Features

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...

Falkland Islanders: ‘Our home is not a tradeable rock’

In the 190 years they have spent on their chilly South Atlantic outpost, Falkland Islanders have been called many names, not all of them polite. To Argentines, they are colonists, pirates, “Kelpers” or, simply, the Británicos who squat illegally on...

More women are willing to go under the knife to get ‘ballerina boobs’

reset. “For decades, larger breasts have been tied to a very specific beauty ideal shaped by media, celebrity culture and commercialisation which promoted bigger breasts as more feminine and desirable,” says the psychologist Carolyn Mair, author of...

The aristocrat who became an ANARCHIST

Labour’s grip on my beloved Wales began with a Keir and will end with a Keir

I was switched at birth

‘Our Motown contracts were like slavery’

Otis Williams, the founder and, at 84, last surviving original member of the Temptations, remembers the night in 1964 when the group was performing at the 20 Grand Club in Detroit. Smokey Robinson said he had a song he wanted them to record. It was a...

A sex pest in Qatar threatened to rape my wife – but I was the one thrown in jail

What the Brisitsh get wrong about fish

Why is anti-capitalist Dale Vince paying himself millions?

How dating became a cruel tightope walk for amen

BINKY vs THE BAKER

The vast majority of social media influencers think they can have their cake and eat it. At least that is the conclusion Reshmi Bennett, owner of Anges de Sucre, a luxury London bakery, has come to. Bennett founded her business 15 years ago; she has...

THRONE TOGETHER

It was four days after the death of Elizabeth II that the nation saw her four children come together. The new King Charles, Princess Anne, Prince Andrew and Prince Edward stood silently in vigil, backs turned to her coffin in St Giles’ Cathedral,...

Genius jackets for jeans

‘When he opened the bag, he must have thought he’d hit the jackpot’

Imagine for a moment that you are a Soho pickpocket, just shy of 30, of no fixed abode, and a dab hand at working the streets of London. An enterprising bag thief such as yourself might like to keep a checklist for a job well done. Phone and wallet?...

The 1970s food revival with a healthy twist

BAD RAP

The backlash to the booking of Kanye West as the headliner of a London music festival was nothing if not predictable. Surprise that West was to play Wireless, his first British gig for 11 years, turned into outrage that a rapper with a long history of...

The town that banned smartphones

The essential elements of a great British walk

The British love a good walk – it’s the nation’s favourite active pastime by a country mile. We’ve been hiking in nature for pleasure since the 18th century, when the Romantics made it look so dreamy. In the 1930s, the Kinder Scout mass trespassers...

The celebrities who are actually nice ...and those who aren’t

Villain: When Jeremy Clarkson mercilessly mocked my driving Marianka Swain I am a terrible, terrible driver. I learnt to drive in London, when I was 19, which didn’t help – it must have the most impatient motorists in the world. But the nadir came...

How the Royals lost the art of flirting

I was one of the first to test drive Jaguar’s woke new EV

Welcome to the controversial rose-pink Jaguar. I know this car isn’t pink, but it (or one like it) was when it was displayed at Miami Art Week last December. Resplendent in Barbie satin fuchsia, Jaguar’s Type 00 concept became, for a while at least,...

‘Charles is a mensch. He is as much a part of our life as we are of his’

On November 6, 1995, the then chief rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, was part of a small delegation joining Charles, then Prince of Wales, on an RAF plane returning to Britain from Israel, where they had attended the funeral of the assassinated Israeli prime...

Joanna Lumley

They say it’s dangerous to meet your heroes, but actress Joanna Lumley puts paid to that immediately. It’s early in the morning and when I compliment her on her luminous complexion, she laughs a big, full-blown laugh. “That’s all to do with make-up,...

I was an ultra-Orthodox Jewish wife...

The Classic FM bungling that fuelled Myleene Klass’s stalking nightmare

Last Thursday, Peter Windsor, the stalker who caused TV and radio presenter Myleene Klass a year of “sheer terror”, was made the subject of a hospital order at Warwick Crown Court. Windsor had been found guilty in October of stalking Klass and her...

