Bel Mooney – författare

A story of survival, transformation and love.In a beautiful and powerful memoir which mixes honest, personal revelation with literature, history, and inspirational self-help, Bel Mooney tells the story of her rescue dog, Bonnie, who in turn rescued Bel when her world fell apart with the all-too public break-up of her 35-year marriage. SMALL DOGS CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE really is a story of survival, and also one of love.This is an account of six years in Bel's life, from when she first acquired Bonnie from a rescue home, through Bel’s years of personal heartbreak and disappointment, and on to the happiness which she has now found in a new marriage and a new life, with the Maltese at her side all the way. This is a book about transformation and change, about picking yourself up and attacking life in the way that a small dog will go for the postman's trousers – and about celebrating life, much as your canine companion will always celebrate your return, even from the shortest trip.Beautifully engaging, entertaining, full of personal anecdotes and deeply moving, SMALL DOGS CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE will take the reader on an inspirational walk with one very small but very remarkable dog – a dog who became a symbolfor all that is best about dogs, and about we humans too.Bel Mooney is a journalist with almost forty years' experience. Well-loved by millions for her advice columns, first for the Times and now in the Daily Mail, as well as countless programmes for radio and television, Bel takes the reader on a journey of discovery, in which she finds herself transformed into a dog-lover by one small and lively bundle of white fur, as well as telling her own gripping story.

A story of survival, transformation and love.In a beautiful and powerful memoir which mixes honest, personal revelation with literature, history, and inspirational self-help, Bel Mooney tells the story of her rescue dog, Bonnie, who in turn rescued Bel when her world fell apart with the all-too public break-up of her 35-year marriage. SMALL DOGS CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE really is a story of survival, and also one of love.This is an account of six years in Bel's life, from when she first acquired Bonnie from a rescue home, through Bel’s years of personal heartbreak and disappointment, and on to the happiness which she has now found in a new marriage and a new life, with the Maltese at her side all the way. This is a book about transformation and change, about picking yourself up and attacking life in the way that a small dog will go for the postman's trousers - and about celebrating life, much as your canine companion will always celebrate your return, even from the shortest trip.Beautifully engaging, entertaining, full of personal anecdotes and deeply moving, SMALL DOGS CAN SAVE YOUR LIFE will take the reader on an inspirational walk with one very small but very remarkable dog - a dog who became a symbolfor all that is best about dogs, and about we humans too.Bel Mooney is a journalist with almost forty years' experience. Well-loved by millions for her advice columns, first for the Times and now in the Daily Mail, as well as countless programmes for radio and television, Bel takes the reader on a journey of discovery, in which she finds herself transformed into a dog-lover by one small and lively bundle of white fur, as well as telling her own gripping story.

A gripping story about a young girl's turmoil during the revolution in Romania.Before she knows it, everything in thirteen-year-old Flora Popescu's life has changed. Her parents, her best friend Alys, and the restricted life she has always known in their Bucharest tower block are distanced from her – and Daniel, the mysterious new boy at school, seems to be the cause. Flora likes him, but why can't everybody else trust him too? She thinks of her father's words: "People like us can't afford the luxury of new friends." Then, just as she is making sense of her divided loyalties, Flora discovers that only she alone can save her father's life.

A gripping story about a young girl's turmoil during the revolution in Romania.Before she knows it, everything in thirteen-year-old Flora Popescu's life has changed. Her parents, her best friend Alys, and the restricted life she has always known in their Bucharest tower block are distanced from her – and Daniel, the mysterious new boy at school, seems to be the cause. Flora likes him, but why can't everybody else trust him too? She thinks of her father's words: "People like us can't afford the luxury of new friends." Then, just as she is making sense of her divided loyalties, Flora discovers that only she alone can save her father's life.

First published in 1989, in Bel Mooney''s Somerset she sets the tone of this delightfully personal account of her ''adopted county''. Brought up in Liverpool, she writes of Somerset with the rapture of the late convert, travelling through its towns and villages in all seasons, observing sights as various as the Minehead Raft Race or rare beakhead moulding at All Saints, Lullington; the mysterious Glastonbury Tor and the magnificence of Wells Cathedral.She begins with Exmoor, with Lorna Doone, prize sheep at the county show, St. Bueno, the smallest parish church in England, moving on to the Quantock Hills, dotted with Bronze Age barrows and cairns. She describes the vale of Taunton Deane with it''s rich red soil, and Cadbury Hill and the Somerset lore of King Arthur. We learn of the flat sodden world of the Wetlands, the dramatic beauty of the Mendips - wild, windblown trees and the ''gruffy ground'' of abandoned mines. We can envisage the mud of Stert Flats, visit Burnham-on-Sea and Weston-super-Mare - a little melancholy out of season - and the accommodating, quiet, green fields and watery sky of the Eastern edge of the county. Somerset writers such as Parson Woodeforde, Coleridge and T.S.Eliot are introduced; so are characters from history - Judge Jeffries and the doomed Duke of Monmouth.The book is designed to be read as a narrative, and covers the whole of the old county of Somerset, dismissing the boundry changes of 1974, and including, therefore, the elegant spa town of Bath.Bel Mooney''s enticing observations, her thoughts, idiosyncracies and passions, will be shared and enjoyed by anyone who plans even to pass through one of Britain''s most beautiful counties.

