Government has officially announced ban on reselling for profit, described by minister as ‘no-brainer’

Last May, in a dimly lit basement beneath London’s South Bank, the UK’s most prolific ticket touts gathered to discuss Labour’s plan to effectively put them out of business.

One seasoned ticket “trader” pleaded with colleagues to help fund a war chest to lobby against the party’s election manifesto pledge to ban reselling tickets for profit.

Can Ben Stokes really lead England to victory in Australia? Set your alarms and gird your loins, this one’s not just big, it’s positively Brobdingnagian

Usually raucous backbenchers snoozed through the session as Keir and Kemi’s exchanges descended into a slanging match

It’s like watching dead men walking. Or, to be accurate, a dead man and a dead woman walking. Ghosts of Christmas parties past, haunting the dispatch box. Cast your mind forward to a year from now. It’s more than likely that prime minister’s questions will look very different. A change of cast. If not a change of fortune.

Keir Starmer may not even make it much further than the end of May. The budget chaos and No 10’s curious briefings against itself have left many Labour MPs in despair. The government can’t even get the basics right these days. Cabinet ministers can barely be trusted to dress themselves.

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He’s been in everything from Love Actually to Shakespeare with Al Pacino – but will he always be thought of as the string-vest-wearing boozy Glaswegian? Ahead of a tour as himself, the actor and Instagram cookery guru looks back

Few actors are more indelibly associated with one role than Gregor Fisher – and few comic characters (although Alan Partridge leaps to mind) grow with their audiences over decades rather than years. “Somebody pointed out to me the other day,” says Fisher of his most famous alter ego, the unemployed Glaswegian alcoholic Rab C Nesbitt, “that it’s 40 years since he first appeared on the telly”. Fisher wore the string vest on and off for 30 of those years, weaving himself into Glasgow folklore – but backing himself into a casting cul-de-sac too. Now 71, he’d love you to bear in mind the other roles he can play – not least that of Gregor Fisher, in which out-from-behind-the-mask persona he is soon to set off, for the first time, on a UK tour.

You might imagine that an actor stepping out as himself after years in character(s) could be scary, or exciting, or a chance to set the story straight. But Fisher is not, as I discover when meeting him in Glasgow on the eve of his tour, a man apt to self-dramatise. Ask him about his career and he’ll toss the word back at you in scare quotes. Ask him about Nesbitt and he’ll tell you: “It’s just a part. It’s gossamer wings. It’s nothing.”

Caribbean island nation is the smallest to reach the finals tournament after appointing the wily coach and drawing on diaspora

The delay in Dick Advocaat becoming Curaçao’s head coach might have been ominous but instead it was the foundation for glory. Frustrated by the national federation’s financial problems, he deferred starting until January 2024, when the problems were resolved and players paid, paving the way for a historic World Cup qualifying campaign.

Curaçao will be the smallest nation – by land area and population – to play at the World Cup after their 0-0 draw in Jamaica on Wednesday. The Caribbean island has a population of 156,000, sinking the previous record holders, Iceland, which has about 400,000 inhabitants. Last month Cape Verde were confirmed as surprise tournament debutants but the African nation is almost 10 times bigger by area than the former Dutch colony, indicating the level of achievement by Advocaat and his squad.

Jamal Khashoggi was dismembered in a Saudi consulate. The president says ‘things happen’

“Things happen.” Just two words. That’s all it took for Donald Trump to effectively dismiss what is probably the most infamous journalist killing of the last decade – and in so doing plumbed a new low in his contempt for journalists, for journalism – and for the truth.

The US president’s dismissal of the murder of prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi came in a press conference with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman – a man whom the CIA found in a 2021 report had orchestrated the kidnap and killing of the Washington Post columnist in 2018. (Prince Mohammed has denied involvement.)

Jodie Ginsberg is CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists

Keir Starmer ramps up pressure on Reform leader, who has dismissed claims as ‘one person’s word against another’

• ‘He used to say things like “Hitler was right”’: Farage faces more allegations of racist behaviour at school

Keir Starmer has called on Nigel Farage to urgently address multiple and detailed allegations of racist behaviour during his teenage years, as the Reform leader attempted to dismiss the claims as “one person’s word against another”.

Pressure was put on Farage by the prime minister over what Downing Street said were “disturbing allegations” after the Guardian reported the testimony of more than a dozen school contemporaries, including an award-winning director who claimed to have been targeted with antisemitic abuse.

It is unclear if Trump administration backs deal that would mean Kyiv giving up territory and slashing size of military

US and Russian officials have quietly drafted a new plan to end the war in Ukraine that would require Kyiv to surrender territory and severely limit the size of its military, it was reported on Wednesday as Russian drone and missile strikes killed at least 25 people in the city of Ternopil.

The draft plan, which was reportedly developed by Donald Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin adviser Kirill Dmitriev, would force draconian measures on Ukraine that would give Russia unprecedented control over the country’s military and political sovereignty. The plan is likely to be viewed as surrender in Kyiv.

Jensen Huang opens earnings call with attempt to dispel concerns after his $5tn firm beat Wall Street expectations

Nvidia shares are rising in after-market trading after the company posted third-quarter earnings that beat Wall Street estimates. All eyes were on Nvidia, the bellwether for the AI industry and the most valuable publicly traded company in the world, as analysts and investors hoped the chipmaker’s third-quarter earnings would assuage concerns about whether the high-flying valuations of AI firms have peaked.

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvida, opened the earnings call with an attempt to dispel those concerns. In sum, Huang said, there’s a major transformation happening in AI and Nvidia is foundational to that transformation.

Study calls for depression treatment to be suspended for more research after reports of heart problems and emotional blunting

Electroconvulsive therapy could be causing a wider range of adverse effects when used to treat depression than previously understood, according to a paper that calls for the practice to be suspended pending more robust research.

Although short- and long-term memory loss is widely known to result from ECT, the research identified 25 further concerning side effects, which included cardiovascular problems, fatigue and emotional blunting.

Pam Bondi speaks after US Senate passes bill to release files – but agency may hold back material that could affect a Trump-ordered investigation

One quick note, there haven’t been any changes to Donald Trump’s schedule today, per the press pool. Which means, as of now, the president doesn’t have any time allotted to sign the bill forcing the justice department to release the full batch of Jeffrey Epstein files.

We’ll keep you updated if things change throughout the day.

Molecular profiles will give detailed snapshot of person’s physiology and predict diseases from diabetes to cancer and dementia

The world’s largest study into key substances in the bloodstream has paved the way for a swathe of pinprick tests that can detect early signs of disease more than a decade before symptoms appear, researchers say.

Work on the tests follows the completion of a project by the UK Biobank to measure the levels of nearly 250 different proteins, sugars, fats and other compounds in blood collected from half a million volunteers.

Samantha Niblett highlighted government’s multi-billion-pound deals with Microsoft and ‘getting locked in’

Microsoft has “ripped off the NHS”, it was alleged in parliament on Wednesday, as MPs called on ministers to divert more of the government’s multibillion-pound computing budget away from US technology companies and towards British alternatives.

The Seattle-based firm’s UK government contracts include a five-year deal with the NHS to provide productivity tools reportedly worth over £700m, while the wider government spent £1.9bn on Microsoft software licences in the 2024-25 financial year alone.

CCRC says new evidence undermines narrative Durrell Goodall, Reano Walters and Trey Wilson were in a gang

The convictions of three young black men for murder after a controversial 2017 prosecution under the “joint enterprise” legal doctrine have been referred back to the court of appeal.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) said on Wednesday that new evidence submitted on behalf of Durrell Goodall, Reano Walters and Trey Wilson, who were 20, 19 and 19 respectively when they were convicted, undermines a core of the prosecution’s case that they were members of a gang.

RSPCA says pet abandonments in England and Wales rose by almost 25% in 2025 compared with 2024

There is an “epidemic” of dogs, cats and other pets being abandoned as owners struggle to cope with the cost of living crisis, the UK’s largest animal welfare charity has said.

The RSPCA said abandonments in England and Wales had risen by almost 25% in 2025 compared with last year, reaching their highest rate for at least five years.

The clip of the US president on Air Force One last Friday has taken off without much help from the media itself

It’s one outrage in days full of outrageous material.

“Quiet, piggy,” Donald Trump told a female reporter in a press gaggle, pointing his finger at her angrily.

Excitement is palpable as Tartan Army to head to football’s biggest stage for first time in 28 years

The prognosis from the north Glasgow primary schools squad had been bleak. “Everybody says Scotland are going to get pumped,” my eight-year told me as he left football training on Tuesday evening, with a realism born of experience even over his short life.

But three hours later, Scotland fans across the nation and beyond were catapulted beyond euphoria as their team qualified for the men’s football World Cup for the first time in more than a quarter of a century after a bum-squeaking, breathtaking 4-2 win against Denmark at Hampden.

JMW Turner left behind some 37,000 sketches when he died, many of which have rarely been seen. Do they – including a huge collection of explicit sketches – reveal truths about the elusive man?

The hook for Turner: the Secret Sketchbooks is meant to be that many of the 37,000 sketches left behind by the great British painter JMW Turner have rarely been seen and never been filmed; therein may be hints at the nuances of his elusive character that his main oeuvre kept hidden. Equally remarkable, though, is the documentary’s bold choice of contributors. As well as the art historians and present-day British artists who would dominate a standard art film, there are famous laymen, from the obviously somewhat qualified – Timothy Spall played the artist in Mike Leigh’s biographical film Mr Turner; Chris Packham is well placed to comment on Turner’s reverence for the natural world – to the more surprising hire of Ronnie Wood from the Rolling Stones.

Neither the sketchbooks nor the celebs turn the documentary format upside down, but they add something to a distillation of Turner’s life and legacy that balances accessibility with analytical muscle. Will a previously uninitiated viewer now be more likely to attend a Turner exhibition? Yes. Can existing Turner experts finesse their knowledge? Yes. Job done.

These old-school presents, from Polaroid cameras to poetry diaries, are the ultimate antidote to digital overload

• The best 90s Christmas gifts: 15 nostalgic picks

All I want for Christmas is … to reclaim my attention span. Granted, it’s not the sexiest-sounding new year resolution, but for those who are addicted to scrolling, it’s basically the equivalent of 75 Hard.

The daily average for watching all types of screen is now almost 7.5 hours in the UK; almost 70% of young people have said social media makes them feel worse about themselves; and since I sat down to write this, I’ve checked my phone upwards of five times. So what to do?

A skilled interpreter and social justice champion, Gaughan is a hero to the likes of Richard Hawley and Billy Bragg. Yet much of his work has been stuck in limbo for decades – until a determined fan stepped in

‘It felt to me as if the world had forgotten about the Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley of folk, or a singular figure in the mould of Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash or Richard Thompson.” So says Colin Harper, curator of a slew of new releases celebrating the stunning music of Scottish musician Dick Gaughan. Harper had recently reconnected with his music after several decades, “and I couldn’t believe the quality of it. His singing and guitar playing were astonishing – he performed traditional songs and championed social justice so powerfully.”

