An anti-Farage army of voters is there to be galvanised, as exclusive data shows. But getting them out will be tricky

Who can stop Nigel Farage? Which voters would actually dig out their ID and schlep down to the polling booth to fight him?

Over the past year, these two questions have come to shape British politics. From Runcorn and Helsby to Caerphilly and Aberdeen South, via countless flimsy leaflets claiming “Only X can win here”, parties have jostled for the part of his majesty’s opposition to Reform. Those battles have given us Hannah Spencer and Andy Burnham; they have bulldozed Labour in Wales and forced Keir Starmer out of No 10.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

People with persistent predatory personalities cause an inordinate amount of pain. Recently, our shared understanding of them has grown – and it could help protect us

The classic checklist for psychopathy was developed in 1980 by Prof Robert Hare, who is still the recognised giant of the territory. The 20 traits, which ranged from pathological lying to a lack of empathy, were based entirely on prison populations. This worked because not only did Hare have the benefit of a large sample, with pronounced psychopathic behaviours, but he was able to compare interviews and self-reporting with data collected about the individuals – so inconsistencies could be identified.

However, Hare knew this approach was limited. In 1976, he said that he simply didn’t know to what extent his results could be generalised to non-incarcerated psychopaths, including female ones. “Research into the socially successful psychopath is badly needed,” he concluded. Even decades later in the early 2000s, when Hare wanted to look into psychopaths in politics, he still needed to go to prison to find them (Pinochet’s henchmen in Chilean jails). Research into the higher-functioning psychopath – who doesn’t get caught, or maybe doesn’t even resort to crime – has proved elusive, not least because self-reporting questionnaires don’t work. Psychopaths lie; arguably, that’s their main thing.

Our buildings are monuments to extraction and extreme emissions. But what if we turned from destructive concrete to timber?

• Last chance to buy the summer issue of The Long Read magazine, now with 15% off. Click here to order

I travelled to Oslo in the early autumn. It felt like arriving into the future. Or, at least, a fragment of a possible future. I drove north in the quiet digital bubble of my electric rental car. In 2024, Norway became the first country in the world where electric cars outnumbered petrol cars.

A smooth, pristine motorway unfolded between farmlands and low hillsides of dense green forest. Long tunnels carried the route up above the banks of Lake Mjøsa, Norway’s largest lake. After a little more than an hour, the road curved downward to run parallel to the lakeshore.

The 80-seat venue at Edinburgh fringe combines sauna rituals with theatre, music, storytelling … and sweat

Tucked away behind the Summerhall arts centre is the hottest new venue at the Edinburgh fringe … quite literally. The Sauna theatre has proved popular among theatregoers at the world’s largest performing arts festival, with shows inside its purpose-built, 80-seat sauna drawing sweaty, swimwear-clad crowds.

Visitors may be forgiven for thinking the sauna is a gimmick, especially at the fringe where absurd, experimental and ludicrous performances are not uncommon. This year they include a man drinking his own urine, someone singing the same song over and over, physical feats of exertion and several fully naked shows.

Poll to take place in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, where Bauhaus blossomed a century ago – and where AfD is promising ‘patriotic culture policy’ if it wins

The city of Dessau, where the Bauhaus design school flourished a century ago, catapulted Germany into the modern era and revolutionised global design.

It is also where the Nazis drove the avant garde movement out of town and attempted to crush its utopian principles. A hundred years later, another high-stakes culture war over its legacy is looming.

Horticulturalists begin moving and propagating plants before the rusty and warped Palm House begins renovation – but some are too tall to save

It will be a gut-wrenching moment for the horticulturalists at Kew Gardens when some of the magnificent trees in the Palm House have to be felled.

“There are some sad moments ahead,” said Palm House manager, Will Spoelstra, who knows all the plants inside the cathedral-like greenhouse.

Entire villages swept away after glacial collapse triggers flood in mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrims

• Nepal-Tibet flash flood – latest updates

• What we know so far

• Have you been affected by the flash floods?

Nearly 1,500 people are missing, the majority of them tourists, authorities have said, after a catastrophic flash flood hit Nepal and Tibet, roaring down valleys and wiping out entire villages, with the preliminary death toll standing at 165.

Rescuers are racing to locate people missing in the mountainous region popular with trekkers and pilgrims, including the hundreds of nationals from India, the US, UK, Australia and Canada.

PM said he would set bar at £500k, but trade unions say funding reforms could undermine their ability to donate to Labour

Andy Burnham has dropped his support for capping political donations, causing anger among activists and Labour MPs who have long campaigned for change to the way parties are funded.

The prime minister has decided not to back amendments to the elections bill, which would cap the amount a person or an organisation can give in a single donation, according to government sources.

Allegations Nathan Cofnas was unqualified for Ghent role and would cause ‘negative impact’ made to senior leaders months ago

Nathan Cofnas, the academic who accused Jason Arday of plagiarism, has been accused of having “very limited expertise” for his academic role by professors also working at Ghent University, who say he has a “far-right agenda”.

Cofnas secured a postdoctoral research role “on the future of liberalism” at Belgium’s Ghent University in March. Weeks later, Ghent’s department of philosophy and moral sciences handed a 19-page statement to university officials, setting out why it believed it was “improbable” that Cofnas was the best candidate.

Exclusive: utility company wants to draw off tens of millions of litres of water a day from Thames and replace it with treated effluent

Levels of a toxic “forever chemical” rose to 13 times the legal limit during Thames Water pilots for a controversial multimillion pound water recycling scheme that will pump millions of litres of treated sewage into the River Thames during drought.

The data from the pilots is in stark contrast to public comments from Thames Water that their water recycling project in south-west London will not harm the riverine environment.

Parliamentary committee welcomes fact most of 472 missing have been found but ‘extremely concerned’ for rest

Forty children who went missing from hotels housing asylum seekers in the UK have still not been found, according to a parliamentary report.

Ministers are facing calls from MPs and peers to explain what they are doing to locate the group, two of whom are believed to still be under 18. The figure emerged in a report on Thursday by the joint committee on human rights on how the social care system is failing young adults.

US tech giant agrees to establish further protections for teens such as daily usage limits and blocks on night-time use

Meta agreed to significant changes to its Instagram and Facebook apps in a settlement that ended a landmark lawsuit on Wednesday. Dozens of US states had accused the tech giant of addicting and harming children with dangerous products.

The agreement curtails a major trial in California and will require the social media company to pay up to $18bn. Meta agreed to establish safeguards for teenage users, including daily usage limits and blocks on night-time use nationwide in the US.

From the 1950s to the 2020s, Kusama produced vivid paintings, sculptures and vast installations that often drew on her experience of hallucinations

• Kusama – a life in pictures

• Was Kusama the world’s favourite artist?

Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese outsider artist who reached superstar status after decades living in a psychiatric hospital, has died aged 97.

Kusama died in a Tokyo hospital on 14 August, her company Yayoi Kusama Inc announced in a statement on Thursday.

Lawyers claim Eman el-Shazly, from Birmingham, was detained in effort to silence her sister, a critic of Sisi regime

The UK Foreign Office has been asked to intervene to secure the release of a British-Egyptian woman who it is claimed has been arrested in Cairo because of her sister’s political activism.

Eman el-Shazly, a 45-year-old based in Birmingham, was arrested on 16 August while visiting Egypt. Her lawyers say she has been detained in an attempt to silence her sister Mona, a relentless and harsh critic of the Egyptian government on her UK-based YouTube channel.

Investment in climate-resilient irrigation enables this year’s haul to rise 6% on 2025’s already bigger-than-usual yield

British farmers have faced a sweltering summer tested by heatwaves, wildfires and water shortages – but a bumper berry harvest could prove a rare bright spot.

With two-thirds of the harvest now picked, this year’s haul is 6% up on last year’s already unusually large crop, according to British Berry Growers (BBG). Volumes of blackberries, blueberries and raspberries picked have been particularly strong, the trade body said.

US Geological Survey says massive glacial collapse caused catastrophic flash floods in the Himalayan border region of Nepal ⁠and Tibet

• Follow latest updates live

• Tell us: have you been affected by the flash floods?

The massive glacial collapse that caused catastrophic flash floods in the Himalayan border region of Nepal ⁠and Tibet has killed at least 165 people, though the number of dead is set to rise, with local officials saying more than 1,000 were missing.

Officials said 826 people were missing in Nepal, among them 579 tourists from two dozen countries, including India, the US, Australia, Britain and Canada. Chinese ‌state media said 558 people were missing ​in Tibet’s Gyirong ⁠county. It was not immediately clear if the missing counts were separate or some people had been counted twice.

The once world-leading producer of crude oil has plunged into an energy crisis as Kyiv targets its refineries

A sanctioned shadow fleet tanker carries oil from Nato member Turkey to a Russian Baltic port. A deal is signed for Russian oil to be processed in Kazakhstan. Fuel cargoes arrive from India via Egypt. The Kremlin pressures allies to sell it badly needed fuel.

The data points may be diverse, but they point to a single inescapable conclusion.

It has inspired violent protests from Norway to Rome – and now it’s hitting the UK. Playwright Tiago Rodrigues explains why the far-right speech at the drama’s climax has proved so incendiary

In February, turbulent scenes inside a German theatre made headlines around the globe. During the final act of a play at Schauspielhaus theatre in Bochum, the audience first jeered and whistled at a performer in the role of a far-right politician. An orange lobbed from the auditorium narrowly missed its target; eventually, two spectators climbed on to the stage and tried to wrestle the actor off. News of the incident travelled around the world: it seemed a bizarre throwback to a world in which people were not able to tell the difference between art and real life, like 19th-century Parisians stampeding out of a cinema after watching a train hurtle towards the camera.

For the man who wrote the play, however, it was nothing unusual. “I was not surprised by the reaction,” says Portuguese playwright Tiago Rodrigues. “I was surprised by the fact that it was so surprising for so many people.” He describes the audience’s reaction to his play Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists as “very intense”, but also “typical”.

AI companies have promised us world-shifting technology. But there’s a cost: loud, unsightly datacentres that drain environmental resources. As the government pushes their rapid growth, can local communities do anything to push back? Madeleine Finlay speaks to the Guardian’s global technology reporter Aisha Down about the backlash to datacentres across the UK and around the world

For tickets to the Science Weekly live event at the London podcast festival on the future of AI, visit the event page at kingsplace.co.uk

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Hugo Weaving stars in this wonderful Australian series about old friends in their 60s. It is a feast of hilarity and heartbreak – and there needs to be more TV like it

With Dalliance, television continues its brave expeditions into unknown narrative lands. It was forced first to venture into women’s stories (using female writers, directors, stars and, oh my goodness, sometimes it was just wall-to-wall womanity, you know?) in the post-Weinstein years. Previously unassailable figures were toppling like ninepins and investors needed to take refuge in those unlikely to have problematic pasts who were likely to tank projects the moment any reporter turned a beady eye upon them.

