You’re not alone, says Mariella Frostrup. Get professional help to muster resilience and determination. We need people like you to change our political trajectory

'I am able to experience first hand how people who have mental health issues get written off by society'

Tim Lott dances, roars and talks intimately at a masculinity workshop which ends in tears, praise and profound insights Despite spending 62 years as a man, I have never quite worked out what the possession of my defining Y chromosome implies. I doubt, in truth, that much of the damn thing survives anyway. I was brought up in a generation when nearly all the parenting was done by mothers and I have now helped to bring up four daughters as well as having been through the crucible of two marriages. In short, I have lived most of my life in the penumbra of women. Lately, in the tremors of

Yes, I’m looking at you, weather presenter Sara Blizzard, speed-meister Usain Bolt, and all the rest My friend Hattie recently introduced me to aptonym (also known as aptronym). This is, delightfully, when a person’s name is well-suited to its owner, whether that be in character or profession. Just this week, I read about a surgeon called Professor Kneebone. Some of you may be familiar with Igor Judge, former lord chief justice. There are many famous examples: the sprinter, Usain Bolt, for instance. William Wordsworth, who, lest we forget, as well as his poetry, also petitioned to reform British copyright law. Regular pub quiz question: who invented the toilet? Thomas Crapper. (He didn’t invent it, just improved it. But he did invent the manhole cover.) Hattie should really be a milliner. I should probably be an expert on diseases. Aptonym is not a new phenomenon, nor recently discovered. In his 1960 book Synchronicity, Jung wrote that there is “sometimes quite grotesque coincidence between a man’s name and his peculiarities”. Nominative determinism is the theory that aptonyms are not merely happy coincidences (or grotesque ones), but that our names can inspire our choices in life and careers, possibly because of egotism. In the past, it was the opposite – the profession came before the name: Taylor, Smith, Baker. Spiderman.

The bestselling novelist on eschewing computers and the secret to a long marriage I am a great believer in sleep. I am usually in bed by 10.30 or 11pm. If my husband, Bob, and I watch TV before retiring, it will be in another room. If I am writing a book, I will be up at 6am the next day. If I am not writing, it will be more like 7am.