But if you haven’t heard of the 77-year-old Gaughan, it’s not surprising: much of his work has been unavailable for years, the rights to it having been claimed by the label Celtic Music, who have not made it available digitally. Gaughan doesn’t recall receiving a royalty statement from the company in 40 years. He is battling for ownership and, in turn, hopes to help other veteran folk artists regain control of their catalogues. “To find that the music I made, that I put a lot of work into, is just not available – it’s like your life isn’t available,” he says.

The rollout of reporter Olivia Nuzzi’s memoir has led to Ryan Lizza airing out her alleged affairs – and is fueling a dangerous stereotype about journalists

This week, Olivia Nuzzi – the US star political reporter known for her cozy access to top Republican figures – dropped an excerpt of her memoir, American Canto. In it, she detailed what she describes as an emotional affair with Robert F Kennedy Jr, who she calls “the politician”.

Not to be outdone, Nuzzi’s ex-fiance and former Politico correspondent Ryan Lizza self-published an essay dishing on the day he found out Nuzzi was cheating on him, he claims – not with RFK Jr, as one might have expected, but with another former presidential candidate, Mark Sanford.

The hot spot seemed the perfect place for Yuletide-loving royalists. But, as with the Eiffel Tower in Beijing and some of the most picturesque windmills in the Netherlands, there was much less to it than first met the eye ...

Name: Buckingham Palace Christmas market.

Age: Brand new this year.

Autocrats like Prince Mohammed are eager to benefit from Trump’s brazen effort to use the presidency to enrich himself and his family

Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, visited the US this week for the first time in seven years – and Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for his favorite Arab autocrat. On Tuesday, Trump hosted the prince for lunch and talks at the White House, followed by a black-tie dinner that included members of Congress, business leaders and top administration officials. The next day, Trump and the prince appeared together at a US-Saudi investment summit at the Kennedy Center.

It’s all part of a rehabilitation tour for Prince Mohammed, years after US intelligence agencies concluded that he had ordered the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident. In October 2018, Khashoggi was ambushed inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member hit team, who dismembered his body with a bone saw. For a time, the killing turned Prince Mohammed into an international pariah. But Trump never wavered in his support of the Saudi leader, and during his first term protected the prince from US sanctions and pressure from Congress.

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University

Bill Ackman thinks his pickup line could aid population rates. Given the track record of the mega-rich, it may do the opposite

Sit down and pay attention, because this column might change your life. I bring you tidings from the Nazi-filled wilderness that is now X, where Maga-adjacent billionaire Bill Ackman has generously decided to dispense romantic advice to the masses. Online culture, Ackman notes, has “destroyed the ability to spontaneously meet strangers”. The antidote to this, he suggests, are four simple words.

“May I meet you?”

No one suffers a cold like I do. Drops and brandy don’t touch the sides – but thanks to a friendly singer, I’ve learned a more extreme regime for countering the snuffles

This time last year, I was on a TV programme with three singers. There was a rapper of Ghanaian heritage, a big pop star, and a famous mezzo-soprano. It was deep midwinter. The night before, I’d been at an old friend’s 60th birthday, crammed into the function room of a pub somewhere in Surrey. It had been a good night, but now, just for something to say, I wondered how it was possible to avoid catching a cold when half the people at the party were players in a symphony of coughs, sneezes, snuffles and nose-blows. By the way, how come some people have nose-blows like trumpets, and others don’t? A question for another day.

At mention of my night out, this trio of troubadours in the TV green room did two things. First, they shrunk away from me slightly. Second, they engaged in a feverishly enthusiastic discussion on how to avoid catching colds which, naturally enough given their line of work, was something of an obsession for them. I get that, but I have skin in this game too – I must avoid colds at all costs because the colds I get are worse than anyone else’s. I don’t have a medical certificate to confirm this, but I know it to be true. My colds last longer. My nose is more blocked, my throat is scratchier, my coughing fits are louder, barkier and apparently endless. My family, wise to the couple of quick throat-clearances which herald the coming storm, either kick me out of the room, or clear the room themselves. Back when I presented football on ITV, my poor colleagues in the studio gallery grew attuned to the warning signs. “Cans off!” the studio director would holler to his team, before I deafened them all, blowing the wiring in their headphones.

Some may be nostalgic for a time when the landline made communication a family affair, before smartphones were an extension of each of us

When something becomes old and then new again during my lifetime, I might be forgiven for feeling at once quite aged and a little sentimental.

But suggestions that the landline telephone may be having a cultural renaissance just make me feel old and somewhat triggered by experiences of fraught teenage social negotiations over the long obsolete rotary dial phone of my youth.

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Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist

For the New York and Washington great and good who loved the company of wealth and power, all that glitters is no longer gold

Many years ago, I went to a party in central London thrown by a host known for curating interesting and heavyweight guest lists and, on entering, encountered David Irving, the disgraced historian and Holocaust denier. As a marker of social pariahdom, Holocaust denial is up there with – or perhaps even more potent than – a conviction for sex offences, and I turned around and walked out; not through any particular moral superiority, but because I thought “notoriety” as a criteria for inclusion on a guest list was stupid and offensive. As I left, I remember looking across the room at the host and thinking: you silly bloody bint, I’m embarrassed for you.

I thought about that party and Irving this week while reading, with grim amusement, the absolute scramble currently under way in the US among media and other public figures seeking to explain, justify, downplay and generally paddle away as fast as they can from their social interactions with Jeffrey Epstein. I’m not talking about the men alleged to have joined the late paedophile in abusing trafficked girls, but rather the apparently endless list of notable figures – mostly in New York, but also reaching down to Washington DC, and across America’s Ivy League campuses – who enjoyed his hospitality, appeared with him at parties, and exchanged cordial emails with the man long after his true nature was known. As the Senate voted this week to release the Epstein files, the chorus of “we didn’t know!” from certain corners grew so loud it might’ve been Germany in 1946.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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.

When a prankster meets a puncher it’s not about sport but an elaborate viral hoax that keeps us wanting more

“If it’s all straight up and proper, you would worry that he takes this kid’s head off,” reckons Barry McGuigan. “Could get his jaw broke, his head smashed in, side of his head caved in, God forbid he could get a brain bleed,” says Carl Froch on his YouTube channel. “It could be the end of him. It could be his last day on Earth,” David Haye tells Sky News, with the sort of apocalyptic glare I try to give my children when they want to jump in a muddy puddle.

Yes, this week everyone appears to be deeply concerned for the wellbeing of 28-year-old YouTube celebrity Jake Paul. The announcement of his fight against Anthony Joshua next month has generated a flood of foreboding prognoses, and fair enough. Stepping into the ring with a two-time world heavyweight champion when a) you’re not even a heavyweight, b) your record consists almost entirely of novices and geriatrics and c) you still fight like a marmoset trapped in an empty crisp packet: on some level, we all know how this might go.

Whether by leveraging Russia’s frozen assets, or other means, the EU must deliver the cash necessary to withstand Putin’s war of attrition

In the early part of this year, as the US vice-president, JD Vance, berated European leaders in Munich, and Volodymyr Zelenskyy was subjected to a televised mauling in the White House, it became starkly apparent that the bonds of solidarity between the European Union and Ukraine would need to be strengthened to cope with a new geopolitical reality. As 2025 draws to a close, a moment of reckoning has arrived.

According to EU estimates, Ukraine will need more than €70bn in extra financial assistance next year to keep defending itself against Vladimir Putin. That money won’t be coming from Washington, where Donald Trump has refused to seek new funding for military aid from Congress. Yet Kyiv’s ability to negotiate an acceptable peace depends on its capacity to withstand Mr Putin’s relentless war of attrition, which is designed to drain Ukraine of the resources necessary to resist, and to weaken the resolve of its European allies.

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.

A fixation on reducing numbers leaves no room for rational discussion of what that means for the economy and society

British political debate has long been dominated by public anxiety about rising levels of immigration. How might that change if the population tide were to turn? Not at all, would appear to be the answer. Net migration has in fact been falling since before Labour came to power last July, and yet there has been no end of demand for ever tighter controls and no end of government acquiescence.

New figures published this week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), adjusting historical data for methodological changes, show that net migration was 944,000 for the year ending March 2023 – about 40,000 higher than had previously been thought. The drop since then has also been steeper. The number for the year ending December 2024 is now thought to be 345,000 – lower than the earlier count by 86,000.

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.

Private appointments, tests and operations are a grave threat to the future of the health service, writes Margaret Greenwood

Gaby Hinsliff is right to ask if the government’s reorganisation of the National Health Service will be the final nail in its coffin (Wes Streeting’s gamble with the NHS is greater than any play for Downing Street, 14 November). Such large‑scale redundancies are bound to create problems.

There are other threats to the delivery of NHS services too. The privatisation of the NHS is happening in plain sight. Last month, the government proudly announced that “A total of 6.15 million appointments, tests and operations were delivered by independent providers for NHS patients this year”, an almost 500,000 increase on last year, which it says is “helping to cut waiting times [and] free up NHS capacity”.

Elizabeth Taylor fully backs industrial action and feels that doctors have been taken advantage of for decades; Dr Natasha de Vere would not consider striking

I totally support the resident doctors’ strike (Why the NHS doctors’ strikes look set to continue, 14 October). I am a retired consultant anaesthetist who worked in the NHS for 40 years. Throughout my career, I felt that I was totally underpaid for my work.

As a junior doctor in the 1970s and up until my consultant appointment in 1991, I was paid a pittance for working excessive, unsafe hours – often 80 to 100 hours a week. Accommodation and catering were minimal. Overtime was paid at a much lower rate.

Thorough reform of how flooding is managed is necessary to reconnect people to their watery environments, says Dr Ed Rollason. Plus a letter from Moira Robinson

John Harris correctly identifies that the UK is hopelessly unprepared for flooding, but is wrong to suggest that the public is not told about the threat (Flooded and forgotten: the UK’s waters are rising and we’re being kept in the dark, 16 November). In fact, the UK has some of the most detailed and accurate flood-risk information in the world. The Environment Agency publishes comprehensive flood-risk maps and impact information that is searchable by address, and regularly undertakes public-information campaigns.

The north-east of England has also pioneered community flood-resilience officers, whose sole purpose is to engage with at-risk communities and to encourage the development of “community resilience”, a model increasingly being mirrored in other regions.

