Proud to be British. Read more from journalists who champion our culture, history and values. | | Jamie Osborne grabs Ireland’s fifth try at Twickenham | England’s Six Nations campaign went from bad to worse after an utter capitulation at home against Ireland, in which they conceded 41 points and fans walked out well before full-time.
Steve Borthwick’s team were expected to compete for their first title in six years but that hope is already dashed after two defeats in their first three matches, with a trip to Paris still to come. The concerning manner of the losses means that the current regime, which seemed to have turned a corner during a successful 2025, is in danger of unravelling, as Oliver Brown writes.
England’s performance was one of their worst ever at Twickenham, and we have dissected 12 reasons why that was the case. It was so bad, in fact, that vice-captain Ellis Genge apologised to fans for the team “believing their own hype” following their resounding win against Wales in round one. | England skipper Maro Itoje’s performance was not worthy of his milestone 100th cap | Both Luke Cowan-Dickie and Freddie Steward were handed the humiliation of being hooked before half-time, and they do not come out favourably in Daniel Schofield’s England player ratings.
World Cup winner Will Greenwood is calling for mass changes for England’s next match against Italy, including dropping fly-half George Ford. If that does not happen, England could lose to the Azzurri for the first time in their history.
Elsewhere, Wales came close to ending their miserable run of defeats but Scotland managed to snatch victory at the very end. The match turned on a moment of genius from Finn Russell, who caught the Welsh team napping with a clever restart that Darcy Graham latched on to.
Read the full match report here ➤
Oliver Brown: Steve Borthwick’s England tenure is in danger of unravelling ➤
Twelve things that made this one of England’s worst performances ➤
Daniel Schofield’s player ratings: Ignominy for Steward and Cowan-Dickie ➤
Ellis Genge apologises to England fans ➤
Will Greenwood: England must make changes and that starts with dropping George Ford ➤ | | Gordon Brown has demanded a police investigation into whether Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor chartered taxpayer-funded jets and landed at RAF bases to meet up with Jeffrey Epstein.
The former prime minister has written to six police forces, suggesting that civil servants be questioned about Mr Mountbatten-Windsor’s time as a trade envoy, it can be revealed.
The letters show his deep concern that Mr Mountbatten-Windsor used chartered RAF flights to transport him to personal engagements that could have involved Epstein, and that the former prince might have leaked confidential information from the trips in a “wholly unacceptable” use of public money.
Continue reading ➤ After revelations this week, sympathy for those caught up in the Epstein scandal is in short supply. Even so, Judith Woods has found one rare advocate in Ian Maxwell, who maintains that his sister, Ghislaine, has become the “fall guy” for Epstein’s crimes and would not be in prison if the paedophile were still alive.  | Judith Woods Features Writer | When Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of child sex trafficking and other offences in 2022 by a New York court, her 20-year sentence had a throw-away-the-key air about it.
Even so, her family refuse to accept her guilt and have been supporting her as she mounts an appeal on the grounds that her trial was unfair. At the forefront is her elder brother, Ian, who has become her de facto spokesman.
Energetic and impassioned, he came into The Telegraph’s offices to appear on The Daily T podcast and then sat down with me to explain why he believed his sister was set up in the wake of Jeffrey Epstein’s death. | Ian Maxwell photographed in London for The Telegraph this week | “My sister is the fall guy,” he said. “Somebody had to pay the price for what Epstein did and so the government and the media chose her. I genuinely believe that, if Epstein were alive, he would be incarcerated and she would be free.”
He also talked about what it was like growing up in the shadow of Robert Maxwell, his father and a legendary newspaper baron. Beatings were regular, while his parents made their favouritism for his sister clear.
“If you got a bad report from school he would beat us boys with a belt,” recalls Mr Maxwell. “The girls had it a little easier; he would use a hairbrush on them. Even though Ghislaine was the golden girl, she wasn’t spared.” | Robert Maxwell with Ian and Ghislaine in 1990 | He also expressed sympathy for Mr Mountbatten-Windsor, who was arrested this week for crimes relating to his friendship with Epstein, namely misconduct in public office. The sight of the eighth in line to the throne, supine and dazed in the back of a car was a reminder of the fact that, unlike Ghislaine Maxwell, his family have abandoned him to his fate.
“There he is, kicked out of his home, completely isolated, and he doesn’t even have a supportive family; even his daughters are at sixes and sevens about what to do.”
