Kerry Hudson

2 weeks ago | heraldscotland.com | Kerry Hudson

There are now more children in poverty than during the mid-1990s (Image: Getty/Derek McArthur) Six years ago, I published a memoir called Lowborn: Growing up, Getting away and Returning to Britain's Poorest Towns. To write this book, I returned to some of the poorest streets in the UK, where I had grown up, to discover if anything had changed for families in the intervening 30 years. In Scotland, this meant visiting my old estates in Airdrie, Coatbridge and Aberdeen.

4 weeks ago | heraldscotland.com | Kerry Hudson

The Experimentarium, Copenhagen (Image: Kerry Hudson) Until I hit my forties, I believed there were two types of traveller. There’s the splurger, who goes away once a year and lets the good times roll, believing the cost of everything on holiday is something to worry about on the flight home. Then there’s the scrimper, going local and cheap wherever possible. I have always been very much in the latter camp, first because I was broke and because I wanted to travel more.

1 month ago | heraldscotland.com | Kerry Hudson

I grew up in communities steeped in poverty, indeed, in every aspect of inequality, on council estates around Aberdeen and North Lanarkshire. In the 1980s and 90s of my youth these were communities where children had few opportunities and little hope, more so because they witnessed adults struggling with that same poverty often further entrenched in mental health or substance abuse issues.

1 month ago | heraldscotland.com | Kerry Hudson

I consider myself very much a ‘yes’ woman. In fact, I pride myself on it. Would you like another slice of cake? Yes. Would you like an extra hour in bed? Another drink, or ten? Absolutely. Would you like to take a plane with a group of strangers to a place you'd never been before? Hell yes. However, ever since forging a note explaining my five-year period to get out of P.E. at High School, I have simply never understood the appeal of competitive, sweaty games.

2 months ago | heraldscotland.com | Kerry Hudson

Recently I fulfilled a lifelong dream of visiting Nashville, Tennessee, or Music City as the locals like to call it. I did all the things you’d expect: I bought cowboy boots from Broadway’s Boot Barn. I stood on "the magic spot’" the cross of black electrical tape in the legendary RCA Studio B on which Elvis recorded Are You Lonesome Tonight. I cried tears of laughter (and, frankly, tequila) at a Predators’ ice hockey game as the whole crowd chanted that the referee was a "Zebra". Of course I ate.