I spent my early years in regional Queensland. It was a world of hot summer Christmases marked with greeting cards and stories of snowflakes and reindeer. And the characters in the books I read lived in a different climate and landscape, with different-styled houses and schools, and they used a different version of English. And [...]

To me, sharing a meal with friends and or family is one of life’s essential pleasures. It doesn’t matter much whether it’s a big family dinner, light lunch, or coffee and cake with a friend, but the food should be good and the atmosphere convivial and unhurried. I appear to have passed on that attitude [...]

It’s become conventional wisdom that if you are a good parent and read to your baby everyday (from conception to the day they go to school) that they will learn to be brilliant readers. I don’t think so. You could just as easily put them off reading for ever. So, let’s stop listening to the [...]