That’s what I wrote when I reviewed One Day soon after it was first published in 2009 – and I stand by every word. In the intervening years, the book has become a bestseller, largely through word of mouth. It’s sold 650,000 copies in the UK alone, been translated into 37 languages and the film version, adapted by Nicholls himself and starring Anne Hathaway (admittedly some One Day devotees aren’t convinced by her casting as the awkward, insecure Emma) and Jim Sturgess, is due out in the autumn.

In a huge, wind-buffeted marquee at the Oxford Literary Festival this week David Nicholls told a packed audience about how he came to write One Day. He did A levels at the same sixth form college as Colin Firth, then studied English and drama at Bristol University. After eight years in the theatre, largely, he said, working as an understudy, he switched to writing screenplays and novels.  Ultra-modest and self-deprecating, he claimed he wasn’t sure if “I gave up acting or it gave me up” and that the success of One Day, his third book, had come as a “huge surprise.”

More recently he’s been busy writing a screenplay of Great Expectations, his favourite novel. But the good news is that he’s now begun to turn his attention to his eagerly-awaited fourth book. I, like thousands of other One Day fans, can’t wait.

But after all that I was thrilled that Moyes’s book scooped the title. The Romantic Novelists’ Association, which organises the annual Pure Passion awards, threw a great party at London’s One Whitehall Place to celebrate. The champagne flowed, waiters whizzed round with trays of flaming meringues (yes, really) and Timothy Bentinck, alias David Archer in The Archers, was on hand to announce the winners.

The star sweetly confided that he’s a romantic at heart and great at giving flowers to his wife. He also put up with a host of witty asides about poor Nigel Pargetter’s death plunge from the roof at Lower Loxley and admitted that standing on the awards’ high rostrum made him feel slightly nervous.

Other Pure Passion award winners included Elizabeth Chadwick, who won the best historical novel prize, Louise Allen, who triumphed in the love story category, and Jill Mansell, who scooped the romantic comedy prize for Take a Chance on Me. “The last time I won something was in a competition at a nightclub for tearing a telephone directory,” chuckled Jill.

PS: Every so often I do something completely reckless, like buying a stunning Proenza Schouler bag in Barney’s on my first-ever trip to New York . I’ve felt guilty ever since  so I was speechless when the clasp broke. I emailed the Proenza Schouler office on Broadway and they replied immediately. “Send it back and we’ll repair it for you,” they said. And that’s exactly what they did, even commissioning a new clasp to be made in Italy. After its trip across the Atlantic, the satchel arrived safely back in the UK this week, looking as good as new. My teenage son glanced at it and declared: “New York, Milan – that bag is much better travelled than you are.”

Next week sees the start of Jamie’s Dream School, a seven-part Channel 4 series where the TV chef recruits a host of celebrities to teach 20 disillusioned teenagers who left school with few qualifications.

The science teacher is fertility expert Lord Winston (who’s already hit the headlines for getting the boys in the class to study their own sperm). History is taught by Dr David Starkey, politics by spin doctor Alastair Campbell, drama by Simon Callow, music by Jazzie B, art by Rolf Harris and maths by economist Alvin Hall. Other experts helping out include barrister Cherie Booth, sailor Ellen MacArthur, rapper Tinchy Stryder and former poet laureate Sir Andrew Motion.

Over a period of two months the teachers attempt to inspire their students, all aged 16 to 18, and persuade them to return to education. But as the celebs soon discover, teaching is an awful lot harder than it looks. I’m speaking from experience. I tried my hand at teaching the same age group a few years ago and it’s one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.

21^st century students are very demanding pupils. Teachers can’t simply stand at the front and drone on – or they’ll bore the class to tears. They have to come up with attention-grabbing lessons, keep the students on track at all times and ensure they actually learn something along the way.

Looking back, I’m not sure I taught my lot very much at all. One girl fell asleep every lesson, a boy whizzed his skateboard along the classroom floor, others chatted and texted pals when I wasn’t looking and as for handing their work on time – sorry, it rarely happened.

Now Jamie has seen what life in the classroom is like too and he’s quick to praise the teachers who do it day in day out. “I have to say that I’ve never admired teachers more than I do now,” he says.

