Caroline Phillips

Journalism

Caroline Phillips
“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”

Caroline Phillips

Journalism

All Current Affairs articles

The best post-lockdown services

Country & Town House | 1 Jul 2020

Expect everything from a deluge of divorces (those already unhappy couples who were holed up during the pandemic) through to a mass exodus to live in the countryside, far from the madding, (masked) crowd. Anticipate dealing with your tubby Coronatummy – and body hair (that’s you, ladies) – and possibly finding a new career too.

Here’s our guide to the top dozen services and practitioners for the next steps.  Whether you’re after the world’s best off-Zoom yoga, the ultimate post-lockdown facial or mouth-watering new foodie experiences, read on.


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Oxbridge secrets

School House | 6 Mar 2017

‘The first thing I want to do is get rid of this mystique,’ says Barry Webb, an English scholar and former Oxbridge admissions tutor, as he kicks off the first session of a three-day intensive residential course for Oxbridge interview preparation with a talk about what our interviewers will be looking for.


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In Calais

London Review of Books | 24 Dec 2015

At the Jules Ferry refugee centre in Calais on Saturday there were hundreds of men clamouring to get in to listen to Handel’s Messiah but the gates were closed, with 700 people already inside. I was there with Play 4 Calais, an offshoot of the Lexi social enterprise cinema in North London, spearheaded by the actress Alix Wilton Regan. The aim was to bring four days of film screenings to some of the Jungle refugee camp’s estimated 6500 inhabitants, including children who are waiting to be reunited with their parents in the UK.


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Short cuts

London Review of Books | 9 Oct 2014

As we stepped off the ferry onto the Aegean island of Symi in late August, our thoughts were on sunbathing and sailing. But the first thing we saw was a group of what we soon discovered were Syrians carrying small backpacks holding those few possessions they hadn’t lost during the crossing from Turkey. A week later, the number of frightened, hungry and exhausted refugees had grown substantially; when we arrived there were about fifty, now there were around two hundred. An old man with gashes on his face sat bleeding in 30° heat for ten hours waiting for a doctor. He slumped forward, seemingly drunk from dehydration. He’d hit his face against the rocks when the Greek port police fired a shot in the air. Symi is the island closest to the Turkish mainland; the same thing is happening on many other outlying islands.


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Sun, sea, sand and a spell of humanitarian intervention

The Sunday Times | 7 Sep 2014

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 and sailing. But our first sight was of 48 dispossessed Syrians carrying backpacks containing their worldly possessions. Within a week their numbers had grown to more than 200 and we could ignore their misery no longer.

Spending our last four days among them, we came across a septuagenarian with facial gashes who sat bleeding in 30C heat waiting for a doctor, as he had for 10 hours. He had hit his face against rocks when the Greek port police fired a shot in the air.


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Worst of times, best of care

The Telegraph | 30 Jun 2008

When her father was taken to hospital last month after a car crash, Caroline Phillips prepared herself for an NHS horror story. What happened was very different.

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World-exclusive article, made front pages and sparked controversy globally, and shortlisted for “Scoop of the Year” in the 1997 British Press Awards.

You can raise a company and run a kid…

Evening Standard | 15 Dec 1995

FIRST there was Penny Hughes, Coca-Cola’s 35-year-old UK president who, newly pregnant, decided that motherhood was the real thing and abandoned her position and £250,000 salary.

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Baby, look at you now

Evening Standard | 24 May 1995

ANNA Gonta has been in labour at Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital since 5am. It’s now 10am. Her baby’s heart is fluctuating. Anna, who’s had an epidural, says she doesn’t feel any pain. But Arthur, her husband, clutches his stomach. ‘I feel pain here,’ he says. ‘I didn’t have this with the first one.’ Anna smiles weakly.

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The day I did a stretch with a former Madam

Evening Standard | 24 Apr 1995

I’M ON MY back on a bed with my legs over a woman’s shoulders. She pulls my supine body. Suddenly a man in an anorak appears on the roof outside the window of her first-floor Beauchamp Place room.

“Oh, don’t worry about him. They’re all fur coat and no drawers around here,” the woman responds curiously.

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Does London really give your child asthma?

Evening Standard | 2 Feb 1995

Parents are afraid that bringing children up in the city threatens them with asthma, a frightening condition that now afflicts one in 10 youngsters. But the links between pollution and asthma may be nothing more than scare stories IT IS undisputed that hospital admission for asthma has increased steadily in Britain over the past 20 years; for children, the admissions graph goes uphill at 45 degrees. One in 10 suffer from asthma, a huge increase over the past few years. Nitrogen dioxide from exhaust fumes has been similarly increasing in the air: twice as high as 20 years ago.

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