What a week...

Up at 6am on Monday, for Start the Week, which had involved some serious homework in preparation; though it was a pleasure to meet Michael Peppiatt, and to discover his wonderful book, 'In Giacometti's Studio'. Slid home through the snow to write my Telegraph column, glad to be coming home to warm house rather than leaking Parisian studio, like poor Mrs Giacometti, then panicked about lack of Christmas preparations. Car was snowed in, so set out on foot to buy food supplies: fish pie for dinner, but two hands not enough to carry home any further shopping. Yesterday: got car out, drove to Muswell Hill, realized that the rest of north London had followed the same impulse, and we were all stuck in the M&S car park, which hadn't been gritted. If anyone is reading this who knows said-car-park, you will understand the skidding and panic that ensued on surely steepest gradient in London.
On the up side, the fish pie was delicious, and my amazon deliveries have arrived in time. On the downside, I still have two dozen presents to buy, and am steeling myself for a trip to the West End. Oh rapturous joy...

Christmas is coming, time to go to Daunt Books...

I'll be at Daunt Books in Chelsea tomorrow evening (7pm, December 15th) talking about Coco Chanel, and signing books (if anyone is out and about doing their Christmas shopping). Here's the address: 158-164 Fulham Road, London SW10 9PR; tickets available at the shop or telephone 0207 373 4997. Please do come if you can... I can offer wine, conversation, and a very surprise guest...

What to do next?

Still grappling with how to email pictures from my new iphone (I am foxed, even though everyone says it is so easy), but just managed to send one -- a very small one -- which goes no way to show the beauties of the Bowood garden on a frosty morning. The lake was frozen over, the folly wreathed in mist, the last of the roses as icy as those beside a fairytale Sleeping Beauty, but the landscape still felt astonishingly alive, as a heron swooped low from the sky.
Back in London, I am staring into abyss of What To Write Next. I feel lost without Coco, and longing to be absorbed into something (someone?) new; but guilty at the thought of abandoning her.
What do readers really want? Not that one can write a book by second-guessing the market; that way madness lies...
But I'd love to know what people here think... Is anyone out there?

White blossoms, midwinter

I'm off to Wiltshire to do a talk about Chanel at Bowood tomorrow; and very much hoping that the freezing fog lifts so that I can see the glories of the garden in winter. Last time I was there the rhododendrons were in magnificent bloom, huge drifts of them, and the wisteria was blossoming in the walled garden. It seems such a long time ago, but I'm sure there are hidden pleasures to be found in the frosty landscape of Capability Brown.

Snow day and tomorrow...

Snow falling like soft white feathers outside, and firelight within. Tomorrow I'm venturing out into the icy city to see a new exhibition (Aware: Art Fashion Identity) at the Royal Academy, and very much looking forward to meeting one of the artists, Susie MacMurray. The picture above is from 'Echo', her beautiful installation at York St Mary's, made out of hairnets and rosin-coated violin bow hair; her work at the RA is 'Widow', an extraordinary gown of dressmaker pins. You can listen to the artist talking about it here... Wonderfully inspiring, hence my voyage across the internet this afternoon, following the traces of Susie's work, from the red velvet and mussel shells at Pallant House in Chichester, to a web of gold embroidery thread in Sir Nathaniel Curzon's Derbyshire mansion...

Feathers, again...

Regular readers will know about my ongoing preoccupation with feathers; here's my latest offering (in the Sunday Telegraph).
In between thinking about these, I've been up and down to East Lothian for the day, to the lovely Lennoxlove festival. It's a beautiful place, and I was lucky enough to be talking in the Great Hall to a delightful audience, who made the long journey feel well worthwhile. Pictures to follow...
Meanwhile, I've been eating butternut squash and sweet potatoes -- the perfect winter food -- and cooking a vat of lentil, ham and spinach soup.
This morning I went to sign copies of Coco at Hatchards in Piccadilly, and Heywood Hill in Curzon Street; both of them bookshops that make me glad to be a writer, and a reader. I bought the OUP edition of Virginia Woolf's Orlando for myself (good notes, introduction, etc); and some secret Christmas presents for others.
Now on my Christmas list:
Romantic Moderns by Alexandra Harris. (Thames & Hudson).
Cecil Beaton: The Art of the Scrapbook. (Assouline).

