And they are directly related to the way in which publishing, which is an increasingly ruthless industry, likes to pretend there is no relation - for authors at least - between work and money. When a leading literary imprint, Hamish Hamilton, approached me in January to write a book about contemporary culture and politics, I threw myself into producing a series of ever-longer synopses, at the editor's request, only to discover from my literary agent in May that he expected me to write the book for an initial payment of less than pounds 5,000.Even with my income from journalism, this is hardly a viable proposition. But the truly perplexing question is why a publishing house would expect a professional author to spend a year writing a book for so little money. When I posed this question to a senior figure at Penguin, which owns Hamish Hamilton, she told me she could not possibly think about how authors live, as though I had just made an extremely indecent proposal.

She also admitted that Penguin is fortunate because so many writers are willing to depend on other sources of income - the frankest admission to date that publishers expect authors to subsidise their companies.This is bad news for those of us who don't want to rely on the old stand- bys: rich parents, trust funds, other full-time jobs, generous spouses. It is also bad for readers, because it is already having dire effects on who and what gets published - television tie-ins, unreadable novels by celebrities, endless drivel about Princess Diana. I just wish more writers were prepared to stand up in public and get angry about it.THE Guardian, which suggested my most recent book should be pulped because it was insufficiently respectful to the late Princess, picked up last weekend on my remarks at Warwick. It also quoted an essay I wrote earlier this year, affecting astonishment that a full-time writer should aspire to live in a house and have a social life. This goes a long way to explain why authors are so reticent about money, fearing the accusation of "greedy writer" - or even worse, "greedy woman writer". I would feel crosser about this if I wasn't aware of a little-known fact, which several of the Guardian's journalists have confided to me, strictly in private.

Apparently it is a condition of employment on the books pages that the staff live together in a mobile home, parked just off the Farringdon Road. That's why they are a little - how shall I put it? - sensitive on the subject of other people's accommodation.AS it happens, I have an idea for a book which would almost certainly be a best-seller. The Little Book of Blair would be a collection of the Leader's sayings, including the moving tributes he has paid to those towering figures of our age who have had the misfortune to pass on in the last year: Frank Sinatra, Linda McCartney, Sir David English. Mr Blair's pronouncements on the recently deceased have become so frequent that a friend, active in Labour politics, told me last week that he is having a little card printed. "In case of my death," it states simply, "I do not wish to receive a tribute from Tony Blair or any other member of the present government.". She had destroyed her mother's marriage, made home life hell and now, aged 16, Belinda Raye's daughter was threatening suicide Her mother's response? `Go right ahead'.

It was the culmination of years of passionate rebellion, recrimination and violent rows that had driven mother and daughter to despair. Something had to stop the cycle of destruction WHEN LUCY told me she intended to kill herself, I opened the window of a top-floor bedroom and said, "Go ahead, make my day." And I meant it I truly hated her and wished she was out of my life. It was just another episode in the destructive relationship between me and my teenage daughter. Ramming home the point, I even suggested she take some pain killers first to ease her downward passage. "There's some on my dresser," I said, before leaving for work. Mothers have pre-conceived ideas of how our "little darlings" should be, and when they don't turn out the way we've envisaged, we're badly let down and disappointed Lucy gave me pure hell.

At the age of 15, and just two weeks before she was due to return to school after the summer holiday, she declared that she was not going back to school. She intended getting a job at MacDonald's and having a baby.I was furious. Lucy had been having a hard time at secondary school since she started Before the age of 12, she'd been a delightful child Obedient, tidy and even considerate But then the letters started coming from her year tutor. She was not handing in homework, she was talking back to the teachers and walking off when they tried to converse with her about her attitude And she was bunking off. I was back and forth at the school so much I became familiar with every corridor.Eventually it was deemed that there must be problems at home because her father was living abroad, and her mother had a new boyfriend she did not get on with and a new baby.