Continue reading ➤
Read more: Andrew’s Met protection officers ‘told to guard party hosted by Epstein’ ➤ | | Zoe Strimpel In buzzing, high-productivity LA, biohacking is becoming mainstream – and the contrast with the stagnant UK couldn’t be starker Continue reading ➤ Kemi Badenoch Young people have been stitched up by Blair’s university con Continue reading ➤ Jake Wallis Simons The case for Trump attacking Iran Continue reading ➤ | | To make sure you don’t miss our newsletters when they land in your inbox, click here. | | Matt Goodwin is pinning his hopes on becoming Reform UK’s ninth MP at the Gorton and Denton by-election next week. Before the vote, Natasha Leake caught up with him in the constituency, where he plans to help bring down Sir Keir Starmer’s Government. In a wide-ranging interview, Goodwin discussed, among other things, how the term “far Right” is no longer used to describe “being a member of a neo-Nazi group”, but instead refers to working full-time, paying your taxes and loving your country. Continue reading ➤ | | | Have you noticed certain changes in the voices of teenagers these days? Statements that sound like questions, a grating vocal fry and Jabberwocky-esque phrases are all changing the face of our linguistic landscape. Unsurprisingly, social media is to blame – and, in a quest for algorithmic supremacy, these annoying vocal tics are just the tip of the iceberg. Continue reading ➤ | | | For nine years, Dame Prue Leith brought joy to the nation’s televisions in her colourful specs and patterned clothing as a judge on Channel 4’s The Great British Bake Off. From her support of assisted dying to her campaign for cookery to be taught in schools as a way to tackle the obesity crisis, Dame Prue shares what her life looks like beyond the Bake Off tent. Continue reading ➤ | | | Apparently, there are over four-and-a-half million podcasts worldwide. There is clearly something for every taste, and yet the choice is overwhelming and so we often rely on the high-profile ones. With this in mind, Chris Bennion has come up with 50 lesser-known podcasts, covering a diverse range of topics from history to true crime to eccentric oddities. This definitive list is full of unique recommendations you can pass on to friends. It is available to subscribers only, so click through and sign up to read it. Continue reading ➤ | | | “A dinosaur resting on its laurels” was how Hugo Ward described Hargreaves Lansdown after it changed its fees last month. He is one of many fed-up investors who got in touch with The Telegraph to say they were moving their money out of Britain’s biggest stockbroker, after the fees overhaul made thousands worse off. Continue reading ➤ | | | Jamaica sits comfortably over 30C during March | After one of the wettest winters in years, many of us will be planning for a break in the sun at the earliest opportunity. In much of Europe, March remains a touch too chilly for a beach getaway, but the options are plentiful if you are willing to look just a little further afield. Continue reading ➤ Below is an article that I hope will be a help this weekend: - As we endure another cold and wet snap, you may be wondering whether your car has what it takes to deal with harsh wintry conditions. These are the best 4x4 cars that aren’t SUVs.
| | Members of the Aetherius Society, set up in the belief that UFOs are real, commune with ‘otherworldly beings’ | | Every week, Sarah Knapton, our Science Editor, and Joe Pinkstone, our Science Correspondent, demystify your supernatural experiences. From ghoulish encounters to bizarre coincidences, there’s always a scientific explanation and nothing is as strange as it seems.
A baffled reader writes...
“Can you confirm an incident in London in the Sixties when I was a child? My older brother, who at the time was a sceptic, maintains he saw a UFO over Maida Vale, where he worked.
“Residents were awed when they saw an object in the sky hovering, then accelerating, then stopping and moving in another direction.
“I think it was reported in the Evening Standard or another London newspaper at the time.
“My brother was so annoyed that he hadn’t got his camera with him, as he was a keen plane spotter already and ensured he always had his camera with him thereafter.”
Sarah and Joe answer:
In the wake of Barack Obama’s comments that aliens are “real”, we asked Telegraph readers if they had ever had an extraterrestrial encounter of their own.
They did not disappoint.
Richard Gayfer described how, when picking apples in his garden at the age of 17, he saw a “sort of silvery white” round disc, which moved rapidly across the sky “far quicker than an aeroplane”.
Lauren Olsen also had a similar experience around 60 years ago. “I noticed what I presumed was an aircraft travelling in a northerly direction,” she said.
“While watching this, I noticed it had seemed to have stopped for a few seconds, then moved 90 degrees to the east, sat for a few seconds and again proceeded to the north. A minute or so later, it disappeared.”
However, it was the strange lights over Maida Vale, in west London, that intrigued us, because it had a definitive location where we could start hunting.
Read the full answer here ➤
Plus, send in your questions for Sarah and Joe here ➤ | | Charles Richards in the khaki hat worn in Burma by the Long Range Penetration Force, ‘the Chindits’ | Charles Richards, who has died aged 104, is thought to have been the last-but-one of the surviving Chindits, the Long Range Penetration Force sent behind enemy lines in the Burma jungle during the Second World War, writes Andrew M Brown, Obituaries Editor.
In his seventies, Charlie Richards put together a memoir recalling his day-to-day experiences of the fierce covert battle against the Japanese.
Richards had a vivid recollection of the men’s terror of the hidden enemy, who would call out “Johnny, where are you?” to try to frighten the British into giving away their positions.
Then there was the reliance on mules, which were transported in Dakota troop-carrier planes, secured by bamboo fixings. Used because they could navigate the dense and steep terrain where Jeeps could not, mules were lively animals: one kicked a hole in the side of a plane. | Richards (lying down, front, second left) before flying to Burma in a Dakota transport plane | The monsoon brought with it dysentery, typhus, malaria, ticks and leeches and almost every evening there were bodies to bury.
Some men had such bad dysentery that they threw away their trousers and wore “kilts” made of their blankets.
Read the gripping obituary here ➤ | | Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including PlusWord, Sorted, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.
Yesterday’s Panagram was CREDULITY. Come back tomorrow for the solution to today’s puzzle. | | Thank you for reading. Allister Heath, Sunday Telegraph Editor
P.S. Please share your thoughts on the newsletter here. | |
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