At the heart of Ana Popescu''s existence is the love for her son. He is the only thing that makes life in Ceausescu''s Romania tolerable. In their mean little flat they have created a private world in which no harm can come to them. But Ana is haunted by a mystery in her own past, and by her awareness under a totalitarian regime the soul can gradually be corrupted. At last as incident at Ion''s school convinces her she must send him away.When she seizes the chance to give Ion freedom, Ana unwittingly propels him beyond bureaucracy into an underworld of refugees and migrants. Attempting to follow, she is caught and thrown into prison. Then the collapse of communism and the overthrow of Ceausescu rekindle her hope for a future, as she leaves her country for the first time and embarks on a quest to reclaim her lost child.The achievement of Bel Mooney''s powerful and ambitious new novel, as it moves across the changing face of contemporary Europe, is that it takes us inside the lives of people caught up in the flood tide of political events. A story of sacrifice, loss and love, it is a moving and triumphant celebration of the power and immutability of the bonds of motherhood and is also about one of the most pressing humanitarian issues of our age.

Eleanor Anderson''s comfortable and well-ordered life is completely shattered when her husband Davis, the dependable and much respected village doctor, disappears. A few days later he is found dead, apparently the victim of a heart attack, and speculation is stilled as family, friends and patients akin feel a kind of relief at knowing the worst.But genuine grief at their bereavement gives way to angry bewilderment when a post-mortem reveals that the man they thought they knew so well, the man they all depended on, had taken his own life, for no obvious reason. And Eleanor discovers, in the uneasy company of her ungracious son, that all she had assumed and lived by has been false...

Millionaire porn-king Anthony Carl has gathered a group of people together for a fourth of July party in New Jersey.Among them is the British photo-journalist Barbara Rowe, who finds herself drawn into unexpected sympathy with Annelisa Kaye, Emperor magazine's most celebrated sex-goddess. Annelisa's life, too, is defined by the cool eye of the camera. And this weekend, more than ever, she seems beautiful, fragile and doomed…

To newly separated Anna, holidaying in Devon with her seven-year-old son, the exquisite windsurfer winging across the waves on the river near their cottage represents all that is young, strong and free. In a nearby nursing home Anna''s mother is dying of cancer, calmly accepting impending death with a dignity her daughter cannot begin to understand.Faced with the dilemma of many conflicting emotions – guilt, grief, nostalgia and an increasing infatuation with the teenage windsurfer – Anna struggles to come to terms with her life…

Bel Mooney has taken twelve children from different parts of the British Isles and observed them over a year as they play, learn and grow. She saw Denise being born, watched Gemma, the daughter of a company executive, at her nursery school and heard the fears of the parents of Donald, a West Indian child from Birmingham. She saw David in preparatory school and Melanie in her comprehensive; talked to a fourteen-year-old Asian boy about his experience of race, and to a ten-year-old Welsh boy about family violence. The twelve chapters in The Year of the Child mirror the stages in a child's development from total dependence to independence and self-awareness and the beginnings of a critical attitude to the world around – a world in which he or she, whatever the social background, has had very little personal choice. The Year of the Child makes a valuable contribution to social history, describing six boys and six girls from different parts of the British Isles and from three broad social groups; it goes beyond journalism and social comment to become a re-enactment of what the author calls 'that cyclical loss of innocence which is at the root of human experience'.

When her beloved small dog died, Bel Mooney was astonished at the depth of her ongoing sorrow. Sharing her loss online and in a newspaper article brought a deluge of responses, spurring Bel to explore these feelings further. Why do humans mourn pets? Can animals themselves grieve - and do they have souls? In Goodbye, Pet & See You in Heaven, Bel sets off on an emotional journey to learn more about pet bereavement. She is astounded by inexplicable 'signs' of her dog's spirit, watches Bonnie's ashes being turned into glass, talks to experts and discusses the mysterious enduring energy of love. She discovers why Ancient Egyptians mummified animals and what different faiths, myths, writers and scientists have to say. She also looks back over her own life and reflects on lessons learned from companion animals - and from wildlife too. As informative as it is deeply moving, Goodbye, Pet is an intensely personal, uplifting look at the love we share with pets, both in life and afterwards. Enriched by heartfelt stories and inspirational words, it is a book to be treasured by anyone who has ever loved an animal.