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What to wear to a destination wedding

The joy of receiving a wedding invitation can be snuffed out pretty sharply when you catch a glimpse of the destination. We’re familiar with what’s expected for a summer wedding in the village church. We scrub up well for a fancy stately-home do. We’ve...

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The drug-free way to bring your blood pressure back from the danger zone

I wince as I feel the familiar squeeze of pressure on my arm and the obligatory “just try to relax” from the doctor. My heart is racing, my breath shallow, and the results aren’t good. I have high blood pressure. My blood pressure (BP) has come in at...

‘We asked Brian May to join Sparks – but he stuck with Queen’

Before we start: a note. When Ron or Russell Mael of Sparks refer to “This Town”, they are talking about their 1974 hit, This Town Ain’t Big Enough for Both of Us – a song that left such an indelible impression when they first performed it on Top of...

My sister was killed when her horse fell at a jump. Eventing needs to be safer

Two years ago, I was waiting for the lift at my local Tube station when my phone rang. On the other end of the line was my mum with devastating news: my younger sister, the international event rider Georgie Campbell, had been killed while competing at...

Dive into the shimmering realm of Britain’s professional mermaids

It’s a Friday evening at Sea Life aquarium in Manchester, and a group of children is almost ultrasonic with excitement. In the tank in front of them are fish (plenty of them), a turtle named Ernie, a couple of stingrays called Babs and Rita, a zebra...

The vanished fashion brands that shaped Britain’s style

It was 1975, and I will never forget the excitement of walking from Manchester Piccadilly station, after a one-hour journey from Stafford, and passing the man with the tripe cart – because I knew I was only minutes away from entering my favourite...

Seven smart food swaps to stay healthy on a budget

If you’ve recently walked out of the supermarket wondering how a small bag of groceries appears to cost the same as a weekly shop, you’re not alone – or wrong. The Food Foundation has revealed that the price of food has increased by 30.5 per cent...

Allison Pearson: My friend Rod Liddle was a great British freedom fighter

According to George Orwell, a journalist should always be a guerrilla on the flank of the regular army “never marching in lockstep”. At a time when too many in our trade fall into line for an easy life, and invitations to the right dinner parties, Rod...

It’s wrong that it’s me who’s the Earl of Devon, not my big sister

When the Prince of Wales announced the sale of a number of farms earlier this year, he would not have been aware that he was stirring up a 487-year-old grudge with the Earl of Devon. But Charles Courtenay, the 19th Earl, is still brooding over the...

Matthew Bourne’s lust-drenched new show is the perfect summer scorcher

Dance The Car Man Sadler’s Wells, London, EC1 ★★★★★ What better programming for this hot summer than Matthew Bourne’s steamy, sweaty, lust-drenched thriller The Car Man? First seen in 2000, this devilishly entertaining dance show – which fuses...

‘Whenever Zendaya’s around, you know you’ll be outshone’

Consider The Odyssey’s month-long promotional campaign and you might assume Zendaya had a leading role in the film. Not only did she do countless major interviews, but she dominated social media after each premiere thanks to her signature “method...

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Booker judges’ obsession with style over substance is just plain weird

A word of advice to Booker Prize judges: never signal in advance the sorts of novels you want to support. “We’re due a return of weird literature,” said Patricia Lockwood in an interview last year. This year’s 13-strong longlist suggests that judging...

Health and safety be damned: the school trips that made us who we are

School trips are becoming rarer. These annual jaunts, usually held at the end of the summer term, often to France but sometimes farther afield, have fallen victim to a combination of budget cuts, cost of living concerns and parental anxiety. And even...

The mystery of why Sonia Exelby paid a man to kill her

Locked inside a cabin in the forests of central Florida, 4,000 miles from home, Sonia Exelby’s fantasy had become a nightmare. As her alleged captor took a shower, the 32-year-old British musician contacted a friend in desperation, knowing that she was...

‘In my heart, I knew he was never coming home’

When my husband, James, found out he had lung cancer, his greatest wish was to live to see his 60th birthday. Had that wish come true, had he not died at just 53, he would have watched our son grow from boy to man. He would have been there to take all...

Joe Pasquale: there’s no TV comedy for the over-60s

When Joe Pasquale was seven years old, his mother, Ethel, was involved in a serious car accident. Not wearing a seatbelt, she was thrown through the windscreen of the car, suffered concussion and subsequently developed epilepsy and depression. “She...

My heart was in my mouth as I watched the Bayeux Tapestry being moved

Like a referee addressing contestants on the television show Gladiators, a woman wearing a headset and an ochre-coloured apron is briefing staff beside a long, wheeled table in a hangarlike gallery at the British Museum. “Winch operators, are you...

Crisis of conscience: how Amnesty International lost its way

As the granddaughter of Seán MacBride, Amnesty’s late cofounder and international chairman, Iseult White feels the human-rights charity is part of her DNA. In the Seventies and Eighties, the pre-Christmas period at home was always spent writing to...

