In holistic communities and midwifery deserts, women are turning to the Free Birth Society for information and unlicensed providers

When the holistic practitioner Emma Cardinal, 32, became pregnant in May 2023, she planned to have a home birth with midwives. Cardinal lives in a town in British Columbia with strong counter-cultural roots. “The community that I live in, home birth is something a lot of women prioritise,” she explains.

Then Cardinal stumbled across a podcast from the Free Birth Society (FBS). One episode in particular, she says, made an impact: “Unpacking Ultrasound With Yolande Clark.” In it, the Canadian ex-doula Yolande Norris-Clark falsely links ultrasounds to autism and ADHD and states that “ultrasound damages and modifies and destroys cells”.

Whether it’s a wine subscription, a museum membership or life-drawing lessons, it’s not too late to grab an 11th-hour present

• The best Christmas gifts for 2025

You’ve forgotten, haven’t you? It happens. Don’t panic, though: from a foraging day to a year’s supply of cinema tickets, here are 18 thoughtful last-minute Christmas gifts you can buy online, sign up for, or book right now – and they’ll never know you forgot.

Our list of experiences, vouchers and subscriptions is also perfect for those who don’t need more stuff, are almost impossible to buy for or enjoy supporting the arts or small food producers. An email may not be as exciting as unwrapping a gift, but an experience or subscription can last months, and they’ll think of you every time they make their subscription morning coffee.

Neuroscientists, psychologists and ‘have-a-go heroes’ themselves explain why it is about more than just instinct

As a knife-wielding terrorist wearing a fake suicide belt caused panic on London Bridge in 2019, Darryn Frost remembers entering a state of intense focus.

Having grabbed a decorative narwhal tusk from the wall of Fishmongers’ Hall, the formerly shy civil servant zoned in on the danger and ran towards it, helping pin the attacker to the ground.

From celebrity endorsements to digital fatigue, the once-obsolete white wire has become a fashion statement and a quiet act of opting out

With white-wired headphones endorsed by celebrities including Lily-Rose Depp, Paul Mescal, Bella Hadid and Apple Martin, a growing number of people are breaking away from wireless listening.

For inspiration, there is the Instagram account @wireditgirls, or a Balenciaga campaign featuring the model Mona Tougaard reclining bed, wired headphones in place.

On her monumental, maximalist opus, the dazzlingly audacious Spanish singer balanced pop and classical, experimentation and accessibility

• The 50 best albums of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

On paper, Lux reads more like a particularly tricky bonus round on University Challenge than the new album by a pop artist whose previous single was a collaboration with Lisa from Blackpink. Split into four distinct movements and sung in 13 languages, Lux is a head-spinning, classical music-adjacent opus exploring feminine mystique, religious transcendence and corporal transformation, often via the prism of various female saints. The dissolution of a relationship – grounded and laid bare on Lily Allen’s West End Girl, 2025’s other dissection of heartbreak – is shot heavenwards here, buffeted by the constant presence of the London Symphony Orchestra and the input of Pulitzer prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw among a scroll-sized list of collaborators. Its audacity alone makes the efforts of Rosalía’s pop peers look pretty laughable.

The fact that Lux manages to transcend scholarly chin-stroking and dry Wiki deep dives is near miraculous, and the credit is solely Rosalía’s. While this isn’t her first album to alchemise the past and present – see 2018’s El Mal Querer and its heady flamenco-R&B hybrid – the stakes are far higher on Lux, and the balancing act more pronounced. What elevates her fourth album, outside its multilayered melodies, rich compositions and engrained drama, is the playfulness at its heart. Like Björk during her 90s peak, there’s a sense of wonderment to Rosalía’s voice that sweeps you up into its tornado. Even when she’s tearing your heart in two, as on La Yugular’s blossoming balladry, or the ascension to heaven on the closing Magnolias, you want to be right there with her.

Now the Guardian’s Top 50 countdowns, as voted for by the whole film team, have announced their No 1s, here are our chief critic’s personal choices – in no particular order

• The 50 best films of 2025 in the UK
• The 50 best movies of 2025 in the US

The time has come once more for me to present my “Braddies”, a strictly personal awards list for films on UK release in the year just gone and, as ever, quite distinct from this paper’s collegiate best-of-year countdown. These are my top 10 lists for best film, director, actor and supporting actor, actress and supporting actress, directorial debut, cinematographer, screenplay and film most likely to be overlooked by the boomer mainstream media (or MSM).

As we look back over the last 12 months, there can be no doubt of the villain of 2025: Tilly Norwood, the female AI star. Launched in October, she is a smilingly bland and really very convincing non-human being who will work uncomplainingly and cheaply without ever storming off to her trailer. Like everyone else, I deplored the horrible simulation and opined that she is part of the AI-isation of movies that has been happening for some time now – without AI.

Trump’s justice department says more Epstein files will be released on a rolling basis after releasing heavily redacted documents on Friday

• Full report: Long-awaited cache of Epstein files released

Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche has said more files will be released by the justice department on a rolling basis.

He said in a post on X that “additional responsive materials will be produced as our review continues, consistent with the law and with protections for victims”.

Reportedly critical drone strike is first in Mediterranean since full-scale invasion began as maritime conflict grows

• ‘There are hundreds’: tracking Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ of oil tankers

Ukraine says it has attacked a Russian “shadow fleet” tanker with aerial drones 1,250 miles (2,000km) from its borders, in the first such strike in the Mediterranean Sea since Moscow’s full-scale invasion nearly four years ago.

Friday’s strike off the coast of Libya, which reportedly caused critical damage, took place on the day of Vladimir Putin’s annual end of year press conference in which he said Russia would respond to recent Ukrainian attacks on shadow fleet tankers.

Blunt remarks indicate UK’s largest union may be on collision course with Wes Streeting and Labour more widely

• Andrea Egan: My warning as the new head of Unison

The new general secretary of Unison has declared the trade union will end its support for the “destructive right wing of the Labour party” and said any leadership election in 2026 should not swap Keir Starmer for Wes Streeting.

Andrea Egan, who won a decisive victory as a leftwing challenger this week, hit out at Streeting in an article for the Guardian over his handling of the resident doctors’ dispute, saying it was “simply unacceptable for a Labour politician to describe striking workers as morally reprehensible”.

Exclusive: Blair-era minister echoes concerns about young people being priced out of jobs, in intervention likely to dismay Labour MPs

The future of the youth minimum wage will come under review as part of a major inquiry into rising inactivity among Britain’s young people by the former health secretary Alan Milburn.

The social mobility expert said that unless the government tackled some “uncomfortable truths” about the labour market there was a risk of creating a “lost generation” of young people.

Campaigners decry plan to reduce requirement for improved standards from 100% down to 40% of new homes

Government plans to make huge cuts to targets for accessible new-build homes in England have been labelled a “monumental reversal” by campaigners, who say disabled people have been left feeling “betrayed and excluded”.

In its proposals for changes to the country’s planning system, the government said a minimum of 40% of new-build homes would be built to improved accessibility standards – M4(2) – which include step-free access and wider doorways and corridors.

Monitor says almost one in eight people face food shortages as flooding and cold exacerbate humanitarian emergency

The famine in Gaza has ended as a result of increased humanitarian aid deliveries into the territory, the UN said on Friday, though it warned that levels of hunger and the humanitarian situation remained critical.

Almost one in eight people in Gaza still faced food shortages, the UN said, adding that persistent hunger had been made worse by winter flooding and the colder weather. Most people in Gaza live in tents or other substandard accommodation as Israel destroyed much of the housing and civilian infrastructure during its two-year war.

President Nicolás Maduro orders Venezuelan navy to escort oil tankers after seizure by US forces

• What action is Trump taking against Venezuela’s oil industry?

Donald Trump and his top advisers have refused to rule out the potential for open conflict with Venezuela as Nicolás Maduro urged his navy to escort oil tankers defying the largest US fleet deployed in the region in decades.

In an interview broadcast on Friday morning, Donald Trump told NBC News that going to war with Maduro’s regime remains on the table. “I don’t rule it out, no,” he said in a phone interview with the network.

Boy, 15, has appeared in court charged with murder after girl died from single stab wound in Weston-super-Mare

The family of a nine-year-old girl who was stabbed to death have paid tribute to “the most beautiful little soul” as a teenage boy appeared in court charged with her murder.

Aria Thorpe died from a single stab wound at a property in Weston-super-Mare in North Somerset on Monday.

Anthony Gilheaney, 31, targeted people with his Mercedes, killing Aiden Chapman, 25, and seriously injuring four others

A man who turned his car into a weapon as he launched a series of hate-filled homophobic and racist attacks on Christmas Day last year in central London has been convicted of murder.

Anthony Gilheaney, 31, was drunk when he mounted the pavement with his Mercedes and repeatedly targeted people to run over.

Exclusive song for online retailer prevents a hat trick of Christmas No 1s for Wham!, as Kylie becomes first woman to secure UK No 1 singles in four different decades

Kylie Minogue has scored her first UK Christmas No 1, and eighth No 1 single overall, with the song Xmas.

She beat competition from Wham!’s mega-streaming Last Christmas, which has been Christmas No 1 for the past two years: it was last week’s chart-topper but drops to No 2. Also in the race was Lullaby from the charity campaign Together for Palestine, which reached No 5.

When AIs become consistently more capable than humans, life could change in strange ways. It could happen in the next few years, or a little longer. If and when it comes, our domestic routines – trips to the doctor, farming, work and justice systems – could all look very different. Here we take a look at how the era of artificial general intelligence might feel

“Does it hurt when I do this?”

The US Department of Justice is expected to release files relating to the disgraced late financier and sex trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, this evening. The Trump administration is obliged to publish a massive archive of documents that could shed further light on Epstein’s misdeeds and his connections with key public figures – including Donald Trump  Jonathan Freedland joins Lucy Hough to discuss why it is such a big moment

US president has been blatant in his appointment of relatives, close friends and big donors – almost none of whom have diplomatic experience

When your goal is to “help Europe correct its current trajectory” because it is “weak”, “decaying” and facing “civilisational erasure”, your choice of highly trained operatives for the mission is plainly of paramount importance.

In Donald Trump’s case they include: a former burger magnate; his eldest son’s former fiancee; the owner of the Houston Rockets basketball team; a producer of Broadway musicals; PayPal’s co-founder; and a convicted felon who is also his son-in-law’s father.

I had watched the coming-of-age weepie over and over growing up so it was an overwhelming experience to sit down with its creator and see it again. It was a magical day and he was just as warm-hearted as his movie

Rob Reiner beams as he greets me. “You’ve seen Stand By Me 100 times?” he asks. I nod sheepishly. “Then you probably know it better than I do.” It’s August 2006, 20 years after Reiner’s coming-of-age weepie was first released, and I’m sitting in his office at Castle Rock Entertainment, the LA-based production company he co-launched in 1987. On the walls hang posters of Reiner’s beloved movies – This Is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, Misery, A Few Good Men – but our attention is fixed on a modest TV as Stand By Me begins.

