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

In the steps of Jamie…

Evening Standard | 5 Nov 1993

THE man who looks like George Bernard Shaw is queueing for Court One where two schoolboys stand accused of killing James Bulger. He has wild long hair, a streaming beard, carries three plastic bags and later, in the public gallery, he wears odd socks on his hands and eats a Cornish pastie. After him, another man tries to gain entry to the court with a bus ticket instead of a public gallery pass. He mumbles incomprehensibly as the police officers turn him away.

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Will the nasty girl ever be silenced?

Evening Standard | 31 Aug 1993

IN PASSAU, a picturesque Bavarian city at the confluence of the Danube, Inn and Ilz rivers, the Second World War is still being fought.

On one side are the respectable citizens of Passau and on the other, 33 year-old Anna Rosmus. Since she was a teenager she’s been obsessively trying to expose what she sees as the truth about her home town, an outwardly affluent and charming Catholic community.

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Joking on the flight of hope

Evening Standard | 16 Aug 1993

The Hercules in which we are arriving in Sarajevo makes a tactical landing, suddenly nose-diving in case there is small arms fire. The Serbs take more pot shots in the afternoon when they’re drunk, but this is early morning. Still, the crew say they can’t underestimate the threat from the ground.

I feel frightened because, in contravention of the rules, I don’t have a flak jacket. This is Saturday, the day before this same plane is used for Operation Irma.

The homes around the airport have been razed by war and a black cloud of smoke hangs over Mount Igman. Serbs burning villages or villagers making tea, says one of the crew, wryly.

Joking on the flight of hope


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The murderer’s tale

Evening Standard | 9 Aug 1993

DOUBLE-killer Norman Parker, 48, was freed last week after spending more than half his life in jail. In 1963, aged 18, Parker, who is Jewish, shot dead his Nazi girlfriend who was two-timing him. He might have hanged, but pleaded self-defence and was jailed for manslaughter. In 1971, he was convicted of a gangland killing – the sensational Body in a Trunk murder – in which his victim was hammered, shot six times and disposed of in the New Forest.

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Night I was face to face with death in my home

Evening Standard | 26 Jul 1993

THAT fateful Saturday night Heidi read an Agatha Christie thriller before falling asleep. She had always dreamed of living on her own in London and had moved into her rented Shepherd’s Bush flat just the day before. It was on the ground floor but had good security. Yet she awoke at 2am with a strange man standing by her bed. It was the start of a three-hour ordeal.

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I said, don’t leave me, then he died in my arms

Evening Standard | 14 Jul 1993

DIANE OSBORNE’S husband died in her arms. ‘After I’d called the ambulance, I begged Bob not to leave me,’ she says.

‘I kept saying, ‘Baby, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me now. Please don’t leave me.’ But he went purple, stopped breathing and died.’

Afterwards she went into deep shock. ‘I had terrible shakes and couldn’t even hold a cup without the liquid pouring out. I’ve been crying a lot and haven’t felt like going from day to day.’

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I wanted to pass out just to stop the pain, even if it meant dying

Daily Mail | 23 Jan 1993

SHE was snatched off the street, sexually assaulted and mutilated by a convicted killer who left her for dead in a blazing squat.

But only 48 hours after the attacker was jailed for 20 years, she is able to say: ‘I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

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Paying the price of coal in tears

Evening Standard | 19 Aug 1992

IT’S OVER. The harsh streaks of an uneasy dawn brings the news that they have found the last of them. He is dead. We are told he is Peter Alcock. More we do not know.

Faces sunk from lack of sleep take in the information and turn away. There is no emotion left. The price of coal!

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13 children lost

Evening Standard | 18 May 1992

THE nursery stands ready and the crib has been redecorated in new broderie anglaise. It is the crib Cherry Roomes slept in as a child. Now it awaits the arrival of a miracle.

To date Cherry has lost 13 babies. Anne, Jane, Megan, Edwina, Emily and Eleanor survived long enough to be named. Megan lived for three days and Eleanor for seven and a half months.

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Running flat out in injury time

Evening Standard | 2 Sep 1991

There’s a police car outside the hospital tonight. In front of it, an alcoholic sits on a plastic chair, can of Special Brew in hand. His friend – a man with a savaged face – goes into the hospital, pushing through the transparent plastic swing doors.

This is the scene in casualty at King’s College Hospital in Camberwell one recent weekend night. It is one of the busiest accident and emergency departments in London.

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The rack and the ruin

Evening Standard | 19 Jun 1991

ONE day senior ad man Alistair Treves was earning more than £100,000 – and the next he was on the dole. ‘I get paid £50 a week from social security because I have a wife and children.’ He had worked for leading London advertising agency Young and Rubicon for 21 years.

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Just who would want a pit bull as a pet?

Evening Standard | 21 May 1991

Next to the door bell is a sticker bearing the legend: “Make his day. Break in.” On it is a picture of a pit bull terrier, stocky and muscular with a steel-trap jaw.

So why would anyone want an American pit bull terrier – or APBT, as the new Sporting Dog periodical would have it?

There are an estimated 10,000 APBTs in England, of whom 1000 reside in Dave and Maria Britons’ borough of Waltham Forest, an area where youths walk in the park: one with an APBT, another with a rottweiler. With its killer instinct, the APBT is a loaded weapon.


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