Shout me down if you like, but I am so pleased that the weather has taken a turn for the “worse.” Now it’s cloudy and drizzly I can sit her...

We are so, so lucky to live half a mile from the Monsal Trail – a disused railway line that is now a bridleway. It goes through beautiful...

Jonathan Franzen, writing in the Guardian Review yesterday, mentioned some of the questions that readers ask him that he finds annoying. Tha...

This Hepworth craze with narrowboat holidays has led us into lots of little towns I didn’t even know existed, or towns that were just names ...

I am still having a love-affair with my bed, after sleeping on that two foot wide “bed” on the narrowboat for ten days. The weather sinc...

…in Cheshire, on the Trent and Mersey canal. We had booked a different boat on the Kennet and Avon, but the boat company rang up two d...

I am very lucky to have Jane as a co-writer. H er judgment is impeccable, and she cares as much about the exact arrangement of words and the...

  Sometimes people ask me if Sally Howe (in Plotting for Beginners ) is me. The answer is “no” but nevertheless, some of the things tha...

My sister Kath has just sent me (by phone) the song of a nightingale because I said I didn’t know what it sounded like. This is not her re...

It’s three years and six months since my mother died. Usually, she pops up in my head and I’m happy to think of her. But these last two week...

I’ve nearly finished reading The Secret Garden for the third time. If you don’t know it, it’s a children’s book and a classic, published a ...

Sisters are one of God’s better inventions. You can get the train to Bingley together and see the Five Rise Locks for the second time t...

You know how Jane and I have been working hard and having fun with our new novel? Well, most of our collaboration is done by email, so I hav...

“April is a beautiful month in the Derbyshire Dales: the colour returns to the landscape. All through the long cold winters, the grass ...

I am working really hard and loving it – Jane and I are having immense fun with this new novel (so far untitled – yes! Still untitled!) An...

I’ve told you how much I like her books: here is an interview with her.

Yay! I woke up at the normal time today and feel like I used to do before I went away. So it did take a day for every time zone to feel ...

Do you remember that Eric Morecambe quote : “I’m playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order”? When I was sitting ...

I haven’t mentioned this before, because I know how lucky I am to be able to fly to San Francisco to spend time with my family, and i didn’t...

I know I always say this, but it doesn’t matter where I’ve been or how much I’ve enjoyed my time away, I always love to come home to Hepwort...

I know it's time to go home, because: It's been warm and sunny the whole time I've been here and today it's raining. It ...

I've been away. I've been away from away. I went to Redwood City to stay with the Aging Hippie, and I've come back to the cit...

How hip am I? I'm sitting with Isaac's super slim laptop and a cafe latte in a cafe on the edge of the Mission district. Yesterday m...

I've just come back home from brunch in a cafe. I love brunch. And I love it in the USA. You can order a bottomless mimosa, and a main o...

That's it! I am done with Sebastian Barry. I don't care if he does write like an angel. I can't take any more of the unhappiness...