MY LIFE IN BOOKS
Author Veronica Henry loves cooker y books and long-running tales of eccentric families
Christmas With The Teashop Girls By Elaine Everest
(Pan lan, PB, £7.99) her dramatic festive return for d her fellow Nippies at the Margate as they prepare Christmas 1940, along with
o dashing Captain Ben Hargrea es. But as bombing intensifies, will ever ything go ahead as planned?
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Alfie The Christmas Cat
By Rachel Wells
9.99)
There’s seasonal suspense aplenty as ever yone’s favourite festive feline Alfie and his sidekick, kitten George, set out to discover who is sabotaging the local Christmas show. Purr-fect reading!
The Twelve Dates of Christmas
By Jenny Bayliss
(Pan Macmillan, PB, £7.99)
All Kate wants for Christmas is to find the per fect par tner. But when she signs up to a dating agency, she discovers that romance doesn’t come gift-wrapped as she embarks on a series of dates. Sparkly and romantic.
A Surprise Christmas Wedding by Phillippa Ashley
(Avon, PB, £7.99)
Lottie’s excited to land her dream job at a gorgeous Lake District estate, especially when she’s asked to organise a Christmas wedding there. But when she discovers the groom is her own ex-fiance, will her newly-healed hear t freeze over once more?
Secrets in the Snow
By Emma Heatherington
(HarperCollins, PB, £7.99)
Take a seasonal break in the Irish village of Ballybray where Roisin O’Connor and her son Ben are coming to terms with the loss of their beloved neighbour Mabel Murphy.
Rag & Bone Christmas
By Dilly Court
(HarperCollins, PB, £7.99)
When her rag-and-bone man father falls ill, Sally Suggs takes on his rounds with trusty horse Flower. But she’ll need all her wits to sur vive the rivals who haven’t heard of goodwill to all men or women!
I was always a bookworm, and trotted off with my father every Saturday to spend my pocket money in the local WHSmiths.
I loved book series: Laura Ingalls Wilder, Joan Aiken, and the Monica Dickens World’s End books, and would end up buying them all. And the Chalet school books! I learnt all my German from those wonderful adventures set in the Swiss Alps.
I’m a sucker for anything set in a big house with an extended family, like the Cazalet Chronicles by Elizabeth Jane Howard. Or of course the Rutshire chronicles by Queen Jilly Cooper, star ting with Riders. Her characters are larger than life and loveable even when they are behaving badly, and you just have to find out what happens next.
Perhaps it’s no wonder I ended up working on the Archers – I love long-running stories that follow characters through different phases of their lives. The sense of familiarity is so comfor ting and you feel as if you belong amongst them.
The book that had the biggest influence on me was the Hamlyn My Learn to Cook Book. I lost my copy years ago but my agent bought me a copy when A Family Recipe was published. When I posted a photo of it on Instagram I had an over whelming response from people who remembered having it.
I often take cookery books to bed, when I’m too tired to concentrate on a plot. I leaf through them imagining what I might rustle up for friends and family. The best food writers are the most wonder ful wordsmiths: How to Eat a Peach by Diana Henr y and The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater are two favourites that always take me away somewhere else.
I have some incredibly talented friends and I always particularly enjoy reading what they have written to get an insight into them! Recently I’ve loved The Glass
House by Eve Chase, The Heatwave by Kate Riordan and The Storm by Amanda Jennings – all of them have intriguing plots and stunning imager y with a strong sense of place.
The writer I admire most is Daphne du Maurier – a born storyteller who grabs you right from page one and doesn’t let you go. That is a great gift. Ever yone who wants to write should read Rebecca. It’s per fect.
Catch up with Veronica’s warm, feel-good stories with A Wedding At The Beach Hut (Orion, PB, £7.99), a page-turning family drama. Ever y bride wants her mum there on her special day, and as Robyn prepares to marr y Jake on a sunny Devon beach, she can’t help thinking about her natural mother, or the box she left when she gave up Robyn for adoption. But how will her beloved adopted parents feel about her quest for the truth? And does her birth mother even want to be found? Veronica’s series of Beach Hut reads includes Christmas At The Beach Hut (Orion, PB, £8.99), an equally hear t-warming tale, just right to cosy up with at this time of year.
Playing Politics
Roadkill, BBC iPlayer
Hugh Laurie was born to play the role of ambitious, amoral Tor y minister Peter Laurence in this political drama which often felt like a little brother to Michael Dobbs’ great House of Cards. Laurie’s Laurence is mix of narcissism, oppor tunism and hear tlessness – with a little bit of man-of-the-people charm thrown in. His performance and David Hare’s script scathingly studied where British politics finds itself in 2020. The final episode ended with Laurence... ah, I won’t spoil it but, suffice to say, I have my fingers crossed that there’s a follow-up!
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Storyville: The Mole, BBC iPlayer Stor yville is responsible for some of the best documentaries to come out of the UK in recent years but it feels almost hidden away on BBC Four. Make a point of finding it on the iPlayer for The Mole, a jaw-dropping account of one man’s attempts to infiltrate the Nor th Korean political regime. With secret identities, far-flung locations and villainous arms dealers, this real-life James Bond thriller is a paranoia-fuelled treat and a rare insight into the world’s most clandestine countr y.