Madonna among BBC’s faces of the year

These are some of the women who have made the headlines in 2003, as seen by the BBC News profiles unit.

Barbara Cassani
Katharine Hepburn
Aung San Suu Kyi
Diana Mosley
Meg Ryan
Maxine Carr
Thora Hird
Jessica Lynch
Gwyneth Paltrow
Martha Stewart

Charlotte Church
Margaret Hodge
Madonna
Paula Radcliffe
Mother Theresa

Shirin Ebadi
Chandrika Bandaranaike-Kumaratunga
Liza Minnelli
Leni Riefenstahl
The Countess of Wessex

MADONNA
Despite releasing a new album, shooing ramblers off her Wiltshire estate and backing Wesley Clark for president, the irrepressible Madonna still found time to launch a children’s book, The English Roses. The beginning of a series, Roses is already a bestseller and one critic describes how, in it, Madonna “tells her readers not to interrupt and listen carefully”. A change, then, from her previous literary offering – the 1992 Sex – which was graphically erotic and ceremoniously burned by religious groups.
Source: BBC News