Blair (The Daily Mail)
Oct 2
My mother used to say, 'The Bible tells us to turn the other cheek, but there are only so many cheeks in a day.'
How true. How long will the British people go on forgiving Tony Blair? All the signs are that patience is running out. My own patience ran out when Blair took us to into war without a mandate from the British people or from the United Nations. At that moment Britain became Little America.
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Childhood Recollections (Harpers and Queen UK)
I had two mothers; my birth mother who gave me up for adoption, and my new mother, the late, great, Mrs Winterson, complete with Gospel Tent and rolling pin. She wore headscarves and crimpelene dresses, a corset and a full-length apron, bedroom slippers around the house, and 200-denier stockings outdoors. She believed in the power of Jesus, Armageddon, and herbal medicines. I had no jabs and no pills as a child, and although this was the 1960's, every day in winter, she sealed my chest in brown paper and Vick. I was the only child at my school who rustled.
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Peninsular of Lies (Evening Standard)
In September 200, Dawn Simmonds was cremated in Charleston, South Carolina. Her husband was not present at the memorial service, but her daughter took the ashes. It was at this service that the biographer Edward Ball decided to investigate the strange life of Mrs Simmonds - who until 1968 had been a man.
It is a bizarre story, wonderfully told, with the right blend of gossip and research. By the end of the book I felt I understand Dawn, aka Gordon, and I wished I had met her - a sure sign that this biography has succeeded in its aims of intimacy and revelation.
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Country Life
I was in a tearing hurry to get to Charlbury station for the London train, but Sister George wanted to go in the other direction towards Hereford.
Sister George is my 1967 Landrover, and anyone who has this Series 11 model will know that reverse and first gear are frighteningly close together. My gearbox has no synchromesh left - if it ever had any to start with - and so the clutch has to be depressed differently for every gear change. At present, getting Sister George to travel forwards begins with preventing her from travelling backwards. Remember Tony Curtis and the motorboat in Some Like It Hot? It is only a matter of time before I too cover the eight miles between Old Minster Lovell and Charlbury entirely in reverse.
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Astrology (Vogue)
Most of us find ourselves glancing at the horoscope columns. All of us know our birth sign. Some of us have a bit of the jargon to go with the sign - I'm a Leo so I need to have everything my own way. My boyfriend was a Scorpio, so we had great sex but he lied all time. Like you, I found myself wondering if there was any 'truth' in astrology, and for once the inverted commas are necessary, because astrological truth is neither a fact nor a fiction, but a potent combination of both.
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Railway Horror (Evening Standard)
I travel by train at least twice a week, often late at night. I count myself lucky that my mobile phone has been stolen only once - by a man so drunk that he was sick all over it as soon as he snatched it.
I have been physically threatened twice, and on each occasion I knocked loudly on the driver's door and demanded help. The help was not forthcoming, but even yobs realise that trains have drivers, and they didn't stay to find out what might happen.
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Vegetarian (The Daily Mail)
I was vegetarian for seven years as a private protest against factory farming.
Everything in life feeds on something else; that is the rule of survival As humans who now live by farming not by hunting, there is an urgent ethical question; is it right to mistreat animals in the name of food?
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Clare Balding (The Standard)
I love racing. I love horses. I do not care if Clare Balding is straight, gay, Martian, or neutered, as long as she goes on entertaining us at the racetrack. Tipped as the next face of BBC sport, Miss Balding is what the BBC does best - no gimmicks, no gameshow personality, just top class commentary that comes out of a big brain with plenty of experience and a passion for the subject.
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Mother From Heaven (New Yorker)
My mother was a re-incarnation of the Virgin Mary. An angel came to her and told her she would have a child, but as she wasn't prepared to do this by any ordinary method, she took a trip to the orphanage and got me.
My new parents were working class, suspicious of education, and deeply religious. The book I was given to read was the Bible. Everything else had to be vetted by my mother, whose argument against books ran something like; 'The trouble with a book is that you never know what's in it, until it's too late.'
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Reading (The Daily Mail)
I grew up in Accrington, a northern working class town, with nothing to its name but a football team and a collection of Tiffany glass.
I was adopted by Pentecostal evangelists, who wanted me to go onto the Mission fields, to save souls.
My mother believed I had been given to her by God, but when she was cross with me, which was often, she used to wipe her hands on her full length apron and say 'The Devil led us to the wrong crib.'
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