Teachers’ Pensions used to check if I was alive. Now it seems to assume I’m dead | Consumer rights

I contacted you a year ago after you wrote about teachers not receiving their pensions because of assumptions that they were dead. I had received six letters essentially informing me that my payments would be stopped unless I confirmed that I was still alive. Recently the payments did stop, only this time I had not received … Read more

Claudia Roden: ‘There hadn’t been cookbooks in Egypt – everything was just handed down’ | Claudia Roden

My lunch companion is a living institution. Self-taught cook, traveller, recipe collector, historian and anthropologist Claudia Roden has reshaped how we think about food, its cultural heritage and social meaning. It’s not just celebrated chefs such as Yotam Ottolenghi and Moro’s Samantha Clark who pay tribute to her pioneering work. The historian Simon Schama once observed … Read more

The truth about cholesterol: 12 things you need to know – from eggs to weight to statins | Health & wellbeing

High cholesterol can cause heart problems and strokes – but levels can creep up without showing any symptoms. This is why, if you’re over 40, you should be getting your cholesterol checked every five years. It’s a simple enough concept, but, like alcohol and other things that could be slowly, invisibly damaging our bodies, cholesterol … Read more