Get your copy of Catherine Law’s latest release, The Artist’s Daughter, an irresistibly haunting love story spanning two generations, perfect for fans of Lucinda Riley!

Every evening at the Menin Gate in the town of Ypres, Belgium, at the going down of the sun, a large crowd gathers. Every evening, without fail, buglers march out, people fall silent as the proud and mournful Last Post is sounded.

But pride can slip easily into bitterness among the fields of Flanders and the valleys of the Somme. For here the inhumanity of war is uncovered, just as farmers’ ploughs today churn up a chip of backbone, a stick of rib and a curved piece of skull. More than one hundred years on, shells and bullets, many still live, are another perpetual harvest. I toured the Western Front to try to understand our nation’s degradation of its youth during the First World War, but could only scratch the surface. I could only stand and stare.

Their names are listed row upon row on the Menin Gate, utterly shocking in their thousands but a drop in the ocean among the endless cemeteries and battlegrounds scattered over this huge area spanning the French-Belgium border. The Tommies gave their theatre of war a human and humorous edge, naming places Hellfire Corner, Suicide Road and Blood Alley. They called their tanks Fritz Flatteners. They laughed, of course, or they died. (After all, it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.)

Stand on the Messines Ridge with binoculars and you can see almost the whole of the Line, stretching from Loos in the south to Passchendaele in the north. And in this benign landscape, force yourself to imagine the filth and the noise of war: the firestorm at Hooge where burning oil was jettisoned over trenches; the poisonous quagmire of Ploegsteert; the violent slaughter in the wire at Beaumont Hammel. In Sanctuary Wood, you can still touch bullet holes in the blasted, ragged trees. Watch the river Somme make its peaceful wide sweep through rolling countryside further south and learn of the revolting carnage at Serre, where the mowing down of a generation occurred in approximately ten minutes.

The enormity of the numbers of the dead is beyond belief; the staggering amount who were simply “lost” and unaccounted for driven home by the single word on missing French soldiers’ headstones: Inconnu. The monument at Thiepval will leave you gaping and speechless. All these place names, notorious, stagnant and cold in our collective psyche, should be carved onto every school curriculum.

As the sun goes down over the Western Front, the wind picks up and the grasses rustle but the earth remains silent. And, in the morning, people rebuild their lives. With nonchalant shrugs, farmers erect barns over mine chambers still packed with explosives, they use former dug-outs as wine cellars, they plough up the bones of century-old youth while birds continue to sing from the hedgerows. Life goes on here because that is what the soldiers ceased living for. And they remain in the cemeteries, legions of them, lying perfectly still, perfectly regimented, under pristine headstones.

All seems peaceful on the Western Front. All quiet… apart from, of course, the bird song.

Stuck in Second Gear by Carmen Reid is out now! Get your copy 📖

In the new book, one of my favourite characters, nephew Deva, is an expert on Coco Chanel. He knows a huge amount about her and loves to talk about his knowledge. I read my way through three brilliant Chanel biographies so that I could give Deva his insider knowledge.

Here are 10 lesser-known facts about this inspiring woman.

