Picture the scene: it’s Tuesday morning and I’m getting ready for a day in the office. I’ve washed my hair and undergone a multi-step styling process, wielding heat-blasting machinery until my biceps

Pulling a hat down over my head, I glanced at my reflection in the mirror, then blinked back tears. Mirrors were my enemy and hats were my armour. It was January 2016, and having recently become a mum

David Farrier Nature’s Genius Evolution’s lessons for a changing planet 288pp. Canongate. £20. In David Farrier’s latest book, he warns us that humanity is endangering every facet of life on Earth thr

Judy Blume’s Superfudge was in our tiny school library, and I wolfed it down at the age of eight. From then, I was side-by-side with all of Judy’s kids, right the way up to 17-year-old Katherine in Fo

When my pugnaciously no-nonsense granny set about constructing our family tree, she cut through the ambiguity of my place on it by adding (grafted) after my name. It was a fair, if blunt, acknowledgem

Ebony’s mum had turned things around and was back in her life. But then a brutal act robbed them of everything…