Forgive me if I’m not congratulating officers for investigating Andrew now – instead of, say, many years ago when they were with him in Jeffrey Epstein’s house

How noble that Thames Valley police has let it be known that its misconduct-in-public-office investigation into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is also considering potential offences including corruption and sexual misconduct. On Friday, it made a public appeal for potential victims and witnesses to come forward.

Obviously, the best time for the police to have started quietly asking questions was shortly after Metropolitan police officers – Andrew’s close protection detail – ferried him back from a London nightclub to a house with some other friends in their 40s, and one young-looking 17-year-old girl. Then waited outside till he decided it was time to come home. But as the saying goes: the second-best time is now. No wait, the second-best time was probably when Andrew paid a reported £12m to settle out of court with Virginia Giuffre, despite maintaining he had no recollection of meeting her. (He denies any wrongdoing.) Ach no, the second-best time was when leaked emails suggest the former prince passed his Met close protection officer Giuffre’s birthdate and US social security number and asked him to carry out checks on her. Sorry, wrong again, the second-best time was a full 12 years ago, when Giuffre alleged that she was sex trafficked to and assaulted by Andrew on that night mentioned above, as well as on two other occasions.

Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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British army is 80-90% short of drones as military exercise aims to build on European defence strategy

Deep in Charing Cross underground station, in the disused terminus of the Jubilee line, a secret Nato command bunker has this week been discreetly at work. Dozens of mostly British soldiers were engaged in a war game defending Estonia from a Russian invasion in 2030, unbeknownst to commuters and tourists bustling above.

The secret chambers are behind two sets of normally locked, metal double doors. A red glow at the bottom of the escalator beyond is the first sign of troops below; next are mocked up newspaper covers pasted over ageing adverts. A British Nato force has deployed to Estonia they blare, in response to a Russian massing of troops on the border.

Addicted to your devices? According to experts, not all screen time is created equal. Here are some healthier ways to spend time online

The average UK adult spends around 7.5 hours a day on a screen, whether that’s a phone, laptop, games console or TV. That figure may even be conservative, particularly for those whose jobs require them to be online. As concern around screen time mounts, the instinctive response has been to demonise it. The reality, however, is more nuanced. As the Guardian’s video games editor and author of Super Nintendo: How One Japanese Company Helped the World Have Fun, Keza MacDonald, recently put it: “Not all screen time is created equal.”

Spending an hour learning a language on Duolingo is not the same as flicking through dozens of short-form videos on TikTok. Video-calling a friend is not equivalent to trolling someone on Facebook. The difference lies in how consciously we engage.

His starring role in Richard Gadd’s brutal toxic masculinity series is a far cry from his days as Billy Elliot. The actor opens up about gruelling shoots, dancing on toilets – and why he can’t ever just chill out

Not many actors are relieved when they have to film an eye-poppingly explicit sex scene, but that was the case with Jamie Bell on Half Man. His role involved chemsex in saunas, dogging in car parks and illicit quickies in library loos. “Honestly, I was so grateful to be shooting that stuff and not fucking 16-page dialogue scenes, where you’re emoting and it’s so intense,” says Bell. “On days when my character had to have sex with random people, I’d think: ‘Thank God!’ Frankly, it came as a welcome reprieve.”

Richard Gadd’s first TV show since the Emmy-gobbling global Netflix hit Baby Reindeer, Half Man chronicles the combustible, codependent relationship between two “brothers from another lover”. Niall (Bell) is bookish, bullied and closeted. Ruben (Gadd) is the swaggeringly violent ex-con son of his mother’s girlfriend. The six-part drama – which reaches its devastating finale next week – traces the inseparable duo’s toxic relationship across three decades.

Departing Manchester City manager has left huge imprint but equally stands alone in his willingness to adapt

When Pep Guardiola arrived in English football in the summer of 2016, there was a degree of scepticism. The quality of the football produced by his Barcelona had been extraordinary – and it’s perhaps difficult now, 18 years on, to remember the impact that side had when they first emerged, how incomprehensible the focus on passing and the manipulation of space seemed.

But his Bayern Munich had not won the Champions League and it was reasonable enough to ask whether that very precise, technically accomplished style would be as effective amid the hurly-burly of an English winter as it had been in Spain and Germany.

Call it a mix of collectivism and entrepreneurialism or just an overarching vibe, but the mayor’s philosophy could be on the way to Westminster

Among the underrated later work of those revered sons of Manchester the Smiths, there is a completely jaw-dropping song simply titled London. Full of fury and excitement, it depicts a Mancunian as he boards a train, travelling to the capital full of ambition and hope, but also gripped by a gnawing ambivalence. Andy Burnham, whose love of the band is hardly a surprise, may well recognise not only its defining theme, but the song’s accidental encapsulation of his decision to try to make his way to the House of Commons, in a line crooned by Morrissey in slightly mocking tones: “And do you think you’ve made the right decision this time?”

Even if some observers only give him a 45% chance of winning, it looks like Burnham has, particularly when it comes to his pitch for power. Eleven years ago, let us not forget, a somewhat different incarnation of the future Greater Manchester mayor was one of four candidates for the Labour leadership, along with Jeremy Corbyn, and chose to stage one of his launch events at the City of London HQ of the auditing firm Ernst & Young. There he said he might back further benefit cuts, and claimed that too many people associated Labour with “giving people who don’t want to help themselves an easy ride”. In 2022, he told me this was the result of bad advice: “I listened to people that I shouldn’t have, really. It was tone-deaf … it wasn’t me. It wasn’t authentic.”

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

London mayor accused of ‘putting politics above public safety’ for rejecting deal to use AI in intelligence analysis

• UK politics live – latest updates

Palantir has accused Sadiq Khan of “putting politics above public safety” after the London mayor blocked its £50m contract with the Metropolitan police in a move that has also led to tensions inside Labour over its involvement with the US tech company.

Louis Mosley, who heads Palantir in the UK and Europe, accused Khan of politicising procurement after he rejected a two-year deal for Scotland Yard to use AI to process intelligence in criminal investigations, as first revealed by the Guardian. Mosley said: “What Londoners value is not being mugged, not being raped by a serving police officer.”

Defence secretary also asks if billionaire’s company may have benefited from Iran war, which Reform leader initially supported

• UK politics live – latest updates

• Business live – latest updates

The defence secretary, John Healey, has urged Nigel Farage to provide transparency about the £5m gift he received from a billionaire businessman, in particular over whether any of the sum could have been linked to Russia-connected profits.

In a letter to the Reform UK leader, Healey also asked him to address the possibility that the war against Iran might boost the revenues of AML Global, an aviation fuel company owned by Christopher Harborne, who gave Farage the £5m in 2024. Farage initially supported the US-Israeli attacks on Iran.

Judge says it is ‘disappointing’ there will have to be retrial of prisoners accused over Lostprophets singer’s death

The jury in the trial of two prisoners accused of murdering the disgraced former Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins has been discharged for legal reasons.

The judge at Leeds crown court told jurors on Friday that there would be a retrial. “Very reluctantly, I’m going to discharge you and the case will have to be retried,” said Mr Justice Hilliard.

