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The number of babies born in England and Wales has fallen to its lowest level for any calendar half-year in nearly 50 years. Figures published today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that there were 287,236 live births recorded in the first six months of 2026, a decrease of 2,406 births compared to the first half of 2025, when there were 289,642 live births recorded – and the lowest number for any calendar half-year since 1977. The latest total is around a fifth below the first half of 2012, when 360,256 live births were recorded, compared with 287,236...

Edward III did not appear in the 1623 first folio collection of Shakespeare’s plays. Loughnane edited it for the 2016 New Oxford Shakespeare: Complete Works, acknowledging that a couple of scenes had probably been written by him, and the play had also appeared in a 2005 volume. Loughnane also co-authored the Canon and Chronology study in the New Oxford Shakespeare: Authorship Companion, which made the case for Shakespeare’s part-authorship... Rather than attributing particular lines to either author, the study focused on linguistic features and the distribution of certain “marker” words, such as “martial”, which are typically present in Marlowe’s plays...

A Christian teacher is taking legal action against a school in Sunderland after being sacked for telling students she is pro-life. Anita Meston, who's been a teacher for 28 years, joined Biddick Academy in Washington in October 2024. During a Year 8 history lesson which focused on the bombing of Dresden in World War II, she asked whether similar moral questions surrounded the current conflict in Palestine. When asked by a pupil, Meston said that she was “pro-Israel” but lamented the deaths of innocent people in Gaza. Later in the lesson, a different student asked if she was “pro-abortion”, to...

As Reporter Lewis Denison explains, pubs and retailers will be able to accept digital ID as proof of age to buy alcohol under new rules. The move aims to provide an alternative to carrying a physical ID so punters can use their phones to prove their age at the pub, festivals and concerts. The changes to the licensing act that come into force on Tuesday apply to businesses in England and Wales and the government expects it to take some time for the technology to be widely adopted. The ID will be available through third-party apps such as Yoti, which...

Trafalgar Square isn’t some random patch of concrete where London needed something colorful to fill an empty corner. This is one of the most famous historic spaces in Britain. Nelson’s Column towers over the square. Statues of King George IV, Sir Henry Havelock, and Sir Charles James Napier have stood there for generations. Whatever anybody thinks of those men today, they represent actual pieces of British history. And now, into the middle of all that comes Lady in Blue… She’s an overweight black woman in a bright, skin-tight blue dress, striding forward on the Fourth Plinth. The idea is that...

The BMA’s [British Medical Association’s] new VSED (Voluntary Stop Eating and Drinking) guidance is not a British story. Canada ran this experiment years ago, and we already know how it ends. Every time one of these documents lands, the same thing happens. A medical body publishes something careful and administrative, the language is so smooth you could skate on it, and the people who object are told they’ve misread it. Nobody is being killed. Nobody is being pushed. This is only guidance, only clarification, only doctors being given the information they need to care for their patients well. I have...

Leaders across Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales are preparing for a meeting to begin the process of seceding from the United Kingdom.The leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will gather on Monday to sign a deal designed to kick-start the break-up of the United Kingdom, The Telegraph can disclose.🔗: https://t.co/VeumqBREAKING:The Telegraph writes that the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will meet in Cardiff tomorrow sign a deal on starting cooperation breaking up the UK.They will demand the right to independence referendum, or in the case of Northern Ireland, on the right to become part of Ireland. After...

Pro-abortion feminist, “queer,” and “trans” activists stormed London’s famed Westminster Cathedral during a Mass at the start of a pro-life rally and March for Life. Fifteen Catholic bishops were reported to be concelebrating the pro-life Mass. The obnoxious interlopers positioned themselves in front of the sanctuary and unfurled a large banner that read: “Pro-life? That’s a lie! You don’t care if people die!” all the while shouting that same refrain. “This morning, members of the Feminist Strike Coalition disrupted an anti-abortion service at Westminster Cathedral hosting the far right group March for Life,” wrote “The Dyke Project” on Instagram following...

Mr Justice McKendrick has ruled that providing clinically assisted nutrition and hydration to sustain the life of a 28-year-old man suffering from a prolonged disorder of consciousness is contrary to his best interests and should cease. The judgment, released today following a 4-day trial last week, overrules the unanimous view of the young man’s family and all his treating clinicians that the life-sustaining treatment should continue, agreed at a ‘best interests meeting’ in March. The case is subject to draconian reporting restrictions under the so-called Transparency Order, which Mr Justice McKendrick has ordered to remain in force until the death...

Leslie Poles Hartley famously dubbed the past “a foreign country.” This summer, for the first time, I sensed that the present can be one too. My annual visit to the land of my childhood and youth exposed me to a culture very different from the one that nurtured me. Growing up as a grammar schoolboy in 1970s and ’80s England, I absorbed the importance of personal restraint; emotional self-control in public; privacy; acting with honesty and fairness, even to one’s own hurt; and respecting others regardless of their social status or opinions. At the level of society, such personal values...

