Justine Picardie

A ring of truth

2012-02-13T07:48:00.001-08:00

Herewith this week's Closet Thinker: an alternative Valentine, with thanks, as always, to Mio Matsumoto for the lovely illustration.

This is the weekend when journalistic tradition demands that readers are advised to buy suitably romantic items, to wear our hearts on our sleeves and flash rings on our fingers, in readiness for Valentine’s Day. But having gone through the acutely unromantic experience of divorce, I know how unhelpful it is to be urged towards displays of tender coupledom; indeed, it was only three years ago that I spent the evening of February 14th watching ‘The Wrestler’ on DVD with my friend Susan (a double date after her bereavement and my separation), and very therapeutic it was too, seeing Mickey Rourke being slammed into the ground.

That said, I have come to realize that rings are to be treasured, encircling as they do the rituals, romances and losses of a life. Those I wear now are from my mother; on the middle finger of my right hand, a diamond that she was given by her mother-in-law, my Russian grandmother, who brought it as an émigré, fleeing from persecution (a jewel that could be slipped into a pocket, one of the very few valuables her generation carried into safety). And two other maternal inheritances: a delicate coral ring, and a Victorian garnet – the gem clasped in tiny gold hands – in memoriam of her maiden name, Garnett.

My wedding ring is in a safe place – no longer worn, but impossible to forsake (my ex-husband is, after all, the father of our two beloved sons). I didn’t buy myself a divorce ring, although it did occur to me that some sort of ritual might have been appropriate (certainly not a party, but perhaps an emblem to represent the long legal and emotional process). If I were to have wanted a non-Valentine’s piece, I might have found a suitable design by the young British jeweller Claire English; her gold Smouldering Spent Match ring, for example, or a silver Wishbone ring (£225 and £115 respectively, from Elizabeth Galton Studio).

Instead, rather magically, I woke up on Christmas morning to find a moonstone in my stocking; at least a century old, but still shimmering with a silvery gleam. I’m not wearing it quite yet – it is being set in white gold, at John Lawrence jewellers in Hatton Garden (one of those long-standing, traditional workshops that are reminders of the subtle overlaps between the past and the present in the city, and perhaps in an emotional landscape, as well). When the ring is finished, it will be slipped onto my engagement finger; for yes, there is a life after divorce, and beyond Valentine’s Day, as well…

A park full of snowmen

2012-02-08T14:53:00.000-08:00

Wandering around my local park, where the snowmen are still standing after the weekend snowfall -- frozen statues, but also like children's drawings come alive -- and I was reminded how they can occasionally look as sinister and evocative as scarecrows, while others seem more innocent. The ice on the ground is stubbornly refusing to melt, up here in the wilds of north London; so the snowmen remain, for now. At night, in the quiet park, I wonder if they are watching each other; I can't imagine them flying, but whispering, perhaps...

Blue skies and ice in Tillypronie

2012-02-01T14:52:00.000-08:00

It's very, very cold in London -- the primroses in my garden are in danger of freezing, though I'm hoping the micro-climate of kitchen warmth will keep them from harm (thanks to simmering beef casserole for dinner last night and pasta with anchovies, pancetta, courgettes and broccoli this evening; yum yum). Dashed up to Scotland for 24 hours on Sunday afternoon -- plans to make, an even icier garden to explore -- and then made it back to London in time for supper on Monday. Since then, have been hibernating and writing at home; hoping that the fragile new beginnings of a book just taking shape...

Closet Thinking

2012-01-29T01:17:00.000-08:00

Here is last Sunday's Closet Thinker (or read it below, with links), and today's column, as well. (The illustrations are by the wonderful Mio Matsumoto, whose drawings illuminate the Closet Thinker every week in Stella). Meanwhile, I've been eating hot porridge for breakfast (it's so cold in the mornings) and almond mini magnums at night (why does a choc ice straight out of the freezer seem so appealing after dinner, even in January?). No answer yet to this conundrum, but it seems to be working for me as an antidote to the low skies; speaking of which, there is an unexpected hint of potential snow in the London sky this morning (although on Friday, there was a violent burst of hail instead.)
Now, just off to make my porridge...

22 January:
Once upon a time, the beau monde escaped the misery of January aboard their private yachts, and doubtless some still do, but for the majority of fashion consumers, the cruise (also known in the US as resort) collections have come to mean something different. Often the most profitable of seasons, and frequently more wearable than catwalk extravaganzas designed for supermodels rather than real women, cruise fills the gap between the autumn/winter collections (available since the dog-days of late summer) and the spring/summer lines (due to arrive next month, when the weather will still be miserable).

Not that resort lines are the sole preserve of luxury brands; H&M launched its Versace cruise collection three days ago, with silk dresses and bikinis in strawberry and butterfly prints, alongside matching bags, earrings and charm bracelets. I didn’t particularly like the much-publicised first collaboration between Versace and H&M – although apparently I’m in a minority of one, given the speed with which it sold out – but this new one looks sweetly appealing (and hopefully the quality of the fabric will have improved since last time).

Alternatively, you could interpret cruise in a more literal, nautical sense, given the predominance of oceanic motifs in the spring 2012 collections: starfish at Yves Saint Laurent and Versace, shark-tooth medallions at Givenchy, tropical aquatic prints at Peter Pilotto and Mary Katrantzou, and an entire Chanel show based around a fantastical seascape, complete with conch-shell clutches and Florence Welch as a mermaid emerging from a giant clam, singing ‘What the Water Gave Me’.

Sceptics, cynics and sufferers from Seasonal Affective Disorder may by now be muttering in disbelief about the implausibility of catwalk scuba ensembles (as seen at Peter Pilotto) set against a background of economic catastrophe. But history reveals that this is not the first occasion in which high style has collided with a surreal view of how to dress in a crisis. During the First World War, the artist Paul Iribe (who subsequently became Coco Chanel’s fiancée) transported wounded soldiers to Paris from the Front Line whilst dressed as a deep-sea diver, for reasons that have never become clear. At his side were Misia Sert (the reigning muse of modernism) and another leading exponent of the avant-garde, Jean Cocteau; both of them dressed in nurses’ uniforms designed by the couturier Paul Poiret, who had also donated his delivery vans as ambulances. Unfortunately, Poiret was thereafter bankrupted; suggesting, perhaps, that if absurdist fashion is a fishy business, it is nevertheless occasionally capable of making waves, even while so far out as to be drowning…

29 January.
It is a convention of fashion (and yes, this is a business as prone to conformism as any other, despite protestations to the contrary) that one is either a wearer of spots or stripes, but not both. If polka dots are supposedly for the girlish, then stripes are for those of a more gamine look; as embodied by Jean Seberg sporting a sailor’s top, in contrast to the young Bridget Bardot in a pink spotted bikini. But there is also the Third Way, currently very much in evidence, kick-started by Dolce & Gabbana’s star print dresses in the winter 2011 collection, and still in a beguiling variety of forms (my favourite a starry cashmere sweater from Chinti and Parker at net-a-porter).

The timing of a resurgence of starry motifs is intriguing, given the concurrent economic gloom, which some commentators are now referring to as a Great Recession, echoing the long slump in the wake of the Wall Street Crash. If previous decades – the Roaring Twenties and the big-spending Noughties – allowed themselves to play with the idea of stripped-down fashion (the Little Black Dress; luxe minimalism), then the aesthetic of 2012 has some parallels with that of 1932. Nowhere is this more evident than in fashion’s latest employment of diamond stars, as if to remind us that even in a Depression, a few essential elements remain fixed points of navigation, and potentially safer investments than risky stock markets.

Hardly a coincidence, then, that Chanel’s 2012 Cruise collection revived the star-strewn jewellery designs from Coco Chanel’s diamond show, originally staged eighty years ago. Princesses and celebrities alike came to the opening party in 1932, to see Mademoiselle Chanel’s radiant, astronomical jewels; a sparkling treasure trove that formed a curious juxtaposition with a hardening winter, when increasing numbers of unemployed were homeless on the streets of Paris.

To Chanel, however, it made perfect sense: she declared that her glittering constellation of stars was the only way forward ‘during a period of financial crisis when an instinctive desire for authenticity is reawakened in every domain’. This pronouncement might seem dangerously close to Marie Antoinette, but as it happened, Chanel was proved right, at least in terms of the markets: two days after her diamond show opened, De Beers stock jumped 20 points on the London exchange.

It is always a dangerous game to make predictions, in fashion as in the wider economy; but still, I’d hazard a guess that however terrifying the coming bust, diamond stars by the luxury brands will sell even better than they did in the boom years.

Short and Sweet

2012-01-24T14:29:00.001-08:00

I've been engrossed in Dan Lepard's baking book -- a present from Father Christmas -- which is the perfect late January comfort read. Not that I've just been reading about cooking; there has been much activity in the kitchen in the last few days (possibly because my younger son has his arm in a sling, suffering the after-effects of a dislocated shoulder -- my cooking can't mend his rugby injuries, but as is generally the case in this household, baking seems the best thing to do, under trying circumstances). So, chicken soup on Saturday, after the hospital, lemon cake for tea on Sunday, followed by fish pie for dinner; a plentiful stir fry last night, and salmon trout this evening; the convalescence has also been punctuated by Maltesers (for both of us). Very annoying: I can't link to any of DL's recipes on the Guardian website without my computer crashing -- have tried eight times in the 45 minutes, and am now giving up and going to bed. But I very much want to try making one of his pear cakes before too long, and the caramelized banana cake looks incredibly tempting...

Snowdrops and gloves

2012-01-18T01:20:00.000-08:00

It's drizzling this morning, after days of crisp air and icy cold blue skies; but though I miss the sun, I'm glad of the rain for my spring bulbs and the cyclamens that have miraculously survived the winter thus far in window boxes. I've been re-reading Elizabeth Bowen -- To the North is such a brilliant novel, and her short stories are remarkable (their landscape seems to continue, long after I've stopped reading them; like a dream that exists even when you have stopped dreaming it).
Meanwhile, Frances Cornford popped back into my mind, after I read Bowen's 'Hand in Glove'; prompting last Sunday's Closet Thinker. When I think of Cornford's Fat Lady poem, it seems to form an instantly visual scene -- vivid as the woman in gloves, seen from a train. For me, the fat lady is wearing white gloves, and there are snowdrops on the winter ground. I don't actually think of her as fat; rather, of the poet as thin and melancholic; possibly hungry, as well, with nothing to eat on her train journey. Finally, it was Henrietta Llewelyn Davies who introduced me to Frances Cornford, and much else besides (on a train from Fowey to London, after we had both been talking at the Du Maurier Literary Festival); all of which I find myself remembering, in the new year after Henri's death.

Closet Thinker: January 15th
It is perhaps indicative of the time of the year that when my thoughts turn to gloves – why have I mislaid one again, leaving me with yet another singleton? – I also remember Frances Cornford’s poem, ‘To a Fat Lady Seen from a Train’: ‘O why do you walk through the fields in gloves,/ Missing so much and so much?/ O fat white woman whom nobody loves,/ Why do you walk through the fields in gloves…’

I have often wondered about Cornford’s own gloves, and her writing hands beneath. The slender, dark-eyed grand-daughter of Charles Darwin, part of an abstemious family that disapproved of sugar, she married a Cambridge Classics don in 1909, the year before she composed the poem, and suffered from a depressive tendency, but history does not relate the details of how she kept her hands warm. Perhaps if her gloves had been cosier, she might have been less unforgiving of the fat woman; and it seems to me entirely possible that the larger lady wasn’t unloved – it was Frances herself who was feeling melancholic.

Anyway, the avoidance of chilly extremities is paramount this month, as is cheering food – for why punish oneself any further than necessary, given the flagellating weather and economic outlook? In an ideal world, a fairy godmother would bestow everyone with jolly gloves – my favourites are from Brora, long enough to cover well beyond the wrists, in soft Scottish cashmere. (I like them best in scarlet or blueberry; and am thoroughly annoyed at misplacing one of mine in each colour, leaving two unmatched left hands).

That said, traditional white gloves can still have something sinister about them, as is made manifest in Elizabeth Bowen’s wonderfully eerie short story, ‘Hand in Glove’, about two sisters living in Ireland in 1900, both in search of rich husbands. Bowen – herself of a generation of well-dressed women, brought up to believe that smart gloves were an essential part of an outfit – imagines a scenario whereby the sisters keep their ailing aunt locked alone in a bedroom, while breaking into her trunks in the attic containing her bridal finery. Only the aunt’s long gloves elude them, but when she finally dies, the elder sister, before even closing the old lady’s eyes, steals her keys and opens the last trunk, whereupon one of the gloves reaches up and strangles her…

Fortunately, when I discovered Coco Chanel’s white gloves in the pocket of one of her signature suits, no such ghostly horrors took place; but then I would never have the temerity to steal another woman’s gloves, however often I lose my own…

Reading and writing remembering in the New Year

2012-01-13T00:04:00.000-08:00

I've been re-reading Nancy Mitford (you'll see why, in the Closet Thinker that I've posted, below), along with Alice Munroe's brilliant short story collection, The Love of a Good Woman, which is even better than I remembered it, and Five Sisters by James Fox (equally absorbing, and with some overlap of subject matter -- the lives and loves of women -- but also satisfyingly different, as a narrative non-fiction history of a dynasty that was almost too odd to invent).
More sisters on my mind -- you'll see I've been thinking about the Bronte corsets at the Parsonage in Haworth -- and my own sister, as always. The story about Ruth's misdiagnosis and death of breast cancer is more complicated than its reporting; but then isn't that generally the case in the messiness of real life? If I have learnt anything from Ruth's death, it is that life is precious, and all the more so for the randomness that can shape our journeys. Ruth cherished the little pleasures, as well as her great loves (and she had a huge capacity to love, and be loved), yet was also forced into confronting the worst of all losses -- to leave those who she loved, when she was far too young to die. Many years have passed since her death, but still, she seems so close; to me, at least, as if the apparent distance between us (that of the dead and the living) is not impossible to navigate. Whenever I write, she is somewhere in my mind -- as the writer whose courage and openness I admire and applaud, as well a beloved friend and sister, and the reader who understands where we both came from, even though she has traveled far ahead of me. Ruth knew the power of tiny details, as well as big ideas; of how our daily lives (what we wear, eat, read, discuss) forms a tapestry that continues to be threaded and sewn over many years. I once believed that death put an end to that weaving; yet it seems not to now. Here, then, are some small patches of an unfinished tapestry...

Closet Thinker: January 1st

We all know that Marilyn Monroe declared she wore nothing but Chanel No.5 to bed, but perhaps she might have been happier the morning after the night before in soft cotton pyjamas? In my experience, they are a welcome consolation against the harsh realities of January, as long as they are not made of nylon; for I still remember those sudden shocks of static electricity from childhood, induced by the synthetic peach nightgowns that my maternal grandmother bought as Christmas presents for all the female members of the family.
My mother generally donated these flounced nighties to the dressing-up-box – my sister and I wore them to Narnia and back again – and like her, I would rather sleep in plain cotton than frilly acrylic. As a look, however, this can need fine-tuning; even the grandest of Nancy Mitford’s aristocrats loses her dignity appearing thus in Love in a Cold Climate: ‘Lady Montdore cut rather a comic figure drinking strong tea in bed among masses of lace pillows, her coarse grey hair frizzed out and wearing what appeared to be a man’s striped flannel pyjama top under a feathered wrap.’

