January 2019

Here in France, we have the right to wish someone a ‘Happy New Year’ up till the last day of January, so I am just in time even for those of you living in Australia. Phew! ‘Happy New Year’ and, as we say in France: ‘surtout la santé’. Above all else, good health. These last…

Summer 2018

I want to begin by introducing you to our new member of the Olive Farm family. His name is Samson. He is a Tibetan Mastiff and has jaws like an alligator. I heard about him through my Olive Farm Facebook page where I saw a photo of him. He was in a refuge over on…

March 2017

There is NOTHING more exciting for me than seeing the jacket on my next novel brought to life by a designer. Nothing, that is, until the book itself arrives and I can hold it in my hands and know that it is real, that I really put all those words and thoughts together. Ask any…

Christmas 2016

I think I have begun every letter I have sent out this year by saying how tough these last months have been since the loss of my mother in February. And it continues with the recent loss of several friends and colleagues. Michel and I have decided to take time out quietly, just the two…

November 13th 2016

Today, midway through November, as winter begins to set in hard here in northern France – I am at our home outside Paris, not down on the Olive Farm – it is a day of mourning, of remembrance. All across the UK and the Commonwealth, on this second Sunday in November, Remembrance Sunday, wreaths of…

FLAVOURS OF FRANCE

FLAVOURS OF FRANCE

I have just returned from my annual visit to London for the FRANCE SHOW held over three bustling and exuberant days at Olympia, Kensington. This one was particularly special for me because I was presenting my new novel, THE FORGOTTEN SUMMER, which is to be published on 11th February. The team working on the book…

Christmas 2015

Christmas 2015

Hello! Season’s Greetings. I don’t know about you, but I am winding down from a very busy year. Last week I was in London recording two of my books for Clipper/W.F.Howes who produce first-class audio books. The first,  A SIMPLE ACT OF KINDNESS, was published as an e-book for Amazon on both sides of the…

A Simple Act of Kindness

Dear Friends, This is an exciting autumn moment for me. My new novel to be published by Penguin early next year has disappeared off to the copy editor; we are preparing for this year’s olive harvest which looks set to be a fine and not insubstantial one, organic, of course, and… ….today My new Kindle…

Happy Days

Hello from a very hot South of France. (currently 34C) The announcement of the news announced today in The Bookseller (link below) has been such a LONG time coming – I have been busting for three months to tell you. I have moved to Penguin Books. I am to be a Penguin author! I am…

April Newsletter

Hello! Are you glad Easter is behind you? Ours has been wet although yesterday morning it cleared up and the sun is now shining and promises to remain with us for at least another week. Fortunately, the two days of heavy rain have really irrigated the land. It was in dire need of it. We…

December Newsletter

Dear friend, This will be the briefest of Newsletters and will not contain a great deal of news! I am intending to deliver my new novel later today or tomorrow so I am DEEP in the world of my ‘lost domain’. As you can see from the photograph, I have recently returned from a week…

September Newsletter

I am writing this from Biarritz, a seaside town originally put on the map as a holiday resort by Napoléon III when he built his beloved Spanish wife, Eugénie de Montijo, a two-storey villa set high on a windy bluff overlooking the town’s grand plage (largest beach). The villa still stands. Now augmented to five…