I’m here in Beverly Hills to write an anniversary article for a film magazine, but it’s also a pinch-me moment. As a teen, I’d watched Stand By Me on loop, identifying with the four protagonists – fragile, wannabe-writer Gordie (Wil Wheaton), tough-but-sensitive Chris (River Phoenix), wildcard joker Teddy (Corey Feldman) and put-upon Vern (Jerry O’Connell) – as they share their grief, insecurities and mistrust of adults.

After a decade away, Tom Hiddleston is going undercover again as Jonathan Pine and this time he’s getting into an explosive, sexually fluid power threesome. It’s just what Le Carré would have wanted

For screenwriter David Farr, The Night Manager’s return is a dream come true. Literally. “Having not thought about the show for five years, a vivid image came to me in bed one night,” he says. “I saw a boy in a Colombian monastery, waiting for a black car to come over the hill. For some bizarre reason, I knew who those characters were. Suddenly, I was half-awake and the rest came flying out of me. I wrote it all down in case I forgot. In the morning, I looked at my notes and thought: ‘This is good, actually.’”

He’s not wrong. It’s a special drama that can leave a decade-long gap between series but still be welcomed back with widespread excitement. It’s testament to The Night Manager’s quality that its comeback is the first must-watch show of 2026.

Turnage’s Festen at the Royal Opera House swept all before it, but there was plenty of extraordinary new music, exhilarating performances and triumphs of talent, commitment and resourcefulness across the UK this year. We pick our best moments
• The best classical recordings of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

I was only able to get to live music for less than three months of this year, but among the few events that I did attend was one of the most remarkable operatic premieres I’ve heard in more than 40 years. Commissioned by the Royal Opera, and based on the movie and stage play of the same name by Thomas Vinterberg, Festen was Mark-Anthony Turnage’s fifth large-scale opera, and showed vividly how the sure dramatic instincts revealed in his earliest stage works, Greek and The Silver Tassie, have matured into an operatic language of immense power and flexibility. Not a word of Lee Hall’s libretto is wasted in revealing the dark family secrets that are exposed at a 60th birthday party, while Turnage’s wonderfully varied, unsparing score never makes a false step. The horror of the drama was remorselessly focused by Richard Jones’s production, with a cast in which every role was made horribly believable. The best British opera in half a century? Probably. Andrew Clements

First prize was won by Elise Blanchard, who documented the lives of girls and young women in Afghanistan. Second prize was won by Natalya Saprunova, who captured the how children in Mongolia are affected by air pollution. Third prize was awarded to Sourav Das, who documented childhood in Jharia, home to one of India’s largest coal mines. Honourable mentions went to seven other photo series from Afghanistan, Gaza, South Africa, Ukraine and the UK

• An exhibition of the work will run until the end of January 2026 at the Haus der Bundespressekonferenz in Berlin, and then at the Willy Brandt Haus, also in Berlin, from 30 January to 26 April 2026

From the Bondi beach rescuers to the women taking on the police, great acts of courage offer hope even in the bleakest times

Some traditions are getting harder to maintain. Among them, my own custom of devoting the last column before Christmas to reasons to be hopeful. In recent years, amid war and bloodshed, that task has been especially challenging – and this week was no exception.

It began with the news from Bondi beach, where 15 people were gunned down and dozens more injured, most of them Jews celebrating the festival of Hanukah. That came just two-and-a-half months after the deadly attack on Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester, on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur. To be a Jew at the end of 2025 is to fear that to gather together, whether at moments of joy or sorrow, is to take a mortal risk. That even to do relatively ordinary things together has become a matter of life and death.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and the author of The Traitors Circle: the Rebels Against the Nazis and the Spy Who Betrayed Them

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.

I have been appalled by Wes Streeting’s attacks on resident doctors. The destructive right wing of the Labour party should know that this is a new era

I started my working life as a low-paid children’s residential care worker supporting vulnerable children, and I am still a registered social worker today. I discovered the labour movement through the powerful women who mentored me and showed me that working-class people will only win the dignity we deserve if we join together in our workplaces.

On Wednesday, I was elected general secretary of Britain’s biggest union, Unison. Trade unions are meant to be vehicles for workers to collectively organise, represent and lead ourselves, so my election should be an unremarkable event.

Andrea Egan is the general secretary-elect of Unison

As a chief whip, I came to know a thing or two about those who flee their parties. Often they are more trouble than they are worth

Nigel Farage is storing up trouble by welcoming yet another tranche of Conservative defectors to Reform UK’s ranks. I should know. When I was chief whip, nothing united a party quite as much as a defection. Old enemies call a truce from their daily hostilities to turn all the available ire on the traitor in their midst. Ask Shaun Woodward, the former Conservative MP for Witney who legged it to Labour in 1999 while making all sorts of rather grand demands in the process. He was blackballed by his original party for such a flagrant act of opportunism, and hated by his new family as someone never to be entirely trusted.

I remember the shock and anger when entering the chamber in April 2024 to see Dan Poulter seated uncomfortably behind Keir Starmer for PMQs. Not only had we had no warning, but as he had barely even attended parliament in anyone’s recent memory, we weren’t quite sure whether Labour would know who he was. Only weeks later, Dover diehard Natalie Elphicke pulled the same stunt and also promptly disappeared from view. How she could have left friends and whips a few hours earlier with the impression that she was voting with the government that day, I am not quite sure. It seems that such niceties matter little to the “defector community”, any more than loyalty to the party, volunteers, voters and supporters who gave them such a privileged position in the first place. Why should Reform expect any better?

Simon Hart was government chief whip from 2022 to 2024, and is author of Ungovernable

The party’s astonishingly speedy growth disguised shallow roots – and its success has brought a level of scrutiny for which it simply isn’t ready

Imagine a classroom with almost nothing in it, save some hard wooden benches and a stack of Bibles. Imagine the school it is in has only one loo, no canteen, gets freezing cold in winter – oh, and the playground is full of gravestones.

If this sounds to you like the perfect setting to teach the country’s most vulnerable children, then you’re going to love Reform UK’s new Send policy, which involves cutting the bill for taxiing children to far-flung special schools by repurposing nearby “empty churches” (a term that in itself may surprise vicars) as schools on weekdays. But if you have actually met any children, and therefore suspect this idea isn’t going to fly, then read on to find out why Reform looks more beatable at the end of what has undeniably been its breakthrough year than it did at the beginning.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Rumours of the prime minister’s demise are premature. Yes, the polls look bad – but these days they reflect little more than voters’ passing whims

Merry Christmas, Sir Keir, and a happy new year. Or as they say in Downing Street these days, make merry for tomorrow you may die. At your drinks for lobby correspondents last week there was reportedly one topic alone. How long had you to go: months, weeks, hours?

We all know bad news sells. Political reporters cannot handle prime ministers sleeping soundly at night. But the terminal gloom around Keir Starmer’s position is absurd. Not a morning passes without rivals being declared, and not an evening without the BBC’s Chris Mason dragged from his supper to stand in the cold. He just frowns and forecasts Armageddon.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Rejoining Erasmus should just be a first step – as the economic evidence piles up, the need for closer ties with Europe could not be clearer

Month by month, Labour is bringing us closer to Europe. This week, the UK announced it is rejoining the Erasmus+ youth exchange programme. This will open the door beyond the many young people who attend university – its remit includes FE students, apprentices, and youth and school groups. A whoop of excitement greeted the announcement, with opportunities for those involved in education, training, culture and sport, and a commitment to maximise take-up by disadvantaged young people. Widening experience, encouraging adventure: Erasmus+ may help cure Britain’s monolingual handicap and the catastrophic decline in language courses. Last year in the UK, less than 3% of A-levels were in languages.

This all eludes Europhobes such as Andrew Neil, who posted on X that “extra taxes now being inflicted on working people will be used to finance some ‘study’ in Barcelona for gap-year yahs from affluent families”.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Our demands are simple – and they start with stopping the flow of arms to Israel

• Amu Gib is an activist currently being held at HMP Bronzefield

Amu Gib is one of several prisoners on hunger strike who are awaiting trial for alleged offences relating to Palestine Action. Gib is being being held at HMP Bronzefield. Their charges relate to an alleged break-in at RAF Brize Norton this year. This article is based on interviews with Ainle Ó Cairealláin, host of the Rebel Matters podcast, and the writer and researcher ES Wight on days 18 and 33 of the strike.

We began our hunger strike on 2 November: the anniversary of the Balfour declaration, when Britain planted the seeds of the genocide that we are witnessing today.

An HMP Bronzefield spokesperson said: “We cannot provide information about specific individuals; however, we can confirm that all prisoners are managed in line with the policies and procedures governing the entire UK prison estate. This includes specialist multi-agency processes, led by the government, to assess individual risks and security status. However, if any prisoner has specific complaints, we encourage them to raise them directly with the prison, as there are numerous channels available for addressing such concerns.”

Amu Gib is an activist currently being held at HMP Bronzefield

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.

In our house, the Christmas photo still exists. But it follows a very different set of rules: Keep it quick, keep it casual, and if it’s not funny … what’s the point?

In my family, Christmas isn’t just a holiday … It’s an obsession. And my mother? She’s the matriarch of mistletoe.

Every December, our home transformed into a living snow globe. We didn’t just buy ornaments, we made them. We didn’t watch Christmas movies, we lived them. We’d cut down our own trees, hand-string popcorn garlands and spend full afternoons debating the correct angle of the angel on top of the tree.

Doctors have warned that the lives of these prisoners are now in danger. Pretending this is not happening is not good enough

In 1981, IRA and other republican prisoners went on hunger strike in Northern Ireland, demanding the restoration of their political status. Ten would die; extraordinarily, their leader, Bobby Sands, had been elected as an MP by the time of his death. Margaret Thatcher took a hardline public stance. But by the end, behind the scenes, the government was looking for an exit, and public opinion had shifted significantly.

The lives of the Palestine Action-affiliated remand prisoners now on hunger strike are at growing risk. On Friday, two reached day 48 without food. (In 1981, one IRA prisoner – 29-year-old Martin Hurson – died on the 46th day.) Twenty-year-old Qesser Zuhrah is being treated in hospital after she reportedly collapsed at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey. Amu Gib, 30, has also been treated. Three more have refused food for more than 40 days and another, who has diabetes, is eating only every other day. Two others have now ended their protest, one after hospitalisation.

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.

Jilly Cooper, Joanna Trollope and Sophie Kinsella all changed the genre. A new generation of novelists are doing the same and sales are soaring

At last, the perception of popular fiction by women as “silly novels by lady novelists”, as George Eliot sniffily put it back in 1856, is changing. Next year, the British Book Awards will recognise romantic fiction for the first time. The recognition is long overdue.

This welcome news came in the same week as the deaths of two doyennes of the form, Joanna Trollope and, at just 55, Sophie Kinsella, only a couple of months after the loss of national treasure Dame Jilly Cooper. Between them these publishing power houses produced more than 100 books, sold millions of copies, and inspired hit films and TV series, most recently last year’s star-studded adaptation of Cooper’s 1985 Riders.

Those who suggest ‘not doing presents this year’ tend to be people who already have all the socks and candles they need, writes one reader

There’s a very particular phrase that circulates as Christmas approaches, usually delivered over a glass of wine: “Shall we just not do presents this year?”