Mitford always had a sharp eye for these details, perhaps because she came of age in an era when pyjama parties were the milieu of the fashionable Bright Young People. (‘Dearest Old Bottom,’ she wrote to her brother Tom in 1928, upon escaping from the conventional formalities of English family life in the countryside, ‘My dear this visit is being a perfect orgy, if only you were here you don’t know what you’ve missed We haven’t once been to bed before 2, pyjama parties every night…’). Hence the parade of nightwear in Mitford’s first novel, ‘Highland Fling’: ‘Sally looked lovely in crepe-de-chine pyjamas, over which she wore a tweed coat lined with fur. Lady Prague was also wrapped in a tweed coat over a linen nightdress and a Shetland wool cardigan.’

Mitford’s scene was set in a draughty Scottish castle, but her world was not entirely removed from that of Coco Chanel in silk pyjamas, entertaining the Duke of Westminster and Winston Churchill at her Riviera villa, the epitome of apparently easy chic. ‘Coco dines at home in printed pyjamas,’ ran the Vogue caption to Christian Berard’s illustration of Chanel in 1937, ‘[with] jewels, striped linen, flannel jacket…’ Perhaps the closest we can get to that fantasy landscape nowadays is within the pages of the Toast catalogue, inhabited by tousled beauties in velvet dressing gowns; either that, or escape to bed to read the glorious stories of Nancy Mitford herself.

Closet Thinker: January 8th

Within the archives of the Bronte Parsonage Museum are several tiny corsets, belonging to the sisters, and when you see them on a winter’s day, as I have done, it seems believable that Anne, Emily and Charlotte died young because of a combination of cold, consumption and constriction. It is the memory of these corsets that prompts me to suggest that January might not be the best month to squeeze oneself into the modern equivalent – now known as ‘shapewear’ – given that we are already tortured by dismal weather, indigestion, and winter viruses. Breathing freely is therefore the only sensible option…

Not that I’m averse to a new set of underwear at this time of year, as long as it’s not too tight; anything that provides a small pleasure in these, the most depressing weeks. Having recently interviewed two very chic women – L’Wren Scott and Carine Roitfeld – I was struck by how practical they were on the subject of underpinnings. Scott (who designs for the voluptuous Christina Hendricks, amongst others) remarked that big knickers were unnecessary with a properly fitted dress – ‘you don’t need control underwear to do the work of a zip, that’s what the dress is for’ – although she also recommended an excellent bra from John Lewis. And Roitfeld, the former editor in chief of French Vogue, proclaimed the cheering effect of black tights (hers are from Fogal, sheer and seamed at the back): ‘something that makes me happy now is a pair of new tights – it’s not so expensive, not like buying a Dolce & Gabbana dress or a Dior bag – this is nearer to yourself, nearer to your skin, something that makes you more sensuous, more voluptuous, more woman…’

There’s nothing like a conversation with Carine Roitfeld to make you want to rush out and buy French lingerie – she wears the highly desirable Carine Gilson (stocked at net-a-porter, though a trip to the Paris boutique in Rue de Grenelle would be a delight). Simone Perele is also good for quintessentially Parisian pieces, at slightly more affordable prices; I’ve got my eye on the charmingly named Invisi’bulles control briefs, that look less dominatrix than gossamer.

Meanwhile, I remain a fan, like everyone else, of stalwart M&S underwear, particularly the Ultimate Magic Secret Support Tights (not such a secret after all, given that quarter of a million pieces were sold in the run-up to Christmas). True, they’re not quite as glamorous as Fogal seamed stockings, but they do the trick for me, gently smoothing over a full stomach. Here’s to a comfortably happy new year…

Great Expectations and the women in white...

2011-12-28T04:16:00.000-08:00

Great Expectations -- a book that demands to be re-read at the beginning of any New Year -- is my favourite of all Dickens' novels, and Miss Havisham survives (for me, as for legions of other readers) as one of the most remarkably potent literary creations; the quintessential gothic bride, the eeriest woman in white, who has haunted my own writing and dreams since the first time I discovered Great Expectations as a child. So it was always going to be difficult to watch the BBC's new adaptation without some feeling of disappointment at what, inevitably, had to be left out. And yes, I missed the scene in which Magwitch rises up from the graves of Pip's family, and the kindly Biddy (although perhaps she will appear in the second episode tonight?); but thus far, it has been brilliantly executed. Gillian Anderson is inspired as Miss Havisham, and the landscape of the muddy marshes is as powerfully evocative as the shadowy Satis House and its abandoned wedding feast, still untouched, even as it decays and turns to dust.
All of which reminds me of the threads between several other women in white that intrigued and perplexed me while I was writing 'My Mother's Wedding Dress'; from the Brontës to Emily Dickinson, Hans Christian Andersen's Snow Queen to the White Witch of Narnia; and in Daphne du Maurier, of course. (For more on the role of the Snow Queen in Daphne, and the uncanny connection between Du Maurier and De Winter, read here). It was my mother -- a courageous radical who chose to be married in black -- that introduced me to Emily Dickinson’s poetry when I was nine or ten, around about the same time that I was having nightmares of a porcelain woman in white who fell down a gothic staircase, and lay smashed at the bottom; not that the two were necessarily connected, but when I remember them – the book and the dream – they seem to reflect each other. Oddly, although I now find Dickinson's meaning increasingly elusive (in a wonderfully tantalizing way), as a child, the effort to understand was less. The anthology my mother gave me was for children (its unforgettable title taken from the poem I’m Nobody! Who are you?); and also contained biographical details, including a brief account of Dickinson’s life within her father’s house in Amherst, Massachusetts: a woman who wore only white dresses, unseen and hidden behind closed doors or in the shadows. I’d been told that one of her white dresses remains in her father’s house, now a museum; though it seemed to me by the time I was a teenager that Dickinson had turned her room into a kind of museum when she was still alive, shutting herself away in it to write her poetry; not that she had planned to make an exhibition of herself, but nevertheless, I wondered whether she realized that interest in her would intensify after her decision to withdraw from view.
When my mother gave me the anthology, however, I was too young to think about what prompted Dickinson to become a white-clad recluse. (And I hadn’t yet read Ted Hughes’ description of her, in the introduction to his selection of her poetry: ‘she wore white, proper for a bride of the spirit, and she daily composed poems that read like devotions’). I was more interested in the poem that gave the title to my book, and also the one that began, ‘I started Early – Took my Dog – / And visited the Sea – / The Mermaids in the Basement / Came out to look at me – ’. I imagined Emily in her white dress, creeping out of her father’s house at dawn, her dog by her side, when no one else could see her; and walking to the seaside, to find the mermaids, with their long pale hair, and beckoning hands. And the water was lapping around her feet, and higher (‘ – till the Tide / Went past my simple Shoe – / And past my Apron – and my Belt / And past my Bodice – too – ’); so that she was up to her neck, her hair floating in the water like the mermaids’.
I don’t remember reading her more opaque poetry at the time; it was only later that it got under my skin (her impenetrability finding its way into me, yet remaining intact). But whenever I read it now, there are still lines that I recognize as if from childhood; for I have never studied Dickinson in a formal sense, tending to avoid critical dissection of her work (which may mean, of course, that my response to her is simply childish; though I am also inclined to agree with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who wrote in the Atlantic Monthly, twenty years after meeting Dickinson, that her enshrouding was too complete to undo: ‘She was much too enigmatical a being for me to solve in an hour’s interview . . . I could only sit still and watch, as one does in the woods; I must name my bird without a gun, as recommended by Emerson’).
Sometimes I feel irritated with myself, with my failure to make sense of her work; but I also like the fact that it remains out of reach, not analysed, not unfolded. And when I don’t understand the poems, there are things – white dresses, named and made manifest – within them that can be recognized with the clarity of an often-repeated dream. So that now, when I read the poem that begins: ‘Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me’ (lines that I remember as well as a nursery rhyme), I cannot help but see the translucent figure that emerges between the lines: ‘For only Gossamer, my Gown – / My Tippet – only Tulle – ’.
It was, perhaps, inevitable that I would progress from the Brontës and Emily Dickinson to an equally mythic Sylvia, who describes herself in ‘Tulips’ in hospital, on her sickbed; a patient, seeking the patience of a nun, colourless, day-clothes gone. (‘Look how white everything is . . .’) ‘I am nobody,’ says Plath in the same poem, echoing Emily Dickinson; and speaks of learning peacefulness. But as I kept on reading more of her poetry (as one does, in gloomy adolescence), she didn’t seem very peaceful to me, unless you accepted that death bestowed peace (not that she did rest in peace); and the whiteness in her poems was as likely to signify bleached bones and death (though I was touched, not long ago, to see a less tortured picture of Plath, wearing white, with her children and spring flowers, and to read her daughter's own words).
Thus poetry was an antidote to cult of happy-ever-after brides; for the more I looked (or rather, read), the more it seemed that women in white were inverted angels, mad, bad and dangerous to know; from the suicidal Anne Sexton, whose reworking of Snow White I had discovered amongst my mother’s books of poetry, alongside Sylvia Plath, all the way back to Miss Havisham, who looms over Great Expectations like a risen corpse. (At first, when Pip makes her out in the gloom of her darkened, shuttered room, he believes her to be an entirely white figure: dress, shoes, veil, even her hair. But as his eyes grow accustomed to the shadows, ‘I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost its lustre, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress, and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone.’)
Two decades after the publication of Great Expectations, Emily Dickinson was directly compared to Miss Havisham by Mabel Todd, the family friend who later undertook the editing of Dickinson’s poetry; she noted in her journal of 1882 that ‘Emily is called in Amherst “the myth”. She has not been out of the house for fifteen years. One inevitably thinks of Miss Haversham [sic] in speaking of her . . . She wears always white, & has her hair arranged as was the fashion fifteen years ago, when she went into retirement.’)
At some point in that periodically gloomy, typically tempestuous adolescence (such a relief to be mostly beyond its reach, into the calmer waters of middle age; although I remain grateful for the reading I undertook at the time, which was perhaps the making of me), I discovered that Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes had gone to Haworth together, weaving poetry out of their walks through the graveyard beside the Brontë parsonage and up onto the moors of Wuthering Heights. And I knew, too, that Emily Dickinson was an admirer of Emily Brontë, whose poetry had been read at her funeral, and that Plath and Hughes were fans of both Emilys, and that you could draw threads between all four poets (and Dickens and Wilkie Collins, as well); white threads, of course.
All of which reminds me to broadcast the appeal from the church in Haworth where Charlotte and Emily Brontë are buried. Their white shrouds are almost certainly turned to dust, but their words are vibrantly alive, which is miraculous, is it not?
Speaking of miracles, I am very happy to announce that my thoughts are turning to a summer wedding dress, preferably not of the tattered design favoured by Miss Havisham; for an interest in gothic narrative has failed to obliterate my belief in the continuing possibilities of happiness and contentment, and the undeniable magic of the greatest expectations of all.

Twas the night before Christmas...

2011-12-24T12:10:00.000-08:00

And I've been admiring the trees outside Tillypronie, as well as the glorious one inside the house. There has been time to walk across the hills -- such a luxury, to feel the Highland air upon my cheeks -- in between the wrapping of presents and the eating of chocolate brownies and meringues. My beloved sons are with me -- the best present of all -- and I feel blessed to have reached this point in my life; to be here, after five decades of previous Christmases. To be 50 -- how did that happen? -- and to love and be loved... such a simple blessing, such a miraculous joy...
If you have a chance, please do read Carol Ann Duffy's 'Another Night Before Christmas' before you go to sleep tonight. It's wonderful, and here's the opening verses, to bring you good cheer:
'On the night before Christmas, a child in the house,
As the whole family slept, behaved just like a mouse...
And crept on soft toes down red-carpeted stairs.
Her hand held the paw of her favourite bear.

The Christmas tree posed with its lights in its arms,
Newly tinselled and baubled with glittering charms;
Flirting in flickers of crimson and green
Against the dull glass of the mute TV screen.'

I love this poem, and Rob Ryan's illustrations for the Picador edition; do look up page 18, of the hare, if you can...

'Then a shooting star whizzed down the sky from the North.
It was fizzing and sparkling as it fell to earth,
And growing in size. A young hare in a field
Gazed up at the sky where it brightened and swelled.'

As for my own Christmas message to the lovely readers that contribute so much to this small community; I am so grateful to you all, for friendship and insights and the best ideas on what to read, and why to read it. If Christmas is a time to remember that life is made up of the small yet precious moments of communication -- only connect, as E.M Forster reminded us -- then tonight is a moment to cherish. Christmas -- like life itself -- is imperfect, sometimes jagged, and all the better for it. Our griefs and disappointments are present, but so too are our hopes and expectations and pleasures. Tonight, I hope you are happy, my friends and comrades, whatever the unhappiness that might have beset you in the last year; courage, mes amis... and let us celebrate the threads that we have woven together, in this, another year...

I Capture the Castle

2011-12-17T14:37:00.000-08:00

Have been hither and thither, with last minute deadlines and all the shenanigans of Christmas. One small disappointment -- my Uniqlo order hasn't turned up yet (where are my Heat-Tech tops, not to mention the presents?). But this has been out-weighed by the seasonal blessings: a Christmas carol service at the Parish Church in Hampstead, with a choir to gladden the heart (I was reminded, again, of how inspiring it is to hear children singing Gaudete). And yesterday I made a cranberry and almond cake, which I ate with my friends and family this afternoon (it slipped down nicely with prosecco and freshly squeezed mandarin juice; delicious...).
Anyway, here is this week's Closet Thinker. I took the pictures at Cockermouth Castle at little while ago (a wildly romantic place, in a beautiful little town) -- in search of the spirit of Wordsworth -- though it reminded me most of all of my beloved Dodie Smith novel...

If Sunday is no longer the day of rest, then today is likely to be particularly agitated, for retailers and shoppers alike. This is, traditionally, a weekend when we are expected to rush around, buying Christmas presents in a flurry of seasonal consumerism, but glad tidings are currently thin on the ground. You already know the headlines, and the reality of rising costs and falling income may well feel more personal by now. Not that I’m encouraging undue pessimism, nor recommending pre-rehabilitation Scrooge; simply acknowledging that these are uncertain times, and splashing out on a party dress won’t necessarily solve anyone’s anxiety about how to pay the bills.

What does seem more important is staying warm; obvious, I know, but cold feet induce misery, as do icy hands. Hence my attachment to a cosy pair of FitFlop furry boots; still going strong after enduring several freezing winters, and also good for toning the bottom. (Speaking of which, poor Pippa Middleton, condemned by the press for – allegedly – crimes against fashion on a skating rink. Apparently she shalt not wear a white princess coat. Treason!)

