Sarah Sands

Sarah Sands enjoyed decade long tenures at the London Evening Standard and The Daily Telegraph, before becoming the first female editor of the Sunday Telegraph in 2005. Her topical weekly column looks at social and cultural issues.

Sarah Sands: It can't be true – it was in the newspaper

If stars live on publicity, some of it will be made up

Recently by Sarah Sands

Sarah Sands: More email kisses would oil the wheels at work x x x

Sunday, 11 October 2009

A friend of mine, a clever, civilised man, once worked as a private banker to Fred Goodwin, during his reign of madness at Royal Bank of Scotland. My friend's field was not actually customer relationships, but Goodwin insisted that he would deal only with the most senior person in the bank where my friend worked.

Sarah Sands: Parakeets have turned Richmond into Rio

Sunday, 4 October 2009

During a birdwatching lull, after each of us had borrowed the best-looking tripod for a closer look at some marsh herons, the subject turned to the explosive issue of the ruddy duck. Being among friends, some of the company confessed that they were shooting the ducks on the quiet. Although they were introduced into this country during the 1950s, the ruddy ducks never really assimilated. They just bred and bred and made themselves a nuisance. No one used the expression "River Tiber foaming with much blood" but the tension in the twitching community was evident.

Sarah Sands: What a chap wants in bed – TV and a sarnie

Sunday, 27 September 2009

Stereotypically, the female areas of a house are the kitchen and the bedroom. Mail order brides are advised that they will need to perform in both. The male areas of the home are the downstairs lavatory and the garden shed.

Sarah Sands: Let us hope the Baroness pays her housekeeper well

Sunday, 20 September 2009

The most enjoyable sin to unmask in public figures is hypocrisy and the Daily Mail's discovery that the Attorney General had broken the very immigration law that she introduced has revived an 18th-century spirit of revelry in the media. The wit of Dr Samuel Johnson echoes still: "Be not too hasty to trust or admire the teachers of morality; they discourse like angels but they live like men."

Sarah Sands: Skip the hanky-panky and you just might score

Sunday, 13 September 2009

George Best used to tell the story of the night porter who brought a bottle of champagne to his hotel room shortly after he had walked out on Manchester United. The football star lay sprawled on a bed with casino winnings and a Miss World. "Would you mind if I asked you a question, George? Where did it all go wrong?"

Sarah Sands: Death in Hollywood: Cleopatra hunched in a wheelchair

Sunday, 6 September 2009

It is both shocking and poig-nantly apt that Dame Elizabeth Taylor was kept waiting for nearly two hours among empty chairs for Michael Jackson's funeral to begin. It is shocking because she is one of the last links with old Hollywood.

Sarah Sands: It's better to be a young mum – and cheaper, too

Sunday, 30 August 2009

The premise of Francis Wheen's new account of the Seventies, Strange Days Indeed, is that recent history can seem remarkably distant. It was pre- mobile phones, pre-Tony Blair and early Germaine Greer. Given the timescale, it is not surprising that we have lurched rather than marched towards social progress, particularly in the field of human relations.

Sarah Sands: Reasons to be cheerful – we're stoical, inventive and we cope in the rain

Sunday, 23 August 2009

Wars rage and poverty persists, but for most of us life is unremarkable, which is something for which we should all be very grateful.

Sarah Sands: Biggs is the darling of Fleet Street. When he goes, it goes

Sunday, 9 August 2009

The clue to a person's age is not hands so much as precious cultural references. The outstanding age indicator of these past days has been the media coverage of Ronnie Biggs. The name means little if you are under 40. Yet the front pages of most newspapers carried heartfelt coverage of the villain's final release from prison on the 46th anniversary of the Great Train Robbery.

Sarah Sands: Jude must learn the first Law of affairs

Sunday, 2 August 2009

The appeal to Jude Law of playing Hamlet must have been the absence of vulgarity. In the darkness of the auditorium he would be treated as a theatre actor rather than a soap opera. And, indeed, his performance was textbook perfect – a little cautiously so. I noticed he had a graceful athleticism about him, but put that to the back of my mind.

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