Hi there
Welcome to 2026. We made it! Everyone I speak to seems pretty glad to have got through 2025 in one piece.
In fact, after a couple weeks of Christmas wallowing – too much chocolate, telly, sleep, dozing – I’m looking forward to getting back to work. And yes, I am aware that I am fortunate indeed to have work and a team at NOON that I love and to be looking forward to sharing 2026 with lots of you!
If you fancy a lift, do check out everything we’ve got coming up – including a special evening with our advisory board member Amelia Troubridge talking about her photographs for charity on 22 January. Book here.
Saying goodbye to Joanna Trollope
Who Joanna was to me
I’ll always remember Joanna’s winning combination of great warmth – she could connect with anyone from a grumpy oldie to a silent teenager – coupled with a ferocious intelligence conveyed by her piercing blue eyes. She was one of those people who made one think more sharply; who, if I offered a platitude would raise an eyebrow as it if to say, “You are better than that”.
She used to write for me and we would lunch at Scott’s or J Sheekys. She was always lively – if bracing – company; she would deliver excoriating views or gossip with such a throwaway patrician air that it was only afterwards on the Tube back to the office I would think: Did she really just say that?
At her funeral, the church was packed, we sang Hark the Herald, and then we listened to Elvis crooning “I can’t help falling in love with you” – not a dry eye in the place. Then we crossed the main drag to Cirencester’s mighty Corn Hall for Champagne and excellent canapes. It was a fitting, if frosty, send-off.
Meeting my past on a drive through the Cotswolds
I drove from Cirencester across the Cotswolds to Broadway to stay with my wonderful aunt, who is now in her late 80s but still driving and doing her horses. My maternal line come from Breedon Hill – visible from Broadway across the Evesham Vale. I grew up riding my pony across the Cotswold escarpment and my journalist grandfather, during the war, was stationed on the top of it, at Broadway Tower, spotting enemy bomber planes and signalling warnings as they flew over on their way to attack Coventry and the Midlands.
On New Year’s Eve morning, which was super frosty, I walked some of the old paths with my cousin, feeling like we were hiking not just hills but through time. There are so many layers of memories here. Much as I dislike the gentrification of the area – bits really are ruined by the Range Rover-driving Soho Farmhouse types – it is still heart-achingly beautiful and touches a deep part of me: It is my true home soil.
Where are your poignant places?
Later I walked across the top of the hill above where we used to live. Its contours and trees are so familiar it feels dreamlike. I find it surprisingly emotional to return. Are there places that feel like that for you, too? Then, driving to see friends in Oxfordshire for New Year’s Eve, Google maps took me past the Rollright Stone Circle just as the sun was going down.
I stopped and walked the Stones, bidding farewell to the year as the sun dropped between the so-called King’s Men Stones (supposedly created thousands of years ago by a witch who turned an army to stone). Having begun the festive season at Stonehenge, if felt fitting to complete it at the Rollrights, the furthest east stone circle in the UK.
Maybe it was going to Egypt and feeling so moved by the power of the Pyramids of Giza that has made me want to connect more viscerally with our own ancient monuments. All I can say is UK stone circles pack quite the punch. Indeed, one of my intentions for 2026 is to explore more of them. Why not try one out near you? Just stand there, touch the stone, close your eyes and just feel….
It wasn’t all gallivanting about last week. My grandfather, the one who was at Broadway Tower planespotting in the war, also ran the local newspapers. Ink is in our blood. Appropriately for this trip, I was also on journalist duty, writing 2 columns for The Telegraph while jollying around the Cotswolds.
I wrote about the rottenness of the Honours System and how CEOs, civil servants and luvvies shouldn’t be getting extra rewards just for doing their jobs. Instead, we should have a public vote for local community leaders or activists who really deserve an honourable mention.
I also wrote about Queen Camilla, having woken up to her dulcet tones on the Today Programme talking about how she was sexually assaulted on a train as a teenager. Given the current trials of the royal family – particularly Andrew – it was refreshing to hear the Queen speaking out about violence against women and sharing her own story.
It was also impressive that she had invited Amy and John Hunt to Clarence House to speak about their own experience of misogynistic tragedy. John Hunt was Channel 4’s Racing correspondent. His wife Carol and two of their other daughters, Louise and Hannah, were killed in 2024 by Louise’s violent ex-boyfriend, described by the judge as jealous and self-pitying committing a brutal and cowardly attack. (He was handed 3 whole life orders.)
The Queen wanted to talk about the signs that women might be in danger. Good for her! I wrote that she is becoming the royal family’s most reliable media performer and its most relatable member. I’m not surprised.
My experience with the Queen
When I was chair of Women in Journalism from 2014 to 2020, she became a kind of unofficial patron, coming to many of our parties. That was brave, as at the time she was not as popular as she is now.
I found her to be clever, warm, funny and endearingly down to earth: She wasn’t born into the royal bubble but spent decades going to the supermarket and taking public transport just like the rest of us. As a result, she still has the capacity to engage and the common touch; not bad going for a woman who began her royal career as a pariah (remember how the King wanted to be her Tampax and that she was the third wheel in the marriage of Princess Di). It’s funny how time changes things: With the king sick, the Princess of Wales poorly and Andrew in disgrace, these days it really is Queen Camilla to the rescue. Character will out.
I’ve discovered the Super Queenagers
I was struck that both Camilla and Joanna Trollope (and indeed my doughty aunt) are part of a particular breed of what we might call Super Queenagers who won’t be with us for much longer. I admire that generation’s steadfastness, the humour with which they have endured suffering and their determination to keep cheerful through trying times.
They also have a great line in self-deprecation, belied by their achievements.
Appropriately, at Joanna Trollope’s funeral, one of her granddaughters read the famous quote by Jane Austen from Northanger Abbey about the novel. “Oh, it is only a novel…In short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language….”
That for me sums up not just Joanna but the wisdom and hard-earned knowledge of these women who came before us and who will not be around for that much longer. I reckon we should all relish them while they are here. Or as Joanna Trollope herself wrote in The Rector’s Wife: “In very simple letter we will put your name and your dates. And then underneath this will be carved. Listen: ‘Pray for me as I will for thee what we may merrily meet in heaven. And the emphasis, is on the ‘merrily’.”
See, even at her funeral she was stressing the fun and refusing to be mourned or pitied – that is the way of these amazing women. We stand on the shoulders of these lady giants.
Now let’s contemplate new beginnings
But enough of endings – January is the time for beginnings.
If you need a little help knocking your own Queenager story into shape – telling your individual story compellingly so it can power you into a new start, then do come and join me on Tuesday for a FREE webinar on rebranding yourself in midlife.
After all, by the time we’ve got through 5 decades, we have so much to say, so much to offer and so much experience under our belt, it is hard to know where to start! My Rebrand Yourself Course™ helps you bring it all together into one coherent and compelling narrative. Don’t take my word for it – check out the testimonials here of lots of Queenagers who have already done it.
Also, we have 1 single place left on the Queenager Ski trip. C’mon: Carpe the diem out of your January and join a small and friendly group of us on the slopes in Switzerland!
Our Camino Walk is selling out fast so do sign up now if you want to come! And don’t forget: We’ve also got lots of NOON Circles happening in January – check out one near you.
Much love – here’s to new beginnings in 2026!
Eleanor
P.S. I also interviewed Sophie Ellis-Bextor in The Telegraph. Check it out with this gift link!
