Lola Young Eight Weeks Looking back, moving forwards, defying the odds 336pp. Penguin. Paperback, £10.99. Lola Young has been a crossbench member of the House of Lords since 2004. She is also an emeri

The clue is in the title: who owns whom? It is one of the many unsettling questions at the heart of this compelling and disconcerting book. Charles Foster – barrister, Oxford fellow, vet and the write

It was my father, Mir Murtaza, who taught me to love dogs. We were on our own, my recently divorced father was now a single parent to a four-year-old girl. He was in exile in Syria after his country h

In her regular column on village life, Paula reveals that country life is incomplete without a dog, and why Lady Dashwood (a small yet mighty dachshund) rules the roost at Sutton HQ

Apart from the For Sale board, the house didn’t look any different from the last time I was here. Six months ago now. The day of my father’s funeral. A memory of how fragile my mother appeared that da

ILLUSTRATION BY PAUL COX Going full Celt VOICING ...