Lennoxlove and spring bulbs in November

I'm getting ready for an early start tomorrow morning -- a day trip to East Lothian to speak at the Lennoxlove literary festival. (Just been reading about the history of Lennoxlove House , which looks intriguing...).
Meanwhile, I've been following the good advice offered by others on this blog, and spent some time outside this afternoon, sweeping the leaves out of my garden, and planting bulbs (muscari and chionodoxa; hopefully both squirrel-proof). The fresh air and the prospect of spring flowers are definitely cheering... so thank you, everyone, for nudging me outdoors today.

My heart leaps up...

"My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man,
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety."

William Wordsworth wrote his poem in 1802, and there is something reassuring, as well as inspiring, to know that over two centuries afterwards, there are still shimmering rainbows to be seen in winter skies. This one emerged out of the rain as I visited Aberdeenshire last weekend...
Blue skies over London this morning, then dense fog descended, but I am still thinking of the Scottish rainbow...
This winter, I'm hoping to embrace the changing of the season, rather than mourning the lengthening of the darkness (I confess, my melancholy tendencies tend to surface in January, so trying to find remedies in advance). Does anyone have good advice to offer here or stories to share as daylight dwindles?

The Bishop Kirk Reunion...

Alright, so I didn't win the Tesco Biography of the Year (Stephen Fry triumphed) but I did get to meet Ben Macintyre, the brilliant author of Operation Mincemeat, who was also nominated in another category for the Galaxy book awards. The bad news is that Ben didn't win, either, but the good news is that we had a chance to catch up on our shared past at Bishop Kirk school in Oxford, where Philip Pullman used to teach English. The school is now gone, and its grass playing fields where we played rounders built over with an estate of smart new houses, but talking to Ben made me happily nostalgic... I remember eating the beech nuts that fell to the ground in autumn, and making a Roman villa out of a shoebox for our teacher, Mr Hood, and singing 'Hearts of Oak' in school assembly... oddly, it never ever seemed to rain there, once upon a time in Summertown...

The day before tomorrow...

... am feeling nervous. Not that one is supposed to confess to anxiety the evening before an awards ceremony (being shortlisted is prize enough, etc); so am trying very hard to cultivate serenity... Anyone have any advice on Zen and the art of book prizes? Have I jinxed myself by confession (and so on and so forth)?

From cygnet to swan in New York...

I've just been reading a new book about Gloria Vanderbilt by Wendy Goodman. Beautiful pictures, an intermittently spooky riches to riches fairytale as if written by the Brothers Grimm, and her eerie artworks that Vanderbilt calls 'dream boxes' (see above and within).

Lutyens & Rubinstein

Thanks to everyone who braved the tube strike on Wednesday evening and made it to the Lutyens & Rubinstein bookshop in Kensington Park Road. There were beautiful Coco cupcakes made by the Love Bakery (the perfect going-home present) and I fell for an adorable dachshund named Billie. In her honour, I made special mention of the Duke of Westminster's dachshunds that accompanied him on his travels with Coco Chanel: from Eaton to the Highlands, and even aboard the Flying Cloud.
Meanwhile, fireworks are damp squibs in the rainclouds above Crouch End. But I am relishing a night in...

Tea at the Four Seasons

A good time was had by all (I hope) at the Four Seasons Literary Tea in Hampshire on Monday afternoon. The sky was bright blue, the autumn leaves blazing -- a brave start to the first day of British Winter Time -- but inside, an array of pale pink roses, poppy-red, and Chanel black and white.
I met lots of fashion aficionados and enthusiasts, admired some wonderful Chanel bags (vintage and contemporary), and shared my passion for La Grande Mademoiselle. As with other events I've spoken at recently (Dublin, Chester, Edinburgh, Manchester, et al), I've been touched to see so many mothers and daughters that have come together, as well as sisters and best friends. The spirit of Chanel seems to be inspiring a sense of female solidarity, as well as bringing out a host of book lovers. Many, many thanks to everyone, including the lovely ladies from Waterstones in Farnham, and to the team at the Four Seasons, who conjured up delicious cream teas and perfect couture patisseries, as well as those wondrous roses...

