“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”
When JG Ballard died, in April 2009, few people knew he had been planning a new work. The author of Crash and Empire of the Sun, celebrated for his bleak dystopian vision, had proposed a book co-written with his oncologist, Jonathan Waxman, to be called Conversations with my Physician: the Meaning, if Any, of Life.
The year may have been humbling for many of the hedge-fund industry’s biggest stars and other experienced investors and traders. Many have found it hard to cope with the effects of Japan’s disasters, uneven US and British economic recoveries, commodity price volatility and concerns about the solvency of Greece and other European nations. This is hardly the time, you would think, for the wives of hedgies to be demanding a new personal shopper, only the woman in question is devoted to rationalising your portfolio (of clothes) and helping you avoid a haircut (on ill-advised purchases).
We pull up at the ashram. A bare-chested man in a dhoti walks past as monkeys and peacocks wander around. “I’ve been here before,” I say, startled. “In another life,” replies a distant cousin, Alan Lawrence. No, two years ago, en route to Kerala. I visited for nanoseconds and thought: “Golly, how could anyone stay here? So boring and uncomfortable.” Now I’m here for two weeks.
Caroline Phillips tries a radical detox treatment in India, while, overleaf, we suggest the 20 best spas to beat the new year blues.
View transcriptThe sandstone building shimmers like a mirage. Perhaps a huge creamy Moroccan fort. Actually it’s a resort in Puglia – in the heel of Italy…
When JG Ballard died, in April 2009, few people knew he had been planning a new work. The author of Crash and Empire of the…
Picture a sandstone building shimmering like a mirage. Perhaps something out of Lawrence of Arabia – or maybe a creamy Moroccan fort. Then imagine honey-coloured…