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Daily Mirror •

Wife's 12-year affair uncovered by note on door left by stalker ex-lover

A stalker's dogged pursuit to determine the paternity of two of his ex-lover's children reached crisis point as he hammered on her door and left a note addressed to her husband, revealing their affair.

Jamie Nielson, 41, pleaded guilty on counts of stalking as well as driving while disqualified, and driving without a licence at Liverpool Crown Court and was sentenced to over a year in prison, banned from driving and slapped with a restraining order. The court heard how the 41-year-old from Mers...
The Telegraph •

How Britain’s pubs are being turned into cannabis farms

Derelict pubs are being transformed into cannabis factories by organised criminals exploiting the crisis gripping the hospitality industry.Drug gangs are targeting boarded-up bars because they offer the ideal conditions to set up secret, industrial-sized marijuana farms, The Telegraph can reveal.Analysis of police reports from across the country show how raids on former pubs are increasingly uncovering multi-million-pound marijuana factories.The shift to using empty pubs to hide vast cannabis cr...
The Telegraph •

Lovejoy helps solve real-life Napoleonic mystery

Featuring the adventures of a lovable rogue with an eye for priceless antiques, Lovejoy is regarded as one of the more memorable TV series of the 1980s.And that certainly proved true for one real-life antiques dealer when his recollection of an old episode helped him crack a decade-old burglary at the crypt of Napoleon III.For 12 years, the burglary at Saint Michael’s Abbey in Farnborough had remained unsolved, with “historically important and priceless” 19th-century prayer frames stolen and fea...
Daily Mirror •

Thousands boycott Alton Towers after 'disgraceful' rule change

More than 24,500 people have signed a petition against changes to Alton Towers' new 'hidden disabilities' rules.

The theme park has made changes to its Ride Access Pass (RAP), which mean that people with ‘hidden disabilities’ such as ADHD and Autism, would be considered ineligible for the virtual queuing system.

Merlin Entertainment, which operates more than 30 top UK attractions, including major theme parks – Alton Towers, Thorpe Park and LEGOLAND Windsor – as well as popular landmarks, such...
Daily Mirror •

Schoolboy, 11, makes historic 48million-year-old discovery with grandparents

Touren Pope was exploring public land in Wyoming in the US last autumn when he noticed something that didn’t quite fit in.

What he had actually found was a shockingly well-preserved soft-turtle shell preserved for nearly 50 million years. The discovery quickly turned a routine family outing into a landmark moment for the region.

Touren’s mother, Tessa Patterson, said she was stunned when his grandparents texted her the photo. “It blew all of our minds, We’re like ‘What is this’?” she told Wyom...
Daily Mirror •

Netflix viewers say Bridgerton's 'pinnacle' talk is most realistic sex scene yet

In one of the more revealing bedroom scenes kicking off anticipated Bridgerton’s fourth season, Francesca Bridgerton (played by Hannah Dodd) is left dumbfounded at her husband, John Stirling (Victor Alli), after he asks her whether she has reached her “pinnacle”.

At first, the Regency ingéneu is led to believe that this mysterious pinnacle has something to do with getting pregnant. With a family dynasty on the line, Francesca begins to fret, but after a series of frank conversations with her si...
South East Londoner •

How to walk through Ruskin Park – according to John Ruskin | South East Londoner

Between Camberwell, Denmark Hill and Herne Hill, the sloping green of Ruskin Park is a cornerstone for the communities surrounding it.Locals gather along its winding paths to walk dogs, play tennis, tend vegetables in the community garden and, on special occasions, pause to listen to the jazz drifting from the bandstand.But Ruskin Park also has a quieter function: as a living memorial to the nineteenth-century critic, writer and social thinker, John Ruskin, who’s ideas about art, nature and publ...
Daily Mirror •

The new Wuthering Heights film must capture one major theme book fans love

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights trailer is either a glorious disaster or an immaculately calculated, two-minute-and-forty-second practical joke played on the literary internet.

Fresh off Saltburn – a film with an expansive understanding of sexual appetite – Fennell appears to have surveyed the Brontë estate and decided to give its most loyal custodians a reason to clutch at their Waterstones totes.