The best winter survival kit will bring good cheer, as well as a level temperature; a formula that requires comforting kit, without making you look like a hibernating arctic beast. In fashion, as in life, it’s all a question of balance: just as high heels don’t work with too much uncovering of flesh elsewhere (the overkill of cleavage, bare thighs and stilettos), so too the bigger the boot, the narrower the leg should be. Hence Kate Moss’s de facto winter uniform of furry footwear plus skinny trousers. I rely on layers of Uniqlo Heat Tech underwear, so fine that they don’t add bulk; then an ancient Holland & Holland green parka on top, which is padded, but miraculously lightweight.

Brown, I think, can be too depressingly muddy a colour for a winter coat, though pink puffas are only good on little girls; better to go for ivory, olive, navy or black. And when all else fails, I return for advice to one of my favourite books, Dodie Smith’s ‘I Capture The Castle’, in particular the scene wherein Rose Mortmain is mistaken for a bear in her great grandmother’s beaver-lined coat. Rose longs for the luxuries of wealth – couture suits, silk stockings, bluebell scent, pale suede gloves -- and becomes engaged to a man who can afford these, then finally realizes her heart lies elsewhere; ‘her trousseau turned into fairy gold’, but true love is revealed to be more heart-warming than expensive new presents.

Coco and Capote and Christmas...

2011-12-04T09:02:00.000-08:00

I've been baking banana bread and ginger cake today, and thinking about Christmas shopping, but not quite getting around to doing it; though I am hoping to do most of it at the wonderful Daunt Books.
Aside from stocking up on Paul Gallico and Truman Capote, I'm also going to be buying several signed copies of Anne Sebba's absorbing biography of Wallis Simpson, as we're doing a talk together at Keats House next Wednesday (December 7th at 7pm). Keats House is a glorious place -- worth a visit, even without sharing a glass of wine with Anne and I -- so I do hope some of you can come.

Herewith today's Closet Thinker column:

Tis the season to be jolly, but not at the expense of one’s sanity, which means that I am reining in the shopping this Christmas. Well, I say that now – as I do on the first weekend of every December – and then still find myself panic-stricken on Oxford Street a fortnight later, wild-eyed with reckless anxiety. This is absurd, given my hard-won knowledge, through bitter experience of the ghosts of Christmas past, that I hate the crush of last minute shopping, the wanton futility of it all.

But neither do I feel inclined to give up on Christmas – I love the rustle of wrapping paper, the scent of pine needles, the flickering light of candles in the darkest nights of the year. And I like giving presents, too; if only to the people I love – so if any of my nearest and dearest is reading this, please stop. (Actually, the men can read on – today, at least – because I’m better at gifts for girls.) This year, I’ve decided to plan well ahead with books and little bits of luxuries, each reflecting the other; not original, I confess, as a writer, but reading is what connects us (you and me, at this very moment). First, a signed copy of my biography of Coco Chanel or Paul Morand’s recollections of the couturiere, and one of her trademark colours in nail polish or lipstick; either the limited edition Black Pearl or Peridot varnishes – each iridescent as a jewel – or Rouge Coco lip colour in the intense red christened Gabrielle (after the founder’s first name, and the shade that she chose for herself, ‘because it’s the colour of blood and we’ve so much inside us it’s only right to show a little outside’).

Alternatively, ‘Mrs Harris Goes To Paris’, Paul Gallico’s novel about a London charlady who flies to France in search of a Dior dress; and as delightful now as it was upon publication in 1958. Best given with Dior on the side; possibly ‘Merveille’ nail polish, a lustrous special edition that might just be the same colour as Mrs Harris’s heart’s desire.

Finally, Truman Capote’s ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s' (published in the same, vintage year as Gallico’s classic), preferably accompanied by a tiny Tiffany original. Capote’s narrator chooses a St Christopher’s medal for Holly Golightly’s Christmas present, to keep her safe on her wayward journey, an amulet against ‘the mean reds’, for days that are more anxious than a bout of the blues. Come to think of it, we could all do with one of those lucky charms now…

I went to Paris to meet Carine Roitfeld...

2011-12-01T01:09:00.000-08:00

And yes, she remains the apotheosis of chic, but warm, not chilly, even on a cold day in Paris. I got to her apartment early -- can't be late for CR -- so went for a bracing walk while I was waiting, along the streets of the lovely Left Bank. The trees in Les Invalides were looking beautiful (with a glimpse of a lamp-post, like the one in Narnia). I admired the good cheer of red geraniums, and just around the corner, a blue door, with its promise of a secret mansion on the other side... then all of a sudden, I found myself on Rue Cler, where I stayed when I first came to Paris as a teenager, and it seemed not to have changed at all, and neither had I -- in that instant, at least -- because I was still entranced by Paris.

Dancing on the edge...

2011-11-27T14:54:00.000-08:00

Have been writing, writing, writing, scribbling in the midst of these turbulent times. Here's my piece in today's Telegraph; for more, read Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald's letters ('Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda')... and do have a look at Kerry Taylor's forthcoming auction.

Recently, when glued to the gruesome news, I veer between terrible anxiety that we are all tipping into a financial abyss, and the hope that everything will turn out to be fine; or rather, that we have survived similarly uncertain times before, dancing on the edge of a precipice. As for the reported expansion of the European Financial Stability Facility bailout fund, I confess, I tend to forget the acronym, but not the numbers: one trillion euros. I cannot conceive of what this figure means, but instead find myself thinking of a snapshot from December 1926, of two young flappers demonstrating the Charleston on a Chicago rooftop, teetering above a great drop. They were dancing three years before the Wall Street Crash, when bankrupts jumped off parapets, but just a month after American Vogue had hailed Chanel’s little black dress as the future: knee length, sleek, and modern as the new automobiles (‘Here is a Ford signed Chanel’).

Nine decades after ‘flapper’ entered the English language – to denote a girl ‘somewhat daring in conduct, speech, and dress’, according to an early dictionary reference – it is difficult to understand the consternation caused by their appearance. In 1922, the US Secretary of Labour denounced the ‘flippancy of the cigarette-smoking, cocktail-drinking flapper’; this season, the term has had some currency again, but only in relation to the resurgence of Twenties-inspired beaded party frocks. Gucci’s black and gold Jazz-Age dresses, central to the brand’s spring/summer 2012 catwalk collection, are already in evidence in Hollywood (Evan Rachel Wood channelling Clara Bow – the original ‘It-girl’ -- with cropped hair and crimson lipstick on the red carpet this month). The High Street has also paid homage to the Great Gatsby, most notably with Wallis’s 1923 collection, based on designs from the label’s pattern archives; clever Wallis, with prices at under £100, yet gleaming with the subtle patina of sartorial history.

Most authentic of all, however, is the forthcoming Kerry Taylor Auction, which will take place on Tuesday (the viewing starts tomorrow at the Royal Opera Arcade in Pall Mall). The items on sale include Elizabeth Taylor’s golden couture pieces, Audrey Hepburn’s ivory lace gown, the Duchess of Windsor’s patent leather handbag, and an early Gabrielle Chanel flapper dress, in beige crepe de chine, dating from 1920. The estimate for the latter is upwards of £6000 pounds, giving weight to the overused phrase, ‘investment dressing’, not that the lucky buyer is likely to wear such a valuable museum piece. Eurobonds or couture originals? If I had any money to invest, I know which I’d prefer…

I've been walking...

2011-11-18T10:01:00.000-08:00

... and enjoying the autumn colours and mists. Since my last post, I've re-discovered the joy of St James' park (the ducks and swans; the great swathes of green hidden in the middle of the city), and got lost in Westminster (I thought I knew the streets of central London so well that I'd never lose my bearings again, and then all of a sudden, I was foxed by a maze of side streets between Victoria station and the back of Buckingham Palace). Up in Scotland last week, the leaves were still vivid, though falling fast, and in Berlin the day before yesterday, they were swirling across no-man-land...
My head is still reeling from my first ever trip to Germany (to Berlin and Hamburg, for the new German edition of Chanel), but my feet have kept me grounded, even on those journeys where I have lost my sense of direction, and then returned me to more familiar territory...

Bibliotherapy: What to read when the clocks go back...

2011-11-01T10:59:00.000-07:00

Try as I might to be a rational stoic, my heart sinks when the clocks go back, and autumn turns to winter. It's not cold outside -- rather unseasonably mild, as it happens -- but I still dread the encroaching darkness. So, time to return to The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken, which was first published in 1963, but remains as gripping as the day when I discovered it as a child (the Puffin edition in the late 60s -- do you remember the days of the Puffin Club, when a paperback cost 2 shillings and sixpence?).
If Bonnie and Sylvia can defeat the evil Miss Slighcarp -- and outrun the wolves that inhabit this alternate history of England, where King James III acceded to the throne in 1832 -- then I, too, can face up to the black shadows of winter.
Here is the opening paragraph: be of good cheer...

'It was dusk -- winter dusk. Snow lay white and shining over the pleated hills, and icicles hung from the forest trees. Snow lay piled on the dark road across Willoughby Wold, but from dawn men had been clearing it with brooms and shovels. There were hundreds of them at work, wrapped in sacking because of the bitter cold, and keeping together in groups for fear of the wolves, grown savage and reckless from hunger.'

A walk around Tillypronie

2011-10-26T05:27:00.001-07:00

Up in the Highlands last weekend, and around every corner was a blaze of glorious autumn colour. The rose garden was still filled with pink petals, and the Michaelmas daisies blooming in the borders, alongside the rose hips and hawthorn berries. The acer leaves seemed even more vivid than I've seen anywhere else before, and the heathers brighter than August (the last time I was at Tillypronie). I walked through long grasses on the hill, and jumped over a burn, then climbed breathless across heather, and down into the woods. All was quiet, as if in a silent dream, even the roe deer, standing motionless as statues, waiting for me to pass, and then leaping up, disappearing towards the skyline...

Keep reading...

2011-10-25T14:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a piece I wrote for Saturday's Telegraph on the latest wave of Chanel biographies... the picture (above) is by a wonderful photographer, Shahrokh Hatami, one of the few to come close to capturing Chanel...

Given that five was Coco Chanel’s lucky number – not least because she saw it as synonymous with her best-selling perfume – she might have been pleased, as well as amused, to see that she is the subject of a quintet of new books this autumn. As the author of a previous biography of Chanel, I should, perhaps, be dismayed at the arrival of competitors. I’d like to think that mine is the only book required by those in search of the truth about Chanel; but one of the many mysteries of Chanel – the most elusive of women – is that people seem always to want more of her, rather than less (which is itself an intriguing conundrum, given her legacy of streamlined modernism, in sartorial matters, if nothing else).

Of the various stories told about Coco Chanel – born Gabrielle, misidentified as Chasnel, the illegitimate daughter of an itinerant market trader, in a provincial French poorhouse in 1883 – a great number were invented by herself. These legends were to be the undoing of the earliest of her biographies (ghosted memoirs commissioned by Mademoiselle Chanel, but never completed or published, always smothered by her at birth when she realized that the truth was less compelling, at least to her, than the self-invented creation myth). They also permeate the recollections published after her death in 1971, including ‘L’Allure de Chanel’ by her friend Paul Morand, which repeats the fairytale that she was raised by aunts, in the wake of her mother’s death. In fact (not that facts are readily available to those seeking uncover the realities of her childhood), Chanel had been abandoned by her father, along with her two sisters, in an orphanage run by nuns at Aubazine, a medieval Cistercian abbey in an isolated region of Corrèze. From these remote beginnings, via a shadowy period as seamstress, shop-girl, music-hall singer and mistress, Chanel made her way to Paris, and fame.

The fairytale remains sufficiently compelling for writers, as well as readers, to wish to make it their own; a myriad reinterpretations and variations, all of them woven out of Chanel’s raw material. Given the afterlife of her classic designs that still prevail in her own (now globally recognized) label, not to mention all the other brands, we should not be surprised; simply consider the lasting appeal and reinvention of her little black dresses, soft tweed jackets, chain straps on quilted handbags, stripy tops, pearls, camellias. Each of these can be linked to Chanel’s past: black as the colour of mourning, remade into a symbol of female independence; pearls akin to the rosary beads of the nuns that taught her to pray, and to sew; chains like the ones worn around their waists; white camellias in recognition of La Dame aux Camellias, the archetypal courtesan who died of consumption (as did her mother); tweed from the sporting garb of her lover, the Duke of Westminster; sailor stripes and trousers from her Riviera escapades.

So far this season, I have been reading these five new books, in between marvelling at the way Chanel’s language of fashion continues to shape the latest collections (just look at the Jazz Age dresses and Coco white collars atop black sweaters). Two are by serious academics: Amy de la Haye’s ‘Chanel: Couture and Industry’ (V&A Publishing) and Linda Simon’s ‘Coco Chanel’ (one of the Critical Lives series published by Reaktion); the author of the former is a professor at the London College of Fashion, the latter an English professor in New York, and both are an indication of the central status that Chanel occupies in the history and culture of the 20th century.

As for the others – Hal Vaughan’s headline grabbing account that depicts Chanel as a Nazi agent, Lisa Chaney’s ‘An Intimate Life’, and Isabelle Fiemeyer’s ‘Intimate Chanel’ – well, where to begin? I am not convinced by Vaughan’s interpretation of Intelligence sources (we have both spent much time researching military archives, but draw differing conclusions; my own view about Chanel’s wartime activities is somewhat less sensational than his, although I hope more subtle and nuanced). Of the two biographies that promise intimate truths, Chaney’s text is undeniably thorough, but Fiemeyer has the distinct advantage of having collaborated with Chanel’s closest surviving relative, her great niece Gabrielle Palasse-Labrunie, who knew her well.

Gabrielle the younger, born in 1926 (and rumoured by some to have been Chanel’s granddaughter; her father, Andre Palasse, officially Chanel’s nephew, was certainly as close as a son -- of which more in my book) was enormously helpful to me in my researches, and her memories and inheritance are displayed again here. The unhappiness of Chanel’s past is made clear – both of Coco’s sisters committed suicide, according to Madame Labrunie – but perhaps most intriguing of all are the photographs of the talismans that Chanel held most dear. If her life and work was shaped by magical signs and symbols (numerology, tarot, with the dead always close at hand), then some of her esotericism was passed on by her first great love, Boy Capel, as is evident in his handwritten notebook that she treasured after his death in a car-crash in 1919. This contains fragments from sacred texts – including theosophy, alchemy, Masonic secrets – and provides an intriguing context to Chanel’s jewellery collection, including the Egyptian medallion that she wore constantly and the child’s ring with which she was buried.

But in the end, however closely we may study these and other precious objects – and I wrote several chapters of my book surrounded by some of them, working at Chanel’s own desk in her private apartment – no one can ever fully possess Chanel, although she continues in her remarkable possession of us…

Daphne: The Guardian Reading Group discussion

2011-10-24T03:07:00.001-07:00

I'll be online from 1 until 2pm today as part of the Guardian's Du Maurier discussion... Hope to chat to some of you there.

Autumn roses...

2011-10-20T14:29:00.000-07:00

The temperature has dropped, but the sky is still blue over my garden, and I've been admiring the late flowers, whilst also giving the honeysuckle a gentle trim (its blossom is long gone, and the highest branches are looking bare and spindly). Every so often, the wind whips fast, and the last petals are blown away, quicker than I can capture them on camera (which makes me wonder if one should ever try to catch a rose), but then I notice another rosebud, on the verge of opening...
So I'm not feeling as apocalyptic as Emily Dickinson, but couldn't resist the temptation to quote her poetry (again).