Labour MPs and PR experts praise his refreshingly forthright approach that is a marked contrast to Keir Starmer

• UK politics live – latest updates

Andy Burnham’s fingers must be aching. Between pitching to become the MP for Makerfield, continuing in his day job as the mayor of Greater Manchester and going for his regular runs, Keir Starmer’s would-be challenger has also found enough time to reply to dozens of posts on social media.

Since it became clear that Burnham planned to stand as a candidate in the Makerfield byelection last Thursday, allies have delighted in his snarky retorts on X, pointing to posts that combine humour with a passive-aggressive thumbs-up emoji as proof he is a natural, and refreshingly forthright, communicator.

Judge’s decision sends a ‘bad message’, says MP, while Hampshire police commissioner also joins criticism

The MP Jess Phillips has condemned the non-custodial sentences given to three teenage boys for the rape of two girls as “unduly lenient”.

Phillips, who was the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls before resigning this month, said that giving the boys youth rehabilitation orders sent a “bad message”. The government said it had received multiple requests for the sentences to be reviewed.

• Tuchel ‘surprised’ by Maguire’s reaction to being left out

• Live reaction | Head coach explains why he picked Toney

Thomas Tuchel has named his England squad for this summer’s World Cup, handing a shock call-up to Ivan Toney, picking Djed Spence over the exiled Trent Alexander-Arnold and, as expected, finding no space for Harry Maguire, Cole Palmer and Phil Foden.

Tuchel, charged with leading England to glory in Canada, Mexico and the US, called players about his plans on Wednesday and Thursday and confirmed his selection on Friday.

Temperatures expected to reach as high as 33C in southern England or Midlands on Monday

• Britain braces for long, hot traffic queues amid extra border checks

Amber heat health alerts have been issued for the bank holiday weekend as record-breaking May temperatures as high as 33C (91F) are expected in parts of the UK.

The alerts – which indicate a possible risk to life as well as potential damage to properties, significant travel delays and power cuts – were announced for the East Midlands, West Midlands, the east of England, London and the south-east, and will be in effect from 2pm on Friday until 5pm on Wednesday.

Bill Winters faced backlash over remarks about some of near 8,000 staff set to lose roles to AI

The chief executive of Standard Chartered has apologised for referring to some of the almost 8,000 staff that are set to lose their jobs to artificial intelligence as “lower-value human capital”.

Bill Winters offered the apology after a backlash over comments he made earlier this week as the London-headquartered lender became one of the first major global banks to lay out plans to cut about 7,800 back-office roles, primarily in response to AI.

Family says host of more than 500 episodes of travel show leaves behind ‘giant suitcase of the happiest memories’

The TV presenter Judith Chalmers, who spent almost three decades persuading British people to go on holiday as the host of Wish You Were Here … ?, has died at the age of 90 after living with Alzheimer’s in her final years.

Her family said she died peacefully at home on Thursday, surrounded by “the family she loved so much”, after becoming ill in recent weeks. They added that she would be greatly missed but left behind “a giant suitcase of the happiest memories”.

Parents speak for first time about daughters’ heroism on the day and their courage in dealing with critical injuries, scars and trauma

From the outside, the small gathering of young girls looked like an ordinary playdate. They chatted giddily, practised pilates and twirled around in their new outfits to the music of Harry Styles.

But on the sidelines, some of the parents were in tears. The last time these girls shared a room was on 29 July 2024. That day, they fled in fear as a hooded teenager turned a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport into one of the most horrific attacks on children in modern British history.

Targeting of foreign activists drew global outrage from governments that have not acted on violence against Palestinian detainees

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has made abuse of detained Palestinians something of a macabre calling card, celebrating cruelty publicly and often on video.

During his time in office, violence including rape, extreme hunger and humiliation have been normalised in Israeli jails. Rights groups say detention centres have become “torture camps” for Palestinians.

Authorities are cracking down on rights activists fighting for Indigenous people threatened by authoritarianism, extractivism and climate breakdown

The operation began at 9am Moscow time, but took place across all of Russia’s 11 time zones. Almost simultaneously, agents of the federal security service (FSB) raided the homes and workplaces of 17 Indigenous rights activists.

Officers carried out searches, confiscated laptops and phones, and arrested and interrogated activists about participation in international forums. Most were let go; many have since left the country. Others remain in Russia, but will no longer speak up.

The bank, formerly a building society, has carried the name of the Yorkshire town since 1853 and most locals think it should be preserved

On a moody afternoon, near the sandstone terraces of Halifax’s Gibbet street, David Glover, a local historian, is opening the gates to Lister Lane cemetery.

Usually closed to the public, the burial ground is being opened today as an exception. Because here, among towering spires and the tombs of wealthy industrialists, lie the founders of one of West Yorkshire’s most famous exports: Halifax building society.

Does Puerto Rican star’s debut collection for Zara spell the end of short shorts?

Men can breathe a huge sigh of relief this week, thanks to Bad Bunny, whose debut collection for fast fashion company Zara includes a pair of shockingly normal mid-thigh shorts.

While for the last few years, short-shorts have threatened to make every day a leg day, the sight of the Puerto Rican star wearing shorts that come comfortably to within a few inches of the knee will signal a welcome shift for many.

The BBC series and its breakout teen stars have been lauded as a much-needed antidote to crueller, more toxic entertainment

As he takes a break from searching for walnuts in the ancient forest of Arslanbob, western Kyrgyzstan, 19-year-old Kush Burman reflects on his relationship with his travelling companion and best friend, Jo Diop.

“I think it’s only in the past couple of days that I’ve realised how much I value having Jo here,” he says, his eyes wet with tears. “I just really appreciate the fact that Jo’s always up for sort of looking after me, in a way. I don’t think Jo will understand, like, the difference it makes.

The Booker prize-winning novelist and screenwriter shares the tune he’d want played at his funeral and why he’d have a couple of pints with Charles Dickens but not three

You’ve written books, films, TV shows and plays. Which of your projects do fans most want to talk to you about?

The one that people react to most, particularly women, is The Woman Who Walked Into Doors [about a woman experiencing domestic violence]. It came out in 1996, but even now – I was at a book signing event in Auckland a couple of days ago and two women told me quietly that that book meant so much to them. I think it’s possibly the best book I’ve written.

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Roddy Doyle is speaking at Sydney writers’ festival on Saturday 23 May at 6pm. His latest book is The Women Behind the Door (Penguin)

Byron Allen’s show Comics Unleashed will take the 11.35pm time slot vacated by the cancellation of The Late Show

Viewers accustomed to watching The Late Show With Stephen Colbert at its typical 11.35pm time slot will be greeted with a different show starting on Friday: Comics Unleashed, hosted by Byron Allen.

While it’s standard for networks to pay a host like Allen, 65, his deal with CBS is a little different. He will be paying the network for Colbert’s old time slot through a 16-month-long lease agreement while selling advertising for the show himself.

