I've got a few stoves and, apart from the newest one which is an MSR Windburner, they've all had a decent amount of use maybe upwards of 100 days each and here's what I think of them:
Crusader - simple cup with a dish underneath for burning chafing gel or hexi. Great stove as compact and relatively light but quite inefficient and completely unsuitable for anything much more than simply boiling water.
Simple stove that screws on top of gas cannister - I think mine is by maple fire or similar but MSR make a pocket rocket as well. These are very small and very lightweight and work OK. However they stand the pot up a goodly distance off the ground and especially with the smaller gas canister it can all be a little unstable under practical use. You can get a little "foot" type adapter to make a base for the canister and that greatly helps things however it does mean that the pot is still a little up in the air and so very exposed to wind meaning it can be hard to keep it lit and every inefficient under anything but calm conditions, even some sort of wind deflector still leaves it pretty exposed, plus the "feet" on the burner for supporting the pot can be quite small so, again, stability can be an issue. These are handy for a quick cuppa but probably unsuitable for your purposes, they'll do it but there are far better solutions.
Multifuel Stove - I have an MSR Dragonfly. These attach to a fuel bottle via a sort of "pipe" arrangement leaving the stove low to the ground and allowing it to have a decently sized pot stand area etc. My Dragonfly is a great stove and ideal for multi-day trips as a fuel bottle would hold enough fuel to boil a lot of water, or even to do some real cooking. As the pot sits relatively low to the ground and is well supported so real cooking is a realistic ambition plus a wind deflector can be put to good use. However, in any real world breeze or wind conditions then the stove mostly has to run pretty much "flat out" in order for it not to be extinguished by the wind. These stoves will be heavier and take up more space in the pack, a small detail that can become a big detail in the real world if you have limited space or have big distances to cover with lots of other gear. The multifuel stoves can, as the name says, burn a lot of stuff and exactly what they can burn varies by stove but I mostly run mine on Coleman Gas (White Gas) which is a liquid fuel a bit like petrol or similar. Most will at least also burn petrol and diesel though priming them with something like diesel can require some planning.
Canister stove - these are stoves attached to a gas canister by a "pipe" so they have the advantages of sitting low etc. mentioned in relation to the multifuel stove but they use canister gas. I have an MSR WindPro II and love it, it is probably my main stove and I've worn one out and just replaced it with another recently. You can vary the size of the gas canister you carry depending on the weight you want to carry and trip duration but, clearly, you need access to canister gas which is unlikely to be a problem in the UK. Most of what is said above for the multifuel stove applies but the WindPro is somewhat smaller and lighter to carry than the Dragonfly on an average day out and this is an advantage. If I had to pick one to do a bit of everything then, providing I wasn't planning an expedition to some remote area of the world where canister gas was unavailable and I might have to siphon from the car fuel tank for cooking, this would probably be my choice as it is handy, reasonably light and small, relatively efficient and fast, easy to use, stable, and offers as at least as much flexibility as anything else I've tried.
The "integrated" stove type things - I have recently acquired an MSR Windburner and these are a sort of combination burner and pot which sit on top of a gas canister and use "feet" for the canister for added stability. These are great if you only need to do one thing which is boil water. The pot design is such that they are very efficient in the wind as all the heat doesn't blow away so they really are fantastically quick to boil water even in real world conditions. However, they won't work by magic in anything like real wind without you picking a decent spot and giving the stove some protection as the wind will blow it out. Mine is new and has only seen 4 days out so I can't give a comprehensive review but so far I'm loving it however it probably doesn't suit your requirements for cooking. The whole setup is relatively compact with the burner, gas canister, and feet all packing away into the pot however because of the design it isn't super lightweight - it's far from heavy but there are lighter cooking solutions though they also tend to be less efficient and not as fast. There is a version that is attached to the canister by a pipe and this might be suited to your requirements, MSR claim you can do real cooking on it, but I haven't used one myself and so can't comment.
