Jane McMorland Hunter
Jane McMorland Hunter works part-time at the shop, having previously worked at Pan, Books for Cooks and Hatchards, where she began as a Christmas temp and stayed for 23 years. When not working in the shop she writes books on the good things in life: gardening, needlecraft and cookery. The Tiny Garden is now available in paperback and For the Love of an Orchard was published in the Spring. She lives nearer the shop than Tony but her bicycle ride takes longer.
Current reading
Lolo Houbein, One Magic Square (Pb, £12)
Aimi found this for me and at first I was uncertain how useful it would be. Lolo Houbein gardens in Australia where the seasons are the opposite of ours. I need not have worried. The book is inspiring and within a few pages I was hooked. Lolo Houbein was brought up in Holland and lived through the acute shortages at the end of the war, largely surviving on the produce from her uncle’s garden. She moved to Australia in 1958 and has grown her own food ever since. The magic square of the title is a 3 foot-square plot, and the book contains 30 plans for different plots, depending on whether you want to eat pizzas and stir-fries, grow plants for health or have cut-and-come-again salads all summer long.
A favourite
E.L. Konigsberg, From the Mixed-up files of Mrs Basil E. Frankweiler (Pb £5)
As a child I wanted to spend the night in Harrods and imagined choosing a pet to keep me company, selecting a book, helping myself to supper in the Food Halls, washing in one of the more outlandish baths and sleeping in a sumptuous bed. This book fulfilled my fantasy: two children run away from home and go to live in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art. They survive surprisingly well, storing their belongings in various exhibits, bathing in the fountain and sleeping in a canopied, sixteenth-century bed. At the same time they attempt to solve the puzzle of the mysterious marble statue, donated to the museum by Mrs Frankweiler.