Gareth Thomas: ‘I will be a voice for people with HIV. I won’t be derailed’

He was one of Wales’s greatest rugby stars – and the game’s first professional player to come out as gay. But it’s the truth about HIV that Gareth Thomas is set on tackling now

The ‘missing personality type’: could you be a Highly Sensitive Person?

Are you moved to tears by the smallest thing? Do emotions overwhelm you? According to a new book, it may be that you are an HSP just like Nicole Kidman, Lorde and Miranda Hart. Rhik Samadder wonders if he qualifies as one, too

Leaving London was a wrench, but our family life back in Coventry has so much more to offer

Hayley Myers was worried about relocating back to her home city of Coventry after a decade in London, but she hasn’t looked back

A winter of the mind: how to escape survival mode

For many of us, it has been a cold and traumatic year. But, as one reader found, difficult times can lead to new and revolutionary ways of thinking

A trip to my mother’s native Sweden helped me recapture my childhood

It was a nostalgic journey to rediscover my family roots, but it was also great fun and reminded me how much I missed this beautiful land

My search for female gardeners’ life stories helped me combat loneliness – and make great friends

I was lonely after lockdown and wanted to know why women gardened so wrote to those I admired. Now I have a host of new friends from different generations and backgrounds

From short king spring to ‘short men are psychopaths’. When will the obsession with men’s height end?

A new study claims to have proved that the Napoleon complex is real – but it misses the bigger picture, says feature writer Simon Usborne

It takes all 53 of our senses to bring the drab external world to life

Sensory perception is a many-splendoured thing, and without it we’d have nothing, writes Ashley Ward

What’s it like when your job involves wading through others’ suffering? I was left weeping and hopeless

Psychologists call it ‘vicarious trauma’ – the result of witnessing too much misery, even if you’re not experiencing it first hand. And it can affect anyone, from war correspondents to legal professionals and interpreters

The big idea: your personality is not set in stone

Think you’re stuck being scatty, or an introvert? The latest research suggests otherwise