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The Magic Key to Charm
The Magic Key to Charm
Jan 30, 2025 9:30 PM

Author:Eileen Ascroft,Joanna Lumley

The Magic Key to Charm

You may not be beautiful, clever and rich, buy you can still change your life by using the long-lost art of charm. This book holds the secrets to serenity and elegance. Miss Ascroft will teach you:

how to banish graceless habits

how to dress to compliment your personality type

how to run for the bus like a young gazelle

how to make friends and be the perfect hostess

how to appear well-educated and well-read

how to decorate your home to suit your complexion

Her fourteen charm lessons build up a whole way of life for you so that you may become more attractive, more desirable, and at the same time a more complete and contented person. Her advice is proffered in a delightful fashion, accompanied by exquisite photographs, and no woman who reads this book can fail to gain something from its pages.

Reviews

A triumph. There's very, very good sense between those pages...such a treat

—— Jilly Cooper

No woman, however beautiful or clever she may be, can live her life to the full unless she learns the secret of charm

—— Eileen Ascroft , The Magic Key to Charm

This book is really, really interesting ... Nothing more important in your life than your microbiome .... this will change your life

—— Chris Evans

A totally addictive and illuminating read. Compelling from beginning to end

—— Dr Saliha Mahmood Ahmed, gastroenterologist and bestselling author of The Kitchen Prescription

A fountain of knowledge and sense in an overwhelming world of science

—— Rhiannon Lambert, Registered Nutritionist and Sunday Times Bestselling Author

A spellbinding explanation of microbiology that will help you get to the bottom of health and happiness

—— John Vincent, Co-Founder of Leon

Engaging ... [Dark Matter] stands out in revealing the microbiome through the eyes of a clinician who sees each patient not just as a human, but as a human entwined with a complex, dynamic ecosystem

—— New Scientist

Arrangements in Blue is a short read, but each page feels so full and worth savouring.

—— Guardian

Arrangements in Blue took my breath away... Even in the process of reading it for the first time I knew it would be a book I would return to again and again.

—— Sophie Mackintosh, author of Blue Ticket

A unique, intimate memoir about building a beautiful life without prioritising romantic love, or focusing on received ideas of success.

—— Guardian

I love Amy Key.

—— Lauren Laverne

Beautifully written

—— Financial Times

There is a whole life pulsing within these pages, written with both clarity and eloquence... A book to be read in astonishment and in admiration. Bewitching.

—— Doireann Ní Ghríofa, author of A Ghost in the Throat

Amy Key’s Arrangements in Blue has been comforting while going through a separation, it revises the societal position of singlehood, especially for childless women and gloriously channels the atmospheric album Blue by Joni Mitchell.

—— Raymond Antrobus, author of The Perseverance

In Arrangements in Blue Amy Key finds a language, searing in its depth and honesty, for desire, shame, grief and, crucially, for compassion.

—— Kayo Chingonyi, A Blood Condition

Deeply moving... A study of love - platonic and romantic, lost and found - Amy's memoir demonstrates the power of music on forming a self.

—— i-D

A seriously beautiful and important work I feel lucky to have encountered and which will change how many think about love in all its iterations.

—— Megan Nolan, author of Acts of Desperation

A gorgeous manifesto for a solo life, the power of music and friendships and a reckoning with the possibilities of love and fulfilment.

—— Sinéad Gleeson, author of Constellations

A beautiful memoir about a life lived without romantic love... Key seems less interested in the privileges that divide us than in the forms of love that can unite us, whatever they may be, and expand our understanding of what it means to have a life well lived.

—— Guardian

Profound and poetic, vulnerable yet brave, I devoured Amy Key's memoir about love, loss, memory and hope. An incredible writer, a stunning debut.

—— Lisa McGee, creator of Derry Girls

An exquisite book whose beauty sweetly stung me. Amy writes just like Joni sings... with ecstatic feminine power.

—— May-Lan Tan, author of Things to Make and Break

Amy Key's extraordinary Arrangements in Blue isn't merely a commentary on Joni Mitchell's Blue, but something bolder, more personal and shape-shifting... It makes itself up on its own terms. An intimate, absorbing inquiry.

—— Paul Lisicky, author of Later: My Life at the Edge of the World

From grief to anger to full-throttled joy, Amy Key hits every note of feeling with perfect pitch... A brave and brilliant exploration of how one woman lives both alone and alongside romance. An absolutely gorgeous work.

—— Heather Christle, author of The Crying Book

Arrangements in Blue is as bold as it is beautiful. Key is not afraid to go to the depths of her longings, but in doing so she creates something new: a space for the voice of solitude, one that is full of heart and creativity for a personal intimacy with home, friends and the self. If a book can be a loving companion, this is it.

—— Lily Dunn, author of Sins of my Father

Filled with lyrical turns of phrase, this insightful take on living solo will appeal to poets, dreamers and anyone marching to the beat of their own drum. It's a lush and moving memoir.

—— Publishers Weekly, *Starred Review*

This memoir may do for you what Blue has done for her Key, putting your unexpressed feelings into beautiful words and helping you feel connected to the world.

—— Crack

Key charts women's lives with a savage delicacy.

—— Olivia Laing

'A writer of a rare and strange magic.'

—— Sarah Perry

'I love Amy Key.'

—— Lauren Laverne

'A beautiful read.'

—— Amy Liptrot

'If you read one thing this weekend make it Amy Key's astonishing essay on Joni Mitchell's Blue, love and love's absence.'

—— Sophie Mackintosh
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