Anne Tyler: Literary Heroine

The aim of Bookdiva is to bring women who love books together, and highlight books that women might want to read.

I’ve written before about …

Is Fifty Shades of Grey really sexy?

Unexpected things turn me on.

Really good porridge. A fantastic new word. Gary Oldman. Especially Gary Oldman in The Fifth Element, bleeding black goo. Mmm.

Video design grows up

London’s new smash musical Singin’ In The Rain has more than its fair share of memorable moments. And although the scene where Don Lockwood (Adam Cooper) …

Fantasy’s moment has come

Thus spake Lev Grossman at the Oxford Literary Festival, in an hour of erudite, funny, self-effacing brilliance that made me jump up and punch …

Jazz, meet word

If you asked any London culture vulture to identify the hottest trends in the capital this spring, jazz and spoken word are both likely to …

Is romantic fiction undervalued?

lt would be all too easy to satirise the Romantic Novelists’ Association Awards (RoNAs). When I’d traipsed through central London to One Whitehall Place – …

PHOENIX | Where Talent Rises

What are you wearing? What proportion of it is black, white, cream, grey, navy, camel, nude or beige? Be honest, now. Here’s a little snippet …

Silk and the city

It’s whispering down the catwalk at Somerset House for London Fashion Week. It’s caressed by every tourist nipping into Liberty’s for an iconic paisley scarf. …

Naturally 7 @ Barbican Centre

Surprisingly, my husband manages to fit in a job other than me. He works for AEG, proud owner of the O2 and other impressively echoey …

‘Appy birfday, Mister Dikkins!

What to write? He said it all, literally. As we celebrate Dickens’s 200th birthday, this is definitely the year to go back and remember why …

Sport stories

If you were searching for a pastime that was the opposite of reading, you might well hit on sport. Burying your nose in a book …

In Residence: Beowulf

This season, the British Library is all about the manuscripts. The gorgeous artworks in ‘Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination’ – its big winter exhibition …

Future Folk

It was an unlikely pairing. You wouldn’t expect the sort of edgy, urban international hipsters that attend SXSW – the music, film, and technology festival …

Literary Resolutions

“Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions”, wrote Mark Twain in Nevada’s Territorial Enterprise on January 1, 1863. “Next week you can …

Scary Christmas shows

It was the blow job joke that did it.

Admittedly, the RSC’s new winter show, The Heart of Robin Hood, had signalled from the …