Christina Patterson

Profile: Full name: Christina Patterson Area of interest: Cultural issues, Books, Politics and the Arts Journals/Organisation: The Independent Email: c.patterson@independent.co.uk Personal website: Website: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/christina-patterson Blog: Representation: Networks: https://twitter.com/#!/queenchristina_

Biography: About: [supporter of the BHA supporter of the BHA] Education: Career: Royal Festival Hall: Literature Co-ordinator, 1990/1998; Poetry Society: Poetry Places Scheme Organiser (and freelance writer and consultant); Poetry Society: Director (overseeing activities ranging from the publication of Poetry Review and Poetry News to the Poetry Café in Covent Garden), 2000/2003; Freelance literary journalist (regularly reviews of fiction and poetry for The Independent, The Sunday Times, Times Literary Suppliment, Literary Critic for The Observer); The Independent: Comment desk Associate Editor and contributor, Deputy Literary Editor, 2007- Current position/role: Commentator also writes/has written for: Other roles/Main role: Other activities: Supporter of the British Humanist Association Disclosures: Viewpoints/Insight: Broadcast media: Video: Controversy/Criticism: Awards/Honours: Scoops: Other: Favourite books of all time are Middlemarch, Anna Karenina and Emma

Books & Debate: Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English (1999) OCLC 40298523 (contributor) Latest work: Speaking/Appearances: Debate:

The Independent: Column name: Remit/Info: Cultural issues, Books, Politics and the Arts Section: Role: Commentator Pen-name: Email: c.patterson@independent.co.uk Website: Independent.co / Christina Patterson Commissioning editor: Day published: Saturday and Wednesday Regularity: Weekly Column format: Average length:

Articles: 2012 If only I had blind faith in our national religion - People who aren't football fans don't get to weep, or hug, in public, or have a kind of communion, with beer - 2nd May The Queen's lesson – it's how you behave, not how you feel, that matters - 28th April It's not 'social cleansing' if Newham Council can't afford to house these people any more - Is it fair some people can have as many children as they like, live wherever they like, and have their rent paid by people who can’t afford to do either? - 25th April Lashings of sex, booze and bling – it's an everyday story of ancient Rome - He called himself "Mr Hot Sex". He lived in a ménage à trois - 21st April The first step to mass murder is a belief in good and evil - Anders Breivik hates Muslims, multiculturalism and feminism, but really what he hates is himself - 18th April Samantha Brick - The woman whose brief fame showed us that self-confidence can be a curse - Andy Warhol would have been amused - 14th April More, better paid nurses – so why are standards going down? - Respect for the nursing profession has been transformed – but some believe patients are not feeling the benefit - 10th April Yes, love can be blind, disfigured and autistic. It can also be touching and fun - I worried, when I saw the posters for The Undateables, that this programme would be a freak show. It wasn't - 7th April Not just unprepared for university, but for life - You don't need to be a 'tiger mother' to think most children are not being stretched enough - 4th April It's not just children who never get the pleasure of walking in pathless woods - It's quite easy, if you live in a city, and don't have a garden, or a garage, or a jerry can, or even a watering can, which Tory ministers seem to think you will, to forget that quite a lot of the world is green - 31st March To win the war on gangs, you have to make their members cry - Being in a gang is like being in a family. But one without parents and where children play with guns - 28th March Asma Assad's top tips on necklaces, heels, chandeliers – and courage - Asma Assad is very modest. "I am," she says, "absolutely clueless when it comes to fine jewellery!" - 17th March Our folly is to think of houses as dreams, not places to live in - Some people think that if they made money through their home they earned it - 14th March Franzen's right that Twitter can be a curse. But it can also be miraculous - Jonathan Franzen doesn't hate computers, but he does think that if you're writing on one, what you should do is destroy its internet port by plugging in a cable with super glue, and then saw off its head - 10th March Sisters, we've let our teenage daughters down - If they studied history and learnt about feminism, they might wonder what had happened to those battles - 7th March I can't vote for Boris. But I also can't vote for Ken - The man who used to be mayor of London is very much like the man who is currently mayor of London - 29th February What one very expensive faulty wire can teach us - The most important thing in life, is to keep looking and keep thinking - 25th February If you want a job, 'slave labour' at Tesco isn't a bad place to start - They seem to think that working in a shop is something that should make you feel demeaned - 22nd February What are these memorials to dead cyclists trying to tell us? - You might want to remind the people who put the bikes out that there are plenty of ways of keeping a name alive - 18th February The struggle against police racism has just got a lot harder - It was all the more serious, said the judge, because Ali Dizaei had been a 'role model' - 15th February A second chance for a bad parent can mean a life sentence for a child - It's not just the shit - 11th February Abu Qatada's freedom is the price we must pay for ours - Most people don't seem happy that