Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Jan 16, 2025 | dailymail.co.uk | Ysenda Maxtone Graham

A typical Nigel Slater moment, in Goa, India. He’s in the back of an ancient Morris Oxford cab, with crocheted antimacassars washed and ironed by the driver’s mother, when the car is suddenly pounded by ‘raindrops the size of cherries’. It’s a monsoon. The driver can’t see out, and stops the car. He passes Slater a tiny mango from the pile on the seat beside him. It tastes divine. ‘A trickle of nectar is running down my chin, stinging my naked, sunburnt thighs.

Jan 15, 2025 | spectator.co.uk | Ysenda Maxtone Graham

When Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies of the Spring was published in 1923, a post-first world war mass wishful belief in fairies was at its height in Britain.

Jan 15, 2025 | spectator.com.au | Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Flower Fairies: The Magical World of Cicely Mary BarkerWatts Gallery Artists’ Village, Compton, Surrey, until 27 April When Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies of the Spring was published in 1923, a post-first world war mass wishful belief in fairies was at its height in Britain.

Jan 9, 2025 | dailymail.co.uk | Ysenda Maxtone Graham

When 56-year-old thrice-divorced George Carman QC first met blonde 30-year-old barrister Karen Phillipps at the Daly wine bar on the Strand in 1986, she told him she had a boyfriend whom she hoped to marry one day, and was prepared to wait. Taken aback, Phillipps politely turned down his proposal. ‘So began a deep and enduring platonic friendship,’ she writes in the introduction to her illuminating tribute to Carman’s powers as Britain’s most-feared barrister.

Jan 9, 2025 | airmail.news | Ysenda Maxtone Graham

The Power and the Glory: Life in the English Country House Before the Great War by Adrian Tinniswood A main entrance, a garden entrance, a luggage entrance, a business entrance, a nursery entrance and a second garden entrance for the private use of family and invalids. A principal staircase, a private family staircase, a servants’ staircase, a “bachelor’s stair”, a “young ladies’ stair” and “other Special Stairs” (purpose unspecified).