Esther Walker Journalist Profile

Articles

Cheerio, Chipping Norton set. Here comes the Kentish Town crew

Jul 8, 2024 | thetimes.com | Esther Walker

For the first time since the departure of David Cameron from No 10 we have a prime minister who is part of a scene. The Camerons straddled two scenes: the North Kensington blow-dried honeys and the Oxfordshire/Gloucestershire Cotswolds nexus of power. Then Boris Johnson came along, with, famously, no friends at all. The Sunaks had the rootless air of all the international mega-wealthy. If either were part of a scene or a set we didn’t know about it, or, more likely, couldn’t relate to it.
I fell in love at work - BP is right to have relationship rules

Jun 11, 2024 | thetimes.com | Esther Walker

When I was in my twenties I fell completely and insanely in love with someone at work. We flirted like mad over email for two months and had one chaste drink in the pub. When he casually revealed he had a girlfriend, my world caved in. Three months after that, a colleague revealed that my crush had moved in with that girlfriend. I was so distraught a friend gave me a Valium. It took me about a year to get over it all. A whole year! I know. Everyone laughs like a drain when I tell this story.
How the nation fell for M&S again

May 22, 2024 | thetimes.co.uk | Esther Walker

I experience a warm glow when I hear about Marks & Spencer doing well. It’s like hearing that my favourite auntie won a prize for something. It is so pluckily undefeated, permanently cheerful and optimistic, even when we are mean and call Per Una hideous and embarrassing. You want jeans? It’ll give you jeans. You like the underwear? Here, have six more knickers lines in technical fabrics that won’t show or shrink or crawl up your bum. You want calorie-counted, plant-based ready meals?
Mamma mia! The Italian PM says female solidarity does not exist

May 14, 2024 | thetimes.co.uk | Esther Walker

I may not agree with the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s politics but I do with her views on women — yes, we turn on each other. “I have always believed there is no solidarity between women — they are far less loyal than they say,” she told a podcast.
People are enraged by Gina Ford … New parents can be so defensive

Apr 24, 2024 | thetimes.co.uk | Esther Walker |Bridget Harrison

I had my first child in 2011, and like most first-time mothers I was clueless. So I bought many baby books. The one out of the five that I read that looked most helpful was The Contented Little Baby Book by Gina Ford. I looked at the lists and the timetables and thought, this is for me. The other books, with their encouragement to “go with the flow”, were anathema. Sorry, my spice rack is alphabetised but you want to me to go with the flow? There was more.
Why I decided to stop smacking my children

Apr 17, 2024 | thetimes.co.uk | Esther Walker

Doctors called on the government this week to make it illegal for parents to smack their children. It is banned in Scotland and Wales and should be here too, they say. They’re right. Not only should parents not smack their children, they don’t have to. There is always someone who says, “Yes, but what if the child puts its fingers in a socket or runs out into the road?” To which I say, there are other effective ways of teaching children not to endanger their lives without violence.
Bad table manners drive me wild but you have to modernise a bit

Apr 8, 2024 | thetimes.co.uk | Esther Walker

Once upon a time young people were nagged to sit up straight, keep their elbows off the table and told not to talk with their mouths full. Personally, I was always told not to eat so fast, like a starving wolf. I responded by marrying Giles Coren, the only person in Britain who bolts his food quicker than I do.
My 10 and 13-year-old don’t have phones, but parents still judge me

Mar 26, 2024 | inews.co.uk | Esther Walker |Kasia Delgado

We are witnessing the dawn of a new moral panic: children and smartphones. When it comes to battlelines drawn between different parenting choices, I thought the rows over sugar were the worst it could get. But the recent movement to keep children away from smartphones until adulthood is shaping up to be an epic battle. A new movement, Smartphone Free Childhood, is campaigning on this.
There’s now a law to ban coaxing cats. Anyone told the cats?

Feb 14, 2024 | thetimes.co.uk | Esther Walker

Listen, cat people are a bit shady. Not very, just a bit. I know this because I’m a cat person and in the right circumstances, I can be a bit shady. Most cat people are consciously or unconsciously aware of their shadiness and don’t do things like coax random cats off the street with dishes of cream and teaspoons of tuna. Because although we quite want to (because we are shady), we know that it is wrong. But there are always deviants who spoil things for everyone.
In school and on medication - the truth about ADHD in children

Jan 30, 2024 | thetimes.co.uk | Esther Walker

ADHD — attention deficit hyperactivity disorder — is the health story that keeps unfolding. Yesterday a huge leap in government disability payments was reported — official data showed that some of the fastest increases in recorded disability have been among children; one in nine has a disability. Within that group there has been a surge in claims for ADHD, which have more than doubled and now make up a fifth of claims.