My Dad gave me a photo of himself to take with me as I set off at the age of seven to my tough Rhodesian boarding school.

Mother liked to pretend that my name was a family decision. I was the third child born to Donato and Carmella Petruccelli of Davenport, Iowa

The writer and her early affinity to words, the duality of being Welsh and English, the seeds of her nomadic existence...

Our house was forever alive with animal instinct. We grew up surrounded by a veritable menagerie, some more memorable than others...

As soon as I turned eighteen, I walked myself down to the nearest tattoo parlour and had a small drawing of a fox printed just below my...

I went to school in the quaint time at the end of the 1960s, before political correctness and niceties about equality...

Beleagured by a myriad of food allergies and epic cookery failures in Home Economics, the author finally finds redemption in a sponge.