MUM of two Bryony Lewis has not looked back since getting a log burner fitted in autumn 2022. 

She reckons she’s already saved £2,000 on her bills since switching to burning wood instead of turning her heating on two years ago.

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The 40-year-old, who lives in a five-bed home in Fareham, Hampshire, with her husband, Dan, her son Theo, eight, and daughter, Izzy, six, runs her own e-commerce business, T & Belle, which sells gifts for parents.

That means she spends a lot of time working at home – and over the winter the heating bills rack up.

So a few years ago, she started looking into what she could do to reduce her bills, and found that log burners can be a great way to heat the whole house up for far less.

With energy bills having risen from October 1, when the price cap went up by 10%, Bryony is very glad she made the investment.

This move by Ofgem saw the average annual energy bill jump from £1,568 to £1,717, meaning households are set to fork out even more cash to heat their homes this winter.

Bryony said: “The cost-of-living continues to go up and gas and electricity bills are making an increasingly big dent in our finances. We are very happy we made the decision to find a cheaper alternative to central heating.”

According to Uswitch, the average household with typical consumption could pay around £226 on gas over three months (October to December) based on the current price cap unit rates. 

This is based on regulator Ofgem’s ‘breakdown of usage.’ But note that the cost for each household will vary based on a number of factors, such as type of home, energy performance certificate (EPC) rating, number of radiators and type of boiler. 

After getting a smart meter, Bryony calculated the family was easily spending upwards of £800 on central heating over six months.

How much did it cost to switch?

Bryony paid £800 for her log burner, plus around £1,000 to get it installed – but this included the cost of removing the family’s previous open fire place, so without that it would have been cheaper.

She said: “We paid around £800 for our ACR Woodpecker WP5 Plus – but as we’ve discovered, it doesn’t take too long to recoup the cost.”

Bryony opted for a modern multi-fuel burner, which is a more eco-friendly type that is approved for use in smoke-control areas.

Now, the only ongoing running costs are logs, kindling and firelighters, which has been far cheaper than running central heating.

Bryony said: “For the whole of the winter season last year – from October to March – we spent a total of £100 on those three items,” she said.

One of Bryony’s top tips is to invest in good-quality kiln-dried logs.

“Doing this means the unit gives out a lot of heat,” she explained.

When buying logs, remember to look out for the “Ready to Burn” logo, a scheme that certifies solid fuels for burning in England. 

The only other associated cost Bryony needs to budget for is getting the chimney swept regularly. 

She said: “We last did this last in September and it cost us around £60.”

If you’re looking for a qualified individual locally, the National Association of Chimney Sweeps (NACS) is a good starting point. Also get your burner regularly serviced to keep it in tip-top condition. 

When getting any wood-burning appliance installed, you must always use a qualified tradesperson, such as a HETAS-registered installer.

And make sure you’re up to speed on wood burning stove winter rules – read more here. 

“Even on the coldest days, we only put it on for a maximum of one hour in the morning and the same before bedtime, despite the fact I work from home.”

Other energy-saving measures

Investing in a log burner is not the only energy-efficient change Bryony has made at home. 

“Our smart meter showed me that the oven was another energy-guzzling appliance,” she said.

“So, after researching the alternatives, I invested in an air fryer. This was back in 2022, and we have made really good use of it since then.”
The family went for a 7.6-litre Ninja Dual model. 

“As a family, we do a lot of things to try to be more efficient,” said Bryony. “We take care to always switch appliances off at the plug, as leaving devices on standby can cost a small fortune.”

Figures from Quotezone suggest households could save around £80 a year by switching off  ‘vampire’ appliances such as gaming consoles, computers, laptops, and speakers, as well as dishwashers, washing machines, tumble dryers, microwaves, coffee makers and TVs.

Bryony added: “Other steps we take to save on energy costs include replacing all our lightbulbs with energy-saving ones.”