That turned out quite well. Women were not as boring as we had been led to believe, and were often capable of anchoring quite interesting, intelligent or funny shows. Sometimes they were all three at the same time, even if they weren’t called Fleabag.

In his trailblazing work, paint is pushed through the back of hemp to create spare, striking paintings. Abstraction is a form of rebellion, he says – and he has no intention of slowing down

In the early 1970s, the Korean artist Ha Chong-Hyun had a simple but novel idea: why not apply oil paint to the back of a surface rather than the front? Instead of canvas, he stretched pieces of hemp, a coarse and loosely woven fabric, and pushed the thick oil paint through the holes in the cloth. For each work he used a single colour, in a neutral or muted tone such as white or brown. On the “front” side, he then moved the paint around with various handmade tools to create something akin to brushstrokes.

Ha, now 91, has remained dedicated to this technique, known as the “back-pressure method” (bae-ap-bub in Korean), ever since. He titles every piece Conjunction – because for him the work is essentially about the coming together of artist and material – along with numbers denoting the date of its creation. “The technique he developed was really revolutionary. It hadn’t been done before,” says Max Bossier, director at Lisson Gallery in London, where a selection from this decades-spanning body of work, alongside several of Ha’s earlier artistic experiments, will go on view in September.

Helen says grabbing friends’ leftovers is a no-no. Bill thinks wasting food is wrong. You decide who should eat their words
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

I know Bill hates waste, but pouncing on people’s leftovers is embarrassing, unhygienic and rude

Paid employment can boost confidence and wellbeing, says Pat McFadden as jobs guarantee scheme gets under way

Work must be “part of the answer” to the mental health crisis among young people, the work and pensions secretary, Pat McFadden, has said as he met some of the first beneficiaries of Labour’s youth jobs guarantee scheme.

He was speaking on a visit to Boots’s headquarters in Nottingham on Wednesday, where several 18- to 21-year-olds were taken on under the job guarantee – with their wages paid by the taxpayer for six months.

A sense of abandonment could make Saxony-Anhalt the first state government to be solely led by the AfD. But the party’s hollow promises will only make a dire situation worse

It was in the summer of 2004 that I stopped understanding my own people. I was standing on a sweltering market square in Aschersleben, the town where I was born, picturesquely situated on the northern edge of the Harz mountains. A large crowd of angry people had gathered in front of a stage to protest about the welfare reforms (or, as many saw them, welfare cuts) introduced by the Social Democratic-Green coalition government under chancellor Gerhard Schröder. They chanted “We are the people!”, waved handpainted placards and seemed utterly beside themselves.

I had gone to secondary school nearby, volunteered at the local hospital and interned at the local newspaper: I knew this place. And yet I found myself bewildered. What, exactly, did these deeply aggrieved people want – standing on a freshly renovated, almost idyllic market square? Weren’t things going reasonably well for them? Where did this burning resentment toward the west come from? Wasn’t the east-west divide supposed to be disappearing by now?

Marcus Böick is assistant professor in modern German history at the University of Cambridge

We can no longer deny that many children get their sex education from online pornography. But the normalisation of violence can lead to tragedy

How can we possibly come to terms with reports a 16-year-old girl child may have died as a result of consensual sexual strangulation with her 16-year-old boyfriend? Police are still investigating this case. Meanwhile what do we do, as a society, to contend with children getting their sex education from pornography when this may be what they learn? When this is what they think sex is?

Often mistakenly referred to as choking, sexual strangulation in the mainstream is new. It has arrived into the bedrooms of young people via online porn which has become part of life, one of the many addictive services generously provided by tech companies making billions of dollars. Some companies do a good job of cleaning up the urgent issues of child sexual abuse material and trafficking, but still, violent porn proliferates.

China’s fashion giant will list in Hong Kong with a shrunken price tag – and big questions over its business model

In a parallel world, we might now be preparing for the arrival on the London stock market of Shein, the giant Chinese-founded fast-fashion retailer. Or it could have happened already.

The possibility of a London flotation was a running story during 2024 and into last year as politicians from both main parties engaged in behind-the-scenes wooing. Shein was seen as a shot of tech adrenalin for a listless local listings scene, and an opportunity to advertise the UK’s openness to international capital.

Straight women loved her, so did Eminem. Even Donald Trump found something nice to say. Her allure had no boundaries and was truly unique

I was at the National Theatre in London on Tuesday night, at a production of Pride, which tells the story of the unlikely alliance between gay activists and Welsh miners during the 1984 miners’ strike, when news broke of Dolly Parton’s death. Well. Against the sadness, one couldn’t help smiling. At a very gay production, attended by a majority gay audience, I half expected them to stop the show or call out a team from St John Ambulance bearing stretchers. In the script for Pride, references to Judy Garland and Ethel Merman serve as shorthand for gay sensibilities, but it could just as easily have been Dolly Parton. The queen of country and crossover pop was beloved by so many communities – many antagonistic to each other – but it was perhaps her gay fans who claimed her most vociferously and publicly.

When we got home my friends and I danced around to 9 to 5, and on Wednesday morning it was Here You Come, Again (“looking better than a body has a right to” – oh, Dolly) on a loop, along with her 1971 hit Coat of Many Colors.

Rearguard reactionaries may try to block the idea of a national commission into proportional representation, but we should want more not less democracy

A poll in the Mail on Sunday at the end of June was remarkable. It had not just Reform as low as 21%, but also Labour and the Tories. It was remarkable because it starkly demonstrated the fragmented landscape of the UK’s electoral terrain, as well as the electoral weakness of its main players.

Polls since have varied, not least with the Burnham bounce, but this week’s YouGov voting intention figures put Reform, Labour and the Tories on 23%, 22% and 20% respectively (although it almost no longer matters which exact figure applies to which party). Add in the Greens and the Liberal Democrats on 13% apiece, the SNP dominating Scotland and Plaid Cymru Wales, then Restore UK and independent candidates and you have an unprecedented variety of options laid out before the British electorate.

Neal Lawson is director of the cross-party campaign organisation Compass

The sense of futility hanging over the room was almost overwhelming as Robert Jenrick took the stage

It’s turning out to be one of the longer sulks in Nigel Farage’s already sulk-filled career. Few politicians are better at having a strop and holding a grudge than Nige. At least on this side of the Atlantic. Donald Trump could give Farage a run for his money, but skin doesn’t come much thinner than Nige’s. He’s the soul of the Reform party as long as he’s the centre of attention and the yes-men and women – that’s everyone – around him are saying yes. But the moment reality challenges his narcissism, the mirror cracks.

There was a time when you couldn’t keep Nige away from a TV camera or a gathering of reporters. It’s what he lived for. But ever since the Guardian revealed his £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, Farage has gone all shy. Unable to bear the humiliation of being seen for the man he really is. The posh. The entitled. The venal. The grifter. Everything he has spent the last 25 years trying to persuade people he isn’t.

The platitudes, euphemisms and cliches are excruciating. But the people who say nothing at all are the worst

Luckily, I already knew having a comic thought at a tragic moment is a natural stress response, or I might have worried. My mum has died, making me an orphan – and what first popped into my head was how annoyed Larry David would be.

In Curb Your Enthusiasm, when Marty Funkhouser’s mother’s wheelchair was run over by a car, he proclaimed himself an orphan. David informed him he was too old to be an orphan. Funkhouser insisted that if your parents are dead, you’re an orphan.

In an era of multiparty politics, first past the post risks generating perverse outcomes that delegitimise the democratic process

If the system that elects MPs to Westminster was obviously the most democratic one available, there would be no need to use alternative modes when electing the UK’s devolved assemblies or England’s regional mayors. The fact that first past the post (FPTP) was not preferred when establishing those institutions reflects an acceptance that there are better ways to turn popular opinion into fair political representation. So why should the Commons stick with an inferior system?

This question is raised by an amendment tabled to the representation of the people bill, which returns to parliament next week. The call to establish an independent national commission on electoral reform has been endorsed by 185 MPs.

There’s growing agreement that under-18s need to be protected – but international turmoil is pushing many towards wedlock

Every minute, 23 girls around the world wed, according to the Girls Not Brides campaign, a coalition of more than 1,000 organisations across 100 countries. No child should be married. But girls are far more likely to be affected than boys, accounting for nine in 10 of those wed before 18, and their spouses are often much older men. The consequences, beyond the immediate threat of sexual violence, include the shortening of their education, increased risks of poverty and domestic abuse, and poor health, including high rates of maternal mortality. In spring, the Center for Global Development thinktank estimated that child marriage costs $175bn annually in lost productivity and increased health risks.

The good news is that the last decade has seen a drop in rates; last year alone, Grenada, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Kuwait and Portugal introduced bans. But there are disturbing signs of regression elsewhere. In May, the Taliban issued a new judicial code enabling child marriage below the previous minimum age of 16, and preventing wives from ending marriages they entered as children if their husbands object. Previous protections were inadequate and often poorly enforced; now even those have been swept away. Activists say forced and early marriages have soared since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, thanks to the ban on secondary education and the state of the economy.

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

Readers respond to Gina Rippon’s criticism of a controversial TV documentary about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Three months ago, at 42, I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Unlike many adults prior to receiving a diagnosis, I had not spent years wondering whether I had ADHD. In fact, I was oblivious until quite recently, when I strongly identified with several things a colleague said about their own experience of ADHD. The more I learned, the more I found myself thinking: “Wow, that’s me.”

My forgetfulness, distractibility, messiness, chronic need for organisation and memory strategies, constant lateness, tendency to lose things daily, persistent perfectionism and habit of going, tyres screeching, right up to the last minute of every deadline suddenly made sense. Things I had spent my life viewing as daily frustrations or personal failings had an explanation. I had ADHD, and had always had it. There was a reason for the constant chatter and noise in my brain, with any gaps filled with, or interrupted by, a song. Honestly, literally anything can trigger a song.

The UK’s response to flagrant breaches of international law is pathetic, writes Bernie Evans, and sanctions against a few individuals have no effect

How long does it take for the penny to drop in Downing Street and the Foreign Office (Israel’s Ben-Gvir posts video of gallows site for hanging Palestinians, 20 August)? Israeli individuals have had sanctions imposed on them for over a year with absolutely no effect, and it is likely that people such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, see them as some sort of badge of honour.

Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband must realise by now that the only sanctions likely to have any effect are those imposed against the state of Israel, so denouncing the issue of tenders for the E1 settlement near Jerusalem as an “unacceptable and destructive act ” is just box-ticking.