All Soul's Eve and Hereafter...

I've just retreated upstairs, after running out of sweets for the hordes of little witches knocking on the door this evening. (I thought 60 mini-packets of Haribo would do the trick, but apparently I underestimated the demand).
The candle in the pumpkin is still flickering by the fireplace, beneath one of my favourite pictures of my sister and me in childhood, taken on Halloween. This isn't a shrine to my dead sister -- apart from anything else, she still seems in some sense alive to me, and the photograph has been there for the last few years -- but I feel as if the coincidence is one of the moments that remind me of our shared past, which continues to be present today. Ruth's presence is as fluid as time itself; a narrative that leaps forward and skips backwards; a hopscotch game like those we played together, on the pavement outside our house. I've not scanned the photograph -- it is fixed beneath glass in a picture frame -- but it is vivid in my mind's eye as I write this. Two small girls, beside a kitchen table, eating jelly out of hollowed-out oranges, on All Hallow's Eve.
James George Frazer writes in The Golden Bough: 'Hallowe'en, the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter, seems to have been of old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate kinsfolk. It was, perhaps, a natural thought that the approach of winter should drive the poor shivering hungry ghosts from the bare fields and the leafless woodlands to the shelter of the cottage with its familiar fireside.'

If there are shivering hungry ghosts tonight, then I cannot believe that Ruth is amongst them. Like all those we love, she remains within my heart, cherished as she ever was, although not confined inside there. The dead remain elusive, unbound and unbidden, however powerful the threads that bind us to them; thus they have a life of their own.

No, if anyone seeks the affectionate shelter of home, it is me. The clocks went back last night, and now the darkness has descended; a time of year that I dread more as I get older, although I search for all manner of ways to embrace it... firelight, candles, good cheer. (How can I wish the winter away, when I learnt from my sister's untimely death that every moment is precious?)
But despite the compass that pulls me to the familiar safety of my house (a house that my sister never saw, yet which sees her face on its walls), I really should venture out to watch Clint Eastwood's latest film,Hereafter; for the book that I wrote about my sister's death, If The Spirit Moves You, was one of several sparks that set the screenwriter, Peter Morgan, on his way... Ruth was passionate about movies -- she worked for several film magazines, at the beginning of her career as a journalist -- and I imagine that she'd have been delighted to know that her story is alight on screen in some mysterious way...

Of the Galaxy National Book Awards, chocolate, pears and puddings...

Very exciting, Coco has been shortlisted for the Galaxy National Book Awards. Am going to celebrate with a cup of tea and a large quantity of chocolate...
PS. Am speaking next week at a couple of places: on Monday 1st at the Four Seasons hotel in Hampshire (yum, the talk is combined with a delicious afternoon tea: have just checked, and the menu includes homemade scones and jam, caramelised apple baba, and spiced pumpkin tart).
Then to Lutyens & Rubinstein bookshop on Wednesday 3rd November at 6.30(for 7pm). There will be wine and v. special bookbags on the night... (21, Kensington Park Road, London W11 2EU; ring 0207 229 1010 for tickets).
Meanwhile, am happily ensconced at home, re-reading Howard's End, and planning to make pear and ginger pudding. It's my own version of Eve's pudding: layer some sliced pears in an oven-proof dish, then add a simple sponge mixture on top -- just weigh three eggs, then cream equal parts butter and brown sugar (ie, if eggs weigh 200 grams, then you need 200 grams each of butter and sugar); add same weight of self-raising flower, plus eggs, a good pinch of dried ginger, and enough milk to make it slightly runny. Pour sponge over pears, and bake until golden. It should be cake-y on top, saucy in the middle, and fruity at the base. I have, on occasion, added a few dark chocolate buttons into the indentations of the pears; please do try this at home...