The name—of it—is "Autumn"—
The hue—of it—is Blood—
An Artery—upon the Hill—
A Vein—along the Road—

Great Globules—in the Alleys—
And Oh, the Shower of Stain—
When Winds—upset the Basin—
And spill the Scarlet Rain—

It sprinkles Bonnets—far below—
It gathers ruddy Pools—
Then—eddies like a Rose—away—
Upon Vermilion Wheels—

Rediscovering Daphne

2011-10-12T14:05:00.000-07:00

Thanks to some thoughtful questions from Savidge Reads and Novel Insights, I've been absorbed in Du Maurier again. Excellent questions from Simon and Polly, and good to read along with their 'Discovering Daphne' blogs. They've taken me back to Menabilly again (and its ghosts, and mine), and from there down the track and through the tree to that cottage in the woods...

And next to Norwich...

2011-10-09T03:10:00.000-07:00

... where I am speaking on Tuesday at the Jarrolds Literary Lunch, alongside the distinguished Robert Shirley, 13th Earl Ferrers, and Susan Hill (whose writing is amongst the very best of contemporary authors; her brilliant ghost stories haunt me still -- they're as good as MR James or Daphne du Maurier. Her novel, 'In the Springtime of the Year' is also close to hand on my bookshelf, ever since I read it after my sister's death). Very pleased to be going to Jarrolds, an excellent department store that first opened in 1820 as a bookseller and lending library (for more about Jarrolds and other independents, read the Guardian guide here). Rather thrillingly, lunch is being held at Delia Smith's restaurant on the top floor of her Norwich City Football Club. Regular readers of this blog will know that I consider Delia's apple crumble recipe to be the best ever. And I'm also feeling inclined to try her autumn lamb recipe, now that it's colder outside...
PS. Later today. Inspired by Delia to have a baking afternoon: have made lemon cheesecake and a very dark gingerbread. The latter is my own recipe, adapted over the years, so I have no one to blame but myself if it isn't sufficiently gooey (I use black treacle, crystallised ginger, and spelt flour). If the lemon cheesecake works, then I'll post the recipe tomorrow; it has to be refrigerated overnight after baking, so the test will be in the tasting...
PPS. Just had the first slice of cheesecake -- delicious. Here is the recipe. I added far more lemon juice than suggested (the juice of two lemons, rather than a teaspoonful, as I like a properly lemony flavour; I also doubled the quantities for the biscuit base -- 85g of digestives, plus 85g ginger biscuits -- and substituted 150 grams of Greek yoghurt and 150 grams of half-fat creme fraiche for 300 grams of Philadelphia cheese, because I already had them in the fridge; in other words:
300g light soft cheese.
150g Greek yoghurt.
150g half-fat creme fraiche
175g golden caster sugar
3 tbsp cornflour
1½ tsp finely grated lemon zest
Juice from two lemons
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 eggs , room temperature, beaten
150g fromage frais

My cheesecake took twice as long to cook at the low temperature than in the recipe, but then everyone's oven is different... you'll know by the slight wobble!

Paris diary...

2011-10-09T02:06:00.000-07:00

A brief, yet magical trip to Paris on Tuesday for the Chanel spring/summer 2012 show, which I loved. (Both the collection, and Paris.) Firstly, apologies for the dismal qualities of the pictures, which do no justice to the glorious scenes I saw; but I thought better to have snapshots than nothing at all. (For more professional pictures, look at style.com). This is what I loved most:
1. The pearls in the Chanel show; taken back to their underwater origins, as shimmering leit-motifs in the pale dreamscape of the vast Grand Palais. Pearls are, of course, as essential to the Chanel iconography as the little black dress (indeed, they are the clues to Gabrielle's childhood in the convent at Aubazine, where the nuns' rosaries look like the religious originals of the ropes of pearls that were to become an integral element of her codes as a couturiere). In Lagerfeld's hands, they were scattered through the models' hair, dotted in a graceful line descending from their necks, threaded into belts and buttons, embellishing bags and dresses and cardigans.
2. Place Vendome on a balmy evening in October; the last warm breath of a late Indian summer. Walking across the cobbles to the Ritz, and looking up in the darkness to the suite on the top floor, where Chanel lived in the 1930s -- imagining the nights when she entertained the Duke of Westminster, Winston Churchill, Dali, Picasso, et al. Wondering who slept there now, in the grandeur of the Coco Chanel suite...
3. Following Mademoiselle's footsteps to the discreet lift at the back of the Ritz, beside the Rue Cambon entrance, and up to the sixth floor, to the smaller room where she slept for three decades, until her death in January 1971. Stepping into that room, not for the first time, but perhaps for the last; savouring the moment, wanting it to last forever, yet knowing that nothing lasts, but it can evolve and change into something even more unexpected. Waiting for the next chapter to unfold...

Flying across Arizona

2011-09-26T13:38:00.001-07:00

Back in the air again, and high above the mountains and deserts of Arizona. It's such a big country; stating the obvious, I know, but the horizon just seems to stretch forever. I feel as if I've traveled so far in the last nine days -- London to New York, Boston, LA, and now onwards to Texas -- but when I'm in the sky, I realise what tiny inroads I've made, not even scratching the surface of this vast place.
I've never been to Dallas before, and am therefore intrigued: so far, I associate it only with the memory of screen or print images from my childhood. Speaking of screen associations, I still feel thrilled about driving along Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, and Laurel Canyon. When I get back home, I'm planning to watch one of my favourite films yet again: Chinatown. Just think of the clothes, let alone the unforgettable landscape of an imaginary past...
And then it will be time to re-read The Great Gatsby.

Chanel in Beverly Hills

2011-09-24T10:37:00.000-07:00

Up on the rooftop at the Chanel boutique in Beverly Hills yesterday afternoon, where the sky was blue and the conversation intriguing. There I met the Costume Council from the Los Angeles Museum of Art, and we talked about Coco Chanel's visit to Hollywood in 1931, and a vault where her original black dress is still kept in another Californian archive. Guess where I want to go next? Phone calls were made on my behalf, so here's hoping.
I also asked these wonderfully well-connected women to see if they could find out what happened to the long-lost Chanel costumes that were designed for Gloria Swanson in Tonight or Never; those, and Chanel's other couture originals commissioned by Samuel Goldwyn for his Hollywood productions in the early 30s.
You never know, a little sprinkling of old-school Hollywood magic may fall from the sky before I go...
PS. More to come about the conversation with Liz Goldwyn at Soho House on Thursday evening.

In the sky above California

2011-09-22T09:39:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this on a flight from Boston to LA, feeling somewhat dizzy from the last few days. New York was amazing, as always. I met so many interesting people, talked endlessly about life and love, through the prism of Chanel, and then arrived briefly in Boston yesterday, where I spoke at the Boston Public Library. What a magnificent place it is; murals by John Singer Sergeant, and 19th century architecture at its most splendid. There I encountered an astonishingly chic 82 year old woman, who looked as alluring as Mademoiselle Chanel herself.
Not sleeping very much -- a combination of jet-lag and nervous energy and different hotel rooms -- but it all feels part of the journey of discovery that Gabrielle Chanel sent me on, many moons ago. Thus moonshine and darkness a necessary element of the voyage...

Coco in New York

2011-09-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a deep breath, before setting off for the US on Sunday (directly to the airport from Blenheim). If any of you live in New York, or have friends thereabouts, then a quick note for the diary: I am talking at Barnes & Noble at the Fashion Institute of Technology on Tuesday Sept. 20th at 5:00pm:
Barnes & Noble at FIT
227 W. 27th St.
New York, NY 10001

There's also a chance to get one of the v. chic Lagerfeld limited edition book bags here.

It's 80 years since Chanel went to New York -- she sailed there in 1931, and stayed at the Hotel Pierre, while recovering from a bout of 'grippe'. Fingers crossed that I am fitter for FiT.

Coco at Blenheim Palace: the Independent Woodstock Literary Festival

2011-09-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

All went well in Hampstead on Monday -- thanks to everyone who came (and I have been musing over the connections between Chanel and Wallis Simpson since then). Feeling feeble after a subsequent trip to hospital (nothing too serious, but groggy after a general anaesthetic), though the sunshine was warm enough this morning for me to sit outside in the garden reading the Ham & High.
Anyway, I'm going to be speaking again at 10.30am on Sunday morning in the Marlborough Room at Blenheim Palace, as part of the Woodstock Literary Festival. It should be the perfect setting to discuss Chanel's relationship with Winston Churchill (he was born there in 1874, and proposed in the Blenheim gardens to his future wife, Clementine). Which reminds me, have you heard the anecdote about Churchill's response to a question about the circumstances of his birth? Apparently, when asked whether his mother, Lady Randolph, had been dancing at a ball in the Long Library or out with a shooting-party in the park, he replied, 'Although present on that occasion, I have no clear recollection of the events leading up to it.'
I was lucky enough to go to Blenheim earlier this year, whilst researching the story of Christian Dior's fashion show there in 1954, and it is the most incredible place -- the vast scale is staggering, yet its myriad details the catalysts for an infinite number of stories.
But on Sunday I'll be keeping to the many-layered tale of Chanel and Churchill -- with several new elements, I promise...

Hampstead & Highgate Literary Festival

2011-09-09T08:05:00.001-07:00

I'm going to be talking on a panel at 12.30pm on Monday 12th September about Heroes and Villains, alongside Anne Sebba, Daisy Waugh, Christopher Stevens, and Melissa Katsoulis (who should win a prize for the cleverest book cover, don't you think?). The conversation will doubtless range between Coco Chanel, Wallis Simpson, Rudolph Valentino, and much else besides. Hopefully, there will be an audience, because last time I appeared at the Ham & High festival, a couple of years ago, with my lovely friend Judy Summers, there were less than a dozen people in the audience, and most of them were Judy's family (though my oldest son also came, loyally...) I seem to remember she had a very successful book in the bestseller lists at the time, but we both felt like complete losers and festival failures (worsened by the fact that we are north London locals born and bred; though perhaps failure is good for the soul in these and other circumstances).
On the bright side, I'm looking forward to meeting such a distinguished list of panelists, and hoping that they bring oodles of fans with them.

Mission accomplished

2011-09-08T14:44:00.000-07:00

I failed to make it to Fashion's Night Out in Bond Street (apologies to Dior, Coach, Vogue, etc, though of course everyone got on just fine without me), but achieved a Big Night In instead. Managed to finish my scary deadlines for the Telegraph (phew), and then made dinner in time to watch Star Trek (the movie) with my son. The homemade gravy was good, the sausages a bit pallid (have they changed the recipe at M&S?),the peas as you would expect, and the crumble excellent (ah, the glamour...). I used Delia's recipe, with a few adaptations: oats instead of flour, and a scattering of golden linseed mixed in with the almonds (to convince myself that the second helping of crumble is a healthy option).
For Enid: I have been reading Patrick Lichfield's autobiography, although this is work-related, rather than a literary diversion (but his story turns out to be diverting, nevertheless).
Oh dear, this is a very mundane blog, but I did go out to the Chanel installation at Harrods on Monday evening (yes, in a dress and lipstick and everything). Help, am I lurching towards pathetic bathetic fallacy?

Tillypronie tree stump

2011-09-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

Autumn in London, and my late summer roses were blown down by yesterday's gales. Turned on the central heating this evening for the first time in ages; no open fires here in Crouch End, but there will be when next I go to Scotland.
Tomorrow I will cook sausages with onion gravy, baked potatoes and peas, and apple crumble made with the fruit from my generous next-door-neighbour's tree. Falling leaves are amassing in the pavement outside, and autumn is truly in the air, gusting through the beeches.

Farewell to summer

2011-09-04T14:38:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the long silence -- I returned to London from Scotland after the Bank Holiday weekend, and have been trying, and failing, to catch up ever since. The photographs (above) were taken on one of the loveliest days in August, on an almost empty Scottish beach -- Lunan Bay in Angus -- where the sea stretches forever into the sky. It already seems a long time ago, walking along the sands, looking out for white feathers, and gathering tiny pebbles that look like gemstones, washed smooth by the waves.
Home again, and blessed by a warm afternoon in the garden yesterday, dead-heading roses, planting spring bulbs (daffodils, snow-drops, grape-hyacinths) and trimming the lavender. The new school term is already underway, and September feels like a beginning, as well as an ending, as always...

Chanel confidential

2011-08-21T11:19:00.000-07:00

Here is the interview on Radio 4's Today programme that I did on Friday morning with Hal Vaughan, the author of 'Sleeping with the Enemy'; or try this link, to listen again. There is so much to say on the subject of Chanel's time in Occupied Paris during the Second World War -- hence the fact that I devoted several chapters in my book to those years -- and of course, it's impossible to cover all of that in a five minute radio slot, though I was very glad that the interviewer was the excellent Evan Davis (never condescending, whilst also assured).
There is much that I find interesting in Vaughan's book, although we may not agree on the conclusive significance of certain intelligence archives, and it's slightly unfair of him to say that no one has written about her war-time activities before (I have, and so have many others, including Pierre Galante, a former French intelligence officer, editor of Paris Match, and ex-husband of Olivia de Havilland). As it happens, I think it's ungracious to dismiss other writers who are absorbed in the same subject matter: we have all shared similar obsessions, sought out hidden mysteries, tried to piece together untold stories. If Chanel's life was composed of a series of secrets, then it is also open to many interpretations. As a writer, I remain fascinated by how many different versions of the truth can be composed -- whether in private family histories or sweeping historical narratives -- and the fierce debate that surrounds these varying narratives. I suppose that is in part the theme of 'Daphne' (which engages with Du Maurier's own researches into the enigmatic Brontes), and it also underpins my biography of Chanel.
More books about Chanel are coming this autumn: I'm looking forward to reading the next one, 'Intimate Chanel' by Isabelle Fiemeyer. Until then, I'm still thinking about Chanel, wondering about her motives, whilst always -- always -- interrogating my own...

And now for something completely different: hurrah for the Tarland Show

2011-08-14T07:50:00.000-07:00

The sun came out in Aberdeenshire yesterday, after a good deal of rain, just in time for the festivities in Tarland, which hosted prizewinning sheep and Highland ponies; Scottish dancing and homemade jams. I was impressed by the grace of the leaping dancers; but expended rather less energy myself, aside from rushing across the field to buy two pots of delicious blackcurrant jam, an excellent Victoria sponge, and a hand-knitted baby's bonnet from the church stall; before a peaceful afternoon admiring the entries in the flower and vegetable show. Despite a month of mostly grey skies, there were scented sweet-peas and roses, glorious dahlias and ripe tomatoes. Lots of prizes won by competitors great and small: from six year olds to grandfathers, and a good time had by all. Nothing could have been more heartwarming and inspiring; thank you, Tarland...