Responding to an article in which birds comforted Helen Harris during bereavement, Angela Smith describes her own experience

Helen Harris’s experience (A moment that changed me: my husband died – and birds began behaving strangely towards me, 19 August) chimes with that of a friend of mine who had many close encounters with robins after the death of her father. She too had birds flying into her house as never before but, unlike Helen, she believed that this was the person’s spirit making contact.

My own association between birds and death is rather different. The day my mother-in-law died, a wren had flown into the window of the classroom where I taught, and I found it dead on the ground outside. When we took her ashes to be scattered in the sea, a pheasant hit the car windscreen and died.

Britain and other signatories to the UN convention on the law of the sea should protest against US proposal to lease seabed for mining, says Guy Standing

Your article on Donald Trump’s plan to lease millions of hectares of seabed in the Pacific for deep-sea mining correctly points to the ecological disaster that this could unleash (US territories hit out at Trump plan to explore deep sea mining in the Pacific, 24 August).

However, it does not mention that this plan contravenes international law in the form of Unclos, the UN convention on the law of the sea, which has been ratified by 171 countries and the European Union. The US has not ratified it, but since 1982 has agreed to abide by its rules and procedures.

• Liverpool would pay £100m plus £2om in add-ons

• France winger has been main summer transfer target

Liverpool are closing in on a £120m deal for Bradley Barcola following a breakthrough in talks with Paris Saint-Germain.

Barcola has been Liverpool’s main transfer target all summer only for PSG’s £145m valuation to prove a significant hurdle. However, further negotiations on Thursday night ended in an outline agreement being reached over a compromise fee. Liverpool have agreed to pay a guaranteed sum of just over £100m for the France international, with add-ons based on individual and team success, taking the overall package to around £120m.

Bruno Fernandes is the only surviving attacker from Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s attempt to bridge gap to rivals in 2021

Five years is a long time in football. Manchester United’s summer of 2021 is now remembered as the turning point in Ole Gunnar Solskjær’s reign; the sentimental decision to sign Cristiano Ronaldo the headline act as United set off on the wrong course after a few years of building steadily.

But back then, even before the signing of Ronaldo, there was optimism aplenty around Old Trafford. United swatted aside Leeds 5-1 on the opening day to fuel talk of a first genuine title charge since Alex Ferguson’s retirement. They had, after all, just signed the most coveted young English player on the market in Jadon Sancho and looked to pair the £74m man with Bruno Fernandes and Paul Pogba, their creative fulcrum, and an exciting set of forwards.

• Sky could share content with ITV in next rights cycle

• Tests in England have been behind paywall since 2006

The England and Wales Cricket Board is planning to offer more rights packages to free-to-air broadcasters in the next set of TV contracts beginning in 2029, with the aim of broadening the sport’s appeal.

While the ECB will not follow Cricket Australia by offering a bespoke free-to-air package for domestic Test matches, the Guardian has been told that long-term partner Sky Sports could share some of its cricket portfolio during the next rights cycle with ITV, whose £1.6bn takeover by Sky’s US parent company, Comcast, is expected to be completed next year.

Before the IBF world heavyweight title clash with Filip Hrgovic on Saturday, Barry Jones and Andy Lee analyse the unbeaten fighter

On Saturday night the 21-year-old Moses Itauma expects to become the second-youngest world heavyweight champion in history, after Mike Tyson, when he fights Croatia’s Filip Hrgovic for the IBF title at the O2 Arena in London. In an attempt to sift through the hype and to assess the potential Itauma has shown, the Guardian asked Barry Jones and Andy Lee for their expert views on the strengths and possible weaknesses of the young British fighter.

Itauma promises to become the dominant new force of the unpredictable heavyweight division but Hrgovic is his first real test as he strives to become a world champion in just his 15th fight.

The women’s singles champion at SW19 on her off-court passions, growing up in Czechia, and the aftermath of achieving her dream

Linda Noskova has spent almost her entire life working towards mastering her sport. She began travelling around Czechia, Europe and then the world for tournaments before she was a teenager. Her life decisions have revolved around tennis for as long as she can remember.

Those early years prepared Noskova for the challenge of winning her first grand slam title, but the biggest lesson from her triumph at Wimbledon last month has been her lack of preparedness for everything that followed. The world did not come to a halt upon the completion of her ultimate goal. Life continues at the same pace, and now she must find her place in the sport once more.

Bradley Barcola, Julián Alvarez, Enzo Fernández and Cody Gakpo could be on the move in the next few days

By WhoScored

Every transfer window has at least one saga that dominates the headlines. Barcola’s potential move to Liverpool has been that story this summer. Given that Liverpool are crying out for a right winger to replace Mohamed Salah, one of their greatest ever players, it might seem surprising that their attention has been fixed on Barcola, who has spent 77% of his minutes at Paris Saint-Germain on the left side of the attack. However, rather than signing a like-for-like replacement, Liverpool seem keen to bring in a fast forward who is willing to press and can play on either flank.

A new season at the snazziest modern stadium in England and something extremely welcome for Tottenham. A home win over domestic opposition. There were only four of them last time out; three in the Premier League with the final one – over Everton on the last day – helping them to avoid relegation. Had they lost that, this Carabao Cup fixture against Charlton would also have been played in the Championship.

Spurs needed this tonic for another reason – to begin the clean-up operation after Saturday’s awful 3-0 defeat at Brentford.

• Third qualifying round, first leg: Chelsea 5-2 Real Sociedad

• Girma 29, Buurman 54, Malard 67 88, James 74; Marín 7, Marcos 59

Chelsea’s sluggish start in the first leg of their Champions League qualifier against Real Sociedad will have made far from satisfying viewing for their suspended head coach, Sonia Bompastor, but two goals from the new signing Melvine Malard contributed to a five-goal haul as the Blues came from behind to give themselves a three-goal cushion going into next week’s return fixture.

“It was a tough game, a tough first half because Real Sociedad is a really great team but I think we had a good reaction,” said Camille Abily, the assistant coach to Bompastor, who was serving a one match ban following her red card in Chelsea’s quarter-final second leg against Arsenal last season. “We were so much better in the second half, there was more space also. It’s a good win – a tough win but a good win.”

Tributes are paid to the much-loved and respected Fleet Street veteran who also tipped as ‘Larry Lynx’

Ken Oliver, who has died at the age of 86, was the Guardian’s racing editor for many years until his retirement in 2004, at the end of a lifetime in racing journalism at publications including the London Evening News, the Sporting Life, the Sun, the London Daily News, the Sunday People – where he tipped as Larry Lynx – and as the editor of Ruff’s Guide to the Turf, the racing equivalent of Wisden.

Ken was the racing editor when I joined the Guardian in 2001 and he was a joy to work with: an old-school veteran of the glory days of Fleet Street, blessed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the sport and steeped in all the rhythms and traditions of daily papers that would soon be ushered into history by the internet. He was also unflappable, understanding when a story or plan went awry, and the best possible company for a pint or two in a local watering hole once the first edition had been put to bed.

A prolific performer across stage, screen and TV, the actor starred in Legend, Clue and It, but will always be associated with the flamboyantly camp rock’n’roll musical in which he made his breakthrough

• Tim Curry on sexuality, surviving a stroke – and 50 years of stardom

• Farewell, Dr Frank N Furter: why Tim Curry’s Rocky Horror Show will go on

• Clowns, corsets and kings: Tim Curry – a life in pictures

Tim Curry, the versatile performer of screen and stage, who made his name as the flamboyant Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, has died aged 80. Reports say Curry died at his home in Los Angeles.

The actor’s manager confirmed to Variety that he died peacefully. No cause of death is known as yet.

Bears killed 13 people in Japan last year, as a lack of forest foods increased conflicts. Yet some say the country’s controversial cull could threaten the endangered species

Every summer, millions of people escape the heat and humidity of Tokyo by heading to the tranquil resort town of Karuizawa in Japan’s Nagano prefecture – just an hour by bullet train from the capital. Here, at the foot of Mount Asama, visitors stroll bamboo-lined pathways, cycle in verdant highlands, and practise the wellness ritual of shinrin-yoku, bathing among the cool hinoki forests. It would be the ideal nature retreat – if it wasn’t for the bears.

From June to August, bears often move close to Karuizawa, feeding on the mulberries, ants, leaves and cherry blossoms that grow near the town. Unlike nuts, these foods are low in calories, spurring the bears to seek out further sustenance. “They’re more likely to get close to residential spaces to see what they can find,” says Amelia Hiorns, a British zoologist who previously worked with Picchio Wildlife Research Centre in the town. “This combines with the busiest season for tourists.”

Rules will require hedge funds, insurers and pension firms to report all non-financial wrongdoing

The City’s largest hedge funds, insurers and pension funds are racing to prepare for sweeping rules that will stop nearly 40,000 companies from hiding bullying and harassment cases from the financial watchdog.

From the start of next month, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will expand a crackdown on bad behaviour in the banking industry to a wider group of City investment firms and brokers.

Comté, beaufort and abondance makers can temporarily supplement cows’ diets as there is ‘no grass left to eat’

Strict production rules will be loosened for some of France’s most famous cheeses after drought and repeated heatwaves dried out grazing pastures, threatening the livelihoods of traditional dairy workers.

Comté, a hard cheese made from raw cows’ milk in the Jura mountains, is France’s top-selling traditional cheese, with more than 62,000 tonnes produced last year. The government announced on Wednesday that its producers would be granted a temporary change to strict rules on grazing after farmers said extreme heat had scorched their pastures, putting production at risk.

DIY system will be stocked by big retailers, starting with Argos, enabling more homes to lower bills by generating own electricity

• Plug-in solar: could a low-cost panel cut your bills?

Plug-in solar panels will go on sale in the UK for the first time from Thursday, allowing households unable to use rooftop panels to also generate their own cheap electricity.

Households across the country will be able to join the millions across mainland Europe who generate their own renewable electricity using “balcony solar panels”, which will be stocked by some of the UK’s biggest retailers.

ONS data shows rising toll of climate crisis, with officials warning this summer on track to set further records

More than 40,000 extra people died on the hottest days in England between 1988 and 2025 than would be expected in normal temperatures, according to data published by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday.

The figures do not include this summer, when England has sweltered under a succession of heatwaves and is on track to record its highest ever number of heat-related deaths. The UK Health Security Agency announced on 30 July that an estimated 2,877 people had died in the May and June heatwaves alone. The total is almost double the figure for the whole summer in 2025.

Lethal temperatures ​and wildfires have exposed a widening gulf between voters demanding ​action and politicians unwilling to confront the long-term choices global heating requires

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The climate crisis means “we’re going to have to change everything – the way we live, the way we produce, the way we trade,” France’s veteran radical-left firebrand, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, told the summer congress of his France Insoumise party last weekend.

