve even been known to convince myself I deserve an entire packet of biscuits to keep my energy up, which rarely makes anything better, but I suppose at least it’s healthier than smoking. I also keep dog biscuits on hand to distract Wilf as necessary; I try not to confuse the two.

Do you have an ergonomic chair?

I have one of those weird-looking kneeling chairs; for a long time I wrote hunched on a stool I bought from a Japanese restaurant round the corner from my old flat in Stoke Newington, until I realised how bad my posture was. This is much better, except for the times when the idiot dog decides to stretch out in a patch of sunlight directly underneath the rockers without me noticing.

Do you wear proper clothes and shoes, or e.g. jogging bottoms and socks?

I can work in bed in pyjamas until mid morning, but when I’m at my desk I’m always showered and properly dressed, albeit probably in old jeans and a large, scratchy knitted cardigan from one of my Scottish bicycle adventures, always with a handkerchief tucked sexily into the sleeve.

Is your phone in the room when you write?

Yes, but I don’t tend to look at it, mostly because it’s even less effort to access the same distracting apps on my desktop.

Do you resent or welcome occasional interruptions by adult humans? If welcome, how many is too many?

Though I like to chat to people when I’m out in the park, or over the garden fence about foxes, I find unexpected interruptions, even phone calls, very disruptive when I’m really in the zone. Fortunately I live on my own, so it’s not too much of an issue.

Is there anyone you show your day’s work to?

No but I do give it a light edit myself, either with a cold beer or similar in the evening, or before getting going the next day, just to reassure myself it’s not as terrible as I remember. It’s always a nice surprise when you find yourself laughing at your own jokes.

What’s the first thing you do when you leave your desk for the day?

Take the long-suffering dog out for a walk. I’ve given up wearing headphones because I realised it wasn’t giving my brain the space it needed to be creative or problem solve; it’s amazing how many good ideas pop into your head when you’re standing staring at yet another bloody lamppost.

Thank you so much to Felicity! You can - and should - obtain your copy of The Underdog here from Bookshop, here from Waterstones and here from Amazon. She’s also on book tour as below (I am going to see her AND WILF in Beccles and I can’t wait).

Thank you for reading! Please do really kindly leave this post a ❤️ if you enjoyed it, thank you, and I’ll be back later in the week with an exclusive beauty post (film?) from me and all-knowing GOAT beauty editor Sarah Jossel. Our event in London tomorrow is sold out but we’re going to do something special for subscribers on here.

Good morning! Have you had a nice week? I have, except that after I mentioned the dog incident, several of the comments expressed concern about gentle, ELDERLY dogs being attacked and I kept thinking about that on and off for days. It makes my heart ache to even imagine it.

The big world continues to burn, but in the little world, the roses are out. There’s cow parsley frothing everywhere. The first cuckoo was heard in the village at 12 noon on Friday. Onwards! We mustn’t get bogged down in sadness about hypothetical dogs. Frankly the UK local election results - CHOOSE HATE, essentially - are challenging enough, mood-wise.

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This is the 11th instalment of a series called Me & My Desk, which exists because I find other writers’ work routines and work environments fascinating. All the other writers’ desks in the series so far are here.

Juliet Nicolson grew up at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent. She worked in publishing for a long time in New York and London, and then became a literary agent at Ed Victor Ltd. She is the author of six books. said of her that ‘she has invented a new kind of social history’.

She has a brilliant eye for telling detail. Her book The Perfect Summer: Dancing Into Shadow is about the long, hot, languid summer of 1911, before anyone really realised that war was coming and that a certain way of life was over forever. Joanna Trollope called it ‘as page-turning as a novel’.

Frostquake is about the frozen winter of 1962 - it snowed every day for 10 weeks - and the altered Britain that emerged when the thaw came. A House Full of Daughters is a memoir, telling the stories of seven generations of the women in Juliet’s family, from a Spanish flamenco dancer to her grandmother Vita Sackville-West.

Her most recent book, The Book of Revelations (which I reviewed for The Sunday Times here) is a gripping, moving, extremely timely history of women’s secrets - ergo also of women’s shame - from the 1950s to now, told via individual women’s stories and taking in everything from infidelity to abortion to the author’s own experience of alcoholism. It is deeply interesting and human, and as you can see from the cover quote, I couldn't recommend it more (true of all her books). I’m so thrilled that she’s sharing her desk with us.