a man who called for mass murder might soon be free - 8th February Whether or not you have faith, the Hajj is one journey we all need to understand - You might find yourself thinking about the journeys that people who didn't make this journey have made - 4th February It's time to ditch the dumbing down and start the wising up - Once you could say it was better to overestimate the public's mentality than underestimate it - 1st February We don't want your apologies unless they're from the heart - If you knew you'd been doing wrong for 13 years, your apology might not sound sincere - 28th January It's looking grim - unless, like Cameron, your talent is PR - They work in factories or construction or in shops and you'd have thought they'd be getting angry - 25th January The Artist is a reminder of some of the things we've lost - The Artist reminds us that silence is what you sometimes need to let your heart sing - 21st January Let's turn this party in the park into something that will last - It would be quite hard for her jubilee not to be overshadowed by a party now costing £9m - 18th January Madonna's got a long wait for her knight in shining armour - Madonna loved to embrace power – but now she’s fantasising about having less - 14th January

Articles: 2011 No one believes in the old economic solutions now - Lots and lots of things seem to be bad for the economy. So many that it's hard to know what isn't - 28th December Stop telling us about your 'kids', and feelings. Just do your job - Dear Ed and Dave and Nick, we don’t care what you eat and drink - 24th December If you don't like capitalism, why not try North Korea? - I'm not sure you could say 'socialism' in North Korea is on its way to being completely 'victorious' - 21st December What Steve Jobs taught us about willpower – and its limits - Powerful people who believe their own myths play a dangerous game - 17th December In a changed world, we need a new social contract - But only fantasists, and Labour politicians, don't have to make a choice. If you're in charge, you do - 14th December Boasting about who, and what, you know is bad for your 'brand' - Boast about things you don’t know and you’ll soon be found out - 10th December There won't be a better time to curb high pay - No wonder the gap between rich and poor in this country is getting bigger every day - 7th December We can't leave all the money, decisions and clout to the boys - It’s great to have more women on boards, but really we need more women in business - 3rd December Race, resentment and the white working classes - The Government worries about 'the squeezed middle', but less so about 'the pinched bottom' - 30th November Do you dress your child like a tart? Don't worry, you're not to blame - If I were a mother, I'm not sure that I'd be rushing to take advice from someone who went back to work seven hours after giving birth - 26th November The world really has changed. But Sepp Blatter hasn't noticed yet - There was a point where it all got rather surreal - 19th November If we're all in this together, then so is the public sector - The question isn't who wrecked the economy. The question is what you do when it is wrecked - 15th November Even Leonardo Da Vinci thought he was never good enough - We need to be reminded, that while human beings are very good at messing things up, they can also, sometimes, do things well - 12th November It wasn't just one man who killed the King of Pop - Perhaps fans thought it was a normal thing that he was crippled with arthritis and nearly blind - 9th November We can't solve the tragedy of gang crime if parents won't grow up too - When the producers of Top Boy asked for permission to film on an estate down the road from me, Hackney council said no - 5th November Thank God ethics is a messy business - We're lucky to have a state religion which doesn't tell you what to think, or who to hate, or how to vote - 2nd November My open letter to Miriam Gonzalez - Mrs Clegg sets the standard for women – if only we could live up to it - 29th October When exposing evil turns into fundamentalism - To Julian Assange and his disciples the world is a giant toilet. He must unblock it - 26th October Children and childcare aren't just women's issues - Are the Tories proposing a ban on the species? - 19th October Art isn't about 'big power' - Some of our artists are too busy selling their shiny, slick souls - 15th October Optimism is the last thing we need in a politician - The US has inequality on a par with Rwanda - 12th October You made us all feel smart Sarah - With Sarah Palin, it’s a fine line between politics as fun, and politics as farce - 8th October We prefer a crazy story... - ... and even if the evidence for it is very slender, that story seems to harden into something that feels like truth - 5th October Tough sentences won't prevent riots - Prison won't work and it costs three times as much as Eton - 1st October We can't let the monster of the markets rule the world... - ... gobbling up jobs, and hopes, and dreams - 28th September Lessons from a man facing death - We need to be reminded of this miracle we wake up to every day, a miracle that's only a miracle because it ends - 24th September The fashion industry that makes us always want more - Something changed when people started wearing their labels on the outside - 21st September The truth about immigration that will never go away - Immigrants don't come here for the weather - 17th September Isn't it time politicians came clean about drugs? - Sometimes, it would be interesting to know what went on in a politician's head - 14th September Smiley, jokey MPs make me nervous - I'd feel less