David Cameron, Boris Johnson – and George Osborne himself – will reap Budget rewards

The first lady of British fashion today made her debut appearance at this season's London Fashion Week.

From a £400 Alice Temperley Filofax to a gold-nibbed Montblanc pen, Britain's stationery fetish is refusing to be erased by technology

Smythson – the upmarket stationery firm that employs PM's wife – turns to product placement

Valued at £126m and billed as one of the most controversial art finds of the century, Salvator Mundi will be unveiled this week at the National Gallery.

David Cameron will warn EU leaders tomorrow that Britain must not be relegated to an EU second division when eurozone countries adopt greater fiscal integration. At the EU summit in Brussels to discuss the eurozone crisis, the Prime Minister will warn that the region's 17 members must not dictate policies for the 10 countries, including Britain, that have not joined the single currency. His intervention reflects growing fears among British ministers that the 10 could be virtually frozen out of decisions that would have a huge impact on their economies – such as the single market, bank regulation and EU directives affecting small and large businesses.

It is a development that will be savoured by environmentalists. Jeremy Clarkson, patron saint of petrol heads and serial denouncer of "eco-mentalists", can look forward to a recycling depot being built within a Lamborghini Murcielago's braking distance of his country home.

The rise and fall of famous shops is social history. Why did we fall out of love with Habitat? Was it them or was it us? Has the timid young provincial couple "going designer" become a thing of the past? Or does a retail concept, however good, die if it does not develop?

"I've not actually read any of them. I just love the bindings." So said the actress Davinia Taylor earlier this year when she decided to put her house on the market – complete with its carefully-sourced collection of classic books. Rarely removed from their perch on a bookcase in the living room, their primary purpose was to disguise Taylor's walk-in fridge. And so, with the fridge no longer destined to be a feature in her life, the books were deemed redundant.

Some of the works have adorned the walls of Britain's corridors of power for more than a century, seen only in passing by a privileged few.