The possibility of a miracle

The Sunday Times Magazine | 20 May 2012

The couple were cuddled up on a sofa, talking about their good fortune. “We lead such a charmed life,” James Collins told his wife, Sharmila Nikapota. The Cambridge-educated professionals enjoyed the theatre, dining out, romantic holidays. They had a lovely home and planned a family. “The world was our oyster,” Sharmila, now 43, says. James is a commercial barrister, recently made a QC. Sharmila used to be a vet. On July 15, 2002, their perfect world was shattered. Their first child, Sohana, was born with the genetic skin condition recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (RDEB).

• Health, Beauty & Spa

A brush with mortality

The Sunday Times Magazine | 6 Nov 2011

When JG Ballard died, in April 2009, few people knew he had been planning a new work. The author of Crash and Empire of the Sun, celebrated for his bleak dystopian vision, had proposed a book co-written with his oncologist, Jonathan Waxman, to be called Conversations with my Physician: the Meaning, if Any, of Life.

• Interviews

Lunch isn’t for wimps

The Sunday Times Magazine | 5 Jun 2004

When Faith MacArthur was a child, she’d pluck chickens and pick potatoes during the harvest. She lived in “Cow Town” – Calgary, Alberta – in the Prairies. Her mother, a minister’s wife, would hang home-made noodles around the house to dry. Sitting on her mother’s knee, four-year-old Faith would pummel bread dough and make carrot curls for garnish. Now Faith, 42, is standing in her fashionable Notting Hill kitchen, knee-high in ingredients for soups: cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, chickpeas, chillis. Rows of saucepans are steaming on an industrial oven and scribbled, half-complete recipes litter every surface.

Faith is half of the husband-and-wife team behind the EAT chain of cafes.

• Food

Patricia O’Neill: Animal House

The Sunday Times Magazine | 19 Sep 1999

They call it, with some affection, Broadmoor. At least, that’s what they say in the family. To others, however, it is Broadlands, the stud farm belonging to the horse breeder and animal conservationist the Hon Patricia O’Neill.

She has 42 stray dogs who move in packs through her house, and a kitchen carpeted with yapping Pekingese. She also has a donkey, jackal, lynx, chimp, 200 parrots, 40 stud ponies, a cage shared by a tortoise, cockerel, monkey and rabbit, plus 19 rescued baboons – some living in a room with filing cabinets and books.

• Interviews