The resulting list of cinematic crimes is already well catalogued. Margot Robbie, 35, has be...
Daily Mirror •

Top primary school has unusual solution to UK reading crisis - and it's working

In the English classroom at Thomas Jones Primary, several surreal things are happening at once. Shakespeare, Milton, Blake and Dickens sit together on a shelf labelled ‘Year 6’. Children raise their hands to answer questions before they have been asked. Although they look like ten-year-olds, they use words like “magnanimous” and “antithesis”, and phrases such as “it was his destiny to perish."

Then there is the view from the window. Beyond the classroom, a tower block is shrinking, month by mon...
Daily Mirror •

Grenfell demolition is 'deeply challenging' for surrounding community

A quarter of the way into the demolition process of Grenfell tower, for the surrounding community the project is beginning to surface painful memories of the inferno that claimed 72 lives in 2017.

The government pledged that the two-year floor-by-floor deconstruction by Deconstruct UK (DUK) would be carried out “with great care and sensitivity” and said the plan for the careful deconstruction “is designed to minimise noise and disruption” in the surrounding area.

However, for those connected t...
South East Londoner •

WATCH: Life inside Camberwell - 2025’s ‘fourth coolest neighbourhood in the world’ | South East Londoner

Once a relatively overlooked corner of south London, Camberwell has been thrust into the spotlight after Time Out ranked it the fourth coolest neighbourhood in the world in 2025.Residents have responded with a mix of pride at its long-awaited recognition and concern for the future – with questions about how rising cultural currency may affect the communities that define it.Laeticia Lucy, a lifelong Camberwell resident, said: “How many different people you meet, how many amazing cuisines there ar...
Daily Mirror •

Strictly’s Shirley shares heartbreaking reason she takes a whistle everywhere

Strictly Come Dancing head judge Shirley Ballas said she never leaves the house without a whistle around her neck – even when she’s taking her dog to the park – after enduring almost seven years of stalking trauma.

In a candid new episode of the Question the Default podcast released yesterday, the 65-year-old opened up to host Harry Corin about the long-lasting fear she still lives with following the relentless harassment campaign that targeted her and her family.

“I don’t think I ever go outs...
North West Londoner •

Marriage rates fall below half of adults for third consecutive year | North West Londoner %

A truth no longer universally acknowledged: fewer than half of adults in England and Wales are married for the third year running, marking a watershed moment in how the country approaches relationship, commitment and family life.


New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that just 49.5% of adults aged 16 and over are married or in civil partnership.


For some, the trend suggests alternative forms of partnership better matched to modern pressures while for others, the...
Daily Mirror •

Love Island legend 'to return to the show' after split from famous ex

A former Love Island champion is reported to be set to make a surprise return to the second series of Love Island: All Stars, which lands in January. The returning ITV star – who first entered the villa four years ago and went on to win her series – has been in advanced talks with ITV after producers reached out to the newly single bombshell earlier this autumn.

Millie Court, 29, who won the show in 2021, will be packing her bikinis once again after her second split from fellow champion Liam Re...
Southwark News •

Dulwich to Denmark: 80 years of questions and answers after World War Two

Eighty years ago in Dulwich, as VE Day celebrations roared across Britain, my great-grandmother Mary Robbins sat down to write a letter to her family in Ireland, writes Emily Driver…


Her son, Alfred, an RAF bomb aimer, had disappeared a year earlier.  

“Glad to know the cursed war is over at last. Now I’m more keenly than ever looking forward to good news of Alf, or better still, seeing him in person. People went mad here, but I couldn’t participate. It made me wish more than ever he was her...
The Mirror •

Inside Holly Willoughby's epic family holiday as Strictly gig beckons

Holly Willoughby has given fans a glimpse inside her recent Florida getaway as Strictly Come Dancing rumours heat up. The 44-year-old TV darling swapped British autumn drizzle for roller coasters, Disney castles, and cocktails as she jetted to Orlando with her family and close friends for half-term. Posting on Instagram, the mum-of-three gushed over an “epic” trip, saying there is “Nothing better than family time and making the best memories together” – complete with “non-stop laughs” and plenty...
South West Londoner •

The Brits helping deliver aid to Ukraine in their spare time  | South West Londoner

While governments debate strategy and sanctions, a quiet army of British volunteers have found their own ways to help keep Ukraine’s wheels turning through the war.


“It’s like being in a Second World War film or a Western — another era. Sandbags on either side of the old carriages taking me to the train station, sometimes sirens sounding.”


