One Christmas build-up tradition, however, has totally bypassed me - that of going up to town and 'doing a show.'

Amsterdam has more than 150 canals and 1,250 bridges, but it never seems crowded, nor bent and bitter from fleecing the tourist.

It has been said that a pretty face is a passport. But it's not, it's a visa, and it runs out fast.

What sort of sap doesn't know by now that picture-perfect beauty is all done with smoke and mirrors anyway?

Families, generally, suck. And I say that as someone who, like my husband, had parents who proved the proverbial exception to the rule.

The freedom that women were supposed to have found in the Sixties largely boiled down to easy contraception and abortion; things to make life easier for men, in fact.

Here in Barcelona, it's the architects who built the buildings that made the city iconic who are the objects of admiration - not a bunch of half-witted monarchs.

The latest twist on the pampering concept is spa parties, where a group of friends take over an entire spa.

Gluttony and idleness are two of life's great joys, but they are not honourable.

My second husband believed I had such a fickle attitude to friendship that each Friday he would update the list of my 'Top Ten' friends in the manner of a Top Of The Pops chart countdown.

Make no mistake, most women are well aware that they've never had it so good; when they enter a spa or salon, it is purely a hair/nails thing, a prelude to an evening of guilt-free fun.

You don’t need to be perfect

A rational human being of the civilized world would be like the swan that can draw the milk from a mixture of milk and water, leaving aside the water.

Read something no one is reading, think something no one is thinking, and do something no one is doing.

That is what a very Christian message is: to care about each other and to help those who need it the most.

...perhaps charity is the kind of beauty that we comprehend the best because we miss it the most.

Every thought, word, or deed, either purifies or pollutes the body.

Type production has gone mad, with its senseless outpouring of new types... only in degenerate times can personality (opposed to the nameless masses) become the aim of human development.

Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.

There are few ironclad rules of diplomacy but to one there is no exception. When an official reports that talks were useful, it can safely be concluded that nothing was accomplished.

I think the greatest imagination we can exercise is one that imagines how someone else feels. Because you know how you feel, but so often we attribute our own feelings on to someone else.