Canvassing opinion | From A Lane to the bus lane | GWR wifi | Suits in the White House | Blancmange rabbit | Narcissism

The Guardian may get a better idea of why some young people support Reform UK by asking actual Reform voters who work in shops, offices and factories in “red wall” towns and cities such as Mansfield, Grimsby and Derby what they think, rather than three students, an environmental activist and a youth equality organiser (How should we tackle Reform and the rise of the far right? Our gen Z panel has some ideas, 13 November).
Nigel Scollin
Breaston, Derbyshire

• Back in 1984, my driving test examiner in Lampeter, Wales, was called Mr A Lane (‘You get more attention than you would choose’: how an unusual name can shape your life – for better or worse, 13 November). I passed the test first time and never drove again. Do I get brownie points for using the buses all these years?
Nicholas Q Gough
Swindon, Wiltshire

Alessia Russo’s second-half double secured a 2-1 comeback victory for Arsenal against Real Madrid in the Women’s Champions League.

The hosts enjoyed plenty of opportunities during the first half but the former Arsenal player Caroline Weir sent the visitors ahead on the stroke of half-time with a brilliant volley.

From pyrotechnics in Perth to the denouement in Sydney, our team of writers outline their hopes and fears for the five Tests

Ali Martin A full-blooded Ashes tour – both sets of supporters in the stands watching a hard-fought contest – after the pandemic proved something of a buzzkill four years ago.

• Plans for 39 grass courts were given approval in 2024

• Pressure has led to judicial review of that decision

Wimbledon’s battle to build 39 new grass courts on a nearby golf course has taken a fresh twist after local residents were granted permission to take a judicial review case to the court of appeal.

Last year the All England Club (AELTC) was given approval by Jules Pipe, the London deputy mayor for planning and regeneration, to build the courts on what used to be Wimbledon Park Golf Club – a decision that was then endorsed in the high court on 21 July.

• Coach backs Saracens man for World Cup and beyond

• Slade and Opoku-Fordjour also named in starting XV

Elliot Daly looks likely to remain a pivotal member of England’s squad through to the 2027 World Cup after being recalled to start the final autumn series game, against Argentina on Sunday.

Daly is among six changes unveiled by the head coach, Steve Borthwick, who is backing the 33-year-old player to prolong his Test career for at least the next two years.

• Manager wants youth to dream of playing for Scotland

• Clarke uses missed chances as player to inspire team

Steve Clarke hopes Scotland’s long-awaited qualification for a men’s World Cup will inspire the country’s young footballers.

Against a backdrop of euphoric scenes at Hampden Park on Tuesday night, the Scots defeated Denmark 4-2 to seal a World Cup spot for the first time since 1998. Their manager was delighted to end that long wait, especially as he believes it has harmed the nation’s football development. “This should stimulate or motivate young players to go out and become Scotland internationals in the future,” said Clarke. “Hopefully there is a legacy from this group of players to the younger generations and we don’t wait so long to go to the next tournament and the next tournament.

• Forward makes claim about dressing room incident at Montpellier

• ‘It was hard to see it as merely a simple error,’ says Matildas star

Matildas star Mary Fowler has claimed she experienced racism while at Montpellier in 2022 when she was given bananas while others in the squad received flowers at the end of her final season with the French club.

The explosive revelations are contained in her memoir Bloom, which was released this week and details the extensive challenges she has faced in her young career, including a pattern of self harm she has worked hard to overcome.

Manchester United succumbed to the first defeat of their inaugural Women’s Champions League campaign, a result that sent Stephan Lerch’s side above United into third in the table.

The temperature in Wolfsburg may have been close to freezing but the players on the pitch did their bit to warm up the 3,817 spectators in the stadium. Five first-half goals raised the dial as momentum swung before the hosts opened up a gap after the break.

• Backlash came amid Rwanda’s support for M23 militia

• Club says deal ‘exceeded the original goals’

Arsenal’s controversial sponsorship partnership with Visit Rwanda will end in June, the club have announced.

The deal, reportedly worth in the region of £10m a year, began in 2018 and has come under scrutiny amid Rwanda’s support for the M23 ­militia in conflicts taking place in the eastern part of the neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo. In February, Arsenal were accused of delivering an “outrageous” snub to the ­Congolese ­government by not meeting the ­foreign minister, ­Thérèse ­Kayikwamba Wagner, to ­discuss the deal.

• Club plan to sell PSLs to help fund new £2bn stadium

• Government wants to stop tickets being sold on at profit

Manchester United’s plans to sell personal seat licences to supporters to help fund the £2bn redevelopment of Old Trafford has been put under threat by the government’s clampdown on ticket touts.

The Guardian has learned that the proposed PSL model being considered by United permitted seat licence holders to sell on their match or season tickets at a profit to other fans.

Exclusive: André Corrêa do Lago says rise of clean energy must be acknowledged and rich countries need to do more

• Cop30 live – latest updates

• Cop30: click here for full Guardian coverage of climate talks in Brazil

Oil-producing countries need to acknowledge the rise of clean energy, and rich countries will have to provide more assurances on finance if the chasm between negotiating nations at Cop30 is to be bridged, the president of the summit has said.

André Corrêa do Lago, the veteran Brazilian climate diplomat in charge of the talks, said: “Developing countries are looking at developed countries as countries that could be much more generous in supporting them to be more sustainable. They could offer more finance, and technology.”

Exclusive: Images are first indication that Israel has used cluster munitions in nearly 20 years

Israel used widely banned cluster munitions in its recent 13-month war in Lebanon, photos of munition remnants in south Lebanon seen by the Guardian suggest.

The images, which have been examined by six different arms experts, appear to show the remnants of two different types of Israeli cluster munitions found in three different locations: south of the Litani River in the forested valleys of Wadi Zibqin, Wadi Barghouz and Wadi Deir Siryan.

North Scotland and east and west coasts of UK to get wintry showers but conditions will be brighter and drier inland

Wintry conditions are expected to continue in coastal areas of the UK after up to 7cm (2.7in) of snow fell in parts of the country.

The Met Office said the forecast in central inland areas was likely to be brighter and drier, while wintry showers were expected on the coasts of north Scotland and the east and west coasts of the UK.

Unsealed indictment says Ryan Wedding tracked down witness who was then murdered before he could testify

US authorities have charged a fugitive former Canadian Olympic snowboarder turned drug kingpin with the murder of a witness who was prepared to testify against him.

The attorney general, Pam Bondi, said on Wednesday that Ryan Wedding was accused in a newly unsealed indictment of tracking down a witness in Colombia who was then murdered before he could give evidence.

Government wants social media platforms to be less attractive for foreign agents after recent intelligence warnings

The government is holding talks with LinkedIn on how it can clamp down on prolific Chinese espionage activity after a rare interference alert was issued by MI5.

The National Protective Security Authority, which is part of the UK’s security services, is speaking to social media platforms about making them less attractive for foreign agents, a government official told the Guardian.

Fortnight-long event to be held in Antalya but Australia may lead negotiations

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Turkey will host the Cop31 climate conference after the Australian government dropped its push to hold the event in Adelaide at the last moment – despite having invested in a more than three-year campaign.

Independent sources confirmed to the Guardian that the fortnight-long event would be held in Turkey’s Mediterranean resort city of Antalya in November 2026.

When the Maui fires ripped through Hawaii, the community came together. For everyone it was a life-changing experience. This is Ryan’s story

Location Maui, Hawaii, United States

Disaster Maui wildfires, 2023

Ryan Kirkham had been the principal at Maui preparatory school for 13 years when the Maui wildfires ignited in 2023, killing 102 people in Lahaina and costing almost $3.3bn in insured damages. Climate change is increasing the severity of droughts in the Hawaiian Islands, which correlates with an increased likelihood of wildfires.

Governments across the continent have attacked green rules with increasing ferocity – all while professing their commitment to existing climate targets

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To little fanfare and few international headlines, Denmark just announced one of the world’s most ambitious climate targets.

The unusually wind-powered and cycle-friendly Nordic nation – whose ruling Social Democrats suffered a setback in elections on Tuesday – promised on Monday to cut planet-heating pollution by at least 82% by 2035 from 1990 levels. The goal inches past the UK’s landmark 81% target for that year and races ahead of the EU’s rather wide goal of 66.3% to 72.5%.

The Neoliner Origin set off on its inaugural two-week voyage from France to the US with the aim of revolutionising the notoriously dirty shipping industry

It is 8pm on a Saturday evening and eight of us are sitting at a table onboard a ship, holding on to our plates of spaghetti carbonara as our chairs slide back and forth. Michel Péry, the dinner’s host, downplays the weather as a “tempête de journalistes” – something sailors would not categorise as a storm, but which drama-seeking journalists might refer to as such to entertain their readers.

But after a white-knuckle night in our cabins with winds reaching 74mph or force 12 – officially a hurricane – Péry has to admit it was not just a “journalists’ storm”, but the real deal.

Campaigners call for urgent reform of redress scheme and say they plan to launch ‘people’s inquiry’ into failings

The Windrush scandal remains “a stain on British society”, Floella Benjamin has said at an emotional House of Lords event where campaigners called for the government to commission a statutory inquiry into continuing Home Office errors.

Despite seven years of promises from ministers to rectify the mistakes caused by the Home Office scandal, Lady Benjamin said the injustices remained unresolved, with many of those affected still caught up in an ongoing nightmare.

Former Met officer convicted of offences in pattern of ‘horrific’ offending dating back 35 years

The former police officer and convicted sex offender David Carrick has been found guilty of further offences including molesting a 12-year-old girl and raping an ex-partner.

Carrick, 50, who served as an armed officer in the Metropolitan police, sexually assaulted the child in the late 1980s.

Lords say culture department has mishandled process and suggest CMA or Cabinet Office oversee new auction

The government has been urged to take control of the sale of the Telegraph through an auction run by a body such as the UK competition regulator or the Cabinet Office.

Peers called on the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, to wrest the sale process from RedBird IMI, which is majority funded by the United Arab Emirates, in questions put to Labour minister Fiona Twycross in the House of Lords on Wednesday.

Treatment of terrorist with known mental health needs said to have contravened prohibition on inhuman or degrading treatment

Shabana Mahmood and David Lammy have been found to have breached a prohibition on inhuman or degrading treatment with respect to a prisoner who spent months segregated from other inmates, in what is believed to be a legal first.

Sahayb Abu was confined to his cell at HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes, for 22 hours a day and prevented from associating with other prisoners for more than four months after Hashem Abedi, the brother of the Manchester Arena bomber, allegedly attacked prison officers at HMP Frankland.

Agriculture minister calls for investigation over marketing of carbonara sauce containing wrong type of cured meat

Italy’s agriculture minister, Francesco Lollobrigida, has called for an immediate investigation after coming across what he claimed were jars of “Italian-sounding” pasta sauce on the shelves of the European parliament’s supermarket.

Lollobrigida, of Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, was particularly vexed by a carbonara sauce made with “Italiaanse pancetta” – the classic Roman pasta dish is made with a different cured meat, guanciale – and a tomato sauce containing “oignons de Calabria”, or onions from Calabria.

Brown University researchers run joint-and-drink study to find alcohol consumption falls after smoking cannabis

It turns out that going “California sober” may actually help you stay away from alcohol, according to new research published in the the American Journal of Psychiatry.