Hard Times

2011-08-10T03:42:00.000-07:00

Like everyone else, I have been watching in horror as the events of the past four days unfolded -- seeing the violence filtered through the lens of computer screen, iphone, twitter, 24 hour news channels -- and it has been truly shocking. Those words may have lost their power, given the endless repetition of outrage by politicians, public commentators, police officers, onlookers, many apparently powerless to protect the victims of these crimes -- yet what else can one say? This is brutal, terrible, shaming... but the one thing it is not is 'pure and simple', or to quote David Cameron more precisely (and precision is important, when everything else seems so uncertain): 'criminality, pure and simple'.
The riots and looting are, amongst very many other things, a reminder of the dark places that co-exist with the images of stability portrayed by the Royal Wedding; for I could not help but think back to the crowds that gathered in the spring sunlight to cheer a girl in a white fairytale dress, as a counterpoint to those that have swarmed through city streets looking for trouble and shiny new trainers. If British society is partly defined by its visual representation, then we are a nation that still incorporates a love of ceremonial tradition, as well as containing (or, as of now, failing to contain) the capacity to riot and destroy and desecrate, whilst also consuming.
'To consume': what does that mean to you this morning? It makes me think of the fires that burnt out of control in Croydon on Monday night; the dread that I felt in the early hours of the morning about what has just happened and what might come next; and of the looters as rapacious consumers who can take whatever they choose. Maybe this seems irrelevant, but it's been hard to ignore the details of what was stolen: wedding dresses ransacked in Peckham; looters trying on clothes at H&M, while one brave woman in Hackney shouted out against the rioters: 'We're not all gathering together for a cause, we're running down Foot Locker and thieving shoes!' And listen to this report from Nick Ravenscroft reporting for the BBC in Manchester, when looters in balaclavas ('I've got a blue one, he's got a purple one') express their sense of entitlement about stealing the clothes they want: 'Why would you miss the opportunity to get free stuff that's worth loads of money?'
Nothing I've heard so far from the Prime Minister sounds convincing; but as Matthew Norman points out in the Independent today, this may be Cameron's Hurricane Katrina. (It's also worth reading Camila Batmanghelidjh, who has actually engaged with the children that others would prefer to depict as feral rats.)
Certainly, the last 48 hours have felt like a perfect storm: a wave of riots dragging down an already plunging economy, combined with the sucking undercurrent of a loss of trust in politicians and police chiefs after the phone hacking scandals (where is their moral compass?). Not that these provide an explanation for the riots; nor could they. As anyone knows who lives in a sprawling city, there have always been threatening streets to avoid, wherein lie desperate lives; and for innumerable different reasons -- a toxic, indefinable poison of envy, criminality, deprivation, neglect, and much else besides -- we are witnessing violence spilling out of the darkness. Something wicked this way comes... But how are we to respond?

Is anyone coming to Belladrum?

2011-08-05T06:55:00.000-07:00

I'm just about to make my way northwards to the Belladrum Festival in Inverness. It's a music festival in a very beautiful part of the Scottish Highlands, and this is the first year they're having a literary stage (or maybe it's a garden?). All I know is that I'm on there between 4pm and 5pm tomorrow (Saturday 6th) in a place called the Prose Garden; not quite sure how flowery it will be, but I can promise lots of stories and pictures about Coco Chanel's adventures in the Highlands.

In the flower tent at Port Eliot

2011-07-31T13:54:00.000-07:00

I loved the white bunting and the stage edged with box hedges. Other highlights of the weekend: talking to Tom Shone about the heartlessness of Trainspotting; admiring Stephen Jones' pinstripe suit; the literary pub quiz (our team came third, but we felt unfairly marked down on the Harry Potter section, despite excellent contributions from Hanif Kureishi and Alex Bellos); meeting Kate Winslet in the fish tent; discussing Daphne du Maurier in Cornwall, and remembering why she is unforgettable; drinking a long glass of Sipsmith gin and tonic, as the sun went down over the walled garden; walking through the woods to the quiet river at Pentillie Castle on Sunday morning... Who could ask for anything more?

Dove Grey Reader at Port Eliot

2011-07-31T13:45:00.000-07:00

Lynne's tent was just as you would imagine it: cups of tea and good conversation about books; knitting needles, embroidery, and the most beautiful quilts. Long may she reign...
Oh, and Daisy Goodwin's talk was excellent -- and so is her book, My Last Duchess.

Guess which one is Kate Winslet's tent at Port Eliot?

2011-07-31T13:41:00.000-07:00

And who could ask for a lovelier view?

With Michael Howells at Port Eliot

2011-07-31T13:36:00.001-07:00

Michael is the creator of the flower tent at the festival, and much else besides.

In the Orangery at Port Eliot

2011-07-31T13:33:00.001-07:00

Stephen Jones was one of the esteemed judges of the flower show; and don't you love his hat? A man of many talents, he also revealed how to bake a gingerbread hat in the Port Eliot kitchen, with the help of the Marchioness of Lansdowne. Sadly, I didn't get a bite...

Struggling with firefox and blogger

2011-07-30T15:24:00.001-07:00

Arggh! Hence the lack of Port Eliot pictures thus far. Will return to the battle tomorrow...

And the bride wore...

2011-07-30T15:24:00.000-07:00

Cynics may sigh, and think, not another wedding; but I found myself unexpectedly beguiled. Here's the piece I wrote this afternoon for the Telegraph. Or you can read it here (see below). The one thing I didn't mention in the Telegraph, which I should have done, was Jackie Stewart's kilt and matching tie and knee socks. Mea culpa...

For a woman once dubbed a ‘wild child’, Zara Phillips looked wonderfully grownup at her wedding, in an ivory gown designed by her grandmother’s favourite couturier, Stewart Parvin. The bridal dress was as modest and appropriate as you would expect from such a safe pair of hands: full-skirted in silk faille and duchess satin, with a chevron pleated corseted bodice, and a fine tulle veil. Which is not to say it was boring: Parvin, who studied fashion at the Edinburgh College of Art, is an impeccable tailor who knows royal protocol inside out, combined with a flair for elegant understatement. ‘He’s been a bit of an unsung hero in British fashion until now,’ says Paula Reed, the style director of Grazia, ‘He can dress any body shape, and he’s brilliant at sculpting fabric, so he’s been able to come up with a design for Zara that works with her natural athleticism, while also having a fairy tale femininity.’

The bride’s splendid diamond tiara was lent by her mother, the Princess Royal (another nod to royal tradition), yet for all the jewels, the wedding at Canongate Kirk was a comparatively unshowy affair, with none of the pomp and pageantry of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding. The groom, Mike Tindall, was every inch the England rugby player in his bespoke morning suit (tailored by a company called Cad and the Dandy, though rather more restrained than the name might suggest), with his best man and ushers in matching outfits striding into the church like a British Ocean’s 11. But any possibility of the newly weds being upstaged by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge was carefully avoided, not least because Kate was in a previously-seen outfit, a muted pale gold coat dress by Jane Troughton, already worn for the wedding of Laura Parker Bowles to Harry Lopes in 2006. (Surely no coincidence, then, that the Duchess of Cambridge also chose a recycled dress for the pre-wedding party on the royal yacht Britannia: her demure green knee-length frock by Diane von Furstenberg that had appeared on her tour of Los Angeles earlier this month).

Even Zara’s cousins, the Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, looked reasonably uncontroversial; Beatrice in turquoise and a matching hat that was flamboyant, but nothing like as mad as her giant pretzel-shaped headgear for the previous royal nuptials; Eugenie in cream and chocolate brown with another rakishly angled hat (what is it with these peculiar sideways affairs? Is it code for saying, we may be royal, but we are still fun-loving chicks? Or is it a subliminal right-leaning message?). The Queen, as always, was in a perfectly judged outfit: apricot pink by Stewart Parvin, with a matching hat that was firmly centred on her level head. Parvin also dressed the Maid of Honour, Dolly Maude, in a dove grey knee length duchess satin dress, which did not draw attention to itself with quite the same vigour as Pippa Middleton’s bridesmaid gown at Westminster Abbey.

As for the mother of the bride: Princess Anne dressed with her characteristic disregard for modern fashion in a pleated coral skirt and floral vintage-looking jacket, which was oddly cheering; as was Camilla’s exuberantly sprouting floral and feathery headpiece. All in all, an apparently jolly gathering of family and friends in the Scottish sunshine, that will do much to enhance this year’s freshened appearance of the steady Royal firm.

Packing for Port Eliot

2011-07-22T06:17:00.001-07:00

See you there tomorrow, I hope... Don't the camellias look lovely?

The book pile on my bedside table...

2011-07-21T02:52:00.000-07:00

... is growing to a teetering tower, with a box of kleenex on top (the flu is receding, but a runny nose remains). Some of the books are old favourites (Janet Flanner in Paris, Stella Gibbons in Nightgale Wood), others are recently finished, but I still want them close at hand (Sybille Bedford's Jigsaw), and Alan Hollingshurst is next on my list of must-reads.
This messy tableaux is entirely unedited or rearranged: you might be able to spot the Gap 2011 summer catalogue, which is lurking there too, along with Boots no.7 Protect and Preserve and Lancome SPF15 face cream. Speaking of sun protection, my fingers are crossed for a sunny weekend, as I'm on my way to the Port Eliot festival tomorrow. I'll be talking about Chanel and camellias in the Flower Tent at 2.30pm on Saturday afternoon, and everyone who buys a copy of my book will get a very exciting surprise; sshhh, but I'll be arriving with several boxes of Chanel white fabric camellias, all the way from Paris. (A kind of coming-home present from me to you in Cornwall, in honour of Daphne du Maurier, as well as Coco Chanel).
All this and more will also be discussed at 11am on Saturday morning, when I join Dovegreyreader in her Port Eliot tent in the Walled Garden. See you there, I hope; in person or in spirit...

Daunt Books on Tuesday evening

2011-07-17T09:52:00.000-07:00

I'm off to Marylebone High Street very soon, for an evening at Daunt Books on Tuesday 19th July, where I'll be talking to my friend and editor Anna Murphy from the Sunday Telegraph. I really hope some of you can come and join in the conversation. There will be wine, and fingers crossed, my cough will have finally gone by then (though I now have a new and unsightly symptom to be rid of, red and sticky eyes).
PS. Have discovered the curative wonders of camomile tea-bags applied to aforementioned eyes. Ah, the glamour! I'll be the woman with the tea-stains on her face tomorrow...

Rebekah by Daphne du Maurier

2011-07-16T10:23:00.000-07:00

There is so much revelation in the newspapers today -- evidence, amongst other things, that journalism isn't dead, whatever its sins -- but I'd also very much like to read Daphne du Maurier on Rebecca Brooks. I know I've already cited Evelyn Waugh as the ideal correspondent on the phone-hacking scandal, but Du Maurier would be brilliant on Rebekah. As with the eponymous (albeit dead and elusive) heroine of 'Rebecca', and the compellingly unknowable woman at the heart of 'My Cousin Rachel', the modern Rebekah is morally ambiguous, yet far more intriguing than the shadowy men around her. Transgressive, powerful, beautiful, clever, yet ultimately felled in the narrative, Rebekah/Rachel/Rebecca remains the character that the reader (well, me, at least) can't help but want to escape from the claws of conventional retribution and punishment.
As for the plot of the real-life Rebekah: well, it's as taut as any by Du Maurier (or indeed her forebears, the Brontes). The girl who rose from an apparently ordinary upbringing, outshining her male colleagues, winning favour from a patriarch who grew to love her as dearly as his own children, thereby drawing jealousy upon her, as well as patronage. If Elisabeth Murdoch is to replace Rebekah as favoured daughter (however close the ties of friendship and insider knowledge that once bound them together), then the plot will only thicken; almost certainly with as many twists as the best of Du Maurier's stories (Jamaica Inn, Rebecca, The Birds) when they were translated onto the screen by Alfred Hitchcock. All we need now is a Mrs Danvers figure to emerge out of the shadows... Suggestions, anyone, please?

Ways with Words: from the Dartington Hall gardens

2011-07-14T10:39:00.000-07:00

It feels like the sky is falling down this week in London. I've still got a bronchial bug -- a chest infection as the lingering after-effects of vile flu virus -- and have finally admitted defeat, and retreated to bed (doctor's orders, with strict admonition about incipient pneumonia). But hacking cough is as nothing compared to phone hacking scandal, which seems to have reached a tipping point. The Murdochs summoned to Parliament, the Guardian at war with the Prime Minister on who is telling the truth about the warnings issued over Andy Coulson, and the whys and wherefores of Cameron's friendship with Rebekah Brooks ... I veer between rage and disbelief and consuming obsession about the details of this vastly significant narrative.
Aside from all of that -- if it can be put aside, which I doubt -- I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who came to see me at Ways with Words in Dartington (and apologies to those who queued for books, only to discover that Waterstones had sold out). The gardens at Dartington were as beautiful as ever; a serene, green oasis in what sometimes looks like an ugly world. Actually, the world still seems beautiful to me... more so, even, when it surrounds such hue and cry...

The Blenheim Set

2011-07-07T10:38:00.001-07:00

In between coughing and spluttering, my head full of cold is nevertheless gripped by the ongoing saga of the latest British scandal. The most coruscating account so far is by Peter Oborne in the Telegraph, but don't you wish that Evelyn Waugh could also deliver his fictional verdict on the affair?
Oborne has dubbed the contemporary players the Chipping Norton set, though a novelist might prefer The Blenheim Set as a title, given that the key protagonists have had various connections with that beautiful palace. Scene one: the wedding of Matthew Freud and Elisabeth Murdoch at the private chapel in Blenheim, a decade ago. Scene two: the gathering, via private jet, on a yacht in the Aegean Sea, of the new scions of influence and power, alongside the ancien regime. Scene three: another Oxfordshire wedding, in 2009, this time in the village of Churchill; the radiant bride Rebekah Wade, marrying David Cameron's old Etonian friend, Charlie Brooks. The nuptials appear in Vanity Fair; more details for the Waugh-to-be novelist can be found here in the Independent. Other potential characters in the cast: David Ross, another friend of Cameron's; and equally glittering tycoons, socialites and eminent party people, some of whom gathered to celebrate in an Oxfordshire garden last weekend.
Please feel free to add further layers, plot twists, and notes on a scandal... There is much gossip circulating about sex and drugs and skeletons toppling out of dark and rotten cupboards, though none of these yet proven (the rumours, that is; the skeletons are always rattling for those who inhabit high places, as for the rest of us; the risk of rattles possibly being one of the reasons that work to keep everyone quiet). I tend not to believe in conspiracy theories, but I'm still waiting to hear more details on so many unanswered questions: who was on the guest list at George Osborne's 40th birthday party last month? Will Hugh Grant play himself, or the prime minister, when the movie is finally made? And could it be scripted by Richard Curtis (Matthew Freud's brother-in-law), along the lines of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' or 'Notting Hill' (two weddings so far in this potential script, and a funeral, after today's death of the News of the World, at the grand age of 168 years old)? If so, will the heroic Grant throw a punch at his former pr, clever Mr Freud (a man whose many skills include the art of match-making)? Actually, come to think of it, Grant has already come up with a very good plot line for the whole affair... If you haven't yet read his brilliant piece in the New Statesman -- commissioned by his ex-girlfriend, Jemima Goldsmith (whose house, if not her heart, is at the centre of the Blenheim landscape) -- do read it now. You couldn't make it up...

