Swoon in June
A list of books for a marriage, the best Coronation Chicken, the best scented things and what to watch
Quick round up of June-ish pleasantries. The heat of May is over, the winds and rains of June are here (my roses are smashed all over the garden!) but it’s still light for hours and hours, and I feel more sociable and generally jolly, so these are the things giving pleasure. Enjoy!
GIVE
Or this could be titled: THE MARRIAGE READING LIST
It’s wedding season! I don’t have many but enough to think about outfits and presents. For one couple, I didn’t fancy buying off the registry. For what I feel it’s reasonable to spend, I’m often left buying just five teaspoons from the cutlery set, or two wine glasses, which looks mealy-mouthed, Or some kind of kitchen gadget that will probably break in a year, or simply isn’t the sort of thing you want to be remembered by (‘they gave us the digital scales, darling’). So I thought, as I often do when stuck for a present idea, of books. At first I wondered about buying a selection of Persephone Books but then I didn’t like the idea that it would appear to be more about the look of the books, rather than the books themselves. (Yes, a bookshelf of Persephone Books is a very stylish thing but…you know what I mean, don’t you?) Also, it felt a bit risky to give books based on the title alone. What if ‘The New House’ by Lettice Cooper turned out to be about a newlywed couple that loathed their new house and ended up in a suicide pact?
So – I have gone to my notebook of books (I’ve written down every book I’ve read since I was sixteen – you can read about it here) and chose 25 books I think everyone should have in their life and read at some point. The choices are made were only on the basis of ‘good books’ – there’s no subtle message about life or marriage in there, I just like the idea that now and again they will go to this little collection and know they’ll find something that’s worth reading.
And then I bought them all second-hand, because I love a ‘lived in’ book. They don’t glare at you from the shelf all new and unread. If you put them in the guest bedroom, it doesn’t make you look madly pretentious, it makes you look well read. I hope. Also, you can get the occasional first edition or a well-preserved Penguin in cream and orange. I avoid the ones that say ‘ex-library’ for this particular purpose. I admit I keep having slight failures of heart and wondering if the newlyweds, surrounded by their box-fresh kitchen gadgets and cutlery, will think I’m like one of those mad wire-haired aunts who rummages in the loft for Christmas presents. I’m ordering very lovely wrapping paper and will wrap each one of these as nicely as I possibly can:
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (oh, that looks like quite an odd choice now, doesn’t it? Perhaps I should make sure they don’t unwrap this one first.)
To Have and Have Not, Ernest Hemingway
The Songlines, Bruce Chatwin
The Buccaneers, Edith Wharton
Tender is the Night, F Scott Fitzgerald
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
A Rather English Marriage, Angela Lambert
The Moon and Sixpence, W Somerset Maugham
Skin Tight, Carl Hiassen
Big Money, PG Wodehouse
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Marina Lewycka
Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Truman Capote
The Periodic Table, Primo Levi
The Magus, John Fowles
The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
The Tortilla Curtain, T.Coraghessan Boyle
Like Water for Chocolate, Laura Esquivel
Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift
A House for Mr Biswas, V.S.Naipaul
Any Human Heart, William Boyd
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Amanda Foreman
A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
Lisa and Co, Jilly Cooper
Far From the Tree, Andrew Solomon
Christmas with the Savages, Mary Clive
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, Jung Chang
What do you think of the selection? What would you not have included, or what do you think I’ve erroneously left out?
While we’re on books – not especially June-related but I am in love with this young man (OOH! YOUNG MAN! In your best French & Saunders voices, please) who reads books and talks about how reading has changed and improved his life beyond measure. He is called Chris Fizer and he’s a god. Reading is, according to Chris, ‘pretty dope, ngl.’
Follow him, please.
COOK
I met the very amusing Ashley Baker, of Out of My Element on here, then of AirMail, at an extremely lavish and fun cliff-jumping, rosé soaked three days at the Hotel du Cap (I was writing a review for Conde Nast Traveller magazine, you can read it here). Ashley lives in London and likes to present as a spoilt American brat (she’s anything but – though her mourning for the Hamptons is hilariously Belle Burden-esque) and recently asked for a decent recipe for Coronation Chicken, as she’s been selected to bring it to her son’s Sports Day picnic. Like the goody-two-shoes people-pleaser that I am, my hand shot up. The fact is, this is a recipe that really works. It’s from our Substack Queen, India Knight, who wrote about it for the King’s Coronation. I’ve made it a gazillion times since and since we are all guaranteed to endure at least one picnic this summer, make this your failsafe. Everyone eats it and it doesn’t go soggy or attract wasps.
Generally speaking, picnics are a nightmare. Everyone makes far too much food and your bottom gets damp because there’s somehow never quite enough room on the blanket, and your husband refuses to put enough chairs in the car. You’re miles from the nearest loo and five inches from an ant hill.
As a general rule, cook for about half the number of people there are. Most people don’t eat much because they’d rather drink wine/eat 99s or dash around chatting/bouncing on the bouncy castle (delete as age appropriate), and only the elderly or infirm want to sit with an enormous pile of food on their plate.
I like to roast a whole chicken - one for 5/6 people. Roast it upside down (no need to add any extra fat, it runs from the bottom to the top, as it were, and makes the most amazingly moist roast bird). Or poach 5-6 chicken breasts.