nervous if you looked as though you worried you might be wrong - 10th September We have to get creative about Britain's best export - In the arts, we lead, or at least vie with those who lead, the world - 7th September Forget the 'Suburban Sarahs' - Politicians should start trying to make us want something better - 3rd September Let's keep 'faith' out of politics - People who are keen to bring faith groups into politics are often the ones who don't know all that much about faith - 31st August What a Harvard academic can teach us about people power - So, after the revolution, a chink of hope - 27th August We can't deny that race plays a part - Too many black men have been killed by the police. This is not the cause of these riots, but it's in the mix - 10th August You can't just blame the politicians - There are some problems that nobody knows how to solve - 6th August Two legal systems, and two choices... - ... Which do we want? - 3rd August We can try to live without the past but we'll always fail - It was Marx, of course, who said that history repeats itself first as tragedy and then as farce, and who arranged for some mass-scale demonstrations of his theory throughout the 20th century - 31st July The row that shows poetry matters - It's sad that this row has made people think that poetry is a joke - 30th July Raise a flag for democracy - When did someone decide that Norwegians could be proud of their country, but that English people couldn't? - 27th July Practical approach to marriage - Anyone who's had a go at internet dating will tell you it's all about a shopping list - 23rd July On one thing, Murdoch is right - If you still want newspapers that can uncover scandals, then what you need is determined reporters and rich men - 20th July It's nice to know, at long last, that money isn't always enough - Ding, dong, the witch isn't dead, but at least he learnt a little lesson - 16th July I want value for money for my taxes - It's important because the things it's talking about are things like what treatment you get if you have cancer - 13th July Loyalty is noble - and often misplaced - The thing about mistakes is that you have to admit you made them - 9th July We can't solve all the world's problems. But we can try - Aid has become ideological. The Left has been too tolerant of what doesn’t work. The Right has been too mean. But some things really ought to be beyond ideology - 6th July Sex, drugs, Twitter and addiction - Is tweeting photographs of penises a disease? Is cheating on your wife? - 2nd July More than ever, politics really matters - No wonder people who don’t call an argument a ‘narrative’ are beginning to think that politics has little to do with them - 29th June We can't keep paying people to be poor - It's very hard for the people who will be poorer. But paying healthy people not to work doesn't help the healthy people - 15th June The bittersweet return of Blair - Tony Blair and the painful remembrance of politics past - 11th June Sex, and the feminist's new clothes - Sex can be very, very, very, very nice. It can also be nasty. It can also be tedious - 8th June A care home or Abu Ghraib? - This week we got a masterclass in the degradation of the human species - 4th June Prejudice and the pursuit of 'cool' - Our society is confused over race - 1st June Perils of writers who get political - Why can't intelligent writers talk sense about politics? - 28th May Now that's what I call special - When Andrew Marr said the word 'chemistry', Barack Obama smiled. They were talking about the Queen - 25th May Young men dying in a war at home - Half the children in Newham live below the poverty line, and violent crime is almost double the national average - 21st May It's Miliband, not Clarke, who should be ashamed - The real scandal is that only 6 per cent of rapes reported to the police end in a conviction - 19th May Can we stop this drift to the right? - We have, according to Scope, got 37 per cent better at abusing the disabled - 18th May Time we respected the wisdom of age - I'd like to carry on wearing what I like, and what I think suits me - 14th May Kate McCann is in media purgatory - She has held fast to the belief in the media as the path to a kind of heaven - 11th May Lessons in love from dictators' wives - How do these women climb into bed with men who kill, and torture, and steal? - 7th May It's time to wave farewell to fairy tales - Many people in New York on Sunday night believed that the wicked witch had been killed, and would rot in hell - 4th May A day for the people to share in a young man's journey from sadness to joy - The Royal Wedding 2011: If this was a country deep in gloom, and worried about money, and jobs, and the future, and bothered about an awful lot of money being spent on the wedding of a very rich young man to a very thin young woman, it certainly didn't look like it - 30th April Lessons in freedom from the sisters of the Arab Spring - 16th April Can governments make us happy? - What they can do is help with our health. They could try to prevent the conditions threatening to bankrupt the NHS - 13th April Hugh Grant, paparazzi and power - You wouldn't necessarily expect the most interesting journalism of the week to come from a film star - 9th April So where's our black middle class? - It would be better if power structures were representative without any effort - 6th April Andrew Lloyd Webber's lesson: there's more to life than sex - 2nd April I still don't see Labour's alternative - If I was losing my job I'd be very angry. But I'd also feel very angry that nobody had presented an answer - 30th March Why I still love Barack Obama - This thoughtful