A team of Brown University researchers conducted a study in which participants were given marijuana joints to smoke and then sent out to a controlled “bar lab”, in which they then were given the choice to have up to eight mini alcoholic beverages. The experiment was conducted three separate times: once with 7.2% THC cannabis, once with 3.1% THC cannabis and once with 0.03% THC cannabis, which was considered a placebo.

Critics warn move could have devastating impact on lives and wellbeing of those affected

New Zealand has announced it is banning new prescriptions of puberty-blocking drugs for young transgender people, in a move that critics warned could worsen the mental health of those affected.

The step comes amid growing global debate about the number of adolescents seeking to change gender, dividing those concerned about hastiness in prescribing such medications and those worried about access to remedies they deem lifesaving.

More than 300 people most at risk are moved to shelters as tallest peak on Java island unleashes clouds of hot ash

Indonesia’s Mount Semeru, the highest peak on Java island, has erupted, blanketing several villages with falling ash, prompting evacuations and leading authorities to raise the alert to the highest level.

The volcano in East Java province unleashed searing clouds of hot ash and a mixture of rock, lava and gas that travelled up to 7km (4 miles) down its slopes several times from midday to dusk, while a thick column of hot clouds rose 2km into the air, Indonesia’s Geology Agency said in a statement.

Drop in October’s annual rate raises hopes of interest rate cut after Rachel Reeves’s tax and spending statement

• Fall looks like turning point that heralds interest rate cut

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UK inflation fell to 3.6% in October, easing the path for the Bank of England to cut interest rates after the chancellor Rachel Reeves’s make-or-break budget next week.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said annual inflation as measured by the consumer prices index cooled for the first time in five months, falling back from a peak of 3.8% over July, August and September.

Proposed legal case understood to allege that app has breached data protection law varying driver pay rates

Uber has been hit with legal demands to stop using its artificial intelligence driven pay systems, which have been blamed for significantly reducing the incomes of the ride hailing app’s drivers.

A letter before action – sent to the US company by the non-profit foundation, Worker Info Exchange (WIE), on Wednesday – is understood to allege that the ride hailing app has breached European data protection law by varying driver pay rates through its controversial algorithm.

Dutch government’s move pauses dispute that threatened car production around the world

• Nexperia row shows how China is weaponising EU relationship

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The Netherlands has suspended its seizure of the Chinese-owned chipmaker at the heart of a six-week dispute between the EU and China that threatened to halt car production at sites around the world.

The Dutch minister of economic affairs, Vincent Karremans, said in a statement on Wednesday that the government would suspend its decision to take supervisory control of Nexperia as a gesture of “goodwill” to Beijing.

Company slashes profit outlook as it takes hit from blunder in North American division

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WH Smith’s chief executive has stepped down with immediate effect after a review found accounting failures in its North American division, prompting the travel shop chain to slash its profit outlook.

Nearly £600m was wiped off the retailer’s market value in a 42% one-day share price fall when the blunder emerged in August. It came shortly after the sale of its high street business, which has since been rebranded as TGJones by its new owners.

Whether it’s vibe-setting dance and rap for house parties or soothing dream-pop for when you’re contemplating the clear-up, reach for these ready-made playlists

Let’s face it: when everyone’s two improvised cocktails deep, they’ll be hollering for Pink Pony Club, and after two more, they’ll be doing Fairytale of New York in a male-female karaoke face-off. But for the early part of the party, here’s some 2025 pop, dance and rap to keep the mood buoyant.

Award-winning author whose novels, including her debut, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, united comic skills with serious themes

Marina Lewycka, who has died aged 79 from a degenerative brain condition, appeared to achieve a kind of fairy-tale transformation when, in her late 50s, her comic debut novel became a million-copy bestseller.

However, behind the literary stardust that settled on the British Ukrainian novelist after A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian lay not just “a long career as an unpublished author”. That book grew from intimate involvement with the sorrow and pity of war-torn Europe: a “measureless ocean of tears and blood”.

The pianist played with the Beatles, the Stones, the Who and more, but remains little known beyond insider circles. This loving doc asks why – but leaves some questions unanswered

This documentary is probably, as they say, one for the heads – for connoisseurs who appreciate a great musician who was never a star. But the flaw of this film, admirably detailed and celebratory though it is, lies for me in the fact that it never pauses to wonder why exactly he was never a star, and what that precisely means. Does star quality consist, in some mysterious way, in a lack of formal musicianship?

Nicky Hopkins was a superbly accomplished pianist who played on records by the Who, the Kinks, Jefferson Airplane, the Rolling Stones and the Beatles (plus solo albums by all four ex-Beatles) and many more. His brilliant work meant he was admired and even hero-worshipped by musicians and producers on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a classically trained Englishman (like Elton John at about the same time, he studied at the Royal Academy of Music) yet sounded as if he learned piano in the Mississippi Delta. And all this was while Hopkins was dealing with serious ill-health; he had Crohn’s disease and later issues with drink and drugs. The latter were at least partly due to a need to dull the pain, in order to keep up with tough recording and touring schedules; it all contributed to his heartbreakingly early death at the age of just 50.

The streamer continues its annual onslaught of forgettable festive films with a mostly charmless romance set in France

At the risk of sounding like the Grinch, I must once again bemoan the release of Christmas movies before Thanksgiving; the temperatures may be dropping at long last, but it’s still too close to the gloominess of daylight savings and too far from the belt-loosening of the actual holidays to fully indulge in Netflix’s now-annual buffet of cheap Christmas confections. Nevertheless, their content conveyor belt rolls on, offering treats about as substantial and enduring as cotton candy beginning in mid-November.

Like American chocolates that no longer, in fact, contain real chocolate but sell like gangbusters on Halloween anyway, the Netflix Christmas movie, like rival holiday movie master Hallmark, is relied upon, even beloved, for its brand of badness, for its rote familiarity (nostalgic casting, basement-bargain budgets, Styrofoam snow, knowingly absurd premise) and uncanny artificial filler, for its ability to deliver hits of sugary pleasure while still somehow under-delivering on expectations. At worst, these films are forgettable train wrecks (last week’s A Merry Little Ex-Mas); at best, they are forgettable fun, such as the Lindsay Lohan comeback vehicle Falling For Christmas, of which I remember nothing other than cackling with my friend on her couch. (Actually, at best they are memorably ludicrous, such as last year’s impressively unserious Hot Frosty.)

Wojciech Has’s slice of 1960s surrealism is set in 18th-century Spain, as an officer careens through farcical encounters and erotic episodes in a wild ride that could be a series of Monty Python sketches

This epic picaresque comedy from 1965 is a head-spinning period-costume adventure of 18th-century Spain from Polish film-maker Wojciech Has. It is a surrealist film whose surrealism resides not merely in the bizarre parched landscape of the Sierra Morena mountain range with its bleached skulls, hanged bandits, crows and mysterious inns in which seductive encounters are to be had, but also simply in the bewildering juxtaposition of individual tales and anecdotes, stories which grow out of each other. The surrealist effect (and the comedy) is in the jolt from one micro-narrative to the other, and the realisation that the overall story is thwarted and undermined.

The premise is that in the Spanish town of Saragossa during the Napoleonic wars, one officer tries to arrest another, who is apparently reading an old book – but is then distracted by the fact that this book is about his own grandfather, the nobleman Alfonse Van Worden. (Later we discover that the passages about this grandfather have been added by hand, in pen-and-ink, hence Saragossa Manuscript.) Then we flash back to the this preening aristocrat-soldier himself, played by prominent Polish actor Zbigniew Cybulski.

A searing documentary on the laundries sees a determined young human rights lawyer join survivors and campaigners in a fight for truth and accountability

At least 10,000 women and girls were imprisoned in Ireland’s Magdalene laundries, forced into unpaid labour and subject to cruelty and suffering. This documentary narrated by Imelda Staunton tells the story of the campaign to hold the Irish government to account for its role in the laundries, mother and baby homes and industrial schools for children. A key figure in that campaign is Maeve O’Rourke, an impressive young Irish human rights lawyer whose master’s thesis at Harvard Law School served as a key legal submission in the legal fight for justice.

O’Rourke had plans for a career in international human rights law until she watched a survivor speaking in a debate on Irish television. We see that footage here, of Michael O’Brien, a former mayor and survivor of rape and torture by priests at a residential school, as he blasts a government minister, white-hot with fury, his trauma raw. It takes your breath away. This thorough documentary hears from campaigners, historians and survivors – including Philomena Lee, forced to give up her son, who was trafficked and sold to rich Americans. Lee was later portrayed on screen by Judi Dench.

Choreographers hear, somehow, a larger heartbeat; it’s fascinating and revelatory to have them reinterpret your compositions, writes the US musician, ahead of a triple bill featuring his music coming to Sadler’s Wells.

When I’m writing music, one of the primary challenges is figuring out how to notate rhythm in a way that is clear to the interpreters. When I hear a phrase in my head it is free of the confines of bar lines, but, in practical application, eventually it needs to get squeezed into recognisable shapes and containers. Every composer has their own strategy (some eschew bar lines entirely, or use alternative notational strategies outside the traditional western systems), but it’s always a negotiation: does the way the composer notates the rhythm correspond to how it should best appear on the flute player’s music stand?

I have distinct memories of being 13, hearing a piece (specifically, Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements), basically memorising it from the recording, and then being absolutely shocked when I finally saw the score. “That’s where the downbeat is?!” Stravinsky’s sense of time and my understanding of the same were at variance in a way I still find exciting: the idea that there are infinite superimpositions of a practical system (notation) over a medium (sound) most often experienced by an audience without the score. Understanding that notating rhythm is artificial yet crucial requires both personal precision and empathy with future interpreters.

Its 1981 New York premiere was a disaster but this told-in-reverse musical became a Tony award-winning hit with Daniel Radcliffe. The film version is a tear-jerking joy

I have made enough mistakes as a critic to feel mildly chuffed when a verdict is vindicated. In 1981 I wrote excitedly about a new Stephen Sondheim musical, Merrily We Roll Along, that I had seen in preview in New York; reviled by reviewers and shunned by the public, it then closed two weeks after opening. In 2023-24 the very same musical ran for a year on Broadway, won four Tony awards and was hailed by the critics. Fortunately a live performance of that Maria Friedman production was filmed and I would urge you to catch it when it’s released in cinemas next month.

I say “the very same musical” but that is not strictly accurate. Based on a 1934 play by George S Kaufman and Moss Hart, it is still the same story, told in reverse chronological order, of dissolving relationships: a success-worshipping composer and movie producer, Franklin Shepard, looks back over his life and sees how time has eroded both his creative partnership with a dramatist, Charley, and their mutual friendship with a novelist, Mary.

