"Because of the recession, this year has involved even more travelling than usual," he says, sipping a Coke in the steel-and-glass lobby bar that is central to the hotel's new look. "In difficult times the inclination is to bunker down, but that is when you most need to be out there saying: let's keep going, we can do this."

Since Mr Cosslett moved to IHG from Cadbury in 2005, his main task has been to knock a highly federated series of national businesses into the centralised, fast-growing ( Read more... )
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People tell me that I was quite a laid-back child and went with the flow but that's not how I remember it. I didn't like St Peter's Street School in Marlow very much. I was quite heavily dyslexic; it was not until I was 10 or 11 that this was picked up. The street went down to the river and the slipway where they launched cabin cruisers; I remember going on a school outing and looking across the river and seeing the weir.

I was at Holy Trinity Juniors for two years and ( Read more... )
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Yet those 338 words and the magnificent illustrations that accompany them have charged the imaginations of children ever since they were published in 1963. Having already sold 10 million copies worldwide, they have this year inspired a 300-page novelisation by Dave Eggers, a $100m Hollywood movie by Spike Jonze (from an Eggers script), and an HBO documentary by Jonze about Sendak's life, which some critics have described as the most interesting element of the triptych.

Even if it was "entirely within the rules", why did you think it reasonable to use my money to pay your nanny? Abigail Burton, Sutton, Surrey

The full report of the findings is available from Parliament and all I can do is ask people to read it before they form a judgement. Twelve years ago I paid the lady who was looking after my children a salary from the Fees Office for the work she did to help me in my constituency duties during the hours when my children ( Read more... )
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The first time I saw Serena was at a fashion show back when I was working at Browns and she had just opened Agent Provocateur. I was struck by how she looked – so exquisite and exotic.

A few weeks later, I met her properly at a barbecue at a mutual friend's house. She had her leg in plaster following some kind of kerfuffle at a party, but Serena is the kind of person who can still look stylish with a plaster cast. It was a fun day and I remember getting on well ( Read more... )
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Even now ? 35 years after he was wrongly convicted of the Birmingham pub bombings ? the trauma he endured has left raw mental scars to go with the physical marks left by torture and beatings at the hands of the police and prison officers. "I still got parts of my body that is not right... they knocked all my teeth out... I'll carry these scars to my grave."

Walker was one of six men ? with Richard McIlkenny, Paddy Hill, Hugh Callaghan, Billy Power and Gerry Hunter ? wrongly jailed for killing ( Read more... )
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The house/flat I grew up in ... was tiny. We were five people in a one-bedroom flat, but to me it seemed enormous and very cosy.

When I was a child I wanted to be ... a child for the rest of my life. I think I've done quite well so far.

You wouldn't know it but I'm very good at ... standing on a balancing ball while punching a speed bag.

You may not know it but I'm no good at ... Where do I begin?

What I see when I look ( Read more... )
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Wearing a loose-fitting suit and a look of surprise tinged with amusement, Herman van Rompuy cut a diminutive figure among his boisterous colleagues. Unusually in this divided country, Flemish nationalists teamed up with Walloon socialists during Prime Minister's question Time in the Belgian parliament to salute their unlikely national hero. In a nod to his premier's famous love of verse, one MP recited the opening stanza of a Flemish poem as a tribute, which Mr Van Rompuy then spontaneously ( Read more... )
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I'm a bit obsessive about split infinitives and apostrophes. Perhaps that goes back to the teaching of Miss Feather and Mrs Gill, or maybe it was Mrs Feather and Miss Gill, at Utley Primary School near Keighley. The teaching was good and I always liked going to school. I loved words from an early age.

I did the entrance exams for Bradford Grammar but I was only there for one term because we moved to Leicester when I was 11. I remember having to leave the school in the ( Read more... )
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I have always loved clothes and taken an interest in fashion so I loved starting to model again. After the Red or Dead show I did a photo shoot for Vogue with Nick Knight. There was a scout for Models 1 there who said they wanted me on their books, and I've been incredibly busy ever since. I am 80 now; a few years ago I did Dolce & Gabbana's show in Milan and last year I did their autumn campaign with Mario Testino and some things with Rankin, who I love.