Ways with Words literary festival: Devon beckons...

2011-07-03T04:55:00.000-07:00

This time next week, I'll be at Dartington Hall in Devon, for the Telegraph Ways With Words festival -- which is turning 20 this year (happy birthday, and hip hip hurrah!). Dartington is a magical setting for one of my favourite festivals -- the architecture and gardens of the Hall are reason enough to visit, quite aside from the extraordinary range of speakers, all drawn to Devon by the charismatic festival director, Kay Dunbar. I'm talking at 4pm on Sunday 10th July, and very much hope to see you there. I'm also going to organise a very special prize for one lucky winner at Dartington who buys the new paperback edition of my Chanel book; come to the book signing afterwards, and all will be revealed. Clue: it is authentic Chanel...

John Galliano and Kate Moss's wedding dress

2011-06-30T14:42:00.000-07:00

While having lunch today at the Berkeley hotel -- meeting very clever Sylvie Chantecaille -- who should be at the next table but John Galliano? He looked thin, serious, and sober -- drinking water, eating little, head down, but doubtless in town to finish the final touches to Kate Moss's wedding dress in time for tomorrow; of which more here...

Gather ye roses

2011-06-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

I feel so behind with everything, at the same time as moving forward. It was my birthday last week -- 50, which seems impossible, when I still feel the same inside -- and this has been a year of so many changes. There have been adventures, like my trip to the rose fields of Grasse last month, where I saw the harvest of May roses for Chanel No. 5, and renewed my acquaintance with Jacques Polge, the legendary Chanel nose who I'd already interviewed for my book. (He's the dashing gentleman in the hat in the photograph above; I'm the dorky one beside).
Since then, I've been rushing, rushing, rushing -- to the supermarket, away from deadlines, to the Hay Festival, back to the shops, to the dry-cleaners, late for the tube, to and from the school, on to the airport, over to Moscow and St Petersburg, back home, into the kitchen, head inside the dishwasher. None of this is a complaint -- at 50, I know how very lucky I am, and how much I love being at home, as well appreciating the wondrous journeys that Coco Chanel has sent me on.
But anyway, here I am in Crouch End again, deadheading the roses this afternoon, because it's already the end of June. Where did the month go, let alone the last year?
While catching my breath, I'm also trying to gather my thoughts -- the ones that bloom and then fade like petals -- and am venturing into the new territory of my next book. All of which makes it a good moment to post this poem by Robert Herrick, which I love, though in an entirely different way to when I first read it, decades ago, as a teenager. If I could meet my younger self now, I could not tell her to do anything differently -- for if I had tarried, my beloved sons would not have been born -- but I might also suggest that life need not end at 30, or 40, or 50. Of course, sometimes it does -- my sister Ruth died at the age of 33 -- and terrible things can befall us (divorce, death, the ordinary disasters of life that everyone shares). But when happiness appears, as if by magic, then enjoy it -- love life, seize its pleasures, yet also cherish its fragility with tenderness.

248. To the Virgins, to make much of Time

GATHER ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he 's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he 's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

A midsummer garden party

2011-06-22T12:12:00.000-07:00

From beyond the computer and into my back garden: welcome to Enid from Cape Town, Jaywalker from Tasmania, and Lilac in May from Marlow, plus friends (including Lazywell, who took the photographs with his customary panache). A good time was had by all: we ate gorgeous cupcakes from the Love Bakery, and a delicious homemade cake baked for the occasion by Lilac in May (if we're very lucky, she will post her recipe). The wind blew hard, but the rain held off -- so there we sat, discussing reading and writing; life and love and art, and the blurring of the lines between them. How sweet it was to meet the people that I have come to know on this blog -- to put faces to names, and to hear the voices that emerge from between the lines. We toasted absent friends -- all the other readers here, and elsewhere, and the connections between us -- and wished that Kairu could have magically appeared, as if from Narnia and into north London.
Here's to more summer days, and longer conversations; to friendship in all its forms, and a great many cakes.

From Russia, with love...

2011-06-20T15:34:00.000-07:00

Just returned, and my head is still spinning with a kaleidoscope of images from St Petersburg and Moscow. The white nights, Picasso and Rembrandt in the Hermitage, the reflections on the dark river; Cartier directly opposite Lenin's mausoleum in Red Square, the ancient icons within the Kremlin, the Faberge eggs and Imperial jewels in the Armoury; the seven towers that Stalin built, looming like Gotham City; the Madonnas and angels and other winged creatures that have survived, against so many threats...
But above all, the people: I met with such kindness and warmth, and felt the tug of threads that I had never known before; the curve of cheekbones that contained within them the lost faces of my Russian grandparents.
All of these just blurred snapshots, I know; impossible to do more than glimpse the tiniest fraction of such a vast nation, so many centuries of turbulence and tragedy and triumph... It seems presumptuous even to try, but still, I want to thank everyone who took the trouble to talk to me, and share their ideas and conversation, including the six-year-old boy who came to his first bookshop signing in Moscow, and sat through the hot evening, listening to a foreigner.
Now past midnight, and time for bed, at the end of my birthday. But instead of feeling my age, I am overcome with the wonderment of discovery, and of knowing how much more I want to know, and to explore...

The Bishop's Palace at St David's...

2011-06-08T10:18:00.000-07:00

If ever you find yourself in Wales, then do go westwards to Pembrokeshire. It's magical; the standing stones and Celtic crosses, the wild sea and the sheltered, ancient churches. There is the same feeling as being on the edge of things as in Du Maurier's Cornwall... those places where you sense the the veil between the past and the present becoming translucent.

A rainbow in my back garden...

2011-06-03T09:04:00.000-07:00

And a poem by Emily Dickinson.

The rainbow never tells me
That gust and storm are by,
Yet is she more convincing
Than Philosophy.

My flowers turn from Forums—
Yet eloquent declare
What Cato couldn't prove me
Except the birds were here!

A long way round to Hay

2011-05-30T03:29:00.000-07:00

Via Strumble Head in Pembrokeshire -- wild and windy and beautiful.

Getting ready for Hay...

2011-05-27T10:18:00.000-07:00

Very much hoping to meet some of you on Tuesday; whether bright and early at 9am, when I will be in the Oxfam tent with Hannah Rothschild, or at 10.30 in the Telegraph tent (more of an informal chat going on there), or at 2pm at How The Light Gets in, where I will be talking about the philosophy of fashion and art with Professor Ulrich Lehmann.
A confession: I'm feeling quite nervous -- will anyone come to see me (there's so much else going on at Hay), and what about the logistics of how to get where, and when, and so on and so forth. Anxiety dreams brewed last night, after the midnight thunderstorms.
Anyone got any good advice?

My internet connection is playing up...

2011-05-22T14:30:00.000-07:00

So am having to write this very fast, in the brief moment I am connected, before it disappears again. Have been fiddling with router, failing to diagnose ailing symptoms, and am throwing myself on the mercy of BT tomorrow, as soon as they wake up.
Meanwhile, I made the most delicious ginger cake ever... the secret ingredients were black strap molasses and spelt flour, plus lashings of fresh ginger AND crystalised chunks, and a simple topping of icing sugar with lemon juice. I appear to have eaten most of it myself, as neither of my friends came round for tea. Harumph.
PS. For all lovers of costume jewels -- whether by Chanel or another -- here is today's Closet Thinker column.
PPS. Herewith gingerbread recipe, from Nigella's How To Be A Domestic Goddess (and my adaptations in brackets).
150g unsalted butter
125g dark muscovado sugar
200g golden syrup
200g black treacle [I used black strap molasses]
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger [I love ginger, so also added some chopped up chunks of crystallised ginger, left over from Christmas.]
1 tsp ground cinnamon [I substituted ground ginger.]
250ml milk
2 large eggs, beaten
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda, dissolved in 2 tbs warm water
300g plain flour [I used white spelt flour from Doves Farm].

[I also had two very ripe bananas, which needed to be used, so I mashed them up and added them to the final mixture.]

1 roasting tin 30x20x5cm, greased and lined with parchment or foil. [I used a square baking tin, simply greased with butter, and not lined.]

Preheat oven to 170C/gas 3

Melt the butter with the sugar, syrup, treacle, ginger and cinnamon. Take off the heat, and add the milk, eggs and bicarb in water.

Place the flour in a bowl and pour in the liquid ingredients, beating well (it makes a very liquid batter, so don't be alarmed). Pour into the tin and bake for about 1 hour.

[Mine was cooked in less than an hour -- about 45 minutes -- and when it was cool, I iced it with a mixture of sieved icing sugar with freshly squeezed lemon juice.]

PS. Please read last comment on previous blog for further details of secret midsummer back garden festival. I will bake a cake...

Is anyone coming to Hay?

2011-05-16T10:00:00.001-07:00

I'll be there on Tuesday 31st May, bright and early, so we can make Hay while the sun rises.

After the blogger meltdown...

2011-05-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Annoyingly, I've lost posts and comments, so am briefly repeating myself: but just wanted to urge people to listen to Ancient Mysteries on Radio 4, before the series disappears from BBC iplayer. Five 15 minute dramatic monologues, based on interviews with dementia sufferers, it's the best thing I've heard on radio for a very long time: touches of T.S Eliot and Alan Bennett, but completely original...

"... the diffused magic of the hot sweet South...

2011-05-11T10:42:00.000-07:00

... the soft-pawed night and the ghostly wash of the Mediterranean far below..."

Beneath the umbrella pines at Cap D'Antibes

2011-05-11T10:36:00.001-07:00

No sign of the ghosts of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, but perhaps they had slipped away before the Chanel show began...

Reading and writing and falling in coils

2011-05-04T12:17:00.000-07:00

I finished Sybille Bedford's 'A Legacy' last weekend, and it's wonderful; quite unlike anything else I've read. At moments, there are echoes of Henry James or Edith Wharton, but really, the novel is entirely itself. Then moved on to Penelope Fitzgerald's novel, 'The Gate of Angels', which is very different in tone (set in London and Cambridge in 1911), but equally remarkable. Anyway, both are highly recommended, if you haven't yet discovered them. Since then, I have fallen down the stairs, and am currently contemplating a disturbingly painful bruise on my foot; yet feeling distracted by the outline of my next book, at the same time as being completely absorbed within it. All quite discombobulating; as if I'm inhabiting two different landscapes (internal and external), and tonight they are jarring with each other, like the bones in my right foot.

The Royal Wedding

2011-05-02T04:27:00.000-07:00

Here's the piece I wrote about it in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday. I thoroughly enjoyed it: the pageantry, the flowers, the frocks, the hats, the uniforms, the bridesmaids and pageboys. I didn't have room for everything in the article, so here is a little bit extra on the bride's bouquet:

The meaning of the flowers:
Lily-of-the-valley – Return of happiness
Sweet William – Gallantry
Hyacinth – Constancy of love
Ivy: Fidelity; marriage; wedded love; friendship; affection
Myrtle: the emblem of marriage; love.

The bouquet contains stems from a myrtle planted at Osborne House, Isle of Wight, by Queen Victoria in 1845, and a sprig from a plant grown from the myrtle used in The Queen’s wedding bouquet of 1947.The tradition of carrying myrtle begun after Queen Victoria was given a nosegay containing myrtle by Prince Albert’s grandmother during a visit to Gotha in Germany. In the same year, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert bought Osborne House as a family retreat, and a sprig from the posy was planted against the terrace walls, where it continues to thrive today.

The myrtle was first carried by Queen Victoria eldest daughter,
Princess Victoria, when she married in 1858, and was used to signify
the traditional innocence of a bride.

Easter at Tillypronie...

2011-04-26T14:25:00.001-07:00

And the sun shone for most of the time, aside from an afternoon of soft rain. On Sunday morning there was an Easter egg hunt in the rockery; then chocolate cake for tea after a walk across the moor, and a box of Pierre Herme macaroons, in all the shades of spring. So heartening to see a cherished garden blooming, even after the deep frosts of another hard winter, and has sedum ever looked more chic, alongside the scarlet ruffles of rhododendron? There is still a little snow clinging to the northern peaks of Morven, but green shoots are emerging on the heather-clad hills, and swifts have returned to the skies.
Now back home in north London, where something wicked has been nibbling at my lilies, but the honeysuckle is flourishing, and the roses are beginning to bud.

The wisteria is blooming...

2011-04-21T04:55:00.001-07:00

And it has the most beautiful scent. Is it always the way, or is this spring more blessed with blossom than others?
In between admiring the wisteria and my bed of tulips -- the latter have survived the squirrels for the first year ever -- I'm watering the pots on the patio, watching the poppy seeds emerge, and the green shoots of lilies and agapanthus.
Wishing everybody a very happy Easter. I'm going to read Sybille Bedford ('A Legacy'), and eat a great deal of chocolate.

Cherry blossom, flower-pot bread, and more good things from the farmer's market

2011-04-17T11:37:00.001-07:00

The magnolia petals have almost gone, but there is more blossom unfurling in the front garden, on the cherry tree that reaches up to the sky. This weekend I've been weeding -- rooting out the bindweed before it chokes the roses -- although all the other self-seeded plants in my beds are allowed to stay (forget-me-nots, bluebells, and red valerian for the butterflies), as are the sprinkling of daisies and buttercups in the lawn.
No need to venture much further than the garden on a sunny Sunday, except to the Farmer's Market up the road at Alexandra Palace, where there were fiery red chilis, delicious Polish cakes and brownies (the best I've had for years; so good I've searched for the source online, and discovered them here, at the Cakehole Kitchen), and bread baked in flower-pots from the Honest Carrot stall. The farmer's market also yielded sausages, which I'm cooking for dinner with onion gravy, mashed potatoes, and plenty of peas. Heaven...

Mercury retrograde, and Mercury found...

2011-04-14T04:29:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, in a mercurial state of mind, or can we blame the stars for mishaps and other troublesome irritations this week? (And last week, come to that). I seem to remember reading that Ted Hughes wouldn't allow any of his books to be published when Mercury was retrograde. Richard Dawkins would disapprove, of course, but perhaps there is some small measure of comfort to be had in blaming the movement of the skies for current vexations. Either that, or chaos rules eternal...
In the interests of scientific balance (so please, no need for angry anti-astrology diatribes), have just been reading about NASA's astonishing explorations of Mercury; just think of the Messenger spacecraft, traveling for six and a half years alone through the solar system... And the NASA photographs are awe-inspiring... a dark, dense, battered planet, cracked and covered in craters.
Since then, I've popped outside into the garden, checking on my tiny spring seeds, and listening to the blackbird. Mercury-gazing has made me suddenly glad to be earth-bound.

It's a beautiful day...

2011-04-06T09:06:00.000-07:00

... and the garden is blooming. I love the splash of lime green from the euphorbias (or is it euphorbium?), in the bed beneath the gloriously creamy magnolia.
Thinking of Elspeth, and remembering all the beautiful flowers she cherished in the spring. Maybe it's the memory of Elspeth that has also sent me in search of Emily Dickinson again; elusive, as always...

