A new self-help book shows you how to fight ageing, but our correspondent would rather have new shoes and her myopic husband

I PROMISED to shoot anyone who gave me a copy of Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess, and I’m not sure that the bearer of Kathleen Baird-Murray’s book How to be Beautiful would fare any better. Not that there’s anything wrong with either book, but I’m never going to be queen of the cupcakes, and when it comes to beauty — well, the words “horse” and “bolted” spring to mind every time I look in the mirror, which admittedly isn’t often. Denial, I find, is the best tool against ageing, but it’s hard to maintain under the scrutiny of a full-length mirror with an overhead light. As for those magnifying mirrors that make your skin look like the surface of Mars, they should come with a government health warning.

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