It’s my first post of 2013 and time to look forward. Actually I threw caution to the wind this morning and was rash enough to te...

What is it about Christmas trees? No matter how hard I try they just won’t stay straight. I bought a special (and rather ugly) t...

With a multitude of presents to wrap, a turkey to buy and red cabbage recipes to puzzle over, there was still only one pl...

If you’re racing to get your Christmas shopping done and need an enchanting story for girls aged ten and up, then The Wolf Princ...

Help! I thought I was completely organised, but as usual I’ve rifled through all the secret carrier bags stashed...

The hall’s full of bike bits, there’s a ton of washing (make that two tons) scattered across the floor and a well-thumbed copy o...

As regular readers will know, my student daughter is at university in Paris this year. She’s settled into a flat on the Left Ba...

My mind’s been on Christmas since the summer. That's when I sat down to write my latest novella, White Christmas . As the re...

With Christmas less than a month away (eek!), I’m busy writing a newspaper piece about great festive reads for children. One...

My children are both at university now – but out of sight doesn’t mean out of mind. Far from it. The fact that I don’t see the...

Hal Benson smoothed his crumpled charcoal jacket, adjusted the livid pink tie he’d borrowed from a friend and cleared his throat...

With Christmas just seven weeks away (help!), my festive new novella has just been published. White Christmas , the tale of two ...

As we ground to a halt on the motorway for the umpteenth time I began to wonder whether our Christmas trip to the Lake District was worth it...

The tree is up (at an unintentionally jaunty angle), the Sainsbury's shop is done and the Military Wives Christmas song is playing full-...

Like most people, I’ve done loads of my shopping online this Christmas. Instead of flogging round the shops in the freezing cold I've sa...

With Christmas exactly eight days away there are still presents to buy, food to organise and a snowboarding course to do (no, thankfully not...

Christmas is full of conundrums. How long to cook the turkey for? Whether to make bread sauce (I loathe the stuff)? What to buy the in-laws?...

I like a bargain as much as anyone. My purse is stuffed with discount vouchers and cuttings snipped out of newspapers and magazines – from a...

Every Saturday the House With No Name blog features a few of the week’s highlights – and with Christmas fast approaching, there have been p...

On the last day of November every year I hang a faded purple velvet advent calendar in the kitchen and fill the 24 pockets with sweets. My d...