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The Pippa problem

The Pippa problem

Kate’s little sister is devastated at being told to butt out of official celebrations during the Queen’s Jubilee year.

While Pippa Middleton and her perky rear may have stolen much of the bride’s thunder at last year’s royal wedding, there is no chance she’ll overshadow the Queen during Her Majesty’s upcoming Diamond Jubilee celebrations. That’s because the Duchess of Cambridge’s little sister has been informed her presence will not be required by Buckingham Palace, leaving the 28-year-old wondering what she’s done to be so cruelly ejected from the royal inner circle.

Word from the palace is that while the Queen is besotted with her granddaughter-in-law, Kate, she finds Pippa “pushy and attention seeking”. “The last thing they want is Pippa flashing her famous derriere or wearing an eye-catching outfit on a day when all cameras should be pointing at the Queen,” a royal insider tells Woman’s Day. “So she is quietly being asked to stay out of the limelight.”

Rather than cause a ruckus in the tight Middleton clan, the Queen decided it would be best if Kate was the one to tell Pippa she’s not welcome at the celebrations, which will peak in May and June. Our source says, “Kate had been pushing for Pippa to play a role in some of the more high-profile Diamond Jubilee events, but during one of her regular briefings by palace officials, she was informed that her sister would not be required.

“Kate is too timid to speak up for Pippa and just accepts what she is told. She would normally look to William for advice or to intervene, but he’s away in the Falklands. “So far, Kate has a great relationship with her grandmother-in-law and wants it to remain so. She is well aware that the Queen is not someone you want to get on the wrong side of.” Friends of Pippa say the party planner is “sad and disappointed” that the “stuffed shirts at Clarence House” don’t want her to be part of the Jubilee celebrations.

Find out which royal was a shoulder for Pippa to cry on, plus take a look at all of the pictures of Prince Harry’s successful tour of Latin America in this week’s Woman’s Day on sale Monday March 19, 2012.

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Brange’s sugar-addicted kids

As they danced wildly through the streets pulling “monster faces”, all eyes were on hyperactive the Jolie-Pitt kids. Superstar mum Angelina Jolie looked harried as she struggled to keep up while carrying two grocery bags weighed down with chocolates, lollies and chips.

This noisy New Orleans scene is not unusual according to those close to the family, with several sources telling Woman’s Day that Brad Pitt and his partner allow their energetic brood as much junk food as they like – and because of it, the six children are often out of control. “The kids eat fast food every day, including doughnuts for breakfast,” a well-placed insider tells us. “Shiloh has become a fully fledged sugar addict and screams when she’s cut off.”

See the exclusive pictures of Angelina’s kids in this week’s Woman’s Day on sale Monday, March 19.

Pax pulls monster faces, while Ange carries bags of lollies and chocolates.

On a trip out with mum recently, Shiloh pokes her tounge out, and is little Vivienne wearing lipstick?

Pax doing his monster moves.

The Jolie Pitt clan in New Orleans in 2011.

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Book Review: ‘Blue Nights’ by Joan Didion

Only the great Joan Didion, perhaps, could ask this of us. To return to the well of despair and drink deeply, again, of her pain.
Blue Nights

Blue Nights, by Joan Didion, 4th Estate, $27.99

Only the great Joan Didion, perhaps, could ask this of us. To return to the well of despair and drink deeply, again, of her pain.

Her last book, The Year of Magical Thinking, was a searing response to the loss of her husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, after a heart attack at their dining table.

Blue Nights concerns the death of their adopted daughter, Quinana Roo, less than two years later.

It was a disease, there was surely nothing she could have done to save her daughter, but in that clear, cool, distinctive Didion voice she re-examines her lapses and failures as a mother (“only later did I see I had been raising her as a doll”) and celebrates the wonder of her girl and remembers the blue nights, the shining summer twilights when the family was together and time seemed to stretch forever, before the chill came.

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Book Review: ‘Night Circus’ by Erin Morgenstern

A fantastical tale set in the late 1800s about two old magicians engaged in an eternal duel.
Night Circus

Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, Harvill Secker, $32.95

A fantastical tale set in the late 1800s about two old magicians engaged in an eternal duel.

Their weapons in this lifetime are a young pair, Celia and Marco, both gifted with extraordinary powers; their arena of battle is a marvellous black and white circus which appears mysteriously as night falls and disappears at dawn.

It is full of wonders and audiences delight to the garden made entirely of ice, the curtain of stars, the eternal white bonfire — the twist being that these are not tricks but real magic, created for the sole purpose of the duel.

Which is, we learn, a deadly game. Only one of the contestants will survive — until Celia and Marco fall in love, putting the whole sinister plan at risk.

This debut novel is a publishing sensation, hyped as the next step for Harry Potter fans, though you needn’t be a fantasy reader to enjoy it. Just roll up, suspend disbelief and let yourself be enchanted.

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Book Review: ‘The Secret in their Eyes’ by Eduardo Sacheri

"The book behind the Oscar-winning best foreign film", says the stamp on the cover.
The Secret in their Eyes

The Secret in their Eyes, by Eduardo Sacheri, HarperCollins, $29.95

“The book behind the Oscar-winning best foreign film”, says the stamp on the cover. Well, in front of the film actually, but that gold statue clearly woke up the publishers and six years on this terrific crime thriller-cum-love story appears in English for the first time.

On the surface, it’s about a former investigator in the courts of Buenos Aries, haunted by a long-ago case of a beautiful young woman’s rape and murder.

