The Lady Magazine

6 March 2015

A few months ago, the author, playwright and President of the Brontë Society, Bonnie Greer, was a guest speaker at one of our much-loved literary lunches. She was there to talk about her memoir A Parallel Life, and our readers loved her. In fact, she was bombarded with questions afterwards. Fortunately, she is also a big fan of The Lady, which is why she has written for us on the tricky topic of ‘mature style’ – think Mary Berry and Charlotte Rampling, Sophie Wessex and Michelle Obama. Forget the fickle fashions of youth, she argues on page 22, there’s a time in every woman’s life when she can finally give up dressing for other people, truly personalise her wardrobe and, perhaps most importantly, have an awful lot of fun doing it. Between you and me, I’m currently trying to adapt her philosophy for the chaps. As Mother’s Day approaches, we also have something of a family theme running through the issue. There’s the remarkable tale of Theresa May’s grandmothers, who both worked as domestic staff (very The Lady); Flic Everett offers a humorous new-granny survival guide; and, inspired by Julie Walters’ new drama series Indian Summers, a reader shares her father’s wartime account of his adventures in Britain’s Indian summer capital, Simla. And if all that wears you out, we have an expert’s guide to getting the perfect night’s sleep, too. Trust me: it works. Until next time,