Hilary Mantel wastes no words over her descriptions of textiles, clothes, jewellery or furnishings in her two Cromwell books. When – rarely – she describes these things, they have a point, either revealing character or state of mind. I’d go further and say that for me the cardinal’s red clothing never makes an unimportant appearance […]

I had a pot of ricotta in the fridge that needed using so I hunted around for a cheesecake cookie recipe to play around with. I didn’t have as many pecans as the recipe suggested so I added some Morello cherries instead. The resulting cookie was not notably cheesecake like and they were too sweet, […]