As parts of the UK swelter, try these low-energy ways to cool down – from fly screens and no-cook meals to air coolers that use a fraction of the electricity of aircon

• The best cooling fans

Where I grew up, snow days were a foreign concept. Instead, children looked to the other end of the thermometer when hoping for a day off school. Playground rumour had it that when the temperature reached more than 40C, classes would be cancelled.

I finished primary school at the turn of the century, so never saw that theory tested. But as the climate crisis intensifies, throughout much of south-eastern Australia, we’ve come to expect at least one 40C day each summer. That means subsequent cohorts of Australian children are learning that temperature triggers for school closure were only ever an urban legend. Instead, in many schools, hot weather means staying indoors during break and lunch.

A testy Reform UK leader tried to bat off questions about why a gigantic gift to him had anything to do with the public

Happy days. Ten glorious years. Maybe it was the chance to bask in the unmitigated triumphs of the UK’s decision to leave the EU. Maybe he wanted to take advantage of a rare lacuna. The vacuum between the last rites of the Keir Starmer government and the handover to Andy Burnham. The man from Makerfield who had only a few days ago been in such a hurry now finds he needs more time to get his ducks in a row. Or maybe it was just the hope that amnesia had set in. That it was safe to come out. Whatever it was, Nigel Farage chose to break cover.

For more than eight weeks now the Reform leader has been a virtual recluse. From having to meet his cravings for an instant fix with two or three press conferences a week, Nige has refused to do any media. He has been in hiding. Only seen out with a few friendly faces. Posting videos of himself alone in a field where reporters can’t find him. Any suggestions that this has anything to do with the £5m gift, or whatever you want to call it, are obviously hopelessly wide of the mark. Nige just wants to be alone. To take a Garbo moment. Some me-time with the person he loves most in the world.

The cost of the traditional takeaway has doubled since 2019, and more outlets are trying to tempt customers with cheaper options such as coley, pollack and hake

In late April, visitors to Harbour Lights in Falmouth, Cornwall, may have raised an eyebrow. The fish and chip shop was in the midst of a “cod-free week”, its owners having removed cod from its menu entirely.

It was the second time owner Pete Fraser had undertaken the experiment, 15 years after the first. He also removed cod from his shops in Penzance and Helston, replacing it with coley, pollack, hake and hoki. The result was very different. “Some of the feedback we had, which certainly wasn’t what we got when we ran it years ago, is ‘Can you repeat this?’ Before, it was like, ‘Have you guys lost your head’?”

From a mural in a baby’s bedroom to a sound sculpture designed to be played out of a convertible, top contemporary artists rose to the challenge of making work for one lucky community

In 1986, an exhibition called Chambres d’Amis took contemporary art beyond the confines of the museum setting and into the homes of 58 residents in Ghent. Forty years on, a similar experiment is taking place, but on a small street in Peckham, south-east London.

Rooms of Neighbours is the brainchild of curator Ben Broome, who came across Chambres d’Amis when he was between institutional jobs. With time on his hands and an urge to get to know his neighbours better, he began to wonder how he could apply the idea to his own community, but with a broader focus. Unlike the exhibition in Ghent, which mostly took place in the homes of art world friends and museum patrons, his own street – a mix of council and privately owned flats and houses – represented a wider demographic, with different age groups, social classes and diasporas. Few of the residents had any prior connection to the art world, he tells me: “The majority of people have never been to the Tate; they have never even been to the South London Gallery, which is a local institution. But that’s not to say some of the neighbours aren’t really creative.”

Whether you fire up the outdoor projector or Netflix and chill in a cool, dark place – let the escapism of cinema be a balm amid the punishingly hot weather

As you will no doubt have noticed, it is quite warm out. Historically warm, in fact. By the end of the week it is likely that the UK will have seen its warmest June day since records began. The Met Office has issued a red warning, recommending that people stay out of the sun entirely. Which sounds an awful lot like code for “stay inside and watch films.”

But which films? It seems only right to watch something that reflects this apocalyptic weather somehow. Here are some suggestions:

Who put Theresa May’s back up on Instagram, what did Boris Johnson say about bananas and much more

It is 10 years since the British public decided to pack up its troubles in its old kit bag, give Jacques Delors the final up yours and march off into an EU-free paradise. Opinions may differ on how that has worked out. Certainly several of the architects of the whole thing are enjoying lovely well-paid retirements on the speaking circuit or have seats in the House of Lords. Anyway, here are 18 questions about Brexit and the referendum campaign. How much do you remember about some of the weirder aspects of those few weeks, months and then years as the UK negotiated its exit?

The Guardian 10th anniversary Brexit referendum quiz

Temperature on Tuesday hits high of 34.6C in Surrey, England, with heatwave forecast to get more intense on Wednesday and Thursday

• Europe heatwave live – latest updates

Searing heat has swept the UK with schools, hospitals, transport networks and water companies struggling to cope with the extreme temperatures caused by climate breakdown.

Temperatures hit highs of 34.6C in Wisley in Surrey, the Met Office said, with the UN chief warning that London was “cooking”.

Reduced rail speeds and services.

Hospital patient appointments cancelled.

School closures across southern England and Wales.

Hosepipe bans in south-east England.

With Burnham and his team potentially having only weeks before he becomes PM, Starmer has agreed to give him access to civil service

Keir Starmer has met Andy Burnham for the first time since the Makerfield byelection in what sources said was a “frosty” meeting to thrash out a transition of power.

The prime minister has agreed for his likely successor to have talks with the civil service to smooth his path, but there is deep resentment within his inner circle towards Burnham for ousting Starmer.

⚽ World Cup kick-off time: 4pm EST/9pm BST/6am AEST
⚽️ Match gallery | Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot

Antoine Semenyo was only 10 years old when Ghana came within a Luis Suárez handball of becoming the first African team to reach the semi-finals of a World Cup. The Manchester City forward can still vividly recall the emotions that night as he watched with his family in Bexleyheath, south-east London.

“I remember being at my uncle’s house, and we were screaming after the handball, thinking we were going through,” he said in an interview last month. “Watching Ghana play in the World Cup was so special. Mum, Dad, uncles, aunties, cousins all turn up to one house, and we would watch all the games together, celebrating and screaming. Ghana came in [for me] when I was 19 or 20, so I was never going to turn it down.”

Treasury also promises a new first-time buyer Isa with no upper age limit, as the ‘age at which a first home is bought is rising’

Isa reforms announced on Tuesday promise a new first-time buyer account with no upper age limit, and a tax on interest on cash savings held in a stocks and shares wrapper.

Savers and investors can currently hold up to £20,000 a year in Isas, which offer the chance to earn returns which are not subject to tax.

Kemi Badenoch, who joined US anti-abortion activists and European far-right parties at ARC, described energy secretary as a ‘villain’

Britain’s net zero policies and the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, have come under fire at a conference of conservatives, rightwing populists and wealthy US backers linked to Donald Trump.

The energy policies pursued by the British government were described as a “tragic mistake” by Trump’s energy secretary, one of a number of officials from the US administration attending the event.

Independent report says by aiming at children Israel is undermining capacity of Palestinian people to exist

Israel continues to commit genocide by deliberately targeting Palestinian children in Gaza, an ⁠independent UN inquiry has found.

The report by the UN independent international commission of inquiry examined violations against Palestinian children since the start of the war in Gaza, and said about 30% of the people killed by Israeli forces have been children.

Activists accused of being part of antifa get long prison terms in case seen as test of Trump’s crackdown on dissent

A group of Texas protesters convicted of terrorism charges received unusually harsh sentences of at least 50 years in prison on Tuesday in a closely watched case that was widely seen as a test case of the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on dissent.

After a three-week jury trial, the nine activists were all found guilty of a slew of criminal charges in March, stemming from a Fourth of July protest at an immigrant detention facility in Alvarado, Texas, south of Fort Worth. The demonstrators arrived late at night with a plan to set off fireworks as part of a noise demonstration to show solidarity with those detained inside. A few of the protesters spontaneously broke off from the main group and vandalized cars in the parking lot, a guard shack, slashed the tires on a government van and broke a security camera. When a police officer arrived on the scene and drew his weapon, one of the activists fired an AR-15 from the woods, hitting the officer in the shoulder. The officer survived.

High court hears identities of women accusing Andrew and Tristan Tate of rape withheld for fear they could be revealed

Andrew and Tristan Tate are not being told the names of the women who have accused them of rape and human trafficking over fears the brothers might publish them on social media, the high court has heard.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) authorised charges against the Tates in March 2024 in relation to the women’s allegations but their accusers’ identities have not been disclosed to the brothers or their representatives. The Tates have denied any wrongdoing.

Local council secures high court injunction against four leaders of Raise the Colours campaign and ‘persons unknown’

Leaders of the nationalist group Raise the Colours have agreed to stop hoisting England flags on lamp-posts in Oxfordshire after the local authority secured a high court injunction against the campaign.

Ryan Bridge, Ben Cullen and Trudy Wells told the high court on Tuesday they would not raise St George’s flags from Oxfordshire county council property, encourage others to do so or impede council workers from taking them down.

How five months in 2016 that encompassed Boris Johnson siding with Vote Leave, Jo Cox’s murder and David Cameron’s resignation shaped the UK’s future

David Cameron, having promised in 2013 that a future Conservative government would offer a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, announces the date of the vote: 23 June 2016. The next day, Boris Johnson, then the mayor of London, says he will campaign for leave.

Europe is dealing with a debilitating heatwave, with schools closed, trains cancelled and France holding an emergency meeting after heat-related deaths.

António Guterres, the UN chief, is urging the world to act on fossil fuels as the continent braces for record-breaking heat.

Lucy Hough speaks to Europe environment correspondent Ajit Niranjan

Big hitters such as Miliband, Mahmood and Streeting are seen as in line for the top jobs; others face an abrupt end to their ministerial careers

By mid-July, as now seems almost inevitable, we will have a new prime minister in Andy Burnham. He will, of course, then pick his own cabinet. So who will – and won’t – make it to the top table of the former Greater Manchester mayor?

Kent Kiehl convinced the US legal system he can find violence in prisoners’ brains. His theories have been since used by defense lawyers – with grave consequences for prisoners

It’s groundbreaking TV that’s hugely important for young queer viewers. It fizzes with the excitement of young love … and yet it’s been axed. What a bittersweet watch this is

In March, it was announced that this second series of the queer dating show I Kissed a Girl would be its last. Sibling show I Kissed a Boy would also be axed, with the BBC citing “difficult choices in light of our funding challenges”. This would perhaps feel less momentous if the two shows were not groundbreaking – the first UK dating shows to feature exclusively gay casts of men and of women.

As well as being unprecedented, these shows have been a container for vital queer conversations that aren’t happening anywhere else on our screens, surely well within the remit of the national broadcaster. Plus, they are ridiculously fun. Watching series two of I Kissed a Girl knowing this is the last feels so entertaining, but so bittersweet.

