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.
Sarah Sands: Weddings are for the family. The couple can wait
The Richard Curtis wedding – village church, silly hats, Hugh Grant pulling faces – is going out of fashion. One in six couples now prefer to get married abroad. They want something secular, hot and relaxed. Suspension of their everyday lives, freedom from their in-laws, wedding shots framed in Caribbean sunshine.
Recently by Sarah Sands
Sarah Sands: A packet of seeds sows hope and roots families
Sunday, 23 November 2008
There is a Victorian tone to these frostbitten days, with the ruination of the feckless and the resurgence of the Salvation Army. The deaths of little house sparrows seems to be part of the same parable. The concreting over of gardens, in the name of modernity, has led to tumbling numbers of the least fancy and most steadfast of residents.
Sarah Sands: Why the common good feels bad to me
Sunday, 16 November 2008
Sarah Sands urges thrift until the banks start spending too
Sarah Sands: Democracy: The X Factor writ large
Sunday, 9 November 2008
People power works in mysterious ways
Sarah Sands: Pursue fame, Sienna, and the paps will pursue you
Sunday, 2 November 2008
Sienna Miller has gone to court seeking damages for a "campaign of harassment" by photographers. She has been chased while walking her dogs, jostled and shouted at, and trapped in car chases. Beautiful, troubled blondes caught in the car lights of pursuing photographers make us uneasy. Diana, Princess of Wales, offers an eternal rebuke from the grave.
Sarah Sands: Money, not class, is the root of all evil. Ask Russia
Sunday, 26 October 2008
John Prescott tried to ram several bastions of privilege before he got into Rugby School. Eton turned him down, but the headmaster of Rugby, Patrick Derham, had been educated himself on a charitable scholarship, so felt he could defend himself on the Prescott charge that rich parents bought their children success. Mr Derham, whom I met at a preview screening for Tiger Aspect's Prescott: The Class System and Me, on BBC2 tomorrow, believed that educational aspiration was a first principle of human nature. He had skilfully choreographed scholarship pupils from non-privileged backgrounds to debate with Mr Prescott. They could not understand the former deputy prime minister's aversion to the ladder of opportunity. Mr Prescott looked in vain for fellow class warriors – the working men's club has little meaning in a multicultural, individualist, internet age.
Sarah Sands: There's no herd madness in the Masai Mara
Sunday, 12 October 2008
At Lewa Wilderness, a short plane hop from the Masai Mara in Kenya, I once met an unassuming Englishman with a wife and baby. They had been there for weeks and showed no sign of leaving.
Sarah Sands: Emma Thompson is the true lady of Brideshead
Sunday, 5 October 2008
"It's our turn now," says the young soldier at the end of Brideshead Revisited, and so it is. Do not mind the old incumbents who moan that Diana Quick can never be robbed of her role as Julia Flyte, or that Jeremy Irons conveyed more emotion as Charles Ryder. Instead, there is a fashionable distaste for barmy old faith and self-restraint. Brideshead has become better looking and more shallow.
Sarah Sands: Peston is our rock – and I knew that
Sunday, 28 September 2008
Hails to the City's voice of reason
Sarah Sands: Cheryl Cole is very, very hot. Official
Sunday, 21 September 2008
Our writer and her son agree that Mrs Cole is very easy on the eye
Sarah Sands: Insult America, Russell, but please make sure it's funny
Sunday, 14 September 2008
The Americans are the least cynical people on earth, someone remarked to me recently. And so we send over Russell Brand, a comically depraved figure, an MTV Byron, who lewdly insults a virgin boy band and takes on the most powerful figure in the world, the US President.

- Jack Riley: A word from the Redditor-in-chief
- Larry Ryan: 'Bizarre indie cameos'
- Simon Rice: The year of the (football) crisis
- Sanjida O'Connell: The truth about life in a 'green' house
- Jimmy Leach: Obama and the internet
- Archie Bland: Pick of the commentators
- Chris Schuler: Life on Mars
- Catherine Gordon: The boxer rebellion bands and some casual Johnny Borell hating
- Andrew Grice: Brown tries to defuse VAT bombshell
- Catherine Townsend: Google Sex Searches NSFW
- Jane Merrick: Peace reigns in the Labour Party
- David Price: Mapping the mind of the blogosphere
- Colinb: Trillion pound black hole of national debt?
- Edward Seckerson: Villazon Back in Comfort Zone
- The Life Browser: Scrooge Williams and friends
- The Independent starts blogging
- Start your own Independent Minds blog
Columnist Comments
• Deborah Orr: One more inquiry isn't going to help
I don't believe a public inquiry into the Baby P case is necessary
• Hamish McRae: It will take time, but we'll recover
If officialdom seems over-optimistic in its forecasts, the markets seem too pessimistic
• Janet Street-Porter: Mother does not always know best
One of the most sensitive subjects for writers is the mother-daughter relationship
• Mark Steel: Never mind the baby, just get back to work
The next thing will be an exciting new scheme known as the 'workhouse'
Most popular in Opinion
Read
1 Hamish McRae: It will take time, but we'll recover
2 Mark Steel: Never mind the baby, just get back to work
3 Robert Fisk's World: The British should not forget the massive debt they owe the Irish
4 Basildon Peta: It should be the tipping point for the tyrant – but this is Zimbabwe
5 Janet Street-Porter: Mother does not always know best
6 Dominic Lawson: When 'life' should mean life.
7 Robert Fisk: 'Nobody supports the Taliban, but people hate the government'
8 Michael Gove: We need a Swedish education system
Emailed
Commented
1 Steve Richards: Who is accountable for the police?
2 James Purnell: New Labour is not dead and buried – it's in rude health
3 Dominic Lawson: When 'life' should mean life.
4 Mark Steel: Never mind the baby, just get back to work
5 Steve Richards: This shameful political point-scoring over Baby P
6 Penny de Valk: 'Paradigm' might be a stupid word, but it can also be a useful one
7 Terence Blacker: The greasy gravy train of lobbyism
8 Alexa Chung: 'Moonlighting as a DJ, I spun nu-metal to a room full of drunk hipsters'