I got started in modelling when ( Read more... )
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Obviously, the circumstances of my departure as party leader were regrettable ? but for all included. I'm not someone who dwells upon past events, taking the view that life is too short. And since my resignation speech at the time, I've chosen not to offer any further comment on either the individuals or the issues involved. That remains the position. I've long since moved on and would continue to advise everyone else to do exactly the same. Since being leader I've served a ( Read more... )
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Garai, of Jewish-Hungarian stock, lost most of her recent forebears in the Holocaust ? there are no known family ties left in Eastern Europe ? so it is unsurprising that she shares her director's passion that this lesson not be forgotten. "Stephen is a Russian Jew, and this film is a sort of a comment on the Holocaust through visual metaphors. I was able to connect with his passion."

The anxiety of Garai's character as the story progresses is unsettling. Her performance rekindles memories ( Read more... )
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I vividly remember walking from the pub (it wasn't a pre-school drink ? we lived above it) on the first day at Northbury Infants and Juniors in Barking, Essex. When I went into the classroom I remember running my finger along the dado rail, a row of tiling three feet off the ground. This was still there when I went back recently to open a new wing; I got emotional.

I got my first award, a badge for reading, which my mum still has; she deserves it, as she taught me to read. ( Read more... )
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As one of America's richest men, Michael Bloomberg does not often have occasion to mull mistakes or regret, but the inauguration of Barack Obama was perhaps one of them. He looked like someone who had wandered into the wrong party perhaps because he had left the Democratic fold years before (for political expediency). Or he was recalling those heady days a few months before when half the country was chattering about his chances of running for president or, failing that, becoming ( Read more... )
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Jamie and I met at Reading University, where he was studying English and I was studying film. We both lived off campus, so he used to give me lifts in his car, which was stuffed full of books. I was late every morning but he never seemed to care – he was simultaneously the most laid-back and motivated guy I've known.

I was never aware of any burning ambition in him, but he got a first-class degree while also gigging pretty much every night. He made these brilliant ( Read more... )
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The house/flat I grew up in ... was off the Edgware Road in west London. There was a police station near our house; a gang of us would jump over the fence and break into the garden. Inevitably, a policeman would catch us, clip us around the ear and send us home. When I was a child I wanted to be ... I thought about being an architect but got nowhere near the necessary school qualifications; aged 15, I decided to cook.

If I could change one thing about myself ( Read more... )
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He has spent his working lifetime spotting stars, as a record company scout and, most famously, as a judge on the world's most popular television talent shows. In doing so, he has become a star himself, one who, because of his nature, still gazes out at the other heavenly bodies around him to calculate just how high he has ascended in the twinkling firmament of entertainment.

So it should have pleased him that, according to the latest edition of Forbes magazine, he is the highest earner ( Read more... )
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I didn't know them, but four people from my secondary school committed suicide. People thought that the cliffs of Old Portlethen, a fishing village near Aberdeen where I grew up, were haunted, and there was a place where people would jump off. It was fairly dangerous , and lots of fishermen got swept away by the waves. The atmosphere was very Wicker Man.

The village had about 60 inhabitants, and there weren't many people of my age so it was quite solitary. I spent hours on the beach and ( Read more... )
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AS Byatt composed her most recent book review with the calm, searching exactitude that characterises her essays. But, because the subject of her criticism was none other than the sacred Harry Potter series, Byatt provoked a torrent of aggressively pro-Potter outrage, some of it phrased as a personal attack.

"We're dealing here with an acolyte at the temple of high culture barring the doors," spluttered Charles Taylor, the leading critic of the San Francisco-based literary website Salon. ( Read more... )
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