From infections and allergies to brain diseases and autoimmune disorders, a wave of trials offers hope

Clinical trials of immunotherapies have rocketed in the past decade as researchers have turned their understanding of the body’s defences into powerful new treatments. Leading the pack are cancer therapies, but researchers have other conditions in their sights, from infections and allergies to brain diseases and autoimmune disorders. Here, we explore how these therapies work.

As temperatures soar across the UK, chill your space – and avoid energy-guzzling aircon – with our pick of the best fans, from tower to desk to bladeless

• The best portable neck and handheld fans

Our world is getting hotter. Summer heatwaves are so frequent, they’re stretching the bounds of what we think of as summer. Hot-and-bothered home working and sweaty, sleepless nights are now alarmingly common.

Get a good fan and you can dodge the temptation of air conditioning. Aircon is incredibly effective, but it uses a lot of electricity … and burning fossil fuels is how we got into this mess in the first place. Save money and carbon by opting for a great fan instead.

Best fan overall:
AirCraft Lume

Best budget fan and best desk fan:
Devola desk fan – stock expected at end of May

Labour’s emerging leadership contest is reopening the EU debate. But if we want to rejoin, Britain needs a more European voting system first

Nowhere is an anniversary more relished than in newspapers. As we approach the 10-year mark since Britain voted for Brexit, countless column inches would no doubt have been reserved for this purpose anyway. Yet the prospect of a Labour leadership contest, at a time when polls are showing four-fifths of the party’s voters at the last election and an even higher proportion of its members want to reverse that June 2016 referendum decision, is transforming what might have merely been melancholic reflection into a more active debate.

Keir Starmer last week made a belated nod to one of his party’s deepest desires by saying that he, too, wants to put the UK back at “the heart of Europe”, even if it was still unclear exactly what he meant. Then Wes Streeting sought to revive faltering ambitions to be the next prime minister with a call for full re-entry into the EU, although he was similarly vague about when that might happen. Meanwhile, Andy Burnham was busy rowing back from a previously expressed hope of rejoining at some undisclosed point in his lifetime, perhaps because he won’t get a shot at Downing Street unless he first wins next month’s byelection in Makerfield, where a majority supported Brexit a decade ago.

Tom Baldwin is the author of Keir Starmer, The Biography

He may be the most brazen of the nation’s leaders, but his ideological spirit is found throughout its government, and beyond

No, you’re not hallucinating: western governments really are condemning Israel, one-by-one, without equivocation. Not because of the ongoing genocide in Gaza that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, of course, but because of a PR stunt in which Israel’s national security minister filmed himself taunting foreign activists.

On Wednesday morning, Itamar Ben-Gvir arrived at the port where Israel had detained hundreds of participants in an international aid flotilla that was attempting to breach the naval blockade of Gaza. In a video he posted to social media, the minister can be seen mocking the activists as they are forced to kneel in rows with their heads on the ground and hands bound with zip ties. Israel’s national anthem can be heard blasting over loudspeakers, before we see Ben-Gvir waving an Israeli flag and shouting: “Welcome to Israel. We are the landlords here.”

Ben Reiff is deputy editor at +972 magazine, an independent, online publication run by Palestinian and Israeli journalists

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

The allegations of rape and sexual assault made by ‘brides’ on the show reflect what many other women experience. Sadly, so do the responses

She said no. She didn’t want it, she made that very clear, but he did it anyway; pushing her feelings aside as though they didn’t matter, because to him they seemingly didn’t. It’s a story so depressingly common that most women probably carry a private version of it in their heads, either buried in their own memories or confided to them by a friend. But still, there’s something profoundly shocking about the idea of it happening right under the noses of a TV audience.

Perhaps you’ve never watched Channel 4’s hit show Married at First Sight, which involves putting total strangers through a purely ceremonial “wedding” and making them live as husband and wife for six weeks to see whether they actually want to make a go of the relationship. But you’re almost certainly familiar with Panorama, which this week told the stories of three former “brides”. Lizzie and Chloe (not their real names) both say they were raped by their on-screen “husbands” – and, in Lizzie’s case, also subjected to alarmingly violent outbursts of temper and an alleged threat of an acid attack – while Shona Manderson, who has spoken publicly, accuses hers of sexual misconduct. All three men, it should be said, deny the allegations.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

The future starts with us: Gordon Brown in conversation
On Thursday 10 September, join Hugh Muir and Gordon Brown to discuss the intricate connections between global instability and civic decline, as explored in Brown’s new book, The Future Starts With Us.
Book tickets here

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.

As the outrages continue, mainstream outlets just see Trump being Trump

His social media posts are unhinged. He seems to fall asleep in meetings. He proudly proclaims he’s not thinking “even a little bit” about Americans’ personal finances in talks with Iran. And he lies constantly about the supposed success of the war with Iran he started for no good reason.

That’s just the start, of course, when it comes to Donald Trump’s disastrous second presidency. There’s the ruination of the Kennedy Center, the building of a ballroom (or bunker?) to replace the White House East Wing, and the wrecking ball that the Trump-aligned supreme court has taken to the voting rights of Black Americans. There’s the endless self-dealing and the abuse of the justice department’s intended purpose.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

The world’s richest man can’t stop posting about how Lupita Nyong’o was chosen to play an imaginary woman

It was the casting choice that launched a thousand meltdowns. The Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong’o was confirmed as Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, and the usual suspects immediately started squealing that the fall of western civilization was nigh.

Elon Musk, a man in possession of the world’s thinnest skin and fattest bank account, is obviously among the aggrieved. Musk started moaning about The Odyssey in January, when it was rumoured that Nyong’o had the role. Since a 12 May interview with Nolan in Time magazine made this casting official, Musk hasn’t stopped whining; he’s spent roughly a week attacking Nyong’o on X and amplifying other angry bigots. His main arguments appear to be that this is a historically inaccurate rendering of a mythological poem; Nyong’o, who was named People magazine’s “Most Beautiful Woman” in 2014, is not sufficiently beautiful; and the casting of a Black woman in a movie nobody is forcing him to watch is inextricably intertwined with a leftwing plot to undermine western society.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Plus, John Travolta’s beret, Rachel Reeves reclaims basic civility and Judy Garland comes to east London

Much discussion in my household this week about the possibility of hantavirus or Ebola becoming Covid-like in their spread. As darkening news from central Africa throws the withdrawal of US international aid into terrible relief, so we revisit memories of those early months of 2020 when reports of a strange virus in China slowly crept from final item on the news list to blaring emergency.

Survivors are right to be angry at the nine years taken to reach this point. Those to blame for the fire must face justice

Relief at this week’s news that police are sending files to the Crown Prosecution Service, recommending charges against 77 individuals and organisations for their roles in the Grenfell Tower fire, is mixed with grief and anger. On 14 June the disaster’s survivors and their supporters will gather for the ninth annual silent walk around the west London neighbourhood in which the ruined tower stands. Next year marks a decade since the fire.

