This isn't the kind of book I'd buy - certainly not at £25 - but I saw it in the library and was seduced by the lovely pictures.
But, heavens, I found Emma Bridgewater's writing so annoying.
I'm as big a sucker as anybody else for all that aspirational stuff about life in the country with chickens and a dresser of enviable china - even though I know that I'd run a mile if a chicken cocked its eye at me. But it's a seductive image and, like every woman I know, I've bought into it.
Now I think of it, every kitchen where I'm on tea-drinking terms has some of her mugs/bowls/butter dishes ...
It's a brand. You shop at Waitrose. You buy Emma Bridgewater.
I'd have been interested in knowing a bit more about how she built such a successful business.
But there's a cliquey-ness about this book. It's rambling and unstructured. It's like being at a party where everybody else is on first name terms - and you're the glassy-eyed with boredom person who doesn't know who they're talking about. And the author hasn't the good manners to make introductions.
It's a bit like reading the Daily Mail sidebar of shame, only with a posher cast. (Kim, Cheyenne, Dita ... no, I haven't got a clue either.)
And it's put me right off my butter dish with the blue stars.
Which I don't suppose was the intention.