A week is a long time in pandemics.

How to stockpile kindness: Our initial reaction to the first global pandemic in over a century has been individualism but it’s reassuring to remember that actually, we humans are programmed for kindness.

But women are every where now — a man once exclaimed to the journalist Caroline Criado Perez.

I’M just back from a month in southern India, where all is lush, peaceful, and communist. In Kerala, this translates as higher literacy rates, greater gender equality, and less desperate poverty, rather than gulags and Stalinist pogroms. Like the rest of secular India, religion is everywhere; temples, mosques and churches tranquilly co-exist side by side. All gods are catered for.

A bright green Ireland is on the cover of The Economist, with a zip illustrating the border: “A united Ireland — could it really happen?” Crikey. Could it?

Suzanne Harrington doles out some practical advice on meeting new people in the digital age

Suzanne Harrington on the differences between backpacking in your twenties and backpacking in your fifties

While researching Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina candle for an article for this newspaper, I learnt that she has a house manager.

Imagine you go on a blind date and meet someone from another country with whom you fall deeply in love. You’re already successful, independent and at the top of your career. But you’ve fallen in love, so you jack it all in, move countries, and leave everything — work, friends, family, support system, identity — behind to become rebranded not as yourself, but as the wife of the person you have just married. The things you do for love.

Below is a join-the-dots of some of 2020’s cultural anniversaries around Europe.

Elizabeth Wurtzel has died aged 52. She wrote with searing honesty and narcissism, starting with the eradefining ‘Prozac Nation’, spotlighting her depression, says Suzanne Harrington.

Over the years, I have perfected the povhol — the poverty holiday, or travel on a shoestring.

Everyone is doing Dry January, Veganuary, Gymanuary — monitoring their every dead lift, bench press, kilometre jogged and kale smoothie blitzed, into some whizzy little app designed to beep digital encouragement.

In her last column of 2019 Suzanne Harrington dares to dream ...

Continue their public nervous breakdown, as we watch between the slits of our fingers, wincing. And trying not to laugh too loud.

We are living in late-stage capitalism, which sounds a lot like stage four cancer. There is no stage five.

A dystopian novel published earlier this year, The Warehouse, based on the workings of Amazon, makes repeated reference to something called the Black Friday Massacres. How these fictional massacres have impacted on fictional consumers, making them entirely dependent on online shopping because going to the actual shops is too dangerous.

In an industry where women battle ageism and sexism, Meryl Streep has managed to decide her own destiny – and roles, writes Suzanne Harrington

She spent a year living in a car while trying to break into the music industry and is now the hottest ticket in showbusiness. Where did this creative powerhouse, who doesn’t conform to celebrity norms, come from, asks Suzanne Harrington.

Suzanne harrington To the fizzing excitement of millions of tweens everywhere, the Disney movie Frozen II is almost upon us. This time Elsa and Anna will take off somewhere even more frozen, accompanied by a freezer full of songs and Olaf the snowman. Cue merchandising tsunami. As before, it’s the sisters who are the stars of the show; there is no male lead. No prince, no hero, no rescuer. The heroines are self-rescuing.

We are finally realising who the real star of Sex and the City was. A new book pays tribute to Miranda and her go-getting feminism, writes Suzanne Harrington.

Looking for a weekend break with a difference? Try Istanbul, says Suzanne Harrington. It’s a treasure trove of palaces, mosques, museums and markets.

Inspired by the ‘gig economy’, The Warehouse is set in a near future world that is horribly believable – zero rights, low pay, devices tracking your every move. Author Rob Hart hopes it will be a wake up call for us all, writes Suzanne Harrington

A direct book answers everything your teenage son ever wanted to know about sex but probably wouldn’t ask, writes Suzanne Harrington