A poor condition book can still make a good reading copy but is generally not collectible unless the item is very scarce. When the Media Society in 1997 gave her their Lifetime Achievement Award the citation noted that she was only the third person to receive the honour: ‘the two previous winners were Sir Alistair Cooke and Sir David Attenborough’.

She ended up in a "Talibanic" convent school, a "ghastly, cold, damp mausoleum in the Peak District". Whether you agree with her or not you can always be sure her views are based on her outstanding journalism, and couched in her own sparkling style. I read this book after hearing her on an old Desert island discs programme BBC, she's old school and obviously a pioneer for her time but the old colonial attitude runs though it all and it rubbed me up the wrong way at times.Ann Leslie is quite simply one of the most fearless, talented and witty journalists in Britain today. It is a risky game, of course, although you'd hardly know it from her nonchalant descriptions of the scrapes she's been in. However, then our heroine is rescued and sent off to London to become a star columnist, which she does rather well, and the globetrotting begins.

My induction mentor’s support and acknowledgement of my unimaginably disruptive students finally forced administrators to take action.

Killing My Own Snakes clears away the haze of nostalgia that surrounds the old Fleet Street – it sounds like a haven of alcoholic misogynists – but it is a lament nonetheless.