The domestic flash of Francis Brennan

Kya delongchamps wonders if a meticulously-mannered 64-year-old Irish entrepreneur really could have anything new to say in the housekeeping/sanity balance of life? It appears ‘yes’ is the answer.

Book store shelves are cluttered with volumes devoted to running a house. Hefty, hectoring, they are curious perennial favourites as Christmas gifts — gee, thanks Ma. The reader can choose from metaphysical wanderings through immaculate lime-planked lofts, purified hourly by the celebrity author’s ‘little woman’ — to domestic science novels tense with Marie Kondo, laser-sighted purpose.

Some demand nothing short of putting hospital corners on your very soul. The text may avoid it, but the pictures of muslin frocked children swinging lightly from a French beamed ceiling say it all — by comparison it says, you and yours are under-class, scruffy, domestic disasters. Anthea Turner’s How to Be the Perfect Housewife (Virgin 2010) — do I have to say — nails this down.