Absent Place—an April Day—
Daffodils a-blow
Homesick curiosity
To the Souls that snow—

Drift may block within it
Deeper than without—
Daffodil delight but
Him it duplicate—

Chanel at Galignani

2011-03-29T14:46:00.000-07:00

I'm so behind with the blog -- have been jotting notes, and taking pictures, and there's much more I want to tell you -- but midnight is approaching, so very briefly, for now, here's a quick update on the launch of the French edition of my Chanel biography, with lots of new drawings by Karl Lagerfeld. It was held at the wonderful Galignani bookshop in Paris, on the Rue de Rivoli, just along from Angelina's, where Chanel dropped in for tea in the afternoon. Galignani was the first English bookshop established on the Continent, and has been a printing press since 1520, so its history is extraordinary, as are the premises in Paris, which have hosted everyone from Proust to Hemingway (and was Chanel's favourite bookshop, as well). It's one of those places where the past feels palpably present, and I wandered around in amazement, admiring first editions of Lord Byron and letters from Hemingway and Jung, in between doing some interviews with remarkably patient French journalists... Oh, and Karl Lagerfeld came, which caused a great stir -- great crowds of fans and paparazzi outside -- though he seemed very much at home in these bookish surroundings (his own library is immense), and signed my book, along with those of his myriad admirers. So it was all rather dreamlike, and very enjoyable -- much less fraught than being published in one's own country...
Inevitably, perhaps, I came back to London with a bumpy crash-landing... even though the blossoms are so beautiful here, and it's lovely to be back home. I feel guilty about the moments of gloom that have overtaken me -- how lucky I am to be alive in a glorious spring -- but one's mind swoops high and low, from the mundane to greater matters and then back to the fragility of magnolia petals in this morning's sudden downpour of rain.

Playing Kiki: Le Violon d'Ingres

2011-03-19T12:31:00.000-07:00

I've always been intrigued by Man Ray's picture of Alice Prin (see above) -- the artist's model otherwise known as Kiki de Montparnasse -- even before coming across her as a figure in Chanel's Paris. I'm rarely tempted by graphic novels, but very much enjoyed this one, and am therefore posting the unedited version of a review I originally wrote for the Guardian: Kiki de Montparnasse: The Graphic Biography by Jose-Luis Bocquet and Catel Muller. [translated by Nora Mahony, published by Self Made Hero, £14.99].

If Montparnasse was the beating heart of avant garde Paris in the 1920s, then Alice Prin was its celebrated body, as the model known as Kiki, immortalised by a myriad artists including Fernand Leger, Jean Cocteau, and her lover, Man Ray. It therefore seems fitting that Kiki’s latest biography should take a graphic form, in which she swoops across the pages, alongside her friends and contemporaries, Modigliani, Picasso, Matisse, Duchamp and Hemingway.

The story of Alice Prin could be told as a grim and cautionary tale – born illegitimate in Châtillon-sur-Seine in 1901, she died in equal poverty in 1953, after a lifetime of drink and drugs and debauchery. But this ribald comic strip version of her biography is as tender as it is witty, and a far more complex portrait of the model and muse than might be expected. Its author and artist, Jose-Louis Bocquet and Catel Muller – whose collaboration has already won several awards for the original French edition – resist the temptation to turn Kiki into either an emblematic victim of male objectification or the proud symbol of female emancipation. Instead, Kiki’s contradictions emerge from the cartoons: her liberated sexual freedom is shadowed by a masochistic tendency to forgive abusive lovers; while her joyous embrace of the pleasures of life (food, art, wine, song, sunshine) is enmeshed with drug addiction and alcoholism.

When Kiki’s own memoirs were published in 1929 (and promptly banned in the United States), her friend Ernest Hemingway wrote an introduction that acknowledged her capacity for self-invention. ‘Having a fine face to start with she made of it a work of art… she certainly dominated that era of Montparnasse more than Queen Victoria ever dominated the Victorian era.’ Kiki’s creativity was also apparent in the illustrations she sketched for her memoir, black and white drawings that shade between childlike innocence and something darker; and despite their surface naiveté, her status as an artist, as well as a model, had already been consolidated with a sold-out exhibition of paintings in Paris in 1927.

Nevertheless, the most enduringly famous image of Kiki is Man Ray’s Le Violon d'Ingres, a photograph of her naked from behind, her signature bobbed hair hidden in a turban, her remarkable face almost hidden, and her voluptuous body transformed into a musical instrument by the addition of the ‘f-holes’ of a violin. The title suggests Man Ray’s inspiration came from the paintings of Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres; and also, perhaps, that he fingered Kiki as a plaything, just as Ingres played the violin.

Catel and Bocquet’s cover is something of an uncovering for Kiki: for although the drawing is a reflection of Man Ray’s portrait, this version has her head free of the turban, and her profile clearer than the original. You can see her charismatic features – big nose and playful eyes framed by the black sharpness of her hair – as a beguiling invitation to look inside. The pages that follow are filled with legendary men, the Surrealists and Cubists and Dadaists who shaped Bohemian Paris; all of them presented here as fighting and eating and jostling to make a living, as well as making love, just like Kiki herself. But she is centre stage, the queen of Montparnasse, whether posing silently for Man Ray, or as a bawdy nightclub act, lifting her skirts and showing her bottom whenever the mood took her. (After a fashionable dinner given by Coco Chanel in June 1929, one of the guests, Maurice Sachs, noted in his diary that ‘Kiki, who had too much to drink, sang very obscene songs.’)

In the end, she was too much for Man Ray to handle; not least when the instrument of his art and pleasure was noisily arrested, after she got into a fight in a Nice bar, and hit the policeman who called her a whore. Man Ray employed a lawyer to represent Kiki, who could only get her out of prison by declaring that she had a ‘nervous disorder’; thereafter the relationship between artist and model was sporadic, and ended when Man Ray fell in love with his protégée, Lee Miller, in 1929, by which point Kiki was already involved in another affair.

Kiki’s career subsequently veered between cabaret and drug addiction, and by the time Man Ray returned to Paris in the spring of 1951 (having left the city at the outbreak of the Second World War), she was swollen with alcoholism and dropsy. Man Ray offered her help, to which she gave her renowned reply – ‘No! A raw onion, a heel of bread and some red wine is enough for me’ – and after he pressed money on her, she promptly handed it over to a beggar. That, at least, is the comic strip version, but it has the ring of truth, as does the last page of the story, in which Man Ray weeps when he hears that Kiki is dead at the age of 51; the artist alone in his studio, but surrounded by the artwork he had made of the woman who finally slipped out of his grasp.

March blossoms and birdsong...

2011-03-16T08:43:00.000-07:00

I've just been out in the garden, admiring the new petals and primroses, hoping the magnolia buds will survive the cold nights, and looking forward to the blooming of my favourite scented clematis. The evergreen clematis was one of the first plants that I put in the garden when we moved here, nearly eight years ago, when the borders were still very bare, and I'm so glad it's thriving.
A blackbird is singing from atop a chimney pot, and there's a small chorus of song-thrushes, too... I wish you could hear them right now...
But here is Emily Dickinson to read instead:

DEAR March, come in!
How glad I am!
I looked for you before.
Put down your hat—
You must have walked—
How out of breath you are!
Dear March, how are you?
And the rest?
Did you leave Nature well?
Oh, March, come right upstairs with me,
I have so much to tell!

I got your letter, and the bird’s;
The maples never knew
That you were coming,—I declare,
How red their faces grew!
But, March, forgive me—
And all those hills
You left for me to hue;
There was no purple suitable,
You took it all with you.

Who knocks? That April!
Lock the door!
I will not be pursued!
He stayed away a year, to call
When I am occupied.
But trifles look so trivial
As soon as you have come,
That blame is just as dear as praise
And praise as mere as blame.

Coco in Keswick.

2011-03-10T09:50:00.000-08:00

Just back from Keswick, and you can watch a little of it here on Sky Arts.
I'd had a misguidedly romantic idea that I would go for a windswept walk around the lake, but it was such a dark and stormy night that a ramble might have ended in disaster. Instead, I had dinner with the lovely team from Ways with Words, and several other writers, including Juliet Barker, Francis Spufford, Matthew Rice and Luke Jennings. So the conversation ranged from stolen Bronte manuscripts to the lost jewels of Stoke on Trent... needless to say, a very good time was had by all...

Ways with Words... Paris to the Lake District.

2011-03-06T14:26:00.000-08:00

Sunday evening, and I'm feeling slightly daunted at the prospect of the week to come (much rushing hither and thither). But looking forward to speaking at the Words by the Water Literature Festival in Keswick on Wednesday, at the Theatre by the Lake. My talk is at 7pm, and tickets include a screening of Coco & Igor later that evening. The film is worth seeing, if only for the re-staging of the first night of the Rite of Spring, when a riot broke out in Paris. Here's hoping a good time will be had by all...
PS. If anyone is in Keswick today (Wednesday), they should definitely try to see Juliet Barker talking about the Brontes. She is a brilliant historian, and the consummate Bronte expert.

Beauty and the beast

2011-03-01T16:11:00.000-08:00

Keep thinking about the rise and fall of John Galliano, and I remembered the Dior spring 2005 couture show. I wrote about it in 'My Mother's Wedding Dress', but the story goes something like this:

In 1932, Colette wrote an intriguing portrait of Gabrielle Chanel (published in ‘Prisons et Paradis’), that suggests something of the conflicting impulses at work in fashion:
“Mademoiselle Chanel is engaged in sculpting an angel 6 feet tall. A golden-blond angel, impersonal, seraphically beautiful, providing one disregards the rudimentary carving, the paucity of flesh, and the cheerlessness – one of those angels who brought the devil to earth.
“The angel – still incomplete – totters occasionally under the two creative, severe, kneading arms that press against it. Chanel works with ten fingers, nails, the edge of the hand, the palms, with pins and scissors right on the garment, which is a white vapour with long pleats, splashed with crushed crystal. Sometimes she falls to her knees before her work and grasps it, not to worship but to punish it again, to tighten over the angel’s long legs – to constrain – some expansion of tulle...”
It’s a description that might still be applied to the making of the white wedding dresses which have traditionally provided a finale to the Paris couture shows; splendid bridal confections that provide substantial orders for some of the most prestigious fashion houses, yet which are also expected to reveal a new or unexpected design twist. For example, the closing sequence of John Galliano’s couture show for Dior in January 2005, featured a series of ethereal white or ivory gowns – a reminder, perhaps, of the concurrent publicity coup which had seen Donald Trump’s newest wife in Dior bridal couture on the front cover of American Vogue – but on the catwalk, the designer had added what looked like pregnant or malignant swellings beneath his floor-length, empire-line creations. At the end, Galliano appeared to take the final bow, looking devilish in piratical black.
At the time, other fashion commentators praised the show as being a perfect embodiment of the poetry of couture. But I felt it was less straightforward than that, as if the smeared rouge on the models' faces was a suggestion of abuse, of the loss of innocence. It's interesting how often contemporary fashion reporting ignores that twist between beauty and horror on the catwalk: perhaps because when you’re close to those dresses, you can see only the rarified art and exquisite work that has gone into their making; it is only from a distance that they look so much more sinister.

Fashion uncovered?

2011-02-27T14:37:00.000-08:00

I'm one of the speakers talking at the Tabernacle tomorrow evening, as part of the Five by Fifteen series. The brief is admirable: "true stories of passion, obsession and adventure recounted live with just two rules: no scripts and only fifteen minutes each." Nerve-racking -- but clearly a good challenge -- as is the prospect of tomorrow morning on Woman's Hour. I'm thinking about corsets and Coco Chanel, beauty and horror, Galliano and McQueen; about what we uncover and how we cover up...

Swishing and sloshing, baking and scoffing...

2011-02-18T09:43:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling slightly distracted today -- trying to do my accounts, which always reminds me that I am numerically illiterate, as well as being phobic about HMRC -- at the same time as attempting to gather my thoughts before tomorrow's event at the V&A. There's a morning of swishing (clothes swapping), which sounds fun, and then at 2pm I'm chairing a panel discussion about fashion styling and its effect on women in the public eye, and taking part in another on body image and the fashion industry. And it's all free, if anyone wants to come (please do...)
Meanwhile, I've been baking and eating lots of cakes this week -- nothing like an upcoming discussion of body image to make me feel hungry. The heart-shaped chocolate ones were made by me (magic ingredient: marmalade), and the more professional and totally gorgeous iced cakes are from Laduree (they taste of rose petals, fresh raspberries and lemon meringue).
As for the new wellington boots sitting at my kitchen table: I wanted to share them with you, as they are gladdening my heart... my old pair had to be retired, as they developed a leak, but these are ready for action. Apart from anything else, I need to walk off all the cakes I've consumed (including the delicious batch from the lovely Love Bakery in the King's Road, which we ate before I could photograph them). But in honour of the V&A, and the start of London Fashion Week, I had to post one of my favourite pictures again, of the exceedingly chic Love Bakery Coco cupcakes...

Heaven scent...

2011-02-09T03:05:00.000-08:00

The blackbird is singing again this morning in the magnolia tree, and suddenly the garden is filled with buds and the smell of growing things. I love these early, fragile days of spring...

Tuesday, sunrise

2011-02-07T23:55:00.000-08:00

Up early to finish a piece of journalism, and the dawn sky is clear. Winter blossom in my neighbour's garden is a burst of pink, and a blackbird is singing into the light...
Memo to self: must clean the windows in my study. Oh, and here's an introduction to a very cheering blog: a little bird; definitely recommended (and do have a look at the recipe for the blood-orange jelly).

The unfurling city...

2011-02-01T08:19:00.000-08:00

My picture was taken from the top of a high tower yesterday -- such a hopeful blue sky soaring over London that I couldn't quote The Waste Land ('Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn...') So here is Wordsworth instead, from 'Upon Westminster Bridge'.

Earth has not anything to show more fair:
Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty:
This City now doth like a garment wear
The beauty of the morning; silent, bare...

Poetry please... The Waste Land

2011-01-31T02:21:00.000-08:00

I was feeling somewhat low yesterday -- cold-ridden, coughing, melancholy -- and happened to hear an adaptation of The Waste Land on Radio 4, which included T.S Eliot's own readings, along with the voice of Ted Hughes, and a new recording by Lia Williams. The interweaving of the three brought the poem alive again for me, and as is often the case, the very bleakness of Eliot's writing seemed somehow bracing. It's more complicated than that, of course -- this poetry is troubling, sinister, mysterious -- but whenever I return to The Waste Land, I find a kind of solace there, rather than misery.

Couture in a cold climate...

2011-01-26T15:20:00.000-08:00

Just back from Paris, where the lights of the Chanel atelier at Rue Cambon burned brightly, even at midnight after a triumphant couture show. There were ghosts and feathers in the Dior collection, fluttering within a vast marquee on the lawns of the Rodin museum; and Galliano's palette of pinks and reds reminded me of the frozen flowers in the winter gardens of Bowood (as well as the more obvious reference, a salute to Rene Gruau, the drawer of Dior).
Paris was alluring, as always -- more evidence, as if I needed it, of how attached I remain to Mademoiselle Chanel (whose apartment I visited again, yesterday, its atmosphere subtly different in daylight, and filled with voices of the living, rather than the dead) -- but home is comforting, especially as I am snuffling and sneezing. Time for bed, at last, beneath my faded rose-pink eiderdown...

