Alysia Vasey is better known as The Yorkshire Forager, supplying the UK’s top restaurants. She is the regular forager on James Martin’s Saturday Show and has appeared on Countryfile, as ...
1. I was inspired to write The Tears of Boabdil by revelations about undercover policemen having sex with their targets.
We now know that, over four decades, at least 139 undercover ...
It’s the question all writers dread. 'Where do you get your ideas?' We dread it because the real answers – 'I don’t know', 'everywhere and nowhere', 'from my head' – ...
Since 2020 has kept us all a little closer to home, I have been reflecting on all the travel I was able to do before the pandemic. Specifically, how I ...
A 2019 report revealed 22% of UK teens reported being bullied in 2019, a worrying statistic given studies show bullying often results in depression, anxiety, under-achievement, isolation, and self-harm.1 Bullying ...
1. Of the 19 Ian Rankin novels, my favourite is Black and Blue. DI John Rebus is the hard drinking, heavy smoking Edinburgh detective who shows scant regard for his ...
Everyone can feel down or anxious, even panicky or scared, these are all normal emotions. Most of the time we have coping strategies to guide us through our experiences. Generally, ...
When “self-help” became a trend over thirty years ago, it seemed that every latter-day guru was telling us to “live in the moment.” We were instructed to put the past ...
Winging It begins with the protagonist Emily in the middle of labour, as she brings her little girl Lucy into the world. As a reader you are quite literally thrown ...
First up, yours truly, Melissa Allen.
I usually ask for books for my birthday and for Christmas, and my family and friends know these three are on my Christmas list. American ...
In March at the beginning of the Covid 19 crisis I had been sitting at my computer for hours, clacking away on the keyboard in an attempt to reach the ...
If the first lockdown wasn’t strange enough, it was definitely more so as I had a Christmas book to work on. Back in March, faced with the shutdown of schools, ...
General Practice has changed massively over the past forty or so years when it comes to its effectiveness and patient experience. A report from the World Health Organisation has shown ...
For so many of us lockdown meant a juggle of working, home-schooling, and trying to keep our sanity. Novelist Anna Jefferson explains how she found salvation in the chilly welcome ...
My husband’s retirement coincided with lockdown. Instead of being elsewhere every weekday he converted the garage into a workshop and built a shed. With the gym closed it seemed the ...
I was gifted Have Yourself A Minimalist Christmas on my birthday by my mum. I had actually asked for it as a Christmas present, but as she rightfully said, ‘you ...
When we think about gender roles in the past, we mostly recall how women had very few rights and were virtually the chattels of their male relatives or spouses. They ...
I became a stepmum to three children and not having any children of my own, it was a super swift learning curve! Throw in the mix, I trained and qualified ...
Working for many years in mental health services I talked to countless people going through all kinds of devastating experiences. Their lives had been derailed by the more severe and ...
Numerology is said to have been discovered by Pythagoras, the Greek mystic and mathematician, although there are different forms of it dating back to old civilisations such as Babylon and ...
I’m a serial house mover. Since I met my partner in 2006, we’ve bought and sold seven properties between us. That’s a lot of stamp duty! We currently live in ...
