Only three dailies recorded year-on-year increases. The Daily Telegraph was up by 5,700 (0.63 per cent) on January last year, perhaps the result of switches of loyalty by refuseniks of the compact Times. But The Times and The Independent, the two broadsheets-turned-compact, are still demonstrating that upmarket compacts are attracting the young readers that all newspapers seek and outperforming the rest of the market.

The Times was up by 25,600 (4 per cent) to 686,300 a day and The Independent by 8,200 (3 per cent) to 257,000 a day. The Times was celebrating the third successive month in which it had sold more copies at the full cover price than The Telegraph.

There is another way of attracting young readers that is even more successful. Month by month media pundits note the inexorable decline in newspaper sales. But perhaps because we tend to sneer at “frees” we overlook one of the more remarkable newspaper success stories of the past few years — the rise of the Metro International titles.

The Metros show that newspapers can reverse the trend of decline if they capture the zeitgeist, which in 2005 consists of being free, straight, apolitical and a quick 10 to 20-minute news fix on the way to work. Forty-two daily Metro editions are now published in 63 cities in 17 countries in 16 languages. Their revenues last year were up by 48 per cent to $300 million (£168 million).

Britain’s go-it-alone Metro, founded in London six years ago by Associated Newspapers, owners of the Mail titles and London’s Evening Standard, is now picked up by a million readers a day in 13 cities, including 490,000 in London. Associated has now launched Standard Lite, a free midday “lite” version of the Standard, which is picked by 54,000 lunchtime readers.

Across Europe the success of Metro and other similar free newspapers, such as 20 Minutes, is equally remarkable. Metro Europe, distributed in 12 countries, is the biggest newspaper in Europe, with a daily distribution of 4.3 million and a readership of 10.8 million, mostly young and well educated. One in four readers is under 25. Add 20 Minutes and Britain’s Metro to that and the Metro titles have a European circulation of more than seven million.

DECADE by decade each new act in the royal soap opera seems to diminish the monarchy. The sneering tone of many reports after the announcement of the upcoming marriage of the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles would have been unthinkable only 30 years ago. The deference and respect once accorded to the royals apparently no longer exist “Boring old gits to wed” said the Daily Star (circulation 860,000 a day). There was Brian Reade’s ode in the Daily Mirror: “So let the kingdom yell and roar, Hurrah for the whorer and his whore”. There was the Daily Mail — “They must atone for all their sins”, “Insult to Diana’s memory”, and, according to a Guardian report, the Telegraph’s very posh Victoria Mather, late of Tatler and now of Vanity Fair, describing Mrs Parker Bowles on American TV as “a 58-year-old bag”.

My own reaction was captured by dear old Polly in The Guardian: “Oh that sinking of the heart”. According to Toynbee, we were in for an avalanche of monarchalia — tripe, tosh and trivia would dominate the press, she wrote. Well, yes and no. Yes, there was quite an avalanche in Friday’s papers, but after that, no, the story disappeared.

As Charles Moore noted in The Daily Telegraph, each newspaper was trying to guess what everyone else was thinking — but compared with only a few years ago the runes were hard to read. As The Sun read the runes, it devoted only nine news pages to the story. But the selfsame runes dictated 21 news pages in the Daily Mail, 11 in The Times and (as a tabloid equivalent) an astonishing 30 in the Telegraph.

Never in Britain’s modern history, The Sunday Telegraph observed, has there been less national rejoicing over the betrothal of an heir to the throne. The marriage was an “irrelevance”, said The Sunday Times. So on this occasion a royal wedding is not lifting sales. Circulation managers are often as useful a guide to the national pulse as opinion polls. “Camilla never sells papers — she arouses such mixed feelings,” said one of my acquaintance. He was right. The only paper that recorded a significant increase — up by about 75,000 — was the Mail.

Times Recommends

• Minister in talks with Saudis to protect creditors
• Premier Inn hits back in £29-a-room row
• Bankers hit back at 'populist' bonus supertax