From gripping medical dramas to thrilling crime shows nearly impossible not to devour in one go, it’s already been a great year for television. Here are Guardian readers’ top shows of the year

• The best TV of 2026 so far

I absolutely loved Legends. It was tense, thrilling and even funny in bits, with an evocative early-90s soundtrack. The acting was all top quality, especially Johnny Harris [as Eddie McKee], who gave another great, morally nuanced performance. Although fictionalised, it brought well deserved attention to the amazing work of Customs kept secret for so long. I would have watched it in one go if I didn’t have to get up the next day! And we got to see a bit of Thatcher’s tearful leaving speech, which is always enjoyable. Edie, 47, Leeds, west Yorkshire, UK

The Brazilian musician, who collaborates with Indigenous artists and puts millions into philanthropy, explains his mission – and defends his jetsetting

When Alok, the most successful Brazilian DJ of his generation, was brainstorming the concept for his new live show, he considered calling it Rave New World. “But when I asked a gen Z kid, the daughter of my creative director, she made me realise how pretentious my idea was,” he says. “The grownups trying to find an easy way out for all of our problems.” Instead, “I started figuring out that it’s not about a new world, it’s about this world. We need to ‘Rave the World’.”

That new title might still seem trite to some, or hypocritical, coming from someone at the heart of a dance music industry with a heavy carbon footprint from constant flying: when I meet Alok, he’s about to board another plane at a private airport outside São Paulo. But dance music has often had a utopian bent to it, and Alok – who champions Indigenous Brazilians in his work and has partnered with the UN on climate initiatives – is certainly making efforts to better the world.

An antithesis of the doom and gloom docs about environmental destruction, Cumberbatch and expert contributors look at how we can all help to protect it

There is value in a documentary about the environment and the climate crisis that does not simply indulge in hand-wringing, anger and despair. Fredi Devas’s film, presented by Benedict Cumberbatch in London’s National History Museum and composed of segments from different contributors, focuses on real, positive measures that individuals and communities can take – or begin to take – to make a difference. I’m agnostic about the sometimes touchy-feely tone of the film which can feel like a schools educational programme rather than something intended for adults, and occasionally also about the surging score which is there to tell us when to feel hopeful and when to feel euphoric. But there is food for thought here.

The film revives the issue about meat eating, which requires colossally destructive land clearance for the cattle involved, but it doesn’t simply try to make people feel guilty for liking meat. Plant-based substitutes for meat like mycelium are not good enough yet, we hear, but improvements are being made all the time. Bio-investment initiatives are discussed – business models which are linked to regenerating the natural world, the source of raw materials. The film interviews a forest healing instructor in South Korea who uses woodland spaces for therapy; of course, it’s tempting to do jokes about “tree hugging” and yet who can doubt that these natural places are indeed restorative? Naturalist and broadcaster Dan O’Neill is shown visiting Singapore and instead of throwing up his hands in horror at this turbo-capitalist place where people can reputedly be severely reprimanded for spitting gum on the pavement, he praises its policy of integrating green spaces into the urban environment.

I believe that chatbots have no place in a decent society, and am repelled by the topic of AI in general. But could I be seduced?

I received a text message from my editor: “Um, is it unethical to ask you to get an AI bf?? You can prob say no.”

Resentment. Contempt! Sorrow. Unease. I love text messaging. I have text message exchanges with, let’s say, 15 people a day. If you want me to do something, you should ask via text message. My editor knows this. She also knows, though it’s more complicated, that I love boyfriends. An AI boyfriend is a boyfriend who always, only texts back, immediately.

I find it hard to express my emotions openly. (No.)

I thrive to develop healthier, more trusting relationships. (Yes, though I prefer to use “thrive” correctly.)

I want a partner who supports my life aspirations. (Crossbow?)

I worry about being judged for what I want in a relationship. (Yes.)

⚽️ World Cup kick-off time: 7pm EST/12am BST/9am AEST
⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Email Jeff

Coming into the tournament, Croatia head coach Zlatko Dalic warned that losing an open match “can destroy everything” for a team in a major tournament. History informed this dramatic stance, with Croatia opening Euro 2024 with a 3-0 defeat to Spain and subsequently bowing out in the group stage.

2018’s run to the World Cup final kicked off with a win over Nigeria; in 2022, a draw against Morocco put both teams on their paths to the semifinal. Just how destroying will that opening 4-2 loss to England prove to be?

Golden oldies fighting for the golden boot? Let us not get ahead of ourselves. But it will do Cristiano Ronaldo’s ego no harm that he is off the mark at this World Cup, particularly in light of Lionel Messi’s voracious appetite to stoke fires that started long ago. Two first-half goals gave Houston’s public what they came for and laid an unfortunate run to rest. Until this contribution to what quickly became a leisurely non-contest, Ronaldo had not scored in 10 major tournament matches.

Thank goodness, then, for an Uzbekistan defence that would have struggled to hold firm in a Masters game. There could have been no better opponent to help Ronaldo get his eye in, Nuno Mendes’ free-kick, an Abduvokhid Nematov own goal and Rafael Leão’s late adornment emphasising the point. Fabio Cannavaro’s players could not get near adversaries of this level.

• Forward expected to return from injury in Group C finale

• ‘His qualities are without question … he’s a superstar’

Steve Clarke believes Scotland must be prepared for the threat provided by the “icon” Neymar in Miami on Wednesday. Neymar is expected to make his bow for Brazil in this World Cup after returning from injury as Group C reaches its climax.

“His qualities are without question,” Scotland’s manager said. “He’s one of the superstars of the modern era. We can expect a very dangerous opponent but I could go on about Brazil and so many dangerous opponents. Neymar is just one of them; even coming from the bench he would give them a lift because he is such an icon.

• Two men due to share trophy-presenting on 19 July

• ‘We are together all the time’, says Fifa president

Donald Trump will hand over the World Cup trophy to the winners at the final on 19 July, Gianni Infantino has said.

Infantino and Trump have forged a close relationship in the buildup to these finals, but the US president has made very few public pronouncements concerning the tournament since it began on 11 June.

• Some staff in Fifa’s US office favoured different strategy

• Fifa says policy agreed ‘with all areas of the organisation’

A number of Fifa’s US-based staff advised against the use of dynamic pricing at the World Cup but were overruled by the world governing body’s leadership, according to multiple sources involved in delivering the tournament.

The Guardian has been told that some staff in Fifa’s US office, which is based in Miami, initially favoured a different ticketing strategy to the one that has been used this summer, with the emphasis on more affordable pricing in general admission areas.

From Gaza to the Peter Mandelson row, his abandoned pledges to the ‘island of strangers’ claim, Starmer’s time at No 10 was truly dismal

Good riddance, Keir Starmer. No sooner had the toppled prime minister wiped away his tears than the solemn guff began. The Labour leader is “principled” and “driven by a deep sense of public service and duty to this country”, said deputy prime minister David Lammy. He showed “the great dignity and integrity that is the mark of the man”, said energy secretary Ed Miliband. “A devoted and dedicated public servant” said home secretary Shabana Mahmood.

No. This was not a decent man defeated by circumstance, a man of duty and integrity who was simply in the wrong job, a principled leader undone by events. This was an unprincipled politician who abandoned promises with as much enthusiasm as he trousered freebies from rich donors.

Ten years on, our writers met to reflect on whether leaving the EU has made the UK richer or more racist – and how the union is doing without us

• Read more from the Brexit Vote: 10 Years On series

Aditya: I have three distinct memories of that entire period: the sense of anger, the sense of the confusion in Westminster and then, afterwards, this quick curdling into a really base form of racism. I remember reporting around south Wales and the north-east of England and then coming back into London, and noticing that one group were talking about their anger and frustration and the other were talking about facts.

As the US tries to limit the damage from the Iran war, its vice-president has admitted he doesn’t understand diplomacy. Of course not: he’s been too busy churning out another memoir

Has JD Vance been injecting Barron Trump’s new energy drink straight into his veins? It would explain a few things, including how the man manages to juggle so much. First there’s the parenting: Vance has three young kids and a baby due soon. Then there’s the vice-presidenting. But despite his long to-do list, Vance still makes time for endless holidays. And he’s even managed to get some writing done: the bestselling Hillbilly Elegy author recently published his second book. It’s a memoir about his spiritual journey called Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith.

So, should you find your way to a bookshop to buy a copy? Most book critics seem to say no. It’s hard to know exactly what regular readers think because two of the biggest review platforms have restricted feedback. Amazon says reviews are limited to verified purchasers because of “unusual review activity” (translation: a torrent of one-star reviews), while Amazon-owned Goodreads has suspended reviews altogether. It’s a shame that Usha Vance, a voracious reader whose Goodreads account notes she just finished Communion (shortly after reading Death Comes for the Archbishop), hasn’t had a chance to give hubby a five-star review.

After the 2016 referendum, panellists from other EU countries responded in the Guardian. Ten years on, we’ve gone back to them

• Read more from the Brexit Vote: 10 Years On series

We’ve shown that rapid, measurable progress is achievable in our cities. Here’s how that can now be replicated worldwide

• Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London. Michael Bloomberg is a former mayor of New York City

Some public health threats make global headlines: Covid-19. Ebola. Famine. When these disasters hit, photographs and videos of people suffering and dying spur countries to respond, international bodies to cooperate and individuals to donate supplies and money. Yet one of the world’s deadliest threats gets almost no attention at all, because it is largely invisible to the public and mostly absent from media coverage: air pollution.

Every day, billions of people are inhaling air that is shortening their lives and making them sicker with every breath. Every year, air pollution kills more than 8 million people worldwide. That’s more deaths than HIV, malaria and tuberculosis combined. It hides in plain sight and strikes without mercy, leading to heart and lung disease, cancers and other deadly conditions.

Sadiq Khan is the mayor of London. Michael Bloomberg is a former mayor of New York City

Everyone these days wants to optimise their workouts, but when a study seems too good to be true, it usually is

• Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

We live in an increasingly polarised world – and I’m not talking about politics, I’m talking about exercise. There’s a fitness community obsessed with constant optimisation and hacks: how can you get from 50 press-ups to 100, from an eight-minute mile to seven minutes, or increase your deadlifts from body weight to double or triple body weight – ideally using just “one weird trick” or novel method no one has seen before.

It seems as if no one is happy with basic fitness or steady progress. Or people are overly concerned with what’s secretly holding them back, from sleep to “I had a couple of glasses of wine … it ruined three days of my life” (that’s Steven Bartlett’s podcast).

Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh

What the US president succeeded in obliterating was any rationale he offered for going to war

Before Donald Trump finally surrendered in his Iran war, he declared victory several dozen times, including on day eight– “We’ve already won!” – day 10 – “The war is very complete”– day 12, proclaiming he had won five times in 13 seconds – “We’ve won, let me say we’ve won. You know, you never like to say too early you won, we won, we won the bet in the first hour it was over”– and day 39 –“Total and complete victory, 100%. No question about it”– and claimed a deal to end the war was just around the corner 38 times. The first time he raised the prospect of peace, on day 24, he said the two sides had reached “almost all points of agreement”.