1. Although Chanel grew up in an orphanage run by nuns, she wasn’t technically an orphan. When her mother died, her father dropped her and her sister off at the Aubazine convent while her brothers were sent to farmers to work. She didn’t see her father ever again but liked to tell people that he’d gone to America to work.
2. The convent was a huge style influence on Chanel. The limestone floors and staircases, whitewashed walls, scrubbed pale wood furniture, the carbolic soaps, starchy linens, black and white nuns clothing, the stained-glass windows with interlocking circles – these were all elements that would go into her future style.
3. Chanel was a neat and a clean freak with a highly developed sense of smell. She insisted she could smell the slightest hint of dust or dirt. Chanel no 5 perfume has elements of classic plain soap and lavender.
4. We should thank Chanel for defining the place in society for a working and then a self-made woman. As a young woman, she was a rich man’s mistress but she was determined not to remain that. As she started to make her own money and become rich, she carved a place for herself in the highest echelons of society.
5. Her rich, English lover, Boy Capel, who she would always describe as the love of her life, helped to fund her very first hat shop. Having broken her heart by marrying not her but a young English woman, he then shattered it by dying in a car crash in the south of France. She insisted on being driven to the site of the crash to mourn there.
6. Chanel may not have invented the short bob, trousers for women, the little black dress or swimsuits, but she made them extremely fashionable and took them from edgy ‘street fashion’ to high and desirable style. She swam and played tennis and thought women should be out of corsets and free to move.
7. She had a decade-long love affair with Duke of Westminster and would possibly have become his wife if she’d been able to provide an heir. After a row about another woman, Coco threw a priceless string of pearls the Duke had given her over the side of his yacht. When the affair ended, she was supposed to have declared: ‘There are many Duchesses of Westminster but only one Coco Chanel’.
8. Chanel was highly aware of the power of publicity and personal brand. She loved to give advice, create slogans and memorable phrases, and she was genius at it. Just some of her lines: ‘A woman with no scent has no future’, ‘Fashion passes, style remains’, ‘There is time for work. And time for love. That leaves no other time’.
9. Boy Capel, the Duke of Westminster and her friend Sir Winston Churchill, all taught her love and respect for traditional British clothing and accessories. She adored thick tweeds, cashmere knits and all the leathercraft that went into saddlery and bridles for horses. Her iconic tweed suits are made with Scottish cashmere tweeds, and her handbags are an inspired mix of saddle and bridle skills, based on over-the-shoulder cartridge bags.
10. Chanel wasn’t the first designer to see the enormous potential in launching her own perfume to make her luxury accessible to ordinary mortals, but she was the designer who made a massive success of it. Her gift for advertising and the stories behind the numbers – the fifth fragrance she sniffed, and no.19 after the address of the shop in Paris – all helped to make her perfumes the must-have items they still are today.

Hope you’ve enjoyed all my thoughts and that you’ll enjoy the new book too.

However you’re celebrating, have a lovely holiday season and hope you manage to enjoy plenty of reading time.

Loads of love,
Carmen xxx

Stuck in Second Gear by Carmen Reid is out now! Get your copy 📖

What I’ve learned over the years.

The number one priority is a reliable car. If you’re not convinced in your heart of hearts that the clapped-out people carrier will make this lengthy journey, then take it from my bitter experience and either rent / beg / borrow something more reliable or go by train.

When I was a kid, our cars were always breaking down – even once on the way to the airport!! And this is the kind of stress no one needs. I have also as a 6-foot-tall teenager driven from Scotland to Germany in a tiny Ford Fiesta with four other family members, plus one radio and… it was tough going!

Next comes entertainment – this is obviously way easier in the high-tech era, but tiny screens and headphones are not for everyone. The car-sick travellers will not thank you. We need audiobooks and plenty of water and fresh air breaks.

Sometimes a long car journey is the ideal place to have heart-to-hearts with older children, if you can lure them from their phones. Younger children love it if everyone in the car is involved in the same thing, so audiobooks that have kept us going mile after mile include Just William, PG Wodehouse’s Blandings books, and Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter of course. On one memorable boiling hot drive to Cornwall with very basic air fan, we were all kept cool by Philip Pullman’s icy Northern Lights.

Best car trip snacks… crisps, tasty sandwiches (not egg!), grapes, but I always have to cut these longways because of paranoia people will choke when we’re doing 80mph on the autobahn. Cooling water and juice drinks, which you half freeze in advance by lying them on the side in the freezer. Don’t freeze the whole thing as you can’t get a drop out till it all melts. Chocolate is probably a no, as it melts and sticks to the car seats, clothes, and everything.

Ideally, there need to be one or even two destination stops en route – though no need to crazy with this, because usually everyone just wants to get there. Looking out a nice service station is a good compromise. Tebay services is the UK legend, and I remember stopping in a gorgeous one in France once with nice food, and a little walk with a viewing tower.

Try to pick a nice overnight stay on really long journeys. We once ended up in a ‘shabby chateau’ in Limousin – we still talk about this place and the dinner they rustled up for us. Still the best quiche I have ever eaten. There were beautiful grounds to explore and as we headed off, the card machine was broken, but they trusted me to send them a payment from home. Which I did, obvs!

Sickness, it happens. We always travelled with thick plastic bags, cool water, and a new t-shirt. The travel sickness pills seem to work quite well, as long as taken well in advance. We did have to give up on driving holidays in the west coast of Scotland though as it was just too much stress for all.

My final recommendation, when you arrive, try not to do much holiday driving. Walk, take the train, hop on a bus, swim, bicycle… you need a break before you’re back in the box on wheels heading back home again.

