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There isn't a politician standing who would deny that there is a crisis in the relationship between women and Westminster. When I say 'relationship', I mean 'the way in which [...]

Weblogs sound more impressive and professional than they are. This is because of the inclusion of the word 'web', which works as an aggrandising suffix or prefix with almost anything [...]

No longer a dippy hippy, she's created a multimillion-pound industry and has Earned the blessing of Cherie Blair It is good to be able to spot a believer in alternative [...]

MADONNA: QUEEN OF THE WORLD Douglas Thompson John Blake Publishing, 290pp, £16.99 £13.59 at www.newstatesman.co.uk (+£1 p&p) The problem with a truly bad biography is that it tells you more [...]

THE RECONSTRUCTIONIST Josephine Hart Chatto & Windus, 224pp, £14.99 £11.99 at www.newstatesman.co.uk (+£1 p&p) Josephine Hart is best known for Damage, a slight, family-based melodrama from which the following line [...]

ZOE WILLIAMS is pained by the whole birthing experience On the premise that Madonna has one, Catherine Zeta Jones has one, and that even she, too, has one, Zoe Ball [...]

ZOE WILLIAMS enjoys an unedifying insight into the lives of the Kilshaws Earlier this month, on Radio 4, John Humphrys spoke to Judith and Alan Kilshaw in what was widely [...]

TO HELL IN A HANDCART Richard Littlejohn HarperCollins, 426pp, £5.99 There is much to confuse in Richard Littlejohn's satire-our hero, Mickey French, is an ex-cop with a wife, Andi, who [...]

For the 2005 general election, I had a party featuring a gigantic cheesecake with differentiated segments by allegiance. It contained no purple, which you could call leftie bias, but it [...]

The Secret World of the Working Mother Fiona Millar Vermilion, 288pp, £12.99 The Idle Parent: Why Less Means More When Raising Kids Tom Hodgkinson Hamish Hamilton, 320pp, £14.99 Fiona Millar's [...]

Magazines have a tendency to overstate. When Anna Wintour wrote her editor's letter for the latest edition of American Vogue, with Michelle Obama as its cover star, this is what [...]

Milton Keynes has always brought the middle classes out in a kind of lugubrious fatalism. I remember going on a walk with my mother in the not far-off hamlet of [...]

By an uncanny coincidence, this year's National Men's Health Week focused on mental well-being, while also coinciding with the start of the World Cup. I personally think that devoting any [...]

It's often hard to tell what's going on with pop music superlatives these days. Parameters change and I am way too lazy to keep up. When a band has the [...]

You don't hear much about space these days--and when you do, you hear about how expensive it all is. It's a lot like listening to a rich businessman who bought [...]

The Truth About Stress Angela Patmore Atlantic Books, 440pp, £12.99 Angela Patmore's thesis, in a nutshell, is that stress doesn't exist. The term is subject to so many definitions, many [...]

Predictably, the 30th anniversary of the Sex Discrimination Act brought with it some self-congratulation and some sober self-examination. Sisters may celebrate their increased presence in the workplace, and an altered [...]

The Hungry Years: confessions of a food addict William Leith Bloomsbury, 296pp, £10.99 This book is said (by its press release, admittedly) to 'defy categorisation--part memoir, part diet book, part [...]

I've changed my mind: it was an incredible outpouring of global fellowship, says ZOE WILLIAMS I was totally wrong about Live 8. Last week, I wrote that it wouldn't have [...]

'If the vibe on the day's the same as it was then, it'll be amazing. But it doesn't seem like the vibe's there.' This is Francis Rossi of Status Quo, [...]

EVERYTHING BAD Is GOOD FOR YOU: HOW POPULAR CULTURE IS MAKING US SMARTER by Steven Johnson Penguin, 10 £, pp. 238, ISBN 0713998024 Steven Johnson has written a bold little [...]

It's a difficult proposition to substantiate, this one, but I'm going to lodge it anyway: people like Scarlett Johansson more than they like other film stars. Sorry, that was coy. [...]

You can say what you like, London is next--for a smoking ban, I mean. But when the time comes, who will the resolute smokers get to front their campaign, maybe [...]