and pragmatic politician is probably as good as it gets - 26th March Are we really all middle class now? - We may all sip our Colombia roast but more than a million of our young are not in any kind of training - 23rd March We only want you if you're rich - The Government wants lots of rich people to come in - 19th March What do we do with tragedy like the one in Japan? - Sometimes you can do everything right, and everything can still go wrong - 16th March A lesson for IDS in my sister's story - 'I say to those watching today,' said IDS, 'who are genuinely sick, disabled or are retired. You have nothing to fear.' - 12th March The curse of the cult of the amateur - David Cameron is extremely keen on rolling up his sleeves - 9th March A drama that shows the ugly side of our globalised world - Sometimes, it takes art to bring an issue alive. Sometimes, what it takes, in fact, is a play - 5th March Thatcherite chicken soup for the soul - There are many symbols of a cold, cruel streak running through Britain today – but for me, the most galling is the ascent of Paul McKenna - 2nd March Israel needs friends more than ever - Everyone in the West knows suicide bombs are a bad idea, but a lot of them think that stealing land isn't - 23rd February Why our very big society is a sign that something's gone wrong - 19th February Nasty nurses..? - ... tell me something new... - 16th February Why some crimes seem to be very, very hard to solve - It's sometimes hard to solve a crime. When, for example, I got my handbag grabbed from under my feet in a restaurant, it was very hard - 12th February Less of the pantomime politics, please - It perhaps isn't surprising that we have leaders who think the most important thing is how you look on a stage - 9th February There's a battle beyond the touchline - Football can keep its offside rules, it can keep its Andies. It can keep its Dicks. Football doesn't wreck lives - 26th January When sex and religion meet - You can't allow some people to invoke 'beliefs' and not others - 22nd January On paternity leave, I agree with Nick Clegg - An actual father is a concept as alien as a world without an Xbox - 19th January Why we should be grateful to a young offender's mother - For some 18-year-olds, being photographed holding hands with your mother would be quite punishment enough. So would the suit. And the tie. Even if it was loosely knotted and worn with a not-fully-buttoned-up shirt - 15th January The one little problem with the royals - It is a shame that the Queen's eldest son seems a terrible fuss-pot - 12th January

Articles: 2010 How I was smeared as an anti-Semite - The Nazi-hunter Simon Wiesenthal died five years ago, at 96. Just, perhaps, before he could hunt me down, too - 23rd December How a prophet of protest lost the moral plot - The heartless vanity of Assange has been exposed - 22nd December Every cause needs a celeb - Celebrity endorsements are a two-way transaction. Just match brand and cause - 18th December What we can learn from (calm) Swedes - They give us Wallander and shocking, but fictional, deaths in Swedish towns. We give them the real thing - 15th December Brown might have found his calling - Gordon Brown will be a hell of a lot happier as a community organiser - 11th December Lessons from a Russian blonde - It's possible, I suppose, that, a leggy blonde, was the best qualified candidate - 8th December That's quite enough of a man who messes with your head - The Saturday Column - 4th December I always thought football was boring... - ... Now I know it's rotten - 1st December What teenagers can learn from a few hours of standing still - The Saturday Column - 27th November Here's my prescription for the NHS - What patients need is nurses and doctors who do their job and people to train these people to do these jobs well - 24th November Politicians on reality TV are a good reason to get out your gun - 20th November Just what is the Army for, exactly? - We know we can fight wars to protect sheep farmers 8,000 miles away, though it's not clear why we'd want to - 17th November Designer handbag - symbol of Britain? - The handbag has been selected as a symbol of the pre-eminence that Britain would like to have in the world - 13th November Britain's got talent, but a lot is wasted - Susan Boyle said she was relieved not to be 'sitting at home being unemployed' with a talent she couldn't use - 10th November Not all families are created equal. - Our politicians, as we know from their Tourette's-like assertions on the subject, are extremely keen on families - 6th November Britain needs a rally for sanity too - Hyperbole and hysteria make for great headlines and TV ads, but they don't make for such a great national culture - 3rd November Price of telling the truth as you see it - Katharine Birbalsingh, who was hailed as a messiah at the Tory party conference, has returned to liberal London as Judas. The social network that made me sick - It's possible that a girl who was particularly skilled at, say, fellatio, might be elevated to the position of hysterical girlfriend - 27th October Be nice to animals (and people too) - You probably shouldn't scoop a cat up and stick it in a wheelie bin, just as you probably shouldn't with a human - 23rd October What I learnt from Prince Charles - One subject bores me to tears. I know it shouldn't, but it does. The environment - 20th October Our kids should reach for the stars - I didn't know that a bunch of South Americans could make me cry so much - 16th October So who has it in them to be a hero? - What kept the Chilean miners going, was, presumably, the most primal of human instincts: hunger to survive - 13th October