The term “climate change”, said Mélenchon – the most likely rival to Marine Le Pen in next year’s presidential run-off, according to one poll this week – may sound “almost reassuring”, but its actual impact will feel like “landing on another planet whenever we leave home”.

A magical corner of Oregon has the highest US rate of wildfire smoke deaths. How do residents live with the haze – and grief?

Driving into the county, you can’t miss the sign.

“IT’S THE CLIMATE”.

Even low levels of traffic noise can negate the benefits of listening to natural sounds, researchers say

Hearing the trill or whistle of a bird while going about daily life is well known to boost people’s mood. But a new study suggests the psychological benefits of hearing birdsong are being threatened by traffic noise.

Researchers found that even low levels of traffic noise negatively affected the benefits to wellbeing that could otherwise be derived from listening to natural sounds.

Surgeons aided by real-time analysis of camera footage that identified critical anatomy in brain to be avoided

Neurosurgeons in London have performed the world’s first successful AI-assisted operation to remove a brain tumour, saving the sight of a 48-year-old man, health officials have said.

The surgery was performed in May at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery (NHNN), part of University College London hospitals NHS foundation trust, but details were kept secret until Thursday while the patient, Rhys Hibbert, recovered.

Presenter says he is moving to YouTube to avoid being left ‘behind the curve’ as media landscape changes

The outgoing Today programme presenter Amol Rajan has warned that the BBC is destined to “get smaller at an accelerating rate”, as he prepares to depart for a new project on YouTube.

Rajan, who announced earlier this year that he was leaving BBC News to “unleash my inner entrepreneur” in the creator economy, said he was making the shift to ensure he was not “behind the curve”.

Reform MP seeks to heap pressure on Tory leader amid confusion around details of meeting with Giorgia Meloni

Robert Jenrick has accused Kemi Badenoch of telling “a pack of lies” about her meeting with the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, as he launched a deeply personal attack on his former boss.

The Reform UK MP sought to heap pressure on the Conservative leader amid confusion about whether Meloni urged Badenoch at a meeting in Rome to “be her own woman” and resist doing a deal with his party.

Neil Gilson completes 230-mile challenge after a ‘tough’ 22-hour crossing of Lac Léman

He staggered rather than sprang out of the lake but it wasn’t surprising.

Neil Gilson, a former international athlete, could be forgiven for feeling a little wobbly, having become the first person to swim the 10 largest lakes in Switzerland, a total of about 230 miles (370km).

The men have spent years at Guantánamo Bay, with legal proceedings mired in pre-trial conflicts over CIA’s interrogation methods

A trial date has been set for four men who have spent years held in Guantánamo Bay for their alleged involvement in the 9/11 attack, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is accused as the mastermind of the plot.

In a ruling that came just weeks before the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack that brought down the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in New York City and killed nearly 3,000 people, Judge Lt Col Michael Schrama issued an order Wednesday, for the trial to begin on 5 June 2028.

A memorial at the park’s entrance held bouquets, and a child asked his mothers why so many people were crying

Becky Bullard was en route home to Austin, Texas, when she heard the news.

“As soon as I heard about Dolly, I thought of you,” read a text from a close friend while she waited for her flight home from Albany, New York.

Both children were born on same day in November 2025 in situation so rare it had not been contemplated by state surrogacy laws

A Queensland woman gave birth to twin children with separate sets of biological parents last year, in what is believed to be an Australian first situation so rare it had not been contemplated by state surrogacy laws.

The woman, anonymised in a court judgment, conceived an unplanned natural pregnancy about the same time as she received an IVF embryo transfer under a surrogacy arrangement with another couple.

Paper products among hardest-hit sectors after trade negotiations broke down, with 25-50% tariffs estimated

• Are you a Canadian boycotting US products? We’d like to hear from you

Using the bathroom or having a cry is about to become more expensive for North Americans as the US and Canada enter a full-fledged trade war that threatens to flush away decades of peaceful trading between the two nations.

After trade negotiations broke down between the two countries last weekend, Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, vowed to match US tariffs “dollar for dollar” and unveiled a list of nearly 900 American goods that will face 25% to 50% tariffs starting on 8 September.

Investors breathe sigh of relief after AI bellwether Nvidia reports doubling in quarterly revenue to nearly $100bn

A company that made its money promising to protect elderly people from nuisance calls has been fined £190,000 for “hounding” them with hundreds of thousands of nuisance calls of its own.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said Elderly Aids Ltd, a company selling call-blocking devices, made 758,053 cold calls between May 2024 and February 2025 to try and sell its products.

Not only did this company target vulnerable people who had explicitly asked not to be called – they harassed them to sell call-blocking devices.

EAL showed a complete disregard for the law and the people they were hounding. This penalty should serve as a clear warning to any business that thinks the law does not apply to them - we will hold them to account for both exploiting people in this way and trying to avoid accountability.

The $5tn firm beat Wall Street expectations for yet another blockbuster quarter, though the stock made only modest gains

Nvidia announced on Wednesday that its quarterly revenue had doubled in a year to nearly $100bn. Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO, jubilantly declared that demand is accelerating as the AI industry had reached a “golden age”.

The chipmaker, the most valuable company in the world with a $5tn market cap, brought in $96.2bn in revenue, beating Wall Street expectations of $92bn in the second quarter. That’s 106% more than the company saw in revenue this time last year. The company expects its revenue to continue to grow to $108bn by the end of the third quarter, higher than analysts predicted.

Jes Staley told US House committee he also was at one point named a trustee of convicted sex offender’s estate

Former JPMorgan Chase executive Jes Staley told US lawmakers he repeatedly shared confidential and market-sensitive bank ⁠information with Jeffrey Epstein and ⁠was at one ​point named as a trustee of his estate, according to a transcript released by the House oversight committee on Wednesday.

These admissions come as lawmakers investigate the late convicted ⁠sex offender’s ties with political and business elites. Staley appeared before the committee in July as part of its investigation into Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Transcripts ⁠from the meeting were released on Wednesday.

Uber and Wayve had said they would start trips ‘later this summer’ but launch now looks unlikely this year

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The rollout of robotaxis on the streets of London is unlikely to happen this year, as regulatory and technical hurdles push back the ambitious schedule set out by the UK government.

Only weeks ago Uber and London-based Wayve were granted the first minicab licences in the capital to allow them to offer self-driving taxi rides to paying customers – but with a human safety driver in place, for now – and said they would start trips “later this summer” before a full public launch.

The South African photographer documented her country’s harrowing Truth and Reconciliation Commission. These pictures form part of a new exhibition – alongside intimate images of actors, artists and friends

Nestled in the heart of Dartmoor, Moretonhampstead carnival celebrates its 101st edition in 2026. The Scragg brothers got among the crowds with Robert Frank-like ambition to document the town’s favourite day, capturing rural creativity and chaos from one decade to the next. Here they distil some of their rare gems from 1978 to 1984. The collection fulfils a promise from one sibling, Adrian, to the other, David, who died in 2020: ‘People will see these, Dave’

The bizarre story of French secret agents blowing up a Greenpeace ship in New Zealand is rivetingly retold by the eco-veterans – revealing an increasingly unhinged litany of lies, denials and James Bond-style antics

When DS Terry Batchelor received the call informing him of the whereabouts of the French couple suspected of bombing the Rainbow Warrior, he was eating a pie. The suspects were in Auckland, he learned, preparing to return their hired Toyota HiAce campervan to the rental depot. A scoop! Batchelor, who was based nearby, gathered his team and set off in hot – and ultimately successful – pursuit. And the pie? “Actually,” reflects the retiree, peering at us over his moustache, “I hadn’t started the pie yet.” A pause, heavy with the threat of italics. “But I was about to.”

There is a lot of this sort of thing in Sky Documentaries’ Rainbow Warrior, a feature-length retelling of the events surrounding the July 1985 sinking of the titular Greenpeace flagship. That is to say; granular recollections, delivered by elderly men with combative facial hair, seemingly irrelevant in isolation but riveting and oddly comforting when viewed as part of a startling and frequently unhinged whole.

This time the ranks of the undead have acquired a hive mind, making them even more formidable adversaries. Can a maverick academic save the day?

Here is another frenzied K-zombie action-horror from Yeon Sang-ho, the director of Train to Busan and Peninsula. Colony is frontloaded with 10 minutes of sciencey exposition and setup during which a biotech CEO mentions maze-solving slime mould and the pioneering work of the entomologist William Wheeler on the hive minds of ant colonies. Then the CEO is injected with a disgruntled former employee’s bright green liquid tech – it always needs to be bright green in such circumstances – and becomes the first victim of a bio-terror attack that traps a small cross-section of South Korean society in a tower block with hordes of fast-moving rabid flesh-munchers. An hour and three quarters of goopy, bloody mayhem ensue.

An upscale shopping mall occupies the lower floors of the tower, and it takes some nerve to give your zombie film much the same setting as Dawn of the Dead, the masterwork of the godfather of the genre George A Romero. Thankfully Colony can boast an innovation: these zombies have a hive mind, an emergent collective intelligence that makes them more formidable adversaries than your average braindead stumbler. The moment that one of the infected notices you and screams, as in Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, they all turn and attack.

It’s painful to see Northern Irish police bang their heads against the wall as they hunt for the journalist’s killer. But there are still important moments here – including remarkable footage from an MTV show that never aired

The killing of Lyra McKee, a journalist shot while observing a riot in the Creggan area of Derry, Northern Ireland, on 18 April 2019, is a case that remains officially unsolved. Last month, three men were found not guilty of her murder after a two-year trial; so far, there has been only one conviction, for possessing the gun that killed her.

That a member of the republican paramilitary group the New IRA fired the weapon is not in question. Many of the approximately 150 people who were standing within metres of him at the time must know who he is. But this is a part of Northern Ireland where police work is still, more than 25 years since the Good Friday agreement, met with violent intimidation or resolute silence. The extinguishing of McKee’s bright, hopeful talent is a story destined not to end in relief or resolution.

The rapper executive-produces this story about a champion boxer out for revenge. Plus: a dream wedding turns into a nightmare in Ludwig. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Atlantic
“Boxing is a criminal enterprise,” says Nicholas Pinnock’s slick crime kingpin Kingsley Marshall. “Always has been, always will be.” It’s a highly debatable claim but typical of this big, bloody and somewhat basic drama executive-produced by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, which is set at the nexus of pugilism and gangsterism. It stars Howard Charles as “Duke Kilroy”, a champion boxer in search of revenge after the murder of his brother. About as subtle as a punch in the face. Phil Harrison

First-wave punks rejected religion – but come the 90s, bands embracing eastern thought found legions of devotees. Ahead of reformations and reissues, they discuss the Bhagavad Gita, brawls and tulasi beads in the pit

Whether wielded as shock tactic or part of a considered philosophical stance, mockery and distrust of religion have been baked into punk rock’s DNA from the get-go. The Damned, Crass, the Germs and the Dead Kennedys all proffered early potshots and takedowns, and if Bad Brains received a grudging pass for their Rastafari leanings, in general, songs kowtowing to gods or masters were about as likely to win you scene cred as praise for Reagan, cops or nuclear war.

