The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is exactly that. Harold, a staid and quite frankly boring man, receives a letter from Queenie  Henessey, a former colleague at the same brewery where he worked almost all his life and whom he has not seen nor heard from for over 20 years. She is dying of cancer. He writes a short note in reply, but when he goes to post his letter he decides instead to take it to her in ...

This is the Book Club which you can access anytime, anyplace, anywhere. You do not even have to have read the book, though it might be fun if you do. You do not have to venture out after supper on a cold night, indeed we don’t advise it. Instead, our panel take the strain. A gorgeous team of five women, all reasonably well read and vaguely intelligent, meet up every six weeks and their heated discussions ar ...

Browsing the local bookstore thanks to the endless tolerance of its owner, I notice that Raymond Briggs Father Christmas and The Snowman have been joined by a mass of books all with a festive theme. Here are reviews of five that ended up in my basket ... Merry Meerkat Madness by Ian Whybrow The story is about a family of Meerkats, who discover the strange traditions observed by us humans in the run up to Ch ...

No matter how many book reviews you read on Amazon, there is no substitute for getting your nose inside a book and having a jolly good sniff to find out whether you like it or not. With the help of a local bookseller who will tolerate your rummaging, you are off to a flying start. We road tested some new books and some old favourites, and here is a selection that we feel sons, daughters, nieces, nephews and ...

As predicted the discussion of Sweet Tooth was heated, and whilst consensus was eventually achieved on certain aspects, the book's ending proved contentious, so all five reactions are given. If you have not read the book and intend to do so, beware that the comments will spoil it, so look away now .... Summary The action is set in the dying days of the cold war period during an apparently mundane period jus ...

Our book club met for the first time on Thursday night over a candle-lit supper at Suzanne's house to discuss Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan. It was a heated debate and we are all invited to join in using the comments box as a forum. The summary will be online on the 17th November. Sophie Brooks formed the group and here is their current status: Sophie Brooks Drama and English Literature graduate who fell into t ...

The title is but a clue to what lies beneath the cover ... and that's the whole point, since this is so much more than a recipe book. What Alice Hart likes to expound is the joy of  an occasion as opposed to the chore of producing food for lots of people. Forty to dinner? Not a problem. This is just what Alice she loves: "I can think of few more rewarding occupations than cooking a supper, lunch or brunch f ...