Celebrity News

America’s richest woman can’t stop giving away her fortune. We look at the demons driving TV queen Oprah Winfrey. On Boxing Day, 2005, Oprah and her longtime boyfriend, Stedman Graham, had just taken off in her private Gulfstream jet from the airport in Santa Barbara, California, near her 17-hectare estate in Montecito, when something went […]

Exclusive extract from Left Bank by Kate Muir. Olivier was in Barthélémy’s cheese shop on the Rue de Grenelle, his nostrils flaring on delight at the loamy, buttery smell. You could leave the cooking up to the maid, but not the selection of cheeses for a dinner party. Was it not Olivier’s favourite foodie, Anthelme […]

A health scare prompted TV host Kerri-Anne Kennerley to improve her eating and exercise habits, with remarkable results. Now she reveals her weight-loss tips so you can follow her lead and get healthy at home. Last summer, the usually unsinkable Kerri-Anne Kennerley had lurched to the end of an exhausting year, when she and her […]

Here are author Sue Williams’ top four writing tips: 1. Start The hardest thing is getting started. I’m a great believer in just picking up a pen, or firing up the computer, and making a start. Get yourself going, and write a couple of thousand words quickly to warm up. You can always go back […]

Exclusive extract from Love and Other Impossible Pursuits by Ayelet Waldman. In the Olivia books, it still doesn’t matter if the little white pig is not at all sleepy. She still has to take a nap. William, however, is under no such compulsion. His mother has decreed that since William’s imagination is so “activated,” since […]

She appears fragile, yet Naomi Watts has the grit to overcome the pain of her father’s death, the will to be known as more than “Nicole Kidman’s best friend” and the talent to be a star. In this candid interview, she talks to Ginny Dougary about her life, her career challenges and the devastation of […]

You can’t just tell the reader the emotion your character is experiencing, you have to show them. You do this by creating images using bricks of significant detail. God and the devil are in the detail. As Strunk and White wrote in The Elements Of Style, “if those who have studied the art of writing […]

Today we are going to explore one of the x factors in writing fiction, faith. Writing, like any creative endeavour, involves uncertainty and requires an act of faith. Faith in our imagination, faith in ourselves, faith in the creative process and faith in the stories we want to tell. When you sit down in front […]

Exclusive extract from Social Crimes (Allen and Unwin) written by Jane Stanton Hitchcock. Murder was never my goal in life. I’m a very sentimental person at heart. I cry in old movies. I love animals and children. I’m a pushover for a beggar in the street. So if anyone had told me five years ago […]

IN THE CHILLY, early hours of October 15, Crown Princess Mary of Denmark and her husband, Crown Prince Frederik, offered their joyous country not only a new heir to the throne, but the promise of a fresh approach to royal baby raising. The couple’s intention to be hands-on parents was underlined within seconds of their […]