Winter Games

Winter Games is a dazzling tale of secrets and betrayal, and the perfect novel for fans of The Bolter by Frances Osborne, and all those fascinated by the Mitford sisters. 
 
Munich, 1936. She doesn't know it, but eighteen-year old Daphne Linden has a seat in the front row of history. Along with her best friend, Betsy Barton-Hill, and a whole bevy of other young English upper-class girls, Daphne is in Bavaria to improve her German, to go to the Opera, to be 'finished'. It may be the Third Reich, but another war is unthinkable, and the girls are having the time of their lives. Aren't they? 
 
London, 2006. Seventy years later and Daphne's granddaughter, Francie Fitzsimon has all the boxes ticked: large flat, successful husband, cushy job writing up holistic spas . . . The hardest decision she has to make is where to go for brunch - until, that is, the discovery of a photograph of Daphne sends her on a quest to discover what really happened to her grandmother in Germany, all those years ago. 
 
A dazzling tale of secrets and betrayal, Winter Games is powerful novel of innocent lives caught up in the march of history. 
 
'Johnson has a brilliant eye for the telling specifics . . . She is a natural comic writer and has a breezy, Mitfordian tone that makes you laugh at the same time as wincing in recognition . . . To write an entertaining romp set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany is a tricky feat to pull off. Yet Johnson has done it - and done it in style' Observer 
 
'A rip-roaring read' Evening Standard 
 
'There's never a dreary moment in this blast of a book . . . Johnson's descriptions are irresistibly exuberant . . . As addictively, fizzily invigorating as the Alpine air itself' Daily Mail 
 
'Johnson delivers a genuine sense of time and place . . . there isn't a dull sentence in this sure-footed novel' Jenny Colgan, Telegraph 
 
'An excellent romp. Full of 'tally-ho' Mitfordian charm . . . a witty, fast read' Red 
 
'Excellent on period detail, the blundering innocent abroad and young heartbreak' Sunday Times 
 
'The Jane Austen of W11' Scotsman 
 
Rachel Johnson is a journalist who has written two previous novels and two volumes of diaries. The Mummy Diaries, Notting Hell, Shire Hell and A Diary of The Lady are all available now from Penguin.

Johnson has a brilliant eye for the telling specifics . . . She is a natural comic writer and has a breezy, Mitfordian tone that makes you laugh at the same time as wincing in recognition . . . To write an entertaining romp set against the backdrop of Nazi Germany is a tricky feat to pull off. Yet Johnson has done it - and done it in style

There's never a dreary moment in this blast of a book . . . Johnson's descriptions are irresistibly exuberant . . . As addictively, fizzily invigorating as the Alpine air itself

Johnson delivers a genuine sense of time and place . . . there isn't a dull sentence in this sure-footed novel

Excellent on period detail, the blundering innocent abroad and young heartbreak

An excellent romp. Full of 'tally-ho'  Mitfordian charm . . . a witty, fast read

An edifying moral lesson as well as a tale of inter-generational sleuthing

Johnson is excellent on period detail and captures the flavour of an era when the storm clouds were gathering

Rachel Johnson is a journalist who has written two previous novels and two volumes of diaries. The Mummy Diaries, Notting Hell, Shire Hell and A Diary of The Lady are all available now from Penguin.

Munich, 1936. She doesn't know it, but eighteen-year old Daphne Linden has a seat in the front row of history. Along with her best friend, Betsy Barton-Hill, and a whole bevy of other young English upper-class girls, Daphne is in Bavaria to improve her German, to go to the Opera, to be 'finished'. It may be the Third Reich, but another war is unthinkable, and the girls are having the time of their lives. Aren't they? 
 
London, 2006. Seventy years later and Daphne's granddaughter, Francie Fitzsimon has all the boxes ticked: large flat, successful husband, cushy job writing up holistic spas . . . The hardest decision she has to make is where to go for brunch - until, that is, events conspire to send her on a quest to discover what really happened to her grandmother in Germany, all those years ago.

Shire Hell

Shire Hell is the hilarious sequel to Rachel Johnson's brilliant novel Notting Hell in which Mimi and Ralph have managed to escape the city and move to the idyllic Dorset countryside, but have they moved out of the frying pan and into the fire? 
 
**Winner of the Literary Review's infamous Bad Sex in Fiction Award in 2008** 
 
Mimi and Ralph have left social climbing, pushy parenting and their marital problems behind them in London, and moved west to the bucolic green depths of the country. 
 