This is almost always suggested by people who already own everything. The sort of people who, if they fancy a new coffee Thermos at 8:42am, simply buy one. Socks? Ordered. Pyjamas? Bought in October. Candles? Seventeen already, none ever lit. These are also the people who believe a £10 gift is radical generosity, holding it out proudly as if they’d made a personal sacrifice, when it costs roughly the same effort as tapping their card at Pret. They mean well; they’re not villains, just living in a different festive universe.

A compelling model for sustainable security without nuclear deterrence or offensive military capabilities could be developed, writes Dr Ian Davis. Plus letters from Prof Michael Rustin and Jon Duke

It is good to see Jonathan Freedland calling out the thuggery of the Trump administration (Donald Trump is pursuing regime change – in Europe, 12 December). To safeguard its security and values, Europe must act swiftly to prepare for a post‑Nato Europe. Most Europe-centric alternative proposals approach the issue from a traditional hard security perspective, not fully severing Nato ties but prioritising EU-led decision-making, often starting as a “Nato-plus” complement before evolving into a standalone entity.

Such thinking also generally proposes major increases in military spending, an EU-based command structure independent of the US, integrated European military capabilities, a shared European nuclear deterrent, and binding mutual defence commitments. However, recreating a European-led “house of dynamite” will simply compound existing insecurities. A radical departure from traditional power politics is needed, drawing inspiration from successful neutral states (Austria, Ireland and Switzerland) and human security frameworks pioneered by the UN and Nordic countries.

Paul McGilchrist says we will remain complicit in the rise of racism until we can accept that it emerges from problematic behaviours and attitudes. Plus letters from Dr Peter Purton and Michael Bulley

In considering the continued popularity of Nigel Farage despite his alleged racism (Opinion, 15 December), Nesrine Malik concludes: “If he survives … it will be because there is now a little bit of his poison everywhere.” She is right. But not simply because racial intolerance has become newly contagious. It is because of a peculiarly British paradox: we abhor racists yet often excuse racism because we too often want to believe that only racists are capable of it.

But racism is no more dependent on racists for its existence than it is reliant on malice to find expression. Too few among the general public are cognisant of this and too many politicians appear to be ignorant of it, which is why so many can be wooed by a hardline anti-immigration stance without recognising the extent to which it employs racist tropes.

David Parker responds to the news that some New Zealanders are taking an extremely long summer break

I’m curious about these New Zealand workers checking out of any serious work from Christmas until March (See you in March? Debate in New Zealand over extremely long summer break, 12 December). Who are these workers exactly? Retail workers? No, they’re straight back on deck for Boxing Day sales. Supermarket workers? Certainly not. Hospital staff? Fast-food workers? Bar and cafe workers? I think not.

Minimum-wage workers need not apply for this extended break. I suspect the article reflects the experience of “professional” types: company directors, academics and politicians. Meanwhile, unseen people are working their behinds off emptying your bins and selling you beer for atrocious wages. They’re certainly not asking you to “circle back [in] February”.
David Parker
Auckland, New Zealand

Ousmane Dembélé becomes our seventh winner as he beats Lamine Yamal into second and Vitinha into third on our list of the best players on the planet

• Premier League dominates list | How every judge voted | Our methodology | The top 100 female players for 2025

• 2024 edition | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012

The highly talented England player is simply being used for when either the batting or bowling goes wrong

For anyone still curious about the exact role of Will Jacks in this England Test team, the key is probably to see him as a kind of a tell, a set of entrails, a weather vane on the state of the game.

The first rule of Jacks goes like this. If you can see Will Jacks on your TV screen, it’s bad. If Will Jacks is bowling when you wake up something has gone wrong. If Will Jacks is batting something has also probably gone wrong.

• Liverpool teammate discusses fallout from interview

• Slot says Wirtz is adapting by bulking up in the gym

Curtis Jones has revealed Mohamed Salah apologised to the Liverpool squad for the fallout from his interview criticising the club and Arne Slot.

Salah was omitted from Liverpool’s Champions League win against Inter having accused the club of throwing him under a bus in response to a poor run of results. The striker also claimed his relationship with Slot had broken down and that he had earned his position in the team after eight phenomenal seasons.

• ‘We will not take that long,’ says Amorim in response

• Amorim criticises sense of ‘entitlement’ at United

Sir Alex Ferguson has stated it could take Manchester United another “10 or 11 years” to win the title, prompting Ruben Amorim to ­publicly ­disagree with the club’s most ­successful manager.

Ferguson won 13 of United’s 20 league titles, the last in 2013, and was asked when a 21st may be added to the trophy cabinet.

• Adverse finding came from test before tournament

• Player suspended in advance of disciplinary process

Britain’s Dom Taylor has been suspended from the World Darts Championship after failing a drug test, the Darts Regulation Authority (DRA) said on Friday, handing opponent Jonny Clayton a free pass to the third round.

The DRA, the governing body of the Professional Darts Corporation (PDC), said Taylor returned an adverse analytical finding from a test conducted on 14 December, one day before the tournament got under way at Alexandra Palace.

Late developer overlooked in New Zealand but has progressed from semi-pro in Ayr to Scotland international

New Zealand rugby must still be unearthing loads of outstanding players. So many, in fact, that their talent spotters have grown increasingly blase. Because how on earth did someone, somewhere not spot the uncut diamond now twinkling on the far side of the world for Bristol Bears and Scotland?

Let’s just run through the impressive menu of skills Tom Jordan will bring to today’s Big Game against Harlequins at Twickenham’s Allianz Stadium. Excellent distribution off both hands? Tick. A smart rugby brain? Tick. The ability to hit unexpectedly hard in the tackle and kick goals as well? Tick, Tick.

A crowded international calendar is undermining domestic leagues and WSL Football has been left to figure it out

When the League Cup quarter-finals are played on Sunday it will probably be the last time they look this way. . West Ham v Manchester City, Liverpool v Chelsea, Manchester United v Tottenham and Crystal Palace v Arsenal means the top four in the Women’s Super League are involved. With clubs having voted to remove teams competing in the Champions League from next season, major changes are afoot.

The future format of the League Cup is still to be finalised and is subject to Football Association signoff but this forms part of plans for a revamp of an underloved competition that has an identity crisis. The changes include ditching the confusing group stage with its uneven number of teams, weird point scoring and odd geographical groupings. It is understood proposals have been put together in consultation with a competition working group that included clubs and was reviewed by representatives from fan associations through the Football Supporters’ Association.

• BBC misses out on Games it has broadcast since 1954

• TNT Sports exploring idea of some free-to-air coverage

The Commonwealth Games will not be broadcast on the BBC next year for the first time since 1954, with TNT Sports buying the live UK rights for next summer’s event in Glasgow.

The BBC is understood to have made an offer to continue its 72-year coverage but was outbid by TNT’s owner, Warner Bros Discovery, with the Commonwealth Games prioritising a larger financial offer above the bigger audience guaranteed by terrestrial television.

• McIlroy: ‘Hopefully golf can build upon this’

• ‘To get public’s recognition is really cool,’ says Fleetwood

Moments before Rory McIlroy was named BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year, and the cream of British sport rose to applaud him, a nervy thought raced through his mind. “I was, like, not an F1 driver again … ” he said.

This time, though, there was no late twist. Lando Norris was unable to emulate Lewis Hamilton, who had pipped McIlroy when the Northern Irishman was a warm favourite in 2014. And with Europe’s Ryder Cup winners also being named team of the year, a delighted McIlroy was able to reflect on a blockbuster night for him and his sport.

Christopher Day was fired barely a month into the job after granting asylum to migrants at a high rate

A US army reserve lawyer detailed as a federal immigration judge has been fired barely a month into the job after granting asylum at a high rate out of step with the Trump administration’s mass deportation goals, the Associated Press has learned.

Christopher Day began hearing cases in late October as a temporary judge at the immigration court in Annandale, Virginia. He was fired around 2 December, the National Association of Immigration Judges confirmed.

Decision from state supreme court on deal once worth $56bn overturns ruling that prompted angry Musk backlash

Elon Musk’s controversial $56bn pay package from Tesla was reinstated by the Delaware supreme court on Friday, two years after a lower court struck down the vast compensation deal as “unfathomable”.

The decision comes less than two months after Tesla shareholders approved a new plan that could be worth $1tn to Musk, already the world’s richest person, in a decade’s time. It overturns a ruling which had prompted a furious backlash from Musk.

Former prime minister allegedly wandering 5 Hertford Street to find members for her Mayfair club a street away

For Tory grandees licking their wounds and plotting their return after their disastrous 2024 general election performance, the opulent, fire-lit rooms of the exclusive club 5 Hertford Street are a sanctuary.

But in recent weeks, their long lunches have been rudely interrupted by Liz Truss, who has been accused of wandering the premises in search of members to poach for her own rival operation, just one street away, which asks “founding members” for an eye-watering £500,000.

Suspect Claudio Manuel Neves Valente was found dead in New Hampshire storage facility after five-day manhunt

Investigators turned on Friday to the search for a motive in the murders of two Brown University students and a physics professor in Massachusetts in separate but linked attacks, after the prime suspect was found dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The body of Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, a Portuguese national and formerly very briefly a student at Brown, was discovered in a New Hampshire storage facility on Thursday night after a five-day manhunt.

Successful children’s author denies allegations after he was reportedly accused of harassing junior female staff

David Walliams has been dropped by his publisher after an investigation into allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards young women, the Telegraph has reported.

Walliams, one of Britain’s most successful children’s authors, was reportedly the subject of complaints that he had “harassed” junior female staff at HarperCollins UK, prompting the publisher to decide it would no longer release new titles by the author.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Researchers noticed ‘dramatic’ changes in nutrients in crops, including drop in zinc and rise in lead

More carbon dioxide in the environment is making food more calorific but less nutritious – and also potentially more toxic, a study has found.

Sterre ter Haar, a lecturer at Leiden University in the Netherlands, and other researchers at the institution created a method to compare multiple studies on plants’ responses to increased CO₂ levels. The results, she said, were a shock: although crop yields increase, they become less nutrient-dense. While zinc levels in particular drop, lead levels increase.

Exclusive: Ancient forests and turquoise rivers of the Cochamó Valley protected from logging, damming and development

A wild valley in Chilean Patagonia has been preserved for future generations and protected from logging, damming and unbridled development after a remarkable fundraising effort by local groups, the Guardian can reveal.

The 133,000 hectares (328,000 acres) of pristine wilderness in the Cochamó Valley was bought for $63m (£47m) after a grassroots campaign led by the NGO Puelo Patagonia, and the title to the wildlands was officially handed over to the Chilean nonprofit Fundación Conserva Puchegüín on 9 December.

In the Peloponnese mountains, the usually hardy trees are turning brown even where fires haven’t reached. Experts are raising the alarm on a complex crisis

In the southern Peloponnese, the Greek fir is a towering presence. The deep green, slow-growing conifers have long defined the region’s high-altitude forests, thriving in the mountains and rocky soils. For generations they have been one of the country’s hardier species, unusually capable of withstanding drought, insects and the wildfires that periodically sweep through Mediterranean ecosystems. These Greek forests have lived with fire for as long as anyone can remember.