Pearls and white feathers

Thanks to everyone who came to Daunt's this evening. As always, there were some wonderful outfits in the audience: pearls, stripes, vintage Chanel bags, little black dresses, white feathers, caramel cashmere, and lovely ten-year-old Hannah, who is doing her school project on Coco Chanel. And very intriguing questions afterwards, which sparked an interesting conversation about the meaning of pearls, and their link to the Catholic rosary...
Some people have been asking about forthcoming events, so here they are... Chester on Tuesday evening (October 26th), then back via Manchester, and to the V&A on Thursday, for an event organised by English National Ballet, as part of the 'Rephrasing Ballets Russes' programme. I'll be taking part in a session between 12 and 1.30pm, which will also include a performance of 'The Dying Swan' by the ENB ballerina, Elena Glurdjidze, wearing a feathered Chanel tutu designed by Karl Lagerfeld. I'm going to try to get there earlier, not least because I want to revisit the spectacular Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes exhibition at the V&A.

Now off to eat some lentil and spinach soup that I made before my jaunt to Daunts... from sublime feathers to the comfort of the everyday...

This, that and the other...

Bright blue skies and frost this morning; Daunt's this evening, and Chester tomorrow...
Have been enjoying a little bird, (very much like the look of the chocolate salted caramels) and re-reading Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Rich Boy' (I needed to check his often misquoted lines about the rich being different, for a piece I've been writing today, and then found myself finishing the story). Also admiring the cover for Polly Samson's new book of short stories, as much as the words within them...

Of Dublin, Chanel, and the Book of Kells

Dublin is the most amazing city; filled with ideas and conversation and books, as always. Have been talking about Chanel here (there, and everywhere), and meeting lots of readers, book-sellers, broadcasters, journalists, fashion enthusiasts -- the people that make Dublin such a vibrant place. I was charmed by Pat Kenny yesterday -- (be still my beating heart...), and Tom McGurk today, and everyone who came to Dubray books in Grafton Street.
Am burbling, after a couple of stiff drinks with a friend, but just wanted to say that I visited the Old Library at Trinity College this afternoon, and became absorbed by the Book of Kells, the Book of Armagh, and the Book of Durrow. The Old Library is more magical than pictures can ever convey, but have posted a couple (above), to give you a taste for more...
My head is now overflowing with Celtic knots and interlocked double CCs. Suddenly, the mysterious stained glass window that illuminates the 12th century Abbey of Aubazine, where Chanel was brought up by the nuns, seems to be reflected in the ancient monastic manuscripts of Ireland...

Chanel sunbathing

V. thrilled to be on the sun-lounger with Laura Bailey... Check out the stripes! The glasses! The hat! Coco would mightily approve...
PS. If anyone lives in Dublin and wants to have afternoon tea with me and the fashion editor of the Irish Times, Deidre McQuillan at the Westbury hotel, here's your chance. It may not be as sunny as Miami, and there will be no bikinis, but chic nonetheless...

Next week in Dublin...

... I will be talking at Dubray Books on Thursday 21st at 6.30pm. What a treat -- I love Dublin, and am so looking forward to being there. Have just been searching my bookshelves, and rediscovered Elizabeth Bowen's collection of Irish stories to read on the journey -- not sure if it's still in print (my edition is from 1978, published by Poolbeg Press). One of the stories -- Hand in Glove -- is a wonderfully chilling tale of clothes and ghosts; don't want to give too much away (and neither does the hand in its glove...).
Speaking of brilliant short stories, I also want to recommend Polly Samson's new collection, Perfect Lives, published by Virago. More of which later...
PS. Went to sign books today at Hatchards in Piccadilly. Anyone who loves fashion and books should head along to the 2nd floor -- a great surprise in store.

