Madeleine Spencer

Madeleine Spencer is a journalist and broadcaster who has contributed to titles including Grazia, Glamour, InStyle, The Independent, The Evening Standard, and Stylist, as well as offering commentary for the BBC, Sky News, and ITV. Her favourite debate to date involved standing up for the mood-enhancing, life-affirming joys of make-up on Newsnight, a topic she feels rather passionately about, given that she also works as a make-up artist.

She is keen on exploring the significance beauty rituals, products, and memories have on people from different walks of life, and enters into conversation on the topic with guests on her podcast, Beauty Full Lives. Said guests have included Kylie Minogue, Nicola Benedetti, Kristen Bell, Clarissa Ward, Sadie Frost, and Joy Crookes. She’s learned through those conversations that beauty is far from skin deep: every single product bought, embellishment applied, and choice made or unmade says something about the person behind it, and tells us something about their life story.

Madeleine is sad to say she knows a LOT about acne and how it can decimate confidence having suffered from it for years, and writes about how to care for volatile skin - and hide it - often.

If pressed to name someone who to her represents great pulchritude, she would always say Elvis Presley's is the most beautiful face she's ever seen. Her views on that cannot be changed, despite many trying. 

Outside of beauty and wellness, Madeleine splits her time between writing creatively (and recently had an essay published by Penguin in Angelica Malin's Unattached), reading and reading and reading, walking her rescue beagle/pointer, Monty, and moaning about petty things. Madeleine has an endless capacity to find niche things about which to have a rant, and indulges those leanings on her instagram (where she also shares tips on everything from the best wellness retreats to finding the perfect mascara).