Trump boldly affixed his signature with a sharpie to the Memorandum Of Understanding on day 110, 17 June, at the Palace of Versailles, where the ruinous treaty concluding the first world war was signed. He seemed oblivious to the historical symbolism of the place, but bedazzled by its gold. “Versailles is not gold leaf – Versailles is the real deal,” he remarked.

Record-breaking temperatures should focus minds on the UK’s lack of preparedness for the climate dangers ahead

As western Europe bakes under what scientists describe as a heat dome, or “atmospheric lid”, reports of dozens of drownings, and heat-linked deaths of children and elderly people in France, are a stark reminder of the threat to life from extreme heat – and the fact that some people face higher risks than others. The red alert covering most of southern England and Wales for Wednesday and Thursday is only the second such warning to be issued.

With the UK’s June record of 35.6C expected to be broken, hundreds of schools are closed. Network Rail has advised against non-essential travel. Temperatures in France and Spain are expected to be even higher, before the heat moves eastwards. But since the UK is less used to intense heat than its Mediterranean neighbours, it faces distinct challenges.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

The sentencing of Peter Murrell brings limited closure to a major scandal. But John Swinney’s government faces new challenges in a changing landscape

The Scottish National party (SNP) is accustomed to presenting Westminster dysfunction as a boost to its case for independence. But the political drama unfolding in London since May’s local elections, culminating on Monday in Sir Keir Starmer’s enforced resignation, has also been welcome for a more discomfiting reason. The glare of the spotlight on Labour’s internal revolution has allowed its own travails to play out in the shadows.

The five-year sentence handed down on Tuesday to the former SNP chief executive, Peter Murrell, brings a form of closure to one of the biggest political scandals in Britain for decades. Scotland’s first minister, John Swinney, has rejected calls for an inquiry into Murrell’s embezzlement of more than £400,000 from SNP funds over a 12-year period. But unanswered questions remain regarding how Murrell got away with stealing from the SNP for so long. The party’s financial probity is also under scrutiny over the use of more than £600,000 theoretically ringfenced for an independence referendum.

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

Readers respond to an article on a campaign that is fighting to end the leasehold system in England and Wales

I read your article about the National Leasehold Campaign and the problems associated with owning a leasehold property (‘The developers got greedy’: the women who took on the leasehold scandal – and won, 16 June). I fully understand the financial costs of leasehold, be it ground rent, management fees or extending a leasehold. However, I would like to point out that there is another problem with owning a leasehold flat.

The freehold to our blocks was purchased by developers, who announced that they would be building new flats on top of our homes. Despite appealing against this, leaseholders were powerless to stop the development. Since May 2025, we have had restricted daylight due to scaffolding that was erected six months before work commenced; trespass above the flats due to poorly secured access; water ingress into flats caused by intruders trying to steal copper; work carrying on into evenings above flats as well as on bank holidays; and work vehicles blocking access. I could list a whole lot more. The work has affected residents with noise, dust and disruption.

Readers reflect on the 2016 referendum and its lasting impact

Winston Churchill once said: “No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” The Brexit campaign was run by multimillionaires who loathed regulation, and they persuaded people who appeared to have not been educated about politics or economics at school, or received alternative views or information from trade unions, to vote leave (‘There’s no jobs’: struggle and regret in a Welsh town that backed Brexit, 21 June).

There was, and is, a lot wrong with the EU, but the lies told about what membership really meant were the biggest assault on facts and truth in British political history. That is continuing today under the Reform UK and Restore Britain banners, which have “normalised” the type of language that got Enoch Powell sacked by Ted Heath.
Philip Clayton
London

Prof Dave Phoenix says government policy should not focus on who can be excluded from higher education

The debate about minimum entry requirements for university risks asking the wrong question (Students could be required to pass GCSE English to access university loans, 17 June).

At a time of persistent skills shortages and productivity challenges, policy should focus not on who can be excluded from higher education, but on how more people can develop the higher-level skills the country needs through a more integrated education system.

Songs for our times | Italian emperors | Running through nettles | Tree loss | Tram destination

Never mind John Crace smuggling Bruce Springsteen song titles into his sketches (Letters, 21 June), I would hope that given Monday’s political developments we’ll be seeing the Grateful Dead’s He’s Gone getting an outing.
Gabriel Brodetsky
Marsden, West Yorkshire

• The Italians are still strong contenders for the record of rapid changes of leaders. In AD69 they had four emperors in a single year.
Chris Leyland
Marsden, Huddersfield

• Pair had long talk before training session at Trent Bridge

• Atkinson, Smith and Bashir also return to starting XI

Ben Stokes returned to the England set-up on Tuesday following talks with Brendon McCullum before training. The past fortnight, McCullum said afterwards, was essentially a “blip” and they are still “very aligned” before a third Test against New Zealand that could decide the future of their working relationship.

The fact that the head coach and captain felt the need to clear the air before nets shows how much the temperature had risen around this England team. Stokes, Gus Atkinson, and the late night after Lord’s that led to them being stood down before the 253-run defeat at the Oval, has put the leadership under pressure.

Ellyse Perry powers Australia to their fourth World Cup win as calamitous Pakistan run outs ruin their chances at Headingley

1st over: Australia 2-1 (Perry 1, Voll 1) Not the start anyone was expecting! Unbelievable worldie from Feroza off a Mooney outside edge.

What a blinder from Feroza who clutches the egg almost before it has left the chicken, diving to her right at slip. Mooney out first ball of the match!

• Tottenham also among clubs tracking Summerville

• Chelsea consider move for Como’s Jacobo Ramón

Roberto De Zerbi has been given significant funds and is looking to make two big moves in midfield. Tottenham are pushing to land Sandro Tonali, even though Newcastle will demand a huge fee for the Italy international, and have entered the race to sign Mateus Fernandes.

West Ham need to raise funds after relegation from the Premier League and are expected to lose Fernandes. The 21-year-old impressed after joining from Southampton for £38m last summer and is a key target for Manchester United. However Tottenham are pushing for the Portuguese midfielder and prepared to beat United on the finances. Real Madrid have also considered a move for Fernandes.

• Squad are due to arrive in Johannesburg on Thursday

• Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus praises Henry Pollock

Marcus Smith says England are flying south determined to make a fast and furious start to the new Nations Championship at South Africa’s expense next week. A 36-man squad will touch down in Johannesburg on Thursday and Smith says there is a shared desire to rise to the high-altitude challenge of upsetting the world champions in their backyard.

England have been training in oxygen masks in Bagshot to prepare themselves for the Highveld and, with games against Fiji and Argentina to follow, are conscious of the need to make an early impression against the Springboks. “It’s one shot,” said Smith, who has now played 50 Tests for his country. “We’ve spoken about leaving it all out there. It’s a hell of an opportunity. I don’t think England have been there since 2018 so we could create history, going down there to deliver a result.

• Committee to study Lake Placid-NYC Games

• 2042 emerges as earliest realistic target

• State cites existing venues and IOC shift

The prospect of a Winter Olympics stretching from the Adirondacks to New York City has taken its first formal step toward reality as state leaders launched a year-long review into whether the two destinations could jointly host a future Games.

New York governor Kathy Hochul on Monday announced the formation of the Lake Placid-New York City Olympic & Paralympic Winter Games Exploratory Committee, a statewide group tasked with evaluating whether a future Winter Games built around existing venues and shared between the two locations could be delivered sustainably and responsibly.

This was the 10th time the Senate had tried to stop the war, and the outcome, on a vote of 50-48, marked a stunning turnaround

• US Senate approves war powers resolution challenging Trump’s Iran war authority

Marco Rubio is to meet Gulf allies today and tomorrow in an attempt to reassure them that the US remains committed to their security and the 60-day ceasefire deal struck with Iran last week will not embolden Tehran.

The Gulf is divided over the deal. While Qatar has played a central role in mediating the agreement, some countries – notably the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain – are fearful it hands Iran substantial sums that may be ploughed into its military.

Estranged husband of Nicola Sturgeon is sentenced for stealing from party over 12-year period

• Montblanc pens to Le Creuset ramekins: police photos show Peter Murrell’s spending habit

Peter Murrell has been sentenced to five years and three months in jail after he admitted embezzling more than £400,000 from the Scottish National party while he was its chief executive.

Murrell stole the money over a 12-year period, splashing out on a luxury motorhome, a Jaguar SUV, Montblanc pens and luxury watches, a set of Lalique salt and pepper grinders and 2kg of coffee granules.

Reform leader says it is ‘purely private matter’ and it is not hypocritical to criticise Keir Starmer for receiving glasses

Nigel Farage has said his £5m gift from a crypto billionaire is “not any of your business” as it was given unconditionally to be spent on anything from Ferraris to gambling on horses.

The Reform UK leader bristled at questions about the £5m gift from the British Thai-based businessman Christopher Harborne in two radio interviews on Tuesday, saying it was “a purely private matter”.

Denunciation comes after former Democratic Unionist leader convicted of child sexual offences

The Democratic Unionist party has denounced Jeffrey Donaldson as a “wicked deceiver” who led a “double and duplicitous life” a day after its former leader was convicted of child sexual offences.

Leaders at the Stormont assembly sought to distance the DUP from Donaldson and described him as a manipulator who had hoodwinked Northern Ireland and hid his crimes behind a facade of respectability and Christian faith.

Ukraine’s president will not attend after sparking Polish ‘outrage’ over naming of military unit

Volodymyr Zelenskyy will skip a high-level conference on the postwar reconstruction of Ukraine amid a deepening rift with Poland over his naming of a military unit after one that killed tens of thousands of Poles during the second world war.

Ukraine’s president had been expected to co-host the Ukraine Recovery Conference, which begins in the Polish coastal city of Gdańsk on Thursday, but the Ukrainian delegation will instead be led by the prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko.

The country’s biggest tree – named Heaven Sword of the Da’an River – is a carbon-storing behemoth hosting whole neighbourhoods of wildlife. But this and other giant trees are under threat

The higher you climb up the gigantic, millennia-old trees of Taiwan’s forests, the more layers of habitat and life emerge. On the forest floor, ferns thrive in the moist shade. Flying squirrels and owls sleep inside the hollow tree trunks. Yellow bell-shaped rhododendron flowers spring from the lower tree canopy. Higher still, dense lichen spread. Up in cloud-drenched branches, a rare, hardy orchid, Bulbophyllum ciliisepalum, can be spotted.

“In one tree, every species has their preferred location,” says Dr Rebecca Hsu, assistant researcher at the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute. “Every metre the temperature, the wind, the sun, the light is different.”

Energy secretary hails £100bn milestone in this parliament and says it is ‘only the start of what we want to achieve’

Ed Miliband has hailed a boost to UK jobs and growth as government data reveals that private sector companies have pledged more than £100bn in investment into the green economy so far in this parliament.

Offshore wind, solar power and the electricity grid make up the bulk of the planned investment, most of it between 2024 and 2031, which will go to all regions of the UK and comes from a mixture of UK companies and overseas sources including the EU and Japan.

