Why Cath is an open book

Cath Kidston has opened up almost every nook and cranny of her Cotswold idyll in a new book, A Place Called Home. Katie Jarvis spoke to Cath ahead of her appearance at this year’s Stroud Book Festival STROUD BOOK FESTIVAL – THIS YEAR FREE AND ONLINE: NOVEMBER 4-8

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Everybody in the Cotswolds knows everybody else. (In a really, really nice way.)

Like when I interviewed Jilly Cooper the other day and she sent her love to Cath Kidston.

“Isn’t she the best!” Cath Kidston exclaims, with huge affection.

“Wonderful. I love her. If we’re allowed, I’m going to see her next weekend.”

Along with Nicky Haslam, too, I hear? (The design guru, now living in Georgian splendour on the Daylesford Estate.)

“Exactly. My favourite. That should be really fun.” Even if, she points out, they end up huddled in a garden. “We’ll have to see what’s what.”

I’m speaking to Cath Kidston by phone, of course – and how lucky am I to get an interview. But – let’s be honest here – I’d love to be chatting in her rambling Cotswold manor-on-a-hill, looking over to a mound between rustling beeches where Iron Age people once venerated their dead.

It’s a stunning house – and I know this because its beauties are laid out in Cath’s latest book: A Place Called Home. And I mean ‘laid out’. There’s hardly a nook or a cranny that isn’t revealed amongst its glorious photographs and beguiling print.