My series of podcasts, Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri, launched on 20th May 2021 and is now on Series 12 with over a million listens. The idea for these came about quite a…

Seven years ago, I became obsessed with keeping bees. It was a powerful calling that came out of nowhere, the like of which people might get to be a nun or a priests; but with…

Nearly four years ago now, I got a letter which I answered in my column from a woman who had left her husband, after 14 years of domestic abuse. I was struck by how genuinely…

Just a few weeks ago, I got a letter from a reader who said that she seemed to prefer life when her partner was away (read the original column here). This morning, strangely, I…

The subject of child mental health is very close to my heart. I was a depressed teenager. I had emotions I could neither name nor deal with, but which came out in strange…

IT’S REFRESHING to see a television programme that, instead of making sex an incidental, cynical part of the plot, simply to facilitate shots of naked people, makes it the…

DAVID CAMERON started his 2013 party conference speech with the emphasis on hard work. Indeed “hardworking people” was in the very first sentence. You could tell that…

If the snow makes you feel like snuggling up with your loved one in front of the fire, and if you think that snuggling up may lead to sex … stop! The birth rate in the UK is the…

The first suitcase I ever picked up was my mother’s. It had travelled with her from Italy and lived in the depths of her wood-lined wardrobe. The suitcase was, impractically,…

The dream and the reality are never so divorced as when dining al fresco. As soon as someone says “let’s eat outdoors”, the spirits lift. The imagination fires and we…

I am not alone. In my tummy, curled up and waiting for a moment to unfurl and press the exit button, is a baby. If being pregnant is a group affair that invites comment and…

I’d always wanted a loft, perhaps fuelled by watching at an impressionable age films in which they featured. Ten years ago, I got one. The only doors were the front door and…

What a service prejudices can sometimes provide. Rod Stewart is pictured with a copy of Model Railroader in his car and easy headlines are made, “Do ya think I’m sexy…

I may have mentioned, in passing, that I was once seamstress to the Queen Mother. This is not exactly true, because it evokes an image of me sat at Her Majesty’s heel…

I like to start the week talking about breasts – and thus it was that I did. There we were Monday morning, ten women sitting around a table at University College Hospital,…

At last, it seems as if the cavalry is coming. For years, the subjunctive has been in hiding in the barren hills of What Once Was: unwanted, misunderstood and frequently passed…

When it came, I always knew Mother Fashion’s revenge would be cruel. That she would spawn something so seductive that all attempts at style and beauty would be sacrificed…

Italians are, according to a recent report, more forgiving of adultery than ever before. No news there, you may think – except that this time it’s the women who are…

THE HAIR is the first thing you notice. It’s big. “Explosive”, according to the art historian George Melly. But you are barely through Anissa El Helou’s…

It started with the ornaments. There were two of them on the mantelpiece in my childhood home, both showing boy/girl configurations. One pair was tall and elegant, the other squat…

AGED 18, the very first thing I bought from my very first pay packet was a pair of Derek Rose red flannel pyjamas. At pounds 25, they left me little change from the meagre pounds…

I was 12. He was 36 (I still celebrate his birthday, 28 February). I loved him. Dino Zoff. At the time, goalie for Italy. Big hands, responsive. But I never imagined him doing…

In Milan, two well-dressed women race each other to the shelf displaying the last pounds 200 nylon bag. In a few minutes they will fight. In London, a girl shyly unrolls a pounds…