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The Healing Power of Story

I am nocturnally challenged. Many years ago, upon sharing this information with someone I met, he looked me in the eye and said 'Get your beloved to read to you.' I wasn't sure what my beloved would think of that, but I asked him, and he did.…
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✳︎ 6 Books for a Compassionate Christmas ✳︎

How is everybody coping as Christmas edges ever closer? I don't know about anybody else, but when December hits and Christmas starts carolling towards us, as much as I love this season, I sometimes feel like burying my head under a pillow and…
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Encouraging Reluctant Readers

I recently had an article published on 'How to Encourage Reluctant Readers' on the Advice for Parents section of Simply Learning Tuition (a London based tutor-company). Click here to have a read of it!
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#FeministFebruary - A shout out from India

Virginia Woolf As February draws to a close, I am sneaking in with a quick blog post to celebrate #FeministFebruary as I only discovered its existence the other day. Coincidentally, I am reading Virginia Woolf's book A Room of One's Own (1929) at…
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My favourite 5 books from the second half of 2017

It's been a busy six months: publishing my third novel, packing up our house & leaving Nairobi. But I've read more than ever. Reading is a constant for me, an anchor and refuge and my day is never finished without losing myself within the…
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Stuck for last minute Christmas gifts? How about one of my top 5 reads of 2016?

I am delighted to unwittingly discover that my top 5 reads of 2016 have all been written by women. I have absolutely nothing against fiction by men; I have also read many books written by men this year and have always been fairly gender-blind…
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Why reading aloud to older kids is not just special, it's vital

When is a good age to stop reading stories aloud to children? Well, how about never? Alright, so what are the chances really of being tucked up beside our seventeen year old reading a bedtime story. But many believe that once children have…
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Win a small treasure: The Gifts of Reading

'This story, like so many stories, begins with a gift. The gift, like so many gifts, was a book...' So begins Robert Macfarlane's masterful and luminous essay, on the gift and power of giving and receiving books. This small, beautifully bound…
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Why should we read Historical Fiction?

I'm going to let you into a little secret: I never intended to write Historical Fiction. It's not that I didn't enjoy reading it from time to time, but in my pre-novel days when I focused on the short story form, they were almost always set…
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How do we create a new narrative of hope?

'It's important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction. The hope I'm interested in is about broad perspectives…