“Until you’ve tried it, you can’t possibly know what it’s like standing in front of a group of young people who aren’t interested in what you’re saying. I think all the Dream School teachers came away with this huge respect for teachers.

“I thought they were all really smart kids. A lot of them had trouble paying attention, but once you got them inspired in whatever subject grabbed them, their qualities really shone through.”

Jamie’s Dream School starts on March 2 on Channel 4. Viewers can see full-length YouTube videos of the teachers’ lessons at www.youtube.com/dreamschool and Jamie Oliver is also launching a search to find Britain’s most inspirational teachers. To find out more, go to www.youtube.com/dreamteachers.

To pass the time, my daughter downloaded hours of audiobooks for me to listen to. And that’s when I discovered the wonderful Keyes. I stopped worrying about my eye as I worked my way through all the books she’d written.

Keyes is an author who puts a smile on your face and makes you think. Her books – my favourites are Last Chance Saloon and The Other Side of the Story – are warm, witty and wise and even when she’s writing about hard-hitting subjects like divorce, depression or alcoholism, she’s never preachy or pious. Her dialogue is true to life and her characters utterly believable.

The Brightest Star in the Sky, her tenth book, is out in paperback this month and like its predecessors blends comedy, high drama and emotional depth.

It’s the story of the eight inhabitants of 66 Star Street, a rambling Dublin townhouse. The top flat is owned by Katie, a music PR who worries about the size of her thighs and whether her hot-shot workaholic boyfriend will ever commit. Below her, two hardworking Poles share a flat with streetwise cabbie Lydia. A sharp-tongued character with endless lists of pet-hates and witty put-downs to passengers who dare to try it on, Lydia deserves a novel all to herself. Some of Keyes’s previous characters have turned up in subsequent books, so I live in hope.

On the first floor there’s Jessica, an octogenarian who lives with her malevolent dog and foster son and gives psychic readings on the phone. Meanwhile the ground floor is occupied by newlyweds Maeve and Matt. On the surface they have everything going for them, so what makes them do random “acts of kindness” to stave off their unhappiness?

The novel also features a mysterious visitor who keeps watch over the inhabitants, emerging every so often to “rattle around” their secrets. In less skilled hands, introducing a magic Puck-like creature to the proceedings could have proved disastrous, but Keyes makes it work. And how can you not love a writer who comes up with one-liners like “never trust a man with two mobile phones” and “there’s not much in life that can’t be fixed by cake?”

The Brightest Star in the Sky by Marian Keyes is published by Penguin at £7.99.

That’s how Andrew Neil summed up the 2010 Costa Book of the Year judges’ admiration for this year’s winning book – Jo Shapcott’s Of Mutability. His praise was richly deserved but even so, Shapcott’s triumph took the literary world by surprise. For a start, it’s the second year running that a poet has scooped the Costa (Christopher Reid won last year for A Scattering). But not only that, the hot favourite for this year’s £30,000 prize was Edmund de Waal’s extraordinary memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes.

Of Mutability is Shapcott’s first book in almost a decade. In the intervening years she has undergone treatment for breast cancer (her doctors are name-checked in the acknowledgements) and even though she has insisted in interviews that she isn’t “someone chasing her own ambulance,” it’s clear that her bold, beautiful poems about change are rooted in her own experience.

The 2010 Costa shortlist was a particularly impressive one, with all five books meriting their place in the final. The others in contention included a novel about a young couple reeling from a traumatic birth, a tale of female infanticide and a children’s novel set in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

Maggie O’Farrell’s The Hand that First Held Mine, skilfully weaves two narratives together – one about a young girl who carves out an independent  new life in 1950s London after being sent down from university and the other about a  couple struggling to cope with the birth of their first baby. Kishwar Desai’s first novel, Witness the Night, relates how a traumatised young girl is found barely alive in a house where 13 people have been murdered, while Out of Shadows is Jason Wallace’s hard-hitting story of a boy sent to a tough Zimbabwean boarding school in the 1980s.

When the overall winner was announced in London this week, I too reckoned Edmund de Waal would win. But having read all the contenders, all five are exceptional books. And you can’t ask more than that of the Costa awards. Read them all.

Now, six months on, the deputy prime minister has outlined government plans for a “properly flexible” system of shared parental leave in the UK by 2015.

