When I moved to Shropshire in 2024, I knew it was only a matter of time before I made a short trip across the border to Powys, Wales, where novelist Alice Thomas Ellis (who died in 2005) lived for much of the year. Alice Thomas Ellis – real name Anna Haycraft – was a unique figure in the literary world of the eighties and nineties: a North London bohemian, hostess and bon viveur who’d once longed fervently to become a Catholic nun. Instead, she ended up getting married, giving birth to seven children and writing numerous novels (often with a religious theme). Yet it was her ‘Home Life’ column in The Spectator older readers may remember, which ran from 1986 to1989.   

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Sandwiched between Taki’s ‘High Life’ and Jeffrey Bernard’s ‘Low Life,’ her weekly update on domesticity, whether in Wales or Camden Town, was a quiet delight.  She wrote of her cats, her children, about North London winos and the Welsh rain. Her columns were full of unassuming wisdom – on how to survive parents’ evenings, unblock drains or even cope with a boa constrictor – and were equal parts cosiness, depressive wit, and frankly expressed frustration. They describe a lost world and are endlessly comforting – a bit like listening to Radio 4 of old.   

My trip to her house – Trefechan – involves two buses and a long taxi-ride to and fro. I’m allowed just a couple of........

© The Spectator