The public inquiry into the disaster pointed the finger at multiple public and private bodies, decisions and individuals. Three construction firms, Arconic, Kingspan and Celotex, were found to have been deliberately dishonest about their products. Poor regulation of building safety was the fault of central government. Kensington and Chelsea council, and its tenant management organisation, were strongly criticised for poor fire safety and other lapses. So were the architects and contractors commissioned to oversee the block’s refurbishment. The London fire brigade was culpable for its dangerous “stay put” policy, which should have been changed following previous cladding fires, including the one that killed six people in Lakanal House, south London, in 2009.

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New papers matter less for royal gossip than for what they reveal about the UK’s fragile constitutional culture of trust, prestige and informal power

The most shocking revelation in files released on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor’s appointment as Britain’s trade envoy isn’t that he loves golf or prefers ballet over theatre. It is that no one asked the obvious question: how risky would it be for a headline-grabbing prince with no business experience to front the UK’s commercial diplomacy without formal vetting? The 11 documents that were released on Thursday show that having experience and being an expert weren’t as important as being a member of the royal family. After the Epstein scandal, those assumptions no longer look merely anachronistic. They look dangerous.

The late Queen pushed, wrongly as it turned out, for her son to inherit the role from the Duke of Kent, according to the papers released through a humble address motion. David Wright, then head of British Trade International, wrote that it was her wish for the then Duke of York to assume a “prominent role in the promotion of national interests”. In 2000, royalty was not peripheral to Britain’s commercial diplomacy. It was central to it.

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.

Dr Craig Reeves and Steve Williams say there is a strong case for the Green party and its voters to help to the Greater Manchester mayor defeat Reform UK – but Rosalind Brown-Grant is sceptical about his environmental credentials

As Aletha Adu pointed out last week (Wes Streeting faces narrow road to Labour members’ favour, 12 May), a recent poll has Andy Burnham on more support among Labour members than Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner put together. More importantly, among the general public Burnham is not only the most popular Labour politician, by 11 points, but the most popular politician of any stripe in the country.

The reality is that Burnham represents our best chance of preventing the catastrophe of a Reform UK government. He is relatable and has both political vision and get-your-hands-dirty pragmatism. He is the only Labour politician more popular among the general public than Nigel Farage – and by six points.

Prof Alan Stein and Dr Lynette Okengo support the call to declare the climate crisis a global public health emergency, and say prioritising children is vital for our future resilience

We strongly support the call to declare the climate crisis a global public health emergency (Report, 16 May). If this approach is to be successful, it is vital that children are put at the forefront of our response. We have ample evidence to show how important the early years of a child’s life are, and increasingly we are understanding how these years are being disrupted by climate change. Droughts, flooding, food insecurity, displacement and extreme heat are already affecting children’s nutrition, learning, and physical and mental health.

Early impairments to development echo throughout your life, and certain physical impairments may even be passed on to subsequent generations. These impacts are occurring around the world and will become more severe as extreme weather events increase in their severity and number. For many countries, these impacts threaten decades of progress that has been made on child health and education.

Hadley Coull highlights the social and cultural conditions that are driving stress, not just the everyday frictions of our lives, in response to an article by Joel Snape

Joel Snape’s article (What does stress really do to our bodies, 17 May) was informative regarding the physiology of stress, yet narrow in articulating the broader drivers of chronic stress in modern life. The piece frames stress largely through everyday frictions: hectic school runs, online arguments, forgotten shoes, driving fines and doomscrolling. It then suggests that stress management is primarily an individual regulatory issue: breathing patterns, rumination, resilience, therapy, exercise and self-care.

Yet much contemporary stress is not driven simply by low-level everyday frictions. It is produced by aspects of modern life that have become psychologically corrosive: social atomisation, economic precarity, platform logic, transactional systems and the erosion of communal life.

Stephen Ladyman suggests a question to ask artificial intelligence systems, while John van Someren is suspicious of advice he got from the AI assistant Claude

There is a test that Prof Richard Dawkins might use to determine if artificial intelligence systems are conscious (Letters, 15 May). Ask them to name the best song.

AI systems will tell you which song sold the most copies, or made the most money, or were named the best song by a particular magazine or commentator. All of these are objective criteria.

⚽ Spence and Toney in for England, Alexander-Arnold out
⚽ Premier League finale preview | Mail Michael your thoughts

Barney Ronay on social media makes a pertinent point: “Harry Maguire: anatomy of how NOT to make a case for being the perfect 7-week back-up squad member. No need for Tuchel to explain now. We all save five mins.”

The final man in the 26 is Djed Spence, the Tottenham full back. He can play on both flanks so offers versatility. There is no Trent Alexander-Arnold in the England squad.

Pep Guardiola took over from Manuel Pellegrini in 2016. Here we chart the trophy-laden decade that followed …

It was confirmed on 1 February that Pep Guardiola would be heading to east Manchester to try his hand at English football. Behind the scenes, plenty went on to create a squad suited to him but, in truth, it was a season of transition as the new head coach investigated who could fit into his system and what needed to change. It was soon apparent how influential the era-defining Kevin De Bruyne would be for Guardiola, as his class in midfield shone. City showed promise but finished third in the Premier League and were knocked out by Monaco in the Champions League last 16 as the new head coach began without a trophy.

• Scheme gets FA Women’s National League approval

• FA to ratify move that has divided women’s game

A proposal to allow four academy sides from Women’s Super League clubs to join the third tier from 2027 has been approved by the FA Women’s National League board.

The league’s management met FAWNL representatives on Friday and were told of the board’s backing. The plans will now be put to the Football Association for further discussion before the changes can be rubber stamped.

• Tottenham’s injured captain has gone back to Argentina

• Spurs face Everton needing a point for safety on final day

Roberto De Zerbi has defended Cristian Romero’s decision to miss Tottenham’s decisive final game against Everton on Sunday after the Spurs captain flew to Argentina to watch his boyhood club.

Romero, who has not played since injuring a knee against Sunderland last month but has a chance of playing at the World Cup, has been criticised for opting to attend Belgrano’s game against River Plate in a league playoff final. But De Zerbi said Romero’s trip had been sanctioned by Tottenham’s medical department and pointed out that the 28-year-old cannot affect the result at home to Everton regardless.

With temperatures in the mid-30s expected, Leo Cullen’s side will need to be at their best to avoid another sad denouement to a French drama

There was a very different feel when Leinster last came to Bilbao for a Champions Cup final. In 2018 it was wet, grey and could have passed for Ballsbridge in March. Not so this time with temperatures in the mid-30s and another baking afternoon in store for their rendezvous with the warm – in every sense – favourites Bordeaux-Bègles.

When Leinster’s fair-skinned head coach, Leo Cullen, walked out for the eve-of-match captain’s run it was reminiscent of a David Attenborough film featuring a lone polar bear on a fast-melting iceberg. There will be no hiding place for heavy tight forwards, a factor exacerbated by the game kicking off in mid-afternoon. Apparently an evening slot was impossible for French TV because of a clash with – wait for it – the Cannes film festival closing ceremony.

