Molly Guinness 
We must save the bread-and-butter letter from extinction
When my parents received a thank-you letter from a good friend recently, we all read it with (I’m afraid) not affectionate pleasure but a rising sense of indignation. The trouble… Read more
'Diana Vreeland', by Amanda Mackenzie Stuart - review
Over 80 and almost blind, Diana Vreeland was wheeled around a forthcoming costume exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, issuing instructions all along the way about hats, shoes, lights and mannequins.… Read more
Women, beware these women
When Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider read this review, they’ll exchange a pitying smile and quietly start waiting for my distress call. For woe betide any woman who thinks she… Read more
Slippery slopes
Being sent to finishing school in Bavaria in 1936 was a dream for some English girls: there were winter sports and sachertorte, opera and sausages, and troupes of handsome Nazis… Read more
The whole kitchen caboodle
Pretentious, effeminate, sinister and even obscene, the fork of folktale was a sign of loose morals, silly decadence or sexual deviancy. To insist on eating with a fork was a… Read more
Applying myself
The harvest is in, the smell of dried leaves is in the air, Parliament’s back in session, and pretty soon the 17-year-olds will start ringing: the university admissions deadline is… Read more
Finery down to a fine art
The Impressionists adored clothes. They delighted in strapontins, polonaises and paletots; fans, hats and umbrellas were an extra treat. They were keen on couture, but they didn’t restrict themselves to… Read more
A Valparaiso romance
More than 150 years after her last publication, the narrator of this novel, the travel writer Maria Callcott, has taken up her pen to tell all about her friendship with… Read more
The attraction of repulsion
Take some boiled maize, chew it, spit it out, put the mixture into an urn, bury it, dig it up several days later, and Bob’s your uncle: the Ecuadoran delicacy… Read more
Ecoutez bien!
The French make it look easy: small babies sleep through the night, toddlers calmly eat four-course lunches, well-dressed mothers chat on the edge of the playground rather than running around… Read more
Don’t mention the war
It wasn’t easy being the daughter of the artist Avigdor Arikha. In this memoir, Alba Arikha mixes teenage fury with glimpses of her godfather Samuel Beckett and a fragmented account… Read more
Chagrin d’amour
The horror of love: Nancy Mitford’s first fiancé was gay; her husband, Peter Rodd, was feckless, spendthrift and unsympathetic, and her great amour, Gaston Palewski, was endlessly unfaithful. She met… Read more
Leave it to the French
Elaine Sciolino was advised to find herself a French lover for research purposes; as far as it’s possible to tell, she didn’t, but this may be the only stone left… Read more
Very drôle
It’s nice to know that the trees lining the roads in Paris have microchips embedded in their trunks, that the city council is controlling the pigeon population by shaking the… Read more
Family album
Fay Weldon’s new book is told by Frances, Weldon’s imaginary sister — one she would have had if her mother had not had a miscarriage a few years after Weldon… Read more
Missed opportunity
A World According to Women: An End to Thinking, by Jane McLoughlin The Noughtie Girl’s Guide to Feminism, by Ellie Levenson Jane McLoughlin is furious with women. We have let… Read more
Desolation by the sea
Patrick Oxtoby is 23 when his fiancée tells him she can’t marry him. He leaves home for a boarding house by the sea. He fantasises a bit about breaking his… Read more
Hope born of fantasy
Molly Guinness reviews Wendy Perriam’s latest collection of short stories Wendy Perriam’s latest collection of short stories tends to focus on the lonely, the mousy and the underachieving, and she… Read more
Gilding the lily
Molly Guinness on Allan Mallinson’s latest novel Allan Mallinson’s hero, Lieutenant-Colonel Matthew Hervey, returns in Warrior with his usual mixture of courage and kindness, his talent for friendship and a… Read more
Too much remembrance of things past
Remember Me . . . is the story of a ten-year love affair, which begins in the early 1960s when Joe, an undergraduate polymath from the north, persuades Natasha, French,… Read more
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