This is how Adrian Simpson, a retired security consultant from Devon, described the final leg of his solo journeys home from Ukraine. Nearly 2000 kilome...
Southwark News •

South London’s ‘party poet’ tells us how it all started in pubs in Peckham

In the cellar of Southwark Tavern, in Borough, James Massiah is talking to me about equations. Not the kind he once ignored at his many schools in South London (apologies Beecholme Park, Gorringe Park and Mitcham Vale), but the ones he now learns as a poet and the creator of party poetry phenomenon Adult Entertainment, writes Emily Driver…


“In maths you have a right answer and a wrong answer, and that’s what I want to get to the bottom of,” he tells me. “What’s a right answer for a poem? When...
North East Londoner •

Refugee to restaurateur: Yogi’s Sri Lankan Kitchen is feeding Angel with kindness  | North East Londoner

When Trampoline Café in Angel changed hands under new ownership this month, it was not a faceless business deal – it was a homecoming. The Sri Lankan-run café, tucked in the cobbled backstreets of Camden Passage, has long been known for its fresh ingredients, crowds spilling into the streets, and its powerful mission: to train and employ refugees through its Changing Journeys programme. Now, that mission has taken a full-circle turn. On 1 October, Trampoline Café officially passed down into the...
Southwark News •

A ‘blueprint’ for the future? Students and experts weigh in on Greenwich-Kent university merger

Students at the University of Greenwich have voiced optimism about preliminary plans to merge their institution with the University of Kent, in a pioneering move set to establish the UK’s first multi-university group, writes Emily Driver…


From autumn 2026, if plans are approved, the two universities will be managed by a single vice-chancellor, Professor Jane Harrington, and unite more than 28,000 students across existing campuses in Greenwich, Kent and Medway. The new university group will be...
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Daily Mirror •

Netflix viewers say Bridgerton's 'pinnacle' talk is most realistic sex scene yet

In one of the more revealing bedroom scenes kicking off anticipated Bridgerton’s fourth season, Francesca Bridgerton (played by Hannah Dodd) is left dumbfounded at her husband, John Stirling (Victor Alli), after he asks her whether she has reached her “pinnacle”.

At first, the Regency ingéneu is led to believe that this mysterious pinnacle has something to do with getting pregnant. With a family dynasty on the line, Francesca begins to fret, but after a series of frank conversations with her si...
South East Londoner •

How to walk through Ruskin Park – according to John Ruskin | South East Londoner

Between Camberwell, Denmark Hill and Herne Hill, the sloping green of Ruskin Park is a cornerstone for the communities surrounding it.Locals gather along its winding paths to walk dogs, play tennis, tend vegetables in the community garden and, on special occasions, pause to listen to the jazz drifting from the bandstand.But Ruskin Park also has a quieter function: as a living memorial to the nineteenth-century critic, writer and social thinker, John Ruskin, who’s ideas about art, nature and publ...
Daily Mirror •

The new Wuthering Heights film must capture one major theme book fans love

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights trailer is either a glorious disaster or an immaculately calculated, two-minute-and-forty-second practical joke played on the literary internet.

Fresh off Saltburn – a film with an expansive understanding of sexual appetite – Fennell appears to have surveyed the Brontë estate and decided to give its most loyal custodians a reason to clutch at their Waterstones totes.

The resulting list of cinematic crimes is already well catalogued. Margot Robbie, 35, has be...
Daily Mirror •

Top primary school has unusual solution to UK reading crisis - and it's working

In the English classroom at Thomas Jones Primary, several surreal things are happening at once. Shakespeare, Milton, Blake and Dickens sit together on a shelf labelled ‘Year 6’. Children raise their hands to answer questions before they have been asked. Although they look like ten-year-olds, they use words like “magnanimous” and “antithesis”, and phrases such as “it was his destiny to perish."

Then there is the view from the window. Beyond the classroom, a tower block is shrinking, month by mon...
Daily Mirror •

Grenfell demolition is 'deeply challenging' for surrounding community

A quarter of the way into the demolition process of Grenfell tower, for the surrounding community the project is beginning to surface painful memories of the inferno that claimed 72 lives in 2017.

The government pledged that the two-year floor-by-floor deconstruction by Deconstruct UK (DUK) would be carried out “with great care and sensitivity” and said the plan for the careful deconstruction “is designed to minimise noise and disruption” in the surrounding area.

