The amount of money people invest when they first open an Individual Savings Account (ISA) has jumped by 84% in a year, according to proprietary data from Scottish Friendly. The modern mutual’s data shows that opening values have been steadily increasing over the last four quarters, data for Q4 2025 and Q1 2026 shows a 21% increase.

Abra-Cadabra My mother had more magic in her thumb than the length and breadth of any magician Weaving incredible stories around the dark-green senna brew just to make us slake the ritual Sunday purgative Knowing how to place a cochineal poultice on a fevered forehead Knowing how to measure a belly's symmetry kneading the narah pains away Once my baby sister stuffed a split-pea up her no…

In a country where most of the population seems to bemoan the fact that Chancellor Rachel Reeves, introduces new stealth taxes on a weekly basis, it is a curiosity that in Denmark, with one of the highest tax regimes in the world, there is little pushback against the Minister of Finance and people remain among the happiest on the planet.

House of Wonder, assembled to mark Beamish's seventieth birthday, is above all a personal album, and that comes through in every bar. To celebrate the occasion, Beamish has returned to the instrument that first shaped her career as a performer in the 1980s: the viola. Crucially, the instrument she plays throughout is a viola made in 2014 by Stephanie Irvine—a gift that, in Beamish's own account, rekindled her relationship with the instrument entirely. The album gathers works written by Beamish for herself to play alongside new commissions from her three children—all accomplished musicians in their own right—and a circle of close collaborators.