Why looking up to him, and down on him, can now be classed as history

For decades, “class” has formed a critical part of the toolkit used to analyse polling results and to plan marketing campaigns. Think of those famous middle-class swing voters of the 1990s – dubbed “Mondeo man” – targeted by Tony Blair. Or, in more...

Drink, drugs and casual sex – and on weeknights too: This Life turns 30

It was the Nineties cult TV drama that explored living and working in London while contemplating turning 30 as your social life, love life and career plans all felt precarious. Now This Life itself has turned 30. First broadcast in March 1996, this...

How a £7m egg brought down the ‘British Fabergé’

The secret life and hidden millions of the man outed as Banksy

Now you see me: Gwyneth Paltrow’s naked ambition

If there were an Oscar for scene stealer, it should unquestionably go to Gwyneth Paltrow’s glutes. Dressed in what looked like a boring, shiny towel from the front – the sort of thing a Miami matron might wear after a long day of sun and vodka at...

‘DRILL, BABY, DRILL’

Michael Wolff: Everyone is missing the real story on Epstein

Michael Wolff has known Donald Trump since they came up together in New York in the 1980s and has spent more time than most trying to understand his thinking. Wolff, now 72, was the irascible Vanity Fair columnist, Trump the omnipresent property...

Britain spends billions more than France on defence, so why is French military kit superior?

The nanny who shaped the King

‘I spent a long time getting it wrong on the red carpet’

On patrol with Britain’s deer hunter-in-chief

How the Royal Navy became a national embarrassment

Britain’s postwar fleet boasted hundreds of warships. Now our one destroyer earmarked for Cyprus is stuck in dock with the welders on board

Martin Clunes: Labour doesn’t understand the rural economy

“We have a Government that doesn’t appear to know anything about the countryside or the rural economy, and certainly doesn’t show any interest in it,” says Martin Clunes, whose latest role finds him at the emotional core of a new British film, Mother’s...

My daughter’s girls school accepted a trans pupil – and refused to admit it

My daughter’s school – my alma mater – states proudly that it is an all-girls institution. But last year, I discovered that it can no longer make the claim to be single-sex. It admitted a biological male. It was quite by accident that I heard my...

I carry anxiety about the outcome and where we landed

The battle for control of Warner Bros Discovery is over. In one of the biggest entertainment deals in history, the maker of the Harry Potter franchise and every extraordinary HBO drama series from The Sopranos to Succession, was sold at auction last...

BEST SUPPORTING ACTS

Selfies but no Spice: my wild night with Cruz Beckham

“Wait, did you say a cruise,” a passing Irishman asked, glancing perplexedly at the queue. He was only looking for a drinking spot, he said, and he seemed to have found a few already this evening. “A Beckham … cruise?” Eddying slightly, he screwed up...

Wave goodbye to gnarled hands and wrinkly fingers

The best proof that face creams work? Look at the difference in skin quality between an assiduously cared for face and largely ignored hands as they slide into middle age. Crepiness, brown spots, popping veins and – as spotted on Nicole Kidman, 56, as...

I stayed at the £75K-a-week clinic where Fergie took refuge

Amid the effluvia of Mountbatten-Windsor-related yarns spilling out from the Epstein sewer, one has really caught my attention. The news that Fergie had “secretly taken refuge” from the scandal at the Paracelsus Recovery Clinic in Zurich, Switzerland,...

Kirk Jones: I quit Hollywood to make I Swear

When I met Kirk Jones, the writer and director of Tourette’s biopic I Swear, a week before Sunday’s Bafta ceremony, he hoped that Robert Aramayo might defy seemingly insurmountable odds in the best actor race. “I would love Rob to pick up best actor,...

‘Everyone in fashion is afraid of taking risks’: Browns founder Joan Burstein at 100

Joan Burstein’s Studio 54 days may be behind her, but her 100th birthday last Saturday was not planned as a quiet affair. “Ibiza, a full orchestra, dancing…” she tells me. The queen – or is it empress? – of fashion retail sold Browns, the emporium she...