This is fine in theory but it highlights just how far removed politicians are from the reality of most people’s working lives. At a time when the government keeps emphasising its commitment to supporting small businesses battling through the global downturn, how on earth will reforms like this help?

Five years ago my husband was working on his computer in our freezing cold attic. In between jobs, he suddenly came rushing downstairs at top speed. He’d had an amazing new idea for an ingenious hi-tech system that helps to reduce leaks on the country’s water distribution networks. Not the glamour end of the market, but pretty damn smart all the same.

Three years on, that eureka moment has resulted in a fully-fledged company on the south coast with 30 employees and orders from water companies all over the world. There’s still a long way to go, but to get this far he’s had to work flat out seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. He’s missed parents’ evenings galore, cancelled holidays at short notice and hasn’t once taken our children to school.

But if he’d followed Clegg’s proposals, there’s no way his company would exist at all – let alone be employing anyone or making a major contribution to saving water.

I’m sure he’s not the only parent who’s made sacrifices. In fact he’s probably very typical of anyone who’s started or is running their own business. It’s all very well for parents working in senior roles for massive companies (or the government in fact) to demand flexible working hours so they can see more of their children. But small businesses simply don’t have the manpower to sustain employees chopping and changing their working hours all over the shop.

Nick Clegg says children often miss out on time with their dads and highlights research showing that “where fathers are involved in their children’s lives they develop better friendships, they learn to empathise, they have higher self-esteem, and they achieve better at school.” Yes, but this isn’t something you can fix through legislation or by insisting fathers get home in time to put the children to bed. Working parents simply have to make time for their children when they are at home.

It’s great news that Maggie O’Farrell’s The Hand That First Held Mine (Headline Review, £16.99) has won the 2010 Costa Novel Award. The prize was announced this week and it’s richly deserved. O’Farrell’s first novel, After You’d Gone, was so moving that I stayed up all night to finish it – and I did exactly the same with this one. It’s the story of two women – Lexie, who carves out a new life for herself in 1950s London after being sent down from university in disgrace, and new mother Elina, who half a century later is struggling to cope with the traumatic birth of her first child.

The irrepressible Jilly Cooper can always be relied on to brighten our spirits and Jump! (Bantam Press, £18.99) is just the ticket. A massive tome running to more than 700 pages, Jump! is set in the world of jump racing and features all the favourite Cooper hallmarks. There are witty one-liners, a massive cast of characters (the devastatingly handsome Rupert Campbell-Black makes a welcome return), gorgeous countryside, endearing animals and lots of steamy sex.

I still don’t understand why David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet (Sceptre, £18.99) didn’t make it on to the 2010 Man Booker shortlist. An exceptional read – part historical novel, part love story and part epic – it relates how clerk Jacob de Zoet arrives in Japan in 1799 to work for the Dutch East India Company.

Better late than never, 2010 was the year I discovered Kate Atkinson’s brilliant Jackson Brodie novels. Started Early, Took My Dog (Doubleday, £18.99) is the fourth – and so utterly compelling that I immediately rushed out and bought the previous three. Lauded for her literary fiction, Atkinson has taken to writing crime with consummate ease, skilfully weaving the lives of three disparate characters into a complex tale of unsolved murder, child abduction and police corruption. A six-part series of the Jackson Brodie stories is due to hit our TV screens this year and I can’t wait.

Last but by no means least, try Jennifer Donnelly’s Revolution (Bloomsbury, £10.99). Love, loss, hope, redemption and forgiveness – this wonderful novel is about all these things and more. Talented teenage musician Andi Alpers is mourning the death of her younger brother in a terrible accident in New York. But when she accompanies her estranged father on a work trip to Paris, Andi’s life becomes intertwined with that of a girl trying to save a young prince during the French Revolution more than 200 years before. Aimed at teenagers, adults will love it too. I certainly did.

I’m not particularly keen on tradition most of the year but Christmas is different. At Christmas, tradition rules. I love searching out the decorations (I buy a new one each year so they now amount to an eccentric medley of hearts, stars, papier maché baubles, twinkling lights and tin snowmen), putting the tree up in time for my daughter’s birthday on the 13^th and playing carols at top volume as I wrap presents. I never write lists and with 24 days to go my office floor is already a tangled mess of presents, wrapping paper and parcels that I ordered on-line but can’t for the life of me remember who for.

