Available in black or white in machine-washable viscose crepe. Prices start at pounds 70 for a camisole; long bias-cut dress, pounds 110.La Redoute – 0500 777 777. An excellent alternative to slogging around in search of your favourite designers, such as Joseph and super-chic French designer Eric Bergere.Toast – 01558 66 88 00. The fashion editor’s favourite, Toast’s mini booklet is full of desirables. Clothes are easy pyjama shapes; cotton summer nightshirts pounds 39, linen shift dresses pounds 45 and cotton apron trousers pounds 32 – they look luxurious but you wouldn’t know it from the prices. Check out the soap bricks, bed linen and Syrian tea-glasses.Johnny Loves Rosie – 0171-375 3574 .Famed for their originality on the accessory front.

Unusual floral or printed flip-flops pounds 12.95, sheer shopper bags in cute colours from pounds 14.95, along with a massive range of floral and diamante hair-clips and pretty dragonfly slides, pounds 8.95 a pair. For a bohemian look – printed or plain headscarves, pounds 14.95, and glamorous chokers embroidered with sequins and coloured beads, pounds 35.Kingshill – 01494 890 555. From catwalk to catalogue: Joseph, Jean Muir, Paul Costelloe and Amanda Wakeley are just a few of the British-based designers showcased in Kingshill, the up-market hardback fashion book.TM Lewin – 0171-515 3360. The renowned Jermyn Street shirtmaker is the best place to stock up on crisp, summer shirts.

Available plain or in gingham checks – all the colours of the rainbow, from pounds 49-pounds 60.. Victor Pelevin is the future of the Russian novel. His satires take the temperature of post-Soviet Russia, in all its amoral, dystopian chaos. The Clay Machine-Gun, just translated into English, has sold more than 200,000 copies on its native territory. Generation P, recently published, has shifted 70,000 in less than a month, and sits proudly at the top of the bestseller list. In a reading culture where the stock-market rating of literary fiction has never been lower, he is a phenomenal blip.

In Russia, this sort of pre-eminence brings with it a practically official position, like the patriarch of the orthodox church. Pelevin ought to be apprenticed to the prophet Solzhenitsyn, making ready to take over as the conscience of the motherland, in the footsteps of Yevtuschenko, Gorky and Tolstoy He should also be a household face. But here he is, freshly landed in London, doing what he never does on home turf. He’s giving an interview, and having his picture taken.
In The Clay Machine-Gun, Pelevin takes a hilarious swipe at the cult of literary celebrity We’re in the middle of nowhere in the civil war of 1919. One night, a ramshackle branch of communist irregulars are entertained by a soldier who can tell the future by talking through the cheeks of his posterior.