Millions of tonnes of the world’s food could be lost amid the uncertainties surrounding the strait of Hormuz and the dangers of a ‘Godzilla-strength’ El Niño

When the US and Israel launched the war on Iran, south-east Asian nations were amongst the first and hardest hit, as the closure of the strait of Hormuz cut off supplies of energy and fertiliser.

Governments across the region, heavily reliant on the waterway, raced to find ways to reduce their fuel use: in the Philippines, many government workers were put on a four-day week. In Vietnam, employers were urged to allow staff to work from home. In Thailand, offices were urged to set air-conditioning units to 27C.

Prime minister was forced to row back on some policies despite strong support among voters for climate action

Keir Starmer has faced a problem no Labour government has needed to deal with before. His energy and climate policies – core to solving the cost of living crisis – have come under attack from opposition parties, which have made dismantling the agenda one of their top priorities, second only to immigration, in their pitch to voters.

This is new in British politics, where a cross-party consensus on the climate and environment has held at least since the days of Margaret Thatcher. She warned the UN of the climate crisis in 1988; David Cameron in 2006 urged voters to “vote blue, go green”; Theresa May enshrined in law the requirement to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; Boris Johnson championed the Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow in 2021; even Rishi Sunak only tried a partial rollback of green policies as a last desperate throw before calling an election.

Chief secretary to the prime minister is being encouraged by some MPs to stand against Andy Burnham

Cabinet ministers loyal to Keir Starmer have said they will not back any candidate against Andy Burnham, urging the chief secretary to the prime minister not to run in a contest.

Darren Jones is being urged by some MPs to run against Burnham to avoid a “coronation” of the former Greater Manchester mayor, though several backbenchers tentatively backing Jones said they were doing so to put the spotlight on Burnham’s economic policies and to warn of the prospect of Ed Miliband as chancellor.

Teenager from Blaenau Gwent now in custody after police launched murder investigation after body was found

A 14-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of murder after the discovery of a body believed to be a missing girl in south Wales.

The body was found in the Duffryn Park area in the town of Blaina, Blaenau Gwent at approximately 10.10pm on Monday, Gwent police said in a statement.

Excerpts of footage of response to incident earlier described as ‘shocking’ but review finds use of force justified

A review of video footage that appeared to show South Yorkshire police officers shoving and drawing batons and stun guns on teenage girls has found the “the use of force was proportionate, necessary, and justified to keep all involved safe”.

South Yorkshire police initially described the footage as appearing “nothing short of shocking” but a review by its professional standards department found that while there “is an opportunity for learning around de-escalation” the actions were appropriate.

Exclusive: Data reveals 60% of 18 to 28-year-olds would vote to rejoin bloc if given the opportunity

A generation of young Britons who were locked out of the 2016 EU referendum because of their age now believe that Brexit has failed, with a majority demanding a fresh vote to rejoin the EU, exclusive polling shows.

Gen Z Britons show deep dissatisfaction with the UK’s departure from the EU, according to new polling of 18- to 28-year-olds conducted by the thinktank More in Common and shared with the Guardian.

Recommendations from commission propose gradual rise in retirement age by the early 2090s

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Germany will gradually raise its retirement age to about 70 by the early 2090s under recommendations backed by the chancellor, Friedrich Merz, as a means of future-proofing the pension system for an ageing population.

Presenting its findings on Tuesday, an expert commission set up to explore reforms to the pension system said retirement age should be linked to rising life expectancy and early retirement should be scrapped.

Film-maker talks about her documentary on John Barnett, the Boeing whistleblower who killed himself in 2024

It is widely recognized that for the Kennedys, tragedy has come often and from unexpected quarters. The film-maker Rory Kennedy, born six months after the assassination of her father Robert Kennedy, has known her share. But in 2024, it was a loss outside the political dynasty that shook her to the core.

John Barnett, a quality inspector turned whistleblower at Boeing, one of the world’s biggest plane manufacturers, was found dead in his truck outside a hotel in Charleston, South Carolina. Affectionately known as “Swampy” because of his roots in Louisiana, Barnett had a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Attack targeted former Chile ambassador Orlando Letelier and his US colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt

Fifty years after Gen Augusto Pinochet’s secret police detonated a car bomb in the heart of Washington DC, killing Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean minister and ambassador to the US, and his American colleague Ronni Karpen Moffitt, a Santiago court has convicted three former agents of Moffitt’s murder.

Judge Paola Plaza, a special minister for human rights in Chile, sentenced Pedro Espinoza, José Zara, and Raúl Iturriaga to 15 years in prison for their roles in the killing of Moffitt, 25.

Decision comes after Aden Duale was held in contempt for ignoring previous high court ruling to stop work

Kenya’s health minister told a court he had ordered preparations for a US-run Ebola quarantine facility to stop, after being held in contempt for ignoring a previous order to end work.

Many Kenyans strongly oppose the facility, with deadly protests erupting since the complex was announced in May for US citizens evacuated from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is grappling with a widespread Ebola outbreak.

Great Britain has paid at least six times the normal price for imported power as millions turn on air conditioning and windfarm output sags

The heatwave has prompted a sharp rise in electricity prices across European markets as millions turn to air conditioners and electric fans to battle record high temperatures, which have also caused a string of power plant outages across the continent.

Great Britain imported electricity from Europe at more than six times the normal price on Tuesday as the high-pressure heat dome has slowed wind speeds, hitting renewable energy generation, and led to outages at multiple gas plants across the country.

Martin Seidenberg, chief executive of parent company IDS, handed payouts after takeover of UK postal service

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The boss of Royal Mail’s parent company received almost £7m in pay and bonuses last year – more than triple the previous figure – despite group profits slumping by a fifth.

Martin Seidenberg, group chief executive of International Distribution Services (IDS), took home £6.9m in pay, bonus and long-term incentive scheme awards in the year to 29 March, compared with £2.1m the previous year.

UK watchdog gives King & King severe reprimand for failing ‘to identify clear self-interest’ when conducting audits

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The UK’s accounting watchdog has fined and temporarily banned a tiny audit firm for “egregious” failures and “widespread deficiencies” linked to its work in signing off accounts of several companies in Sanjeev Gupta’s metals empire.

King & King and its managing partner Milankumar Patel have been fined a total of £378,184, received a “severe reprimand”, and hit with serious restrictions on audit work after a four-year investigation by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC).

Firm has been developing full EV version of its top-selling model in Europe at its plant in Sunderland

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Nissan has reportedly stopped developing a fully electric version of its Qashqai, its top-selling model in Europe, as the Japanese carmaker seeks to cut a fifth of its models and slash costs.

The carmaker quietly halted development of a full EV version of the Qashqai at Sunderland, the site of the UK’s largest car factory, last year, according to a report by Reuters.

The 84-year-old actor has spent decades bringing Samuel Beckett’s plays to life. Does his recent diagnosis give him new insights into playing ‘sad clown’ Krapp in a drama about age and the battlefield of memory?

What a lot of Krapp. Pardon my French but Samuel Beckett’s haunting 1958 masterpiece about regret and isolation is having a moment. Stephen Rea recently took Krapp’s Last Tape on an international tour, Gary Oldman returned to the stage after decades away to deliver the tragicomic one-man show and this summer Stockard Channing will direct it at the Edinburgh fringe, with David Westhead as Krapp. Beckett’s eponymous loner, who sits in his dark den and ritually listens to tapes he made as a younger man, is riding a new wave of popularity.

Peter Marinker first played Krapp half a lifetime ago and is preparing to star in a new production, reusing the tapes he recorded in 1983. How does he feel listening back now? “I thought of redoing them – it could have been better,” he says when we meet at the tiny Cockpit theatre in London. That assessment matches the spirit of the self-lacerating Krapp who looks back not just in anger but anguish. Marinker quotes Dennis Potter, who said we should consider our past with “tender contempt”. He adds wryly: “That rang a bell.”

The sequel to Casino Royale was plagued by a writers’ strike, but its shaky-cam style and erratic action aligns perfectly with our hero’s fractured state of mind

In the final moments of Casino Royale, a piercingly blue-eyed Daniel Craig holds the conniving career criminal known as Mr White (Jesper Christensen) at gunpoint on the steps of his Lake Como villa. “The name’s Bond,” the spy says coolly to his captive. You can probably finish the rest of that sentence.

Despite the intense scrutiny Craig endured prior to its release, the 21st entry in the 007 franchise would prove to be an era-defining take on a truly modern-day Bond. If past iterations saw him reduced to a smattering of cliches, all parodied to death over the years, Craig’s debut as the suave secret agent was lauded for being a stripped-down, back-to-basics approach to a character audiences were already familiar with.

After two forgettable seasons, the Game of Thrones prequel finally comes into its own – blazing back on to our screens with the most epic dragon-based smackdown imaginable. Fans can breathe a fiery sigh of relief!

Ah yes, House of the Dragon! Unlikely as it is that a megabucks Game of Thrones prequel with a blue-chip cast could be forgettable, in its first two seasons HotD did not help itself, with the first either killing off its best characters too soon or recasting them to accommodate bewildering time jumps, and the second building and building to nothing. It returns for a third run without much wind in its dragon wings.

Breathe a fiery sigh of relief, then, at the news that this show has found its focus. The start of season three is a fine epic, balancing big battles with sharp two-hander scenes where dominance shifts and fatal personality flaws are forced out. Add the odd new face and a blast of comic relief here and there and you have proper Thrones.

Archaeologists blunder into an ancient and unwittingly release a vengeful monster – with predictable and conventional results

In Irish folklore, the Morrígan is a powerful goddess of death and war. This horror movie imagines her as an actual historical figure: a pagan queen massacred with her followers by Christians. A quick scene at the start of the film shows the dirty deed. The Morrígan’s rage against misogyny has screamed down through the centuries – so it’s a shame the film frames her not as a feminist icon but a highly conventional horror movie nemesis; a malign vengeful female to be crushed and destroyed. There is nothing to punch the air about in the end.

Saffron Burrows plays an archaeologist called Fiona who has been repeatedly passed over for tenure at her US university. When Fiona presents her radical theory that the myth of the Morrígan may have a basis in real life, her slippery colleague Jonathan (Jonathan Forbes) is made the lead on the dig. Fiona is forced to bring along her rebellious teenager daughter Lily (Emily Flain), who has just been expelled from boarding school. And it is poor Lily who is possessed by the Morrígan when the archaeologists blunder into her burial chamber, unleashing demonic powers that were hidden underground by priests, like some pagan nuclear waste, 1,500 years ago.

Nighy is the Dingle dwelling grandfather of a Sheffield family in strife in sentimental adaptation of Mark Lowery’s novel Charlie and Me

This, sadly, is not a biopic of the Proclaimers, but a family tearjerker adapted from Charlie and Me, Mark Lowery’s novel for older children, an adventure about a teenage boy who runs away from home with his little brother to go to their grandad’s. It’s a sentimental film that requires a cast of fine actors to squelch through some fairly heavy slush. Among them, Bill Nighy as the grandad seems to suffer from some kind of reverse Samson effect with a rugged beard that might be to blame for his charisma dip.