So when Dimitrios Avtzis, a senior researcher at the Forest Research Institute (FRI) of Elgo-Dimitra, was dispatched to document the aftermath of a spring blaze in the region, nothing about the assignment seemed exceptional. He had walked into countless burnt landscapes, tracking the expected pockets of mortality, as well as the trees that survived their scorching.

Cindy Butts says she’s determined to stop victims being forced to investigate for themselves after state failings

Victims of disasters such as Hillsborough and Grenfell having to wait years for justice is “shameful and a stain on our society”, the new Independent Public Advocate (IPA) has said in her first interview in the role.

The former police complaints commissioner Cindy Butts said she was determined to stop people from being forced to “become investigators and de facto lawyers at the time of grief” in order to get justice after tragedies involving state failings in England and Wales.

People of Silverdale report rattling and shaking as 2.5 magnitude earthquake strikes in probable aftershock

A village in Lancashire has been hit by a “radiator rattling” earthquake for the second time in little over two weeks.

Residents of Silverdale, a small coastal village located five miles south of the Cumbria border, reported the now strangely familiar feeling of rattling and shaking in their homes at 5.03am as a 2.5-magnitude earthquake hit the area with its epicentre 1.6 miles (2.6km) off the coast.

Under changes revealed by regulator, banks and card providers encouraged to set their own maximums

The £100 limit on contactless card payments will be scrapped next year and consumers could get the ability to spend as much as they want without inputting their pin under changes announced by the UK financial regulator.

Currently contactless payments by cards are limited, while payments using mobile phones are not, but the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) said that from 19 March banks and card providers could set their own maximums.

Michelle Mills and Geraint Berry sentenced to 19 years each for conspiring to murder Christopher Mills

A woman who plotted with her secret lover to murder her husband so they could start a new life together has been jailed for 19 years.

Michelle Mills, 46, and Geraint Berry, 47, planned to kill Christopher Mills so they could continue their affair, and Berry recruited Steven Thomas, also 47, to help carry out their attack on 20 September last year.

Investigation centres on pair’s movements outside the GV hotel, where they stayed throughout their time in the country

One of the alleged Bondi beach shooters visited a firearms shop during his visit to the Philippines, local police have revealed as they investigate what the pair did in the weeks before the mass shooting.

Sajid Akram and his son Naveed stayed in a hotel in Davao City for four weeks before returning to Australia on 28 November, only two weeks before they allegedly killed 15 people and wounded dozens of others at a Hanukah celebration in Sydney on Sunday.

Group called Robins des Ruelles later said in statement stunt was intended to highlight cost of living crisis

Dressed in red suits and backed by masked elves, a group of Santas marched into a Montreal supermarket, loaded their bags with thousands of dollars worth of groceries and disappeared into the night.

The bandit Santas later released a statement saying the food would be distributed to the needy, and saying the Robin Hood-style stunt was intended to highlight the spiralling cost of living crisis that has pushed basic necessities increasingly out of reach for ordinary Canadians.

Man, 27, from northern Taiwan reported to have fallen to his death in police chase after rampage through capital

At least four people have died in a rare mass stabbing incident in central Taipei after an attacker used smoke grenades to cause chaos as he went on a violent rampage through Taiwan’s capital. Several people were also injured.

The suspected assailant is among the dead after he fell from a building during a police chase through a busy shopping district on Friday evening.

Children’s Health Defense using familiar playbook to defend health secretary as it downplays dangers of disease and exaggerate risks of vaccines, public health experts say

The non-profit group that Robert F Kennedy Jr built into a giant of the anti-vaccine movement is defending its old boss even as the US health secretary presides over the worst year for measles in more than 30 years.

Three people have died and 1,958 people have been reported infected with measles in the US this year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In South Carolina, 224 people are in quarantine amid an outbreak that has sickened 144 people. Most are unvaccinated children.

Retailer targets £7m in bonuses as FCA examines scandal in North American arm

WH Smith will try to take back as much as £7m in bonuses from former executives after revealing the UK’s financial watchdog has launched a formal investigation into a devastating accounting error linked to its US business.

Almost £600m was wiped off the books to paperclips retailer’s stock market value overnight in August after it identified errors with accounting for supplier income and provision for lost stock going back to 2023 in its North American arm.

Shoppers held back on Black Friday spending in November and budget uncertainty hit consumer confidence

• Business live – latest updates

Retail sales unexpectedly slumped in the crucial run-up to Christmas, as cash-strapped shoppers held back on Black Friday spending, and uncertainty before the budget dampened consumer confidence.

Sales volumes in Great Britain fell 0.1% month on month in November, according to official figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

‘Extraordinary’ high court ruling covers Jacob Corlett’s attempt to seize back control of parcel delivery firm

The former owner of Yodel probably forged his mother’s signature in an attempt to seize back control of the parcel delivery company, according to an “extraordinary” ruling issued on Friday by a high court judge.

Jacob Corlett, a 31-year-old logistics entrepreneur, launched a takeover of Yodel in January 2024, buying the financially distressed company for £1 as part of a plan to merge it with his own parcels company, Shift.

Criminal ecosystem is made up of mostly male native English language speakers aged from 16 to 25

Ransomware hacks, data theft, crypto scams and sextortion cover a broad range of cybercrimes carried out by an equally varied list of assailants.

But there is also an English-speaking criminal ecosystem carrying out these activities that defies conventional categorisation. Nonetheless, it does have a name: the Com.

Marvel has put the first official trailer for the new Avengers meetup before random screenings of Avatar: Fire and Ash. Recordings of it have leaked online – but many questions still remain

Is anything real any more? For the last few weeks there have been rumours that Marvel is about to drop the first official footage for its forthcoming superhero epic Avengers: Doomsday, ahead of screenings of Avatar: Fire and Ash. And it makes a sort of sense: the latest instalment of James Cameron’s 3D mega-project about blue aliens and colonial shame is clearly a visual spectacle, so why not lure fans of Captain America and Thor into cinemas by dangling the promise of a Doomsday trailer in front of them? In a world in which everyone expects everything to be online instantly, could the most radical experiment be to put this thing in cinemas?

If it once seemed like a good idea, it increasingly looks less so. There are rumoured to be multiple Doomsday trailers in circulation, to be ushered in ahead of select screenings of Fire and Ash. But several appear to have leaked online already, which means most Avengers superfans are now getting their first glimpse of the new movie through a prism of phone footage and compression artefacts. Audiences at early showings of Cameron’s film, meanwhile, have reported not seeing any Avengers trailer, though some insist they definitely saw something, briefly.

Sainsbury theatre, London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art
Boutique staging with just 12 dancers makes up for its small scale with inventive choreography by Valentino Zucchetti and a spirited cast

The Nutcracker screams Christmas. For major ballet companies it’s usually their biggest spectacle of the year, with huge casts, lavish sets, all stops pulled out. So how do you make a Nutcracker for a small company such as New English Ballet Theatre, with a dozen dancers? NEBT are an admirable outfit. Director Karen Pilkington-Miksa consistently commissions new choreography, in this case from Royal Ballet first soloist Valentino Zucchetti, whose work has been seen on the Royal Opera House stage and elsewhere.

Now, this isn’t the Royal Opera House. In an intimate venue such as this, you don’t get the instant magic and suspension of disbelief a grand stage brings, just real people dancing in front of you. And a ballet like the Nutcracker needs magic because it’s a confection, and the dance’s main job is to decorate its fantastic Tchaikovsky score (here in a recorded version).

At Sainsbury theatre, London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, until 20 December

Brilliant biopics, daring documentaries and a host of chillers and thrillers – our critics pick the best from another sensational year of cinema
• Read the US version of this list
• More on the best culture of 2025

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Topped by Rosalía’s multilingual, ultra-ambitious Lux, here are the best albums of the year as voted for by 30 Guardian music writers
• More on the best culture of 2025

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From demon sheep to the year’s most intense watch … it’s been another amazing year of television. Our countdown of the very best continues
• More on the best culture of 2025

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A family classic reborn in a wide open world, a satirical adventure through teenage life and a mystery puzzler for the ages – our critics on the year’s best fun
• More on the best culture of 2025

Ivy Road/Annapurna Interactive; PC, PS5, Xbox
An arena warrior on a losing streak takes refuge in a vast forest where she discovers the joy of working in a cosy teashop. From this simple premise comes a joyful game of mindfulness and social interaction, as Alta learns how to serve up witty conversation and decent hot drinks. Colourful and highly stylised, it is a thoughtful study of burnout and recovery.

The new project from the creator of Pulling and Utopia is the real-life tale of a teacher whose life is upended by working with inmates. ‘It upends your prejudices,’ he says

Writer Dennis Kelly has a few mantras he’s always lived by. They’re all there, clearly defined in his very earliest interviews, right from the start of his career. Write like you mean it (perhaps that’s why his plays have so much heart and drive). Never write for money and never compromise (maybe that’s why two of the best TV shows he had a hand in, the controversial conspiracy drama Utopia and the Sharon Horgan comedy Pulling, were cancelled after two series). And finally: make sure your writing always contains a secret.

In the case of Matilda, the smash-hit stage adaptation he wrote alongside Tim Minchin, Kelly only figured out the secret hidden inside his writing long after the awards came flooding in. It turns out that Matilda, a show that glows with love but also aches with a sense of a loss, was all about Kelly’s longing to be a father – a longing that was met just a few years after the premiere with the birth of Kelly’s now six-year-old daughter, Kezia.

This twist-packed, star-strapped take on the reality juggernaut became the year’s most addictive show. It was a masterclass in suspense, camp and chaos

• The 50 best TV shows of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

For narrative twists, unforced comedy and high-profile casting, The Celebrity Traitors knocked most televised dramas into a cocked hat, or a fashion cape. We were all swept up, from teens to the retired, magistrates and retail workers, even non-gameshow fans. The show became the national conversation in a way TV pundits no longer thought possible. It was lightning in a bottle. Which would be a cool way of murdering someone.

Why was it perfect TV? On the face of it, it’s a simple format that balances banter and tension, fun games and insidious group dynamics. Bucking the streamer “dumping” model, the BBC drip-fed episodes until we were slavering. Their ace, of course, is Claudia Winkleman – impeccable outfits, iconic hair, sly presenting style. I saw so many Winklemen at Halloween parties this October it was like Being John Malkovich with bangs. But this year the show surpassed even its own standards.

Hollywood is betting big on vertical microdramas told in chunks under two minutes. Can a gimmick turn into a new form of entertainment?

If you have been anywhere close to the social media blast radius of The Summer I Turned Pretty, Amazon Prime’s breakout YA series on a tortuous teen love triangle, you may be familiar with the plight of Henley and Luca. The star-crossed lovers of a short-form video series called Loving My Brother’s Best Friend – plot self-explanatory – have made waves on TikTok with yearning stares and “I/we can’t do this” drama that echo the many fan edits of beloved TV couple Belly and Conrad. But whereas The Summer I Turned Pretty explored its central tension over 40-minute episodes on streaming, Loving My Brother’s Best Friend, produced by a short-form company called CandyJar, distilled its appeal to its barest essences: sexual tension hook, escalating line and cliffhanger sinker, all within two-minute “episodes” on your phone. Without even meaning to or really wanting to, I watched the first 10 chapters (of 44) in one 15-minute gulp – and I’m not the only one.