After serving time in jail, actor Allison Mack opens up about her experiences in a group with links to sex trafficking. Plus, a deep dive into Jane Austen

The 26-year-old’s debut album I Love My Computer has already netted her some of Australia’s most prestigious prizes – and it’s all about the delight and depravity of growing up on the internet

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Ninajirachi is having a dream run with her debut album I Love My Computer – and between leading this year’s Aria nominations with eight nods and the rapturous crowds at sold-out shows, she knows it.

“I want to live up this one before I move on, because it might be hard to come back to this headspace and time,” says Nina Wilson. “I don’t want to rush into the future.”

The author of Palestine turns his attention to the legacies of Indian partition in this brilliant portrait of the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots

Joe Sacco is one of a very small number of graphic novelists who have smashed through into the mainstream. His masterwork is Palestine, a collected volume of single-issue comic books he created in the 1990s, documenting the violence in Gaza. His technique is to embed as a journalist in a war zone and interview people on the street, telling their stories with pictures. Lessons on global politics emerge from ultra-local conflict and depictions of day-to-day life.

Palestine propelled Sacco to fame, drawing comparisons with Maus, Art Spiegelman’s two-volume saga about Polish Jews during the Holocaust with Nazis portrayed as cats, and Jews as mice. These works are sold prominently in bookshops, not in musty basements packed with racks of polyethylene-sheathed superhero comics. Alongside a couple of others, Maus and Palestine signalled that graphic novels, as they became known, could be serious works of fiction, nonfiction and journalism. Palestine itself is as depressingly relevant today as it was in the 1990s. In December 2023, it was reprinted for the first time in a decade, after selling out following the 7 October attacks.

An intimate soiree builds to a horrific climax in this visceral novel about a young woman tasked with hosting a meal for her fiance

Literature loves a dinner party. From Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway to more recent offerings such as Sarah Gilmartin’s The Dinner Party and Teresa Präauer’s Cooking in the Wrong Century, an intimate soiree provides the perfect recipe of claustrophobia and choreography into which a novelist can sink their teeth. The preparations are usually unduly stressful, the guest list dynamic unpredictable, the quantity of alcohol borderline obscene – in short, as a device it has all the ingredients for total, delicious carnage.

The latest entrant to this literary Come Dine With Me is Viola van de Sandt, whose debut The Dinner Party centres on Franca, a shy young woman from the Netherlands tasked with hosting a meal for her English fiance Andrew and his two male colleagues. To make matters more challenging, it is the hottest day of the year, the menu is rabbit (despite Franca’s vegetarianism) and her sous chef is their often violent pet cat.

An affectionate biography of the polymath includes details of never-produced gems such as Monty Python’s Third World War

Terry Jones was a Python, a historian, a bestselling children’s author and a very naughty boy. He loved to play women in drag, started a magazine about countryside ecology (Vole), founded his own real-ale brewery and was even once a columnist for this newspaper, beginning one piece in 2011 like this: “In the 14th century there were two pandemics. One was the Black Death, the other was the commercialisation of warfare.” He even used to write jokes for Cliff Richard.

It would be tempting in view of all this to call him a renaissance man, except that Jones rather despised the highfalutin Renaissance, preferring the earthiness of medieval times: his first published book was a scholarly reinterpretation of Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale, arguing that the hero’s fighting and pillaging was being presented satirically by the poet as something deplorable. Later he raided the Norse myth-kitty for the beloved children’s book (and, later, film) The Saga of Erik the Viking. His illustrator told him that Vikings didn’t really wear those massive helmets with horns sticking out at the sides, but Terry insisted on them. Historical accuracy could only get you so far.

The author of The Employees goes back to 17th-century Denmark for an intensely poetic portrait of everyday sorcery and female solidarity

On 26 June 1621, in Copenhagen, a woman was beheaded – which was unusual, but only in the manner of her death. According to one historian, during the years 1617 to 1625, in Denmark a “witch” was burned every five days. The first time this happens in Danish author Olga Ravn’s fourth novel, the condemned woman is “tied to the ladder, and the ladder pushed into the bonfire”. Her daughter watches as she falls, her eye “so strangely orange from within. And then in the heat it explodes.”

The child is watched, in turn, by a wax doll who sees everything: everything in this scene, and everything everywhere, through all space and all the time since it was fashioned. It sees the worms burrowing through the soil in which it is buried; the streets of the world in which it was made. It inhabits the bodies that walked those streets: “And I was in the king’s ear, and I was in the king’s mouth, and I was in the king’s loose tooth and in the quicksilver of his liver, and did hear.”

The use of AI in the surprise game-of-the-year contender has sparked a heated cultural and ethical debate, and raised existential questions for artists, writers and voice actors

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Arc Raiders is, by all accounts, a late game-of-the-year contender. Dropped into a multiplayer world overrun with hostile drones and military robots, every human player is at the mercy of the machines – and each other. Can you trust the other raider you’ve spotted on your way back to humanity’s safe haven underground, or will they shoot you and take everything you’ve just scavenged? Perhaps surprisingly, humanity is (mostly) choosing to band together, according to most people I’ve talked to about this game.

In a review for Gamespot, Mark Delaney paints a beguiling picture of Arc Raiders’s potential for generating war stories, and highlights its surprisingly hopeful tone as the thing that elevates it above similar multiplayer extraction shooters: “We can all kill each other in Arc Raiders. The fact that most of us are choosing instead to lend a helping hand, if not a sign that humanity will be all right in the real world, at the very least makes for one of the best multiplayer games I’ve ever played.”

Forty years ago, the Nintendo Entertainment System dominated the markets in Japan and the US. But in Europe, a technologically superior rival was making it look like an ancient relic

There’s an old maxim that history is written by the victors, and that’s as true in video games as it is anywhere else. Nowadays you’d be forgiven for thinking that the Nintendo Entertainment System was the only console available in the mid-to-late 1980s. If you were brought up in Nintendo’s target markets of Japan and North America, this chunky contraption essentially was the only game in town – the company had Mario after all, and its vice-like hold on third-party developers created a monopoly for major titles of the era. But in Europe, where home computers ruled the era, the NES was beaten by a technologically superior rival.

The Sega Master System was originally released in Japan in the autumn of 1985 as the Sega Mark III. Based around the famed Z80 CPU (used in home computers such as the Spectrum, Amstrad and TRS-80) and a powerful Sega-designed video display processor, it boasted 8kb of RAM, a 64-colour palette and the ability to generate 32 sprites on screen at one time – making the NES (based on the older 6502 processor) look like an ancient relic.

From Demon Souls to Baby Steps, challenging games keep a certain type of player coming back for more. I wonder why we are such suckers for punishment

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Most people who really love video games have the capacity to be obsessive. Losing weeks of your life to Civilization, World of Warcraft or Football Manager is something so many of us have experienced. Sometimes, it’s the numbers-go-up dopamine hit that hooks people: playing something such as Diablo or Destiny and gradually improving your character while picking up shiny loot at perfectly timed intervals can send some people into an obsessional trance. Notoriously compulsive games such as Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, meanwhile, suck up hours with peaceful, comforting repetition of rewarding tasks.

What triggers obsession in me, though, is a challenge. If a game tells me I can’t do something, I become determined to do it, sometimes to my own detriment. Grinding repetition bores me, but challenges hijack my brain.

Guitar Hero’s controllers let anyone become a star in their own living room – and made the bands featured in the game household names again

It is 20 years since Guitar Hero was launched in North America, and with it, the tools for the everyday gamer to become a rock star. Not literally of course, but try telling that to someone who has nailed Free Bird’s four-minute guitar solo in front of a packed living-room audience.

Developed by Harmonix, published by RedOctane and inspired by Konami’s GuitarFreaks, Guitar Hero gave players a guitar-shaped controller with which to match coloured notes scrolling down the screen in time with a song. Each riff or sequence corresponded to specific notes, creating the feel of a genuine performance.

Design Museum, London
The Fantastic Mr Fox’s snappy outfits, an intricate model of the Grand Budapest Hotel and dozens of stop-motion puppets are all among the 700 objects in this sugarcoated quirkfest

Terrible things happen in Wes Anderson films. In his latest, The Phoenician Scheme, a man is casually split in half in an aircraft crash. In The Royal Tenenbaums, the patriarchal protagonist feigns a terminal illness in order to weasel his way back into his estranged and dysfunctional family. In The Grand Budapest Hotel the “heroic” concierge Monsieur Gustave is essentially a killer and the fictional Republic of Zubrowka is in the tightening grip of a fascist regime.

All this is played for knowing comedic effect (the splatted bisection resembles a Tom and Jerry cartoon; Zubrowka is a brand of Polish bison grass vodka), while lavishly sugarcoated in a set dressing of eccentric curios, outlandish costumes and saturated colour. Anderson aficionados will be familiar with the drill, a bit like finding a gnat in a cupcake, delivered in a series of perfectly composed vignettes.

Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge
Offeh’s show blares and jostles with life as he mimics Mammy, listens to self-help advice and gets naked for Grace Jones’s anatomically impossible Island Life pose

Mmmm ... Mm-mm. Mmmmmwwwwwmmm. MMM. Sometimes sexy and sometimes sleepy, sometimes like a kid making airplane noises or doing an impression of a creaking door or maybe a whale, the sound of Harold Offeh humming and ummming fills the lobby of Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge. Mmm, he goes, mmm-mm-mm. He up-speaks and mumbles and wrings a whole world of feeling out of this disembodied overture. The title of Offeh’s show, including that Mmm, is a quote, from a song on Portishead’s 1994 album Dummy. “Gotta try a little harder / It could be sweet,” runs the lyric, which is also printed in big gloopy lettering on the gallery walls, behind Offeh’s video screens, his photographs and other graphic interventions. The show blares and jostles with life, with song and dance, with skits and routines, with public moments and private performances on the loo and in the bathroom.

For more than two decades Offeh has been a moving target. Here’s the Ghanaian-born Offeh as Haroldinho, in Rio de Janeiro in 2003, shuffling samba steps and wearing typical, Brazilian blue worker’s overalls, his adopted name appliqued on the back. Dancing in the streets and on the beach, he sways and smiles, an object of mild curiosity to passersby. In Rio, people often assumed he was Brazilian. Here he is again, now on the streets and shopping centres of Walsall, Oxford, Liverpool and Chester, in Stockholm and Banff, in the shadow of the Canadian Rockies, wearing a Victorian-era magnifying lens in front of his face, which distorts and exaggerates his features. Given the suspicious looks he gets on the British streets, you worry for his safety.

Theatre by the Lake, Keswick
All the major characters are present in Sonia Jalaly’s update, but this is also a journey of self-realisation with brisk songs and cartoonish humour

Most people come to Keswick for the mountains and the cream cakes. For 13-year-old Dorothy (Nimi Spiff), they are the reason she wants to get out. What need for scenery and pink icing when she could be in the hubbub of London?

Grieving for her mother and fantasising about her absent father, she is determined to escape to the capital for Christmas. But a Lake District storm is brewing and, after making a break through the upstairs window of her aunt and uncle’s house, she is propelled along a different route.

