I hated being a teenager. I was utterly angst-ridden. Not so much in the existentialist ‘why am I here?’ department, but just about everything else. I was too skinny, too foreign (at the time practically the only brown-haired, brown-eyed girl in the wh …

Before moving to the UAE we lived in France. I didn’t make many friends, French women are notoriously difficult to make friends with, but those friends I did have spent most of the summer talking about just one thing: la rentrée. La rentrée is the Fren …

Nawal El Saadawi has returned to Cairo where intends to stay until she dies. Not that she feels particularly at home there. “Home is not about where I am. I would not call Cairo home. I feel at home wherever I meet people I feel at home with,” she tell …

When I was 18 years old I had a friend called Tim who owned a Porsche. It was a white 911 Carrera. Gorgeous. One day I told my friend that I missed my mother. She was living in Sweden at the time and I was in London. “Let’s go and see her,” said Tim. ” …

Earlier this week I was chatting to one of the trainers at my gym about six-packs. “I hate this flab,” I told him, grabbing my mid-riff. “I want it gone. I want a six-pack like Fernando Torres.” “If you come here three times a week, you will have one i …

When Olivia was about five, she came rushing into my office one evening. “Mummy,” she said, gesticulating wildly. “There’s a big, big problem. I dropped the torch and Bea’s got blood.” This was no normal torch. It was one of those massive American fire …

A couple of weeks ago I ranted on about what not to read, namely 50 Shades of Drivel. Meaningless, humourless, trite, sentimental and badly written. I have just finished a book that is the exact opposite and I urge you all to read it. I am not the only …

I remember when I was at school we used to have to write an essay at the beginning of term about our summer holidays. I could never really think about much to write, except of course for the summer when my mother and I escaped from her third husband in …

It is a well-known fact that French women don’t like the gym. In fact, they would rather do anything than go to a gym, including, as with one woman I interviewed once, not eating croissants for over 30 years. French perfumeries, chemists and supermarke …

I used to say there is nothing as dangerous as a frustrated author. I should know, because I used to be one. I could barely stand to hear about someone who had had their book published, it would send me into a frenzy of jealousy and frustrated angst. N …