When you have children is the most important choice affecting your life.


I started in journalism: my first magazine, I developed when I was 10. I sent it round to the neighbors. I also sent it to the Queen of England.

What, for me, was exciting about America was just this extraordinary, complex, difficult, fascinating country, and Britain can feel very small. London, in particular, feels small because everything happens there, so you have publishing, politics, you have finance; everything in Britain happens in London.

One of the things about being online is it's hard to forget people, so it's very easy to stalk an ex, it's very easy to follow what people are doing. It's almost impossible to forget them.

I grew up in the north of England - 200 miles north of London, in a relatively unsophisticated place. And I craved magazines as a way of finding out about the future, about the life that I wanted.

What magazines do is curate: we give accurate and trustworthy information. If you have a problem, it's very difficult to go to the web and get accurate information... magazines, at their best, should be an incredible voyage of discovery.

I remember once when I was working on a magazine, and one of the male editors was going on a field trip with one of his sons. The office was full of, 'He's such a good dad,' whereas I came in late from a doctor's appointment for one of my children and was asked, 'Where were you? You'll need to make up the time.'

There's nothing more mainstream than equal pay for equal work. I mean, it's completely obvious that's what feminism should be for, and for women's right to choose what happens to their own bodies.

Get out there and meet people, and that will lead to meeting other people. Look around; see if there's anyone hiding in plain sight. There may be friends that become more than friends.

We have a generation of women who think that they can just have IVF, and everything will be fine. The odds are against you once you start having IVF, and the odds are against you over the age of 35. And to pretend that it's easy to have a baby in your 40s or 50s is - it's just selling women a false dream.

People don't really talk about falling in love anymore. And yet falling in love is the great engine that drives all the best art - or falling out of love or being heartbroken - drives all the best books, drives all the best music, and yet we've sort of stopped talking about it.

Love and food are very similar in many ways. We can't survive without them, and they bring us great joy, and just as there is junk food, and you can become obese, there's also junk love.