What is the desk?

When I first began to write I needed a desk that would fit my computer, a huge blue machine the size of an olden days television, so I asked a carpenter friend to make me a chunky oak table with drawers (essential for Sellotape, glue, Post-Its, love letters and chocolate) that would have enough space for the giant Mac. When I moved from London to the countryside twenty years ago the table came with me. All my six books have taken shape on the surface of this piece of oak.

Where is the desk?

It’s at one end of the first floor of an old barn that used to be the Sussex office for Barrett Homes. Those tidy rows of constructive intimacy are now replaced by one desk, a lumpy sofa (that is never sat on), a sofa bed (an occasional warm refuge for shivery field mice), and teetering piles of books. They have overflowed onto the floor from bookcases originally built for our brilliant village bookshop Much Ado and given to me when the shop moved premises.

Every book has its dedicated section: war time, royalty, family, poetry, travel, dead writers, living writers, psychology, religion, and for my last book about secrecy, I have amassed a full library dedicated to women.

I’m trying to have a clear-out but parting with any of the little darlings is impossible.

What do you look out onto?

I sit at a ‘picture window’. I have put oak planks beneath the legs of the desk to make it higher so I can see out properly. The curve of the South Downs is ahead of me, and I look directly at Great Meadow, a huge sloping field which gave Dirk Bogarde the title for his memoir of an idyllic childhood spent in the Old Rectory at the top of the field. In the little courtyard directly below the window the bird-table, usually abuzz with a feathered flurry of robins and bluetits. It sits in front of a flint wall along which foxes slink at dusk.

How does siting down at the desk make you feel?

My half-minute commute from kitchen door to desk chair involves a walk of 63 steps. That brief physical interlude between domesticity and work is crucial and each morning it gives me the motivation to begin writing again. As soon as I sit down, I am in the space of my own. No-one else has ever sat or worked at this place, except once when Barry Humphries (staying for the nearby Charleston Lit Fest as below) dashed up there and flung himself onto the floor to escape an unwanted fan who had wandered into the courtyard below.

I write the working day’s agenda on a Post-It and stick on the desk. By lunchtime motivation begins to fade and if nothing has been crossed off the list I panic. Sometimes I add something like ‘have lunch’ just so I can cross it off again and feel I am getting somewhere.

When do you write - are there set hours?

The day after the clocks go forward in the spring, I am up with the lark, usually slinking back off into the garden by mid-afternoon. In the winter I light the little log burner and hole up for good.

Daily word count, or as the spirit moves you?

1000 words is the deliberately modest goal, in order to feel smug if I exceed it.

Do you wander to and from the desk, or stay at it until you’re done?

Sometimes I can only go on if I have a complete change of scene, requiring a decamping to the kitchen table, or squashing into the tiny greenhouse with my laptop actually ON my lap. Every so often I escape to a cottage an hour’s drive away, a familiar and much-loved, slightly haunted space where I once lived alone and which smells of woodfires and desiccated rose petals. This is the place that energises a writer’s procrastination in a twinkling.

Are there pens?

LOTS. Of all colours in a mug that says Minnie Driver. (My daughter ordered it a long time ago when I got a new car but she hadn’t realised that instead of looking at the Volkswagen shop she had logged into the actress’s fan site).

Are there notebooks?

No, just a laptop and Post-Its.

Are there photos?

Too many. Stuck on the window frame, tucked into my little writing-paper rack and crowding onto my desk. Here are my children & grandchildren and an image, faded on paper but not in memory, of my best friend and my girls practising their Abba routine for my 2009 wedding to Charlie.

Are there small weird talismanic items?

Yes, precious things given to me without which the desk would lose its soul. An actual gold box, one of many, that were sent for the Christmas of 1914 to soldiers in the First World War by the King’s daughter, containing cigarettes and chocolate. A glass paperweight that looks like a circular icicle.

A Persian lozenge-shaped dish that once belonged to my grandmother. A blue circular glass repository for earrings when they begin to pinch. A wooden snail made by my granddaughter. A lamp left to me by a beloved friend who died aged 102. And more friend-reminders: a metal farmyard of pigs and chickens hovered over by swans and rhubarb-red ibis.

