Isabel's Journalism
Here is a selection of Isabel's more recent journalism and interviews that can be found online.
How did the real hero of the anti-slavery movement get airbrushed out of history?
Wilberforce has been lionised as the man who outlawed slavery exactly 200 years ago. But, in a travesty of justice, the REAL hero has been airbrushed from our history...
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Botox Ballot Box
I'm sitting in the Wimpole Street surgery of Jean-Louis Sebagh - the Botox "king". He lives in Paris but spends three days a week in London, smoothing the brows of the celebrated and the civilian. Demand for his deft needlework is brisk. "I've had some very agitated ladies on the phone this morning," his personal assistant, Dale, confides. "But I explain that they'll just have to come in and wait." According to Dale, most of the women who flock to Dr Sebagh are neither rich nor royal, but "normal" forty- and fifty-somethings anxious to stop the clock. They are clearly...
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In Defence of Romance
Imagine you are playing one of those word association games and someone says "romantic novelist". What image is most likely to pop up? Middle-aged, middle class, pink hat, string of pearls?
Romantic fiction, more than any other genre, has suffered from stereotyping of the most unflattering kind. It is all too often seen as vulgar and second rate - at its best, escapist and opiate; at its worst, downright risible...
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Top Ten Books set in the Midlands
Isabel chooses her top 10 books set in her old stamping ground, the Midlands...
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Praising Chick Lit
I read your last book," a female acquaintance confided at a party recently. "Really?" I said casually, idly hoping for some complimentary comment.
"I was surprised at how good it was," she concluded goodnaturedly. I tried to cover my slight annoyance with a smile. "I don't normally read that sort of thing," she went on with sledgehammer sensitivity. "But yes," she mused as she sipped her Pimm's, "I thought it was really quite good."
The woman wasn't being deliberately impertinent - her amazement was genuine; but I've long since got used to such remarks...
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Weston Mercury Interview/Book Review
Wolff is everything journalists love. She's bubbly, hysterical, totally radio-ready and always with a cracking good line....
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