As the 80s ticked into the 90s, however, something curious began to happen: a clutch of bands emerged who were wise to the hardcore classicism of Minor Threat and SSD but also looked east to Krishna consciousness. Leading the way was Ray “Raghunath” Cappo who, barely into his 20s, had already broken down walls as frontman for Youth of Today, a New York band who combined a straight-edge philosophy with animal-rights advocacy and a sense of full-throated positivity. He and guitarist John Porcelly had “witnessed enough young people screwing up their lives that we thought, as simple as it is, it’s a positive message. Let’s rally behind it,” he says. “And it became big, bigger than we expected.”

With their twangy sound, madcap outfits, lusty yodelling and pirouetting pirate frontman, the band became global superstars almost overnight. But, as their guitarist Marco Pirroni recalls, the thrill ride soon hit the buffers

‘The essence of pop is, one, brilliant fucking songs – and the rest is sex, subversion, style and humour. And that was us.” So Adam Ant told me in 1995, describing the reconstructed Adam and the Ants, which formed in early 1980 with the arrival of guitarist/songwriter Marco Pirroni, who was sitting next to him. “We’re responsible for bringing back dressing up, going mad and screaming your head off.”

“That’s it!” grins Pirroni when I remind him of this, as we sit in the shabby-chic lounge of London’s 21Soho venue. Back then, I didn’t tell them I was 15 in 1980, forever sprinting across dancefloors pretending to be Adam Ant, chiffon scarves tied to knees, limbs flailing like a whirling Cossack. Pirroni hears this today and laughs. “That’s what it’s all about,” he hoots. “When I was 13, watching Bowie, Roxy, T Rex, you just go, ‘I wanna do that.’ It’s exciting, sexy, about looking good, Top of the Pops. I can’t imagine anyone saying, ‘Wow, I desperately want to be in Cabaret Voltaire. They must be earning no money, look boring and nobody likes them – that’s the band for me!’”

The oberek is a traditional dance beloved of state folk ensembles – but a new generation of musicians is reconfiguring its music into wild new forms, merging folk steps with electronics and the sound of Chicago footwork

It’s 6pm on the first day of OFF festival in Katowice, and a crowd is gathering in front of one of the stages to watch newcomers Tercet Imperial. Sporting disco outfits of nylon jackets, tracksuits and Chicago Bulls caps, keyboardist Piotr Zabrodzki deploys resonant acid melodies, while drummer Jan Emil Młynarski plays a rapid, irregular rhythm that brings to mind the scattergun beats of footwork, the ghetto-house subgenre that grew out of Chicago in the late 90s.

Not many of those jerking their limbs to the music in front of the stage are likely to realise that they are listening to a distinctly Polish sound: that of the oberek, a traditional dance in triple metre whose name derives from the Polish verb “to spin”, because it usually accompanies couples whirling across dancefloors in a circular motion.

Despite their fast rise, the Manchester indie-pop band are happily going at their own pace. But what – if anything – did they learn from the advice of Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon?

When Westside Cowboy played Later … With Jools Holland earlier this year, fellow guests Duran Duran offered some advice. “Nerves are just your mind telling you that you’re about to do something extraordinary,” Simon Le Bon told the band, who were “cacking their pants”. Le Bon’s words didn’t really help. “I was hoping for some real advice,” says vocalist and guitarist Reuben Haycocks, laughing. “Like, where do I look?”

The Manchester band have had to learn the ropes quickly. By 2025, only two years after forming, they had won Glastonbury’s emerging talent competition, supported Geese on the year’s buzziest indie tour and signed to a major label. “We’d be lying if we said there wasn’t a little bit of pressure,” says vocalist and guitarist Jimmy Bradbury.

The author of The Adversary and Yoga unearths a history that includes the Nazis, Russia, and the Académie Française

When Emmanuel Carrère’s mother, Hélène, died in 2023, at the age of 94, President Macron spoke at her memorial. She had been “perpetual secretary” of the Académie Française, in effect its head, and 200 people gathered at Les Invalides in Paris to pay tribute. Emmanuel’s father, Louis, was there too, in a wheelchair, only half aware of what was going on. This 400-page memoir, translated into English by John Lambert, is a homage to both parents and the unlikely history that brought them together. It’s also an act of reparation towards Hélène, whom Emmanuel worshipped as a child but upset as an adult by publishing a book that she’d forbidden him to write.

Hélène grew up in stateless poverty in Paris, the daughter of Georges Zourabichvili, whose parents had fled Georgia in 1921, and Nathalie von Pelken, who as a child had six governesses, one for each day excluding Sunday. Though “the magical world of the fallen Russian aristocracy” was the backdrop, conditions were tough, not least after Georges disappeared in 1944, murdered by partisans for alleged Nazi collaboration. Hélène was 15 at the time and unsuccessfully tried to hide the truth about George’s death from her younger brother, Nicolas.

The much-discussed Life of M is the latest in a lineage of celebrity satire that spans from Virginia Woolf to The Devil Wears Prada

In Rachel Cusk’s new novel, Life of M, the famous actor protagonist participates in an event at a book store after hours. The actor, M, is joined by “a writer of some renown” and a fashion model who possesses “some vague self-absorption”. A brand sponsored the affair. I spent literal hours trying to find the real-world equivalent of the opaque fictional passage. I scrolled through the backlogs of influencers I know to appear bookish in their content, who might have fallen prey to Dior’s Ulysses tote bag drop or Miu Miu’s “literary club”. I even stooped so low as to DM a Natalie Portman fan account, asking for leads.

As has been widely reported, M’s character is based on Portman. One journalist was credited with the scoop, but she simply finished her advance copy sooner than the rest of us; it’s clear from page three, when Cusk describes M’s breakout film as having “immediately brought her childhood to an end” (obviously Léon: The Professional; Portman was 11 when she was cast) and a later film about obsessive, wild ballerinas (Black Swan). But the rumor that Portman is unhappy with her portrayal – an impression that cannot immediately be gleaned from the book itself, especially depending on interpretation of its final lines – has trickled down to the raggiest of tabloids.

A terminally ill woman makes a final trip to Egypt in an exquisitely wrought portrait of end-of-life reckoning

Virginia Woolf said of Middlemarch that it is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people. In the shallow and infantilising age through which we are living, Colin Thubron dares to assume that his readers are adults. Passage is a very beautiful, very moving, authentic work of art. Hardly more than a novella, it sits lightly in the hand, but its emotional and aesthetic weight overtips the balance.

Thubron began his career as a travel writer and a large part of the action of Passage is set in a vividly but economically evoked Egypt. This is not the teeming Egypt of Cairo or Alexandria, but of the countryside, the villages, and the great immemorial tombs and ancient monuments. The best travel writers know that “abroad” is most convincingly evoked not by awed exclamations at the world’s wonders, but by an attitude of relaxed familiarity. Thubron is obviously an old Egypt hand, or at least has the skill to convince us that he is.

A brilliant new biography that does its subject the favour of taking her seriously – even if few else did

Barbara Cartland was famous for dictating her novels. With a pekingese clamped to her hot pink bosom she would lie back on a library couch and exhale a story about virginal girls taming wayward dukes, damaged airmen or misunderstood surgeons. Meanwhile Miss Savory, Mrs Smith or Mrs Morgan, picked for being unfidgety and sneezeless, would take everything down in immaculate Pitman shorthand. Cartland reckoned on being able to polish off 8,000 words a day. “In this way,” she told one of the many reporters who quizzed her on her astonishing productivity, “the typescript for an 80,000-word novel is finished in a fortnight.” At her peak she was pushing out 23 books a year which added up to 723 in total. Only Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare topped her lifetime sales of 750m.

Cartland was a dictator in other ways, too. Husbands, dogs, houses and the local council were all expected to bend themselves to her indomitable will. Resistance, let alone opposition, was futile. The managing director of the company that printed her books suggested that she read Nietzsche on the perceptive grounds that they had a lot of ideas in common. Oddly, he also declared himself madly in love with her. Behind that marshmallowy exterior, all pink chiffon, candyfloss hair and soft, smudgy lines, there lurked sinews of high-tensile steel.

An increasing tension between players and publishers about ownership of titles could lead to a divestment from the system the big companies are trying to enforce

At the time of press, there is a well-publicised protest taking place in the video games community. PlayStation 5 owners are being encouraged to log off from their consoles between 23 and 30 August – no playing games, no downloading new titles. The motivating factor is Sony’s decision to cease physical game disc production from January 2028. After that, games will only be released as digital products. In an act of poor timing or wilful defiance, Sony chose this week to send out a mass email reminding customers of their PS5 terms and conditions: “The software is licensed to you, not sold,” states the relevant clause. “You are granted a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and personal license to play … ” It knows, of course, that most customers won’t open the email, let alone read it.

There has always been a tension between game players and game publishers – an underlying sense of mutual mistrust. Players are wary of their favourite franchises being canned, or games being delayed or released with bugs. Publishers and manufacturers are wary of piracy and the capricious tastes of consumers. But now the atmosphere among many game players feels more starkly political than ever. Microsoft has been targeted by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement for its ties to the Israeli military; the consumer advocacy group Stop Killing Games is gaining support; players have protested over the purchase of Electronic Arts by a Saudi-led consortium – boycotts have been proposed in part due to the possible ramifications regarding LGBTQ+ content in titles such as The Sims. As the games industry has grown and globalised, its impact on culture, society and politics has increased. Yet, on an individual level, gamers and consumers are feeling increasingly powerless.

PC; Nathan Grange, Léonard Lemaitre, Niels Tiercelin, IronEqual
Race across impossible dystopian cityscapes in this exhilarating game of wall-runs, death-chancing leaps and split-second improvisation

At first, Vholume seems like a quick rush through some smartly selected references. Has this breathless yet austere parkour game been designed or ingeniously curated? The urban gymnast moveset comes from Mirror’s Edge. Level names use terms like conapt, first coined by Philip K Dick. And the environments themselves are dystopian and surreal, Half-Life 2’s City 17 colliding with the blasted avenues and mute archways of de Chirico. Many games have influences. Vholume has actual taste.