The ‘Turkish Simon Cowell’ says sealing promotion to the Premier League via Saturday’s playoff final would ‘finish the miracle’

“I love the city – for me, it’s therapy,” the Hull owner, Acun Ilicali, says of his second home. Running a football club is not particularly therapeutic but after almost four-and-a-half-years at the helm, the Turkish media mogul will have his day at Wembley on Saturday when the Tigers face Middlesbrough for a place in the Premier League.

Life is rarely quiet for the globetrotting Ilicali, regarded as Turkey’s answer to Simon Cowell. He produces some of the world’s most popular television shows in numerous countries, having started out as a sports reporter. The entertainment theme has continued at Hull, creating a tumultuous and gripping reality that has featured head coaches coming and going, and playoff and relegation battles. Everything aligned this season, the team securing sixth place on the final day before defeating third-placed Millwall over two legs. Hull have even been victims of Southampton’s removal from the playoff final amid “spygate”. It is never dull in Hull.

• Carrick handed job after his successful interim spell

• 44-year-old says he will target ‘biggest honours’

Michael Carrick has been confirmed as Manchester United’s permanent head coach until 2028, with the 44-year-old promising to “challenge for the biggest honours again”.

Since taking over as interim manager from Ruben Amorim in January with United sixth and out of both cup competitions, Carrick has proved hugely successful, on and off the field. With morale low after the Portuguese’s disappointing tenure, Carrick restored the spirit of the team and guided United back into the Champions League and a guaranteed third-place finish going into the final day of the league season.

Forward has had a difficult final season at Anfield but his outbursts are born of the same hunger that has fired a generational talent and all-time great

Mohamed Salah loves to hear stories about Steven Gerrard and Sir Kenny Dalglish from Liverpool fans who work at the training ground. He can recite his predecessors’ numbers and achievements, having spent the past nine years in pursuit of both, but what really captivates him are tales of how they became legends in the eyes of the Kop. Salah has always longed to be in that company. While that makes his recent public criticisms all the more unfortunate, it does not diminish his phenomenal achievement in reaching that goal.

There is acrimony at the end of Salah’s Liverpool career, as there was a degree of antipathy at the start. He will be celebrated for the relentless brilliance in between.

• 41-year-old died after hospitalization for severe illness

• Earnhardt, Hamlin and Gordon pay tribute

• Fans honor driver by donating to IVF foundation

Longtime teammates, former rivals and others around the sports world have joined the wave of condolences over the sudden death of Nascar driver Kyle Busch on Thursday.

Busch, a two-time Cup Series champion who was the winningest driver across the sport’s three series in history, died at 41 after being hospitalized earlier Thursday with a severe illness. No cause of death has been announced.

The US secretary of state said the US is monitoring Russian allegations against the Baltics

Rubio begins with thanks to Sweden for hosting the ministerial meeting.

But that’s where the niceties end as says the upcoming Ankara summit will be “one of the more important leaders’ summit in the history of Nato,” as the leaders will have to respond to Trump’s “disappointment” with the alliance’s “response to our operations in the Middle East.”

“That will have to be addressed, that won’t be solved or addressed today. That’s something for the leaders level to discuss.”

Israeli prison service denies claims of abuse, including beatings, during detention of 430 people trying to take aid to Palestinians

• Ben-Gvir’s template of televised abuse was honed on Palestinians

Activists released from Israeli custody after being detained on a flotilla trying to take aid to Gaza were subjected to abuse, organisers have alleged, with several hospitalised with injuries and at least 15 reporting sexual assaults, including rape.

Israel’s prison service denied the allegations, and Reuters was not able to verify them independently.

Situation described as ‘deeply worrisome’ by officials as aid cuts and community distrust impede responders

The Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo poses a “very high” risk to the country, the World Health Organization said on Friday, revising its threat assessment upwards.

The outbreak is spreading rapidly, WHO leaders said, with almost 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths, up from 246 cases and 65 deaths when it was first reported a week earlier.

Drivers conserve fuel amid Iran war uncertainty, pushing overall sales down 1.3% in April

• Business live – latest updates

Motorists cutting back on petrol and fuel purchases at the steepest rate since the Covid pandemic in 2020 drove retail sales in Great Britain to their biggest monthly decline in a year.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the overall volume of retail sales plunged by 1.3% in April compared with the previous month, the biggest contraction since May last year and worse than the -0.6% forecast.

Replacement scheme worth about 40% less than current funding greeted with scepticism by headteachers

Funding for primary school sport in England is to be cut by Labour, including the abolition of a grant designed to cement the 2012 Olympic legacy, to the dismay of school leaders.

The Department for Education said that the £320m fund paid directly to primary schools each year through its PE and sports premium will be scrapped and replaced by a “sport partnerships network” worth £193m a year to cover both primary and secondary schools.

Figures show domestic flower growers are expanding their market share, as the government gives sector official recognition

British flower farmers have long resembled David faced with their own particular Goliath – the imported flower industry. More than 80% of cut flowers bought by UK consumers are shipped or flown in. However, recent figures show domestic growers are expanding their market share.

Chloë Dunnett, the founder of Sitopia Farm, a London-based organic farm growing food and flowers, says: “Our flower sales are up 65% for the year and turnover is increasing year on year as the public and florists look for flowers that are seasonal, environmentally friendly and hyperlocal – consumer power can be very effective.”

What does a surge in ocean temperatures, compounded with El Niño, bode for the summer?

An enormous marine heatwave off the US west coast is ringing alarm bells among ocean and atmospheric scientists as new data shows its ecological and environmental effects are intensifying.

The unusual area of warm water has persisted since peaking in size during September 2025 and still stretches thousands of miles from the California coastline – more than halfway across the Pacific – affecting a vast triangle-shaped region of oceanic habitats from Hawaii to British Columbia and southward to Mexico.

In the country’s north, mining has ravaged Indigenous lands and lives for decades. Is history repeating itself as renewable energy schemes arrive on their doorstep?

In the heart of the dry tropical forest, Maria Elena Aguilar Uriana walks past towering cacti, her ancestors’ graves, and patterned clothes blowing in the wind. Her brow is furrowed, her hands fixed on her hips. She points to a former watering hole, now nothing but dust.

“Our children are malnourished and dying,” she says. “It’s all because of the mining. It has destroyed our landscape, our homes, our lives.”

Resolution backed by 141 states hailed as ‘new chapter’ that could improve climate diplomacy and litigation efforts

When the UN general assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of a landmark climate crisis ruling on Wednesday, the Pacific island of Vanuatu’s prime minister hailed the result as the start of “a new chapter” in climate action.

“The task before all of us now is to translate legal clarity into meaningful action, stronger cooperation, and greater protection for present and future generations,” said Jotham Napat.

Thames Valley police believe more witnesses may be out there in inquiry into alleged misconduct in public office by former prince

Police investigating Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor want witnesses to contact them if they believe they have information about alleged sexual misconduct, corruption, fraud or the sharing of confidential information involving the king’s brother.

In a sign of the potential expansion of their “unprecedented investigation”, Thames Valley police vowed to rigorously investigate claims against the former Prince Andrew.

