In the depths of her darkest moments, afflicted by the heartbreak of a broken marriage, renowned writer, journalist and author Bel Mooney finds solace and hope in a small rescue dog, Bonnie.

In this honest and absorbing narrative, Bel tells the story of finding the courage and the strength to rebuild her life by learning from the bond she shares with her pet. On this journey she discovers truths about dogs and humans alike she never dreamed of, shares stories of dogs in literature, art and history, and confronts her own contradictions of loss and gain. More than a memoir, Bel shares her wisdom, her insight and the strength to love and forgive for which the readers of her column adore and admire her.

Truly inspiring and utterly engaging, Small Dogs Can Save Your Life is a story about loss, survival, understanding and finding love again.

The book is pubished by Harper Collins in Hardback at £14.99.

The subtitle to this book is ‘Conversations on Faith and Doubt’ - and it is the book of my long-running series on Radio 4, in which I talk to people distinguished in many fields about the whole issue of whether or not there is a God, and why human beings need to believe in something outside themselves. Out of thirty five interviews done in the past I have picked twenty five, and I know you will feel fascinated and uplifted by Ben Okri, Jeanette Winterson, Denis Healey, Melvyn Bragg, Philip Pullman, and many many more.

The book is pubished by Hodder &Stoughton at £10.99.

The Vintage Book of Marriage.
2000

Romantic love has spurred a million pens to pour out passion and longing, but conjugal love has never been considered romantic. 'Succesful marriages,' wrote Lord David Cecil, 'have seldom inspired succesful poetry.' Bel Mooney has set out to prove him wrong in a fascinating and entertaining book on love, harmony, betrayal and forgiveness, for married couples and would-be couples alike.

This richly varied anthology follows the course of marriage from theories of Bertrand Russell and Sydney Smith, to proposals, wedding days - and nights - the domesticity brought by daily life, the arrival of children, infidelity and forgiveness, up to the sad inevitabilty of the death of one spouse before the other. It will fascinate anyone interested in what Bel Mooney calls 'one of the greatest tests of character any of us have to face'.

The classic anthology was published in hardcover in 1989 as From This Day Forward then in paperback as The Penguin Book of Marriage

Perspectives for Living
1992

'Perspectives of Living' is based on two series for BBC Radio 4 in which Bel Mooney interviews twelve people about the way one particular deathaffected their lives. Each interview concentrates on a different loss, but the effect is to remind us most powerfully that loss is both unique and universal.

What the interviews have in common is an understanding of gain through loss. It might represent (as in the case of Lord Hailsham) an intensification of religious faith; or (as with Claire Short) a simple, humanistic faithin the perpetual nature of human goodness. But all twelve people have truly achieved a perspective for living - a knowledge that loss places you permanently of the interface between suffering and acceptance, and that grief and love are two sides of the same coin.

Chris Patten talks about his mother, and Dan Topolski about his father. Bernard Levin remembers the loss of a dear friend, and biographer Anne Chisholm describes the tragic early death of her sister - which, with sad irony, provided her with an unexpected gift. Clare Short honours the memory of a happy childhood of which her father Frank was the centre. The novelist Alice Thomas Ellis, actor Barrie Rutter, and Val Hazel all tell of the particularly painful experience of losing a child, whilst Lord Hailshamand the poet Pamela Gillilan talk about the death of a beloved spouse. Equally moving is Tony Whitehead's description of the deterioration, through AIDS, of his partner; and Christopher Booker's haunting story of the murder of his younger sister.

Bel Mooney's Somerset
1985

'This is not a guide book, for there are plenty of those, but it would be pleasing to think it might guide the reader into my enthusiasms, even if only from the comfort of his or her airmchair.'

In her introduction, Bel Mooney sets the tone of this delightfully personal account of her 'adopted county'. Brought up in Liverpool, she writes of Somerset with the rapture of the late convert, travelling through it's towns and villages in all seasons, observing sights as various as the Minehead Raft Race or rare beakhead moulding at All Saints, Lullington; the mysterious Glastonbury Tor and the magnificence of Wells Cathedral.

She begins with Exmoor, with Lorna Doone, prize sheep at the county show, St. Bueno, the smallest parish church in England, moving on to the Quantock Hills, dotted with Bronze Age barrows and cairns. She describes the vale of Taunton Deane with it's rich red soil, and Cadbury Hill and the Somerset lore of King Arthur. We learn of the flat sodden world of the Wetlands, the dramatic beauty of the Mendips - wild, windblown trees and the 'gruffy ground' of abandoned mines. We can envisage the mud of Stert Flats, visit Burnham-on-Sea and Weston-super-Mare - a little melancholy out of season - and the accommodating, quiet, green fields and watery sky of the Eastern edge of the county. Somerset writers such as Parson Woodeforde, Coleridge and T.S.Eliot are introduced; so are characters from history - Judge Jeffries and the doomed Duke of Monmouth.

The book is designed to be read as a narrative, and covers the whole of the old county of Somerset, dismissing the boundry changes of 1974, and including, therefore, the elegant spa town of Bath.

Bel Mooney's enticing observations, her thoughts, idiosyncracies and passions, will be shared and enjoyed by anyone who plans even to pass through one of Britain's most beautiful counties.

The Year of the Child
1979

This was my first book, and some saw it as a collection of classic accounts of child development.

The Year of the Child is both a collection of warm, lively, sensitive child portraits and a study of childhood itself.

'Bel Mooney has taken twelve children from different parts of the British Isles and observed them over a year as they play, learn and grow. She saw Denise being born, watched Gemma , the daughter of company executive, at her nursery school and heard the fears of the the parents of Donald, a West Indian child from Birmingham. She saw David in his preparatory school and Melanie in her comprehensive; talked to a fourteen-year-old Asian boy about his experience of race, and to a ten-year-old Welsh boy about family violence.'

The twelve chapters in The Year of the Child mirror the stages in a child's development from total dependance to independance and self-awareness and the beginnings of a critical attitude to the world around - a world in which he or she, whatever the social background, has had very little personal choice. The Year of the Child makes a valuable contribution to social history, describing six boys and six girls from different parts of the British Isles and from three broad social groups; it goes beyond journalism and social comment to become a re-enactment of what the author calls 'that cyclical loss of innocence which is at the root of human experience.'