At a talk I gave about my travels, the male organiser pinned a map of the world on the wall behind me, and handed me a pen. He asked me to trace a line to demonstrate where I had…

"I’d never been skiing. I’d tried ice-skating once, but spent the whole horrible half-hour clinging to the bar at the side of the rink, my ankles shaking either through…

Once, in the heyday of Hollywood, the evidence of screen success was a soft-top pink Cadillac. Now it is a far smaller — and not necessarily pink — bundle of joy that, like the…