Pamela Druckerman is a freelance journalist on lifestyle issues married to an English football writer. They live in Paris and have three young children. She is the author of French Children Don't Throw Food and Lust in Translation. Apart from using her own first-hand observation of her French friends and neighbours, she has interviewed scores of French mothers, teachers and child experts.John Bird was born just after the Second World War to a London Irish family in slum-ridden Notting Hill. Homeless at five, he went on to spend three years in an orphanage before, at the age of ten, embarking on a spree of shoplifting, house breaking, vandalism and arson. Periods in jail were followed in his… twenties by the birth of three of his children and his metamorphosis into a successful businessman. At the age of 45, using his own life and professional experience, he founded the Big Issue and over the last fifteen years has overseen its development into an international movement which stretches from Tokyo to Totnes.