The Kusuma Neolithic Hall, based on Durrington 68 site, will allow visitors to ‘step back in time’ into the lives of those who built the stone circle

It may have been a place for ceremony or a barn for pack animals. It could have been a place for weary labourers to rest their heads. Or perhaps there was no building at all.

English Heritage has unveiled a 7-metre-high reconstruction of what a 4,500-year-old Neolithic hall may have looked like at Stonehenge, offering visitors a glimpse into the lives of the prehistoric builders who raised the world’s most famous stone circle.

Charity Commission inquiry into William Blake House in Northamptonshire resulted in rescue plan

A group of “accidental activist” families have succeeded in their efforts to secure the future of their adult children’s care home after uncovering serious alleged management failures that took the charity to the brink of bankruptcy.

The families launched a campaign after discovering that William Blake House, a residential learning disability care home charity in Northamptonshire, owed £1.5m in unpaid taxes, had paid its former chair £1m in fees, and was close to bankruptcy.

Updated code of practice covering England, Wales and Scotland also relates to changing rooms and follows supreme court ruling

• What is the updated EHRC code of practice about and how does it apply?

Single-sex toilets and changing rooms in England, Wales and Scotland must exclude transgender men and women, according to a new code of practice from the equalities watchdog.

But the long-awaited guidance also says that businesses and service providers have to offer practical alternatives such as gender-neutral toilets for people who do not wish to use services for their biological sex.

Pakistani mediators believe permanent ceasefire within reach although major points of disagreement remain

Future control over the strait of Hormuz and a demand from Washington that Tehran export its stockpile of highly enriched uranium remain key stumbling blocks, as Pakistani mediators continued to seek a permanent ceasefire they believe is still within reach between the US and Iran.

Meanwhile, Israel and Iran each fear the other is about to launch a surprise attack on its territory while the US president, Donald Trump, continues to insist a fresh assault on Iran is an option available to him.

US social media firms acting on orders from Middle East kingdom accused of being ‘instruments of repression’

Major US social media companies including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms have blocked the accounts of Saudi Arabian dissidents so they are no longer visible inside the kingdom, following orders by Saudi authorities.

Those affected include Abdullah Alaoudh, a US-based activist and vocal critic of Saudi human rights violations, and Omar Abdulaziz, a Canada and UK-based activist who worked closely with Jamal Khashoggi before the journalist’s murder by Saudi agents in 2018.

Seven Bangladeshi-Italian candidates stand for Venice’s council as community faces far-right hostility – while voters demand an end to overtourism and neglect

Rhitu Miah, one of seven candidates from the Bangladeshi-Italian community standing in Venice’s local election, is used to brushing off racist or sexist comments. But she was taken aback by the virulence of the negative comments online when she announced she would run for the council – potentially making her one of the first people of Bangladeshi origin ever elected in the lagoon city’s administration.

“There were hateful messages – one person told me to get on a camel and go back to my own country,” says Miah, an Italian citizen who moved to Venice with her family at three years old, through her father’s job at the Fincantieri shipyard, a huge importer of labour from Bangladesh. “I tried to let it be and reply with a smile … but it was difficult not to cry. This is also a reason why I’m running [to combat these prejudices].”

US secretary of state’s campaign of ‘maximum pressure’ is culmination of a personal pursuit spanning decades

• Cubans outraged at US charges against Raúl Castro

Marco Rubio’s moment has finally arrived. The outcome of the Trump administration’s efforts to exert “maximum pressure” on Cuba may topple the 67-year-old communist government in Havana and direct the future of the US’s sway over the western hemisphere.

For Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who serves as both secretary of state and national security adviser, the US campaign marks his ascendancy in an administration where he has established himself as a trusted aide to Donald Trump and manoeuvred that position to advance a key goal: Washington’s right to assert its authority across Latin America.

Everlane CEO confirms sale in letter to employees and says it will stay true to ‘sustainability’ commitments

Everlane, the retailer that bucked the fast-fashion industry by promising affordable ethically sourced and sustainable clothing, is being acquired by the king of fast-fashion, China’s Shein.

A letter to Everlane employees from CEO Alfred Chang confirming the deal was obtained by the Associated Press on Friday.

IPO filing from Elon Musk’s company reveals closer look at finances, cosmic ambitions and tech empire’s quirks

SpaceX publicly released an investor prospectus on Wednesday as part of its plan for a $1.75tn debut on the US stock market next month, revealing unseen details about the finances and future plans of Elon Musk’s flagship company. In addition to new information on operating costs and revenue, the filing also included trademark Muskian sweeping proclamations about the universe and insights into some of the quirks of his tech empire.

Scattered throughout the 300-plus-page prospectus are several disclosures and risk warnings that show the eccentricities of Musk’s company and its cosmic ambitions. Other financial details in the document highlight how interdependent Musk’s various businesses have become and the risks that they carry.

Key sticking point to building beauty powerhouse was level compensation demanded by Charlotte Tilbury

• Business live – latest updates

The US cosmetics company Estée Lauder has ended talks with its Spanish rival Puig about a merger that would have created a fashion and beauty group worth almost $40bn (£30bn).

Estée Lauder, one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of skincare, makeup and fragrances, owns brands including Clinique, Bobbi Brown and Tom Ford Beauty.

Prospectus for tycoon’s sprawling empire reveals his plan to keep control – and ambition to colonise Mars

• SpaceX reveals plan for $1.75tn stock market debut

Elon Musk’s SpaceX has revealed plans for a highly anticipated $1.75tn (£1.3tn) flotation next month as he seeks investor backing for his quest to make life “multiplanetary”.

SpaceX is a sprawling business, encompassing the eponymous rocket launch company, the Starlink satellite broadband service, Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence startup and the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

As a standalone, the new adventure is perfectly fine matinee fodder – but the galaxy is now so congested that we seem doomed to shiny retreads of the same old story

When Disney bought Lucasfilm for roughly $4bn in 2012, it must have felt like an obvious piece of business: who wouldn’t throw wads of cash at a saga boasting an entire galaxy in a box? For a while, it seemed too good to be true. The Force Awakens made more than $2bn worldwide. Rogue One did more than $1bn. The Last Jedi conjured up more than $1.3bn, even while triggering a culture war so radioactive it could power the Death Star. Most of the fandom hated The Rise of Skywalker, but that most execrable of movies still earned Disney more than $1bn.

Then came Disney+, the perfect delivery system. No more waiting years between films: just hang around for a few months and something else would pop up on the conveyor belt. Andor, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka, The Mandalorian. Plot holes were filled, animated side characters got their magnum opus, and we all learned far more about the middle-management structure of galactic fascism than we had ever imagined possible. So why are we, almost 14 years on from that monumental shift in the Star Wars power structure, reading yet another slew of critical notices declaring that the saga has run its course? The Mandalorian and Grogu, at time of writing, has a rating of 61% on Rotten Tomatoes, pushing it just into the “fresh” category. The positives, broadly speaking, are that it is charming, brisk, visually polished and has Baby Yoda, a character precision-engineered for adorability. On the negative side, critics have complained the film feels thin, formulaic and weirdly televisual, less a grand restoration of Star Wars on the big screen than three Disney+ episodes.

