TALES FROM BELLA'S WORLD...

I only have one photograph of my mother and father together. This image is from when dad had taken my mother to the South of France, I think a few months after I...

I don't remember when I started to be someone who was late for things but it became a signature, a horrible one, which I both dreaded as inevitable, and on some level relished. It is ironic...

Here I am striking a pose in a room full of Nan Goldin prints at the Victoria and Albert museum. This room is part of an amazing selection of Sir Elton John and...

My birthday falls on April 17th. Most years it coincides with the Easter holidays when I or everyone else is away. As a child in the 60's and 70's we didnt have parties...

My son flew 5.351 miles back from California on his US college Spring Break to meet his father James's new puppy called Dash.  We had a family dog, a Border terrier named Joey...

I came late to Sonic Youth, after they split. I read Kim Gordon's memoir 'Girl in a Band' and was immediately interested in everything that interested her. I became fascinated by her look,...

When I was a child I kept a pet rat. It wasn't much bigger than a mouse and mostly lived on my shoulder. I would go for walks with it nestling under my...

When I was growing up in the 70’s, Yoko Ono seemed to be viewed by society – or at least by much of the media – as an enemy of the state. How...

  I had tears in my eyes when I read an interview with Camila Batmanghelidjh. It moved me the way she spoke about the young people she worked with through her charity Kids Company, her...

Last week I went to the archives of the National Portrait Gallery to look at some of the 47 sketch books our family donated after my father's  death in 2011. Sarah, Tanya and Carys,...

Few people have the ability to leave those they encounter with the feeling that they have been gifted a unique and treasurable exchange, never to be forgotten. Shane MacGowan had this power. Shane was no...

When I was a child in the late 1960’s my mother took us to live in Morocco for a couple of years. We didn’t have a lot of possessions but I was allowed...

I remember what I was wearing when I first met Martin Amis. My then husband, the writer James Fox, was a great friend of Amis’ and of his new wife the writer Isabel...