Once cooked, strip and cut into bite sized pieces. Leave to cool completely.
Get a big bowl. Tip in about half a jar of Hellman’s mayonnaise (a regular size one), and the same amount in Greek yoghurt.
Heaped tablespoon of medium curry powder or a tablespoon of curry paste (less gritty than powder, korma or balti will do).
Salt and pepper, to taste.
Can also throw in chopped spring onions.
Couple of handfuls of sultanas.
1/3 jar (ish? to taste – keep checking – it’s there to add a little sweetness but not too much) of mango chutney.
Add your mix to the chicken in big spoonfuls – you may not need all of it. You don’t want the end result too gloopy, but everything should be pleasingly covered.
Garnish with a generous amount of toasted flaked almonds and chopped coriander.
Great in a wrap (teenage boys like this particularly), or with rice salad (that someone else can provide).
SCENT
I was given for my birthday, by an interior designer who KNOWS these things, a bag of pot pourri. This, she says, is what we’re all doing now – not scented candles. It looks fairly unprepossessing, lots of dark greenish dried out leaves, not an orange slice or fir cone in sight. But I put it in a bowl in my sitting-room, and it works magic. At first it’s quite mint-y but it settles down and now there’s just a very gentle, fresh smell to the room. It’s perfect for summer, I think it lasts ages (I’ve had it six weeks so far) and isn’t a fire hazard. This is the one and you can get it from Liberty’s: Officina Profumo-Farmaceutica di Santa Maria Novella. £26, so cheaper than Diptyque.
Also, on Diptyque, or rather not, as general consensus seems to be that since they got bought by some massive company or other, their scents are not as good anymore…I was given this extraordinary-sounding candle: Highgate Cemetery.
But it’s so good! We lit it during the writing retreat, and every time I went into the room, I kept thinking someone who was wearing the most marvellous scent must have just walked out. It’s that kind of delicious. It does not smell of graves. Promise.
WATCH
This is not new – I think it came out in 2024 – but my agent put me onto it, and it’s a beautifully produced, cast, costumed, acted, written series based on the life of Christian Dior during the war. Juliette Binoche is completely enrapturing and convincing as Coco Chanel. There are some hard moments in it – it does not flinch from the horrors – but it’s not much for us to be brave, sitting on the sofa eating popcorn, when the people they are portraying had to live it. Five stars.
Thank you for those of you who gave me some great ideas for dresses. I bought something quite fun from Nobody’s Child, which I wasn’t sure about at first but I think I have grown to like. I’ve decided I like structure and boldness, rather than dainty florals and a big wardrobe clear out beckons. Am also rather attached to this idea:
What do you think? With more shmancy shoes and a bag, could be good?
PLANNING AHEAD
I’m absolutely crap at planning ahead. I want spontaneity! I don’t know what I’m going to feel like a week on Tuesday! But then, what usually happens is that the restaurant is fully booked, the museums have a three-hour queue, the exhibition is sold out for three months… So, I’m trying. I very much like the idea of going to see Gillian Anderson and Billy Crudup (from ‘The Morning Show’) in ‘Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ and although the show opens on September 21st, tickets are already sold out up until late November. I’d better get my skates on. I will, I will. I’m pretty sure I’ll want to see it in December. Won’t I?
Ooh, and on planning ahead… I’m doing a Substack Live on Monday 22nd June at 6pm with Geraint Anderson (this is his Substack). He wrote a very funny/appalling reveal of a banker’s life in ‘City Boy’ that was a mahoosive bestseller, as it came out just as the City sank in 2008. Now he’s written a parody, ‘How to Con Friends and Manipulate People,’ narrated by a psychopath. The more serious point is that our world leaders are getting rewarded for psychopathic behaviour rather than empathy, and we need to turn this around. But can we? Tune in to find out. I’ll do more reminders and a proper link.
That’s it, folks! Have a lovely time, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing. I’ll be back as soon as I can. As ever, a ‘like’ or a restack brings me much gladness and helps other readers to find me – thank you.
Jessica x
LOVE all this! I am going to make that chicken but I am also someone who LOVES picnics almost more than anything else in life. THis is a good picnic recipe - roast a chicken then wrap in foil. Mix some greek yogurt (maybe two tablespoons) with triple-ish the quantity of Hellmans mayo, so perhaps 6 table spoons, then add about two table spoons of pesto. Mix it all up. Add black pepper and even some basil if you have it. Put it in a jar. Take it to a picnic with the chicken and soft white rolls. Then you can rip the chicken up and put it in rolls with the insanely delicious mayo as you go. Or you could slice it up before hand of course, but I do quite like the decadence of a whole chicken at a picnic. Then when you are done you can wrap the chicken back up in the foil and chuck it away. No washing up. It makes a regular chicken somehow taste so so good. You can also do it at home! I served it at a party to about 30 people (several chickens) at home and it was a very good way to feed lots of people quickly. Stuff rocket in the rolls too if you want to be fancy. LOVELY readying list XXXXXX ps can I see you soon now I am back?
My mum sent her very aged French rural-Burgundy-born-and-bred Aunt Erma pot pourri one Christmas. That Summer when we made our annual pilgrimage to visit her, I worked out from my O Level French that she was thanking her for the lovely tea!