For every year a woman breastfeeds, her risk of breast cancer goes down by 4.3 per cent, on top of a 7 per cent reduction for each child she has.Scientists behind the research accept that it is “completely unrealistic” for today’s working women to mirror mothers in rural Africa, who typically have six or seven children and breastfeed each for up to two years.But breastfeeding a child for an extra six months could reduce a British woman’s chances of developing breast cancer by 5 per cent. It is estimated that of the 39,000 cases diagnosed each year, more than 1,000 could be prevented.British women have an average of two children and breastfeed each for two to three months. About 30 per cent do not attempt to breastfeed at all, and of every five mothers who start breastfeeding one gives up in the first two weeks.This is a better record than the US, where 50 per cent of women do not breastfeed, but it compares badly with Scandinavia where just 10 per cent of women bottle-feed and the sight of a child on the breast hardly warrants a glance.More women are choosing to breastfeed as the benefits become increasingly obvious. In the past decade research has shown that breastfed children score higher in intelligence tests, are less susceptible to chest infections, gastroenteritis, infections of the middle ear, asthma, eczema and diabetes and are less likely to be obese.Along with the profound emotional benefits for mothers, breastfeeding has been shown to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer, help the uterus to contract after delivery and help women to regain their shape.Strangely, breastfeeding was once totally acceptable in Britain.

In the 1800s, it was regarded as far worse for a woman to show an ankle or leg than her breasts.But the introduction of formula milk in the early 1900s was a turning point. At first, manufactured milk was responsible for killing nearly every baby it was fed to. Poor standards of hygiene in factories, and in the orphanages where it was used, meant that the death rate was almost 100 per cent.But by the 1950s, formula milk had become fashionable. Advertisements showing beautiful, smiling babies coincided with an era when pregnant women rarely ventured out of the house, and when, in February 1957, a women giving birth was for the first time shown on television, the Daily Sketch declared it “tasteless” and “revolting beyond the pale”.In 1956, when the NCT was established to campaign for women to be treated more humanely during childbirth and to support mothers who wanted to breastfeed, the charity’s founders were seen as freaks.By the 1970s, Belinda Phipps, the charity’s chief executive, said that few babies were breastfed. It was only during the 1980s and 1990s that breastfeeding rates began slowly to increase.Scotland is now considering giving women a right to breastfeed, but attempts to win a right for MPs to breastfeed in the House of Commons have so far failed.Mrs Phipps said that today’s research, showing the “enormous health benefits for mothers”, should encourage more women to breastfeed.”We need to see a real shift away from the current bottle-feeding culture in the UK to one where breastfeeding is completely accepted.”Breastfeeding should become as unremarkable as reading a newspaper, so that more women are able to follow their instincts and breastfeed wherever and whenever their baby needs to be fed.”In Norway, nobody is interested if a mother starts to feed her baby.

But we still get letters from people saying they have been thrown out of burger restaurants for breastfeeding.”She added: “We hope that this important finding – that the longer women breastfeed, they more they are protected from breast cancer – will encourage more women to consider breastfeeding.”Professor Valerie Beral, the lead author of the study, said it had long been assumed that breastfeeding and childbirth protected women. After Ramazzini published his treatise, De Morbis Artificum Diatriba, another Italian study in 1843 again showed that nuns ran a much higher risk of breast cancer.In 1926, a scientist called Janet Lane-Claypon at the Minstry of Health found that women with breast cancer had an average of 3.4 children while women without cancer had an average of 5.3.Professor Beral said the new study was an “important step forward” in understanding breast cancer. The key was to find the biological mechanism involved and see if scientists could replicate the protective effects of reproduction.She said: “Prolonged breastfeeding and having lots of children pushes breast cancer rates down. The high rate of breast cancer in Britain could be sub-stantially reduced if women breastfed their babies for an extra six months. But they acknowledge that such a change would be “completely unrealistic” for today’s working women.. The latest gaggle of young men in suits and ties from New York, the oddly named Interpol, are here to bring a little gloom into your life. Firmly in thrall to great miserable English music of the past, they look back to the pre-Ecstasy Manchester sound of Joy Division and the largely forgotten Chameleons, just like Doves, who aren’t exactly starving these days.

Though the rigid structures, tribal drumming from Sam Fogarino and the unconvincing corporate image might grate, songs like “Untitled” (groan) with its guitar stabs and the shameless Bunnymen facsimile “NYC” (short for “New York cares”) have real power. Whether you find the accumulative effect merely wearing rather than entrancing depends on your age and general state of happiness, though their one nod to jollity, “Say Hello to the Angels”, which borrows the beat from “This Charming Man”, is plain awful. They have enough visual curiosity to satisfy; singer Paul Banks resembles a preppy Howlin’ Pelle and bassist Carlos D is Crispin

The latest gaggle of young men in suits and ties from New York, the oddly named Interpol, are here to bring a little gloom into your life. Guaranteed to do well among teens who can’t be seen to enjoy the Strokes any more, they’re a perfect soundtrack to a cosy evening in, engrossed in a depressing book.
A weekend of Icelandic frolics at the ICA (surprise) concluded with a terrific set from the hugely unlikely Apparat Organ Quartet, something of a local supergroup (they played as The Helvitis Organ Symphony the previous night) who wield unwieldy old instruments while a drummer pounds behind them. God knows what stock usually fills Reykjavik’s second-hand music stores, but most of it must have been here tonight. Sadly, when one keyboard broke down after the excellent current single “Stereo Rock’n'Roll” (Kraftwerk meets the Glitter Band and everyone wins), the only microphone on stage was fixed to a vocoder, thus inspiring the robotic cry of “This is out of order”.