They blew up a van full of banknotes. They sold high-end Ukrainian vodka to Selfridges. Now art duo Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn are auctioning their past works – to launch their most ambitious project to date

This Saturday, artists Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn are auctioning off their work from the past decade and a half. The reason? To help fund a community-led renewable power station in Nigel Farage’s Clacton constituency. Former YBA Gavin Turk will be wielding the gavel and the couple hope to raise at least £250,000 for the project.

The big-ticket item going under the hammer will be the remnants of a gold Ford Transit van containing £1.2m in fake banknotes that the pair blew up in London’s Docklands in 2019 as the climax – or money shot, if you will – of Bank Job, a film about their attempts to fight toxic debt culture with art, a battle that involved printing cash to wipe out more than £1m debt.

As this year’s Cannes ordinaire draws to a close, our chief critic examines what went wrong and predicts the who’ll take home the prizes – including the fabled Braddies

The 2026 Cannes film festival comes to an end with an uneasy consensus that this has very much not been a vintage year. It’s a Cannes ordinaire.

There has even been some dark muttering from older veterans about comparing 2026 to the dreaded 2003 Cannes, the year of Vincent Gallo’s epically embarrassing erotic road movie The Brown Bunny.

Cannes film festival: Lukas Dhont’s first world war-set gay romance is a heartfelt examination of cowardice and lives lived in secret amid the brutality of battle

The word of the title is not used at any time in this film, but the relevance is clear. On the western front in the first world war, Belgian soldiers get permission to form a theatrical troupe, often in drag, to entertain their comrades when they are behind the lines and raise their morale (not entirely unlike the now despised 70s BBC TV comedy It Ain’t Half Hot Mum). The director is Lukas Dhont who explored gay and transgender issues in movies such as Girl and Close, and this story of a gay affair in the army is heartfelt and well acted, if rather earnestly researched.

The motley “band of rejects”, evidently excused frontline combat duty for various reasons, is led by Francis (Valentin Campagne), a tailor in civilian life who has now ecstatically flowered in the new role the war has given him. He is exuberant, mischievous, imaginative and genuinely committed to his theatrical art. The resulting entertainments look professionally accomplished. (Did these first world war gang shows really have people playing flute and clarinet?) One stolidly handsome, shy soldier called Pierre (Emmanuel Macchia) is fascinated by these theatrical types and by Francis himself; he deliberately stabs his own hand with a bayonet on the field of battle so he can join their group.

A misogynist is made to learn the error of his ways in this painfully dated and embarrassingly star-packed sexism comedy

In its attempt to become a one-stop shop for just about every form of nostalgia possible, Netflix has now decided to revive the dreadful British comedy of the 2000s. Films such as Sex Lives of the Potato Men, Three and Out, Fat Slags and Lesbian Vampire Killers saw creatives boldly stand up to Hollywood and declare that whatever they could do, the UK film industry could do it 10 times worse.

The all-deciding algorithm has somehow deemed it necessary for a return to that cursed era with the release of Ladies First, a broad and chintzy new comedy that would have felt old hat even back then. It’s an excruciatingly unfunny high-concept thought experiment, imagining a world with flipped gender politics, that’s far too happy with itself and what it’s allegedly achieving to be passed off as just some charming throwback. Like the other misfires it recalls, it’s also a criminal waste of talent, a murderers’ row of actors who hopefully got paid handsomely for the embarrassment of this whiffing up their IMDb pages.

Will Arnett uses standup comedy to tackle his midlife crisis in Bradley Cooper’s hilariously biting drama. Plus, the bookies’ favourites to be the next James Bond have a blast in a winning bomb disposal thriller

In a collapsing world, artists like Slayyyter and Cobrah are chasing extreme highs with hyperactive music and debauched lyrics. Is their trashy vibe emancipating – or a bit contrived?

If any year demanded a soundtrack of self-aggrandising female mayhem, it’s 2026. Amid the terrors of war, AI and the climate crisis, women are expected to be symbolic vessels of order and stability: thin, beautiful and perpetually 25 – a state of perfection newly available for purchase thanks to weight-loss drugs and the deep plane facelift.

Covered unironically in leopard print and rhinestones, a cohort of young female pop stars are defying this familiar con with brash electronic pop, shamelessly hedonistic lyrics, anarchic sexuality and an obsession with what was once dismissed as “white trash”. It’s an aesthetic embraced by performers such as Slayyyter, Kim Petras, Cobrah, Demi Lovato, Snow Strippers’ Tatiana Schwaninger, Tove Lo and returning scene godmother Kesha.

The five-piece combine traditional musical styles with mountains of synths and hurried drums – rejecting computerised production in a pointed anti-AI statement

From João Pessoa, Brazil
Recommended if you like Hermeto Pascoal, Mr Bungle, King Crimson
Up next Celestial album released 7 August, touring the UK and Europe from 15 August

Thanks in part to its famed music department at the local Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa – the easternmost city in South America – is a hotbed of artists playing different folk styles from all over the continent. Papangu sound like all of them at the same time. The five-piece blend a long list of genres: bossa nova, the circle-dance song ciranda and forró, with its dry-tuned accordion and pulsing rhythm section, plus the more ubiquitous progressive rock and extreme metal. The band’s virtuoso chops and intensity keep their songs from buckling under the weight of those ideas, from the hurried drums to the mountains of synthesisers and pianos.

(Unheard of Hope)
The Guatemalan newcomer and US veteran find striking common ground on an intimate collaboration full of agitation, complexity and uncanny chemistry

This dreamlike, intimate album unites one of experimental music’s current stars with one of its most prolific veterans. During an interview promoting 2024’s acclaimed Sentir Que No Sabes, 34-year-old Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti praised Bill Orcutt, the 64-year-old US guitarist whose disjointed, aggressive four-string playing – honed in 90s noise-rock band Harry Pussy – graces more than 100 records. Orcutt reached out, and they started sharing files. While their friendship is new, Almost Waking reveals a deep kinship between these true originals.

The album centres on conversational duets between Fratti’s cello and Orcutt’s guitar. On the overdriven Forced & Forced & Forced, Orcutt’s trademark string-snapping plucking is matched by Fratti’s fragmented, agitated bow-scraping. Just as both players can wrestle with their instruments, they know how to make them feel like voices. On Steps of the Sun, the cello and guitar harmonise tenderly and take turns as lead, performed with the complex phrasing and dynamism of a sung duet.

(Decca France)
The trumpeter’s improvised soundtrack for the new wave director’s 1957 film still glows with sensuality, tension and nocturnal beauty in this lavish reissue

When Miles Davis was dying in September 1991, an invisible, neighbouring trumpet player, who this writer would frequently hear practising graceful classical phrases, began playing homages to Miles’ voice-like, blues-inflected melodies instead. It was a poignant personal tribute to a unique instrumental sound, and a unique imagination, that had profoundly enriched 20th-century music.

