Traveling

Friday, September 25, 2026

Investigate Fiennes captivity, say family

How Manchester City broke the rules | The five-day diet that will help you live longer
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Britain’s most popular daily newsletter, read by more than 850,000

Saturday, 26 September 2026

Issue No. 580

Good morning.

Family and friends of Sir Ranulph Fiennes have demanded an urgent investigation into his care arrangements after The Telegraph revealed that he had been “unlawfully deprived of his liberty”. They want the Office of the Public Guardian to establish whether Louise Millington-Cotes, the explorer’s wife, is correctly discharging her duties as his legal guardian. Gordon Rayner, our Associate Editor, reports.

Elsewhere, Jeremy Wilson, our Chief Sports Reporter, wades through the Manchester City financial rules breach debacle, untangling what the club has been found guilty of and, pertinently, why it has taken so long for them to face the consequences. What should their sanction be? Oliver Brown, our Chief Sports Writer, believes they should be kicked out of the Premier League.

Chris Evans, Editor

P.S. We’re giving you a whole year of The Telegraph for just £29. If you’re already a subscriber, make sure you’re logged in to read today’s stories.


 

In today’s edition

The middle-class benefits boom

—

Revealed: Secret robot offensive that ‘killed 3,000 Russians’

—

Plus, the five-day diet that will help you live longer

 
 

Try 1 year for just £29

Unlock this newsletter, plus full access to our website and app for less than £2.50 a month.

 

Ranulph Fiennes’s family demands urgent investigation into care

Sir Ranulph Fiennes
Gordon Rayner

Gordon Rayner

Associate Editor

 

Sir Ranulph Fiennes is a man who would never give up, and his family and friends are adopting the same dogged approach in their determination to find out where our greatest living explorer is, and how he is.

They are demanding an investigation by the Office of the Public Guardian (OPG) into his care arrangements, which are dictated by Louise Millington-Cotes, his wife and legal guardian.

Among those who want answers are his stepson and his former sister-in-law, both of whom say the OPG must now use its investigative powers to establish whether Millington-Cotes is providing appropriate care. They cannot find that out for themselves because, since the start of this year, she has refused to tell them where Sir Ranulph is.

We know that Millington-Cotes has been moving him between care homes under an assumed name, and that at one point he was being “unlawfully deprived of his liberty” because the correct legal protocols were not being followed.

Damian Hinds, the shadow health and social care secretary, said the case “raises serious concerns” and called on the OPG to look into any failings of the guardianship system.

John Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor and a friend of the explorer, said he had been “horrified” to read about Sir Ranulph’s circumstances, adding: “We must know what’s happening to him.”

This report is available to subscribers only.
Continue reading ➤

Sir Ranulph Fiennes kept in care home illegally ➤

‘My friend Ranulph’s story is tragic, and he may not be the only one’ ➤

 

How Manchester City broke the rules

Jeremy Wilson

Jeremy Wilson

Chief Sport Reporter

 

When Roman Abramovich “parked his Russian tank in English football’s front garden” in 2003 – a brilliant quip from David Dein, then the Arsenal vice-chairman – clubs could basically do what they liked, regardless of what they earned, who paid, or what their closest rivals could afford.

Five years later, Sheikh Mansour from Abu Dhabi took over Manchester City and, on the same day, broke the British transfer record for Robinho, the Brazilian superstar.

It was the Wild West, but when top-flight debt soared past £3bn following the financial crisis, the Premier League introduced strict profitability and sustainability rules to curb reckless spending.

City were accused, and now have been found guilty, of bypassing these caps, through disguised owner funding and inflated sponsorship deals. For six years, they have been embroiled in an extraordinary series of investigations. The wheels of justice evidently turn slowly but, pending an appeal, the end is finally in sight.
Read the full story ➤

Oliver Brown: Manchester City must be relegated down the divisions ➤

What your club would win if City’s trophies were taken away ➤

 

Opinion

Camilla Tominey Headshot

Camilla Tominey

Andy Burnham is the emptiest PM of our lifetimes

Beneath the Northern swagger lies a complete and utter inability to lay out a political philosophy

Continue reading ➤

 
 
<span style="color:#DE0000;">Tom Harris</span> Headshot

Tom Harris

The end of Burnham’s political honeymoon is nigh

Continue reading ➤

 
 
<span style="color:#DE0000;">Richard Kemp</span> Headshot

Richard Kemp

Madam, the SAS is not Marks & Spencer

Continue reading ➤

 
Matt Cartoon
 

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In other news

• Andy Burnham has ruled out an early general election. The Telegraph previously revealed that some of his advisers in No 10 had been pushing him to call a snap election.

• Nigel Farage is to “fire the starting gun” on Reform UK’s general election campaign with a nationwide tour beginning next week, The Telegraph can reveal.

