“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”
World-exclusive article, made front pages and sparked controversy globally, and shortlisted for “Scoop of the Year” in the 1997 British Press Awards.
Professor Phillip Bennett faces a dilemma. His patient, 16 weeks pregnant, is carrying healthy twins and cannot abide the prospect of having two children. She says she couldn’t cope.
She has told Mr Bennett, professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at London’s Queen Charlotte’s Hospital, that if she were carrying just one baby, she would continue her pregnancy.
Finalist in the Catherine Pakenham Award. Illustrious previous winners and runners-up have included Tina Brown, Polly Toynbee and Sally Beauman.
In a Regency house just off the Mall, a man wearing an MCC tie sits behind an enormous mahogony desk. On the other side of the desk is a navy-suited strawberry blonde. Suffice to say her name is Camilla.
The man questions her about her hobbies, and Camilla answers easily enough. Then he suddenly slips in a question about Middle Eastern politics. His manner remains relaxed but emotionless, but Camilla is unnerved, sensing a menacing undercurrent.
Finalist, Cosmopolitan New Journalists Competition
Finalist, Cosmopolitan New Journalists Competition
Every week ‘The Week’ selects the best features from the world’s press. Here are some of Caroline’s that they’ve chosen.
For a country the size of England, Nicaragua has more than its fair share of volcanoes, says Caroline Phillips in The Independent.
It has been attracting attention from the rich and famous lately, but the lush and beautiful Greek island of Meganisi is still “firmly off the tourist radar”, says Caroline Phillips in The Times. Part of the Ionian archipelago, just off the country’s west coast, it feels lost in time, with patchy mobile reception and a population of just 1200, none of whom locks their house or car.
Richard Ingrams, former editor of Private Eye, looks away as he shakes my hand. He’s imposingly tall and wearing his habitual cords, a jumper full of holes and undone laces.
The chairman, a rubicund man with a gale-force voice and peeling nose, shakes my hand and runs off. A minute later he sprints past again. “It’s to do with tourism”, he’s bellowing to the minion scuttling behind him. He’s Sir Jocelyn Stevens, chairman of English Heritage, reputedly a monster and one whose nicknames are Piranha Teeth and Terminator 3.
Caroline Phillips on lingo and lasers
The challenges of memory, the stranglehold of the past, addiction, alcoholism, loneliness, regret, nostalgia, resignation, denial, blame, guilt, lies and illusion, love and forgiveness. They’re all here in the 1941 autobiographical masterpiece, Long Day’s Journey Into Night – a frequent contender for best American play, and one which won O’Neill a posthumous Pulitzer prize. It’s cathartic and multi-layered, but also funny. And terribly sad.
Go and see this production of Faith Healer by Brian Friel, one of the greatest Irish dramatists; it’s mesmerising and moving. It’s a four-scene play in which three characters act out their memories alone on stage —monologues delivered by Frank the faith healer, his wife, Grace, and his manager, Teddy: three unreliable narrators.
I am onstage in front of 65 strangers who think I’m a stand-up comedian. I’ve never done anything like this before. Why have I agreed…
I am lying on a wooden massage bed as two women rub my naked body with hot pouches of cooked rice, milk and medicinal herbs.…
As we stepped off the Dodekanisos Pride ferry onto the Greek island of Symi for our late August beach holiday, our thoughts were on sunbathing…