I don’t know how familiar readers are with the term ‘accelerationism’. It is generally used to describe a tendency on the left, though is increasingly heard on the right too. The basic idea of accelerationism is that there are certain flaws in the societal structure which if pushed could bring things to their inevitable conclusion more quickly. It is why there are so many people on the left of politics who say that sustainable government spending should be discouraged. It is not just because they are economically illiterate. What they really hope is that a speeded-up financial disaster will expose...

When will the left admit this is Islamic conquest? England 1950: ~5 mosques England 2026: ~1750 mosques This is what an invasion looks like. That’s a staggering 34,900% increase in mosques by the way. And, even with all that, with plenty of places to worship their “religion,” they choose to express their faith in Muhammad’s rituals…at revered Christian sites: There are more than 500 mosques in London, but they chose to pray on the grounds of Westminster Abbey, the most sacred site in the Anglican Church. Why? Again, conquest.Since 2008, millions of illegal immigrants have entered the UK. And, that’s...

The number of antisemitic incidents recorded across the UK since the start of the year is up by a fifth compared to last year, figures show. The Community Security Trust (CST), an organisation that provides security support to the Jewish community, recorded 1,926 incidents of anti-Jewish hate across the UK in the first six months of 2026. It represents a 21% increase on the number of similar incidents reported in the first half of last year. It also marks the second highest total of antisemitic hate incidents ever recorded by CST in the first half of any year since the...

FAITH FACTS Church of England attendance has remarkably risen for five consecutive years, reversing decades of decline Digital ministry through online theology classes, social media Bible studies, and café conversations is reaching believers beyond traditional Sunday services Britain’s spiritual renewal is manifesting in unmeasured ways that traditional church statistics cannot capture A surprisingly remarkable transformation is unfolding across Britain as the Church of England reports its fifth consecutive year of attendance growth. But the real story of spiritual renewal extends far beyond what can be counted in pews on Sunday mornings. For decades, declining church attendance in Britain seemed inevitable....

A farmer has described feeling "absolutely gutted" following a blaze on land. Steven Conisbee, who runs Barracks Farm in Fetcham, said he awoke on Friday at 22:00 to some loud bangs and then immediately after his son called to say the farm was on fire. "I leapt out of bed, threw some clothes on, jumped in my pickup truck and headed down," he told the BBC. "I thought the barn was on fire, but the sky was lit up orange." Conisbee, a ninth-generation farmer, continued that he discovered his "best wheat field" was ablaze. "The wind was blowing," he told...

e-mail 324 shares Ann Widdecombe was bludgeoned 21 times over the head with a hammer in a 'ferocious' two-minute attack captured on camera, a court heard today. The 78-year-old former minister was ambushed in her own kitchen by a hammer-wielding intruder while she was having her lunch, it was said. Disturbing details of her brutal murder emerged today as her alleged killer Joshua Kerry appeared in court for the first time. The 28-year-old is alleged to have walked into the former MP's kitchen through an unlocked front door asking, 'Don't suppose you have bank cards and ID?' as he held...

Joshua Kerry, a 28-year-old from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, has been charged with the murder of Ann Widdecombe, the 78-year-old pro-life former Conservative MP and Reform UK spokesperson. Widdecombe’s body found with serious injuries at her home in Haytor, Dartmoor, Devon. Kerry, who is a political leftist, will appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday, the Crown Prosecution Service announced Monday. Widdecombe, a longtime champion of the pro-life cause and devout Catholic known for her steadfast defense of unborn children and traditional values, was discovered at approximately 11:40 a.m. on July 9. Police believe the attack occurred around 12:30 p.m. the...

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. -- Bukayo Saka's hat trick helped England survive a dramatic second-half comeback to beat France 6-4 in Saturday's chaotic third-place playoff and secure their best finish at a World Cup since 1966. England were up 4-0 at the break as a shambolic France side was dismantled through goals from Declan Rice and Ezri Konsa and two Saka strikes. Both teams made seven changes following their semifinal defeats, but in his final match in charge after 14 years at the helm, France's Didier Deschamps introduced four substitutes at halftime, including Ousmane Dembélé and Bradley Barcola, in an attempt...

After Finland’s Supreme Court found Päivi Räsänen guilty of “crimes against humanity” for sharing an online Christian pamphlet, Britain canceled her travel authorization, escalating concerns about the future of religious liberty in Europe. [UPDATE] The U.K. is a nation that now allows rapists, murderers, and terrorists to pour across its borders and live permanently in taxpayer-funded homes, but there is one thing that can get someone banned from even setting foot on British soil: “insulting” homosexuals. That’s a lesson that Päivi Räsänen, a member of Finland’s Parliament, recently learned when the U.K. denied her travel visa application.

Antisemitism has gone global. In one country after another, Jews are being excoriated over Israel’s conduct of the war in the Middle East. Israel stands accused of genocide, of baby-killing, of deliberately starving the citizens of Gaza. October 7, 2023 — the slaughter of some 1,200 Israelis and the dragging of roughly 250 hostages into the tunnels of Gaza — is now brazenly repositioned as payback for Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Never mind that two million Arab citizens live inside Israel in peace and prosperity, with seats in the Knesset, judges on its Supreme Court, and doctors in every...