Floris

This morning had a fabulous time at Floris in London's Jermyn street, where I'm having a bespoke perfume created to launch The Madonna of the Almonds. It's a terrific honour because Floris is such a distinguished firm, they've had a Royal Warrant for centuries, and, on a personal note, my Gran used to use Floris! We met the lovely perfumier, Shelagh who has a treasure trove of an office, with ranks of antique bottles and vast ledgers detailing orders from the likes of Lawrence Olivier, Ralph Richardson, and every Royal you can imagine, both foreign and domestic! Floris has a bit of a literary history as their no.89 scent was Ian Fleming's favourite scent, so he had James Bond wear it in the novels. Anyway, Shelagh had read the book really closely and had picked out just about every olfactory reference in there, and soon we were sniffing dipsticks of lemon, almond, vanilla, sandalwood and incense (churches and old libraries, said Shelagh) We were in the presence of a master as she blended the scents expertly, and we came away happy with the scent of The Madonna of the Almonds in our noses! The perfume will be a limited edition, available in association with the book in May. Thanks to everyone at Floris, and Teresa (my uber-agent) for going along to sniff with me and lend her perfume/marketing expertise!