However, for those connected t...
South East Londoner •

WATCH: Life inside Camberwell - 2025’s ‘fourth coolest neighbourhood in the world’ | South East Londoner

Once a relatively overlooked corner of south London, Camberwell has been thrust into the spotlight after Time Out ranked it the fourth coolest neighbourhood in the world in 2025.Residents have responded with a mix of pride at its long-awaited recognition and concern for the future – with questions about how rising cultural currency may affect the communities that define it.Laeticia Lucy, a lifelong Camberwell resident, said: “How many different people you meet, how many amazing cuisines there ar...
Daily Mirror •

Strictly’s Shirley shares heartbreaking reason she takes a whistle everywhere

Strictly Come Dancing head judge Shirley Ballas said she never leaves the house without a whistle around her neck – even when she’s taking her dog to the park – after enduring almost seven years of stalking trauma.

In a candid new episode of the Question the Default podcast released yesterday, the 65-year-old opened up to host Harry Corin about the long-lasting fear she still lives with following the relentless harassment campaign that targeted her and her family.

“I don’t think I ever go outs...
North West Londoner •

Marriage rates fall below half of adults for third consecutive year | North West Londoner %

A truth no longer universally acknowledged: fewer than half of adults in England and Wales are married for the third year running, marking a watershed moment in how the country approaches relationship, commitment and family life.


New figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that just 49.5% of adults aged 16 and over are married or in civil partnership.


For some, the trend suggests alternative forms of partnership better matched to modern pressures while for others, the...
Daily Mirror •

Love Island legend 'to return to the show' after split from famous ex

A former Love Island champion is reported to be set to make a surprise return to the second series of Love Island: All Stars, which lands in January. The returning ITV star – who first entered the villa four years ago and went on to win her series – has been in advanced talks with ITV after producers reached out to the newly single bombshell earlier this autumn.

Millie Court, 29, who won the show in 2021, will be packing her bikinis once again after her second split from fellow champion Liam Re...
Southwark News •

Dulwich to Denmark: 80 years of questions and answers after World War Two

Eighty years ago in Dulwich, as VE Day celebrations roared across Britain, my great-grandmother Mary Robbins sat down to write a letter to her family in Ireland, writes Emily Driver…


Her son, Alfred, an RAF bomb aimer, had disappeared a year earlier.  

“Glad to know the cursed war is over at last. Now I’m more keenly than ever looking forward to good news of Alf, or better still, seeing him in person. People went mad here, but I couldn’t participate. It made me wish more than ever he was her...
The Mirror •

Inside Holly Willoughby's epic family holiday as Strictly gig beckons

Holly Willoughby has given fans a glimpse inside her recent Florida getaway as Strictly Come Dancing rumours heat up. The 44-year-old TV darling swapped British autumn drizzle for roller coasters, Disney castles, and cocktails as she jetted to Orlando with her family and close friends for half-term. Posting on Instagram, the mum-of-three gushed over an “epic” trip, saying there is “Nothing better than family time and making the best memories together” – complete with “non-stop laughs” and plenty...
South West Londoner •

The Brits helping deliver aid to Ukraine in their spare time  | South West Londoner

While governments debate strategy and sanctions, a quiet army of British volunteers have found their own ways to help keep Ukraine’s wheels turning through the war.


“It’s like being in a Second World War film or a Western — another era. Sandbags on either side of the old carriages taking me to the train station, sometimes sirens sounding.”


This is how Adrian Simpson, a retired security consultant from Devon, described the final leg of his solo journeys home from Ukraine. Nearly 2000 kilome...
Southwark News •

South London’s ‘party poet’ tells us how it all started in pubs in Peckham

In the cellar of Southwark Tavern, in Borough, James Massiah is talking to me about equations. Not the kind he once ignored at his many schools in South London (apologies Beecholme Park, Gorringe Park and Mitcham Vale), but the ones he now learns as a poet and the creator of party poetry phenomenon Adult Entertainment, writes Emily Driver…


“In maths you have a right answer and a wrong answer, and that’s what I want to get to the bottom of,” he tells me. “What’s a right answer for a poem? When...
North East Londoner •

Refugee to restaurateur: Yogi’s Sri Lankan Kitchen is feeding Angel with kindness  | North East Londoner

When Trampoline Café in Angel changed hands under new ownership this month, it was not a faceless business deal – it was a homecoming. The Sri Lankan-run café, tucked in the cobbled backstreets of Camden Passage, has long been known for its fresh ingredients, crowds spilling into the streets, and its powerful mission: to train and employ refugees through its Changing Journeys programme. Now, that mission has taken a full-circle turn. On 1 October, Trampoline Café officially passed down into the...
Southwark News •