Chanel goes to Daunts and Dublin

I know that some people have been unable to get tickets for my talk at the V&A on October 15th (it seems to be sold out, although I do have a couple of extra guest tickets, if anyone here is particularly keen).
But there will be another chance to meet in London, on Monday October 25th at 7pm, at Daunts in Marylebone High Street. I love this bookshop -- it's one of my favourites in London, along with Heywood Hill in Curzon Street and Lutyens & Rubinstein in Notting Hill -- for several different reasons. Daunts is a beautiful place, lined with wooden shelves of books, including an inspiring travel section, and it also happens to be very close to where I lived as a child, in a flat at 99 Marylebone High Street (just along from Patisserie Valerie, which used to be Sagne's, where my sister and I ate marzipan piglets and florentines). So there's something about it that reminds me of home, but also of where I might be going to...

First of all, to Dublin (at Dubray Books in Grafton Street, on Thursday 21st October at 6.30pm; more details to follow).

Until then, enjoying the sunshine in my garden... sweeping up leaves from the wisteria, dead-heading the roses, trimming and weeding, and thinking fondly of my cat, whose ashes we scattered last month beneath the magnolia tree.

Emily Bronte's hawk

For reasons that I do not quite understand, I've been dreaming about birds of prey for the last two nights -- startling, unsettling, but not quite nightmares -- and perhaps as a consequence, Emily Bronte is very much on my mind tonight; in particular, her picture of a merlin hawk (see above). As it happens, I wrote about the Brontes and feathers in a previous book, My Mother's Wedding Dress; and have just found myself leafing through the relevant chapter (very rare for me to ever return like this; once written, a book seems to fly out of my reach); and to the episode in Wuthering Heights where Cathy tears open her pillow with her teeth, and identifies the feathers within:

"And here is a moorcock's; and this -- I should know it among a thousand -- it's a lapwing's... This feather was picked up from the heath, the bird was not shot -- we saw its nest in the winter, full of little skeletons. Heathcliff set a trap over it, and the old ones dare not come."

It's impossible to ignore Heathcliff's cruelty -- a boy/man who hangs puppies, kills lapwings, beats children and his wife -- although many accounts of him as a great romantic hero seem untroubled by his macabre tendencies (as with Mr Rochester in 'Jane Eyre' and, for that matter, Max de Winter in 'Rebecca'; both of them murderous toward their first wives).

Emily Bronte herself remains as enigmatic and intriguing as ever; impossible to interpret (at least in biographical terms), but the clues she left still seem tantalizing, slipping through my fingers, light as feathers in the wind. I very much recommend Juliet Barker's meticulous new edition of The Brontes, and Christine Alexander's book, The Art of the Brontes. The latter contains the following information on Emily's hawk:

"Study of a merlin, a bird of prey, facing right and perched on one claw... Although she does not title the painting, her pet merlin 'Nero', which she had rescued from an abandoned nest on the moors, would have provided ample opportunity for the close observation of plumage and colouring evident in her work. This hawk has been referred to as 'Hero' in many publications, but... this is a mis-transcription of the name in Emily's diary papers."

Emily mentions Nero 'in his cage' in her diary paper of 30 July 1841. Christine Alexander suggests that the bird was probably acquired early in 1841, based on Emily's reference to a bird pining for the liberty of 'Earth's breezy hills and heaven's blue sea' in a poem dated 27 February 1841, 'The Caged Bird'. The bird of the poem, however, is not in a cage but on a chain; Alexander believes that Emily identifies wholly with its 'cold captivity':

Ah could my hand unlock its chain
How gladly would I watch it soar
And ne'er regret and ne'er complain
To see its shining eyes no more

But even so... I wonder why Emily kept her hawk in a cage (not a Hero, but Nero, the Roman tyrant...)? By the time she had returned from Brussels in November 1842, Emily's hawk had gone. She writes in a subsequent diary paper: 'lost the hawk Nero, which, with the geese, was given away, and is doubtless dead, for when I came back from Brussels, I inquired on all hands and could hear nothing of him...'

Dreaming aside, I want to know more...