The film switches between time periods. In the present, teenager Finn (Roman Griffin Davis) runs away after overhearing his separating parents (Clare Dunne and Michael Socha) arguing about who gets which child in the split. Finn takes his scampish younger brother Charlie (Dexter Sol Ansell), and off they set on a 500-mile trip from Sheffield to Dingle on the west coast of Ireland where their grandad John (Nighy) lives.

Sorey/BBC Singers/Tines/Gibson/GBSR Duo
St Giles’ Cripplegate, London
The Pulitzer-winner’s sprawling amalgam of Morton Feldman and African American spiritual felt meandering, but the GBSR duo, the BBC Singers and Ruth Gibson’s viola were luminous and charismatic

Monochromatic Light (Afterlife) by Pulitzer-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist Tyshawn Sorey demands patience. Subtitled “A meditation on Morton Feldman’s Rothko Chapel”, the work uses a similar ensemble – percussion, keyboards, a viola, a choir, a solo voice – and a similarly abstract dialogue of rhythms and pitches to Feldman’s 1971 tribute to the US painter. But where Feldman’s meditative soundscape lasts half an hour, Monochromatic Light sprawls across 80 minutes and discloses only in its final bars a second vital anchoring in the African American spiritual Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child.

Such a score is not ideally experienced from a hard pew in a hot church during a week of record-breaking temperatures. There were moments between its opening, barely detectible murmur of tubular bells and its closing revelation of the bass-baritone soloist’s single line of text (pieced together syllable by syllable over 50 minutes) when I struggled to hold on to a sense of musical architecture, when the pinpricks of dissonance and slow-motion scatterings of instrumental lines began to feel meandering. Other details offered more rapid gratification: elemental rumbling on bass drum and timpani using sticks with heads like candyfloss; a glistening sheen of bowed marimba on a rare, mill-pond calm octave unison from the choir; wild bass-baritone melismas plunging acrobatically across the voice.

Three months after Bergen-Belsen was liberated, Britten and Yehudi Menuhin performed there. Survivor and cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was ‘transfixed’ – as she told the composer when they played together decades later

In 1945, the violinist Yehudi Menuhin was on a short tour of Germany, offering recitals to survivors of the concentration camps. On Friday 27 July 1945 he reached Bergen-Belsen, liberated three months earlier, and gave two concerts, in the cinema at the camp. The experience had a profound impact. “I shall not forget that afternoon as long as I live,” said Menuhin. “After Belsen, Yehudi was never the same again,” his sister Yaltah Menuhin reported. Anita Lasker, a survivor of Belsen, was present at one of those concerts. Nineteen years old, and a cellist, as a child she had been at Auschwitz, where she played in the women’s orchestra, under the direction of Alma Rosé, the niece of Gustav Mahler.

Lasker wrote to her cousin about the concert. “Who would ever have believed that Belsen Camp would hear Yehudi Menuhin playing? A wonderful evening”, which included “the Bach/Kreisler Prelude and Fugue, the Kreutzer Sonata, Mendelssohn’s Concerto, something by Debussy and several smaller, unfamiliar items”.

‘I thought I could regain some power by writing a celebration of debauchery that was so brazenly sexual it would infuriate the people who insulted me’

Nancy Boy was about reclaiming the homophobic insults that were hurled at me every time I went out because I had long hair and wore eyeliner and nail polish. I’d walk into a bar and people would react vociferously, or guys would think I was a girl then get really aggressive when they found out my name was Brian. I thought I could regain some power by writing a celebration of debauchery that was so brazenly sexual it would piss off the people who insulted me even more.

Various venues, Suffolk
The second weekend boasted brand new music by Davies and Waley-Cohen, the premiere of Alex Ho and Rockey Sun Keting’s Chronicle, and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales with Kevin Edusei on exhilarating form

Percussionists are classical music’s original multitaskers. But even by their standards, Colin Currie is a virtuosic outlier. For portions of the world premiere of Tansy Davies’s percussion concerto Earth Works, Currie sat almost motionless at the kit except from the elbow down, as he sent a complex, glitchy weave of cymbal and drum skittering across an orchestral texture that ran on an altogether more monumental timescale. An arm shot out from behind a screen of tubular bells to reach a hi-hat cymbal amid an invisible juggling act dominated by what sounded like cowbells. There was a passage centred on an upturned dustbin and a tiny gong that might have been a small dangling frying pan. There were multiple just-in-time dashes back to a drumkit.

Behind Currie, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales looped melodic cells and exposed strata of flutter-tongued brass and delicate veils of strings, thick wodges of double bass, searing woodwind and elemental rumbles of orchestral percussion rolling across the stage.

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the reporters behind Regime Change, were up against an administration that is ‘very good at keeping secrets’

They cracked the White House Situation Room, unearthing secrets from the heart of a secretive administration. But the reporters behind Regime Change, a blockbuster new book on Donald Trump’s second term, ran up against a wall when reporting on one issue surrounding the 80-year-old US president: his fitness for office.

“His health has always been a very specific lockbox for him, going back decades,” Maggie Haberman, co-author with Jonathan Swan, said in an interview. “Illness freaks him out; he perceives illness as weakness, usually, and he certainly perceives any sense that he is having an issue as a projection of weakness, and his advisers are very, very attuned to that.

From the Booker-shortlisted author, a tantalisingly unreliable account of childhood, history and mental uncertainty

The historian and novelist Fiona Mozley acknowledged in a 2018 piece for the Guardian that the city of York had a major influence on both her careers. Childhood and adolescence in a place such as York, full of time and times, can generate conflict between “the desire to live in the past and the need to extract oneself from it”. Awake Awake, a follow-up to her previous novels, 2017’s Booker-shortlisted Elmet and 2021’s Hot Stew, engages with two types of memory: the personal and the historical. They’re not exactly at odds, but as far as living in the past is concerned they feed on one another in a complex, entangled relationship.

Narrator Mary Mooney – also a novelist, also from York, and whose first book is also shortlisted for a major prize – tells the story of her mental illness. Or she seems to. She begins in childhood. We’re introduced to her parents and her parents’ friends, religious academics in York; to her home in Cathedral Close; to school and her school friends, with whom she will stay in contact as she grows up. Life is a round of family occasions, church events and church politics, spiced with adventure and wild excitement in the countryside, mischief in the classroom. Detail is piled on detail and presented with photographic clarity, from her father, with his “large, pointed nose and grey eyes that looked greener than usual when he was outside in the vegetable patch”, to the fall of the Twin Towers, which she recalls seeing “on a television in the school staff room … looking through the door from the outside and glimpsing it on the tiny screen”.

This stranger’s-eye-view of an eccentric nation promises insight but delivers only conventional wisdom

‘Continental people have sex lives; the English have hot-water bottles.” So observed Hungarian journalist George Mikes in How to Be an Alien (1946), one of the finest examples of a tradition in which foreigners explain Britain to itself. From Voltaire to VS Naipaul, outsiders have often illuminated national peculiarities, revealing contradictions so embedded in British life that they pass unnoticed. Helene von Bismarck’s Fantastic Kingdom is the latest contribution to this genre.

Von Bismarck, a distant relative by marriage of the Iron Chancellor, seems ideally placed for the task. The name alone gives her project a certain piquancy; there is something almost Pynchonesque about a German historian with that name attempting to decipher Britain for the British. Raised across Europe as the daughter of a diplomat, educated at the same Brussels school attended by Boris Johnson and Ursula von der Leyen, and a frequent visitor to the UK for two decades, she possesses the combination of distance and familiarity that can produce genuine insight. Her grand theme is that Britain is a “bewildering, complex, and wildly contradictory place”: a monarchy and a liberal democracy; a state of four nations; hostile to immigration yet remarkably pluralistic; obsessed with hierarchy yet strikingly informal. These tensions provide the book’s organising principle.

From frontline reporting to a trailblazing comic novel and a prophetic dystopia, which of Eric Blair’s books is the best?

Imagination was not George Orwell’s forte. In each novel the protagonist is to some extent an Orwell surrogate doing things that Orwell did in places where Orwell had been. Here, somewhat unconvincingly, the author’s representative is a repressed young woman, Dorothy Hare, who loses her memory, identity and faith. Orwell considered it “tripe” except for the dream-like, polyphonic chapter where Dorothy sleeps rough in Trafalgar Square – a fascinating legacy of his youthful infatuation with James Joyce.

As phrases like easter eggs and looksmaxxing enter everyday language, what other words from the world of video games might soon be mainstream?

Twenty years ago, video games were seen as a niche hobby dominated by hardcore enthusiasts, tucked away in obscure online forums and gaming meet-ups. Back then, the idea that governments would use footage from Call of Duty and gaming terms such as “killstreaks” as war propaganda would have been absurd. Then the 2010s happened: nerd culture popularised, previously online-only spaces began to meld with the real world, and gaming went mainstream.

Now, gaming references have entered common parlance – at the end of 2024, video game terms including “cheat code” and “cutscene” were even added to the Oxford English Dictionary – and they increasingly crop up in politics, too. Earlier this year, the official White House X account posted footage of military strikes on Iran interspersed with footage from the video game Grand Theft Auto. Six days later, another video was posted, this time interspersing military footage with clips from Nintendo’s 2006 game Wii Sports. Video game references aren’t reserved for the political right, either: in February 2026, Democrat representative of New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quipped, “Why does this guy always talk like a World of Warcraft npc [non-player character]?” in response to a post on X by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff.

When a company decided to shut down an online game’s servers, there wasn’t much the players who had bought that title could do – until a group called Stop Killing Games began lobbying for new consumer protection laws

You can never be sure how long an online video game will last. Developer BioWare shut off sci-fi shooter Anthem’s servers in January, after seven years. Electronic Arts discontinued access to The Sims Mobile the same month. Wildlight Entertainment shuttered its Highguard servers in March, mere months after the game’s release. Activision Blizzard took Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile offline in April. Dozens more games have had their servers shut down in the first six months of 2026, adding to an already long list of video games that are no longer playable.

There is little that players can do when a company decides to stop supporting online play. Communities work hard to keep their favourite games online, sometimes keeping dead games running on private servers, though that may not necessarily be entirely legal. Generally, though, when a game goes offline it is dead and it’s not coming back.

PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2, PC; Team Asano/Square Enix
Upbeat, charmingly retro RPG full of treasure-hunting, temple-roaming, monster-slaying and princess-saving is an absolute blast to play

You can’t help but wonder if developer Team Asano is in a private competition with itself to come up with the most ridiculous name for a video game. Following Project Triangle Strategy and Bravely Default: Flying Fairy we have this mouthful: The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales. It’s a playable love letter to the Zelda adventures of yesteryear rendered in the studio’s trademark glorious 2D-HD art style, melding evocative pixel sprites with modern visual effects.

