The Great British Bucket List: Utterly Unmissable Britain may be useful if you do. There are 60 mini adventures (from comically easy to mildly challenging) so whatever your age and abilities, you can do them. Which means we can all start ticking off the lists right here in the UK while we are saving up to book our flights to the Taj Mahal, Machu Picchu and the Grand Canyon!
Jane Lovett’s first cookbook Make It Easy is packed full of foolproof, stylish and delicious do-ahead recipes. Have recently been revisiting some of the wonderfully tasty and wonderfully stress-free dishes. Highly recommend.
I’ve never been a fan of lipstick. So dull having to keep reapplying it. Until, that is, I found Look Fabulous Forever’s long lasting lipstick. You literally put it on and it stays put for hours. Such great colours too – there’s a very helpful guide to choosing the right one for you on their website. My current favourite is Rosewood. Stay All Day Lasting Colour Lipstick £24 with free UK delivery.
We love sharing our favourite products. For more recommendations click here.
Studio 10’s Perfect Bronze Glowplexion is another product worth noting for any of us that are looking for a radiant, year-round healthy colour. This ultra-light, deeply hydrating liquid bronzer is specially formulated for mature skin and includes Gatuline to blur fine lines. £26. So, if you’d like an instant hit of healthy-looking colour click below!
Have always found Maybelline to offer effective products and their Instant Anti Age Rewind Perfector was a new one on me until Marvellous-Mother-In-Law arrived at my house glowing with good health. On complementing her, it transpired that this product had a lot to do with her fresh looking complexion. It’s a joy to put on your face – feels light and is easily blended with either a brush or your fingers. Buildable too. £10
OK, they’re only paper freezer labels but they really work. Stay put on the container when in your freezer but easy to peel off when the time comes. Reliable, useful, inexpensive. 100 pack £3.99
Best £5.99 I’ve spent recently. Sturdy and transparent, I can now use my mobile phone hands-free – and while it’s charging too. No more cracked screens either as the phone isn’t always being picked up and put down. Brilliant gadget! (Grace)
Super moisturising – we love the sound of that! Two products that will deeply hydrate, smooth and nourish your skin. Treat yourself to the body wash and hand cream duo from Balance Me for £22 (usually £31)
No idea where she gets the time from but Grace has been helping set up a series of high profile author talks – The Kent House Series – which will be held in London (Knightsbridge) from January next year. Tickets £25 including a complimentary glass of (delicious!) wine.
‘Liz Fenwick weaves intrigue and romance into this profound, luminous novel’ Woman’s Own
The Secret Shore is an historical fiction romance set in World War 2 – from Liz Fenwick, author of from the bestseller The River Between Us
Annabel has recently read three books that she has very much enjoyed and thinks you might be entertained by them too. So, if you’re looking for your next good read…
‘A writer at the peak of her powers’ The Telegraph
Kilburn, 1873. The ‘Tichborne Trial’ has captivated the widowed Scottish housekeeper Mrs Eliza Touchet and all of England. Readers are at odds over whether the defendant is who he claims to be – or an imposter.
Mrs Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her novelist cousin and his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects England of being a land of façades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.
Andrew Bogle meanwhile finds himself the star witness, his future depending on telling the right story. Growing up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica, he knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor. And that people are more easily manipulated than they realise.
Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about how in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what’s true can prove a complicated task. BUY HERE
‘Full of horrors but energetic, funny and tense as a spring . . . plants its devilish brilliance deep in the reader and won’t let go.’ John Self, Observer
Giles Trenchard is born into privilege – and an atmosphere of hidden violence and isolation. Wholly unloved, he is shipped off to one boarding school after another. Always hoping to live up to his family’s expectations he joins the Navy on the outbreak of war. The camaraderie of life offer him some semblance of purpose and contentment. Yet on his return from war, he finds himself adrift and one day – like the hero of Joseph Conrad’s classic Lord Jim – he commits an act so shocking that it calls his past, his character and his whole world into question.
‘Haunting, compelling and brilliant’ The Times
‘Irresistible and seductive’ Guardian
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality. From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch.
M&S is our favourite one-stop Christmas Village. We really look forward to our visit to Camberley (one of their largest stores) each year to see what treats they have for us all. December is so often a really busy time for women, there’s so much to organise. So why not make life easier for yourself and visit the Christmas Village either in person or online…