Hold the front page! - Anne Scott-James

In 1953 pioneering journalist Anne Scott-James started to write a weekly column for the Sunday Express newspaper. 'The Anne Scott-James Page' set the bar for a new way of writing. Scott-James perfected the art of the short, sharp column - and many of the topics she covered are equally on-trend today. She cogently expressed her views on men, children, fashion, beauty, food, interiors, travel, and anything else that took her fancy. Political opinions might be squashed between thoughts on eyebrow tweezing and a piece on swimsuit lines. Scott-James was a great believer in entertaining her readers, and her columns are sharp, witty, to the point, often very funny, sometimes very moving. In Hold the Front Page! a selection of the Sunday Express columns is brought together with a commentary by her daughter, writer Clare Hastings, and with photographs from the Scott-James/Hastings family albums and drawings by Osbert Lancaster, Scott-James's third husband, to provide a fascinating insight into the 1950s - and into the public and private life of one of the most celebrated columnists of the twentieth century.

Clare Hastings started her career in the fashion department of Harpers& Queenmagazine, before leaving to work freelance as a stylist and later as a costume designer. Thirty years later, Clare changed direction to work freelance alongside her daughter, Calypso, in The Indytute.

"InHold The Front PageClare Hastings has compiled a warm hearted tribute to her mother the journalist and gardener Anne Scott-James. Anne, whom I knew well as a country neighbour was a beautiful and formidable woman, a pioneer in the then male-dominated world of Fleet Street, whose newspaper columns, reprinted here are still relevant and topical today. Interspersed with examples of her journalism, Clare gives us a touching memoir of her remarkable mother, like herself "strong on common sense and short on whingeing."