All the surface stuff fades away when the game is in motion, however. Vholume’s an on-foot racing game in which you hoof it through spectacularly odd environments, moving from one beam of concrete to the next. You’re clipping your wall-runs and power-slides together to bridge seemingly impossible gaps between buildings, forever in search of the next stretch of track, the next turn, the next jump that gets you to the level’s exit and the worldwide leaderboards. And once that’s done, you have a choice: onwards to another gauntlet, or back to the start of this one again to slice a few microseconds off your score? Or maybe you’d rather head over to multiplayer to race against the ghosts of others?

With oversight from Clive Barker himself, and a role reprisal as Pinhead from actor Doug Bradley, Revival aims to introduce new audiences to the discomfort of Hellraiser

If a horror game gives its own director a physical reaction, it’s probably doing something right. While researching the images people find hardest to look at, game director Emil Esov discovered he has trypophobia – a fear of clusters of small holes. Rather than tone the scary images down, he fed them straight into Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival.

The forthcoming first-person action-horror game drops players into a new story in Barker’s universe. Aidan Lynch must use the Genesis Configuration puzzle box to rescue his girlfriend from the Labyrinth as Pinhead, his Cenobites and a cult close in. But Revival is not built around jump scares. The team at Mad Head Games began with one question: what should players feel? The answer was discomfort.

Developer Patrick Grant was born in Australia and lives in New Zealand, but a childhood of British TV inspired him to set a comedy game in a bleak vision of the north

Something is amiss in the dingy town of Slagford, and curious scamp Pip Bunting is the only one who can find out what. So quit your mithering, it’s time to discover just how grim it truly is up north.

A Pocket Full of Slagford is an upcoming retro-styled 3D puzzle adventure game set in a surreal alternative-reality near-future northern England that never escaped the clutches of Thatcherism. The story follows the misadventures of a young local lad from the eponymous Slagford after he takes ownership of a mysterious relic that lets him wreak havoc on reality.

Summerhall, Edinburgh
Gabe Winsor’s inventively staged tale is charming and sweetly lo-fi, but the emotion never quite clicks

Deep sea diving and plumbing the depths of family history make a decent parallel in this nimble multimedia production by Buzzcut, which has a sweetly eccentric air yet leaves a little too much beneath the surface.

The premise is familiar, as Eddie (Morgan Beale) returns to the seaside town where his sister, Ira (Camilla Anvar), still lives in her childhood bedroom and runs the family pub now that their parents are gone. Guilt, resentment and jealousy bubble up as they squabble over which of them was their parents’ favourite and what to do with the business, while Ira shares her doubts about Eddie’s new husband.

At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 31 August

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Summerhall, Edinburgh
An endurance test for a standup already starring in a fringe hit, this show resurrects the man who drilled the first ever cross-Channel swimmer

‘Who are these people that do what [the rest of us] cannot?” Adam Riches’ solo play The Captain teases at the daredevil spirit, incarnate here in Capt Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the Channel unaided. Riches plays Fred Beckwith, a swimming coach who trains the young Webb for his tilt at greatness. The show takes the form of a lecture-cum-eulogy to the “half man, half fish” Webb, whose body lies under a shroud on a table in the apt surroundings of Summerhall’s Anatomy theatre.

A comedian by trade, Riches offers up a version of the true story here that’s as funny as his comedy elsewhere on the fringe, The Critic’s Way. The gentle sendup of Victorian values is droll. The swimming workshops and cheerleading of Webb’s channel crossing, to which the audience is co-opted with gusto (this is an Adam Riches show, after all), are stirring good fun. And there’s a real relish for the story’s bizarre details – such as Beckwith’s “mystical fifth swimming technique”, the sidestroke. Or the American rival to Webb who completes the crossing before him, albeit in a rubber suit that strongly resembles a boat.

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
The comedian delivers a tour of his peripatetic childhood, with stops for risque gags and to ponder his resemblance to a ‘porn Super Mario’

Comedy fans have seen Sami Abu Wardeh in several guises, from a capering clown catching cherry tomatoes in his mouth, to teller (on last year’s fringe) of the historical stories behind the Gaza crisis. But we’ve never seen him deliver straight autobiographical standup – until now. The new direction, the 40-year-old tells us, is thanks to his agent, who’s told him that audiences need to get to know him better. And who may be concerned, Wardeh implies, by recent dust-ups between this “anti-fascist”/pro-Palestine performer and one or two audience members to whom that worldview was unwelcome.

Sami Abu Wardeh Hates You (its title notwithstanding) presents us with a more palatable act, one effortlessly capable of delivering mainstream comedy. From the opening gag about walk-on music, to the tour of his peripatetic childhood (from Kuwait via southwest London to Dubai), to the risque gags about wanking and his resemblance to a “porn Super Mario”, the show might have been designed to demonstrate the Irish-Palestinian’s mastery of standup topics and techniques. But he gives them his own spin; whether that’s workshopping racist slurs with his bully, or orchestrating his Middle Eastern schoolmates in a rap-along to Will Smith’s Men in Black.

Summerhall, Edinburgh
The comedian brings a calm authority to her tale of a haunted house and digs out maximum horror from a minimal staging

Some shows work their magic on you slowly but Kirsty Mann will have you hooked in under a minute. A thunderous sound effect, a flash of blood-red lighting and a DIY ghost costume is all it takes to get the audience strapped in for her comic tale of a haunting. “Are you a believer?” she asks us. Mann may not convince you of supernatural powers but she overwhelmingly proves the power of storytelling.

It succeeds partly because our host is such a natural on stage and so rational, too. Mann quickly comes across as an ordinary neighbour, even while detailing the most uncommon events of moving into her new home. When she and her husband snapped up a semi in east London they knew it was a fixer-upper but it turns out the knotweed is the least of their problems. The previous resident died in the same bed in which they consummate their moving in and it gets creepier by the day. Why does the toilet seemingly flush itself? Are those scratch marks on the bedroom door? What the hell is going on under the apple tree?

Musicians and performers pay tribute to the country legend who managed to be a generational talent, a formidable entrepreneur, a dedicated philanthropist and a truly kind person

Shirley Collins, singer-songwriter

The actor had sought $8m in attorney costs resulting from her protracted legal battle with Baldoni

Blake Lively has been awarded more than $400,000 in attorneys’ fees after her 18-month legal battle with Justin Baldoni.

On Wednesday, judge Lewis Liman awarded the actor $363,245.40 in attorneys’ fees and $44,206.35 in costs, figures far lower than the $8m Lively had sought.

Like co-star Tom Felton, Grint will once again play the role that made him famous, in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Rupert Grint is set to reprise the role of Ron Weasley in the Broadway hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

The actor will join the long-running stage show for 17 weeks starting in February 2027.

Insecure Men singer has now been dropped by his record label and had tour dates cancelled after two women shared allegations about his behaviour

Saul Adamczewski of Insecure Men and formerly of Fat White Family has been dropped by his record label and had tour dates cancelled after two women shared allegations of physical and emotional abuse against the musician.

One woman said that the pair had a short relationship that resulted in a pregnancy, after which, she alleged, Adamczewski “made it his duty to make me suffer. He has been violent, pushed me, thrown glass bottles at me, showered me with beer […] insulted me, taken my passport from me, stolen my money and more, all while I had our baby.”

Built in the 60s and 70s to curb a holiday exodus to Spain, with apartments inspired by Mayan pyramids and featuring ‘intergalactic curves’, La Grande-Motte is having another moment in the sun with fans of modern architecture

My dream holiday is a trip back in time. Not to see the results of seismic Pompeii or 15th-century Machu Picchu – although I love both – but somewhere created specifically between the mid 1950s and 1970s, when cities were getting weird. I love postwar architourism, exploring urban planning at its most frenzied and optimistic. I have relished trips to Niemeyer’s Brasília and Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh in India, where the monumental and visionary modernist architecture and interiors are at odds with the minimal population. So La Grande-Motte, the retro futurist folly of a resort town on the southern coast of France, a 30-minute drive from Montpellier, had long been on my “must visit” list.

The tourist board of this Occitanie seaside town likes to flag up some superficial parallels between it and the aforementioned cities, but this isn’t a high-concept capital city or administrative hub. It was built in the late 1960s and early 1970s purely to persuade the French to stop going south to the Costa Brava in Spain. As part of an initiative by the French government, a stretch of windswept mosquito-infested coast between Montpellier and Perpignan, including Gruissan and Port Leucate, was reimagined as an alternative to the Côte d’Azur with several new-build beach towns. La Grande-Motte would be the weirdest project. It was made for fun. It’s also well positioned to visit the nearby salt marshes and 13th-century walled-in town of Aigues-Mortes, for when you want to feel as if you’ve ticked a few more holiday boxes.

Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?

Every now and then the Thursday quiz gets involved in a flap, as it did last week with “birb”-gate. After a sustained campaign lasting at least two weeks, subeditors finally relented and allowed the quiz to call our feathered friends “birbs” – only for half the comment section to revolt against the indignity of modern internet parlance. Still, that is nothing compared with the time a reader complained that the quiz using the phrase “baby cows” was unbecoming of a broadsheet newspaper. Anyway, 15 questions on news, general knowledge and obscure trivia await, and no “birbs” were harmed in the process. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 262

With a genuinely impressive lifetime guarantee, Nectar’s mattress outperforms pricier rivals for comfort and motion isolation

• The best mattresses, tested

Memory foam has been called the Marmite of the bed industry. Nice soundbite, but I think it’s more like butter – because many mattresses now include a “comfort layer” of this squishy material to make them more palatable. You wouldn’t eat a whole block of butter, though, and you probably wouldn’t want to sleep on a mattress made entirely from memory foam. Too much squish, too little support.

The Nectar Classic memory foam, like so many of the best foam and hybrid (foam and springs) mattresses, tempers the marshmallowy feel of true memory foam by sandwiching it between other types of foam, namely breathable polyfoam and dense support foam. As I discovered when testing it, this creates a lovely balance of comfort and firmness that feels more like a hybrid mattress, only without the bounce.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food, and the basic they scrimp on? The former reality star and author talks family heirlooms, organic veg and splurge-worthy jeans with the Filter

• How I Shop with Fred Sirieix

Millie Mackintosh rose to fame as part of the original cast of the reality show Made in Chelsea, filming five series before leaving in 2013. She has since established herself as a fitness, health and beauty ambassador, releasing her own beauty collection with Boots in 2017, and publishing Made: A Book of Style, Food and Fitness.

After choosing to go alcohol-free, she shared her journey in the bestselling Bad Drunk, co-written with Dr Ellie Cannon. Mackintosh speaks candidly about the realities of motherhood, mental health and self-care on Instagram.

Our writer spent weeks putting capsules, sheets and liquid detergent through their paces to find the best for your clothes and the planet

• Sustainable cleaning subscriptions that make life easier

Nothing makes falling into bed more enjoyable than freshly laundered sheets, especially if they’ve just been dried in the sunshine. It’s a definite bonus, though, to know your clean bedding won’t bring you out in a rash or pollute your local river.