Or so they though. Yes, there's mud and masses of fresh air, plenty of handsome hayseeds and there's Rose, Mimi's new best friend and Dorset's answer to Martha Stewart. But what should be Shire Heaven is, it turns out, just as tricky to navigate as Notting Hell. 
 
There's low-level conflict between the racehorses in vintage/Diesel/Ralph Lauren and the brood mares in Barbour/Boden, there's guerrilla warfare between the landowners and eco-warriors and naked hostility between Old Money, New Money and No Money. 
 
Yes, in Honeybourne, if you don't have: 
 
1.	A landscaped garden with 1,000 acres (minimum) of prime land2.	A helipad for your trophy guests3.	An organic farm shop selling sixteen sorts of home-made sausages4.	Four pony-mad polo-playing children5.	A Literary Festival in your mini-stately6.	A bottom that looks smackable in jodhpurs 
 
Then, well...you're Mimi, basically. 
 
And that's just the start of her problems. Mimi also has a secret. But can she keep it? 
 
Rachel Johnson is known for her wickedly funny novels The Mummy Diaries and Notting Hell; also available from Penguin is her first non-fiction book A Diary of a Lady.

Rachel Johnson is a newspaper columnist, journalist and editor of The Lady magazine. She is married to Ivo Dawnay, has children, and lives in London and Somerset. The Mummy Diaries, Notting Hell and A Diary of The Lady are available now from Penguin.

Mimi and Ralph have left social climbing, pushy parenting and their marital problems behind them in London, and moved west to the bucolic green depths of the country. Or so they thought. Yes, there's mud and masses of fresh air, plenty of handsome hayseeds and there's Rose, Mimi's new best friend and Dorset's answer to Martha Stewart. But what should be Shire Heaven is, it turns out, just as tricky to navigate as Notting Hell. 
 
There's low-level conflict between the racehorses in vintage/Diesel/Ralph Lauren and the brood mares in Barbour/Boden, there's guerrilla warfare between the landowners and eco-warriers and naked hostility between Old Money, New Money and No Money. Yes, in honeybourne, if you don't have: 
 
1) A landscaped garden within 1000 acres (minimum) of prime land 
2) A helipad for your trophy guests 
3) An organic farm shop selling 16 sorts of home-made sausages 
4) Four pony-mad polo-playing children 
5) A literary festival in your mini-stately 
6) A bottom that looks smackable in jodhpurs 
 
Then, well...you're Mimi basically. And that's just the start of her problems. Mimi also has a secret. But can she keep it?

My First Year As Editor

A Diary of The Lady

Rachel Johnson takes on the challenge of saving The Lady, Britain's oldest women's weekly, in her hilarious diary, A Diary of The Lady: My First Year and a Half as Editor. 
 
'The whole place seemed completely bonkers: dusty, tatty, disorganized and impossibly old-fashioned, set in an age of doilies and flag-waving patriotism and jam still for tea, some sunny day.' 
 
Appointed editor of The Lady - the oldest women's weekly in the world - Rachel Johnson faced the challenge of a lifetime. For a start, how do you become an editor when you've never, well, edited? How do you turn a venerable title, full of ads for walk-in baths, during the worst recession ever? And forget doubling the circulation in a year - what on earth do you wear to work when you've spent the last fifteen years at home in sweatpants? 
 
Will Rachel save The Lady - or sink it? 
 
'Action-packed, entertaining, marvellously indiscreet. Johnson is everything you want in a diarist and has a compulsive habit of saying the wrong thing' Sunday Times 
 
'She's a loose cannon. All she thinks of is sex. You can't get her away from a penis' Mrs Julia Budworth, co-owner, The Lady 
 
'A total romp, wonderfully readable, unflinchingly described' Guardian 
 
'HYSTERICAL. For the first time, everyone is talking about The Lady for reasons other than nannies' Piers Morgan 
 
Rachel Johnson is a journalist who has written two previous novels and two volumes of diaries. The Mummy Diaries, Notting Hell, Shire Hell and A Diary of The Lady are all available now from Penguin.

HYSTERICAL. For the first time, everyone is talking about The Lady for reasons other than nannies

Mitfordesque and both intentionally and unintentionally hilarious

Action-packed, entertaining, marvellously indiscreet. Johnson is everything you want in a diarist and has a compulsive habit of saying the wrong thing

Made me laugh out loud and stay up so late reading it that I shot terribly on the first drive

Fabulous, wonderfully written and a total hoot

Rachel Johnson is married to Ivo Dawnay, has three children, and lives in London and Somerset. Her previous books include The Mummy Diaries, the international bestseller Notting Hell and Shire Hell.