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Jodie Whittaker’s Duchess of Malfi strides on to the stage in a scarlet cocktail dress and confidently takes hold of a standing mic to sing about desire. She then pours herself a strong drink and waits for her two madly controlling brothers to express their disapproval — which they duly do, volubly and at length. It’s a promising start to Zinnie Harris’s The Duchess (of Malfi), first seen in 2019, which wrests John Webster’s blood-soaked tragedy from the 17th century and relocates it loosely in the early 1960s. Sadly, what follows is a muddle.

There’s potential in a response to the Jacobean original from a female perspective: a chance to give the duchess greater interiority and an opportunity to examine the enduring nature of misogyny and violence. With a setting evoking the Sixties, it could make sense that the duchess’s weirdly possessive brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal, would panic at the prospect of greater liberation for women.

But the result is an oddly patchy affair that cleaves closely to Webster’s plot without bedding it into the new context. We don’t get much closer to the duchess and the characters seem to be floating free: the hierarchy that determines their actions in Webster’s time no longer fits and there’s no sense of another society’s pressures to replace it.

That might matter less if the focus were more psychological. Here we see the misogyny but we get no deeper into what drives it: Paul Ready’s Cardinal is an ice-cold sadist and Rory Fleck Byrne’s Ferdinand is snake-mad from the get-go. Harris’s script is brisk and modern, but too often characters flatly state what is going on with them rather than it seeping out of the drama.

Meanwhile Tom Piper’s brutalist set, with its clanging metal walkways, could be a modernist house but also has the feel of an institution, suggesting that society is a prison — or that the whole thing may be unrolling in a psychiatric hospital. Interesting ideas both — the 1960s was a period of disturbing psychological experimentation — but again they don’t feel explored.    

There are moving scenes in Harris’s production. The female characters occasionally express their feelings in song, as if needing to break out of the structure of the tragedy to speak freely. The torture of the duchess evokes war crimes; her slaughter, along with that of her maid and daughter, leaves three broken female bodies on a dirty floor — a piteous sight that speaks for so many domestic murders. They then gently rouse one another to haunt the men, becoming a timeless chorus of battered women. And there’s a touching ending that suggests a path away from toxic masculinity.

But, for all that, and despite Whittaker’s vibrant, warm, determined duchess, it’s an odd, messy affair. It often feels strained, confusing and over-emphatic and, in the end, it fatally misses the tragic power of the original.

★★☆☆☆

To December 20, trafalgartheatre.com

Today’s agenda: EY fires staff for “cheating”; Mubadala Capital’s private equity push; Chinese share buybacks soar; Navalny’s memoir; and the use and abuse of Orwell

Good morning. We start with the latest updates on the US presidential race, with a Financial Times analysis showing Kamala Harris raised $971mn in the past three months, more than the Trump campaign’s entire haul of $894mn since the start of January 2023.

Who’s donating? The vice-president has received contributions from more than three times the number of individual donors as Donald Trump since she entered the race in July. The Republican former president has been more reliant on billionaires giving through so-called super political action committees, which unlike political candidates can raise unlimited amounts from individuals. Nearly half of Trump’s money has come from super Pacs, and four billionaire donors combined — Timothy Mellon, Miriam Adelson, Elon Musk and Richard Uihlein — have given $395mn to four pro-Trump super Pacs.

Why it matters: A recent poll shows Trump has all but erased the slender lead Harris had built up in crucial swing states. The poll found that about a quarter of registered voters described themselves as “uncommitted” to either candidate. With just two weeks to go until the November 5 vote, both candidates are criss-crossing the country and splashing out on expensive advertising in the battleground states that could decide the outcome.

We have more on the money race here, and further analysis below:

• Harris’s economic team: The Democratic candidate is expected to bring in her own people if she wins. We explore her potential choices for Treasury secretary and key policy advisers.

• Global impact: Strongman leaders around the world would welcome a victory for the Republican former president, writes Gideon Rachman.

