In Screw the Fairytale, Helen Croydon traces the history of relationships in an immersive, first-person account. She shows how marriage was never supposed to be about love anyway. She investigates the prevalence of mistresses across different eras and cultures to see what we can learn from infidelity and explores the science of falling in love. Highlights of her mission take in a polyamorous commune in the Scottish Highlands (where she has to carry out a sexual pact), a wife-finding tour to the Ukraine and infiltrating a network of single professional women who've chosen to give up on finding love and get a sperm donor instead. Interviews with psychologists, evolutionists, asexuals, swingers, philanderers, long-term marrieds, mistresses and 40 year old virgins all combine to break new ground in this humorous and insightful guide to sex and love for the modern girl.

Whenever Helen Croydon mentions that marriage and kids just aren't on her radar, everyone tells her that she'll become 'one of those old ladies with lots of cats'. But what, she asks, is so wrong with that? Cats don't have boring in-laws that take up entire weekends and they don't soak the bathroom and scribble on walls either, do they? Just what is the obsession with white weddings and 2.4 children anyway? For the first time in history, long-term relationships are no longer a necessity, but a luxury. Yet you're still deemed a failure if you don't find The One, and worse if you're not even looking in the first place! Just because you don't want to share your home and bed with a significant other, it doesn't mean love is out of the question but perhaps, like Helen, the shackles of commitment are not for you. Join her as she goes on a quest to find a more realistic approach to romance to fit with today's independent lifestyles and to discover what works and what doesn't along the way. Through hilarious anecdotes from her own love life to undercover missions, including a meeting for sex addicts, a 'wife-finding tour' to Ukraine and staying in a polyamorous commune in The Highlands along with fascinating interviews with anthropologists, psychologists, swingers, sperm donor mothers and more, journalist Helen debunks the fairytale myth that finding true love is our only route to Utopia.

Attitudes towards, and strategies for treating, those who suffer from abnormal mental states have evolved considerably over the centuries, and these are reflected in the various literary genres of all eras. In its introduction, this book provides a concise, yet thorough, overview of this phenomenon, citing key examples taken from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. Each of the eight chapters which constitute Part One of this study then focuses on representations of a particular mental health issue in a work of literature produced by a twenty-first-century French woman writer. Considering the causes and symptoms of the given condition, it situates the representation of its treatment in relation to current attitudes and practices in the West. Inspired by the concept that reading literature which concentrates on mental health problems can be both informative and of comfort to those affected by such issues, Part Two provides detailed textual analyses, and discusses the English-language versions, of four works examined in Part One which already exist in translation. Suggesting how these may be of benefit to an Anglophone readership, it recommends that the four remaining texts, which may be equally helpful, are suitable for translation into English.

Frustrated with her stalled career as a broadcast journalist and uninspired by dating naive and needy guys her own age, Helen Croydon joins a website to seek an older man. She expects it to be just a few fun dates in some fancy bars but finds herself propelled into a world of Prada shopping trips, fine dining, first-class travel and fascinating, powerful men. Helen's soul-searching dating adventures take her to New York, Malaysia, highbrow sex parties, top ski resorts and London's finest hotels. When one of her dates alludes to a monthly allowance, she is shocked, but how long will her resistance to the idea last? Sugar Daddy Diaries is a confessional true story that questions modern ideals about relationships, examines the attraction of power and asks if money can ever be the currency of love.

When Helen’s friends all started settling down and having kids, she was determined to fill her weekends with something other than cocktails. So she threw herself into the world of endurance sport. From glamorous party girl to marathon runner, ocean swimmer and even, perhaps, a Team GB triathlete, this is Helen’s inspiring and hilarious story.

Authoritative criticism covering every area of world cinema: classic silents and thirties comedies, documentaries and the avant-garde, French or Japanese cinema as well as the Hollywood mainstream and the latest megaprocutions and B-movie horrors. Assessments of well over 10,000 movies, including full details of director, cast, alternative titles and release date for each film.