Oh and there are flowers. Sometimes I arrive to find Charlie has surprised me with a little posy: at this time of year, it is lily of the valley. And I love the scent of pheasant eye, the final narcissi of the season to bloom.

Is there a dog or a cat?

A small metal dog on the desk. And there is animal and bird action outside, as above

Longhand, Scrivener, Word, Pages, something else?

Word. Always Word for words.

Do you listen to music, and if so, what?

Almost never. I need silence. But when I was writing about the winter of 1962-3 during which the Beatles had their first hit, I played Love Me Do on repeat. Occasionally, especially at the end of a long, cold, lonely winter in my barn, I allow myself a top volume blast of Here Comes the Sun, sung at one daughter’s wedding by the other daughter’s boyfriend. Tears are falling onto the keyboard by the end of the song.

Do you use internet-blocking apps like Freedom?

No. Should I?

Are there desk snacks? Is there desk tea?

Sometimes, if I’m on a deadline, I eat lunch at my desk, usually tomato and avocado salad in a bowl. With Fruit And Nut for pudding. Tea throughout the day, beginning with English Breakfast and ending with Marquis which tastes like deliciously decadent scent

Do you have an ergonomic chair?

Shamefully no. I have an old tapestry-covered chair that’s a bit less demanding now that I have a squashy Grayson Perry cushion on it that I got for Christmas. I sort of hanker for an ergonomic, thinking it might be rather comfortable and knowing it would be good for posture but then I flop back, literally, onto the prettier choice.

Do you wear proper clothes and shoes, or e.g. jogging bottoms and socks?

Proper clothes in case the postman can see me from the courtyard below. On deadline when there is no time for stylishness, it’s an unvarying uniform for weeks on end consisting of t-shirt, jersey, jeans, scarf and fingerless gloves even in summer.

Is your phone in the room when you write?

Yes. On Silent.

Do you resent or welcome occasional interruptions by adult humans?

No human beings ever wish to risk the sigh that accompanies the sight of an uninvited visitor. Occasional invitations are issued, but never for social purposes.

Is there anyone you show your day’s work to?

I print out articles or reviews to show Charlie. Only when I’m nearing completion of a whole book do I show anything to anyone and that is because I know I have to. Otherwise I am not sure I ever would.

What’s the first thing you do when you leave your desk for the day?

Walk 63 steps home, say hello to Charlie and make more tea.

Thank you SO MUCH to Juliet for answering my desk questions. You can subscribe to her Substack below, and here is The Book Of Revelations, which is out today in paperback, on Bookshop, at Waterstones and on Amazon. It’s an extraordinary read at any age, but you’ll read it with your mouth hanging open if you’re young.

juliet nicolson

I’m a writer, a reader, a mother and a grandmother

By Juliet Nicolson

Thank you for reading! Do please really kindly leave this post a ❤️ if you enjoyed it, thank you, and I’ll be back possibly tomorrow with another Me & My Desk (unless I hold it back until Monday, which I might to not make a Desk traffic jam), and certainly on Saturday with your trusty Weekend Supplement. Have a lovely Thursday!

PS remember Stella McCartney x H&M drops at 9am this morning - my picks here

I do, though. I’m so cross. And I’ll stop there before I start ranting about irresponsible dog owners. Except to say, why would you even want that sort of dog? It’s in itself a marker of insecurity, like old men in penis cars. Also you don’t look very hard flailing about and shrieking when it turns out you can’t even hold on to your own dog lead.

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Good morning! I love that quote. It’s in my book, but if you haven’t read my book - quelle tristesse, you can remedy that here - it’s a good thought to ponder on a Saturday morning, especially when the world feels grotesquely turbulent. Living well, taking pleasure in small things, is what the spirit of this newsletter is about.

(Nancy Mitford’s historical biographies are chronically underrated, especially Mme de P and The Sun King. They’re like being at Versailles with your nosiest and most gossipy friend, the sort of person who knows everybody, introduces them with much delighted squealing and air kissing, and then the moment they wander off grabs your arm, raises an eyebrow and says ‘Well…’).