Sign up for our US Election Countdown newsletter for the latest updates on the final stretch of the White House race. And here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:

• Economic data: The IMF publishes its latest world economic outlook and its global financial stability report. The UK has data on public sector finances, and the US has labour figures, both for September.

• Brics summit: Leaders of the group gather in Kazan, Russia. Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping are set to attend after India yesterday said a deal was reached with China on patrols at their disputed border.

• Companies: Chanel is expected to announce a deal with the Oxford-Cambridge annual boat race. General Motors, Kimberly-Clark, Lockheed Martin, Moody’s, Philip Morris International are among those reporting results. Full list in our Week Ahead newsletter.

Five more top stories

1. Exclusive: EY has fired dozens of US staff for what it called cheating on professional training courses. The dismissals took place last week after an investigation found that some employees had attended more than one online training class at a time during the “EY Ignite Learning Week” in May. Several of the fired employees told the FT they did not believe they were violating EY policy.

2. Exclusive: An arm of Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund is preparing a push into private equity markets, spotting what it believes is an opportunity to take over large holdings as buyout groups race to sell assets and return cash to investors. Mubadala Capital has raised $3.1bn for its latest private equity fund, surpassing a $2bn target. Antoine Gara has more details.

3. Iran’s currency and stocks have declined and most foreign airlines have suspended flights in anticipation of an Israeli retaliatory attack on the Islamic republic. While regime loyalists insist that Tehran is not afraid of a potential war with Israel, many fear that the country’s sanctions-hit economy can ill-afford another cycle of escalation.

4. Share buybacks on mainland China’s biggest exchanges have soared to a record high of Rmb235bn ($33bn) so far this year, more than double last year’s total and far surpassing the previous record of Rmb133bn in 2022. The rush comes amid policymakers’ attempts to revive a flagging stock market.

• Beijing’s U-turn: After resisting calls for fiscal stimulus for years, today’s Big Read explores why Xi Jinping changed his mind — and whether it will be enough.

5. PureGym plans to make the US its second-biggest market, with more than 300 sites by 2030, as it pursues a $105mn deal to buy dozens of outlets from collapsed chain Blink Fitness. The UK’s largest gym operator has offered to buy “a substantial portion” of Blink’s estate after it was put into Chapter 11 by owner gym group Equinox in August. Read the full story.

News in-depth

Launching a “national conversation” about the future of England’s NHS yesterday, health secretary Wes Streeting admitted it was in the midst of “the worst crisis in its history”. As health leaders press for a substantial funding injection in the UK’s Budget on October 30, the latest data underlines the scale of the strains on the taxpayer-funded system.

Think you can run the UK economy? Step into the chancellor’s shoes and play the FT’s new Budget game.

We’re also reading . . . 

• Moldova’s EU bid: Here’s how Russia won over the former Soviet country’s south to deliver an unexpected upset for President Maia Sandu’s referendum to join the bloc.

• Immersive fashion: Vogue’s next event will go beyond the runway to become a theatrical light show. Is immersive entertainment more than a passing fad?

• Alexei Navalny: Patriot, the memoir of Vladimir Putin’s murdered opponent, is a worthy testament to his courage, defiance and humour, writes FT Moscow bureau chief Max Seddon.

• Victims of success: While challenging, the prevalence of today’s mental and physical conditions may actually be a good sign for the human race, writes Stephen Bush.

Graphic of the day

Long regarded as more science fiction than reality, low-cost, high-energy laser weapons are getting renewed attention from the defence sector, as militaries around the world look to the cutting-edge technology as one of the ways to counter cheap new missile threats such as drones.

Take a break from the news

For years, journalists, critics and columnists have vied for George Orwell’s posthumous approval, writes Irish novelist Naoise Dolan for the FT Magazine. How did one of Britain’s greatest writers become the single answer to so many questions, in so many different subjects, for so many people?

Additional contributions from Gordon Smith and Benjamin Wilhelm