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In Cocktail Hour Under the Tree of Forgetfulness Alexandra Fuller braids a multilayered narrative around the perfectly lit, Happy Valley-era Africa of her mother’s childhood; the boiled cabbage grimness of her father’s English childhood; and the darker, civil war- torn Africa of her own childhood. At its heart, this is the story of Fuller’s mother, […]

Banish stress, beat the blues and re-energise with these mood-boosting techniques.

Banish stress, beat the blues and re-energise with these mood-boosting techniques. Think like an astronaut Along with elite athletes, policemen and airline pilots, astronauts are taught autogenic training as part of their space-training programs. Developed by a German doctor, Johannes Schultz, in the 1920s, this technique has been scientifically proven to relieve tension, lessen anxiety, […]

The rumour mill went into overdrive yesterday when a gossip magazine claimed Prince William and Kate Middleton were expecting twins. While the world marvelled over where the super-slim Duchess of Cambridge was hiding two 12-week-old babies, and we dreamed up designs for a royal pregnancy commemorative edition, royal representatives were drafting a press statement to […]

A lifetime of dieting has made Kelly Baker miserable, exhausted and, ultimately, heavier. In this blog she documents her mission to give up yo-yo dieting and slim down for good. I clearly remember going on my first diet when I was perhaps 12 or 13 years old. I weighed 62kgs and at 177cms I would […]

As Neil Sedaka sang, breaking up is hard to do — but not if you live in China. For a mere $30, Chinese lotharios can now hire a complete stranger to dump their partners for them. The past few months have seen a boom in ‘break-up proxy’ websites that help timid customers end their romances […]

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, Picador, $32.99. Remember Al “Chainsaw” Dunlap? The Packer family’s corporate cost-cutter of the early ’90s? Well, he’s exhibit A in Jon Ronson’s new investigation into the madness industry — specifically, whether many leading CEOs and politicians are in fact diagnosable psychopaths. Lord knows how Ronson persuaded him but he […]

Amexica: War Along The Borderline by Ed Vulliamy, Random House, $35. A tough, gritty — and most disturbingly, true — report from the Mexican-US border, where drug cartels wage war on each other, and anyone gets in their way. More than 28,000 have been killed since the official war on drugs was declared five years […]

Gilgamesh by Joan London, Random House, $23.95. This is an oldie-but-goody, recommended with such enthusiasm by a fellow reader I felt I had to give it a go — and so enjoyed the experience I am now passing it on. Drawing on the epic of Gilgamesh, the world’s oldest known poem, it is both a […]