The September Issue -- filmed as far as I can tell during 2007 (I recognised the hairy, plastic fringed Prada dress that received an acid comment about the unwearable weight of materials employed by the Italian house early in the film) -- is a beautifully filmed documentary that spies on...

Only slowly over the last few years has the significance of uber-poet Tennyson in my own family history become apparent. Here I am, sitting in a room that used to be his study, high up under the eaves of a rather confused house on the Isle of Wight. The ceiling...

I can feel a bit of excitement starting up under my ribs as feedback begins to flow on my first published novel. It's the week of publication for One Apple Tasted , here in the UK, although Amazon started sending my first novel out a couple of weeks ago,...

Reading about sex is all the rage for women over 45, according to Astral -- a pleasant skincare range that you buy in your local chemist (which tells you what kind of client base it has). Which is just as well, because I finally was able to write about fully...

A couple of weeks ago I got talking to the actor and director Matthew (Harry) Burton at a party about websites, for which I have a knack. He mentioned that Victoria Gray, the widow of the playwright Simon Gray, was thinking of creating a website for her late husband, as...

For you suave and much-published authors out there, skipping in and out of Bloomsbury, the traditional book publishing area of London, to discuss the minutiae of line editing, cover design, launch parties, curly quotes and more, is a matter of dull, everyday drudgery. For this newbie, it's a lovely treat....

Renowned British designer Jasper Conran has done a complete volte face for S/S 2008. Showing in the Royal Academy yesterday in an all-white room punctuated with bleached trees that threw leafy shadows onto the pristine walls, the collection hopped delightfully from prim to sexy and back again in direct...

In contrast to some of the social events I record here, I want to tell you of the joys of the Montgomery Show. 'Like something out of the 1950s,' said my friend's mother. In a bumpy, damp field, tents made of stained cream canvas are arranged about a 'ring' where...

The world occasionally gets interested in the Great British Sex Life, and now is one of those times: the classified ads site Craigslist has surveyed that hackneyed old chestnut about whether the British prefer a cup of tea to sex on the first date.

Fact number one here is...

Off we went to see the polo again, this time in Windsor Great Park for Cartier International Polo. The park is huge area of trees and greenery that was originally a kind of living larder for the Kings of England -- they went there to hunt deer for the table.

I went to my new scent critic, Celia Lyttelton's book launch last night at L'Artisan Parfumeur in Marylebone High Street. Her book, The Scent Trail, I highly recommend, as it takes you on a journey around the world sniffing and snuffing up the delicious elements that make up our perfumes....

I went to Hyde Park for a wonderful party last night, following a day that involved going all the way to Devon and back by train for a three-hour meeting. I sat on a wall on the way from Paddington Station to the park in a quiet side street, to...

It always seems to happen so fast. One minute everyone's huddled in coats, the next they're displaying highly unnecessary bits of themselves to an unappreciative audience on the underground. Elsewhere, visually, London blossoms with pretty girls in gangs and good dresses, swinging along - the first fake tan of the...

The English have a hopeless addiction to tea, but even they seldom take 'champagne tea' at 2pm. Luckily, we hadn't had anything remotely resembling lunch due to wrangling the kids sufficiently to get ourselves tidied up and out of the house in time to watch the Audi polo match on...

It has taken me this long to write anything about London Fashion Week, as it has been quite frantic, and I have only managed one party -- Vivienne Westwood's book launch at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park. And I spent that chatting to my Picture Editor just inside the...

The fashion theme at London's BAFTAs last night was surprising conservative and retro, with many nods to the 40s and 50s, sober, one-color outfits and masses of extremely valuable but unchallenging diamonds nestling in cleavages and particularly down bare backs. There were enormous numbers of sequins, in all sizes and...

The BAFTAS are coming. The Orange British Academy Film Awards usually play something like third fiddle to the Golden Globes and the Oscars, perceived as being quaintly British while striving to be international. This year, as Hollywood blinks and winces under the onslaught of the writers' strike, they have attained...