The least likely of military leaders, Joan of Arc changed the course of the Hundred Years' War and of history.

For years, the place I really lived - the world I watched, the one I thought and wrote about - was 15th-century France.

I have at last admitted that not only was I angry with my mother, but, in fact, I wanted to destroy her as a child. And I was so concerned to be a woman who was different from my mother that I had this vast architecture of rules.

I was the good girl who never needed disciplining, who made straight A's. I applied and was accepted to Stanford University.

When I was 11, I realised that I did not have to live the life my mother had: school, marriage, children, apartment, summer house.

I'm from a big family. I've got 10 nieces and nephews.

I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says.

There is a natural rhythm to parent-child interactions, including the fact that some parental insights prove poignant and veridical decades after they were first shared with us.