Hollywood is hoping that you, too, will be hooked. Though Loving My Brother’s Best Friend may not look like a typical Hollywood product – in fact, it resembles some mix of teen show, soap opera and amateur fan-cam edit – the industry is investing heavily in the future of series like it: low-budget, mobile-only “microdramas” with episodes between 60 and 90 seconds. These shows, also known as “verticals” for their phone orientation, have already become widely popular in China, where mobile screens dominate entertainment even more than in the US. In just three years, revenue for serialized short-form drama in China rose from $500m in 2021 to $7bn in 2024, and is projected to reach $16.2bn by 2030. The global microdrama market for 2025 is estimated at anywhere from $7bn to 15bn – and booming, with nearly triple revenue growth for microdrama companies outside China in the past year.

A hotel’s worth of rich guests cut off by snow, a dead body, the mafia and some supernatural antics … there’s a banquet of melodrama to feast on in this soapy foreign-language series

The snow is crisp and even, up in the Italian Alps: how lucky the protagonists in the new Walter Presents series Stranded are to be spending Christmas at a four-star spa resort in the beautiful Vanoi Valley! The welcome is warm, the hot chocolate is decadent and the hotel building, bedecked with giant baubles, looks like a greetings card painting. But wait! Threatening music? Characters staring anxiously into space, because they clearly have a big dark secret? A guest in a witness protection programme, and another who recognises her as the witness in the forthcoming trial of his secret mafia brother? Attenzione! This Italian-made Green, Red and White Lotus might not be such a paradise. Bad stuff is about to go down.

Specifically, the bad stuff is several thousand tons of snow and the thing it’s about to go down is the side of a nearby mountain. One avalanche later and, with frozen rocks blocking the tunnel that’s the only access to the valley – which we know on account of someone driving through it earlier and remarking “This tunnel is the only access to the valley” – everyone in the hotel is stuck there for the festive season, cut off from the outside world. Who lives? Who dies? Who chills in the bar with a grappa and a plate of carne salada, patiently waiting for help to arrive? Nobody, is the answer to that last question – they’re all too busy with their shady hidden agendas.

In just two years, Rae has gone from star TikTok dancer to being Grammy-nominated for best new artist. She reflects on her critically acclaimed debut and how she’s learning to reclaim and relinquish control

No one in pop has had a year like Addison Rae. She may not be the biggest star – that remains Taylor Swift – or even the most commercially successful breakout act. But the dreamy dance-pop haze of her debut album, Addison, made her into an artist’s artist, loved by the likes of Charli xcx and Lana Del Rey – the leftfield pop acts who paved the way for someone like her. Like a pre-Brat Charli, or perhaps Sky Ferreira, the 25-year-old is the pop connoisseur’s choice, justly earning comparisons to Del Rey, her fellow Louisiana girl Britney Spears and Ray of Light-era Madonna, while knowing her way around her R&B and Jersey club. She’s up for best new artist at next year’s Grammy awards – and with Addison and its knowingly anaesthetised single Headphones On placing in the Guardian’s top five albums and tracks of 2025 respectively, she’s our artist of the year.

So it’s crazy to flick back just two years to when Rae wasn’t just a flop, but a punchline. In 2021, she released her debut single Obsessed, a perfectly average Benny Blanco-produced single that attracted disproportionate hatred because Rae was then just a TikTok star whose breezy dance videos had made her the platform’s fifth most-followed figure. The song flopped. Two years later came the AR EP: featuring a Charli guest verse – she asked to feature on a leaked demo that she loved – it made Rae a cult favourite. Last summer, she returned the favour, guesting on a remix of Charli’s Von Dutch: “While you’re sitting in your dad’s basement … Got a lot to say about my debut!” Rae taunted.

Furiously angry and uproariously witty, the Irish singer’s third album was a high-water mark for pop, inspiring a TikTok dance craze and a triumphant set at Glastonbury

• The 50 best albums of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

The making of CMAT’s third album was a fraught business. Holed up in New York, writing and recording the follow-up to 2023’s Crazymad, for Me – which, despite critical acclaim and a Mercury nomination, was pronounced unsatisfactory by the singer herself – Ciara Mary-Alice Thompson suffered what sounds like a pretty terrifying breakdown. “I started actually hallucinating,” she said earlier this year. “I didn’t realise for the first two months that was what was happening, but I basically imagined the entire apartment I was staying in was crawling with insects … I went to the doctor and showed him my bites, and he said: ‘Those are stress hives; you’re mental.’”

One assumes that wasn’t exactly what he said, but you get the gist. And yet, despite its author comparing its recording to “a toxic relationship”, Euro-Country does not sound like it was challenging to make. On the contrary: it sounds like the supremely assured work of a songwriter whose powers have reached a new peak. It is, by turns, poignant, moving, furiously angry, uproariously funny and packed with incredible tunes. It strides confidently away from the country-infused style she minted on her 2022 debut If My Wife New I’d Be Dead, into territory that touches on jazz (Janis Joplining), raging alt-rock (The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station) and soul-kissed pop (Running/ Planning; Take a Sexy Picture of Me) without losing the essence of what made her successful in the first place.

Her post-punk trailblazers were a key influence on riot grrrl. Now, after decades working as a lawyer, she is taking the name – though, contentiously, not the rest of the band – back on the road. ‘I haven’t given the best of me yet’, she says

At the height of her music career in the early 1980s, Lesley Woods got accustomed to dealing with irate men. As the singer and guitarist of Au Pairs, the Birmingham post-punk four-piece, she recalls “guys being aggressive purely because you were a woman on stage”. At one show, the band were on the bill with UB40 and the Angelic Upstarts, only the latter didn’t turn up. “So the audience, who were 95% skinheads, were gobbing at us and throwing anything they could get their hands on – which included a bin.” Was she scared? “No, I was bolshie back then. I just went to the front of the stage and said: ‘You missed.’”

After the band split in 1983, Woods hoped her days of dealing with overt misogyny were behind her. But then she retrained and became a lawyer. “When I came to the bar [in the 1990s], women couldn’t even wear trousers. I used to get men saying: ‘What colour knickers are you wearing today, Lesley?’ It’s better now, but back then law was way worse than music in how it treated women.”

The Nazis adopted Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. Happy Birthday hides a tale of corporate greed. And Putin uses Shostakovich’s Leningrad symphony as a call to arms. That’s why I put them in my soundtrack to the complexities of human existence

The idea was always a ludicrous one: to reduce millennia of human musical history – not to mention billennia of the Earth’s sonic geology – into a book of 50 pieces of music. And yet that’s the challenge I decided to take on. The most pressing question was: why? To which my answer was: the inevitable failures and gaps of the project are precisely where its interest lies.

The next concern was how. Called A History of the World in 50 Pieces, the book is not a digested history of music, nor a list of my favourite songs, performances or recordings. Instead, it’s centred on the definition of a “piece of music”. This is a democratic principle – a belief that works don’t belong only to their creators but are shared and reinterpreted by generations of musicians at distances of time, geography and technology, in ways their original composers and performers could not imagine.

The Safekeep author on her secret childhood reading, falling in love with Elizabeth Strout and why she keeps coming back to Zadie Smith

My earliest reading memory
I had a children’s encyclopedia on the shelf above my bed – orange and brown, the cover old flaking plastic – but I retain nothing of what I read. I do remember a book of dirty jokes I was obsessed with at the age of eight. I was convinced it was off limits to me (it wasn’t) and so I waited until my parents were at work to shamefully steal it from the bookshelf. One time, my mother found it under my pillow and I was mortified. I recall her being confused and putting it back with a mumbled “I don’t judge” as she left the room.

My favourite book growing up
That must have been one of Thea Beckman’s novels, most likely Hasse Simonsdochter. Beckman was the author for young adults in 80s and 90s Netherlands.

Anointing a new Santa; a child refugee’s tale; a dangerous journey across frozen wastes; a YA roadtrip romance and more

The Great Christmas Tree Race by Naomi Jones, illustrated by James Jones, Ladybird, £7.99
Star always goes on top of the Christmas tree – until new decoration Sparkle kicks off a race. Who will win: Lights, Bauble, Snowflake or Reindeer? A festive picture-book caper with a child-pleasing twist.

The Boy Who Grew Dragons: A Christmas Delivery by Andy Shepherd, illustrated by Sarah Warburton, Templar, £12.99
Tomas, Lolli and the dragons in Grandad’s garden all love Christmas, but when a baby snow dragon hatches, her icy flurries make present-delivering impossible. Children and dragons team up to find a solution in this charming, funny picture-book introduction to the bestselling 5+ series.

Bob and Dick Sherman take centre stage in this well-researched account of how Walt Disney created a classic

Like many kids of the VHS generation, I must have watched my taped-off-the-telly copy of Disney’s Mary Poppins (1964) well over 100 times. I probably knew every frame as well as Walt Disney himself, who invested 20 years in bringing it to the screen.

The culmination of his live action achievements, Mary Poppins remained the project Walt was most proud of. A sophisticated, multi-Oscar-winning musical that proved the House of Mouse was about more than just cartoons, its box office success enabled him to expand his Florida ambitions for Disney World resort and shore up the company’s financial future.

The no-nonsense comic actor and author further cements her status as a national treasure with her trademark gobby one-liners

A lot of terrible things happen to Kathy Burke in her memoir, though you won’t find her mired in self-pity. Burke was a toddler when her mother died from stomach cancer, meaning she has no memory of her. In the Islington council flat where she grew up, she shared a bedroom with her alcoholic dad who would give up booze only to fall off the wagon and, at his worst, became violent. When a stranger on the estate called her ugly in front of her friends, she cannily deflected the insult with laughter. “I’m the best dancer at the ugly bug ball though,” she hooted, and did a little dance.

Burke would find her tribe on London’s punk scene and, in her teens, got the acting bug and a place at London’s Anna Scher Theatre school. This put her on the path to a brilliant and varied acting and writing career that saw her appearing in comedy sketches with Harry Enfield and French and Saunders, being called a genius by Peter Cook and taken by Luc Besson’s private jet to collect the prize for best actress at Cannes film festival for Gary Oldman’s 1997 film Nil By Mouth. There, much to her chagrin, she found herself “accepting a bellini cocktail from Harvey fuckface Weinstein”.

Whether your household is in the mood for singing, driving, quizzing or shouting, here are our top choices for homely holiday fun

Multiplayer hand-to-hand combat games are ridiculously good fun and there are plenty to choose from, including the rather similar Gang Beasts and Party Animals. I’ve gone for this one, however, which lets everyone pick a cake to play as before competing in food fights and taking on mini-games such as roasting marshmallows and lobbing fruit into a pie. If you ever wished that the Great British Bake Off was ever-so-slightly more gladitorial, this is the game for you.

