I have discovered perfection, the perfect colour; it is red-and-blue.

This startlingly ugly room is where I try to write. But, awful as it looks, the Useless Room, aka the Hopeless Room, represents progress. Until recently, I worked in a sea of Sticklebriks in the sitting-room

The author describes her best distraction techniques, the odd people she meets in the British Library, and the occasional triumphs of a typical working day

I don’t understand the point of garden visits. Why do ordinary people, the owners of mere balconies and tiny yards, torment themselves by touring other people’s grand estates? Nut trees, stables, ancestral compost heaps: I need no reminder of what I am missing.

Baths are the perfect place for murder: self-contained, soundproof, easily sluiced. And crime fiction is the greatest analgesic. When life is particularly grisly, we don’t have time for idiots falling in love, or Britain’s glorious hedgerows.

Resolutions are for teenagers. Once we’re adults, we no longer need to start the year with self-loathing, failure and shame. Give blood, walk more, donate to charity, wear your favourite clothes, find a therapist, stroke pets.

As a child, Charlotte Mendelson thought her grandparents' native Hungarian sounded ridiculous. But now her tiny vocabulary keeps their memory alive

When I was seventeen, in Florence, I had the best raspberry sorbet of my life.