Sophie learns to catwalk again after op

AS A top model, Sophie Dahl was used to parading down the catwalk at the world’s fashion shows. But she’s now revealed that she ‘had to learn to walk again’ after undergoing major surgery on her hip.

Sophie, 44, who is an author like her celebrated grandfather Roald Dahl, says she’s fought a debilitating battle with hip dysplasia since she was a child.

‘It wasn’t picked up when I was a kid,’ says Sophie, pictured before the op. ‘So I had surgery a couple of years ago where they cut my pelvis all around the acetabulum to create adequate hip sockets.’

Sophie, who has two children with her jazz musician husband Jamie Cullum, refers to the example of Roald’s first wife, Oscar-winner Patricia Neal. She says: ‘Every time I felt sorry for myself, I’d think of my grandmother, who had three cerebral aneurysms when she was 39, which rendered her paralysed and without speech, and I’d pull myself together and try and climb the stairs again.’