• Thousands of suspected sex offenders are being released onto the streets by Labour to ease the prison overcrowding crisis. Those released include 1,004 people accused of “sexual assault on a female”.

• Channel migrants who landed on a Kent beach may have made a decoy emergency call to distract Border Force and reach the shore undetected, seafarers have said.

• Finally, an escaped emu has been filmed butting a would-be captor before fleeing. The emu, named Side Neck, escaped its holding in Salcombe, south Devon.

Emu

Credit: SWNS

 

Weekend reads

The middle-class benefits boom

Analysis by The Telegraph shows that the middle classes are increasingly signing up for welfare, often at a faster rate than those in more deprived areas. Leaf Arbuthnot explores how the stigma long associated with claiming benefits is waning, and wealthier, well-informed people are taking advantage of Britain’s generous handouts.

Continue reading ➤

 
Charles Harrelson

The violent life of Woody Harrelson’s hitman father

Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson’s new Apple TV comedy has a crazy enough premise – what if the two Hollywood stars secretly shared a father? The truth about the man who inspired it – assassin, womaniser and self-proclaimed JFK conspirator Charles Harrelson – is even crazier. Tom Fordy reports.

Continue reading ➤

 
Robot

Revealed: Secret robot offensive that ‘killed 3,000 Russians’

A Ukrainian drone crossed the front line in northern Donetsk in the dead of night equipped with a small robot on wheels. It was the first attack of a top-secret operation that has gone on to kill 3,000 Russians in a matter of months. Could it turn the tide of the war?

Continue reading ➤

 

When children as young as six are in a mental health crisis, the system is failing

An invisible tribe of children is occupying hospital cubicles across England with nowhere safe to go, writes Dr Sam Jones. Attendances for acute psychiatric distress have surged by 36 per cent, leaving patients as young as six effectively homeless for days. As a paediatrician, I’ve seen wards overwhelmed by self-harm and despair – but this short-term surge is caused by a long-term systemic failure.

Continue reading ➤

 

Your Saturday

The five-day diet that will help you live longer

Could five days on a low-calorie “fast-mimicking” diet help you live longer? Dr Valter Longo, a longevity expert, believes his regime can reset the body and promote healthier ageing. From what to eat to how often to do it, here’s exactly how the diet works, and what the science says about its potential benefits.

For subscribers only ➤

 

Food for thought

Do you know what you’re going to eat this weekend? We’ve got you covered. Every Saturday, Diana Henry, The Telegraph’s award-winning cookery writer, brings you three recipes for a perfect weekend meal. Meanwhile, William Sitwell shares his view from the culinary world – and a recommendation or two.

Ginger-maple chicken, nectarine and pecan salad

Diana Henry

Diana Henry

 

This time of year makes me think of all the good things about home. We re-embrace being inside, being in our kitchens, but also local comforts. I am a huge fan of local independent shops. That doesn’t mean a fancy emporium selling £7 sourdough (see more on that below), but the places that you rely on for the odd pint of milk. Near me, there are small Turkish and Greek shops that sell nearly everything you might run out of, but also fruit and veg. Outside both shops there are rich, colourful, hunger-inducing displays. You come for milk and Jaffa cakes and leave with cherries and a bouquet of coriander.

It has been a really good year for stone fruit, and these small shops often stock it even after the season is “over”, so I’ll be cooking selfishly this weekend, making the dishes I know I won’t be able to next week. This salad of griddled ginger-and-maple chicken with pecans feels autumnal even though it stars nectarines.

Roast stone fruit with almond and orange-flower crumbs

In fact, if you can get your hands on any other stone fruits (use whatever you can find; I can still get apricots) and a few berries (raspberries and blueberries are good, bringing pops of tartness), I urge you to make this dish of baked fruit with almond crumbs. The topping, which only partly covers the fruit, is lighter and more scented than a crumble topping (it has nuggets of marzipan in it). It works with different fruits at different times of the year, so keep hold of the recipe!

Plum, cardamom and orange jam

The Turkish shop, a five-minute walk from where I live, still has gorgeous cherries as well as plums. I was quite torn – should I pickle some cherries? – but I’m opting for this plum and cardamom jam. It’s an unusual mixture of flavours – there are shreds of orange zest in it but it’s not a marmalade – and you can use star anise or cinnamon if you’re not keen on cardamom. Put the last of the summer in a jar.

Having sung the praises of local independent places, I’d love to hear your views on farm shops – and the broad use of that term. Tomé Morrissy-Swan has visited small, barn-door operations selling spuds from the field next door, and vast superstores with international aisles. Which can truly claim to be a “farm shop”?
Share your thoughts here ➤

Lastly, this week my colleague Gordon Thomson tasted a single malt whisky with a £26,000 price tag. It had spent a full 50 years in oak barrels – a risky process for the distiller, since if they leave a spirit in active oak for too long “the wood can overwhelm it”, Gordon tells me, “producing something dry, tannic and about as pleasurable to drink as a second-hand sideboard”. I’m not surprised he was nervous about trying it.
Read his verdict here ➤

Find me here every Saturday and in my Recipes newsletter, which you can sign up to here.