‘Easy delivery apps sent me into a spiral of alcoholism’

The first time I ordered a bottle of alcohol to my door just for myself, not to split with friends alongside a takeaway, was in the first few weeks of lockdown. Most people can remember how lucky we got with the weather that spring. It was warm and...

Dire Another Day

So, goodbye, Keir Starmer. Though I never knew you at all, you had the grace to hold yourself, while those around you crawled. They crawled out of the woodwork, and they whispered into your brain. Specifically, they whispered: “Burnham’s got a seat....

...BUT TWO VERY DIFFERENT PATHS

The four-decade friendship between A-listers Matt Damon and Ben Affleck is astonishingly enduring, given the fickle nature of Hollywood. Yet the choices made by these Boston buddies, who together won an Oscar for Good Will Hunting, could hardly be more...

I fell foul of fashion’s deadliest trousers

They’re my favourite buy of the summer – a silky pair of blue and white wide-legged trousers and matching top. Or a co-ord set, as the fashionable people would say. They’re not actually silk. They’re 100 per cent polyester and were – whisper it – dead...

Jack Mosley

After my dad [Michael Mosley, the TV doctor and diet guru] died, mum and I received thousands of messages from people who wanted to let us know just how much he had helped them. They spoke of reversing their diabetes, or dramatically improving their...

THE SCARY TRUTH ABOUT SAUSAGES

You can’t beat a banger. Whether it’s a Lincolnshire, cocktail or Cumberland sausage, they are the unifying factor across fry-ups, parties and barbecues and a firm staple in the British diet. When it comes to our health, the news isn’t all gloomy....

‘It’s impossible to enjoy a body you’ve known only how to hate’

After the demise of my first long-term relationship at 23, I stopped enjoying sex and stopped being able to climax. For some years, I put this down to being “broken” and simply “not a sexual person”, until a chance encounter with a fellow guest at a...

The eco-fascists turning climate change into a race war

Alfie Coleman was 16 when Britain went into Covid lockdown and, like many teenagers, he spent more time online than he should have. Doomscrolling in his bedroom, he found much to trouble his young mind – including apocalyptic warnings about climate...

Find the right shades to frame your face shape

Eyewear experts spill the secrets to selecting a pair of sunglasses to match your features and personality. By On what basis did you choose your last pair of sunglasses? Because you lost your previous pair and needed some to hand? Because you were...

Are you in the stress danger zone?

Short cuts to beach chic

How white working-class kids lost the grammar school race

Jemima* is mixed race, but when she first toured Queen Elizabeth’s School with her eldest son, she was struck by the lack of diversity at the north London grammar. Founded in the 16th century and located in Barnet, Queen Elizabeth’s consistently ranks...

‘Islamists want to dominate, not integrate’

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Bring back Miliband? That’s bananas

Ambassadors are paid to be calm and collected, but the European envoy who rang me out of the blue seemed utterly exasperated. Could I meet him and a colleague in half an hour? Yes, it was important. The colleague turned out to be a visiting diplomat...

Why Madonna has swapped Manhattan for Marylebone

When Madonna describes a beachside town as her “idea of heaven”, one pictures a beautiful location catering to the super-rich: the squares of St Tropez in early summer, perhaps, or the hidden coves of Capri that are accessible only by boat. What one...

Holly’s high-risk comeback

What to eat to beat the heat

Record temperatures and a rare Met Office red warning this week have caused school closures and travel disruption – while amber warnings are still in place and set to continue into the weekend. When temperatures soar like this, most people know to...

Brexit 10 years on: Allison Pearson, David Frost and Ambrose Evans-Pritchard

Is it really 10 years? I’ve been trying to cast my mind back to the actual moment when we knew. Sleepy but glued to the TV, determined to stay awake, hoping against hope that, despite everything, we could do it. Rochford, Forest Heath, Eden, Erewash....

How to beat the heatwave

EXPOSURE THERAPY

It’s a boiling hot Sunday when I pull up to the big green gates of the Heritage Family Naturist Club, at the end of a leafy lane in Berkshire. Secretary Ken Clark meets me, as arranged. He’s naked from the waist up – I thought I’d have time to...

Air rage, alcohol and estrangement:

Family members often pick sides in an acrimonious divorce, but it’s unusual to see children publicly declare their allegiance to one parent and estrangement from another. Yet, that’s exactly what seems to be happening with Brad Pitt and Angelina...

THE NEIGHS HAVE IT

Why Eton is the perfect fit for Prince George

‘Auf Wiedersehen, Pet was like being in a rock band’

Kevin Whately is easy to spot in the foyer of Garsington Opera’s studio space, nestled in an idyllic corner of the Chilterns. He sidles up, his round, boyish face instantly recognisable from the hit TV shows Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, Peak Practice,...

Decline and fall of the aristocracy

The ad campaign that sparked a pile-on from the pro-Gaza mob

Gwyneth Paltrow has always rubbed people up the wrong way. Born rich, well-connected – you might have heard of her godfather, Steven Spielberg – and beautiful, she was perceived as a “nepo baby” in Hollywood long before it became Instagram’s insult du...

