I hate that word ‘juggling’. Not because it doesn’t describe the frantic activity that consumes the lives of many of us, but because, well, when you juggle, you are usually holding onto one ball at a time. Everyone I know who ‘juggles’ – and I don’t just mean mothers of
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This article first appeared in The Independent on Sunday You are walking alone down a dark street, the moon a sliver in the sky, when you hear footsteps tap, tap, tap behind you. How you react, claims the crime writer Val McDermid, is determined by gender: “A woman would think,
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This article first appeared in The Independent on Sunday When she was younger, Barbara Taylor Bradford refused to wear jewellery to an interview. The author of A Woman of Substance and 25 other global bestsellers did not want to “flaunt” her great wealth. (Estimated to be worth £166m, she was
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This article first appeared in The Independent on Sunday The writer tells Danuta Kean how she swapped criminology for exotic dancing to research her new thriller There is something about modern housing estates: the homogenised exteriors; the windows kept small to econom-ise not enlighten; the cars on front drives ready
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This article first appeared in The Independent on Sunday A few years ago, in the pub after work, I laughingly told my then colleagues that I had once been a member of a church affiliated to the notorious Nine O’ Clock Service, where people spoke in tongues and danced down
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This article first appeared in The Independent on Sunday On holiday in St Lucia with his Japanese wife and their young daughter, Tony Parsons became increasingly frustrated by a loud conversation at the next table. A bunch of lads were describing in explicit detail their latest conquests. It was not
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