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  • The Telegraph

    Andrew Motion: My boarding school was brutal – birdwatching freed me from its misery

    My father was a brewer, and although he commuted from my childhood home in north Essex to his office in London every weekday, he thought of himself as a countryman (like his own father before him) and lived for country pleasures. In hindsight, these seem to have consisted largely of killing creatures in seasonal rotation: foxes, pheasants, partridges and rabbits during the cooler months; salmon (in Scotland) and trout (wherever they could be found) when the weather cheered up. But he wasn’t simp

  • The Telegraph

    The NHS cult of natural birth is failing both mothers and children

    One of the reasons I waited so long to have a baby was the endless trail of horror stories about pregnancy and birth. I had the distinct impression that – despite the availability of C-sections on demand – one would be pressured into having a natural birth.

  • The Telegraph

    How to get picture-perfect topiary in time for garden-party season

    Nothing sets off a garden quite like a neatly clipped topiary ball, cone or, perhaps, cloud. If you fancy having a go at turning your shrubs into topiary in time for the first garden parties of the summer, now is a good time of year to get cracking. You could take the easy way out by buying a ready-made design in the form of a wire frame. Some even come with a plant attached. The plant will grow into the shape and you just trim off the excess as it pokes through the frame. It is not, though, the