A Christian, a Muslim and an atheist sounds like the beginning of joke. Instead, it could the beginning of a broader-based struggle for freedom of religion and belief, in the face of rising religious intolerance around the world.
Last week, I visited Alex Aan, an Indonesian atheist in jail for...
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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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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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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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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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Saturday is the 'big day' - our documentary is being broadcast on BBC2 - and I have to say I am starting to get a tad nervous. It seems so long ago that we went through the whole filming process, and soon there it will be right across...
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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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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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Nothing beats the stress and tension of exam season if you work in a secondary school. For students, exam season is a wake-up call, one of the first moments that they realise there are some situations where only their own brain and effort will get them through. For teachers, exam...
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It's Day 10 of Cannes and the annual festival fatigue has well and truly set in.
I arrived at the press junket for the new HBO movie Hemingway and Gellhorn to find most of the other journalists there acting like doped up zombies.
Even Nicole Kidman tells me how exhausted...
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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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Some years back a young Iraqi Kurdish woman had to pass through Turkey but knew that talking Kurdish or mentioning Kurdistan could be awkward. The problem was that her first name was Kurdistan. When asked her name at passport control she tried to evade the query but finally blurted out...
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Dear Mr Cameron,
I've got half an eye on the Leveson feed while I write this piece, so it could be out of date by the time I post; but assuming you are still Prime Minister when I finish typing, I was wondering if you'd seen Chloe...
According to Which? Magazine, customers have crowned Halfords the worst high street store for customer service in the UK, giving it a satisfaction score of just 51%.
Which? carried out the research and questioned more than 11,000 people, with scores based on price, products, service and store, as well as...
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Yes comrades. It's been a couple of days. This jet-lag is a fucker. Hardly slept a wink. So . . .
Did a show a couple of days ago at the Budokan. Quite a prestigious gig. Bob Dylan played here back in the day as did a little known band...
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I've often wondered what it might feel like to turn up to a Union meeting, Women's Institute lunch, writers' guild workshop, or cub scout jamboree only to discover that it had been chosen as the location for a major political speech or policy announcement by a leading politician. Now I...
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Primaries & Caucuses
Although the Democrats and the Republicans have yet to hold their late summer conventions, the 2012 race for the presidency is clearly in full gear.
We are now coming to the end of a brutalizing Republican Primary-Caucus season - beginning back in the freezing...
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In a recent New York Times opinion piece, NASA climate scientist James Hansen again puts forward his very compelling argument for strong action on limiting global CO2 emissions. Some observers have challenged his thinking, but the warnings he has given over the last thirty years have...
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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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As we head towards one more tacky but popular Eurovision final, will a spotlight also be shone onto the serious human rights abuses in Azerbaijan, this year's host? Or will the Azeri government succeed in burnishing their image and hiding the reality of violence, repression and an increasingly hostile environment...
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