The unlikely cult of Jane McDonald

The nightmare seating plan for Taylor Swift’s wedding

The world’s biggest pop star, Taylor Swift, will marry American football player Trevis Kelce next month in a ceremony so feverishly anticipated (and secretive) that it makes the Prince and Princess of Wales’s 2011 nuptials look low-rent. Swift is...

I was a pro-Palestine fanatic... then I went to Israel

It wasn’t long after Hamas carried out its attack on Israel on October 7 2023 that Taryn Thomas found herself swept up in the chorus of pro-Palestine activists mobilising against the Jewish state. Even before Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza following...

Derek Jacobi 'There is no such thing as a working-class actor any more'

At 93, Joan Collins is still queen of the red carpet. What’s her secret?

Dame Joan Collins is fighting fit, but you don’t have to take her word for it: she has the paperwork to prove it. “I just finished making a movie, My Duchess, a few months ago,” she says of her latest role, in which she portrays Wallis Simpson in her...

The English eccentric is a vanishing breed – just when we need them most

Heads turn as the man known as “Soho George” approaches an Italian café in Frith Street, in London’s West End. He is dressed in a houndstooth suit with a custom-tailored calf-length jacket, a pale bolero hat, bowling shoes, dark glasses, chunky gold...

I’m a cardiologist. These are the mistakes midlifers make which can lead to heart disease

I grew up in Sicily, starting each morning with a walk around my tranquil town, before enjoying a breakfast prepared by my mother, with fresh coffee, buckwheat bread, yogurt and fruit. Our diet was simple and rich in fresh whole foods: a dinner of...

Why a Welsh dandy dyed his Pomeranian lilac

Even among the gallery of rogues, popinjays and oddballs that comprise the more colourful parts of the British aristocracy, Henry Cyril Paget stands out. Born in 1875, he was an Eton-educated child of Empire whose ancestor lost a limb at Waterloo....

Wake up your wardrobe with dreamy ‘dayjamas’

There was once a time when wearing pyjamas in public signalled either a nervous breakdown or a killer hangover on the school run. Now, the chicest women in Europe are spending the summer dressed as though they have just floated out of bed at a boutique...

The photogenic women changing the face of the far-Right

Not so long ago, the stock image of someone from the far-Right was male, probably bald, with tattoos and wearing steel-toe-capped boots. Times, however, have moved on: this week, it was reported that the Government had banned seven “far-Right...

‘However good my singing is, trolls still comment on my weight’

“The French really know how to write sensual music,” swoons Aigul Akhmetshina. The 29-yearold Russian mezzo-soprano is singing the role of Delilah when Richard Jones’s colourful production of Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila returns to Covent Garden this...

‘My alma mater isn’t the same – my son would feel like a minority’

For three generations, the men in Tom’s* family went to the same British public school. His grandfather started there in the 1930s, his father in the late 1960s and Tom himself in the 1990s. He and his wife always assumed their own son, Hugo*, would...

‘They turned their backs on us’: the pupils taking on their striking teachers

As teenagers prepared to sit their English literature exams yesterday, the pupils at Connaught School for girls, in Leytonstone, east London, were also getting ready for a more fundamental challenge. Shortly before 8am, a band of teenage girls...

I will not be bullied into silence – rational debate is good for society

What better place to meet Matt Le Tissier than The Dell pub at St Mary’s? As I arrive, the man who ended 103 years of history at Southampton’s old ground with a fairy-tale goal is playing darts while chomping on a Double Decker. “Drink?” he asks,...

David Attenborough Britain's natural treasure

The ‘redneck at heart’ who is smashing Taylor Swift’s records

She’s the Bible-reading, horseloving, gun-owning “redneck at heart” taking over the global charts. Ella Langley, an Alabamaborn country singer, was barely known outside of Nashville 18 months ago; now, the 27-year-old is being touted as the new Taylor...

Faces at this year’s fashion shindig are beyond belief

Well, so much to discuss from Monday night’s little shindig in New York. The fact that the Met Gala’s tickets are now so extortionate (rumoured to cost up to $100,000 [£74,000] each) that even the luxe-iest of fashion houses are pulling back. The...

Why baby boomers really do have it better

At the age of 32 – the same age my daughter, Charlie, is now – my husband Ross and I were the proud owners of a beautiful four-bedroomed farm conversion, with two acres of garden in the countryside near Alcester in Warwickshire. Two large cars sat in...

How Labour burnt its bridges with voters in Wales

Wales was once the powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution. By the 1820s, it was responsible for 40 per cent of Britain’s iron exports, pioneering new technologies such as Henry Cort’s “puddling” method, which made wrought iron cheaper and more...

Why the biggest mistake you can make is to retire

Perhaps your dream of retirement involves sailing off into the sunset on a round-the-world cruise? Or maybe you’re planning to play 24/7 golf, interspersed with the odd spot of Sudoku? Lyndsey Simpson says those of us who are thinking of this stage of...