It’s for all those reasons that I couldn’t wait to read India Knight’s new novel. I love Knight’s Sunday Times column and Posterous blog so I knew she’d be the perfect person to capture the Christmas zeitgeist.

Comfort and Joy is the story of a modern family Christmas hosted by Clara Dunphy over three consecutive festive seasons. Clara is determined to make Christmas special. As she says, “I want it to be so lovely, so redemptive, so right. There’s no point in doing it craply, is there?” Definitely not. But even so, it’s a tricky feat to pull off when she’s got 16 guests turning up and is doing everything single-handed. Sitting round her London table each year are her ex-husband, her about to be ex-husband, three children, eccentric mother, two half-sisters, non-PC mother-in-law and a host of well-behaved and not so well-behaved friends. Knight is brilliant at blending laugh-out-loud humour with real insight into the stresses and strains of a family Christmas. You’ll love it if you’re hosting it at your place this year – and even if you’re not.

Comfort and Joy by India Knight is published by Fig Tree at £14.99.

These are just some of the thorny questions posed in Fabulous at Fifty, an enthralling history that’s just been published to celebrate the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s 50^th anniversary. From Barbara Cartland through to chick-lit, the book scrutinises the fans, the detractors, the prizes, the parties (the RNA throws great bashes) and the plaudits.

Romantic fiction often gets slated – largely due, as Joanna Trollope says in the book, to snobbery and the genre’s pink covers, embossed lettering and “cartoon drawings of cocktail glasses and handbags and ditsy girls falling off their designer heels.” But much of the criticism is downright unfair. Romantic fiction boasts some of the best writers around. Take Marian Keyes, for instance. Far from sticking to hearts and flowers, she’s covered everything from domestic violence and depression to alcoholism and dementia in her ten best-selling novels. If you haven’t read Last Chance Saloon or The Other Side of the Story by the way, you are in for a big treat.

The RNA also does a brilliant job in promoting the genre and supporting its members. They’re a very impressive lot, as Jeremy Paxman discovered in 2005 when the RNA team stormed through to the final of University Challenge – the Professionals, eventually losing to the Privy Council. The team, incidentally, included the wonderful Annie Ashurst (alias Mills and Boon author Sara Craven), who won the Mastermind crown in 1997.

And finally, just to answer the questions at the top: Former RNA president Mary Burchell was the novelist who helped to rescue dozens of Jews. In the 1970s WAG stood not for the likes of Victoria Beckham and Coleen Rooney, but for the Writers’ Action Group, whose members campaigned to set up the Public Lending Right. And the first man to win the Romantic Novel of the Year was Peter O’Donnell (aka Madeleine Brent), who scooped the prized award for Moonraker’s Bride in 1978.

Fabulous at Fifty is published by the Romantic Novelists’ Association at £9.99.

But now my daughter’s gone to university it just isn’t the same any more. My son refuses point-blank to watch and even though my husband loves Wagner, it’s not the sort of Wagner you see strutting his stuff in front of Simon, Cheryl and co.

But Saturday night’s show, even though I had to watch in solitary confinement again, was the most exciting yet. Why? Because my lucky daughter queued for two hours in the rain to be in the audience and was sitting right behind the four starry judges. I must admit my mind wasn’t completely on the contenders singing their hearts out because every time the cameras panned to the audience I was too busy trying to spot my daughter among the shadowy profiles.

But this morning she rang to spill the beans on what the live show is really like. For a start, she couldn’t believe how tiny the studio was. Not only that, the audience had to stand while the contestants performed and were encouraged to clap (and boo) the judges as they delivered their verdicts.  The biggest surprise was that when the judges swept out during every other ad break, it was Simon and Cheryl who smiled and bantered with the audience. “Dannii and Louis completely ignored us,” revealed my young mole. “Simon winked at us and when my friend said to Cheryl ‘I love your shoes,’ Cheryl stopped and said ‘thank you.’”

So what were her verdicts on the last 12 acts in the competition?

“The main thing was that they all sounded so much better live,” she said. “Aiden, Katie and Matt were brilliant. Belle Amie were boring and One Direction (the teenage boys dressed like a gang of Artful Dodgers) were much better than they sound when you’re watching at home. They don’t look as young and they’re actually good singers. They’re not my kind of thing but I really think they might win!”