I’ve digressed right at the beginning, a new low. Let’s get on with it. HEREWITH my favourite things this week. Today we have: a bargainous pleated lampshade that looks about ten times more expensive than it is, a bargainous table lamp base to go with it, Italian vegetable cooking, what might be the perfect pair of jeans (according to someone who really seems to know), makeup recs, tablecloths, a favourite fake tan, a kaftan that is attractive rather than post-sexual, a lovely rug, two really divine, summery blue shirts, a couple of recipes, and a ton of interesting things to read. Get comfy, get your cup of tea, and we’re off.

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Good morning! It feels properly WARM where I live and everything in the garden is erupting and frothing and bursting forth, like nature undoing its bodice and shaking out it…

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This took too long to upload this morning when I was rushing, but am trying again now, just in case you have makeup overwhelm and find it helpful. I think most of the items are in my shop (? some of them, at least). I threw in a mirror selfie with terrible lighting for good measure, because I note from my own consumption of this sort of thing that that is the law.

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There was talk earlier in the week of women not posting today in protest at the recent arrival of a particularly terrible person on Substack, where he promptly acquired, or imported, a million subscribers, meaning you couldn’t miss him briefly sitting at the top of a bestseller chart.

I don’t know whether the plan gained any traction, but I feel very strongly that women should never silence themselves - erase themselves - over men’s behaviour. No shade intended whatsoever if people have gone silent - obviously I understand the desire behind it. You can contact Substack directly here if you need to report a violation of content guidelines. And here’s some good advice.

Onwards! GOOD MORNING! As George Herbert said, and as I never tire of repeating, living well is the best revenge. Here are a whole load of life-enhancing things to read, (window) shop for, absorb and think about this week.

I write these posts for paid subscribers once a week, and for free subscribers once a month. This is a paid post. The most recent free one is here. All posts auto-paywall after 4 weeks, though I’m about to change that to 2.

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I am much less careful about things like palettes than I think most people are - I lump everything together on an ‘if I like it, it’ll work’ basis. I appreciate this isn’t very considered, and I know that the very idea of winging it like that makes some people panic. When I do book signings for Home, you wouldn’t believe the number of people who say ‘I’m useless with colour’. If that’s you, yesterday I had a revelation which I think may be helpful. At least, I hope so. It’s either helpful or crashingly obvious, but the thing about crashingly obvious is that it’s only crashingly obvious if you already know.

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Good morning! It feels tin-eared to go straight into things that are cheerful and (hopefully) uplifting when the news is as it is. We don’t need to talk about it here - it would be the opposite of the point of this newsletter - but I feel like it’s important to acknowledge that everything feels absolutely fucked. So big love to you if you’re feeling anxious/sickened/enraged, swinging wildly between wanting to avoid the news completely and also mainline it 24/7. Me too. All of us, I expect, which is at least a crumb of comfort.

Sorry for the downer opener (you should have seen my first version. It was about 1000 words and it was… intemperate). Anyway: we shall now trot gaily away from the ruins and into the nice meadow full of flowers for a bit, like the Billy Goats Gruff swerving the troll under the bridge. Or outwitting him. Which wouldn’t be hard.

Here are all the things I liked this week, plus a little digression about dressing while fat - my former area of… expertise is a bit strong, but I do have some tips that might be useful.

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This is the tenth instalment of a series called Me & My Desk, which exists because I find other writers’ work routines and work environments fascinating. All the other writers’…

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I found this unattributed photo on Pinterest. I like the idea of giving people (not young children, who would be indignant) an egg box with a few Easter things in it, e.g. this Lindt bunny, rather than so many giant eggs that everyone feels mildly queasy by 11am.

• For lunch on Easter Sunday 1: slow-roast lamb with sumac, dates and pomegranates.

• I like this picnic basket from M&S Not quite picnic weather YET, admittedly, but it’s coming and it’s nice to be ready.

  

• Louise’s wonderful pattern mixes:

A Sartorial Love Story

Living the patterned life.

This post is too long for email, so click through to open it up, or read it in the app…

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2 months ago · 44 likes · 19 comments · Louise

This potting table from Argos is such a good colour (and price).

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Good morning and happy eve of British Summertime! AT LAST.

You know how in the later books Tom Ripley goes away and does his murders and then feels this sense of absolute blissful ease when he comes home to Belle Ombre, his house (and garden) in France?