Meanwhile, William Sitwell muses on the unfortunate rise of the hapless “food-fluencers”...

William Sitwell

William Sitwell

 

I saw the videos and winced. Amateur video reviewers on social media, God help us all. In particular, I watched some preening bloke and his family opining on lunch at Jeremy Clarkson’s pub The Farmer’s Dog, in Oxfordshire. It’s a very modern curse. Folk bereft of conversation attempting, and failing miserably, to describe food. “This is cheese,” says a young woman, pointing at cheese – and it doesn’t get better. Where it gets worse is when you watch a video posted on TikTok by a woman reviewing a café at Auschwitz. She sees no irony in suggesting people bring their own food and drink there. Oh, and by the way, you get frisked at the entrance. Try that at my place, The White Hart in Wiveliscombe, and I’ll have you run out of town…
Read William’s full column ➤

 

Your say

Happy snappers

Every weekday, Orlando Bird, our loyal Reader Correspondent, shares an off-piste topic that has brought out the best of your opinions and stories.

Orlando writes...
Thanks for all your replies to this week’s newsletters. Good news for the British Museum: it can begin its weekend with a sense of vindication. Telegraph readers wholeheartedly support its ban on photography at the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition, discussed in Thursday’s edition. In fact, you hope it might give other galleries ideas.


 

Simon McIlroy writes: “Taking photos in galleries and museums should be forbidden. The flow of viewers to a painting or exhibit is disrupted; many a time I have walked behind a photographer as he or she lines up a photo of a painting, sometimes with family members standing in the ‘frame’. Some gallery visitors also take photos as evidence of their visit, ticking boxes.”


 

Another reader recalls: “In Amsterdam, I saw a tall girl posing, arms upraised, for her boyfriend, with her back to a large group portrait of a guild from the Dutch Golden Age.

“No thought for anyone who might be hoping to look at the painting itself. People racing around just snapping each painting and then its label before moving on are another hazard. Susan Sontag said it in On Photography: that taking a photo becomes a substitute for actually looking.”


 

You’ve also been writing about neglected English composers (the subject of Tuesday’s edition), from Havergal Brian to William Byrd. Ann Preston would also like to put in a word for “William Boyce, a Master of the King’s Music in his time, and a prodigious composer of church and cathedral music as well as secular pieces for Drury Lane Theatre such as The Shepherd’s Lottery.

“Sadly, deafness overcame him, much like Beethoven, in his later life, but he left a fantastic legacy of beautiful music.”

That’s all from me for this week, folks. I’ll be back on Monday to bring you the best Telegraph talking points. In the meantime, you can contact me here.

Please confirm in your reply that you are happy to be featured and that we have your permission to use your name.

 

Puzzler’s corner

Welcome to Andrew Baker’s Saturday quiz. Test your knowledge below to see if you have been paying attention to our newsletters this week...

1. What is the day job of Charlotte Gifford, whose crime novel The Blame has been dramatised by ITV?

2. Havergal Brian, born 150 years ago, was a leading British exponent of which art?

3. The first British television advertisement ran this week in 1955 on ITV. Which product was being promoted?

4. What is the name of the eventing pony ridden by Mia Tindall, daughter of Zara and great-niece of the King?

5. What, according to the example of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Mickey Rourke, is now the ultimate badge of masculinity?

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 The 1% Club, Cogs, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.

Panagram

Yesterday’s Panagram was DETECTING. Come back tomorrow for the solution to today’s puzzle.

Plus, can you tackle The 1% Club? Scroll down to see if you got the questions right – and play for free on our website and app.

 

On this day

1789 | Thomas Jefferson is appointed the first US Secretary of State

1949 | The old Hollywoodland sign is torn down and replacement begins for Hollywood sign

1968 | Oliver! premieres in London

2016 | The Telegraph’s investigation into Sam Allardyce is published online. He lost his job as England manager the following day (the same day we published the front page below)

Birthdays: Serena Williams (45), Bryan Ferry (81), Anne Robinson (82)

Telegraph front page
 

Thank you for reading. Have a fulfilling day and I hope to see you tomorrow.

Chris Evans, Editor

I’d love to hear what you think of this newsletter. You can email me your feedback at fromtheeditor@telegraph.co.uk.

Quiz answers:

  1. Money reporter at The Telegraph
  2. Musical composition
  3. Gibbs SR toothpaste
  4. Bunny Two Twirls
  5. Owning a small dog
 

The 1% Club answers:

  1. FLIPPED
  2. Amir
  3. Seven
 
 
 

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