With ​a blend of retro-futurism, moral ambiguity and monster-filled wastelands, Fallout became an unlikely prestige television favourite. Now there is something a bigger, stranger and funnier journey ahead

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The Fallout TV series returns to Prime Video today, and it’s fair to say that everyone was pleasantly surprised by how good the first season was. By portraying Fallout’s retro-futuristic, post-apocalyptic US through three different characters, it managed to capture different aspects of the game player’s experience, too. There was vault-dweller Lucy, trying to do the right thing and finding that the wasteland made that very difficult; Max, the Brotherhood of Steel rookie, who starts to question his cult’s authority and causes a lot of havoc in robotic power armour; and the Ghoul, Walton Goggins’s breakout character, who has long since lost any sense of morality out in the irradiated wilderness.

The show’s first season ended with a revelation about who helped cause the nuclear war that trapped a group of people in underground vaults for a couple of centuries. It also left plenty of questions open for the second season – and, this time, expectations are higher. Even being “not terrible” was a win for a video game adaptation until quite recently. How are the Fallout TV show’s creators feeling now that the first season has been a success?

PC, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2; Simogo
A suite of iOS classics is lovingly preserved in this collection from the Swedish developer, early standard-setters of the meaningful smartphone game

Fifteen years ago in Malmö, Sweden, animator Simon Flesser and programmer Magnus “Gordon” Gardebäck left their jobs at the now-defunct games studio Southend Interactive to strike out on their own. Tired of the fussy nature of console development, the pair would stake their claim on Apple’s App Store, which in 2010 was regarded as one of the most exciting frontiers in games. Mashing their names together to form a portmanteau, Flesser and Gardebäck became Simogo, and a consistently wonderful and forward-thinking games studios was born.

Simogo Legacy Collection represents the Swedish indie studio’s first seven games, released across its first five years. Originally released for iPhone and iPad from 2010 to 2015, Apple’s constantly changing standards meant that Simogo, like all iOS developers, had to either regularly update their games to comply with the latest specifications, or see their games rendered unplayable. The only solutions are either to perpetually issue updates, or find a way to bring the mobile game experience to other platforms.

He rewrote the rule book with Rockstar then left it all behind. Now Dan Houser is back with a storytelling-focused studio to take on AI-obsessed tech bros and Mexican beauty queens

There are only a handful of video game makers who have had as profound an effect on the industry as Dan Houser. The co-founder of Rockstar Games, and its lead writer, worked on all the GTA titles since the groundbreaking third instalment, as well as both Red Dead Redemption adventures. But then, in 2019, he took an extended break from the company which ended with his official departure. Now he’s back with a new studio and a range of projects, and 12 years after we last interviewed him, he’s ready to talk about what comes next.

“Finishing those big projects and thinking about doing another one is really intense,” he says about his decision to go. “I’d been in full production mode every single day from the very start of each project to the very end, for 20 years. I stayed so long because I loved the games. It was a real privilege to be there, but it was probably the right time to leave. I turned 45 just after Red Dead 2 came out. I thought, well, it’s probably a good time to try working on some other stuff.”

The Spanish master’s angle on performance, treasures from Egypt and the year’s best wildlife images on Earth – all in your weekly dispatch

Made in Ancient Egypt
Wonders to amaze and move all ages, in this magical exhibition that brings ancient Egyptians to life.
• Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, until 12 April

Almeida theatre, London
A north London Jewish family share a meal – and heated arguments – in this complex and courageous drama

Stella Adler, the renowned actor and teacher of Yiddish origin, believed theatre to be a “spiritual and social X-ray of its time”. That might be an ever more unattainable ideal in our time of Punch and Judy politics, culture wars and artistic self-censorship. This is one of the reasons why Sam Grabiner’s play about a north London Jewish family eating dinner on Christmas Day feels so singularly outspoken.

It begins lightly with humour (“You’re not Larry David, you’re from Hendon”), then builds to bickering and full-on fallouts, covering antisemitism, spirituality, belonging and how the Israel-Gaza war has shaped these Londoners’ sense of self. There is certainly no conflation of Israel and Jewishness but a deliberate foray into this highly charged and contested ground.

At Almeida theatre, London, until 8 January

Puccini’s opera returns to Covent Garden in a vivid staging that, although 40 years old, still feels fresh and fun. David Levene had exclusive access to rehearsals to witness the severed heads, the sumptuous costumes – and the executioner going green

Andrei Șerban’s staging, with dazzling designs by Sally Jacobs, made its debut in 1984 and is the Royal Opera’s longest-running production. This is its 19th revival: the performance on 18 December will be its 295th at Covent Garden. Turandot tackles grand emotions and even grander themes: love, fear, devotion, power, loyalty, life and death in a fantastical, fairytale version of imperial China. And, of course, there’s surely opera’s most famous moment, the showstopper aria Nessun Dorma.

“If the opera has depths, Șerban is content to ignore them, but for once it doesn’t seem to matter. The three-storey Chinese pagoda set, army of extras and troupe of masked dancers make his cartoon-coloured creation the nearest the company has to a West End spectacular,” wrote the Guardian’s Erica Jeal reviewing a 2005 revival.

Puccini’s libretto states that the emperor appears among “clouds of incense … among the clouds like a god”. In this production he does indeed appear as if from the heavens, his magnificent throne lowered slowly to the ground.

Soho theatre, London
Lauren Lyle and Alexander Arnold make a compelling pair in a surprising drama about a one night stand

It is set on a summer morning in Edinburgh during the festival but David Ireland’s two-hander, first staged as a reading at the fringe in 2012, has an odd sort of Christmas spirit heightened by the timing of its London premiere.

To explain requires some spoilers about its bizarre twists but the setting could not be more straightforward. In a Travelodge hotel room, a couple wake up after a one night stand. She’s in the shower; he’s devouring a bucket of KFC for breakfast. When she emerges, Glaswegian Mary (Karen Pirie star Lauren Lyle) licks her lips and takes pleasure from recounting their mind-blowing sex while Hoosier Mike (Skins’ Alexander Arnold) reserves his orgasmic delight for the drumsticks. Wasn’t last night amazing, she asks. “It was something else,” he replies – and half an hour later we find out what he means.

At Soho theatre, London, until 24 January

The breakout star of Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (the Guardian’s No 1 film of 2025) on learning karate, her love of car chases – and how she got her name

You could hardly ask for a better movie debut than Chase Infiniti’s in One Battle After Another, even if the 24-year-old actor was very much thrown in at the deep end. As Willa, the teenage daughter of former revolutionaries, she was called on to do shoot-outs, car chases, karate, and to hold her own against heavyweights like Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro and Regina Hall. “My whole life has literally changed in the last six months,” she says.

Tell us how you got this role? Was there a giant karate tournament where you had to defeat all your rivals?
No, thank God. I did six months of auditioning for the film while I was working on my first project, Presumed Innocent. So I was in California when I sent in my first self-tape. And about a month after that, the casting director called me and was like: “Hey, Paul Thomas Anderson would love to do an in-person callback, and it’s going to be a chemistry read with Leonardo DiCaprio and Regina Hall.” And so after that, I had in-person auditioning, callbacks, chemistry reads and camera tests, and then I had four days of intensive karate training, private lessons and group classes. Paul came to watch the final one, and then after that, he told me I’d got the part.

In her day job, the ‘first lady of Croatian avant garde’ sliced up cadavers at Zagreb’s anatomical institute. In her studio, she used the same medical instruments to make art that surprises to this day

Edita Schubert lived a double life. For more than three decades, the late Croatian artist worked at the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Zagreb’s medical faculty, meticulously drawing dissected human bodies for surgical textbooks. In her studio, she made art that resisted every attempt at categorisation – often using the very same tools.

“She was producing these really precise, technical illustrations which were used in medical textbooks,” says David Crowley, curator of a new retrospective of Schubert’s work at Muzeum Susch, in eastern Switzerland. “She was right in the middle of that practice … She was totally unfazed about being in dissections.” Her anatomical drawings, notes Marika Kuźmicz, the museum’s curator, are still published in handbooks for medical students in Croatia today.

The US-Ireland Alliance will give the actor the Oscar Wilde award at the event’s 20th anniversary in Los Angeles in March

After a varied career in which he has played a psychopath, a romcom heart-throb, an intergalactic warlord and a plucky newspaper editor among others, Domhnall Gleeson has won his first Hollywood award.

The US-Ireland Alliance announced that Gleeson will receive the Oscar Wilde award at the event’s 20th anniversary in Los Angeles in March in the run-up to the Oscars. It honours a body of work rather than a particular performance.

Late-night hosts recapped Trump’s national address and further insights from chief of staff Susie Wiles’s interview

Late-night hosts discussed – or ignored – Donald Trump’s surprise primetime address and dug further into the explosive new interview the White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food and the basic they scrimp on? Jo Malone CBE talks Tiffany jewellery, M&S underwear and Ikea at Christmas in the Filter’s new column

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Jo Malone CBE grew up in south-east London and left school at 13 to care for her mother. She is the founder and creative director of the luxury fragrance brand Jo Loves. She previously founded, and sold, Jo Malone London and left the brand in 2006.

In 2023, Jo moved to the Middle East to seek out adventure. She created a new company in the region and launched a drinks business, Jo Vodka, in 2025.

In need of a last-minute gift or a showstopping centrepiece? Our expert has tested and rated the most beautiful blooms, including sustainable and same-day delivery options, this Christmas

• The best letterbox gifts

I pride myself on being an excellent gift-giver. And I truly believe the uplifting feeling of finding flowers on the doorstep is hard to beat (unless they’re from an ex who “just wants to talk” – never be that guy).

Flowers are such an easy win for the gift-giver, too. There’s a plethora of online flower delivery services with a range of offerings. Some provide next-day delivery; some will deliver flowers monthly via subscription; some will even slip in a box of chocolates, a bottle of fizz or a candle in the delivery.

Best flower delivery overall:
Marks & Spencer

Best budget flower delivery:
Scilly Flowers

They claim to fix fine lines, blemishes and redness – but which stand up to scrutiny? We asked dermatologists and put them to the test to find out

• The best anti-ageing creams, serums and treatments

LED face masks are booming in popularity – despite being one of the most expensive at-home beauty products ever to hit the market. Many masks are available, each claiming to either reduce the appearance of fine lines, stop spots or calm redness. Some even combine different types of light to enhance the benefits.

But it’s wise to be sceptical about new treatments that are costly and non-invasive, and to do your research before you buy. With this in mind, I spoke with doctors and dermatologists to find out whether these light therapy devices actually work.

Best LED face mask overall:
CurrentBody Series 2

Best budget LED face mask:
Silk’n LED face mask 100

Unleash your inner mixologist this Christmas with these awesome agave spirits, from sustainable to smoky to margarita-ready

• ‘Dreamy in a dirty martini’: the best vodkas, tested

Across North America, Mexican spirits have always been big – tequila even overtook whiskey as the US’s second biggest spirit in 2023 – but it’s taken the UK a little longer to catch on.

Now, though, premium Mexican spirits are on the rise, and we are surely in our agave era. Celebs are bringing out agave-based drinks by the crate-load (shout out to Rita Ora, Kendall Jenner and Nick Jonas), spicy margs have their own merch, and even Waitrose reported an 86% increase in sales of tequila last year.

