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.

Like this page on Facebook for updates

Sarah Sands: We are right or left wing to the core, even at bathtime

During a discussion about BBC bias at a lunch last week, a brainy woman remarked that the organisation was admirably positioned and she hoped that David Cameron would note that this was the country's centre of gravity. Thus she revealed her political colours. According to Donald Rumsfeld, who I think we agree is a little to the right of the BBC, a characteristic of a leftie is someone who regards a difference of view as a sign of stupidity because they cannot imagine "how anyone intelligent could possibly disagree with them". I think the BBC is scrupulously neutral, except that many of its staff believe that there is a sane world view, and then there are the crazies.

Recently by Sarah Sands

Sarah Sands: I've bailed out my car – and a final farewell to it

Sunday, 6 February 2011

If you want to understand what an autocracy feels like, try your local car pound. Mine, which is typical, owes its architectural inheritance to an open prison, wasteland premises, high gates, ubiquitous security cameras. Inside the prefab reception, the tax collector, I mean clerk, sits behind an enforced window. The decoration on the walls consists of an epic, almost poetic, list of parking heresies. Otherwise, there is a jaunty warning of the consequences of a false claim of damage. Only once is the word "welcome" used, in relation to types of credit cards.

Sarah Sands: Exit Andy Gray and Richard Keys. Enter the Men's Defence League?

Sunday, 30 January 2011

Studio supremos are exposed as a pair of plonkers, but will there be male reaction?

Sarah Sands: Jamie can make the sun shine in half an hour

Sunday, 23 January 2011

It is not easy flogging books to the public during a recession, and the excellent figures for Penguin last week were cheering. What lifted the fortunes of the publisher was the record-breaking success of Jamie Oliver's 30-Minute Meals. Why this book rather than learning to cook in 24 hours, or like an Italian?

Sarah Sands: The hating of Bercow – let me count the ways

Sunday, 16 January 2011

While America is reflecting on the consequences of ideological polarity, this is the English version of a bust-up. The Speaker, John Bercow, who in the film version might be played by Tom Hollander, confronts the burlier Tory figure of Mark Pritchard, in the corridors of Westminster. For some reason, Bercow decides to speak as if he were in Wolf Hall: "The courtesy of the House is that honourable members should stand aside when the Speaker passes by." The honourable member growls: "You are not fucking royalty, Mr Speaker." Bercow squeals after him: " Well a good morning to you, Sir." Pritchard's line is not Wilberforce, but it caught the imagination of his colleagues and is now being printed on T-shirts.

Sarah Sands: Swagger has been vanquished by duty and modesty

Sunday, 9 January 2011

Dark, handsome, modest, talented, quintessentially English, the whole country mad about him. On the day that The King's Speech went on general release, Colin Firth was in danger of being eclipsed by the hero of the Ashes, Alastair Cook.

Sarah Sands: Oh, tidings of discomfort and compromise

Sunday, 26 December 2010

When Nigella Lawson said, slightly biblically, that the best type of Christmas lunch allowed for strangers at the table, she was being seasonally prophetic. Christmas ended up being a great rush to get home, and, like a child's party game, some people simply ran out time and took the nearest available seat.

Sarah Sands: Do we really want friends and family to be our ballet critics?

Sunday, 19 December 2010

It was not chivalrous of Alastair Macaulay, the British dance critic of The New York Times, to write that Jenifer Ringer, principal dancer of the New York City Ballet, looked overweight in The Nutcracker.

Sarah Sands: Thugs killed my favourite tree. But a new one is growing

Sunday, 12 December 2010

Compared with the desecration of the Cenotaph, the chopping down of an old hawthorn tree in Glastonbury is low on the emotional Richter scale.

Sarah Sands: What drives a man to be a cyber martyr?

Sunday, 5 December 2010

Julian Assange took advantage of a loner

Sarah Sands: Shopping is a science, and I know the perfect formula

Sunday, 28 November 2010

If you should find yourself in the chilly, unspoilt, Cameronesque parts of Oxfordshire this weekend you may be puzzled by the colossal volume of cars and coaches veering off at junction 9 of the A40. Trust me, they are not looking for Blenheim. The faces pressed against the fogged up windows are not admiring the peaceful stone villages and pretty church spires. They ignore the Sunday parachutists and gliders in the sky. They are just passing the time before they see the first signpost to Bicester Village retail outlet. This shopping Eden had no mention in Cameron's happiness index, yet for young women, particularly if Chinese, there is no lovelier place on earth.

More sarah sands: