‘Jump in and be bold’
If you’re a regular Good Housekeeping reader, you’ll know that we love to feature national treasures on our cover – familiar, well-loved faces; usually highly respected leaders in their fields. It’s especially wonderful when we recognise that somebody has reached national treasure status and feature them for the first time – as it is with this month’s cover star, BBC News presenter Reeta Chakrabarti.
My mother and I often watch the news when we’re together and are something of a Reeta fan club; we’re always blown away by her calm, measured delivery of world events. She has an almost magical ability to relay serious, sometimes heartbreaking, news with empathy and composure. It was, therefore, lovely to get to spend time with the real, off-screen Reeta on our cover shoot and hear more about her life – and I think you’ll love getting to know her better, too. She has clearly grafted tremendously hard to carve out her career and she’s also a family oriented woman, with a fun side to her character and a passion for hitting the dancefloor!
Something that particularly resonated with me was Reeta revealing that she sometimes feels self-doubt and lacks confidence, but she pushes herself to grasp opportunities; ‘I think you have to jump in and be bold, even if you’re terrified,’ she says. A good mantra indeed.
I think Reeta, and anyone else needing a confidence boost, will be interested in this month’s feature on How To Silence Your Inner Critic (page 48) and there is also some very sound advice from Dr Alex George on how to strengthen your mind (page 84).
Elsewhere in the magazine, I would encourage you to make time to dip into our extended cookery feature, Make Your Kitchen Greener (page 122). I’m immensely proud of the work that our cookery director, Meike Beck, and consumer affairs director and resident sustainability expert, Emilie Martin, have put into this special section. Both spoke on the subject of living more sustainably at our Good Housekeeping Live event in London last autumn and, since then, they have done still more research, investigation and recipe development to empower us all to make better decisions on everything from food waste to shopping seasonally and saving energy. There are some revelations in terms of what can become delicious with careful preparation – yes, banana skin curry really is a thing, and brown bread ice cream is utterly moreish!
Hopefully, with the longer days and several bank holidays ahead, you may get time to try your hand at some of these new recipes. Or, perhaps, you’re preparing for a getaway, in which case, our fashion director, Amanda Marcantonio, has sorted an essential packing list for you (page 16).
Whatever the month ahead holds, I hope you’ll jump in feet first and enjoy!