The Privilege of Youth Dave Pelzer Michael Joseph, 228pp, £10.99 Dave Pelzer made his name (and a considerable fortune) with the A Child Called It trilogy, detailing what no feeling [...]

Last month, there was a play at the Barbican called Ideas Men, by a company called Ridiculusmus. 'Sponsored by the London Mime Festival' has always been a tag line that [...]

Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination Helen Fielding Picador, 344pp, 12.99 £ In her opening acknowledgements, Helen Fielding's thanks go 'above all to Kevin Curran for his enormous contribution in [...]

The Boy Germaine Greer Thames & Hudson, 256pp, 29.95 £ Germaine Greer's purpose in producing this sumptuous and appealing coffee-table-only-more-so art history book is to 'reclaim for women the right [...]

Everyone knows The Magic Roundabout was all about drugs. There was a rabbit in it with a guitar. Ermintrude got stuck on top of a washing machine in midcycle (hmm, [...]

Last Christmas, my mother called to let me know that, as she planned to under-resource my present both fiscally and time-wise, I might as well tell her exactly what I [...]

Nobody demands meaningful political engagement from ageing punks. Clearly, you can't expect much in the way of joined-up thinking from a movement whose core weapons against the state were atonality [...]

Literature is rubbish at pain; you will never find a decent description of exquisite agony, because all the words designated for such a purpose have already been pressed into use [...]

A A Gill is away A A Gill Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 254pp, £16.99 Discounts at www.newstatesman.co.uk Gill begins his travelogue -- or, as he would have it, his 'interviews with [...]

Of the many things that are strange about Julie Andrews, one thing stands Out as the strangest: this is a woman whose career has spawned well over 30 films, if [...]

DEAD FAMOUS Ben Elton Bantam Press, 339pp, £16.99 Discounts at www.newstatesman.co.uk Ben Elton's high concept for his latest social satire is promising, if not terribly original. It is about the [...]

I spent Sunday in a locked pen, down the side of the red carpet to the Baftas, with 70 competition winners. It was a revelation. Not that Angelina has freakishly [...]

I don't have children, but I've heard from parents that biting is the worst thing tots can do to one another. My best friend caught her daughter preparing her playmate [...]

Imagine my delight. Having weathered the body blow of being the last person in the country to discover the Radio 4 sketch show That Mitchell and Webb Sound--and not the [...]

Guitar Man Will Hodgkinson Bloomsbury, 304pp, £12.99 This lovely book has two subtitles--A six-string odyssey and You love that guitar more than you love me--of which the first, for the [...]

There's so much to regret, it seems, about Live 8. The organisers of the Philadelphia concert have just launched proceedings against a firm linked to Anna Nicole Smith, claiming she [...]

I Told You I Was III John O'Connell Short Books, 176pp, £9.99 John O'Connell's shamelessly endearing memoir of imagined illness falls squarely into the 'confessional' genre. I think there must [...]

Politicians are gregarious by their natures. It's a guess, but I reckon everyone in the country, by the time they reach a certain age, will have met an MP socially [...]

John Cynthia Lennon Hodder & Stoughton, 404pp, £20 There is a very poignant introduction to this book, written by Julian Lennon: 'For far too long, now, Mum has put up [...]

He's Having a Baby (BBC1) A baby, Davina McCall tells us, 'is born in Britain every 45 seconds'. I wish there were some sort of nuclear italics that could convey [...]

Last week, quite by chance, I unlocked the secret of men. It started with the cricket. We were about to win, you see. I mean 'about to' in the scientific [...]

I had that sinking feeling, which luckily no one can see when you're on the radio. (My face is my undoing. I once got fired from the reputable clothes shop [...]

This is my first trip anywhere, ever, with the Labour Party. I've been to Genoa with the Socialist Alliance, and Glastonbury with the Nicaraguan Health Fund. (That was a long [...]

It's very rare for new ideas to surface at election time. This is the car-boot sale of the political process, where parties roll out things they've had kicking about the [...]

Mine All Mine (ITV) Modern British television has a number of conventions habitually sketched out in such coarse, nursery brush strokes that a lot of time and money could be [...]

Chatto & Windus, 251pp, 10.99 £ Tibor Fischer first came to notice when he was Booker shortlisted for his debut, Under the Frog, and last came to notice for the [...]