Lessons in modern womanhood - So, now we know what you need to be the most powerful woman in the world. What you need to be is a wife - 9th October Tory realism's going down a treat - What people want is a roll-your-sleeves-up kind of government that knows what it's doing - 6th October The utter idiocies of equality and the law - God knows what it’s called nowadays, but it used to be called common sense - 2nd October The new brand of 'human' politician - When did these media-savvy, metropolitan, middle-class middle-youthers start emanating the air of a super-race, charged with the task of tidying the rest of us up? - 29th September A better idea in films than life - We'll need a much more sophisticated approach to industrial relations than the knee-jerk threat of universal strikes - 25th September Saints, sinners and cloud cuckoo land - On Sunday, the son of a banker was set on the path to sainthood - 22nd September If bigger breasts are the answer, what's the question? - I'm a big fan of plastic surgery. Without it, I think I might feel like a freak - 18th September You can't argue with religious zeal - Let's, by all means, do what we can to keep the institutions of our state as secular as possible - 15th September Change. Energy. Passion. How much more of this can I take? - 28th August It's time to stand up to the Treasury - IDS apparently told Mr Osborne he 'wasn't going to tolerate' the way the Chancellor treated his department - 25th August The best cure for boredom we'll get - 21st August Cameron: from gimmickry to gravitas - A prime minister should, if he is a man, be pleasant but not sexy, youthful, but not 12 - 18th August The shape of politics to come - 14th August Why is social housing such a mess? - What started as a much-needed escape route from the slums, has become a racket - 11th August We need to talk about integration - Never mind the deficit, multiculturalism is the biggest challenge we face - 4th August We can't live without the past - For some Cambodians it's something, and something is better than nothing, though nothing can take the pain - 31st July The limits of multi-culturalism - I didn't realise that goyim were about as welcome in Hasidic Jewish shops as Martin Luther King at a Klan convention - 28th July Lessons on immigrant life - There are glimpses into the lives of people who leave their own country - 24th July Is there room for art in Big Society? - There isn't much philanthropy in Britain - 21st July Why I felt sorry for a violent thug - This is a man with more than a screw loose, a man who, it seems, knew he had a screw loose - 17th July Roll up, roll up, for the carnival of cuts - David Cameron is an optimist. He thinks that the economic equivalent of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is an excellent way to let the sunshine in - 14th July Neanderthal Norfolk to Iran today - Some might be surprised to hear Norfolk was once cradle of British civilisation - 10th July Men: the latest endangered species - Boys are being vomited out of an inadequate school system at sixteen - 7th July The sweet taste of freedom and trans fats - I adore carbohydrate and fat. Especially with added salt or sugar - 3rd July Fair society? It's only a fantasy... - We've clung to the view that the rich should be rewarded - 30th June Game, set and match to the posh PR boys - This is the calm before a very, very big storm. And that's even without the Battle of Bloemfontein tomorrow - 26th June Moderate Islam must find its voice - Religion is here to stay. Dawkins can rant till the sacred cows come home, but people have always yearned for the transcendent, and always will - 24th June Choice is not what some parents need - You can see why social services will try pretty much anything to keep children with their parents - 19th June Heaven knows we're miserable now - Where we used to get a prescription for cold showers or a tonic, now we get one for drugs that kick-start the synapses - 16th June Rarer than a rhino: a woman with true self-confidence - The Saturday Column - 12th June Here's one saving right in Downing St - Andy Coulson's salary on recruitment was widely reported to be 'in the region of' £475,000 - 9th June Why we are shamed by Robert Boyle's pursuit of knowledge - If you want to get anything done, you need to set some goals - 5th June Give us back our private lives - How brave David Laws was to attempt to impose an idea of propriety on our compulsively confessional culture - 2nd June This time what you hear is what you get - This government, as the Queen could have said, will be good for diction - 29th May We're more stressed than ever - Nearly a fifth of all workers have called in sick because of workplace stress - 22nd May You're better off relieved of power - That thing has come to pass that nobody ever thought would come to pass. Gordon Brown is happy - 15th May Cameron & Clegg - consensual, civilised... depressing - So here we have it. The New Politics. Young, smart, male, white, rich and nearly all privately educated. What more could they have in common? - 13th May We're all 'hard-working' now - Cameron even spent a knackering night deferring to the proletariat - 8th May Sweden's lesson in education priorities - If the Tories scrape through on Thursday, they're planning to open the first "free schools" in September - 4th May Not everyone plays happy families - Almost a third of people live alone and about a fifth don't have any children - 1st May