A Corpse in Christmas Close begins in November 1923 when local reporter Iris Woodmore is sent to cover the Prince of Wales’ visit to historic Winchester. However, she finds herself on the trail of more than just royal gossip when the leading lady in Winchester Cathedral’s charity production of Cinderella is found dead in mysterious circumstances.

In the 1920s, most pantomimes were humorous adaptations of popular fairy tales. Productions of Cinderella, Bo Peep, Jack and the Beanstalk, and Little Red Riding Hood were staged across Britain.

However, the roots of pantomime can be traced back centuries to commedia dell’arte, the improvised comedy popular in Italian theatres from the 16th to 18th centuries. Travelling troupes of actors would form a cast of stock characters, including Harlequin, Scaramouche, Pantaloon, Pierrot, and Columbine, to improvise comic stories to a basic plot.

Shows would include singing, dancing, and acrobatics, and the actors would rely on a repertoire of phrases and jokes related to their characters. Audiences became familiar with these and joined in, much like the pantomimes of today.

Over centuries, these stage shows evolved, and by the end of the 19th century some of the most extravagant productions were to be found in London. Pantomimes could last up to five hours, with huge casts dressed in flamboyant costumes performing dazzling stage tricks.

Pantomimes often opened on Boxing Day, offering Christmas entertainment for the whole family. Writers would weave in double-entendres and innuendo for the grown-ups amongst the slapstick and child-friendly comedy.

By this time, gender-switching had become a common feature of pantomimes. While men have played female roles throughout the history of theatre, women taking male roles is a more recent development. Although women often acted in street performances, it was illegal in England for a woman to act on the stage professionally until 1661.

By the latter half of the 19th century, it was customary for the principal boy to be played by a girl. Female music hall stars such as Vesta Tilley and Marie Lloyd were famous for playing principal boys at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. At a time when women wore long skirts, it was considered risqué to see actresses perform in shorts and tights. But by the 1920s, fashions had changed, and it was no longer controversial to see women on stage in short skirts or wearing breeches.

Although the big shows were staged in London and major cities, by the 1920s most regional theatres would host a pantomime at Christmas. In A Corpse in Christmas Close, a charity production of Cinderella is staged in a church hall close to the city’s medieval cathedral – where a killer lurks in the shadows of the ancient Christmas Close…

A Corpse in Christmas Close by Michelle Salter is out now! Click to get your copy.

In the 1920s, illicit drinking and drug dens sprang up in cities across the country.

Cocaine was popular with bright young things throughout the 1920s and 30s. Cole Porter originally wrote, ‘Some get a kick from cocaine’ in his song I Get a Kick Out of You from the musical Anything Goes. The line was later changed to ‘Some like the perfume in Spain’.

And actress Tallulah Bankhead famously joked, ‘Cocaine habit-forming? Of course not. I ought to know. I’ve been using it for years.’

However, what isn’t as well known is that a decade earlier, the use of cocaine was widespread amongst troops in the Great War, as Iris Woodmore discovers in A Corpse in Christmas Close.

She’s shocked when her close friend, Percy Baverstock, tells her that the British Army gave soldiers a gelatine-coated pill called Forced March that contained cocaine and cola nut extract. While it was supposed to improve endurance, soldiers took it to enhance their mood rather than their physical ability.

At the start of the war, cocaine wasn’t a controlled substance and was readily available to buy. In 1916, Harrods in London sold a kit that included cocaine, morphine, syringes and needles and was marketed as a present to send to soldiers on the frontline.

However, moral outrage was growing at the widespread use of psychoactive drugs like cocaine and opiates. In 1916, the army council introduced a Defence of the Realm Act to prevent the sale of cocaine, morphine and opium to the British Armed Forces.

Later, the 1920 Dangerous Drugs Act criminalised civilian possession of these drugs unless there was a medical need. The Act ruled that only medical practitioners were allowed to prescribe morphine, cocaine and heroin.

In 1922, a British crime film called Cocaine depicted the distribution of cocaine by gangsters in London nightclubs. The plot sees a man seeking revenge following his daughter’s death.

The film’s portrayal of drug use made it highly controversial as it was feared it would encourage the trade in banned substances. However, censors approved its release because it highlighted the danger of drugs, and it was shown in cinemas in June 1922 under the alternative title While London Sleeps.

Iris Woodmore has seen the film, and it comes to mind in the winter of 1923 when she discovers that drug use in the Great War casts a long shadow over some ex-servicemen…