It's been a good week for … the urban jungle

A LAIDBACK country life is often heralded as the utopian dream, but a new study is claiming to deftly turn that notion on its head.

According to Dr Jeanette Bicknell from York University in Toronto, urban dwellers enjoy more life satisfaction than their rural counterparts.

Dr Bicknell found that fast-paced cities such as London and New York fuel contentment among their residents who profess to feeling like they make better use of their time than those with a more leisurely tempo of life. In short, being busy is viewed as a "badge of honour".

Yet, something rings a tad hollow. Secret to happiness? Nah. More like using a full diary to divert from an empty life …

It's been a bad week for … children's books

A LEADING author has expressed dismay that modern children's books are being "sanitised".

Geraldine McCaughrean – awarded the CILIP Carnegie Medal for her novel, Where the World Ends, last week – suggested that the genre has undergone a major dumbing down with a range of topics no longer deemed suitable for younger readers.

She said: "With a book that's going to be sold into schools you get a list of things that are unacceptable – no witches, no demons, no alcohol, no death, no religion. It really does cut down what you can write about."

McCaughrean, who has penned more than 160 books, added: "It's extraordinary because in pre-school you can read fairy tales in their original form and some of them are really scary and dark.

"But you go to junior school and all of a sudden the fairy tales that you read in school have been sanitised and cleaned up."

She makes an excellent point. Our moral compass can be shaped by the books we read in our formative years. Wrapping kids up in cotton wool does little to instil a pivotal sense of good and bad.

Next there will be demands that the CS Lewis classic be re-named as The Lion, the Nice Old Lady and the Wardrobe.

Or insisting that the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood didn't eat Grandma, but rather whisked her out for a lovely vegan afternoon tea.