There are some notable exceptions, and I’ll get those out of the way immediately.  Otis Redding’s ‘Merry Christmas Baby’, William Bell’s ‘Every Day Will be Like a Holiday’, And let’s not forget ‘Fairytale of New York’, and Swamp Dogg’s ‘An Awful Christmas and a Lousy New Year’.  But, The Pogues aside, these guys could sing the phonebook and still have me hooked.  I’m also a big fan of Gaby Moreno’s ‘Posada’ album, a mix of traditional hymns and gospel.  Her voice is exquisite

Samuel Butler said that ‘It was very good of God to let Carlyle and Mrs. Carlyle marry one another, and so make only two people miserable and not four.’ The Carlyles may have been famous for their squabbling but there is little sign of it in Thea Holme’s ‘The Carlyles at Home’ - an entertaining look at their day-to-day routine in Victorian London. In fact, the author would have us believe that Thomas and Jane were a perfect match for each other: hypochondriacs who lived in t

Because my mother’s minutes were sucked into the roar of the vacuum cleaner, Because she waltzed with the washer-dryer, and tore her hair waiting for repairmen, I send out my laundry and live in a dusty house, Though really I like clean houses as well as anyone. Woman Enough – Erica Jong 'Feng Shui - It's not you, it's your furniture!' - Unknown Person on Pinterest In ‘Love at First Bite’ George Hamilton (as Dracula) winds up in New York, where he has sex with Susan Saint Jam

‘ A perfect piece of written heartbreak’ – The Jewish Chronicle The first half of this book, a reprint of the author’s diary, is a scattered account of the days and weeks leading up to the Liberation of Paris in 1944. Inevitably, each entry veers between elation and despair: the end of the War is in sight but Mesnil-Amar’s husband is in German hands, and destined to be on the last deportation train out of Paris. The family, who are Jewish, have spent the war years moving from