Keep the kids warm as the mercury drops this winter with 10 cosy, cute, and stylish jackets

I've worn it everywhere since, bar the premiere of Skyfall, but only because I wasn't invited

Little is known about the vulgar treatment of lambs - all just to keep us snug and trendy.

Four medieval bras have been found among textiles excavated from a castle, confounding conventional wisdom that bras did not exist before the 19th century.

The Cornshed Sisters are a North-east folk-pop quartet who include Marie Nixon (previously of Kenickie), and their debut album, produced by Field Music's Peter Brewis (a Cornshed husband), is filled with beguiling close-harmony tunes which wouldn't feel out of place on the Wicker Man soundtrack, and sound like venerable trad-arrs but are actually originals.

He is not the only designer to use lace this spring – but his modern take defies expectations, says Susannah Frankel

Model: Alicia at Ford

The Guidebook

Insight Guides' Select series has four new editions: Marrakech, Paris, Chicago and Shanghai, all bound in patterned linen. £9.99 each.

Go to Insightguides.com

A cape created from golden silk spun by more than a million spiders is going on display this week.

What we love, we're not sure about, we're buying and can't wait for

Wool is the latest commodity that has shot through the roof. Thanks to tropical storms in Australia (which have disrupted production) and rising demand in China, the global price of the material, harvested from the backs of sheep, has doubled. This is expected to lead to a 10 per cent increase in the typical price of a man's suit. So expect a jump in popularity for linen ensembles. And other cheaper materials will get a boost too as the laws of supply and demand do their work.

With a thump, a thick tome lands on my desk: it is the Provisional Atlas of the UK's Larger Moths. Two adjectives in that title, provisional and larger, may well deter some people as they give off a definite whiff of nerdiness, but having by now been infected with the nerd germ I am immune to such concerns, open the volume eagerly and at once find myself immersed in the world of the oblique carpet, the dark spinach, the smoky wainscot, the brindled pug, the snout, the beautiful snout, the Bloxworth snout and the true lover's knot.

Add a touch of Sixties rock-star glamour to your wardrobe with this winter's warmest accessories...

Click on the image to launch our guide

Writing under the pseudonym Frances Brody, best-selling novelist Frances McNeil debuts with her first crime novel, a retro-mystery set in 1920s West Yorkshire.