From west Philabieldia, born and raised, our hero is adventurer Elliot. The antagonist making trouble in the neighbourhood is a king’s dastardly aide intent on summoning an ancient evil. The story is pure after-school-TV schlock, fully voice-acted but still unafraid to make you sit through reams and reams of text, and the action comprises treasure-hunting, temple-roaming and dispatching monsters. It’s part Chrono Trigger, part Oracle of Seasons as our almost obnoxiously upbeat hero journeys through the ages in order to solve puzzles, tip his fedora and of course, save a princess.

After the billion-dollar company’s leaders sent staff a memo saying the brand had ‘over-extended’, game studios may be in the firing line

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In March 2000, Bill Gates stood onstage at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco and, to a packed crowd, officially announced the company’s long-anticipated video game console. “We want Xbox to be the platform of choice for the best and most creative game developers in the world,” he told attenders – and that was indeed the intention of the small, dedicated team who put together the blueprints of that first machine.

The Xbox landscape seems very different 25 years later. Last week, mere days after a bullish summer showcase full of Gears of War revivals and promises of a renewed focus on Xbox’s gaming strengths, new CEO, Asha Sharma, and chief content officer, Matt Booty, wrote a memo to Xbox staff inviting them to brace for “hard truths”. “Excluding Activision Blizzard King, over the past five years, we have spent over $20bn on ongoing investments in our content, platform and hardware subsidy, but our annual revenue has declined nearly half a billion during that time. Going forward, this cannot continue,” it read.

Is it an alien? A dinosaur? Is it going to kill us all? Our writer hits Ashdown Forest for the Big One Hundred celebrations – and finds its magic enchanting new generations

The rolling idyll of heath and forest, spinney and stream that gave us the Heffalump, the Woozle and, most famously of all, Winnie-the-Pooh, has a new fantastical resident. Creeping through the bracken, making strange cooing and purring noises, is a shapeshifting creature with a huge tubular nose and eyes inspired by adders. It shimmies with iridescent patches and the psychedelic purple of flowering heather in high summer.

Poppet, a puppet made by costume designer Jack Irving and brought to life by a team of 10 award-winning puppeteers, is performing for schoolchildren in Ashdown Forest, East Sussex. The primary school class squeal with delighted fear as the purple apparition transforms itself from caterpillar to bird to munching monster in sinuous moves.

Tate Modern, London
Frida Kahlo took self-portraiture to new levels of interior revelation and her work takes you deep into her mystery. So why is this show padded out with responses by lesser artists?

Charisma is something you can’t fake and Frida Kahlo had it before she became an artist, let alone a modern hero. In photographs, the teenaged Frida appears both in a silk dress staring boldly from beneath her already colliding black eyebrows, and posing as a man in suit and tie. In a home movie her husband, the Marxist mural painter Diego Rivera, woos her and they cuddle. Those were the good times. Rivera is so fat and ugly next to his wife, you’d think he would have appreciated his luck more.

Every image of Kahlo is interesting but nobody could portray her like she portrayed herself. She took self-portraiture to new levels of interior revelation, psychological and physical. Inspired partly by the surrealists and partly by Catholic traditions of depicting pain, Kahlo took herself apart and put herself back together in images of suffering, survival and triumph. In her 1937 painting The Heart, she stands neat and calm while a sword pierces her chest and her disembodied arms reappear in two floating, otherwise empty outfits. The most complete of the Fridas has a brace on her left foot which could be a Freudian symbol except it’s a factual reference to the physical challenges she suffered all her life after she was severely injured in a bus crash when she was 18.

Japan House, London
This darkly atmospheric exhibition pairs the revolutionary Hiroshima images of revered photographer Kikuji with Ai’s glittering but deeply melancholy visions of cherry blossom

Japan House’s first, free photography exhibition, Kyotographie: Kawada Kikuji x Iwane Ai begins with slow-burning suggestions of fire: a box of Lucky Strike cigarettes, its surface crackling and curled; Coca-Cola bottles sinking into a dark bed of crushed ashes. Kawada took the photographs with a 4x5 plate camera; here they’re reprinted on washi paper, the textures and density of the blackness making them even more evocative of obliteration. They are vestiges of American culture in the wake of American violence – images found in the wreckage of Hiroshima in the aftermath of atomic destruction.

Kawada, now 93, is a photo geek’s photographer; people have paid up to £25,000 for a copy of Chizu (The Map), the photobook that collects together his tense, ruminative Hiroshima impressions, made when he was in his 20s. A series of seemingly abstract images depicts the stains on the wall – all that remained of bodies in the Genbaku (A-Bomb) Dome. Kawada was 12 when the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima. His approach to capturing one of the worst scenes of mass destruction in human history was to tell it with a kind of detachment, indirect and impressionistic, fragmented. It’s a story about proximity to trauma and surviving it. His photographs veer away from truth. The reality is impossible to comprehend – for both Kawada standing there, and us viewing the images. These were revolutionary photographs at the time – and they still feel new in their search to express the inexpressible.

Underbelly Boulevard, London
Audience members become unsuspecting mind-readers, and numbers disappear from their memory, in this hugely entertaining show

An audience member is on stage, their feet hypnotically glued to the floor. Under the influence of magician and mentalist James Phelan, we’ve just seen them unable to count to 10, or remember their own name. Now Phelan has a finger to their brow, to channel into their head the unspoken thoughts of another punter sat in the auditorium. A woman in the back row is invited to summon to mind what she wished to be when she was younger. A pause while she does so, and then: “she wanted to be the Woolworths pick’n’mix lady,” pipes up the mesmerised individual. And the woman in the back row exclaims: “Holy shit!”

Give or take banal speculation about plants in the audience, I have not a scooby how such tricks are accomplished. The mind reels. Phelan, the nephew of TV conjuring stalwart Paul Daniels, occupies most of his set, Showman, with this stuff, and – no matter how many times you’ve seen mind-benders and “neuro-linguistic programmers” do it all before – it’s absorbing to watch an innocent member of the public have the number seven seemingly wiped from her mind, or another one select the very figure between nought and 200 that Phelan requires for his dramatic climax to work.

From book club meet-cutes to shared English Literature lectures, romance has blossomed beyond the page for these bibliophiles

Dua Lipa and Callum Turner have been honeymooning in Italy, after throwing a star-studded wedding in Palermo earlier this month. But their relationship began with a book: running into each other at an LA restaurant, the pair realised that they were not only reading the same novel – Trust by Hernán Díaz – but had both just finished the first chapter. “So, we’re on the same page,” Turner said to Lipa. Here, four other couples share the literary sparks of their love stories.

AI company ElevenLabs unveils its officially licensed replica of the iconic actor’s voice in a retelling of Homer’s epic poem, while director who previously recorded the star recalls real-life experience

Next month, Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster version of The Odyssey is set to storm cinemas around the globe. Auguries suggest the almost three-hour drama will repeat the success of Nolan’s previous film both at the box office (Oppenheimer took nearly a billion dollars) and the Academy Awards (it won seven Oscars).

But before that, a new audiobook version of Homer’s tale has been released starring one of Nolan’s most frequent collaborators: Michael Caine, with whom he has worked on eight films, including the Dark Knight trilogy.

The Teesside town struggles with drugs and social discord, but inspired by its magical light and mercurial artistic spirit, some say it has the best cultural scene in the UK

At a gig in a Middlesbrough art gallery, the room smells of blood. Rainbow confetti is strewn across the floor. Someone has been making music by rattling rusted springs from their dad’s sofa. Movement artist Shlinga bends and rises around tuned gardening wires; later, Finn Darrell pulls needles from their skin as loop pedal harmonies fill the air. This was a recent gig being hosted by Industrial Coast, a music label and event promoter in Teesside that has found itself at the forefront of radical English art.

Twenty-four-hour noise sets, 50p tickets and £999 digital releases are just some of the label’s unfashionable marketing techniques. Gigs happen in old shopping units or any available space, and the people on the doors are lax about entry rules. The point, I’m told, is to get open-minded people in the room.

The tharavad is a traditional style of housing designed for and run by women. Our writer went on a pilgrimage to find her own family’s – and uncovered a way of life fast disappearing

A chance conversation with a distant family member led me to Palayil, the name bestowed on my ancestral tharavad. The latter is the name given to a house designed around women. Ours had stood, in some form, since at least the 17th century. My great-grandmother, Palayil Sreedevi, was the last woman in my line to live in one. It was in the southern Indian village of Tholanur.

My great-grandmother belonged to the Nair community, a matrilineal caste with its origins in the state of Kerala. Historically, it was a martial nobility that served royal dynasties. For centuries, Nair boys left home at 12 to train as soldiers before being dispatched to serve the Travancore royal family. When men returned, they often slept in outhouses – satellites to the tharavad of women.

Whether you have a few pots on a balcony or an expanse of greenery, here’s how to help everything thrive when the mercury spikes

After the two hottest May days on record in the UK last month, gardeners may be surveying the damage and dreading the summer months ahead. “Heatwaves early in the summer can result in scorched, brown leaves,” says Leigh Hunt, the principal horticultural adviser at the Royal Horticultural Society. “When temperatures climb over 35C, there are more extreme effects.” (Thermometers hit 35.1C in London on 26 May.)

But don’t put down your trowel in defeat just yet. “Plants were caught out by the sudden change in temperature,” says Hunt. “They are a bit more naturally resistant later in the summer.” Plus, there is plenty you can do to support them without wasting gallons of water or installing an inefficient sprinkler system – and the payoff is massive. “Plants provide shade and release moisture; they cool our towns and cities by 2C to 4C,” says Hunt. “Your little bit of greenery is part of a network of greenery doing its bit. It makes the places we live better and cooler.”

The creators of County Cork’s Sheep’s Head Way had to win over hundreds of landowners to complete the ambitious project, but the result is a gloriously unspoilt trail

The Sheep’s Head peninsula is clearly a good place to be a skylark. They seem to warble overhead at every turn, singing their little hearts out – and who could blame them? The hills here are high and heathery, the sea breeze is warmed by the Gulf Stream and the edge-of-the-world scenery is a realm of wild green slopes and endless blue Atlantic. If you had to choose a sky to lark in, the one that crowns this County Cork headland is a bona fide wing-quiverer.

The peninsula wows hikers, too. I’ve come to one of the south-westernmost points on the Irish mainland to trek the Sheep’s Head Way, a long-distance trail opened by the local community 30 years ago this summer. It took serious work to complete – more of which later – but it’s a delight. I’m walking the original 55-mile (88km) loop around the peninsula, although a longer, 63-mile option is now considered the official route. The way attracts a fraction of the numbers drawn to the Kerry Way and Dingle Peninsula trail further north, and thanks to its untrammelled paths and rampant, cliff-edged scenery, the rewards are grand, in every sense.

Amazon isn’t the only one slashing prices this week. We’ve rounded up the best deals on Filter-tested products from other big name retailers across home, beauty, fitness and more

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Prime Day is now in full swing to fill the summer-shaped gap in the bargain-hunter’s calendar. But what if you don’t want to fork out nearly a hundred quid a year for Amazon Prime, or indeed use Amazon at all? Plenty of other retailers have joined in by rolling out big mid-June reductions, and unlike Amazon, they don’t make you subscribe to a members-only club to get their best deals.