Your tips and tricks for cutting festive waste; how to host the perfect Christmas dinner; and the best pyjamas for cosy nights and lazy mornings

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Not to sound too Scrooge-ish, but it can sometimes feel like Christmas is the season of overconsumption and overindulgence. Whether it’s wasted food, unwanted presents or single-use crackers, trees and wrapping paper – once we’ve finished decking the halls, a lot of it ends up decking landfill.

Our handy guide to cutting Christmas waste has lots of useful ideas, but we also asked you for your tips and tricks. From alternative trees to an ingenious way to use up leftovers, here are your top hacks for a more sustainable festive season.

Looking for a great supermarket champagne? Need an easy recipe to take to a party? Or just some really good cheese… Yotam Ottolenghi, Giorgio Locatelli, Ixta Belfrage and others reveal the best snacks, drinks and desserts to make and buy for the big day

Christmas is a time of overwhelming choice, especially when it comes to food. So, to help you navigate the festive feasting, we asked 16 top chefs and cooks to tell us what they buy or make to give to the people brave enough to invite them over.

Reassuringly, it turns out that even the most decorated chefs love a Ferrero Rocher, a nice glass of sherry, a good mince pie and a decent cheeseboard at this time of year. And everyone is attached to their own traditions, whether that’s the apple tart Matthew Ryle’s family loves in place of Christmas pudding, the hot chocolate-and marshmallow kit Yotam Ottolenghi’s kids can never resist, or Sabrina Ghayour’s favourite truffle-infused cheddar.

Costume designer Marylin Fitoussi says Italy understands the show’s wardrobe is ‘about breaking rules and having fun’

Netflix’s famously frothy romcom Emily in Paris has long divided critics and Parisians alike, but as it returns for its fifth season it seems to have won a presidential seal of approval. On Monday, Emmanuel Macron named the series’ creator, Darren Star (best known for Sex and The City), a knight of the legion of honour for boosting France’s cultural prominence and soft power through the show’s global success.

It is a long way from the initial backlash, which partly centred on the brash wardrobe of Emily Cooper, the American in Paris played by Lily Collins. Brightly coloured, print-heavy and over the top, the outre outfits were received as a personal affront by many Parisians, who even objected to her embrace of archetypal French chic.

This holiday staple is also one of the world’s oldest crops – here’s what to know about adding sweet potatoes to your diet

Sweet potatoes can be roasted, mashed, fried and pied – you might have eaten them so often that they feel old hat.

In a way, they are – sweet potatoes count among the world’s oldest domesticated crops. Archeological evidence suggests they were cultivated in South America “more than 4,500 years ago”, says Michelle Johnson, a seed historian, journalist and self-described “sweet potato superfan”.

Red chicory leaves with blue cheese, honey and walnuts; a big jug of caramelised swede and honey soup; a turkey wellington with red wine gravy, cranberry relish and a hispi and sprout slaw; and a showstopping yule log to finish

Christmas lunch in my family is about as traditional as it comes, and is pretty much the same every year no matter who’s house we’re at (including at least three monumental rows about things that happened years ago). Everyone chips in, too, even the kids – well, they’ve got to earn their dinner somehow. Rather than shooing them off to watch cartoons while the adults do all the work, we make sure they’re hands-on in the kitchen alongside us, especially with the annual yule log. Not only is this a valuable life lesson, it also helps develop and strengthen our family culture. The children get to share in that sense of pride at a job well done, too, and everyone feels a part of the occasion. And isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

Clementines and cranberries sing Christmas carols in this classy festive premix

This is a home-friendly version of one of the drinks on our new cocktail menu. It’s a batch premix that’s packed with the flavours of Christmas, making it ideal for a festive party. Save the excess cordial for breakfast drinks or for puddings, or for another round of bikinis.

Tibor Krascsenics, group beverage director, La Petite Maison, London W1

Some traditional treats may be off the menu, but there are plenty of alternatives for a festive feast

For a festival with childbirth at its religious heart, it is perverse how much of our traditional Christmas spread isn’t recommended for pregnant women. Pre-pregnancy, this was not something I’d clocked. I was the soft cheese supremo, canape queen – at my happiest with a smoked trout blini in one hand and a champagne flute in the other. Then one day in October, two blue lines appeared on a test result and everything started to change: my body, my future and most pressingly my Christmas.

Don’t get me wrong: no present under the tree can match the gift I’ve got in store. But as a food writer who loves this season, I can’t think of a worse time to be nauseated, exhausted and forbidden by the NHS to eat, drink or do my favourite things to eat, drink or do in winter. I have no alternatives for saunas, skiing and hot baths. I do, however, know enough chefs, bartenders, retailers and producers to create a Christmas feast that is full of wonder, joy and within the NHS guidelines.

While every story has been unique in loveliness, I’ve found that many share a similar pulse

• Read our kindness of strangers series here

Earlier this year, I had a phone call with a woman named Debbie about one of her toughest days as a parent. While she was carting her two sick toddlers to buy medicine, one abruptly vomited across the floor of the local shopping mall. A passing stranger stopped, grabbed a roll of paper towel from the display in front of the chemist, and sopped up the mess – then went inside to pay for what she’d used, insisting on footing the bill. It was a small but lovely act that spoke to the decency of other people.

Working as a journalist often involves speaking to people on, or about, the worst day of their life. But for the past year I have had the tremendous pleasure of interviewing Australians (and the occasional Briton) about something very different – the acts of kindness they’ve received from a total stranger. Guardian Australia asked readers to send in these stories, and we have been publishing them in our weekly Kindness of Strangers column.

Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning

All of us belong to different tribes that give us identity and meaning, but this lesson tells us we are more than our different tribes

Last week, a family member passed away. While we came together to celebrate the tremendous impact of his life, death always hurts.

Death also always makes me contemplate three things:

You could try showing them the depths of what they don’t know, says advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Knowing what they’re missing could be a path to mutual respect

• Read more Leading questions

How do I talk to grown grandsons who have different political beliefs and dismiss mine as fuzzy thinking, since I am old?

They are conservative and believe they “pulled themselves up by their bootstraps”. They didn’t. They had parents and family and help with university. They are lovely men and kind to me, but I cannot converse with them on the issues of the day.

They have had setbacks, but nothing that makes them realise how very difficult life can be. I want to tell them that they cannot always control life, and also that I disagree with them. What can I say?

The reader’s letter has been edited for length

Parveen doesn’t know if she’s getting a sponge cake or a burger bap, but Joe thinks she needs to embrace his northern-isms. You decide who is sweet and who is sour
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Joe says ‘buns’ covers all sweet things in the north, but I worry he’ll bring me home a burger bun

Regional differences in language are all part of the fun – plus, surely sugar is sugar?

With a bit of planning, plenty of delegation and the right home comforts, you can reduce the Christmas cortisol

• How to host the perfect Christmas dinner

Whether you relish the role of host or it’s simply your turn, having a houseful of guests at Christmas can be hard work. Cramming everyone in, remembering everyone’s dietary requirements – and the fact that no matter how many glasses and mugs you think you own, it’s never enough.

Logistics aside, though, there’s something so magical about seeing your whole crew under your own roof. And from DIY troubleshooting to deliberately mismatched crockery, there’s plenty you can do to reduce the Christmas cortisol levels – and, yes, that includes delegation.

Celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver launch ‘Bang in Some Beans’ campaign to highlight cost savings and health advantages

• Magic beans: top chefs’ recipes for protein-rich superfood

Beans have it all, according to some of the best-known chefs in the country. They are sustainable, plentiful, nutritious and a fraction of the cost of meats such as steak and chicken.

Notifications of cancellations at Rebecca Adlington and Steve Parry’s swimming school don’t mention form-filling process to get money back

Swim!, the nationwide swimming school set up by the Olympians Rebecca Adlington and Steve Parry, has cancelled a number of my child’s lessons recently, but makes it unnecessarily hard to get refunds.

Parents, who pay by direct debit, must specifically request a refund by filling out a form within 30 days. None of the text or email notifications of cancellations mention this. Consequently, I have ended up inadvertently paying for five cancelled lessons.

The service was cut off and then there were threats of losing the number of 60 years

My 84-year-old parents, who have significant disabilities, had their TalkTalk landline cut off without notice in August.

We eventually had to sign a new contract to get the service restored and were assured that they would keep their phone number of 60 years.

The temptation is to sit at home and hibernate, but beating the winter blues can be done. Here’s how to embrace the coldest and arguably most beautiful season

Stephanie Fitzgerald, a chartered clinical psychologist, used to dread winter. Like many, she coped by keeping busy at work and hibernating at home, waiting for the cold, dark days to be over. But this approach wasn’t making her happy. So she sought out the science that would help her embrace the winter months, rather than try to escape them. In her resulting book, The Gifts of Winter, she writes: “I fell deeply in love with winter … It is a captivating and truly gorgeous season.”

How did she change her mindset – and can the 42% of us who say summer is our favourite season learn to love winter too?

A breast cancer diagnosis is hard enough – what happens when a mother and daughter go through it at the same time?

Genna Freed should have been in the mood to celebrate. On a cloudy November day in 2022, her mother, Julie Newman, was about to complete her final round of radiation, after being diagnosed with breast cancer in September. The whole family, a close-knit bunch, was gathering with balloons and signs.

But Freed, then a few weeks shy of her 31st birthday, was carrying a secret. Spurred by her mother’s diagnosis, she had her first mammogram a couple days earlier, and it had turned up a suspicious spot. Now she needed a second, diagnostic mammogram, and likely a biopsy. She found herself walking a surreal sort of tightrope, caught between relief that her mother’s treatment was over and fear that she might soon be starting her own.

Several kinds of bacteria can give you an upset stomach. Here is how to steer clear of the worst offenders, and what to do if they do make it through

Many people in the modern world, it’s probably fair to say, do not take food poisoning particularly seriously. Yes, most folks wash their hands after handling raw chicken and use different chopping boards for beef and green beans – but who among us can honestly say we’ve never used the same tongs for an entire barbecue or left a storage box of cooked rice on the sideboard for a couple of hours? Ignore that rhetorical question for a moment, though – before you comment that of course everyone should do all those things, let’s talk about what’s happening in your body when it all goes horribly wrong.

At the risk of stating the obvious, food poisoning occurs when you eat food contaminated with harmful bacteria, viruses or toxins – but that doesn’t mean it always works the same way. “Some bacteria, such as Bacillus cereus – sometimes found in reheated rice – produce toxins before the food is eaten, meaning they can cause symptoms such as sudden vomiting within hours,” says Dr Masarat Jilani, an NHS specialist who regularly manages children and adults with food poisoning. Bacillus cereus also produces another type of toxin in the small intestine, which can cause diarrhoea. “Others, such as Salmonella and E. coli, act after you’ve eaten and often cause longer-lasting symptoms through inflammation of the gut.”

I understand the temptation to run away – I have felt it too. Try to stay in the room, and in the moment. You’ll be glad you did

This is my last column for you. I am shocked and delighted that I’ve been allowed to carry on for almost two years, saying such controversial and true things as: the oedipal complex is real and all of us have one; psychodynamic psychotherapy is an effective and vital mental health treatment and we must fight for it in the NHS; and Midnight Run is the best film of all time. It has been a joy and an honour, and, now we are here, I’ve been thinking about the significance of endings.