Soir de lune and Eve's pudding...

2011-01-19T10:09:00.000-08:00

Here is the new Red website... I very much like the look of the recipe for fruit crumble, although I am planning to cook my own version of Eve's pudding tonight, using pears instead of apples, and adding a taste of ginger to the sponge topping.
The temperature is dropping again outside -- white frost icing the lawn this morning -- but I love the clear blue skies, after days of rain. Now a full moon is rising, and the fire is flickering inside; the kind of evening that makes me think of Elidor, and the childhood longing for a glimpse of magic in the darkness, beyond the lamplight, just out of reach...

The King's Speech and the Queen's clothes

2011-01-17T09:09:00.000-08:00

I am writing this whilst waiting on the phone to speak to a call centre. ('Thank you for your patience; please hold, and one of our advisors will be with you as soon as possible'; dum di dum di dum). Woke up this morning feeling somewhat bleak in the rain, but have ordered myself to show stiff upper lip, inspired by seeing 'The King's Speech' at the weekend. Not that a stiff upper lip was necessarily very helpful in curing the King's stammer; but anyway, it is an excellent film, and deserves all of its many plaudits. Oh, and I very much liked the blue hat and dress that Helena Bonham Carter wore in the scene in which she and her husband visited Balmoral Castle, where they are dismayed to discover Mrs Simpson in residence, and a great deal of drinking and dancing going on... Rather pleasing to see Wallis as less glamorous than usual portrayals (there is such a thing as being too rich and too thin) and the plumper future Queen Mother eating sweets in the back of a car, but still retaining a chic sangfroid.

Fireworks in the rain?

2011-01-14T10:01:00.000-08:00

6pm, and I've just got home -- did anyone else get caught in the deluges of this afternoon? -- with a bunch of beautiful white roses. Anyway, someone is letting off fireworks nearby -- slightly damp squibs, if I'm honest... Why, I wonder? Is it a reaction to the gloom of January? Or a local festival of the light? Very odd...

Happy New Year...

2011-01-10T02:48:00.001-08:00

Sorry to be so belated with the blog -- after Christmas, I embarked upon a journey that involved so many snow-related delays that we ended up on a flight from London to New York that was diverted to Montreal at the last minute, then from Montreal to Chicago to Tampa to Miami. Thus began three days and two nights in assorted airports, all of which look, smell and sound spookily alike... But I know other people had even more frustrating delays, and the hours in various limbos sped up while I read John Le Carre's latest book ('Our Kind of Traitor') and 'A Week in December' by Sebastian Faulks; both of them big, dark, state-of-the-nation novels that felt somehow appropriate as narratives to accompany my jet-lagged zigzagging across time-zones and national frontiers.
Anyway, when I did get to New York, it was completely wonderful: we ate delicious food (downtown at the Little Owl and Barbuto in the West Village, uptown at the Mark); drank cocktails at the King Cole bar at the St Regis; and stayed in what is now my favourite ever hotel room, on the 39th floor of the Four Seasons, with a view over Manhattan and Central Park that made me very, very happy. Met the producer of the David Letterman show, and ascended to the heights of his office at the CBS tower (v. thrilling). Shopped for brilliant sale bargains at J.Crew (how I wish we had a London store, though you can get some of the range at net-a-porter), and bought the perfect pair of black velvet trousers and a soft tweedy black and cream cardigan (I like to think Mademoiselle Chanel would have approved of the latter, in the knowledge that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery).
Back in London again, facing the expanse of 2011. I've been clearing out cupboards and drawers -- trying to do at least one a day -- a task that I put off while working on Coco; and finding it both therapeutic and occasionally overwhelming.
Tiny shoots of green grape hyacinth stems are appearing in the back garden, though later than usual, and I fear the squirrels have eaten a great many of the tulip bulbs I planted last year. But now that the snow has melted, spring seems a little less distant than before, and I've been reminding myself that the days are lengthening, if only by a few minutes. I've sometimes struggled through Januaries in previous years, although this time (fingers crossed, wood touched), I'm feeling braver than before, and resolved not to wish the days away, but to embrace the month, as a time to potter and bake and nest, and make some plans and wishes as well...

What a week...

2010-12-22T02:02:00.000-08:00

Up at 6am on Monday, for Start the Week, which had involved some serious homework in preparation; though it was a pleasure to meet Michael Peppiatt, and to discover his wonderful book, 'In Giacometti's Studio'. Slid home through the snow to write my Telegraph column, glad to be coming home to warm house rather than leaking Parisian studio, like poor Mrs Giacometti, then panicked about lack of Christmas preparations. Car was snowed in, so set out on foot to buy food supplies: fish pie for dinner, but two hands not enough to carry home any further shopping. Yesterday: got car out, drove to Muswell Hill, realized that the rest of north London had followed the same impulse, and we were all stuck in the M&S car park, which hadn't been gritted. If anyone is reading this who knows said-car-park, you will understand the skidding and panic that ensued on surely steepest gradient in London.
On the up side, the fish pie was delicious, and my amazon deliveries have arrived in time. On the downside, I still have two dozen presents to buy, and am steeling myself for a trip to the West End. Oh rapturous joy...

Christmas is coming, time to go to Daunt Books...

2010-12-14T08:51:00.000-08:00

I'll be at Daunt Books in Chelsea tomorrow evening (7pm, December 15th) talking about Coco Chanel, and signing books (if anyone is out and about doing their Christmas shopping). Here's the address: 158-164 Fulham Road, London SW10 9PR; tickets available at the shop or telephone 0207 373 4997. Please do come if you can... I can offer wine, conversation, and a very surprise guest...

What to do next?

2010-12-07T13:19:00.000-08:00

Still grappling with how to email pictures from my new iphone (I am foxed, even though everyone says it is so easy), but just managed to send one -- a very small one -- which goes no way to show the beauties of the Bowood garden on a frosty morning. The lake was frozen over, the folly wreathed in mist, the last of the roses as icy as those beside a fairytale Sleeping Beauty, but the landscape still felt astonishingly alive, as a heron swooped low from the sky.
Back in London, I am staring into abyss of What To Write Next. I feel lost without Coco, and longing to be absorbed into something (someone?) new; but guilty at the thought of abandoning her.
What do readers really want? Not that one can write a book by second-guessing the market; that way madness lies...
But I'd love to know what people here think... Is anyone out there?

White blossoms, midwinter

2010-12-05T06:27:00.000-08:00

I'm off to Wiltshire to do a talk about Chanel at Bowood tomorrow; and very much hoping that the freezing fog lifts so that I can see the glories of the garden in winter. Last time I was there the rhododendrons were in magnificent bloom, huge drifts of them, and the wisteria was blossoming in the walled garden. It seems such a long time ago, but I'm sure there are hidden pleasures to be found in the frosty landscape of Capability Brown.

Snow day and tomorrow...

2010-11-30T13:10:00.000-08:00

Snow falling like soft white feathers outside, and firelight within. Tomorrow I'm venturing out into the icy city to see a new exhibition (Aware: Art Fashion Identity) at the Royal Academy, and very much looking forward to meeting one of the artists, Susie MacMurray. The picture above is from 'Echo', her beautiful installation at York St Mary's, made out of hairnets and rosin-coated violin bow hair; her work at the RA is 'Widow', an extraordinary gown of dressmaker pins. You can listen to the artist talking about it here... Wonderfully inspiring, hence my voyage across the internet this afternoon, following the traces of Susie's work, from the red velvet and mussel shells at Pallant House in Chichester, to a web of gold embroidery thread in Sir Nathaniel Curzon's Derbyshire mansion...

Feathers, again...

2010-11-23T09:41:00.000-08:00

Regular readers will know about my ongoing preoccupation with feathers; here's my latest offering (in the Sunday Telegraph).
In between thinking about these, I've been up and down to East Lothian for the day, to the lovely Lennoxlove festival. It's a beautiful place, and I was lucky enough to be talking in the Great Hall to a delightful audience, who made the long journey feel well worthwhile. Pictures to follow...
Meanwhile, I've been eating butternut squash and sweet potatoes -- the perfect winter food -- and cooking a vat of lentil, ham and spinach soup.
This morning I went to sign copies of Coco at Hatchards in Piccadilly, and Heywood Hill in Curzon Street; both of them bookshops that make me glad to be a writer, and a reader. I bought the OUP edition of Virginia Woolf's Orlando for myself (good notes, introduction, etc); and some secret Christmas presents for others.
Now on my Christmas list:
Romantic Moderns by Alexandra Harris. (Thames & Hudson).
Cecil Beaton: The Art of the Scrapbook. (Assouline).

Lennoxlove and spring bulbs in November

2010-11-20T08:52:00.001-08:00

I'm getting ready for an early start tomorrow morning -- a day trip to East Lothian to speak at the Lennoxlove literary festival. (Just been reading about the history of Lennoxlove House , which looks intriguing...).
Meanwhile, I've been following the good advice offered by others on this blog, and spent some time outside this afternoon, sweeping the leaves out of my garden, and planting bulbs (muscari and chionodoxa; hopefully both squirrel-proof). The fresh air and the prospect of spring flowers are definitely cheering... so thank you, everyone, for nudging me outdoors today.

My heart leaps up...

2010-11-16T14:04:00.000-08:00

"My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety."

William Wordsworth wrote his poem in 1802, and there is something reassuring, as well as inspiring, to know that over two centuries afterwards, there are still shimmering rainbows to be seen in winter skies. This one emerged out of the rain as I visited Aberdeenshire last weekend...
Blue skies over London this morning, then dense fog descended, but I am still thinking of the Scottish rainbow...
This winter, I'm hoping to embrace the changing of the season, rather than mourning the lengthening of the darkness (I confess, my melancholy tendencies tend to surface in January, so trying to find remedies in advance). Does anyone have good advice to offer here or stories to share as daylight dwindles?

The Bishop Kirk Reunion...

2010-11-11T09:04:00.001-08:00

Alright, so I didn't win the Tesco Biography of the Year (Stephen Fry triumphed) but I did get to meet Ben Macintyre, the brilliant author of Operation Mincemeat, who was also nominated in another category for the Galaxy book awards. The bad news is that Ben didn't win, either, but the good news is that we had a chance to catch up on our shared past at Bishop Kirk school in Oxford, where Philip Pullman used to teach English. The school is now gone, and its grass playing fields where we played rounders built over with an estate of smart new houses, but talking to Ben made me happily nostalgic... I remember eating the beech nuts that fell to the ground in autumn, and making a Roman villa out of a shoebox for our teacher, Mr Hood, and singing 'Hearts of Oak' in school assembly... oddly, it never ever seemed to rain there, once upon a time in Summertown...

The day before tomorrow...

2010-11-09T09:45:00.000-08:00

... am feeling nervous. Not that one is supposed to confess to anxiety the evening before an awards ceremony (being shortlisted is prize enough, etc); so am trying very hard to cultivate serenity... Anyone have any advice on Zen and the art of book prizes? Have I jinxed myself by confession (and so on and so forth)?

From cygnet to swan in New York...

2010-11-08T03:45:00.000-08:00

I've just been reading a new book about Gloria Vanderbilt by Wendy Goodman. Beautiful pictures, an intermittently spooky riches to riches fairytale as if written by the Brothers Grimm, and her eerie artworks that Vanderbilt calls 'dream boxes' (see above and within).

Lutyens & Rubinstein

2010-11-05T13:50:00.000-07:00

Thanks to everyone who braved the tube strike on Wednesday evening and made it to the Lutyens & Rubinstein bookshop in Kensington Park Road. There were beautiful Coco cupcakes made by the Love Bakery (the perfect going-home present) and I fell for an adorable dachshund named Billie. In her honour, I made special mention of the Duke of Westminster's dachshunds that accompanied him on his travels with Coco Chanel: from Eaton to the Highlands, and even aboard the Flying Cloud.
Meanwhile, fireworks are damp squibs in the rainclouds above Crouch End. But I am relishing a night in...

Tea at the Four Seasons

2010-11-03T04:49:00.001-07:00

A good time was had by all (I hope) at the Four Seasons Literary Tea in Hampshire on Monday afternoon. The sky was bright blue, the autumn leaves blazing -- a brave start to the first day of British Winter Time -- but inside, an array of pale pink roses, poppy-red, and Chanel black and white.
I met lots of fashion aficionados and enthusiasts, admired some wonderful Chanel bags (vintage and contemporary), and shared my passion for La Grande Mademoiselle. As with other events I've spoken at recently (Dublin, Chester, Edinburgh, Manchester, et al), I've been touched to see so many mothers and daughters that have come together, as well as sisters and best friends. The spirit of Chanel seems to be inspiring a sense of female solidarity, as well as bringing out a host of book lovers. Many, many thanks to everyone, including the lovely ladies from Waterstones in Farnham, and to the team at the Four Seasons, who conjured up delicious cream teas and perfect couture patisseries, as well as those wondrous roses...

All Soul's Eve and Hereafter...

2010-10-31T13:01:00.000-07:00

I've just retreated upstairs, after running out of sweets for the hordes of little witches knocking on the door this evening. (I thought 60 mini-packets of Haribo would do the trick, but apparently I underestimated the demand).
The candle in the pumpkin is still flickering by the fireplace, beneath one of my favourite pictures of my sister and me in childhood, taken on Halloween. This isn't a shrine to my dead sister -- apart from anything else, she still seems in some sense alive to me, and the photograph has been there for the last few years -- but I feel as if the coincidence is one of the moments that remind me of our shared past, which continues to be present today. Ruth's presence is as fluid as time itself; a narrative that leaps forward and skips backwards; a hopscotch game like those we played together, on the pavement outside our house. I've not scanned the photograph -- it is fixed beneath glass in a picture frame -- but it is vivid in my mind's eye as I write this. Two small girls, beside a kitchen table, eating jelly out of hollowed-out oranges, on All Hallow's Eve.
James George Frazer writes in The Golden Bough: 'Hallowe'en, the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter, seems to have been of old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate kinsfolk. It was, perhaps, a natural thought that the approach of winter should drive the poor shivering hungry ghosts from the bare fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter of the cottage with its familiar fireside.'

If there are shivering hungry ghosts tonight, then I cannot believe that Ruth is amongst them. Like all those we love, she remains within my heart, cherished as she ever was, although not confined inside there. The dead remain elusive, unbound and unbidden, however powerful the threads that bind us to them; thus they have a life of their own.

No, if anyone seeks the affectionate shelter of home, it is me. The clocks went back last night, and now the darkness has descended; a time of year that I dread more as I get older, although I search for all manner of ways to embrace it... firelight, candles, good cheer. (How can I wish the winter away, when I learnt from my sister's untimely death that every moment is precious?)
But despite the compass that pulls me to the familiar safety of my house (a house that my sister never saw, yet which sees her face on its walls), I really should venture out to watch Clint Eastwood's latest film,Hereafter; for the book that I wrote about my sister's death, If The Spirit Moves You, was one of several sparks that set the screenwriter, Peter Morgan, on his way... Ruth was passionate about movies -- she worked for several film magazines, at the beginning of her career as a journalist -- and I imagine that she'd have been delighted to know that her story is alight on screen in some mysterious way...