Blog

Dressing the part

Publication Day for THAT WOMAN and, to celebrate, a fitting for THAT DRESS with the designer I know Wallis would have rushed to embrace,Roland Mouret. I cannot reveal – yet – what it looks like. But like all of Roland’s clothes it is clever, witty, seductive and makes the wearer feel instantly wonderful. It is certainly not a copy of a Wallis original, but it pays homage to one of her most famous gowns. The day after the official launch, September 6th, when Roland and I will be having a conversation about Wallis’s life and style at the iconic Net-a-Porter headquarters, THAT DRESS officially goes on sale but, unlike Cinderella, when the clock strikes midnight I will still have my own gown to keep for ever.

 

The power of the web

The power of the web

Publishers have brought forward the release date of my book to August 19th in response to Daily Mail serialisation and Amazon, where the book has jumped to number two in the Hot New Releases below Terry Pratchett at number one and Lee Child at number 4. This is so exciting. Thank you to everyone who is pressing the button and buying.  There is a whole lot more in the book!

The two week window

The two week window

Ask any author, researching is lonely, writing is tortuous, the publicity round exhausting. So why do it?

Because I love it, perhaps?  Not always, but this, the final two weeks before publication, is the best moment. This is the window when my book is still my own, inside me, before the world has had a chance to read it – or judge it.

But it’s a strange time too. Nothing I can change now … however often I wake in the night wishing I could add this or say that better. And in this case it’s not just a book but a Channel 4 film based on my quest to find Wallis. And the film even more than the book is totally out of my hands and into those of the director and producers … I have done the interviews but don’t yet know the title or the transmission date. Watch this space. As soon as I know,  you’ll  know.

Talking of judging… just as I thought I had time to read all those novels piling up on the floor by the side of my bed the biographies start arriving: serious reading this as I am a judge for the HW Fisher Best First Biography prize. What a treat, and what a responsibility! But please won’t someone ask me to judge a fiction prize?  Historians read novels too – Hey, some of us even write them!

On this day 90 years ago

Ninety years ago today Jennie Churchill, American mother of Winston, died. She had fallen down the stairs after slipping on some high heeled shoes which had not had their soles adequately scored. At first it was thought she had just sprained an ankle but then gangrene set in. She had the lower leg amputated and for a while it seemed as if she would recover. But on June 9th 1921 she suddenly haemorrhaged. Winston famously ran through the streets in his pyjamas to be with his adored mother before she died. She was just 67 and still radiating the energy and vigour which made her so attractive to younger men.

Although married to Montague Porch, a Nigerian civil servant, she was still known as Lady Randolph Churchill and buried, as she had requested, at Bladon churchyard just outside Blenheim Palace because she wanted in death to lie next to her errant first husband, Lord Randolph Churchill.