The lofty reason Jacob Elordi is wrong for Bond

Jacob Elordi as James Bond? Chop half a foot off him, then we’ll talk. The 28-year-old Australian star of Euphoria, Saltburn, Frankenstein and the current box-office smash Wuthering Heights is suddenly in the frame, albeit with his head poking...

Topshop is back – but pick your pieces carefully

It feels sacrilegious to say, but the return of Topshop might have been somewhat overstated. After an initial flurry of excitement about the comeback of the high street favourite earlier last year, there was an uninspiring catwalk show last September...

Why are hotels now putting loos on view?

I am lying on the bed with a favourite book, glass of champagne beside me, surveying the glorious view from the balcony of the uber-luxury new W hotel in Edinburgh. I have been mildly discomfited on arrival, in the king-size deluxe room (£315 per...

Why a sauna can be as good for you as a workout

How Margot Robbie became the most powerful woman in Hollywood

Why Gen Z are too stupid to read Wuthering Heights

The hotly anticipated film adaptation of Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, has led to a surge in sales of Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel. Bookshops shifted more than five times more copies last month (10,670) compared with January...

What to wear on Valentine’s Day, however you spend it

When it comes to dressing for Valentine’s Day, you could go literal. Hearts on everything, red top-to-toe, regardless of the setting. Alas, that’s not our style. On The Telegraph fashion desk, we’re favouring a more muted approach. Think artfully...

'My husband left me and has never told me why'

How the capital lost its allure for young professionals

Is your crockery killing you?

Why Twiggy is still our greatest supermodel

There is no point saying, “Twiggy is back” – because the truth is that she never went away. This week, however, Burberry’s new campaign reminded us of something Britain has always known: that Dame Lesley Lawson, with the haircut that launched a...

I tried Britain’s biggest breakfast sandwich

“I’ve got a buttered breadcake, two pieces of steak Canadian, three pieces of fried Spam, grated cheddar cheese and a giant hash brown in the centre, then four rashers of well-done griddled back bacon, a bit of HP,” says Joz Wootton as he assembles a...

Allison Pearson: When I met Mandelson I thought he was the devil incarnate

There is a word for receiving favours in return for divulging the secrets of the Crown; it begins with a T and ends in the Tower of London. I met Peter Mandelson only twice, on each occasion at a social event. Had I been a hedgehog, my spines would...

CLASS ACT

The pop industry is now a battle between old-fashioned stars who just want to sing and those willing to be as brash, in-your-face and controversial as possible to grab attention. Unsurprisingly, in today’s self-obsessed world, the latter camp have been...

I lost 3st on fat jabs - and had to learn how to dress again

Jimmy Tarbuck: ‘I’m the last of an era, I’m Lucky Jim’

Jimmy Tarbuck, who is 85 and throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s was one of the most popular entertainers on TV, lives in a large mock Georgian house on a private estate backing on to a golf course in Surrey – a setting which perfectly maps with the Venn...

The plot to crush capitalism one Waitrose at a time

First, there was Extinction Rebellion. Then appeared Just Stop Oil, which was, in turn, followed by Palestine Action. Now it’s Take Back Power – the latest anti-capitalist group intent on subjecting Britain to a crime wave to achieve their radical...

Stylish wet-weather outfits for the dog days of winter

With two dogs that need to be walked twice a day, every day, getting dressed at this time of year can be a challenge. We live on the Isle of Wight, and a walk on the beach often means a strong headwind (goodbye, blow-dry), while if the tide is in, I...

Why Labour’s NEC now runs Britain

The demise of England’s great cathedral schools

The killer primary teacher damned by her own words

If Labour thinks Reform is ‘fascist’, what to call a party that cancels elections?

Would you like Nigel Farage to be prime minister? If so, a senior Labour minister has a terrifying warning for you. During an interview with Sky News on Sunday, Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, was asked whether it was true that she thinks a Reform...

Five great road trips to banish the winter blues

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The city in a flap over pigeons