My power list - female influencers

BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour has revealed its list of 10 female influencers, featuring names such as Nicola Sturgeon, Angelina Jolie and Anna Wintour. It's a great list, but it got me thinking about the women that influence me. Obviously, my mum tops the list, but as she's not on social media here are 11 other women, in no particular order, that influence me and that I think you should be paying attention to.

Book review: The Last Act of Love by Cathy Rentzenbrink

I very rarely cry at books. I'll get sad, my heart will hurt, my eyes might tear up, but it takes a lot for those tears to actually spill over. So when I tell you that when I finished the last page of Cathy Rentzenbrink's The Last Act of Love to realise I had tears running down my face, it should clue you in to how powerful a memoir this is.

I should say at this juncture that I work with Cathy - I know her professionally, and consider her both a mentor and a friend. Beyond knowing the subject matter of the book, I didn't really know what to expect from The Last Act of Love. What I found was an intensely personal tale dealing with the universal subjects of love, family, and loss.

In the summer of 1990, Cathy's younger brother Matty was knocked down by a car, leaving him in a coma in hospital. Cathy and her parents willed him to survive, and he did. But at the time, Cathy and her family had no idea that survival might not have been the best option - Matty was left severely injured, unable to walk or speak or communicate fully. Every time he made progress, he suffered an epileptic fit, or something else that set him back. Eight years after his accident, Cathy and her parents were forced to make the hardest decision they would ever make.