ONE OF THE MOST GRIMLY FUNNY POEMS OF the past century is Philip Larkin’s “This Be the Verse,” with its opening salvo about how our parents invariably mess us up. Larkin used a saltier word for “mess,

Thanks to the old Sherlock Holmes films that we used to watch on TV every week after the children’s programme Crackerjack had finished, I have known about my family’s “Hollywood relative” since my chi

ISOBEL had known that living in her old childhood home would bring back memories. However, she never expected so many, or for them to be so vivid. Sometimes, in the last minutes before waking, she ima

I always felt like something was missing

MAE WEST was a trailblazer in more ways than one. Born in 1893, her stage career began at five years old. By the age of fourteen, academia already a distant memory, she was known as the “Baby Vamp” fo

TOM! What are you doing here?” I stopped gazing at the empty space in the centre of the table, to throw myself into my fiancé’s arms. “You’re not supposed to be here until tonight,” I told him. “I dec