In seconds the tornado ripped my world apart

Evening Standard | 12 Dec 2006

My home has always been my sanctuary, a place of exquisite beauty and calm. I read or sit undisturbed on our leather sofa in our family room with its off-white walls, stainless steel and sage-green stone surfaces, and gaze through its wall of sliding glass doors onto our fragrant cream and lavender garden with its climbing roses, ancient apple and pear trees, camellias and jasmine.

All that changed in less than 10 seconds on Thursday when the tornado visited.

• Caroline’s Life

The boy who beguiled London’s literary luvvies

Evening Standard | 1 Dec 2006

He was a British diplomat’s lover who tired of being an ambassadorial consort. What formidable networker Pablo Ganguli did next is almost stranger than fiction

• Culture,
• Interviews

A novel time in Marrakech

Evening Standard | 23 Aug 2006

“My family grew up with a really big secret,” says the broadcaster and author Aminatta Forna. “My father had been killed and nobody told us what had happened.” An aid worker, a Bloomsbury publisher and a classics scholar sit transfixed as this powerful woman explains that her father was hanged. Aminatta is addressing the the Jnane Tamsna Literary Salon in the eponymous hotel in the Paleraie, the oasis outside Marrakech that has become a playground for London’s artistic belle monde.

• Culture

Jennie Withers: Let’s make a baby!

The Observer Magazine | 2 Jul 2006

It’s strange that I’ve come to this. I always used to say, ‘I’d rather die than be one of those women pushing a pram around Sainsbury’s.’ The mundane and domestic terrified me. It’s only in the past two years that I’ve started to acknowledge that I’d like a family. I’ve been looking for a partner – more a soul mate, really – for ages. But the right person hasn’t come my way. Then, about six months ago – profoundly, peacefully but really clearly – a thought came to me: ‘I want a child.’

It made me cry. It felt as if it had come from such a true place. The idea that I could want a child and not have a partner was extraordinary.

• Interviews

Wanted: would be father to co-parent a child

The Observer | 2 Jul 2006

Pretty, soulful, happy and healthy woman, 41 (single and heterosexual), would like to meet a man prepared to father a child and have a role in the child’s life. London based, terms of relationship to be negotiated.

• Interviews

The merciless Mr Bean

Evening Standard | 16 May 2006

Jemima Khan has the give-away sinewy arms. Then there’s Leonie Frieda with her sculpted body, not to mention Lady Cosima Somerset, former confidante of Princess Diana, with her gym-toned physique. These are all Bean’s Babes: girls who have been put through their paces by Tim Bean, probably the world’s most sought-after personal trainer-cum-nutritionist.

• Health, Beauty & Spa

Women’s work?

The Independent | 4 Apr 2006

Is there such a thing as feminine writing? Caroline Phillips asks female novelists on the eve of an international conference.

• Culture