Articles: 2009 Sillitoe was the genuine article - Unlike our Prime Minister, I don't know much about the Arctic Monkeys, but I do know that the title of their first album is a quote from a novel by Alan Sillitoe - 27th April A life affirming brave new world - Londoners actually smiled at each other because spring had, at long last, sprung - 24th April On the kindness of strangers - They are a kind of liberation – they can set you free to be anything you want - 12th December Is this what they mean by NHS care? - How complicated can it be for a breast-care nurse to master the procedures of a clinic? - 5th December Very nice - but forgiveness is overrated - Sometimes, as Lydon sang, in his post Sex Pistols band, 'anger is an energy.' - 28th November Let the men eat cake (and have a chat) - One of the exhausting things about being a woman is that there's no brief answer to that social stalwart: "How are you?" - 26th November What we learn from the Sikh in the BNP - For ethnic harmony, you can go the route of a Tito or a Saddam Hussein - 21st November Didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to Basra - What do you do when you've bombed the living daylights out of a country? - 14th November Why it's hard to be a blonde in the City - A big, fat, dark, ugly man who complained about their intelligence - 12th November Negative thinking for a better world - The man who started the Iraq war chose a rug to reflect his 'optimism' - 7th November My boss is discriminating against me - Vegetarian offended by your colleague's bacon sarnie? Bring on the lawyers! - 5th November Why we can't resist a dice with death - They need a ‘gap year’ because they’ve barely been past their front door - 31st October Politics isn't just a game for the boys - We’ve seen what happens when a gung-ho male culture prevails - 24th October If you want to be adored, just shut up - So, poor old Hollywood's got its knickers in a twist about Twitter - 22nd October Energy, drive, decisiveness – and knowledge of libel laws - "The culture of our company has been built around the qualities of the markets in which we work. We encourage our people to be energetic; driven and decisive and pursuing opportunity; respectful both of the significance of what we do and of the individual needs and qualities of our customers and suppliers." - 15th October A thief stole more than just a handbag - I’ve pressed more numbers, in more ‘menus’, than a Bletchley code breaker - 10th October Let's preserve the dotty, dying don - If I were rewriting Dante's Inferno, I'd ensure that the catalogue of punishments included a PhD - 8th October I've reached a tipping point with tipping - It starts the minute you arrive at your hotel - 1st October Let's ditch this gold-diggers' free-for-all - I've always felt a bit sorry for Mrs Bennet - 17th September Society isn't broken, it's just become self-centred - Was it inevitable, after 18 years of me, me, me, that we’d all bow to the new god, Choice? - 12th September Lessons on drink and la dolce vita - In my first week at university I discovered that I came from something called a "gin and jag belt" - 10th September Children don't need happy endings - Sure, children want to know What Katie Did. Did she have another boob job? - 29th August At least sport keeps men busy - There is no single thing that will unite women the way it unites men - 26th August Politics is dirty. And a noble calling... - I’m very glad I don’t have to have my cleavage subjected to national scrutiny - 22nd August Lessons in fashion and the female brain - When I was 13, I was obsessed with fashion - 20th August The big problem with the NHS isn't funding - I won’t bore you with the mammogram that turned out to be an X-ray of an ankle - 15th August The perils of predictive text - I like my texts non-predictive, nicely punctuated and correctly spelled - 13th August The price of this war keeps going up - Fighting on the frontline is tricky, of course, but if you want real stress, try working for the MoD. Actually, if you want real stress, just try speaking to them. When I last phoned them up, about casualty figures in Iraq, I thought I was going to explode - 6th August The hangover women can't shake - Yes, we need cheaper childcare, but the real question for women is ‘Are you hot?’ - 1st August Oh, the delights – and dangers – of charm - In Search of Byron - "the first modern sex symbol" - 30th July Thank God for the Church of England - I like the fact that it’s mature enough to recognise doubt – and that it is calm - 25th July What Americans want is not what they need - It had to happen. Barack Obama has been ousted by Susan Boyle - 23rd July Why I love self-help books - Don’t you love the exclamation marks? I love the perkiness and the confidence - 18th July Tips on parenting from the dad of a 'stupid kid' - Just occasionally, in the litany of bad news about the economy, and bad news about the government, and bad news about the environment, and bad news about the general collapse of everything all the time, you hear something that makes you want to cheer - 16th July Why nice work pays much better - Recruiting bankers is, apparently, as tricky as getting pandas to mate - 11th July Here's how we know feelings are real - I was in a monastery in Syria when I heard that Michael Jackson had died - 9th July Hurrah for democracy – and that World Wide Web - There are certain moments in a job that you'll always remember. One of mine was the day I logged on to the website of the organisation I was running, to find it had disappeared - 2nd July I'm giving up hope for our postal service - Yesterday's post brought a lovely surprise. There, among the bills and the Somerfield fliers was a parcel. Not a slim volume from a poetry publisher I've never heard of, not a pile of books from Amazon to plough through for my next interview, but a