'The whole place seemed completely bonkers: dusty, tatty, disorganized and impossibly old-fashioned, set in an age of doilies and flag-waving patriotism and jam still for tea, some sunny day.' 
 
Appointed editor of The Lady - the oldest women's weekly in the world - Rachel Johnson faced the challenge of a lifetime. For a start, how do you become an editor when you've never, well, edited? How do you turn around a venerable title, full of ads for walk-in baths, during the worst recession EVER? And forget doubling the circulation in a year - what on earth do you wear to work when you've spent the last fifteen years at home in sweatpants? 
 
Will Rachel save The Lady - or sink it?

Notting Hell

An addictively funny read about the lives of the rich and richer ****

A wickedly funny comedy of modern manners

Rachel Johnson is a newspaper columnist and journalist. She is married to Ivo Dawnay, has children, and lives in London and Somerset. The Mummy Diaries is available now from Penguin.

&lsquo;Our neighbours divide into the haves &hellip; and the have yachts.&rsquo; 
 
Meet Mimi and Clare, two married women making the most of their Notting Hill postcode. New best friends, and close neighbours, that doesn&rsquo;t stop them being rivals, in fact it compels it. Both are aspiring Notting Hill Mummies (Clare needs the baby, Mimi needs the six figure income) and, keeping up with all the area&rsquo;s fads, fashions and fabulousness is a full-time job. But the arrival of sexy billionaire Si in their exclusive communal garden strains loyalty to friends, family, spouse and feng-shui guru alike &hellip; and only one of them can win. But who will that be? Clare or Mimi? Are they friends, or just&hellip;neighbours?

Or How to Lose Your Husband, Children and Dog in Twelve Months

The Mummy Diaries

In hardback, The Mummy Diaries has sold over 13,000 copies

Rachel Johnson writes for among others The Daily Telegraph, The Spectator and the Evening Standard: she is married with three children and lives in Notting Hill Gate.

Rachel Johnson's hilarious take on life as a yummy mummy in West London and on Exmoor has been making her newspaper readers chortle for the last couple of years: now they are seamlessly turned into a diary of her year, from the dog's birthday party in January (games of Paws-the-Parcel) to the June sports days (where the mummies turn up at the school sports day in sports bras and running shorts with little back packs containing high energy drinks - and that's just for them) to summer on Exmoor hosting demanding visiting ponies.

Rachel Johnson

Laugh out loud...Johnson's easy-breezy comic style [belies] a wicked satirical take-down of the capital's mega-rich and their wobbly value system...perfectly pitched.

First class...Johnson is hilarious...a talented writer who can go deep when she wants to.

‘Summer Reads', Irish Independent on Sunday

[An] ultra-funny, ultra-detailed take on the mores and manners of the West London super-rich.

Slowly, devilishly roasts her characters in the flames of a hundred Diptyque scented candles.

Fast-paced, fizzy . . . fun beach reading.

I just loved it. Lethally funny and so clever.

I ADORED it. It's the most fun I've had with a book in a long time, and I love how she writes - so many dazzling sentences and phrases.

A wickedly funny, biting satire of Notting Hill's basement-digging class. My absolute guiltiest read this summer.

An addictively funny read about the lives of the rich and richer. Four stars

'Hell is other people', as Jean-Paul Sartre once said, and Mimi is fast realizing on her return to Notting Hill that there is no greater hell than the W11 neighbours she is forced to share an exclusive communal garden with. Back in town after her sojourn in the Shires (as documented in Shire Hell), Fresh Hell is a fast-paced and fabulously funny depiction of feuds, fame and fashion in one of London's most exclusive postcodes.

Rachel Johnson

Praise for Fresh Hell

Laugh out loud...Johnson's easy-breezy comic style [belies] a wicked satirical take-down of the capital's mega-rich and their wobbly value system...perfectly pitched.

First class...Johnson is hilarious...a talented writer who can go deep when she wants to.

Delicious fun

Laugh out loud...Johnson's easy-breezy comic style [belies] a wicked satirical take-down of the capital's mega-rich and their wobbly value system...perfectly pitched.

First class...Johnson is hilarious...a talented writer who can go deep when she wants to.

Delicious fun

Laugh out loud...Johnson's easy-breezy comic style [belies] a wicked satirical take-down of the capital's mega-rich and their wobbly value system...perfectly pitched.

First class...Johnson is hilarious...a talented writer who can go deep when she wants to.

Delicious fun

Books by Rachel Johnson

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