Laundry detergent can be a troublesome product. A few years ago, I suffered a full-body rash after using pound-shop detergent on my sheets. I switched to a big-brand product and never had a reaction again, but there’s still the question of whether its ingredients may be causing environmental harm after they’ve gone down the drain.

Brilliant for managing breakouts and refreshing puffy eyes, but after months of treatments, is Shark’s light therapy device the one our writer would buy now?

• The best LED face masks

Of all the LED masks I’ve tested, the Shark CryoGlow feels like the most heavily marketed. Touted as a one-stop shop for anti-ageing, blemish-busting and undereye cooling, it’s trickled its way into countless influencer morning routines and post-work wind-downs, slowly but surely filling up my social media timeline.

As an acne-prone woman whose work life revolves around beauty tech, the adverts are well placed. But that doesn’t negate the fact that, to the average consumer, LED therapy still reeks of pseudoscience. If my younger self got wind that I was strapping a glowing mask to my face every day, she would die laughing.

Laborious to harvest and extortionately priced, the sunset-coloured stigmas of the saffron crocus have an extraordinarily warm, pungent taste. Fortunately, however, a little goes a very long way …

The saffron crocus has six lilac-purple flowers, three yellow stamens and three orange-red stigmas that extend beyond the petals like the wiry antennae of an insect. The thread-like stigmas have to be picked only by hand when the flowers are fully open, a laborious, finickety job that hasn’t changed much since ancient times. Then, to avoid the colour and flavour fading, the stigmas need to be dried very quickly, a process that reduces their weight by about 80%. Tens of thousands of fiery-looking filaments are required to produce half a kilogram of the dried threads, which make the “hay” or powder we know as saffron and explains the exorbitant cost. Fortunately, just a few threads of this precious spice go a long way.

Native to Crete, Iran and south-west Asia, the saffron crocus has been cultivated since the dawn of civilisation for its medicinal properties, as well as for use in cosmetics, perfume, food and as a dye. According to Alan Davidson in The Oxford Companion to Food, the Moguls brought the use of saffron from Persia to India, in particular Kashmir; meanwhile, in the westward direction, the Arabs were cultivating saffron in Spain by AD960, although it was not until the 13th century that cultivation spread to Italy, France, Germany and England, particularly Essex. In his book The Last Food of England, Marwood Yeatman describes the “orderly strips of purple flowers inches apart in beds of up to 10ft wide” growing in a field outside the prosperous, half-timbered Essex wool town of Chipping Walden. “The women (‘crokers’) stooped to lift the crop on damp and dewy September mornings.” By the early 1500s, Chipping Walden had been renamed Saffron Walden.

The cookbook author and owner of Melbourne’s Beatrix Bakes shares a her ‘100% reliable’ formula for freeing bundts from tins

When all the layer cakes are baked and iced, I will always love a slice of pretty patterned bundt. Especially one that is lightened with the perfect amount of baking powder (overly dense bundts are stodgy sadness) and brightened with limes and yoghurt.

Cake goop – a mix of flour, oil and butter – is a gift of guaranteed cake release that I found on the internet, and it means no more stuck bundts. Bless the baker who invented it! Goop has it all – release, plus enough sticking power to hold the batter as it rises and cools, without slumping. Additionally, mixing the flour with oil means you don’t get that fine, white, dusty crust on the outside of the cooked cake. Goop is 100% reliable with a 100% untarnished release record in my kitchen.

Shake up the remnants of a bottle of ketchup with a splash of sprits, a heap of mayonnaise and a few other simple additions, and turn it into one of the culinary world’s most famous sauces

My new favourite preparation for sauces, marinades and dressings is in a near-empty jar, tub or bottle, so I can upcycle all the remains. Rather than washing it and putting it in the recycling, I instead add a few store-cupboard ingredients to create a dressing or sauce, often re-exploring classics such as a retro Marie Rose sauce or my yoghurt-pot chicken. It’s a convenient way to use up the last dregs of a ketchup bottle, for instance, which often seems to harbour exactly the right amount of sauce.

My Marie Rose recipe is inspired by the one in Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham’s 1997 The Prawn Cocktail Years. It’s wonderfully simple, with the sophisticated addition of a dash of cognac, though other recipes use brandy. I had neither, however, but I did have some sweet vermouth left over, which worked exceptionally well, so feel free to experiment with whatever spirits you have to hand – vodka, for instance, works brilliantly, and gives the sauce a nice kick.

Serve this cold curry with a hot, fenugreek-flavoured preserve for a seasonal refresher

This lovely summery “curry” is a cold, refreshing dish from Karnataka in India, and is eaten widely in Tamil Nadu, just 20 miles across the Palk Strait from my ancestral Tamil homeland in north and eastern Sri Lanka. Along with chefs Louis and Seb in our development kitchen, we decided that smacking the cucumbers helps give them a silky texture, and means the fragrant yoghurt base can get into all the nooks and crannies. It’s wonderful with plain rice and a side of fenugreek-heavy hot Tamil pickle, made with English gooseberries rather than superfood nelli, both of which are said to make your skin shine and hair bouncy.

With many adults admitting they feel lonely, meetup platforms offer the chance to make new connections

Would you pay £20 a month for the chance of making a friend, on the understanding that an algorithm – not you – gets to decide who you’ll meet?

Driven by the decline of “third spaces” such as youth centres and pubs, an increase in remote working and rising loneliness – 40% of adults aged 16 to 29 feel lonely “always, often or some of the time”, according to the Office for National Statistics – paid social events are now in vogue.

Research shows young adults often feel isolated. So alongside embracing ‘grandma hobbies’, they want to get involved with the places they live and be good neighbours

Name: Community-maxxing.

Age: The portmanteau is recent, but Homo sapiens have always been social creatures.

He has chased a deer across a dual carriageway, eaten an entire tray of chocolate brownies and jumped head first into a canal. But despite all the worry he brings us, he is extraordinarily lovable

Ernie found his way into our hearts and home about nine years ago, when he strategically crawled into my lap during a family visit to meet a litter of puppies. While all the other beagle puppies ran wild, Ernie sat comfortably on me with his long, soft ears dangling down. We chose him because of his placid nature and named him Ernie after my mum’s late dad, who coincidentally also had short legs and a bit of a round belly.

After a few weeks we realised that Ernie was anything but placid. His gentle temperament quickly morphed into an unruly and persistent need to find his way into danger.

Following the all-clear, Kevin and Jade found a new openness in discussing sex and intimacy – and also a shared desire for exploring polyamory

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

Since the all clear, my relationship with my sexuality has shifted a lot

We want our balance back, but we can’t access the money to pay for essential repairs and settle an electricity bill

Last November, Lloyds Bank informed me, in my role as treasurer of my parish church, that the church account was to be closed and that I should open a new business account instead. This can only be done online, but a fault with their system prevented me – and local branch staff – from doing so.

At the branch staff’s suggestion, I opened the new account with a different bank in early March. Since then, I’ve been trying in vain to get Lloyds to transfer the balance from the closed account.

Britons will be able to buy ‘balcony’ systems they can install themselves from 27 August thanks to rule change

Despite this summer bringing hours of sunshine, many Britons have been unable to cash in on free electricity generated by the sun. Rooftop solar panels are usually out of the question if you live in a flat or rent your home, and the cost has made them prohibitive to many more households.

However, this could be about to change because next week the first wave of low-cost “plug-in” solar panels will go on sale in Great Britain.

It has not paid me for months and I am in severe financial distress, and apart from my husband while I try to sort it out

I stopped receiving my NHS pension in May and, when I rang to ask why, I was informed that I was deceased.

I have repeatedly called to no avail and my emails have received auto-generated responses.

Sign-up perks may capture the attention but should the focus be on the interest-free overdraft?

• Students on their biggest financial shocks

• The best student deals and discounts

• An insider’s tips on student money

In the scramble to sort out university accommodation, join freshers group chats and work out how a student loan payment is meant to stretch across a whole term, there is one big decision that is easy to put off but worth getting right: which student bank account to open.

Student accounts work like any other current account but come with two extras that don’t apply to the general public: an interest-free overdraft, and a lot of perks designed to hook you in as a customer for life.

The public health emergencies in 2022 and 2024 saw the virus reported in 145 countries, but in the new cases children appear particularly affected

A fresh outbreak of mpox in Guinea Bissau – the country’s first – means the virus formerly known as monkey pox is back in the headlines. So what has changed?

Since 2022, there have been almost 190,000 lab-confirmed cases of mpox reported worldwide in 145 countries. Before then, outbreaks of mpox tended to be relatively small and in a handful of African countries, where the viral infection was known to be endemic.

Scientists found those who had used hormone replacement therapy were 10% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia

Hormone replacement therapy may reduce the risk of dementia, a study has found.

Scientists tracked more than 180,000 postmenopausal women in the UK in the largest study of its kind. They found that those who had used HRT were 10% less likely to develop any type of dementia and 16% less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the most common form, compared with those who had never used it.

Discussing people’s bodies can be fraught. We asked eating disorder experts how to do so – or not – responsibly

In the age of Ozempic and people being open about plastic surgery, discussion about people’s bodies is rife. At the same time, nobody seems quite sure how to talk about them, as shown by recent coverage of celebrities like Ariana Grande.

It is a fraught topic. We asked eating disorder experts for guidelines to follow when talking about other people’s bodies, and how to do so without doing harm.

Creatine has become the go-to supplement for anyone wanting to give their fitness a boost and build muscle. It’s even made it out of the gym, with influencers touting its cognitive benefits. But what’s the science behind creatine, and does the evidence stack up? Madeleine Finlay hears from science editor Ian Sample and Dr Justin Roberts, professor of nutritional physiology at Anglia Ruskin University

Is it true that … we should all be taking creatine?

Athletes and fitness influencers use creatine, but what is it? And does it work?

The 70s was a golden era for the jumpsuit, but I’m happy they’re back, thanks to Harry Styles, Benson Boone and – of course – me

Since appearing on The Traitors, I’ve become synonymous with jumpsuits. In fact, I’ve been required to wear one at every public appearance I have made since it aired, despite only wearing two on the show. That’s the power of the jumpsuit, I guess.

When I was packing for the show, I wasn’t even sure I would bring them – and not everyone watching liked them. Lots of people did, but I got messages saying: “What the hell is he wearing?”. The memes were also phenomenal. My favourite was my head on John Travolta’s body in a still from Saturday Night Fever.

