Serves 6-8

Sherry Cracker, the far from normal heroine of Connell's second novel, is a loner, obsessive note-taker and lover of tartan trousers. She works for Mr Chin, who runs a business buying used gold from dentists.

The Marmite ad doesn't pretend that everyone has to like the sticky brown stuff. It's OK that some of us – such as myself, for instance – love it, while others find it loathsome. Wine tends not to divide opinions but achieve a common consensus based on reliability and quality. Indeed, products like non-vintage champagne flaunt their consistency of style to reach a broad common denominator of taste.

On a biting cold night when a thick blanket of snow lay on the ground, I went on a tapas-bar crawl as a guest of the Tortilla Club, a group of Spanish food and wine aficionados. Starting off at Fino, my first surprise was at how many tapas bars there are in London's Charlotte Street area. My next surprise was how much I found myself enjoying sherry with just about everything consumed that night. I enjoy fino and manzanilla as refreshing summery aperitifs, but their warm full-body and appetisingly tangy flavours made them good winter drinks too.

They couldn't get Lord Ashcroft to come in so they took it out on Hayden Phillips.

This light, refreshing yet bitter drink is a wonderfully grown-up cocktail. You might also want to have some peach purée on hand. This way by stirring 1 part peach purée with 3 parts prosecco one makes the delightfully delicate and fruity Bellini.

Serves 4

Forget mojitos - sherry is back in vogue

Serves 4

Isn't it strange how certain styles of wine keep returning? Just as flared trousers and mutton have regained popularity, so too a number of the wine styles we consigned to history have started to make a comeback. Among the worst offenders were German riesling, sherry and beaujolais, which had all sold their good names down the river.

The Hold Steady, for the inattentive, are a Brooklyn quintet whose sound fuses Eighties hardcore with bar-room blues: imagine Hüsker Dü meets the E Street Band. Their USP is that their major players were already well into their thirties when the band formed, and are now staring down the barrel of 40.

Port, the after-dinner tipple of choice for the gout-suffering classes, is attempting to shake off its stuffy image with a new pink version aimed at elusive female drinkers.

Anthony Rose picks the perfect wines to help you through the party season, whether you're on a tight budget or splashing out

The end of the affair