Susie Dent, 61, is a lexicographer, author and broadcaster best known as the resident word expert in Countdown’s Dictionary Corner. Here, for our regular My Saturday column, Dent shares how she spends her downtime.
9am
This is my sweet spot to wake up. I have a large pile of books by my bedside and I genuinely get lost in them, so my nights (and my mornings) have become later and later. There’s a great old Scots word, “hurkle-durkle”, which means to stay in bed long after it’s time to get up.
9.30am
I don’t “hurkle-durkle” for long because I get restless if I linger in bed. I ease into the morning. I’m not alive until I’ve had my first cup of builder’s tea with honey and I yawn for England for the first half-hour. I’m not good around what I call “gigglemugs” – people who are perpetually smiling. If you’re not a morning person, you don’t want to see somebody incredibly bright and chirpy until you’ve had that cup of tea.
11am
My perfect “me” weekend, or “meekend” as I like to call it, always includes a book and a walk. I try to leave my phone behind, which none of us does enough. I live in central Oxford and there are gorgeous walks near me.
I’m quite close to Blenheim Palace and I love its grounds so much that I featured them in my novel, Death Writ Large. I’ve been a tree lover since I was little, when I used to climb them all the time. Blenheim has these ancient oaks that have seen everything; some predate the Normans. They’re incredibly gnarly and beautiful. I love going there and losing myself.
12.30pm
I catch up with friends a lot on walks because there’s something wonderful about walking beside somebody. You’re not constantly looking at one another, so conversations evolve naturally and sometimes become much more profound than they would in a cafe. I have a writer friend who is a brilliant sounding board for my book plots. I often think through those while I’m walking. I’m quite a fast walker. I’m not very good at going slowly – weirdly, it makes me feel tired. If there’s a hill, I like to tackle that quickly too. If I’m walking alone, I never wear headphones. I like listening out rather than listening in. I’m fairly ignorant about birdsong, although I’m getting better.
2.30pm
I have a small garden, but I love it. I was determined that any garden I had, however small, would have a tree in it, so I planted a mimosa. It has the most beautiful blossom every year. I can see why gardening is such a source of solace for people, although I need to learn to create more in my garden when I have time.
3.30pm
I prefer seeing a friend on their own, or perhaps one or two people. I’m not amazing at parties because I’ve realised that I don’t enjoy small talk. I wish I was better at it, but I get impatient and want to get to the nub of things. I suppose I’d describe myself as introspective rather than introverted. I can be extroverted with people I know, but I live in my head and I’m a total daydreamer. I still love people-watching. Part of my perfect “meekend” might be sitting with a coffee in a cafe and imagining the narratives playing out around me.
5pm
I’m quite good at doing chores during the week (partly because I use them to procrastinate), so I don’t have a mountain of chores waiting for me at the weekend. There’s an old word, “quiddling”, for concentrating on unimportant tasks as a way of avoiding the important ones, and I’m good at that. I don’t really feel the back-to-work blues – or the “mubble-fubbles”, as they were once called.
6.30pm
For dinner, I love a vegetarian chilli or a chickpea curry. I’ve been vegetarian for about 16 years. I love pulses – lentils, chickpeas, all of that – so dinner will often involve those with rice. I do like going out too. Oxford is brilliant culturally. I recently saw my friend Tom Read Wilson at the North Wall. He’s a fellow word nerd and we geek out together. We have great walks because words are pretty much all we talk about. I love the cinema as well, but I don’t go often enough. Oxford has some wonderful independent cinemas and I’m perfectly happy going on my own.
8.30pm
Reading is a huge part of my life. I loved The Names by Florence Knapp, which is a beautiful book, but at the moment I’m reading quite a lot of non-fiction. When I’m writing my own fiction, I tend to move away from other fiction. I’m reading Lucy Worsley and a book by my friend Sophia Smith Galer called How To Kill A Language, and whether it matters when languages die out. I also like a good thriller. Sometimes I go back to children’s books for the nostalgia. I’ve just picked up Swallows and Amazons. I can be nervous about returning to books I loved as a child in case the spell is broken. I did it with my all-time favourite children’s story, The Lost Domain, and thankfully it was every bit as perfect as I remembered.
10pm
I love Slow Horses. Mick Herron, who wrote the books it’s based on, lives in Oxford, but I still haven’t met him. I’m convinced he must go to the same coffee shop as me, so perhaps one day I will. I’m also desperately hoping Mare of Easttown returns. Basically, if Kate Winslet is in something, I’m there. When we film Countdown, we make five shows a day, three days a week, so they’re very full-on days. There’s something lovely about shutting the door afterwards and watching something entirely different.
11.30pm
I wind down by reading. At night I try to be strict with myself and not go back to the news. Instead, I have that wonderful pile of books beside my bed staring at me expectantly. I’m quite good at sleeping, and I often put a podcast on very quietly and fall asleep to it. I probably won’t remember any of it the next day, but I like it as background noise.
Susie Dent started on Countdown in 1992. A graduate of Oxford, she has written numerous books about words and language, and turned to fiction with her 2024 debut novel, Guilty By Definition, followed by Death Writ Large, in August 2026. She was awarded an MBE in 2024 for services to literature and language. She lives in Oxford and has two adult daughters. She is working with Premier Inn to add the word “meekend” to the Oxford English Dictionary.