It takes more legwork to find deals across multiple retailers than to head straight to Amazon, of course, so we’ve done the research for you. As well as finding the lowest prices online, we’ve used price-checking tools such as Pricerunner and Idealo to scour price histories and check that these are real deals with genuinely new and notable discounts.

Whether it’s a casserole dish or art inspired by the city they studied in, these are the gifts recent graduates told us they loved the most

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There’s considerable pride to be taken from graduating, and it’s a moment friends and family are often eager to mark with a gift. But what presents best cement this major milestone? As leaving celebrations of all stripes approach, we asked recent graduates to tell us about what they loved receiving, from the sentimental to the practical.

“When I graduated from York, my parents treated me to a meal at a restaurant I’d had my eye on since starting my course,” says reader Toby Beer, a biology graduate. “It was a brilliant send-off to celebrate my time in Yorkshire.”

We’ve rounded up stylish and comfy summer footwear for every occasion, whether you want beach perfection or office-ready

• The best sunglasses for every budget

I’m over clunky shoes the minute there’s a glimmer of sunshine in the sky. And because flip-flops will only get you so far (literally and figuratively), a range of sandals is constantly in rotation for me during the summer months.

Sandals have also become an unlikely favourite for men’s event dressing, with Alexander Skarsgård stepping out in a pair of Valentino Rockstud flip-flops on the Sundance red carpet earlier this year. And while thong sandals aren’t for everyone, plenty of more reserved options offer additional coverage.

We’re well into strawberry season now, but which punnets are the pick of the crop and which hit a sour note?

• The best supermarket strawberry jams, tasted and rated

Back in 1994, I used to pick strawberries in Dorset to earn extra pocket money. It was gruelling but delicious work. We’d shuffle on our hands and knees down furrowed rows of plants, picking those beautiful, fat red berries and trying not to eat too many along the way. We were paid by the punnet, which at my picking speed amounted to less than £1 an hour, unlike the impressively fast seasonal workers who came to our village every summer.

I scored the strawberries below on sweetness first, using a Brix refractometer, which measures the sugar content of fruit and veg (each Brix point represents 1% sucrose in the juice by mass). Sweetness isn’t everything, however, and some of these berries had a lovely, complex, honeyed or floral flavour. Tartness is important, too, for bringing balance and a refreshing quality to the eating experience. As a general rule of thumb, go for fruit with a bright red body, fresh green leaves and a powerful but fresh aroma.

The volume and choice of liquid is important, say our experts, as is turning up the heat – but, after that, you really can just flavour to taste

Why are my scones always dry and tough? And any fun flavour ideas?
Paul, by email
It mostly comes down to applying a light hand, so touch the dough only as much as is strictly necessary. “Also, although it sounds old-fashioned, always use a knife to cut in whatever fat you’re using,” says Verena Lochmuller, head of product development at Ottolenghi. “It’s OK to have a few lumps, too.” Though it might seem obvious, it’s worth checking your leavener as well: “If it’s old, get a new one,” says Lochmuller, who goes for baking powder plus baking soda or bicarb. “You’ll get more air bubbles from the bicarb, but you need something to react with it.” Her liquid of choice is buttermilk, kefir or soured cream let down with a little water.

Insufficient liquid is another possible culprit for Paul’s scone plight, says Anna Higham of London’s Quince bakery and the soon-to-open Clementine. “Depending on the weather and how old your flour is, it will absorb different amounts of liquid on different days,” she says, so it’s not a case of simply following a recipe: “It’s also about how the dough feels.” Generally speaking, the wetter it is, the better, Lochmuller says. “People think if it’s wet, it’s going to be heavy, but it’s actually the opposite.” But don’t be daft and pour all the liquid in at once – instead, go slow.

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

Rather than being relegated to side orders, vegetables take centre stage in everyday Korean cooking, as these pancake and noodle dishes show

Vegetables play a central role in Korean cuisine, and they form the backbone of everyday meals, rather than simply acting as side dishes. They provide balance, nutrition, colour and variety, often through preparations such as kimchi, namul and seasonal banchan. Our vegetable cooking focuses on simplicity and preserving natural flavour, often using techniques such as blanching, light sauteeing, fermenting and pickling, and typically seasoning with garlic, sesame oil, soy sauce and fermented pastes such as doenjang and gochujang. This approach reflects Korea’s long tradition of plant-focused cooking shaped by seasonality, resourcefulness and the need for preserved foods. Together, vegetables create harmony and contrast within a meal.

This one-pan. 30-minute stir-fry will be just as delightful if you swap out the cheese for tofu

This is such a gorgeous one-pot rice dish, though it deviates from my usual microwave method and goes back to cooking rice the good old-fashioned, stove-top absorption way. If you’re vegan, you can easily substitute tofu for the paneer cubes. In fact, I told my tofu-mad children that the paneer was tofu, and they were none the wiser.

Barron Trump has a new yerba mate and Kai Trump a ‘bold’ energy drink – would their offerings pass the taste test?

Do you like sugary soft drinks? Do you like Donald Trump and his family? Do you want to support nepotism?

If the answer is yes to all these questions, then have I got the products for you: a pineapple yerba mate co-founded by Trump’s son, and a syrupy, energy-drink-thing developed by his granddaughter.

Puff Puff, AKA Puffy, came to us aged 13 with no teeth, a broken ear and a cold – but was always there in tough times

Three of our cats had died of old age, leaving my family heartbroken. So Brandy, my wife, looked at our local animal shelter website and saw it had a 13-year-old stray cat with no teeth, a broken ear and a cold. Betty, as the staff had named her, had one day left to live before the shelter was going to put her down.

Brandy sent me along to see her. The warden said no one had visited Betty, but as soon as they opened the cage a Himalayan cat catapulted out of her blanket straight at me. I picked her up and knew I had to take her home.

Meg was married to a man but had fantasised having sex with women for years. When she met Jess, her knees buckled

• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

I’d spent so many years visualising having sex with a woman

An academic and a medical student share concerns about ​extremes of wealth and poverty, but do they agree on the monarchy?

Anna, ‘in her 40s’, Exeter

Occupation Education academic at the University of Exeter

The standup and Big Boys creator on experiencing grief at a young age, his mischievous grandmother, and why he refuses to learn to drive

Born in Watford in 1993, Jack Rooke is a comedian, actor and writer. He studied journalism at the University of Westminster, and began his standup career in 2014. Rooke’s breakout show, Good Grief, was written with his grandmother, Sicely, and documented their experiences of bereavement following the death of Rooke’s father, Laurie, from cancer. His next show, Happy Hour, became the basis for his two-time Bafta-winning Channel 4 comedy, Big Boys. Rooke is taking an updated version of Good Grief on a UK tour, starting at the Roundhouse in London on 14 August. Rooke is an ambassador for the suicide prevention charity Calm.

I am three years old and being pushed by my nan on a swing. She’s in a lovely powder-blue two-piece while I am sporting an iconic all-in-one black-and-white striped mini boiler suit dungaree scenario. For reasons we will never know, I look rather unimpressed.

The Passport Office accepted applications for my two other children but refused the youngest with exactly the same documents

I am a Briton living in Switzerland and my three children are British and Swiss nationals.

When we found out via the Guardian that dual nationals, who live overseas, are now required to hold a British passport in order to enter the UK, we set about applying, so the children can continue to visit their English relatives.

We were charged the wrong amount, but because the bank says we have no evidence it won’t do a chargeback

I went to Paris to recover from the grief of losing my dog.

All was going well until I took a taxi from a rank outside Musée d’Orsay to my hotel near Notre Dame – a 12-minute journey.

Bank details at risk as criminals use AI to create fake sites and emails offering pre-release beta test version

Like millions of gamers around the world, you have been waiting years for Grand Theft Auto VI to be released. Now you have the opportunity to play the much-anticipated game before everyone else.

An email has arrived inviting you to play a pre-release “beta” version of the game so that you can alert the makers to any bugs before its official release later this year.

Government’s temporary VAT cut aims to ease cost of living for families this summer – here’s what’s on offer

From Thursday families can enjoy a cut-price trip to Legoland or the cinema to watch Toy Story 5 as the government’s school holiday discount scheme Great British summer savings gets under way.

Billed by Rachel Reeves as a way to “support families with the little treats in life”, the temporary VAT cut will reduce ticket prices at family attractions such as zoos and theme parks as well as the cost of children’s cinema tickets and restaurant meals.

As a kid, I did my best to avoid exercise. As an adult, I endured it for the sake of my health. Then I set myself a clear goal – and motivation was no longer an issue

It’s fair to say I don’t come from a long line of athletes. When I was growing up in the 1990s, sport was something other people did; we were not a family who cycled, much less jogged. In PE I was the wheezing child hiding behind the bins, pretending I’d twisted an ankle. When I contemplated working out – not often – I had the vague idea it was supposed to turn my body into something other people might find attractive.

I evolved from an unsporty child into an unsporty adult. Occasionally, mostly in an attempt to lose weight without having to stop eating croissants, I would attempt something like Couch to 5K, which I’d either abandon after a couple of sessions or see through to the bitter end out of the perverse determination to prove I’d been right all along: exercise was a mug’s game and endorphins an invention of Big Wellness.

Mobility can’t be tracked on a leaderboard, but it can help you feel better and make daily tasks easier

Fitness is often measured through numbers: how much weight a person can lift, or how fast or far they can run. But one important metric is harder to quantify: mobility.

Mobility gets overlooked, because the relevant exercises do not “have the instant visual appeal of traditional workouts”, says Tyler McDonald, certified personal trainer and senior brand manager for the National Academy of Sports Medicine.

How to start meditating

How to start weightlifting

How to start budgeting

How to start running

90/90 hip switches: Sit on the floor with the front leg bent at a 90-degree angle (thigh out in front of you and calf perpendicular to you) and the back leg bent at a 90-degree angle (thigh out to the side, calf roughly parallel to you). Slowly rotate your knees to the opposite side without lifting your feet off the floor. “This is fantastic for opening tight hips,” McDonald says.

Cat-cow stretch. With your hands and knees on the ground, arch your back towards the ceiling, dropping your head between your arms. Then, slowly drop your back and raise your head and glutes towards the ceiling. This helps with spine mobility.

World’s greatest stretch. Yes, this stretch has quite the name, but for good reason. Start in a plank. Bring the right leg forward into a low lunge position. Stretch the right arm overhead towards the ceiling, twisting the upper body. Then, bring the right hand behind the head and attempt to touch the ground with the right elbow. “It hits your hips, hamstrings and upper back all at once, making it incredibly efficient,” says McDonald.