A ‘blueprint’ for the future? Students and experts weigh in on Greenwich-Kent university merger

Students at the University of Greenwich have voiced optimism about preliminary plans to merge their institution with the University of Kent, in a pioneering move set to establish the UK’s first multi-university group, writes Emily Driver…


From autumn 2026, if plans are approved, the two universities will be managed by a single vice-chancellor, Professor Jane Harrington, and unite more than 28,000 students across existing campuses in Greenwich, Kent and Medway. The new university group will be...
southlondon.co.uk •

Review: The Land of the Living at the Dorfman - southlondon.co.uk

The Land of the Living, opens on a hesitation. Ruth (Juliet Stevenson) stumbles over her words, circling a question posed by a man from her past, Older Thomas (Tom Wlaschiha). We do not hear the question, but as the play unfolds it is revealed as the inexhaustible one: who am I, and where do I come from, writes Emily Driver.


For Thomas, that question is freighted with a uniquely brutal inheritance. Back in war-torn Bavaria, we learn with Ruth, a UN relief worker, that as a boy he was torn fro...
Southwark News •

Rogue traders ‘thriving’ as South London’s trading standards teams stretched to breaking point, says report

Staffing for consumer protection in some South London boroughs reaches an all time low, leaving counterfeit goods, scams and cowboy builders free to operate with little fear of prosecution, writes Emily Driver…


The report by consumer watchdog Which? has revealed a collapse in trading standards enforcement across Britain – with South London boroughs as among the worst hit. Lambeth – home to a population of over 318,000 people and over 13,000 businesses – has just two trading standards officers...
Southwark News •

World’s oldest boat race returns to the Thames

The River Thames will swap ferries, freighters and Uber boats for single sculls on Wednesday, 10 September, as three rowers compete in the Doggett’s Coat and Badge Wager – the oldest continuously run boat race in the world, writes Emily Driver…


Dating back to 1715, the annual wager is a historic test of strength, skill and endurance. The arena is a 7.44km course of London’s most iconic, fast-running waters between London Bridge and Cadogan Pier. The award: the Red Coat and Silver Badge – one...
southlondon.co.uk •

Review: The Popess at The Glitch - southlondon.co.uk

In Waterloo this week, a conclave has been called. Cardinals gather in the basement of The Glitch, white plumes of smoke curl skyward, the papal throne is filled. The surprise? The pope is a woman, writes Emily Driver. 


The Popess, written and performed by Elena Mazzon and directed by Colin Watkeys, draws on an obscure and tantalising fragment of Christian history: the cult surrounding Gugliema of Bohemia, a 13th-century noblewoman once hailed by followers as the reincarnation of the Holy Spi...
Southwark News •

Walworth Road partially closed after car crashes into traffic light

A section of Walworth Road in SE17 was cordoned off this afternoon after a car crashed into a traffic light, writes Emily Driver…


Emergency services were called to the scene at 12:53pm. Officers from the Metropolitan Police secured the area, while firefighters from Peckham Fire Station attended to make safe any exposed electrical wiring caused by the crash. One vehicle was involved, and no serious injuries have been reported.


 A London Ambulance Service spokesperson said: “We were called...
Southwark News •

Appleby Blue Almshouse in Bermondsey shortlisted for Prestigious National Housing Award

Two South London housing developments – including Bermondsey’s Appleby Blue Almshouse – have been recognised for their pioneering approaches to affordable housing and shortlisted for a prestigious national architecture award, writes Emily Driver…


Bermondsey’s Appleby Blue Almshouse, which reimagines the traditional almshouse model to meet 21st-century needs, is among the four projects shortlisted by the Royal Institute of British Architects’ (RIBA) for the Neave Brown Award for Housing 2025 –...
southlondon.co.uk •

Review: Dulwich Picture Gallery - Time Spaghetti - southlondon.co.uk

Dulwich Picture Gallery’s new display doesn’t belong to time past, present or future – but to time overspilled and cheerfully tangled: Time Spaghetti, writes Emily Driver. 


The works by Lisa Contucci, Clifton Wright and Stanley Ganton stage a new kind of conversation for the gallery, held, not over a dinner table, but across eras. When sharp and sustained, they prompt us to consider the gallery’s old masters with a fresh set of devouring eyes.Contucci’s process-driven art begins from photogra...
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