Stay in the car for a Christmas to remember

The Express | 10 Dec 1996

A survey released last week by motor manufacturer Toyota found that the car has overtaken the breakfast table as a principal family meeting place. The evidence from the survey will be used in designing its Picnic “family fun” car.

Our family has known this for years. A long time ago, we started having family Christmases in the car. We don’t have to put up many decorations because we can, if the mood takes us, park beneath the festoons of light adorning Regent Street.

And we do our bit for the environment – the tree part of it, at least – because we speed to Trafalgar Square to admire the 65ft Norwegian Christmas tree rather than splashing out on our own somewhat smaller baubled conifer.

• Columns & Regulars

I entered battle like a failing windmill and ended up like a limp aspidistra

The Express | 7 Dec 1996

I was about to witness the terrible beauty of this brutal sport, this distillation of basic urban survival instinct. I swallowed hard and repeated to myself the boxer’s mantra.

• Interviews

How to win a war and lose a marriage

The Express | 7 Dec 1996

Sandy Woodward, naval hero of the Falklands, tells Caroline Phillips why he deserted his wife after 32 years.

• Interviews

I don’t know if I can trust nannies again

The Express | 7 Dec 1996

You’ve endured the morning sickness, the painful birth. And you’ve suffered the gruelling labour of finding a nanny. Finally you have your first chance to go out alone, with your husband.

• Current Affairs

Wisdom from far away and long ago

The Express | 14 Nov 1996

Prince Charles’s confidant and spiritual guru Sir Laurens van der Post, tells Caroline Phillips abot passion, plants and his extraordinary past.

• Interviews

Think yourself fit

The Express | 14 Nov 1996

If the thought of exercise makes you weak, meet the personal trainer who hypnotises clients into shape. Caroline Phillips falls under his spell.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

I went in search of self, seduction and sex

The Express | 14 Nov 1996

Freya North, 28, has just won the literary lottery. Publishers fought to buy her first novel, Sally, a feisty romp that helped her scoop £200,000 in a three-book deal.

• Interviews

Mother of all headaches

E.S. | 25 Aug 1996

There are 149 causes of headache – and this woman knows them all. Caroline Phillips meets the Queen of Pain.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

No doctor thinks that abortions are good

The Express | 25 Aug 1996

Professor Phillip Bennett has been vilified over the past week as a national hate figure. Most of the time he has been holed-up in his West London house behind closed curtains with his girlfriend Lisa and his two cats.

• Current Affairs,
• Interviews

Nightmares of the eight-baby case doctor

The Express | 25 Aug 1996

He is the father of a little boy, the son of a convicted terrorist and the man trying to save Mandy Allwood’s eight unborn babies. He is a person who hates performing abortions so much that he wants to vomit every time he does one. He is also the doctor who helped a woman have a baby after 13 miscarriages.

• Interviews

Farewell to last of the lover boys

The Sunday Express | 25 Aug 1996

This is a time of national mourning. Of women wearing black Armani armbands. Of not a dry high cheekbone in the country. This is the era of the distressed female. The last male remaining on the shopping list of the world’s most desirable men has just become unavailable.

• Culture

A mother wanted me to abort one of her healthy twins. It may sound unethical but it was either that or for both babies to die.

The Express | 25 Aug 1996

Professor Phillip Bennett faces a dilemma. His patient, 16 weeks pregnant, is carrying healthy twins and cannot abide the prospect of having two children. She says she couldn’t cope. She has told Mr Bennett, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at London’s Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, that if she were carrying just one baby, she would continue her pregnancy.

• Interviews