New Diorama, London
Two stories, centuries apart, are used to chart climate disaster in this ambitious musical with bitty scenes and cumbersome lyrics

This climate disaster musical takes place in a tower block overlooking the Thames. The setting is central because the dystopia has been caused by a biomedical waste dump in the river. London is flooded and this flat on the 16th floor is the safest place to live.

Or so it seems, because things are very opaque in this experimental production. Devised by director Adam Lenson, Stu Barter, Rachel Bellman, Annabelle Lee Revak, Darren Clark and Shaye Poulton Richards, it brings an electro-folk sound to bitty storylines in two timezones. There are the tower block survivors – it is unclear which century they are living in until close to the end when they mention the year 2425 – and a second storyline in the past which might be the 1990s (there is talk of DVDs) in which a couple moves into a luxury high-rise overlooking the Thames (the same 16th-floor flat?).

The actor said he wrote wishing 11-year-old Dominic McLaughlin ‘an even better time’ growing up in the role than he had

Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe said that he wrote to 11-year-old actor Dominic McLaughlin, who has been cast in the title role of the new Harry Potter TV series.

Radcliffe appeared on Good Morning America on Tuesday and said: “I wouldn’t say that anyone who is going to play Harry has to [call me],” adding: “I wrote to Dominic and I sent him a letter and he sent me a very sweet note back.”

‘I turned a corner and saw this: a dusty alley lined with daisies, a few redheads, a handful of puppies and a woman with a gas can, all in blinding sun. That’s the miracle – when everything comes together and you’re there to catch it’

In 2013, I’d been living in New York for a long time. The social life was vibrant but I had never figured out a way to make pictures there. So when a friend sent me details of a teaching position in Eureka, California, I jumped at the chance. When I arrived, I found Northern California to be a confounding and beautiful place, one that inspired a new body of work almost immediately.

Eureka was the first time I’d stayed so long in one place. During those months, I saw the same people day after day. I taught two days a week at the local community college and the rest of the time I was free to walk around – exploring, meeting people and taking photographs. I was entirely focused on my work, almost like a residency.

The 1975 drama, one of the only films to ever receive the big five Oscars, remains a touchstone of American cinema with a resonant message of resisting conformity

A movie winning the big five Academy Awards – best picture along with honoring the lead actor and actress, writing and directing – happens so rarely that there’s not much use in examining the three movies that have pulled it off for common ground. But among It Happened One Night, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and The Silence of the Lambs, it may be Cuckoo’s Nest, released 50 years ago on Wednesday, that feels like the unlikeliest across-the-board triumph. It Happened One Night and The Silence of the Lambs both belong to rarely awarded genres (romantic comedy and horror, respectively), which makes their big wins unusual but also clearcut: here is an example of the best this type of movie has to offer. Cuckoo’s Nest, meanwhile, is potentially much thornier. It’s a comedy-drama made at least in part as allegory – an anti-conformity story of fomenting 1960s social rebellion, disguised as a movie about lovable patients at a mental health facility.

The Ken Kesey novel that the movie is based on was published in 1962, chronicling some of what Kesey saw as a hospital orderly and anticipating some of the coming pushback against postwar American conformity. The major change in Miloš Forman’s film is to shift the narrative away from Chief (Will Sampson), a towering Native American who presents himself as deaf and mute. Chief narrates the book, while the movie hews closer to the perspective of RP McMurphy (Jack Nicholson), who enters the facility having faked mental illness in the hopes that he can avoid serving out a prison work-camp sentence. Though the doctors don’t seem entirely convinced by his ruse, his behavior is apparently erratic enough for him to stay at least a little while. His attempts to bring more individualism and fun to his cohabitants runs afoul of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher), who exercises tight control over the ward.

When Austrian philosopher Otto Neurath invented the visual language of Isotypes, it was to democratise education. As a new exhibition shows, it ended up influencing pop art, graphic design and electronic musicians from Kraftwerk to OMD

When Otto Neurath died in Oxford some 80 years ago, far away from his native Vienna, he was still finding his feet in exile. Like many a Jewish refugee, the economist, philosopher and sociologist had been interned as a suspected enemy alien on the Isle of Man, along with his third wife and close collaborator Marie Reidemeister, having chanced a last-minute life-saving escape from their interim hideout in the Netherlands across the Channel in a rickety boat in 1940.

Thanks to Neurath’s pioneering use of pictorial statistics – or “Isotypes” as Reidemeister called them, an acronym for “International System of Typographic Picture Education” – he left behind an enormous legacy in the arts and social sciences: it is the language through which we decode and analyse the modern world. But his lasting relevance would have been hard to predict at the time of his death at the age of 63.

We’ve tasted, sniffed and inspected more than 300 presents to bring you our ultimate Christmas gift guide – from must-have Lego and smoky mezcal to Meera Sodha’s favourite knife

Don’t you just love Christmas shopping? There’s a massive thrill in finding a present you know they’ll love and won’t have thought to ask for, but the pressure is enough to drive any sane person to hibernation.

We’ve gone the extra (2,000) miles to help you find the perfect gifts: we’ve tested out the latest products to see which ones are worth the hype (and which aren’t); trawled shops in person; enlisted babies (OK, their parents), tweens and teens to test out toys and give us their must-haves; tasted the good, bad and the did-I-really-put-this-in-my-mouth; and rounded up some of the products that were tried and tested by us this year.

That ‘once-a-year’ deal might not be as rare as it looks – here’s how to spot the real bargains hiding in the Black Friday chaos (and avoid the scams)

• Do you really need a new TV? Seven simple ways to upgrade your setup

It’s a difficult time for people who dislike Americana influencing British culture. Even if you’re able to ignore the culture war sailing across the Atlantic, we now have the double whammy of Thanksgiving and Black Friday being celebrated in the UK.

While the former may only have a small footprint in the UK, the latter is big business. In 2024, Britons spent £3.6bn between Black Friday and the retro-futuristically named Cyber Monday – a 5.2% increase on the previous year, despite (or perhaps because of) the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

From activity trackers and a massage gun to fitness kit and soothing post-workout soaks, it won’t be too much of a stretch to find a present that suits

• The best Christmas gifts for 2025

What does a fitness fanatic want for Christmas (other than rock-solid abs)? Whether you’re buying for a gym bunny who loves a gruelling Hiit session or a yoga fanatic who hits the mat to unwind, we asked a selection of top trainers and fitness devotees for their gift picks.

We’ve made the job of getting them something they’ll love that little bit easier by tracking down the best gifts for the chronically active. From kit that makes you want to workout to tools that help tired muscles afterwards, read on for all the present inspiration you need.

Whether it’s a jacket to stay cosy in the cold or a clever multitool, our expert-selected gear means there’s something for everyone who loves life on their bike

• The best gifts for runners

As the proud daughter of the president of St Austell Wheelers cycle club in Cornwall, I know better than to wing it when it comes to giving gifts to a bike rider. That’s why we’ve asked so many people, from coaches to athletes, club riders to young cyclists, what they would like to receive.

Speaking of Dad, this year he has moved from his road bike to the world of gravel riding (check out Fairlight Cycles) and is loving it. He treated himself to a Cornish downpour-proof jacket and a set of panniers for a cycling trip to France – and highly recommends them (see below for details). Less so the bike bell someone told him “everyone” uses in France, only to get there and find not a single cyclist he saw had one.

Ten trees, one fearless rescue cat; gloriously silly baubles; and our big Christmas gift guide – packed with presents for everyone on your list

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In the world according to TikTok, the true meaning of Christmas is cats hurling themselves at 8ft trees to a Mariah Carey soundtrack. This particular trend always made me wonder what I’d been doing wrong. Every cat I’d ever lived with, notably my dear departed Iggy, was indifferent to my Christmas tree.

Maybe Iggy just wasn’t a tree kind of guy, despite (or perhaps because of) his face being all over my tree decorations. Or maybe I just needed to up my tree game. After testing the best artificial Christmas trees against all manner of metrics, including feline appeal, I’ve concluded it’s probably the latter.

The best Christmas baubles: 28 delightful decorations, from baked beans to tinned fish

‘Simple, well-crafted and excellent’: supermarket chutneys, tasted and rated

Coffee, crochet kits and … mashed potato: the best Advent calendars for 2025 – tested

The best self-care gifts for Christmas, from cosy PJs to massagers

The best Christmas gifts for swimmers, from swim socks to snorkels

The best Christmas gifts for 11-year-olds – picked by 11-year-olds

The environmental costs of flying are much higher, and the government subsidises rail travel, so what explains the baffling price difference when travelling domestically?

Years ago, airline travel was the preserve of the wealthy, and this may be why it can still come as a surprise when getting on a plane looks like the money-saving choice compared with taking the train.

When the personal finance comparison site Finder did some research this summer, it found flying within the UK was the cheapest option more often than taking the train. It then asked people what they thought of its findings. Louise Bastock, a money expert at the website, says respondents all said “trains should be cheaper as it is public transport and more accessible”, with some saying “it feels all wrong” when plane travel cost less.

If you’re an urban creature like me, you can go country-coded while staying aware you’re essentially playacting. The trick is not going OTT

Once a decade or so, the urban-centric fashion world discovers this delightful concept called The Countryside. With the vanishingly scant levels of self-awareness that are fashion’s default setting, it then proceeds to immediately and loudly tell the world about it. There are so many trees! Don’t you just love trees? Especially at this time of year when the leaves are lovely tasteful colours, great for selfies, very flattering to the complexion. The pubs are absolutely charming. Sometimes they even have sourdough.

Here we go again. It began with hiking boots, a couple of years ago. Last winter, the barn jacket was suddenly, inexplicably everywhere, and this season is wall-to-wall Fair Isle jumpers. Dressing like you are on a cosy mini-break is to autumn what dressing for a festival field is to summer: a version of countryside dressing conceived by someone who leaves the city for no more than 48 hours at a time. It is possibly not even a million miles from cultural appropriation. And at this point I need to hold my hands up and say: I’m as bad as any of them. I love the countryside but I, in my cold hard heart, am an urban creature, really.

A luscious torte is a great way to use up that big bag of nuts in the cupboard and to make use of the season’s pears

Each recipe in my cookbook Eating for Pleasure, People & Planet includes optional whole food ingredients such as rapadura sugar, emmer wheat and flaxseeds to boost nutrients and flavour, while also keeping things adaptable so you can use up what you already have in the cupboards. Writing a plant-based cookbook taught me new ways to save waste, and confirmed my belief that zero-waste cooking is whole food cooking. Aquafaba (the liquid from a tin of chickpeas or other beans), for example, is a powerful emulsifier that can replace eggs, especially when whisked with ground flaxseeds or chia. It’s a brilliant way of turning what we’d usually pour down the sink into cakes with remarkable lift and texture.