The event feted its 25 year anniversary with labels like Zambesi, promising emerging designers and an explosion of Māori and Indigenous culture

New Zealand fashion week took place in Auckland this week at the heritage-listed Shed 10 on Waitemata harbour and other venues across the city. Founded by Dame Pieter Stewart in 2001, now run by entrepreneur Feroz Ali, the 25th anniversary featured a mix of established names, exciting newcomers and a dramatically enhanced Indigenous program. The event boasted three separate group showcases of creatives from not just the Pacific region, but India, Taiwan and the US, in addition to the inaugural New Zealand Indigenous fashion symposium.

If ‘lifespan’ is the time you’re alive and ‘healthspan’ the years you’re disease-free, then ‘hotspan’ is the period you’re attractive and vibrant. Want to increase yours? Experts share their tips

Forget 12-step skincare routines, red light therapy and injectables – the single most important thing you can do for your skin is wear UV protection. “Not just sun protection, but UV protection, every single day, regardless of weather or season,” says Dr Jennifer Owens, resident aesthetic expert at the Reborne Longevity clinic in London. “Up to 90% of visible skin ageing is caused by UV exposure – nothing else comes close in terms of impact.”

Cute, egoless canines offer a break from a world that feels dominated by ‘nepo babies’ and ‘Maga lady aesthetic’

What do Nicole Kidman, a pair of “nepo babies” and a beagle called Sansa Martínez Berlingeri have in common? They all appear on the covers of the all-important September issues of Vogue and Dogue. But the winner of the unofficial battle of the covers? The one with the keenest sense of smell and a penchant for playing with socks.

The September covers of British Vogue and Vogue US have come under intense scrutiny after their recent release, while their canine counterpoint, Dogue, has been almost unanimously celebrated.

The crowds at the top of Yr Wyddfa, the highest mountain in Wales, are now so huge that seasoned hikers and climbers are simply walking past them. Is everyone just making a mountain out of a molehill?

Name: The Snowdon queue.

Age: A decade and a half, give or take.

In the shadow of the crowded Lake District, this quiet coast path offers great views, breathtaking nature and a striking new hotel on the historic waterfront

What’s the edgiest region in the UK? I don’t mean in the sense of sketchy or fashionable, but where on the map of these four nations feels most at the margins of everywhere else? For my money, the north Cumbrian coast is a strong contender. Hemmed in by the Lake District fells on one side and the Solway Firth and Irish Sea on the other, this strip of towns and villages, farms and nature reserves, clinging to the low-lying littoral, has been battling nature, weather, geology and geography throughout its history.

Coastal erosion is part of the challenge. Like the railway navvies before them, the planners and builders of the England Coast Path (ECP) have done sterling work at plotting a viable footpath and shoring it up. But there are and always will be sections that are compromised and even impassable. I chose a section that would take three days, walking southwards, and my final destination, St Bees, was only reachable via a diversion. It’s all part of the adventure, and we’re lucky to have the ECP as a national trail, as it means issues and obstacles on the English coast will usually be promptly addressed.

From smoked kippers in Northumberland to dolphin spotting in Dorset and a palm-fringed village on a sea loch in the Scottish Highlands

The historic harbour is the hub of this working East Neuk fishing port, home to a fleet of about 30 small trawlers and creel boats. Their catches are sold at the covered market on the quay each weekday morning, and served at the harbourside Dory Bistro and Chip Ahoy at the Larachmhor pub. Pittenweem (which means “place of the cave”) also has a Victorian-era swimming pool next to the beach, which is filled by the tide twice a day. After falling into disrepair, it was saved by a local group called the West Braes Project and reopened in 2021, along with the crazy golf course. Early each August, there is an annual arts festival with exhibits by nearly 200 artists in harbourside spaces, heritage buildings, homes and studios. Pittenweem is flanked by two other pretty harbour villages, St Monans and Anstruther, while a third, Crail, is a little further north; the Fife Coastal Path links them all. The Bank in Anstruther has harbour-view rooms (doubles from £120 B&B).

The city’s rich history and culture have so far flown under the radar, but its fiercely proud inhabitants are determined to change that

We have hardly begun walking before I spot the side alley, curving away from the main road in a patchwork of sunlit yellow walls, shuttered windows and shadowy archways. “What’s up there?” Elena, my guide to the city, pulls a wry smile. “That is Carmine. As a kid, I was warned not to go there.”

I turn up the alley. There’s a lot of graffiti. Next to an anarchy symbol, someone has sprayed “morte al decoro” – death to decorum. I’m intrigued. We go further, finding a labyrinth of colourful streets filled with bars and restaurants, a few just opening up for the day.

Dublin’s representative in the traditional festival defiantly reckons with xenophobia and balances Gaelic pride with her Somali heritage

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Last week marked the climax of Ireland’s Rose of Tralee festival, an annual celebration of Irish women, culture and the Irish diaspora. When Suad Mooge was chosen as Dublin’s participant in the festival earlier this year, she quickly became a symbol of Ireland’s fraught conversation around immigration and what constitutes Irish identity.

I caught up with Suad on a video call a week after the festival’s culmination, and found someone reflective and determined in the face of criticism.

Fiction sleuths are obsessed with the idea that the book, Life of M, is a flagrant riff on the actor’s life. And despite being a firm Cusk fan, Portman is reportedly not happy

Life of M, the latest book by the critically acclaimed author Rachel Cusk, is being billed by its publisher, Faber, as a “blazing interrogation of fame, power, beauty and truth” – and openly alleged as a thinly veiled portrait of Natalie Portman. For weeks before publication, speculation has swirled that its movie-star main character is based on Portman – to her reported displeasure.

With the book out this week, readers and critics alike are judging it as literature and gossip. Don’t want to read it yourself, but want to have an opinion? Here’s your crib sheet.

From bowl cuts to extreme mullets, punk dos to bad dye jobs, a terrible hairstyle can never be forgotten – even decades after it has grown out

It’s the late 1990s. Big, round, feathered fringes are a huge deal at my primary school. Most of my friends have one, influenced by Britney Spears or Emma Bunton. I, too, have a fringe. Mine, as you can see, appears more inspired by Kevin Keegan circa 1993.

Service charges used to be a matter of choice, but now consumers feel obliged to pay them for even a cup of coffee. How do we navigate this minefield and who is really profiting?

In a London pub, Greg Double was brutally confronted with the reality of Britain’s evolving tipping culture. “I was annoyed about the pint being eight quid, but then when you put service on top, it’s absolutely criminal,” he says. In the past, you might have told the bar staff to keep the change or have a “drink” on you, but since when did we routinely tip in pubs? Or coffee shops? Or, worst of all, at self-service machines? Tip creep is happening.

Tipping was awkward enough in the UK when the general rule was 10% at a restaurant, plus anxiety about whether you should tip the hairdresser, babysitter or food-delivery driver. Now, with tipping suggested ever more frequently, US-style, it has become a minefield to Britons. The amounts edge higher – in fancier London restaurants, a 15% service charge is relatively commonplace. And it’s often asked for – in coffee shops for example, when you pay – before any service is delivered.

The standup has been the host of the panel show Mock the Week for more than two decades. As it returns to UK screens, he discusses its years as a macho bear pit, the dearth of jokes about Brexit – and why it’s important to punch up

Dara Ó Briain is still having photos taken when I arrive at the studio in west London. A comedian requires comedy pictures, so Pål, the photographer, has him sitting on the floor holding up a scroll of the rust-coloured paper that he’s using as a backdrop. It looks as if the roof is falling in on Ó Briain. He calls over to me. “We can tailor the interview to match the pictures,” he says. “Starting with: do you ever feel like you’re trapped in a box?”

Shoot over, he ditches his jacket and we walk up the road to find a quiet corner in a pub. There’s a new season of Mock the Week, the topical satirical panel show that ran for 17 years on BBC Two until 2022 and has now been reborn on the free-to-air channel TLC. A roster of comedians make up two teams and compete in a faux gameshow, ostensibly to answer questions about the previous week’s news, but really just to be funny.

North Shields’ Gabriele Keenaghan was 12 when she was evacuated from Nazi Austria in 1939. She remembers the shock of leaving her family at Westbahnhof station

Gabriele Keenaghan still remembers the day in April 1939 when she said goodbye to her grandmother at a Vienna railway station for a Kindertransport to Britain – tears were strictly forbidden.

“I was apprehensive and I was worried because Nazis in black uniforms were on the platform,” she said. “I was only 12 years old so I think they were frightening … terrifying.

Hundreds of millions of pounds of dirty money are being deposited at post offices every year. So why are the police reluctant to investigate the scale of the problem?

• Last chance to buy the summer issue of The Long Read magazine, now with 15% off. Click here to order

Leicestershire police won’t say who first told them about Jigar Gheewala, but you can see why, once they had heard of him, they decided to find out more. Gheewala was unemployed, had no apparent income, yet lived in a £1.3m house and sent his three children to private school. “He was a declared bankrupt, with a bank account that was absolutely not reflective of what it should be,” said financial crime supervisor Laura Panter of Leicestershire police’s economic crime team. “That was our starting point.”

Over the course of 2020, despite being on benefits, Gheewala’s bank account received more than £880,000 in cash in 200 different deposits. He was, it turned out, a money launderer, but not the kind you’ll see in the movies. Gheewala’s deposits had been made not in Liechtenstein or on Grand Cayman, but at various post office branches in Leicester, one thick wodge of banknotes after another.

Floods and mudslides have swept away houses and roads with many hundreds missing

Hundreds are missing and at least 160 people have died after torrential floods ⁠hit the Himalayan border areas of ⁠Nepal and in ​Tibet in China. An avalanche of ice and rock triggered massive flash floods causing widespread damage to villages and infrastructure.

Officials said hundreds of travellers from countries including India, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Malaysia, were reported missing.

We would like to hear your tributes and memories of country music star, actor and philanthropist Dolly Parton – whether you met her, or appreciated her work

The death of country music legend Dolly Parton was announced today. She was 80.

The singer-songwriter known for hits such as I Will Always Love You, Jolene and 9 to 5 also invested millions in child literacy, Covid-19 vaccine development and other causes.

As people grow used to AI chatbots, we’d like to hear your views about Google’s search engine

Google has put artificial intelligence at the front and center of its search bar. The most-visited site on the internet still shows the same list of links to users, but they have to scroll past a summarized response from an AI chatbot, a feature Google calls AI Overviews. The change to what was once the gateway to the rest of the internet has been profound, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting.

“AI is driving the most significant upgrade of the Google Search experience ever,” Liz Reid, Google’s vice-president of search, wrote last August. In May, the company said more AI is coming.

How did it affect your plans for either further education or getting a job? Did you go through resits? Tell us

The government plans to introduce a new “stepping stone” qualification from 2028 for students in England who do not achieve a pass in GCSE maths or English.

The new preparatory level 1 qualifications - one level below GCSEs - will “give students the essential knowledge and skills before they resit English or maths GCSE,” in an effort to “end the resit treadmill”, the government said.

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