Because they are significant. Sometimes, having no time left can make it possible to feel and say what was impossible before. They can invite an intimacy and truthfulness and grief that some find overwhelming. It’s not unusual for patients to talk of dropping out, or to skip the final session – to call it a waste of time, to want to leave the room before the end.

This year, the once-vanishing symbol of Las Vegas glamour was reborn in the wardrobes of Gen Z superstars

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After a 31-year stint on the Las Vegas strip, the showgirls from the revue Jubilee! took a final synchronised kick in 2016. The show, known for its elaborate costumes created by the American fashion designer Bob Mackie, came to an end due to falling audience numbers and unimpressed critics who described it as a spectacle “trapped in time”.

Now, almost a decade later, showgirls, or at least the showgirl aesthetic, is back.

Set the seasonal mood with special pieces – from cosy knits to a touch of sparkle

Clothes can be tricky presents to pick, but follow my simple rules and you’ll have your shopping all wrapped up

Once upon a time, Christmas shopping meant grabbing the newest album release or an old-favourite DVD box set, wrapping it in glitter paper, depositing it under the tree and putting your feet up with a highlighter pen to annotate the Radio Times. Now that music and film lives in the cloud, we’ve turned to clothes as the new go-to gift. But choosing them for another person is a high-risk endeavour. How can we boost our chances of getting it right?

Because we do really, really want to get it right. Kids just want Santa to bring them the swag, but one of the things that happens when you become a grownup is that you care more about whether other people like the gifts you’ve given them than you do about what you receive. And fashion is more difficult to get right than many think. After all, if how to dress well was self-evident, then I wouldn’t have a job.

Clip-in fringes are easy to use and trying one first could save tears and regrets

That quote about the definition of insanity being the repetition of the same behaviours with the expectation of a different result is often wrongly attributed to Einstein. Whoever it really was, I’m certain it was someone who had decided to get another fringe – and I relate.

Despite occasionally catching sight of one of my several former fringes in a photo album and always thinking how bloody awful I look (only my husband disagrees), I am seemingly never far from a decision I’d definitely regret. As was proved when I saw a recent photograph of Demi Moore, all yard-long black hair and short, scruffy fringe that looked to be artfully cut with a pair of old nail scissors. She looked exquisite, obviously, in a way that my rational brain knows to be absolutely unattainable, but nonetheless I found myself sending hairdresser Hadley Yates a WhatsApp asking if he’d do the deed.

From rockpooling in Somerset to stargazing in Northumberland, our readers share their favourite seasonal outdoor activities
• Tell us about a beach holiday – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Arrive at Fowlmere RSPB reserve, 10 miles south-west of Cambridge, an hour before nightfall to allow yourself time to find a good vantage point to enjoy the spectacle of the murmuration. Starlings gather and swirl in fluid Spirograph shapes, framed by shadowy trees against sunset reds until the sky darkens and the birds take their last dip into the reed beds. It really is a spectacular display, available most winter evenings here.
Helena

With ancient standing stones and modern midwinter festivals, the West Penwith peninsula is a land of magic and mystery

The light is fading fast as I stand inside Tregeseal stone circle near St Just. The granite stones of the circle are luminous in this sombre landscape, like pale, inquisitive ghosts gathered round to see what we’re up to. Above us, a sea of withered bracken and gorse rises to Carn Kenidjack, the sinister rock outcrop that dominates the naked skyline. At night, this moor is said to be frequented by pixies and demons, and sometimes the devil himself rides out in search of lost souls.

Unbothered by any supernatural threat, we are gazing seawards, towards the smudges on the horizon that are the distant Isles of Scilly. The clouds crack open and a flood of golden light falls over the islands. My companion, archaeoastronomer Carolyn Kennett, and I gasp. It is marvellous natural theatre which may have been enjoyed by the people who built this circle 4,000 years ago.

This tiny country is awash with atmospheric castles, many of which you can stay in, making for a magical wintry break. And it won’t cost you a cent to travel between them

The top of the tower had disappeared in the mist, but its bells rang clear and true, tolling beyond the abbey gates, over the slopes of frost-fringed trees, down to the town in the valley below. Final call for morning mass. I took a seat at the back of the modern church, built when the Abbey of Saint Maurice and Saint Maurus relocated to this hill in Clervaux, north Luxembourg, in 1910. Then the monks swept in – and swept away 1,000 years. Sung in Latin, their Gregorian chants filled the nave: simple, calming, timeless. I’m not religious and didn’t understand a word, but also, in a way, understood it completely.

Although mass is held here at 10am daily, year-round, the monks’ ethereal incantations seemed to perfectly suit the season. I left the church, picked up a waymarked hiking trail and walked deeper into the forest – and the mood remained. There was no one else around, no wind to dislodge the last, clinging beech leaves or sway the soaring spruce. A jay screeched, and plumes of hair ice feathered fallen logs. As in the church, all was stillness, a little magic.

Going away for the festive season has left me with unforgettable memories, from a boat trip with Bangladeshi fishermen to exploring Castro’s Cuban hideout

I have made a point of escaping Christmas for as long as I can remember. Not escaping for Christmas, but avoiding it altogether – the stressful buildup, consumer chaos, panic buying, the enforced jollity and parties. When the first festive gifts start appearing in the shops in September, it’s time to confirm my travel plans, ideally to include New Year’s Eve as well.

Sometimes I travel independently, but more often in a group, and while it’s not always possible to avoid the tinsel and baubles – even in non-Christian countries thousands of miles away – I just relish not being at home at this time of year.

We should have stayed in bed, recovering. Instead, we ploughed ahead with our cliff-jumping boat tour and found ourselves stranded in choppy waters …

It was probably the fish stew. We got it from a street food vendor on Ko Phi Phi, Thailand’s most party-centric island, and I remember it being absolutely delicious. Fifteen hours later, my wife and I were lying on the bare boards of a long-tail boat, rocking gently in the waves, huddled together under a blanket and regretting every single choice we’d made that Christmas Day. As the song says, we can smile about it now, but at the time it was terrible.

Thailand is a fantastic place to go for Christmas: it’s hot, the people are lovely, and there are plenty of fairy lights but not too much Cliff Richard. Ko Phi Phi is more of an acquired taste – it’s the sort of place you buy heavily diluted vodka by the bucket – but we were very much making the best of it. The night we arrived, in 2014, we watched a bunch of farangs (foreigners) flail away at each other in oversized boxing gloves, some of them chugging beers between rounds. For the big day, we decided to push the boat out: the limestone rock formations around the islands are a popular spot for deep-water soloing, where you climb up a cliff face with no rope and then leap (or fall) into the clear blue sea below. We hired a guide, had a light supper and hyped ourselves up for an unforgettable festive morning.

My heart skipped a beat. I felt quite light-headed. Finally, the moment I dreamed of had arrived

I can’t remember the first time I played the lottery – I was probably quite young. I’m an optimist. If you don’t play, you can’t win, and somebody has to win the big prize. Why not me? To me, winning would mean freedom – leave my job, have no debts and do exactly as I pleased.

I live in Norway, and every few weeks I’d buy a lottery ticket. I’d occasionally win 100 kroner (£7.50), which just covered the cost of the ticket. It kept the dream alive, though.

All you need is oil, vinegar, steel wool and a whetstone to get everything looking as good as new

I am a tool-care evangelist. I like to keep my harvest knife sharp and my garden fork hung up tidily in the shed. At least this is what I tell myself – because I believe tool care is important despite, in reality, being the kind of grower who drops her secateurs and forgets to pick them up before an overnight rain, or leaves a trowel stuck in the ground at the end of a veg bed, convinced – erroneously – that I’ll remember to put it away as the sun starts to set.

Rust corrodes the metal parts of our garden tools, affecting how well they work and even their safety. Small patches can be removed using wire wool and perseverance but, ideally, we’d prevent it from appearing in the first place by cleaning, drying and storing our tools properly after each use. But if you, like me, are a fallible human who occasionally finds certain tools have turned the shade of autumn leaves, it is entirely possible that they can be rescued.

From a Grade II*-listed converted village chapel to a flat in the heart of London

Dying is a process and in a person’s final hours and days, Nickie and her Threshold Choir are there to accompany people on their way and bring comfort. Through specially composed songs, akin to lullabies, the choir cultivates an environment of love and safety around those on their deathbed.  For the volunteer choir members, it is also an opportunity to channel their own experiences of grief and together open up conversations about death.

Full interview with Nickie Aven, available here

From floods to droughts, erratic weather patterns are affecting food security, with crop yields projected to fall if changes are not made

Experts have warned that the world’s ability to feed itself is under threat from the “chaos” of extreme weather caused by climate change.

Crop yields have increased enormously over the past few decades. But early warning signs have arrived as crop yield rates flatline, prompting warnings of efficiency hitting its limits and the impacts of climate change taking effect.

Thailand and Cambodia have been locked in a border dispute for more than a century, which exploded again in the summer of 2025. Peace efforts have had mixed results and fighting continues.

Guardian journalist Oliver Holmes looks at how colonial maps, simmering nationalism, Donald Trump and tourists all have a part to play

• A visual guide to the historical maps and temples at the heart of the Thailand-Cambodia conflict

Across the world, incarcerated pregnant women are often held in deplorable conditions, leading some to miscarry or give birth alone inside a cell, say campaigners

• Read more in our Women in prison series

Dina Hernández was 35 weeks pregnant when she was arrested near her home in San Salvador in March 2024. The 28-year-old human rights activist, who was with her five-year-old son, was accused of “illicit association” with gang members and jailed without evidence.

Three weeks later, her family received a call from the prison authorities to collect the body of her newborn baby. The cause of death has not been investigated and the family has no idea what happened, or whether Hernández – who is believed to remain in prison – received any postnatal care.

We’d like to hear from independent retailers about how changes to online searches has affected them. We’d also like to find out from customers about how easy it is to track down independent retailers

We’d like to find out more about how your business has been affected by changes to online searches amid the rise of AI.

Independent businesses have traditionally relied on online advertising for increased visibility and sales, even if they are based on the high street. However, with the introduction of AI mode and AI Overview summaries on Google, and the proliferation of LLMs such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini, people are altering their search habits, which may affect the online visibility of small businesses.

We would like to hear about your favourite new podcast you’ve been listening to this year and why

We would like to hear about your favourite new podcast you’ve been listening to in 2025 and why. Let us know and we’ll run a selection of your recommendations. Tell us your favourite using the form below.

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

We want to hear from UK parents with experience in temporary accommodation about the impact on their lives, family and schooling

More than 172,000 children were living in temporary accommodation in England at the end of June, according to the latest quarterly official figures from October.

That represented an 8.2% rise on the same period last year. There are now more than 130,000 households households living in temporary accommodation in England, the figures showed.

We would like to hear about your television highlights of the year. Share your thoughts now

The Guardian’s culture writers are compiling their best TV shows of the year – and we’d like to hear about yours, too.

What was your top TV show of 2025, and why?

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