Fish pie gets a tropical reboot, or try a cold-busting filo chicken pie or a wholesome supergreens and cheese pie

When the temperature takes a nosedive, few things compete with a just-baked pie. Don’t be daunted by social media images of perfect, artistic ones; a pie will taste just as good whether it’s rustically homespun or exactingly decorated and carved. Ultimately, what is more important is the integrity of the ingredients (both the casing and the filling). As pastry or potatoes are such a large part of the equation, invest in the best, and make sure puff pastry is all butter and filo is generously lubricated with melted butter. And, if you’re serving your pie with mash, you want it lump-free, properly seasoned and enriched with butter and cream.

Mushrooms again come to the rescue for that meaty mouthfeel, but our panel also recommends the savoury flavours of Asia to sate those umami cravings

I’m a lifelong vegetarian, but my boyfriend is a dedicated carnivore. How can I cook to please us both?
Victoria, by email
“I have three words for you, Victoria,” says Anna Ansari, author of Silk Roads, who grew up in a predominantly vegetarian household: “Di si xian.” Typical of northern China, this stir-fry of aubergine, potato and peppers (otherwise known as the “three treasures”) is laced with soy, Shoaxing wine, white pepper, sugar, cornflour and, in Ansari’s case, doubanjiang. She also adds tofu (the fourth treasure, if you will) for “a rounded, one-pot/wok dinner” to eat with steamed rice. “It reminds me of being a teenager in Beijing, far from home and in need of warmth and comfort,” she says, and we could all do with some of that right now. “It’s also cheap as proverbial chips, not to mention quick to make, and it will knock both your socks off. Promise.”

Mushrooms could also pave the way to harmonious dining. “Surely they’re the closest thing to a natural meat substitute,” says Zak Hitchman, chef/owner of Other in Bristol. He’d be inclined to layer them up in a lasagne: “Slice a load of mixed mushrooms [chestnut, shiitake, oyster], then saute them in oil and butter with some seasoning.” Next, fry onion, garlic, celery, diced carrot, maybe some rosemary or thyme, until softened, then return the cooked mushrooms to the pot with some tinned tomatoes and tomato puree. “You could bulk it out with tinned lentils,” he says, but either way be sure to include a splash of soy and some miso for “that meaty flavour”, plus any vinegar you have knocking around “for balance”. Cook slowly until reduced, then layer between dried lasagne sheets. “Top that with bechamel [or simply dollop on some mascarpone] and lots of grated parmesan [a vegetarian one, if need be]. Drizzle with olive oil and bake until the pasta is soft, the sauce bubbling and the top golden.”

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

The MasterChef Australia winner and cookbook author puts a lemongrass-y, lime leaf-y spin on two Australian classics

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They both liked the Greens’ Zack Polanski and disliked the tech oligarchs. But could they find common cause over the power of the unions?

Andrew, 70, near Nottingham

Occupation Retired acupuncturist and herbalist

Maya worried about entering into an open relationship with Ollie, but being honest with each other has deepened their relationship

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

If I know that Ollie’s on a date, I find it difficult sitting around, not knowing what to do with myself

I was sleep deprived and completely overwhelmed when she stepped in and took charge

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

As a twin mum the work is constant. It is double the love and double the laughs, but also double the illness. Of course, my twins would never get sick at the same time. As one recovered, the other would start showing symptoms.

One day, when my girls were three, one had a vomiting bug. She hadn’t thrown up for 24 hours so I took my chance to do a quick run to the chemist to stock up on supplies. My husband worked away during the week, so I had to manage on my own. I was exhausted, carrying the sick kid in my arms, while walking the healthy one along next to me as quickly as I could.

A face-to-face conversation telling her how her behaviour affects you would give you peace, even if she ignores you

I have been friends with a woman for more than 20 years, who has overcome many challenges, which I admire. However, she’s constantly blindsided by people. Her husband left her, and it was a huge shock. A lot of her friends disappeared at that point as they were only interested in her husband. This surprised her. She made more effort to be my friend, and must have realised more clearly what friendship was.

Over the years since, quite a few of her friends have disappeared and she isn’t sure why. Her last employer turned on her, even though she was an excellent employee, and she left without knowing what had changed.

From turning down thermostats to make savings to installing reflectors to push warmth back into your home

“When it comes to staying warm and saving energy, small changes can make a big difference,” says Sarah Pennells, a consumer finance specialist at the investment company Royal London.

The offensive listing seemed more than a mistake – it was a failure of corporate responsibility, says reader

I found a baby outfit (sizes from newborn to five years) on Amazon bearing the phrase “Santa’s favourite ho”.

This isn’t just a tasteless mistake – it’s a failure of corporate responsibility and consumer protection. A corporation this large should have systems that prevent sexualised or exploitative language being associated with items for children.

A new generation of younger workers are being derided as delusional and unreliable, just as millennials were

Gen Z is undisciplined, apparently; entitled, some critics claim; and purportedly hates work. One viral column in the Wall Street Journal went so far as to suggest this entire generation was potentially “unemployable”.

As younger employees establishing themselves at work continue to face relentless criticism from the higher rungs of corporate America, those old enough to remember the arrival of the last generation could be forgiven for experiencing a sense of deja vu.

My van was hurtled into motorway barriers by a driver who did not stop and the vehicle is still being held in a compound along with the tools of my trade

My van was hit from behind on a motorway by a speeding driver who failed to stop.

It spun across the carriageway, hitting the barriers on either side, and went up in flames. I thankfully got off with a small head injury. I reported the collision to my insurance company, Autonet, and was told it would be in touch.

Since I was a teenager I had struggled in winter, experiencing excessive tiredness and low mood. A specific instruction lifted the gloom

I’m pretty sure I must be half human, half plant – how else to explain why I need the light to thrive? During the brighter seasons I feel fine, but when winter comes and the light begins to fade, I start drooping.

I have struggled with seasonal affective disorder (Sad) since I was a teenager. The symptoms of Sad are similar to regular depression, with low moods and lethargy, and can be equally debilitating. Over the years I’ve experienced the full Sad spectrum, from moments of excessive tiredness and carb cravings (yes, those are official Sad symptoms), to a low point of breaking down crying on the kitchen floor after school because it was so cold, dark and bleak.

More and more people are turning to egg freezing to increase their chances of becoming a parent. Here’s what you need to know if you’re considering it – from the hidden costs to the chances of success

When I first told my mother I was freezing my eggs, she asked: “So my grandchildren are going to be stored next to some Häagen-Dazs?” (Very funny, Mum.) I’m one of an increasing number of women in the UK who have chosen to put their eggs on ice in order to preserve their fertility, although this does – as discussed later – have clear limitations.

According to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), the UK’s regulator for the fertility industry, there was a 170% increase in the number of egg freezing cycles between 2019 and 2023. The technology has been around since the 80s, but became more accessible in the 00s with vitrification, a flash-freezing technique. Now, celebrities such as Florence Pugh and Michaela Coel openly discuss their experiences of it, and companies such as Meta, Spotify and Goldman Sachs subsidise the procedure for employees.

There are modest benefits to exercising on an empty stomach, but it’s more important to burn more energy than you’re consuming

‘There’s an element of truth to that,” says Javier Gonzalez, a professor of nutrition and metabolism at the University of Bath. “When we exercise, we’re always burning a mix of fuels – mainly carbohydrates and fat. If you’ve fasted overnight, you’ll generally burn a bit more fat and less carbohydrate than if you’d eaten breakfast, especially one high in carbs.” But that doesn’t mean fasted workouts are better for weight loss.

“We can only store a small amount of carbohydrate as glycogen in our muscles and liver. Any extra energy – from carbs, fat or protein – eventually gets stored as body fat. So to lose fat, you need to be in an energy deficit: burning more energy than you consume. If you’re not, it doesn’t matter whether you’re fasted or fed – your body balances things out over time,” says Gonzalez.

Meaningful therapy offers a path past our worst impulses. We should be fighting for it to be available for everyone

When I picture what a good life means to me, I feel a tension in my chest. I see my daughter and my husband and I feel the profound fulfilment of being exactly where I need to be, tightened by the terror that life is so fragile and I cannot protect them from that reality. Then a memory: lying on my analyst’s couch and describing a feeling of hollowness inside that I felt deeply ashamed of, and her listening and thinking and understanding – and my noticing that while I felt horror and repulsion, she didn’t seem to. Next: different walks around different parks with different friends, each with the same feeling of being warmed from the inside out; also, bumping into neighbours at the playground and feeling a part of my community. I remember powerful moments with my patients, who have felt understood, by me and within themselves. And I think of the moving messages from readers who have got in touch, sharing precious stories from their lives.

People often think that psychoanalysis and its NHS-friendly grandchild, psychodynamic psychotherapy, are all about looking inwards. And it’s true – good therapy should give us the time and space, the frame and the containment, to look inside and listen to ourselves.

It’s been a bumper year but these are my top picks, including my most used lipstick and an eyeshadow palette that has finally stolen my heart

This has been an excellent year for new makeup, starting with Givenchy’s comeback. Having infuriated the beauty community by (badly) reformulating its classic loose powder, it won back detractors with the exceptionally good Prisme Libre Pressed Powder, which blurs, smoothes and near-perfects a face of makeup, and now lives full time in my handbag. This was followed by a Bronzer Powder version, also £45, which succeeded in moving me away from creams to achieve a filtered, sun-kissed finish. Full marks with distinction for both.

I won’t dwell on Nars The Multiple (£33), because I so recently have, but the reboot of this classic cheek, eye and lip cream improved on the legend with nuanced, muted shades and a soft, lasting, flattering finish.

They can be garish and ostentatious, or a sign you are softer than you might first appear. From the catwalk to the high street to the big screen to the rugby pitch, you just can’t miss them right now

Wuthering Heights is a story about pain, revenge and the Yorkshire moors as a metaphor for bad life choices. But if Emerald Fennell’s forthcoming adaptation is anything to go by, it’s also about bows.

In the two-minute trailer for the film, Cathy wears red bows and black bows, navy bows and pink bows. There are bows around garden pots, and bows around “baddy” Edgar Linton’s throat. Some bows flutter in the fell wind, others are unlaced at speed. In one memorable shot straight from the Jilly Cooper precoital playbook, a pretty white bow is cut from Cathy’s bodice using a labourer’s knife, which would be unforgivable hamminess were it not incredibly hot. Never mind that Emily Brontë rarely mentions bows in the book; that one is an entire plot device.

A look at the editor-in-chief’s Vogue covers from her first radical combination in 1988 to her final ‘weird’ shoot

During her 37-year tenure as editor-in-chief of American Vogue, Anna Wintour has presided over more than 400 covers. December 2025’s, on newsstands this week, will prove her last before she steps away to focus on roles as Vogue’s global editorial director and chief content officer at Condé Nast.

The cover is certainly memorable: an image of the actor Timothée Chalamet photographed by Wintour’s long-term collaborator Annie Leibovitz in a Celine white polo neck, long cream coat and embroidered jeans, standing on a “planet” with a backdrop of a star-filled nebula provided by Nasa.