Fitness isn’t just about getting a six-pack or competing in a triathlon. These straightforward, low-intensity moves will improve your strength and mobility and make almost everything easier

There are lots of movements that make you stronger and more physically capable – press-ups, squats and kettlebell swings build strength and muscle that help in a huge variety of situations. But can you get more specific? Well, yes: there are exercises that target the challenges of everyday life, whether that’s playing on the floor with your kids or bringing in the big shop. Here are the moves you may want to consider, presented by a dozen movement coaches, personal trainers and strength specialists.

People assume that those with facial hair are more likely to harbour bacteria on their faces than the clean-shaven – but the truth is more tangled

The idea that beards are dirtier than clean-shaven faces has been floating around for decades, says John Tregoning, professor of vaccine immunology at Imperial College London. There is even research that shows people perceive bearded men as less hygienic: one study found restaurant customers rated waiters with facial hair as dirtier. Science doesn’t necessarily back that up, though.

One of the earliest studies on the subject, published in 1967, looked at how much bacteria could be recovered from men’s faces after being artificially sprayed on to their skin. Researchers compared washed and unwashed faces, both with and without beards. The dirtiest combination wasn’t with a beard: most bacteria was recovered from unwashed clean-shaven faces, followed by unwashed bearded faces, washed bearded faces and finally washed clean-shaven faces.

The colour-coordinated ‘clean girl’ athleisure aesthetic is dead. Now it’s all about mismatched outfits and vintage sportswear

At first, the goblins came for our downtime. Going “goblin mode” was a lifestyle confined to the home – to the bed, mostly. The “comforts of depravity” it brought (“watching 90 Day Fiancé on mute while scrolling endlessly through social media, pouring the end of a bag of chips in your mouth”, for example) weren’t compatible with doing anything productive.

Enter the gym goblin. The optics remain much the same – think ancient T-shirts, knackered socks, oversized cardigans – but the setting has changed, with goblincore devotees rising up from unmade beds, Diet Cokes in hand, to hit the treadmill. It’s Diana, Princess of Wales’s oversized college sweatshirts meets Josh O’Connor’s half-tracksuit look for the Disclosure Day press tour – and the polar opposite of the matcha-drinking, Lululemoned “clean girl” aesthetic that dominates fitness circles.

A man of modest tastes, the departing PM excelled in dad chic. His hair, however, had an Instagram account all of its own

It will be little consolation to Keir Starmer, who had loftier ambitions for his term of office, that he made a good fist of the tricky brief of prime ministerial style. “He had good hair” is not the legacy he hoped for. But we are where we are.

Starmer’s prime ministerial look was smart, but unpretentious and unflashy. He looks good in a dark suit, which is a bonus in this job. His suits – often bought from Charles Tyrwhitt, where a standard price tag comes in at a typically restrained, Starmer-esque £350 – were well fitted, although menswear pedants pointed out that the sleeves were a little long. (A jacket sleeve should expose a half inch of shirt cuff, leaving the hands visible.) No flashy Rolex, either: Starmer’s watch of choice is a sensible Tissot, which costs about £320.

Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons say Milan fashion week collection demonstrates rejection of ‘useless design’

Speaking backstage before the Prada show at Milan fashion week on Sunday, the co-designers Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons described their latest collection as “breaking the perception of what is perceived as typical luxury in high fashion right now”.

This was a purified version of Prada. The design duo called it a “rejection of experimental shapes, techniques and decoration” distilling the collection to pieces that are “intentional and meaningful”.

Move over Barbie, ‘electric fuchsia’ is now dominating football’s biggest stages. But why has the sport embraced the colour?

Any fashion-conscious England fan watching the World Cup this week would have appreciated the moment the attack reached the Croatian end – and not just for the potential goals.

It offered another glimpse of goalkeeper Dominik Livaković in hot pink, a shade fast becoming a visual signature this tournament. Forget Barbie pink – welcome to the World Cup’s hot pink summer.

Come for the sun; stay for the seafood, jazz festival, galleries and coastal walking in this laid-back village within a city

South of the city centre, Le Mourillon is Toulon’s characterful and unpretentious seaside quarter. Once a fishing village, Le Mourillon is home to little shops selling Provençal produce such as huge garlic bulbs and tomatoes in vibrant shades, alongside lively bars and restaurants. It’s not as glamorous or polished as the likes of Antibes or Saint-Tropez – you won’t find designer brands – but it’s all the more charming for that.

From a waterfront palace in Greece to a nonna’s house in Italy, these stylish boutique hotels offer character and comfort at a budget-friendly price

The vibrant port city offers a more relaxed and budget-friendly base for exploring this beautiful coastline by train and ferry

The ferry from Salerno to Amalfi town was set to take about 35 minutes, and we were debating whether to risk the windswept top deck, fearful our packed lunches might fly into the Tyrrhenian Sea. (My father and I were taking a pragmatic approach on our Italian holiday, opting for light midday meals to save space for the primo and secondo courses at dinner, and ample lemony desserts.)

As our ferry sped across glittering water, we admired the views as the Amalfi coast unfolded, incandescent with charm. But we could also see the crawling traffic on the narrow roads that cling to the cliffs. That could have been us, up there in one of those toy-sized rental cars, squeezed between a tourist coach and a fed-up local leaning on their horn. Thankfully, we were on a boat instead, sea breeze in hair and coffee in hand.

This wetland south of Syracuse was saved from developers and preserved as an unspoilt haven for migratory birds

We rented Il Nido because we thought other people wouldn’t like it. Small and basic, without internet, the property was supposedly beside a beautiful national park famous for its coastline and migratory birds. The online picture suggested it was pressed up against one of those concrete pillars (common around Sicily) supporting a deserted and rotting motorway flyover. I was writing a thriller with mafia connections. My partner wanted to scrape off six months of fumes from her new job in London. Our daughter needed fun.

“This is a bomb,” said the hostess, opening a cupboard under the sink. “You turn it anticlockwise to go off.”

Generations of gardeners have added stones to their pots before topping up with compost, but does it really help?

The problem
Most old houseplant guides suggest adding a layer of gravel or stones to the bottom of the pot before adding compost. It is presented as basic good practice; the thing you do to stop soil from retaining water, which can cause root rot.

The hack
This layer of gravel is said to improve drainage by providing a place for excess water to collect below the root zone, keeping roots above the waterlogged area and allowing air to reach them from beneath.

The solutions to today’s puzzles – and the winner of the Anguish Languish contest

Earlier today I set these three puzzles about deception. Here they are again with solutions.

1. Super syllabus

For one day every June, South Africa’s searing racial inequality seems to melt away at Comrades race

In the early morning dark, thousands of runners waited, jostling with anticipation. South Africa’s national anthem rang out. Then the haunting swell of Shosholoza, first sung by Zimbabwean migrant workers in South Africa’s goldmines. Finally, that unmistakable, spine-tingling piano: Chariots of Fire.

Runners gather before the start of the marathon

28 June 1951: The much-talked of state-owned experimental abattoirs have not been built

HEREFORD: With the departure of the high winds, rain has come again in a steady, dreary drizzle. To-day we should have been hay-making: it is as well that none is yet turned and that not much is cut. Rams are sitting each against the trunk of an apple tree: the sheltering branches form big green umbrellas. Nasty selfish creatures. Janice seems to think, so I have brought her back to her old nook against the house between two clipped bushes: she can keep dry there and eat a handful of crushed oats. The cats were already under another bush. Flossie has gone to her basket and grandmama cat sits behind me on my chair; it was her habit to treat a distinguished author like this and she got from him a quite unfair portion of chair.

The men are mucking-out buildings, masoning, and whitewashing. Farmers have done their best to produce good meat under difficult conditions, only to see waste and animals cruelly treated and left to wither away in congested areas outside the totally inadequate slaughterhouses. The much-talked of state-owned experimental slaughterhouses have not been built, and it is doubtful if even two will be ready this year. Up at Ardgay my cousin has found a rare bugle; it was sent to the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens and is being photographed there.

Aiden is an unforgettable young caregiver in Walthamstow, east London, who has been looking after his mum for over half his life. Every few weeks, Aiden and other young carers get a rare night off thanks to tenacious council worker Satvinder, who fights to improve the recognition of young carers in her borough. This film joins them as they reclaim a few hours of their teenage lives back.

Is Mum OK? is released during Carers Week in the UK, a campaign that celebrates unpaid carers across the country and calls for better recognition and support for them. There are more than one million young carers in the UK – with an average age of 12 – which is the equivalent of two kids in every school class.

Leaving the EU was supposed to solve Britain’s border issues, slash bureaucracy, revitalise the health service, even supercharge vacuum cleaners. How much control did we really take back?

• UK marks 10 years since the Brexit referendum – Europe live

Ten long years have passed since that queasy morning of 24 June 2016, when Boris Johnson and Michael Gove addressed the cameras to hail the victory of the Vote Leave campaign, and a leap into the unknown for the UK.

In the no-holds-barred battle of Brexit that spring, many alluring promises were made to tempt voters to turn their backs on the European Union. A decade on, we take a look at which of them ended up being met.

Starmer appeared ruthless in banishing the influence of Jeremy Corbyn, and winning power – but far less certain on how to wield it

Few would describe him as a dramatic man, but Keir Starmer’s political career has been almost Shakespearean in its trajectory: a mere 11 years to enter parliament, lead Labour to an election win many assumed was impossible and then, inside the final two years, throw it all away.

His demise is, of course, a reflection of an unprecedented era, one in which voter loyalties were atomised, a two-party hegemony fractured into five, and for the first time ever Labour faced a coherent threat on its left as well as its right.

People trained to experience world as otters, salmon and other River Tone creatures for pioneering research

What does a kestrel make of the dog sniffing in the long grass below? Why does an exhausted salmon pause before a weir? How will an otter experience the rumble of a passing train?

Eighteen people have spent six weeks swimming, slithering and soaring as otters, salmon, earthworms, red deer and kestrels in an attempt to better document the risks for wild animals in our human-dominated landscape.

How did you cope? What do you remember of that period of hot weather? Tell us and share your pictures

The record temperature for June set in Hampshire in 1976 is expected to be surpassed during this current UK heatwave.

The highest June temperature on record of 35.6C was set on 29 June 1957 in London. This was then equalled on 28 June 1976 in Southampton during that year’s heatwave.

We would like to hear from Cape Verdeans in the UK and across the globe on the team’s progress in the tournament

Cape Verde is enjoying a fairytale World Cup, with their performance becoming the story of the tournament.

There was the shock 0-0 draw with Spain in their tournament debut. Then on Sunday, there was another when they drew 2-2 with two-time champions Uruguay in Miami. This now puts them in serious contention for a place in the knockouts.

How has the shortage affected you? How are you coping?

Health leaders have warned Britons are facing some of the “most severe” shortages of NHS medicines on record, including common painkillers, epilepsy drugs and HRT.

The National Pharmacy Association (NPA) has warned that medicine shortages pose a “serious risk to patient safety”.

We would like to hear about the best film you have seen this year so far and why

The Guardian’s film writers have compiled their favourite films of the year so far – and we’d like to hear about yours, too.

Which films have captured your imagination this year? Are there any new releases from so far in 2025 that you would recommend watching?

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