Category Archives: Uncategorized

For a total change of pace, here’s my latest book, out in winter 2022. It’s a social comedy set in late-nineteenth century New York. There’s new money and old money, romance and snobbery, lots of wonderful dresses. I had great … Continue reading →

The Royal Shakespeare Company has adapted Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies into a dramatic diptych, currently on stage at Stratford-upon-Avon. Two plays, six hours. Wouldn’t you just love to see them?

At the Frick, that is. Since October, the two paintings have been star attractions in The Frick Collection’s blockbuster exhibition “Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Hals: Masterpieces of Dutch Painting from the Mauritshuis.” People lined up around the block. But a funny … Continue reading →

Much-loved author of The Cazalet Chronicles and the memoir Slipstream, among others. My favorite line from this obituary: Howard explains that she married her second husband “because I became exhausted by people wanting to go to bed with me after half an … Continue reading →

Yes, I read & discussed this last spring. But The Custom of the Country is 100 years old and The Mount (Edith Wharton’s Lenox, MA home, open now to the public) is doing a year-long blog on it. They invited … Continue reading →

You know those scientific studies that prove something you figured out long ago? News flash here is that reading literary fiction promotes empathy. Yes — you understand people better if you read novels that include complex characters and emotional dilemmas … Continue reading →

In today’s New York Times Book Review, Ian McEwan says, “Perhaps the greatest reading pleasure has an element of self-annihilation. To be so engrossed that you barely know you exist.” I totally agree. You?  

I’m interrupting my Patrick O’Brian reverie to share news from London. (Actually posted to the To Marry an English Lord FB page by the daughter of my co-author Gail MacColl. Thank you, Isabel!) Evidently Julian Fellowes is now contemplating a prequel … Continue reading →