About Philippa

My perfect day would start waking up with sun on my face, I would ride my beautiful horse (I never have ridden him by the sea but that would be perfection) lunch with my family in a wonderful restaurant, some theatre in the evening and then going salsa dancing with my husband.

What is your greatest extravagance?
My really great and exciting extravagance is that I travel first class even when I am paying for my own ticket and not on expenses. It has taken twenty years of success for me to let myself do this and I love it.

What is the most exciting thing you ever received through the post?
A love-letter from my husband.

What's your idea of a perfect meal?
Lots of lovely little dishes -like sushi or tapas. I recently went to Yo Sushi! with my daughter Victoria and we had the best of times, eyeing up the revolving dishes and looking forward to the next one.

Do you have a favourite hangover cure?
I used to have more hangovers than I do now, but my favourite in the old days was to sleep as late as possible, take paracetamol and waking, lots of water and vitamin C, and as soon as bearable a high carb meal.

What vehicle, if any, do you own?
I have the most beautiful XK8 jaguar in black with ivory leather upholstery. It purrs, and so do I.

What was the first job you ever had?
My first job was on The News, Portsmouth, where I was apprenticed as a reporter.

Do you have any irrational fears?
I have an irrational terror of very loud water in unnatural circumstances like hydro electric power stations, lock gates, or mill races. Water alone is OK it is when it is pouring into machinery that I hate the noise and the rush of it.

What is the oldest item of clothing you still wear?
I have a very old and very beloved waterproof jacket by North Face, that I bought nearly ten years ago and it is still snowproof and waterproof and windproof. It's baggy and soft and washes beautifully.

Who do you love?
In alphabetical order (to avoid complaints) my son Adam, my husband Anthony, my stepson Francis my stepson Marc, my stepson Patrick, my stepdaughter Samantha, my daughter Victoria and my stepdaughter also Victoria, my sister and her family, and my friends especially (in alphabetical order) Claire and Tine.

Who, or what, do you hate?
I absolutely refuse to let myself hate anyone, even when I find their behaviour hateful. I think hate sickens the person who is feeling it, I try to forgive and if I cannot, then I make myself forget, or at the least I try not to dwell. The people who are really irritating me at the moment and testing my forgiveness to its saintly limit, know perfectly well who they are, and what they are doing, and if they are reading this then they should know that I wish to God that they would stop doing it and behave like reasonable people.

What newspapers or magazines do you read?
The Times every day, the Sunday Times and the Observer on Sunday, Private Eye occasionally, Vogue at the hairdressers, Hello! very rarely, and in bewilderment.

What would be your desert island book?
I'm sorry to be dull but it would be the works of Shakespeare or Tolstoy, it would be a wonderful opportunity to read from cover to cover.

What is your favourite TV programme?
I'm not very fond of watching television, I used to like Friends and I quite enjoy Will and Grace but there is nothing that I would change my plans for. I often enjoy factual programmes or history programmes but I don't have a viewing schedule.

What was the first record you ever bought?
It was the 59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy) on a 45" single.

Where do you go to relax?
I love expensive spas like Grayshott Hall in Surrey, but I like to potter in my garden and I like to sit in the stable with my horse. He's a very calming companion. He is so big and so beautiful and so sweet tempered that I can almost feel his aura enveloping me. I am always happy when I am with him.

What is your most annoying habit?
I don't know… if I did know I would try to stop doing it. I think failing to shut cupboard doors in the kitchen probably comes pretty high, sometimes I leave the Marmite out. My children don't like it when I say uh-huh pretending to be listening, when I am not. I am often distracted because I am thinking about other things and so I am forgetful of errands I said that I would run. I imagine that I drive my children mad about my astronomically high standard of table manners but they are mostly too nice to complain.

What is your favourite journey?
There's a great rail journey along the south coast from Bournemouth to Cornwall, and I loved the road that goes from San Francisco to Los Angeles, all the way up that beautiful west coast of America. The drive from Malaga airport to Granada takes you through some pretty fine countryside too, and I used to walk a wonderful walk from God's Bridge on the Pennine Way, to the nearest pub.

What is your ultimate ambition?
I should like to achieve a reliable state of serenity.

Which person has most influenced you?
My husband is a constant and powerful influence in my life, but also my children make a tremendous difference to how I see the world and what I think and feel. The greatest influence before them was my mother who was a powerful independent and lovely woman. The very thought of her still makes me smile.

What is your greatest achievement?
More than ten years ago I gave some money (not very much, only £300) to build a well in a schoolyard in The Gambia, West Africa. It was such a success in terms of making a market garden from what had been a patch of desert, producing food that the children could eat at lunchtime, and a surplus that they could sell for school funds, that I raised money and built 56 other wells. It's a tiny project (me and my friend in The Gambia) but it has made a tremendous difference to thousands of children. I'm very proud of it. If you would like to contribute you can send a cheque to me and I will forward the

Choose three people, dead or alive, to invite to dinner.
I should like to have dinner with William Cecil (Elizabeth 1st's chief advisor) he is one of the key characters in my new novel The Virgin's Lover, probably one of the most skilled politicians this country has ever had. Elizabeth would not have become the Queen she was without him. My second guest would be Dorothy Parker whose wit was delicious and, I suspect, better at the dinner table than on the page, and Danny Kaye for humour and charm.

Do you believe in God?
I don't think I can seriously believe in someone who takes an interest in the world and yet lets it become like it is (yes, I do know the arguments about free choice - but what sort of stupid deal is the free choice experiment? What is the point of it?) I am not sure about how the world started, of course, so that could be a God, and I certainly have an instinctive feeling that someone is watching over me and hears me when I say, in crisis: Please oh! Please let this happen…., and I have a very powerful sense sometimes of holiness, especially in places that have long been centres of worship or are very beautiful … So…actually I don't know.

Do you believe in love at first sight?
In theory, of course not, nonsense (and so on). In fact, I first met my husband 22 years ago and I fell in love with him that evening. We were apart for 15 years and married two years ago. I have to believe in love at first sight, because it happened to me.

Do you know who's number one in the charts?
Not a clue. I don't mind not knowing, either.

Do you support the death penalty?
I don't support the death penalty. I can't help feeling sometimes that some life sentences are such misery, and such crimes so abhorrent that a death sentence would be a merciful and just alternative. But that's an emotional response, not a logical one. I wouldn't vote for the restoration of the death penalty and I would campaign against it.

Do you understand how to work a video recorder?
Yes. I'm not very technical and I get very quickly irritated by technology, but if it is something I need then I make myself understand it. And anyway, they're all a lot easier than they were.

Do you sing in the bath?
Not in the bath, in the shower, and when gardening and pottering about.

What would you like to be your epitaph?
Amazingly fit, incredibly beautiful, beloved by all that knew her, and happy to the end.