Closeup of studded stilettos in trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2 causes fashion debate on social media

Posting the first trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2 on Instagram on her birthday this week, the film’s star Anne Hathaway captioned the video with “it’s everybody’s birthday”, prompting copious comments featuring emojis of flames, hearts and – of course – the red shoe now associated with the film’s poster.

But with the trailer circulating on social media, it’s the shoes that have become the focus of fashion debate – and not in a good way.

With a new exhibition of his work at the National Gallery in London, a visit to the artist’s home town reveals the landscapes and industry that inspired him

The river rushes white around each of the large, flattish rocks as I tread tentatively over the stepping stones that Dovedale is famous for. This limestone valley on the border between Derbyshire and Staffordshire is a popular spot for day trips and hiking. Thankfully, it’s quiet on this brisk November morning, and I’m able to soak in the scene: the River Dove flowing fast, the autumn trees turning russet and gold, the green fold of hills rising around me.

On days like this, it’s clear why Dovedale has inspired creatives. One of those was the 18th-century artist Joseph Wright of Derby, whose work is being celebrated in a new exhibition at the National Gallery.

The cosy cabins, bike rides and serenity of De Alde Feanen national park make it the perfect place to switch off and unwind in winter

If there are times when the sights, smells and sounds of a new destination are best downed in a single, heady, flaming sambuca of a weekend, there are others when a more slow-drip pace is called for. Such is the case with De Alde Feanen, in Friesland. One of the most peaceful national parks in the Netherlands, this 4,000-hectare wetland slows down naturally after the summer season. Its waterways shrug off their summer flocks of kayakers, paddleboarders, boat trippers and terrace diners. Museums and galleries close. The local tourist office winds down. Even the park’s population of nesting storks fly south.

A 20-minute drive south-east of Leeuwarden, in the country’s north-east, the lakes, ponds, ditches and canals of “The Old Fens” are the remains of the peat-cutting that began there in the middle ages. Now awash with reeds, rushes and sedges, its watery habitats are richly biodiverse, home to more than 100 bird species as well as otters, pine martens, roe deer and dragonflies. Hay meadows and wetland forest add marsh thistle, reed orchids, alders and willows to the list. Ribboned with well-marked hiking and cycling trails, the proximity to nature draws spring and summer tourists but treasures can be found there in autumn and winter too; among them thousands of ducks and geese, and some of the starriest skies in the Netherlands.

Crooked buildings, welcoming inns, ancient woodlands … it’s easy to see why the location scouts chose this idyllic corner of England

The door creaks as I push it back and move forward into the gloom. The ceiling is vaulted and dark, but light falls in shafts of gold from the upper windows, revealing ancient stone carvings and tombs. It’s the right atmosphere for a ghost-hunt. I take a few steps and the door clicks, making me jump. Must be the wind.

Exploring old English churches is always a pleasure. There is no one to disturb you, and in the dim quiet will be a historical jaw-dropper: a centuries-old face carved in oak, a grisly tomb, an inscription to the dead hero of a forgotten battle. Each site is a mini detective puzzle, waiting to be unravelled, often with a helpful booklet available near the door. The spirits of those who have shuffled off this mortal coil hang in the dust motes, but here, in Weobley, Herefordshire, I am looking for someone specific.

From a Tudor manor in Wales to a swinging 60s hotel in Prague, these hotels and guesthouses are steeped in history

Two of the world’s leading cult interventionists live (with their parrot) in Philadelphia. They explain the art of coaxing people out of the most pernicious groups in the world

When the phone rings at Patrick Ryan and Joseph Kelly’s home in Philadelphia, chances are the caller is desperate. One couple rang because their son was about to abandon his medical practice to follow a new-age guru in Spain. Another call came from a husband whose wife was emptying their life savings for a self-proclaimed prophet in Australia. Yet another family phoned about their niece, who was in a relationship with a man stealing from her, maybe drugging her, probably sexually assaulting her.

These families had tried everything else. When nothing worked, they heard there were two men in Philadelphia who might still be able to bring their loved one home.

I once even thought I had seen my late grandmother. Can science explain my overfamiliarity with strange faces?

When I was in my mid-20s, I spotted my grandma through the window of a coffee shop. I was dumbstruck – she had passed away the year before. I stared for a moment, then reminded myself it couldn’t be her.

I’d had similar experiences all my life. Every now and then, I “recognized” someone I didn’t know. Sometimes I could quickly pinpoint who the stranger reminded me of – like my grandma. Other times, a face simply had a vague familiarity I couldn’t place.

When Katrina Brownlee tried to leave her fiance, he aimed a gun at her pregnant stomach. The 22-year-old wasn’t expected to survive, let alone walk again. But she soon began her fight for other victims of crime

A month before she was shot, Katrina Brownlee had a premonition. It came to her in a dream: the 22-year-old saw her former fiance, a law enforcement officer who had been abusing her for years, try to kill her, but she survived. She had experienced premonitions from a young age – she later came to see them as guidance from God. On the way to the house she had shared with him, she could hear a voice in her head pleading with her: don’t go back there.

It was a freezing January morning in 1993. Brownlee was five months pregnant and had taken a cab with her two-year-old daughter through the snow to the house she had shared with her ex in Long Island, New York state. Her elder daughter, then seven, was at a playdate. A few weeks earlier, Brownlee had left her fiance for good and she and her daughters had been living in a motel to hide from him. However, over the last few nights, she had spoken to him on the phone. He seemed to have accepted their relationship was over and agreed she could come and collect her belongings.

I had run every day for ten years and cried when the doctor said I needed two months off. Then I borrowed an oversized road bike. At first, I couldn’t wait to ditch it, but something kept me going ...

I couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that I broke my foot. The injury didn’t seem like a big deal at first, because stress fractures sneak up on you. It just hurt, and wouldn’t stop hurting, except while running. Maybe because running was the only time I felt good about myself. But in the end the pain intruded there, too. I ran on stubbornly, with a limp.

Eventually I had to go to the doctor, and that’s when it hit me. She said it would take eight weeks to heal – no running. I couldn’t imagine even one week without running. I had run every single day for nearly 10 years and I loved it. I tried to find the words to explain, to say that this “rest” was just not possible, but I was too embarrassed. It was a minor injury by clinical standards – and self-inflicted, too. But afterwards, in the corridor, I cried.

Alan, 87, has devoted his life to trying to defy death, and has promised his wife, Sylvia, that they will be cryogenically preserved upon death to be reunited in the future. However, when Sylvia dies all too soon, Alan unexpectedly falls in love with another woman and is forced to reconsider his future plans. An extraordinary love story, told with humour and tenderness about how we deal with loss, our own mortality and the prospect of eternal life.

After 14 years of Tory rule, the Guardian’s parliamentary sketch writer thought he had seen it all. Westminster would surely tick along nicely once Keir Starmer’s party took over. How wrong he was ...

I feel I should probably start with an apology. A few days after the 2024 general election, I wrote that it felt as if the grownups were back in charge. It wasn’t as if I was carried away by the vision of Keir Starmer or the charisma of Rachel Reeves. More that I felt we had regained a basic level of competence. That politics would become business as usual rather than the breathless psychodrama of the past 10 years. You could go to bed at night relatively confident that the country would be more or less recognisable when you woke up. There would be no more mad people doing mad things as we raced through five or six news cycles in the course of a couple of hours.

And part of me was a little concerned. Because what is good for economic stability and social justice isn’t necessarily good for a sketch writer. Dull, well-intentioned politicians putting in place dull, well-intentioned policies, and a government that is ticking over more or less OK, do not necessarily make for great entertainment. So what would I write about?

As GenAI becomes the primary way to find information, local and traditional wisdom is being lost. And we are only beginning to realise what we’re missing

• This article was originally published as ‘Holes in the web’ on Aeon.co

A few years back, my dad was diagnosed with a tumour on his tongue – which meant we had some choices to weigh up. My family has an interesting dynamic when it comes to medical decisions. While my older sister is a trained doctor in western allopathic medicine, my parents are big believers in traditional remedies. Having grown up in a small town in India, I am accustomed to rituals. My dad had a ritual, too. Every time we visited his home village in southern Tamil Nadu, he’d get a bottle of thick, pungent, herb-infused oil from a vaithiyar, a traditional doctor practising Siddha medicine. It was his way of maintaining his connection with the kind of medicine he had always known and trusted.

Dad’s tumour showed signs of being malignant, so the hospital doctors and my sister strongly recommended surgery. My parents were against the idea, worried it could affect my dad’s speech. This is usually where I come in, as the expert mediator in the family. Like any good millennial, I turned to the internet for help in guiding the decision. After days of thorough research, I (as usual) sided with my sister and pushed for surgery. The internet backed us up.

The puffy, artificial look is rising in popularity - thanks to Maga elite such as Kristi Noem and Matt Gaetz

Picture a plastic surgeon’s office. You might imagine a sleek Los Angeles practice, with discreet entrances meant to conceal celebrities from the paparazzi. Maybe a Dallas high-rise, where monied housewives spend on postpartum “mommy makeovers”. Or a Miami location, where influencers and OnlyFans stars film TikToks of their BBLs. One city you might not think of is Washington DC. But its buttoned-up reputation belies a newly buzzing industry.

Much has been made of the so-called “Mar-a-Lago face”, or the uncannily smooth and artificially voluminous features seen on the likes of Maga elite such as Kristi Noem, Kimberly Guilfoyle, Laura Loomer and Matt Gaetz. The bee-sting puffy lips, frozen brows and taut necks have been compared to Real Housewives stars, sleep paralysis demons and – ironically, considering the Republican party’s anti-LGBTQ+ culture war – drag queens (minus the campy fun).

We’d like to hear from Scotland football supporters – tell us how you feel about qualifying and any plans to watch the matches

Scotland’s men have secured a place at the World Cup for the first time in nearly three decades.

After a nail-biting match at Hampden Park in Glasgow, they beat group favourites Denmark 4-2.

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Guardian column the Pet I’ll Never Forget is returning and we’d like to hear your stories about the amazing pets that you’ve loved

After a one year hiatus - and due to popular demand - the Guardian will soon be resuming the Pet I’ll Never Forget, a column celebrating the magnificent creatures and mischievous critters who have left an indelible mark on their owners.

It’s a real who’s who of pet royalty. There’s Nelson, the unapologetic one-eyed cat; Verity, the kleptomaniac pug; Thumper, the frisky rabbit who got pregnant through her cage; Rambo, the Dexter-watching tarantula, to name but a few.

We would like to hear your favourite characters whose gamechanging arrivals lifted the shows they were in

From Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones to the Hot Priest in Fleabag, we have picked our favourite 18 TV characters whose gamechanging arrival in later seasons have lifted their whole show. Now we would like to hear yours. Who is your favourite late-arriving TV character and why?

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