proper, squashy brown paper parcel. And in the middle of it, the handwriting of a friend - 25th June Shelley and middle-class musical chairs - 20th June If you don't like food, you don't like life - While I wouldn't go quite as far as Shakespeare's Julius Caesar in wanting "men about me that are fat", I share his suspicion of anyone with a "lean and hungry look" - 18th June Hijab and civil war in the House of Lords - Politics is, boringly, necessarily, but at times gloriously, the art of the possible - 13th June When old age is the time of your life - The other day, in a house in Prague, I met an extraordinary woman - 11th June Oh, to sin, confess and sin again - Being a Protestant, sin was serious. God was watching, all the time - 6th June Alternative therapies just don't work - Liquid herbs, powdered herbs, herbs in capsules and herbs in tinctures... - 28th May Of course women can't have it all - Helen Fielding lives in the land of gleaming gnashers and plastic breasts - 23rd May If you're reading it, you should be paying for it - On Tuesday night, I sought salvation, but found only counsels of despair - 21st May The true religion of Iran is not Islam - How free did we feel before this hot, itchy carapace swaddled our heads? - 16th May Please stop telling me you're sorry - Sorry. I was baffled when the word screamed out at me from a giant billboard on the tube a couple of weeks ago. Who was apologising to who? - 14th May Cracking the code of the Da Vinci nuts - In my experience, a key category of men to avoid, if you earn your living as a writer, is, in fact, the aspiring writer - 23rd April Tell us what to do about getting old - I look at the pension supplements piling up next to my sofa and I feel sick - 18th April Can't we all please just calm down? - So, at long last there are "glimmers of hope". God has spoken. Or at least the nearest thing we have to God on this earth has spoken - 16th April The day I applauded Alastair Campbell - Politics is flawed, but it’s our only process for changing our society - 11th April Sister, stop stuffing your face - No one expects nurses to look like supermodels, or lap dancers - 9th April Our obsession with the bedroom - You don’t need to tell me that sleep gets rid of the day’s mental rubbish - 4th April This tragedy has nothing to do with poetry, nothing to do with art - In his letters to the critic Keith Sagar, Ted Hughes described blissful fishing trips with his son, Nicholas, in Africa, Iceland and Alaska. Alaska, he said, was a "dreamland" where they "fished alongside bears" and "lay awake listening to wolves". It was a rare glimpse of the poet's relationship with his son, and of their shared passion for nature and silence. It is, therefore, beyond any kind of irony that it was in this "dreamland" that, a week ago, Nicholas Hughes hanged himself - 24th March (see:Lonely life and premature death of Nicholas Hughes) Leaders won't give us moral guidance - Communist countries may do capitalism these days but they don’t do spirituality - 21st March Rand is the last role model we need - Bad artists are rarely good guides to economics, politics or anything else - 14th March (Ayn Rand) Who said writing, or life, would be easy? - Where did this myth come from, that life and art should be easy - 7th March The going gets tough, the tough wise up - There's not much space for chic sofas when worrying about losing your home - 14th February Catch a man? Not if you're over 40... - We're mating according to the rules of misogynistic Manhattanites - 7th February Madness is not such a great life - You can go bananas and be sidekick to one of the leaders of the Western world - 31st January Heaven help the white working class - We all sneer at the brainless blobs of lard chewing the cud over ‘Jeremy Kyle’ - 24th January Escapism - for those that can escape - It is hard to celebrate a society that remains as cruel as that of Mumbai - 17th January There's a male crisis, blame the women - Which is better: to keep society ticking along, or the planet? - 10th January Never mind wealth, think index-linked pensions - That world of mediocrity and inefficiency is suddenly attractive - 3rd January

Articles: 2008 Let's raise a glass (but not at a party) - New Year's Eve on your own? You're the saddest person in the world - 31st December 2008 Blog and be damned – and go to prison - Lucky I was in Syria on holiday and not a Syrian writer - 13th December 2008 Nothing is certain except uncertainty - Many of the pillars of our lives may well be taken from us - 6th December 2008 Don't be vague, just go to The Hague - There is nothing like some music and art and good writing to lift the spirit - 29th November 2008 You can tell a lot about people by their friends - Lets return to a time when friends weren't just names to be dropped? - 15th November 2008 A war of terror, not security - In Britain and America we treat people we expect to die for us appallingly - 8th November 2008 One thing Britain does well is religion - Our state religion has been unobtrusive to the point of anaemic - 1st November 2008 Let's call a ceasefire in the battle of the sexes - A revolutionary assumption has lain dormant: men and women are the same - 25th October 2008 Soup for us, canapés for the fat cats - Was this the moment we all stopped being relaxed about the filthy rich? - 18th October 2008 Art for when the bubble bursts - In the week the economy collapsed, I had a lovely time looking at art - 11th October 2008 Can we please stop talking about sex? - Sex doesn't involve words. For the verbal among us, it's a lovely respite - 4th October 2008 Shandy Hall must be preserved – at any cost - Like so many