What's On

Record Store Day survival guide (for mums who'd rather be in bed)

When your other half announced they’re getting up at 5am on a Saturday to queue outside a record shop, you had questions. Mainly: “Why?” and “Can you take the kids with you?” Well, Saturday 18 April isRecord Store Day 2026, and more than 300 independent record shops across the UK will be flinging open their doors from as early as 8am. Hundreds of exclusive…
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Parenting Skills

Sorry, Silicon Valley. Our teens are not your guinea pigs

Ladies, we’ve all felt it. The tug-of-war over the glowing rectangle. The vacant stare of a teenager who hasn’t blinked in 45 minutes. The eerie silence punctuated only by thetap-tap-tapof thumbs on glass. We’ve all been there. But it’s not your fault. And it’s not just “lazy parenting.” According to a landmark court rulingon 28 March…
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Lifestyle

The Sapiosexual question: Is intelligence really sexy anymore?

You know that feeling when a man starts talking – really talking – about something that matters? Philosophy, history, the kind of conversation that crackles with curiosity? For some of us, that is attraction. Not the chiselled jawline or the gym-toned physique, but the mind behind it. As our London Mums’ editor Monica Costa put it recently: “For me, a man is charming and sexy…
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Entertainment

What if Scottish Bagpipes were… Italian?

Every Christmas in Italy, a familiar figure appears in nativity scenes and town squares: the zampognaro (bagpipes musician). Wrapped in a heavy cloak, moving slowly, playing a sound that feels older than memory itself, he seems suspended in time. For Italians, that sound means Christmas – anticipation, devotion, winter, faith. Yet behind this apparently simple, folkloric image lies a far…
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Mums Tips

The gentle rebellion – Why polite compliance is the new tyranny

Ah, freedom. The word we print on tote bags, chant at rallies, sprinkle across Instagram like Parmigiano on pasta. We live in the age that claims to worship it more than any other… and yet, if you listen closely, something feels off. Like a slightly sour note in an otherwise well-rehearsed choir. No, we’re not living under tyrants twirling moustaches and banning books at dawn. Our century…
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Parenting Skills

How we survived childhood without helmets, hand-sanitiser or half the drama

There are days when modern life feels like an endless parade of warning labels: Mind the step. Hot beverage may be hot. Do not ingest the candle. And in these moments, my mind wanders back to the generations who somehow survived childhood armed with nothing but a slice of bread, an optimistic belief in gravity, and a complete absence of adult supervision.Let us take a little wander through the…
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Parenting Skills

When the forest becomes a battleground for parenting ideals

I’ve long suspected we mums are living in an age where the greatest crime isn’t forgetting the PTA raffle… it’s daring to parent differently. And nothing proves it quite like the saga currently unfolding in the Italian woods, where a British -Australian family attempting a wholesome “back-to-nature” childhood found themselves at the centre of a national storm, mushroom poisoning…
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Parenting Skills

Ripeness is all - so stop polishing your teenager like a trophy

Edgar’s offhand wisdom inKing Lear– “ripeness is all” – is a marvellous thing to whisper into the ear of any parent currently living with a human in the body of a hormonal small asteroid. It isn’t a rallying cry for control, nor a promise of tidy victories. It’s the quiet, knotted knowledge that some growth can’t be manufactured, only allowed. Which…
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Books

Prince Andrew - A Royal reckoning

Let’s not dress this up in polite court language: the monarchy has been called into account – and yes, I’m cheering. The man formerly known as Prince Andrew, scion of privilege and poster-boy for entitlement, has been stripped of his princely style, uprooted from his Windsor estate, and quite possibly forced to stare at a life he never truly earned. The Facts: The end of “Prince…
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