Desperate Reader

I started planning these posts about vermouth back in June, thinking I'd write them in August. By the end of July I realised I hadn'...

Patricia Fara's 'A Lab of One's Own - Science and Suffrage in the First World War' came out in paperback last month and I ha...

Rumer Godden has a way of writing about houses and their accumulated history that I find irresistible. The narrative of ‘A Fugue in Time’ sk...

This Orange Martini comes from the Sipsmith 'Sip' book, and is a slightly simplified version of the Savoy Cocktail guide drink from ...

The drinks I remember from Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle' are sticky liqueurs illicitly consumed in the village pub, but ...

As a child of the 70s I have vivid, if slightly confused, memories of the Martini adverts. I also have vivid memories of being given Martini...

'Sip' continues to prove itself a sound investment; the beauty of only having 3 ingredients per cocktail, one of which is guaranteed...

I must have read F. M. Mayor's 'The Squire's Daughter' and 'The Rector's Daughter' before I started blogging, wh...

Amongst my most treasured Virago Modern Classics are the 3 Mae West books (2 novels and her autobiography), I've also got a box set of h...

Looking for John Cheever short stories yesterday, followed by finding John O'Hara in all sorts of places reminded me of how much I enjoy...