Her hobbies are listed in Who’s Who as: “mooching, lounging, strutting, strumming, priest-baiting and quiet subversion of the system”, although she also enjoys obfuscation, sleaze, rebellion, witchcraft, armed robbery, tea and biscuits. She is a passionate advocate for authors’ rights, and is currently the Chair of the Society of Authors (SOA), and member of the Board of the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS). She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, has honorary doctorates in literature from the universities of Sheffield and Huddersfield, and has been a judge for the Whitbread Prize, the Orange Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Betty Trask Award, the Prima Donna Prize and the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science, as well as for the Fragrance Foundation awards for perfume and perfume journalism (for which she also received an award in 2017). Her books are now published in over 50 countries and have won a number of British and international awards. Since then, she has written 18 more novels, plus novellas, short stories, game scripts, the libretti for two short operas, several screenplays, a musical and three cookbooks. She studied Modern and Mediaeval Languages at Cambridge and was a teacher for fifteen years, during which time she published three novels, including Chocolat (1999), which was made into an Oscar-nominated film starring Juliette Binoche. Joanne Harris (MBE) was born in Barnsley in 1964, of a French mother and an English father. It’s such a nostalgic feeling with an adult twist, though the stories would be perfectly suitable for kids. The illustrations in this book are spectacular and I recommend reading the print edition so you can relive the childhood experience that I imagine most lifelong bookworms have, of poring over a book of fairy tales and looking at the pictures when you should be in bed.

She’s unapologetic in her criticism of certain characters, without ever directly even criticising them and I love it. The stories carry a mixture of moral messages and also, if you’re familiar with Joanne Harris’ Twitter presence, some stories that really capture the kinds of personalities you find online and how they affect others (I’m being so diplomatic here, you should be impressed). They’re really easy to read and particularly good if you only have a couple of minutes to spend reading at a time, though I will admit that I read the whole book in a couple of settings. The Lacewing Prince is a selfish and cruel ruler of the fair folk, touching many lives with his behaviour, but as time goes on he starts to face the consequences and mature. This is a gorgeous collection of super short (2-5 page) stories that read like a cross between fairy tales and fables, each interconnected to a larger picture.

Joanne m harris honeycomb