writers’ homes, the house has survived on a wing and a prayer - 27th September 2008 Crazy for God... Sarah Palin, the devil and me - 13th September 2008 The one problem with this lovely Swedish utopia - With marvellous egalitarianism comes near-universal conformism... - 10th September 2008 A tale of bleeding hearts and bleeding backs - If parents have the right to believe what they like, children have the right to be taught that certain things are wrong - 30th August 2008 The battle of the bulge – and brain - The sobering reality is that Nation GB is set to win one medal that wasn't even on the list. Yup, we're on course to be gold medallists in obesity. Try as we might, we can't control randomness - 23rd August 2008 Our enduring love affair with Mills & Boon - 20th August 2008 There is a lot to be said for marrying young - 16th August 2008 Where poetry still has power - Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian poet who died at the weekend - 13th August 2008 Give us drugs and babies – with no strings attached - You've waited for ever for little Chloe to burst forth, and some professor is pontificating about costs - Saturday, 9th August 2008 It's not isolation in old age that worries me - We may be lonely, miserable and scavenging in skips, but we won't be bored – because we'll be working - Saturday, 2nd August 2008 I'm depressed by all this happy talk - Wednesday, 30th July 2008 A crash-course in the seven basic plots - More rip-roaring adventure than a league-topping billionaire could dream of - Monday 28th July 2008 The challenge of poetry – and football - Wednesday, 23rd July 2008 A joyous display to help heal broken lives - Saturday, 19th July 2008 Poor patient care is a bitter pill to swallow - Wednesday, 16th July 2008 The more sex we get, the more we want - Bedroom farce, on stage, page or double-page spread, is, for the most part,numbingly banal - Saturday, 12th July 2008 We should be celebrating this literary triumph - Friday, 11th July 2008 Stop making excuses, it's time to get tough - Wednesday, 9th July 2008 There's more to life than irony... - A generation brought up on Chaucer made sure the next would be brought up on Coleen - Saturday, 5th July 2008 A sorry tale of sex and the single songbird - Wednesday, 2nd July 2008 Equal opportunities? That's so public sector - As always, the Government has caved in. We didn't mean you. This is just for the kids - Saturday, 28th June 2008 Ancient words clash with living cultures - Wednesday, 25th June 2008 Ah, Italy - sunshine, olive oil, blatant racism - Headlines in the local and national papers screamed about the crime wave unleashed by the 'immigranti' - Saturday, 21st June 2008 We are all following the gospel of recyling - Wednesday, 18th June 2008 Fashion's denial of the skeleton in its closet - Wednesday, 11th June 2008 Laureate kings and queens of the jungle - If Tony Blair thinks that the media are feral beasts, he should meet some poets. It's amazing what they will do - Saturday, 24th May 2008 'Broken societies' and political nightmares - Wednesday, 21st May 2008 Patterns in the marble, and a lesson in history - In Syria's secular, highly educated society, it is possible for religious faith to be a force for good - Saturday, 17th May 2008 It's such hard work pursuing sex and power - With money you can buy your cure, but you can also feed your addiction - Saturday, 10th May 2008 The discreet charm of the new politicos - Wednesday, 7th May 2008 Why the Chinese have reason to feel pride - Watching people in Tiananmen Square, I saw something I'd rarely seen in my life - Saturday, 3rd May 2008 All hail the Messiah – and the politicians - Wednesday, 30th April 2008 Jane Austen and the sexual smorgasbord: What did they want, for God's sake? Their balls, deep-fried, on a bed of wilted spinach? - Saturday, 19th April 2008 The dark heart of British democracy - Wednesday, 16th April 200 Beauty... a commodity ripe for taxation: If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the beholder seems remarkably unimaginative - Saturday, 12th April 2008 Making the most of motherhood - Wednesday 9th April 2008 Poetry lessons from the masters of the universe: Thabo Mbeki missed the chance to come up with a Xhosa ditty about garlic and lemon - Saturday, 5th April 2008 The price of freedom is the right - Wednesday, 2nd April 2008 The dignity of work in a supermarket - Friday, 28th March 2008 Just what's so great about self-confidence? - Friday, 21st March 2008 Reality intrudes in the search for paradise - Wednesday, 14th March 2008 Britons long for sunshine (but know it will rain): This is a country whose national treat – national panacea, in fact – is a nice cup of tea - Tuesday 11th March 2008 The bigger issue beyond Lee Jasper - Friday, 7th March 2008 A royal action hero shoots for the stars: Who could blame him for thinking that he too could dip in and out of life's smorgasbord - Saturday, 1st March 2008 Britain's gulag of neglect and despair - 29th February 2008 So why do we ignore all these murders? - Friday, 22nd February 2008 The class that dares not speak its name - Friday, 8th February 2008 Keep it in the family (if you're lucky enough) - Friday, 1st February 2008 A land of milk and caramel macchiatos - Friday, 25th January 2008 Cry freedom – but only if you are rich - Friday, 18th January 2008 There are times when I am glad to be British - Friday, 4th January 2008

News & updates: Special Report: A crisis in nursing. Six operations, six stays in hospital – and six first-hand experiences of the care that doesn't care enough, The Independent, 10th April 2012

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