Queen Elizabeth is celebrating her Diamond Jubilee this year. The event marks a milestone in one of the life of one of the most famous dog owners in the world. Her Royal Lizness has always been pretty prim and private. But when it comes to her dog obsession, she's relatively...
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I'm blessed that the career I chose to follow allows me to travel and participate in some amazing projects around the world. Cooking is something I've dreamt about from the age of four and many years on I'm happily living my dream as a chef.
This Spring I had the...
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Normally you see me writing for HuffPostUK on politics. I'm told in LA they call it "showbusiness for ugly people."
This week I managed to break out of my political space and attend a rather more glamorous launch. Not a politician to be seen!
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The art of ink is back. The creative act of the cursive script with lavish loops and lines bleeding into textured paper is returning to true desktops all over the world. Pen makers and stationers are seeing a significant increase in sales of fountain pens.
In the past five...
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WARNING: This post contains content that some may find offensive.
I recently found myself in a situation. It involved a boy and it involved sex, but that's where the familiarity stopped. We met a while ago; there was A LOT of excellent snogging, some drinks and...it's never been anything more...
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It's a fact: no man can ever come close to judging women's parenting and work choices as harshly as other women. I've just been writing a TV adaptation of my novels that - apparently unusually for a male author - feature a hard working woman as the central character (Jenny...
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The man in charge of the land of the free (not Donald Trump) rocked up to ABC News earlier this month and told America gay marriage should be legal. Earlier this week the leader of this great country had a spokesperson issue a statement declaring gay marriage was a government...
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For many of us, the mere mention of alcohol and Russia evokes stereotypical images of heavy drinking Muscovites, consuming large amounts of vodka, in smoky bars at sub-zero temperatures; and although Russians have always had a close affinity for alcohol, this is far from the truth.
Wine consumption has increased...
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Summer is looming on the horizon and the usual applications for summer holiday contact are piling up on lawyer's desks and in the lists of County Courts up and down the land. Mediators are beginning to see their first lot of seasonal cases based on how much time children should...
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I had no idea about burials laws until coming across Wendii Miller, a Cambridge graduate, who carried out her own DIY burial for her 98-year-old mother Doris, even digging the grave after collecting her corpse from Grimsby Hospital mortuary and driving her mother's remains back to a burial...
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It's a plot worthy of Hollywood - a fatal radioactive poison, secret documents, suppressed information, and drugs.
But this isn't fiction. This is the story of the tobacco industry's knowledge, policy and inaction around radioactive material in cigarette smoke. And how it took a painstaking search through thousands of court-ordered...
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Exploitation in the food industry is alive and well. That's according to the latest grim report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation which studied the experiences of some of the migrant workers (almost invisibly) toiling in our fields, factories and restaurants.
According to the report's authors, who interviewed more than...
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A Beatle is a gardener's best friend after all, as Ringo Starr paid us the amazing honour of opening the 'Herbert Smith Garden for WaterAid' at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2012 on Monday.
The Beatles legend has been a WaterAid supporter since 2003, and understands better than most the...
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I recently watched a film - a terrible film - which had an archaic, grotesque depiction of life in a psychiatric ward. I won't tell you what film, as I do not wish to promulgate my disdain for it. After I recovered from the boredom, I woke up, wiped dribble...
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Some of you may have read my blog about having a miscarriage and then being too scared to try again.
I'm finally fully embracing the idea but very soon I turn 39. All through my thirties I thought I was bobbing along fancy-free and young at heart. Now the...
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"Buy Sex - Pay the Price," scream the posters in Brixton Tube. A silhouette of a shady man stands underneath the headline, moodily checking his mobile phone. "Lambeth Council and Lambeth police are targeting those who buy sex," explains the blurb, helpfully reminding commuters that "Prostitution is a form of...
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The NSPCC published a very worrying piece of research earlier this month on 'sexting'. I say worrying because it gave an insight into the sorts of pressures that young people are under to take part in sexting. And that got me thinking about just how seriously this issue...
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This week, many Arsenal fans experienced a strange sense of internal conflict. With resentment in their eyes, and confusion in their hearts, they found themselves cheering on their bitter rivals, Chelsea, in the Champions League Final. "The enemy of my enemy is my friend", says the Arabian proverb, and a...
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Anyone who entertains a complex based on the idea that computers will become self-aware and start taking over the world has undoubtedly been labeled neurotic in days gone by. Science fiction's multimedia warnings have been discredited under the banner of playful nonsense. Countless depictions of a dystopian future, riddled with...
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Arkady and I usually go somewhere hot at Easter, so invited friends Mikhail Alexeievich and Maria to join us in the Carribean. However, being Jewish, they can't come because it's Passover, so they're going to visit some Russian friends in Israel.
Instead we invited Nika and Vasiliy Vasiliyevech....
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