I was thinking on the train that I feel exactly like that coming home. It’s an unfortunate analogy - I did nothing more criminal than overspend in Sézane, of which more below - but Patricia Highsmith is so good at conveying his sense of perfect serene contentment that I can’t think of a better comparison. Which is to say: it’s heaven to be home (I was only away for 3 days, it’s pathetic. If I had to travel a lot for work I would just sit in airports crying).

It’s also heaven to have categorically decided not to replace the bathrooms. That is thanks to this brilliantly useful and comprehensive post by . I was reading it, eagerly taking notes, and then I thought, nah. Fuck it. Too much effort, too much faff, too much mess, too much money. Our bathrooms are cosy and functional, the pressure is amazing now we’ve got a new giant hot water tank, the baths are long enough (v important, no one wants to bend the knee if they don’t have to, in baths or in life), and under the carpet are beautiful, wide, ancient elm floorboards. A friend is coming round in a bit with some bathroom bookshelves he’s made, and that whole set-up will do very nicely.

I was going to say ‘for now,’ but actually it might do very nicely forever. Sometimes, house-wise, the pleasure is not in upheaval but in keeping things as they are. And anyway I’m not convinced that 17th century houses need 21st century bathrooms.

Before I start, thank you so much to those of you who came to the Daunt Books event with Mimi Pond, especially to the person* who bought me the delicious marmalade (it’s this one) (*edited - thank you CATHY!).

If you didn’t come, this is how Mimi signs every copy of her book about the Mitford sisters. I mean. Apparently people expect it of ‘cartoonists,’ which is how she describes herself.

She also brought excellent merch with her, including this tea towel.

She’s at the Oxford Literary Festival this afternoon, should you be in that neck of the woods.

Also Jessica Mitford’s SON was in the audience! Which actually I found slightly inhibiting because I’d read Laura Thompson’s excellent recent post about how you either love the Mitfords or are appalled by them, and I wanted to dig in to Laura’s point about Decca’s free pass. But I didn’t. I mean, the man’s sitting there, it’s his mum, you can’t, really.

I write these round-up posts for paid subscribers once a week, and for free subscribers once a month. The most recent free one is here, and the others are all here. All posts auto-paywall after 4 weeks. More free things to read: really good chicken recipes; the author Lottie Moggach’s desk, and how she writes; an extract from a brilliant thriller; an extract from a brilliant tragicomedy.

Below the paywall: everything I liked this week, including a really good interiors book, an outstanding cookbook, new jeans, beauty things, a new (to me) and brilliant word game, and some further shopping triumphs.

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Good morning! Well, dramatic morning - a rook fell down the chimney and was waiting for us in the dining room. Lupin alerted us by barking and respectfully standing next to it (it was stunned rather than flapping about, thank God). I admire corvids’ great intelligence and Gothic good looks, but I’m scared of them close up - I’m not mad on the beaks and feet and black, black eyes - let alone of them IN MY HOUSE. Anyway, all fine now - my partner lovingly rescued it, gave it a pep talk in a kind voice, told it how beautiful it was, sat with it (outside) until it perked up, and shouted YES! YES! when it flew away. All this before 7am.

I’m glad it’s okay. I wouldn't love a repeat of the great injured kittiwake rescue of 2023 (it lived in the broody hen coop for two weeks until its wing healed, ate delicious fresh fish and was furious throughout. Then he took it back to Sizewell beach, whence it came, and it soared up into the sky, flew out to sea and rejoined its colony on the old offshore platforms. Which I do admit was very gratifying). What is it with my family and rescuing birds at the moment? I wish someone would rescue an animal I can do business with, e.g. a baby donkey.

It was the spring equinox yesterday and I feel we’re on the way. So this weekend’s post has lots of spring bits throughout it - clothes, home things, and various other items designed to get the sap rising, in the non Seth Starkadder sense (although, don’t let me stop you).

This is a post for paid subscribers. There are lots of recent free things to read on my home page - book extracts of various genres here, here and here, shopping here, last weekend’s giant roundup here. There are three free particularly good chicken recipes here. And you could always take a look at my shop:

IT IS HERE AND I LOVE EVERYTHING IN IT

Some links are affiliate, at no cost to you and minuscule benefit to me.

I write these round-up posts for paid subscribers once a week, and for free subscribers once a month. Last week’s was free and the others are all here. All posts auto-paywall after 4 weeks.

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