He risked his career — and life — to find the killer and is now writing a book telling the true story.

This all happened in Argentina, during the 1970s, when the courts operated by whim of the military junta.

The political machinations, and the attempts to block the investigation, provide a rich background to the novel’s broader themes of justice and revenge, plus our detective hero’s attempts to rekindle an unrequited love. It’s a great mixture, the writing strong and simple; I found it gripping.

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Book Review: ‘A More Perfect Heaven’ by Dava Sobel

Dava Sobel gives us the man who revolutionised our understanding of how the universe worked, Polish cleric, doctor and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.
A More Perfect Heaven

A More Perfect Heaven by Dava Sobel, Bloomsbury, $35

She re-invented the non-fiction form with Longitude, her 1995 account of clockmaker John Harrison’s invention of the marine chronometer; here, Dava Sobel gives us the man who revolutionised our understanding of how the universe worked, Polish cleric, doctor and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus.

His shocking — and in the 15th century, ludicrous — idea was that the Earth revolved around the sun, not the other way round.

Fear of ridicule stopped him publishing his theory for another 30 years and this book, told in the form of a play sandwiched between two more conventional histories, tells the life and imagines the thoughts of Copernicus as he climbed the ladder of the Catholic Church hierarchy during turbulent times.

They knew, citing Psalm 104, that “the Lord God laid the foundation of the Earth, that it not be moved forever. Forever”. They were wrong.

It meant the end of the beautiful theory of fixed celestial spheres but the beginning of true cosmology, and makes for a fascinating read.

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Book Review: ‘The Litigators’ by John Grisham

Never challenging but never predictable, The Litigators is a great read, you'll be cheering David Zinc through the mess in which he finds himself.
The Litigators

The Litigators by John Grisham, Hodder & Stoughton, $39.99

After several soul-destroying years in the corporate sweatshop of a massive legal firm, young lawyer David Zinc finally burns out.

He takes his wobbly legs and palpitating heart to a nearby bar and forgets his problems the old fashioned way.

Somehow he ends up in the ambulance chasing “boutique” firm of Finley & Figg, attorneys who struggle to stay on the right side of the law themselves. Should David have stayed in the metaphorical frying pan after all?

John Grisham brings a pleasant whimsy to his legal knowledge in The Litigators.

He pitches poor likeable David, who’s never been in a courtroom before, up against a legal goliath, with no one but melancholy Oscar Finley and incorrigible Wally Figg to help him.

Never challenging but never predictable, The Litigators is a great read, you’ll be cheering David Zinc through the mess in which he finds himself.

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Book Review: ‘Girl In A Green Gown’ by Carola Hicks

This book is refreshingly entertaining and educational, taking us into the rich symbolism of the painting.
Girl In A Green Gown: The History and Mystery of the Arnolfini Portrait

Girl In A Green Gown: The History and Mystery of the Arnolfini Portrait by Carola Hicks, Random House, $39.95

It’s been an eventful 600 years for this masterpiece of western art. Painted in 1434 by Jan van Eyck, this glorious portrait of a wealthy Bruges merchant (with an unfortunate resemblance to Vladimir Putin) and his richly gowned wife has inspired artists throughout history; from the Renaissance all the way through to the more recent reinterpretation of the pair as Muppet and Star Wars figures.

Very little is known about Mr and Mrs Arnolfini but everything in the painting speaks to us of their wealth, and Hicks amusingly compares the portrait to a shoot for Hello magazine.

This book is refreshingly entertaining and educational, taking us into the rich symbolism of the painting, and travelling with it from aspirational medieval Bruges to the courts of Europe, its plunder in the Napoleonic wars and its extraordinary popularity today in Britain’s National Gallery.

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Book Review: ‘Chanel: An Intimate Life’ by Lisa Chaney

By the end of this biography I didn't know whether to love or hate Gabrielle Chanel.
Chanel: An Intimate Life

Chanel: An Intimate Life by Lisa Chaney, Fig Tree, $39.95

By the end of this biography I didn’t know whether to love or hate Gabrielle Chanel. The designer helped liberate women from being purely decorative, giving them freedom to move for work and play, and became one of the world’s first female business moguls.

But she also lived with a Nazi spy during the occupation of Paris, forcing her to flee France after the war and resettle in Switzerland.

Lisa Chaney is not the kind of writer who digs for dirt, but Chanel’s life offers up a wealth of scandal, including lesbian affairs and a drug addiction.

The mistress of a playboy during her youth, Chanel went on to become muse or mistress to the 20th century’s greatest artists, and yearned for a child with the Duke of Devonshire, one of the world’s richest men.

Despite her many loves she was fiercely independent until the day she died. Chaney gives new insights into the life of the first truly modern woman.

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Book Review: ‘Hazel: My Mother’s Story’ by Sue Pieters-Hawke

This book is hard to put down even though we all know the story of Hazel Hawke.
Hazel: My Mother's Story

Hazel: My Mother’s Story by Sue Pieters-Hawke, Macmillan Australia, $49.99

This book is hard to put down even though we all know the story of Hazel Hawke.

Her daughter painstakingly tells the story of Hazel’s humble origins, the highs of her life in the Lodge and the traumatic breakdown of her marriage.

The reader gets the sense that Sue Pieters-Hawke does not want to blame her father but she still leaves a strong impression of a man with many failings as a husband and a father.

In contrast Hazel is a saint with a wealth of admirable characteristics. This is as easy to read as it is compelling.

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