Little black dresses, white feathers, and dove grey scribbles

Like many others, I am a longstanding fan of dove grey reader, so I'm thrilled she has been enjoying Coco. As always, she has made some intriguing connections: take a peep at what she has to say about her father, Winston Churchill, and why women are so good at salmon fishing...
Meanwhile, have been hither and thither, in the virtual and physical world. To Paris, to see the Chanel show on Tuesday morning (of which more later), which took over the vast space of the Grand Palais, and yet seemed also to lead into the dream-like landscape of Last Year at Marienbad. We've talked about Resnais's enigmatic film on this blog before now -- and its links to Chanel past (Delphine Seyrig's costumes were designed by Coco) -- and so it was intriguing to see it shape-shifting into the present (itself a prediction of the future, given that this show was -- is? -- the spring/summer 2011 collection).
I loved the feathers, the little black dresses, the fact that grownup women were on the catwalk -- Stella Tennant, Ines de la Fressange. I'm still wondering about the ghosts that haunt Resnais's film and Karl Lagerfeld's fashion show... and about the 1920s feathered cape that I peeked in the Chanel archive at Place Vendome; and wings of desire and flights of fantasy; of gardens and mirrors and the torn veil between now and then...

Coco's Caledonia

A Frenchwoman and the Scotsman... magnifique.
Also reading Gondal Girl and Alison Kerr... and enjoying the coolness of milk.

Through the round window...

I loved the view from my room on the top floor of the Balmoral -- looking out of the attic window at the Castle beyond. It reminds me of Play School, the television show from my childhood, where the highlight was going through the round window or the square window or -- on special occasions -- the arched window. In my hazy memory of the past (that world where dream and memory blurs into one), the round window was also somehow akin to Alice going Through the Looking Glass... and as it happens, in the opening chapter of Lewis Carroll's story, Alice is gazing out of a window. 'I was watching the boys getting in sticks for the bonfire... Only it got so cold, and it snowed so, they had to leave off.' She is talking to her kitten at the time -- who has been playing with a ball of wool -- and re-reading this episode now, I was struck by the tinge of menace in the room. 'Alice wound two or three turns of the worsted round the kitten's neck, just to see how it would look.... "Do you know, I was so angry, Kitty," Alice went on... 'when I saw all the mischief you had been doing, I was very nearly opening the window, and putting you out into the snow! ... You know I'm saving up all your punishments for Wednesday week -- Suppose they saved up all my punishments?" she went on, talking more to herself than the kitten. "What would they do at the end of a year? I should be sent to prison, I suppose, when the day came."'
Then, to punish the kitten for not folding its arms properly, 'she held it up to the Looking-glass... "-- and if you're not good directly," she added, "I'll put you through into Looking-glass House."'
But it is Alice who sees the glass go soft as gauze: '"Why, it's turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It'll be easy enough to get through --" She was up on the chimney-piece while she said this, though she hardly knew how she had got there. And certainly the glass was beginning to melt away, just like a bright silvery mist.'

I know, I know, I'm still obsessed with Coco Chanel -- how could I not be? -- but as I sit here, musing over the looking glass house, I can't help but remembering the mirrored walls of 31 Rue Cambon, and the sense I had while writing at Mademoiselle's desk of how her reflection might be visible just behind me; the back of my neck prickling, wondering whether the glass above the fireplace might soften, just as ice melts...

PS. One of the disturbing things about having a book out is that you feel yourself exposed, as if seen in a distorted hall of mirrors -- and there is shame, too, in feeling that you are looking at yourself, as well as being examined by others. But having just read today's review in the Telegraph , I'm so glad to realize that other writers and readers are discovering the myriad reflections in Chanel's looking glass world -- and that she has a continuing life of her own.

Some good things in my kitchen...

Proof, at last, that couture cakes and Chanel can inhabit the same kitchen counter. I have been enjoying these delicious cupcakes from Samantha Blears -- although they looked too good to eat, I couldn't resist them -- and have been carrying my book bag with pride...