This month marks Miles’s centenary, and a clamour of celebrations of a musical life that led him to be dubbed (by Duke Ellington, allegedly) the “Picasso of jazz” for the many styles he explored. A standout this month is his 1957 movie soundtrack Ascenseur pour l’Échafaud – now repackaged on vinyl and CD with restored audio, beautiful photographs and revealing essays.

Memoir tells how the Jewish and Catholic parents of actor Isabelle and Caroline Huppert fell in love amid the rise of the Nazis. She explains why she wanted her ‘children’s children’ to know the story

Families have a way of appointing their own historians, even if the recruitment process remains obscure. In the late 1990s, Caroline Huppert – the fourth of five siblings, of whom the youngest is actor Isabelle – found herself alone with her father and a tape recorder. Over five days, he opened up about his life before and during the second world war. “I think I had that privileged position with him, because he had a taste for history, too,” she says. “But we didn’t have the same vision. I like the approach of what is called the nouvelle histoire, things like details of daily life in the past. With him, it was more emperors, kings, dates.”

More than 25 years later, their exchanges have led to her memoir, Une Histoire Cachée (A Hidden Story), a work that bundles up quotidian intimacy and big-ticket history in telling the story of how her parents, Raymond and Annick, fell in love. Their relationship so easily might never have happened: he was Jewish, she Catholic, and after they met in 1934 at Paris’s HEC business school, her haute-bourgeois family were opposed to them marrying. A big enough obstacle even before the Nazis invade France, and the young lovers are forced to flee the capital for the Free Zone near Lake Annecy. “I wasn’t aware of any of it in the least,” says the 75-year-old on a phone call from her home in Paris. “My parents weren’t people who talked about the past. They were always absorbed in the present, in action.”

A bunny who loves to bake, illustrated poems about amazing animals and a YA verse novel of dancefloor salvation

Ban Ban’s Bakery by Elena Hiroko Magee, Do Re Mi, £12.99
Ban Ban the bunny loves baking with Grandma – but will she be able to turn Dusty Cottage into a bakery of her very own? A cute, enticing picture book full of mouthwatering, pastel-hued treats.

Daddy Is Cleaning by Angel Dike, illustrated by Ebony Glenn, Nosy Crow, £12.99
Baby is helping with laundry, cooking and planting – so Daddy is cleaning, a lot! This tender picture book perfectly evokes the love, humour and exhaustion of managing a day’s chores with an enthusiastic toddler.

In this lurid, big-boned, often brilliant book about a sculptor and a true-crime documentary, state-of-the-nation commentary and gruesome chills combine

Claire Fuller is fascinated by corpses: by the moment when a supple, beloved body turns into inert, heavy matter. In her masterful 2021 Costa winner Unsettled Ground, adult twins veer between pathos and gawky comedy as they attempt to dress and bury their dead mother, floored by the sheer, awful weight of her. Now in Hunger and Thirst, Ursula’s destiny is shaped by encounters with two cadavers. And as the book oscillates between social realism and gothic horror, these two unruly corpses destroy her life.

The first is Ursula’s itinerant, troubled but loving mother, who’d been busking with her child alongside her since giving birth at 16. Aged seven, Ursula spent an appalling two days stuck in a bathroom in Morocco, with the door trapped by her mother’s dead body after she died of dengue fever. By the time the novel opens in 1987, Ursula is 16, and has been moved between seven children’s homes before ending up at a “halfway house” alongside recovering addicts and released prisoners. She lands a trial job in the postroom at Winchester School of Art: there she makes friends with bold, madcap Sue, who thrusts on Ursula an unfamiliar intimacy, introducing her to her enviably warm and rambling family. Ursula is narrating the book 40 years later, and it’s clear from the start that something will go so horribly wrong between Ursula and Sue that a prurient documentary-maker will end up making a film about Sue’s murder. Scenes from this documentary, Dark Descent, punctuate the book, adding to the sense of foreboding.

Packed with gossip and incident, this book is also a fascinating study in the gestation of genius

Among the many great pleasures of Daniel Okrent’s new biography of Stephen Sondheim – a book perfectly weighted between the gossipy and erudite – is its rendering of the milieu beyond its immediate subject. You come for the biography and stay for the world of mid-20th-century New York, in which Leonard Bernstein says terrible things about Sweeney Todd (“disgusting”), Sondheim says terrible things about Barbra Streisand (“doesn’t have one sincere moment left inside her”), and Arthur Laurents says terrible things about everyone. In the early 2000s, during a particularly poisonous exchange of letters between Laurents and Sondheim, the latter told his old collaborator, “you’re just good enough to know you’re mediocre”.

The entire book is sheer delight and Okrent, formerly an editor at the New York Times and a baseball fanatic who effectively invented the modern fantasy baseball league, does a terrific job of telling Sondheim’s life story alongside shrewd analysis of his body of work. We meet Sondheim’s mother, known as Foxy, whom the writer and composer made an elaborate play of hating his entire life and who Okrent brings to life in order to get behind that particular performance.

Driving sims were overtaken by open world fantasy adventures, but new upgrades show how much joy there is in the genre

I have spent the last week careening around Japan in a Porsche 911, seeing the sights, racing other cars and occasionally veering off the road to plummet through an ancient bamboo forest. You all know what’s coming next … this wasn’t in real life, folks – it was in Forza Horizon 6, the latest instalment in Microsoft’s series of open world driving games set in authentic-looking, real-world locations.

Reviewing this game (which is out now on Xbox and PC, and coming to PS5 later in the year) has reminded me of the sheer fun and exhilaration that driving games can provide. It’s easy to forget, but this was the biggest genre in town from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Consoles were sold on how good their racing games were: the original PlayStation had Ridge Racer, the Sega Saturn had Daytona USA. Later came the dirt-track thrills of Colin McRae Rally, the chaotic destruction of Burnout, the sophisticated realism of Gran Turismo. They were the bestsellers of the era, showcasing the future of real-time 3D visuals.

Why are Nintendo releasing a straight-up remake of the space-flight shooter – with many of its original limitations – rather than a fresh new take?

The Nintendo 64 was not my first video game console, but it was my formative one. Getting to grips with 3D movement in Super Mario 64 with that weird three-pronged controller is one of my most visceral childhood memories; the long, long wait for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the background noise to a huge chunk of my youth. But back in the 1990s (in the UK at least), it felt as if nobody had an N64. When everybody had a PlayStation instead, I felt I was the only kid in my whole city who cared more about Banjo-Kazooie than Crash Bandicoot.

If even Zelda seemed comparatively niche in Europe in the 90s, Lylat Wars (known elsewhere as Star Fox 64) was a real deep cut. It’s a 1997 space-flight shooter starring Fox McCloud and his squad of animal pilots laser-blasting across different planets in nimble crafts called Arwings. I played this game to absolute death in 1998, when I got it for my birthday alongside the fabled Rumble Pak, which made your controller vibrate and shudder whenever something cool was happening on screen (fun fact: Lylat Wars was the first console game to feature controller rumble). But I really hadn’t thought about it much since. Then, last week, Nintendo announced a Switch 2 remake.

Microsoft; PC, Xbox Series X/S (PS5 due later)
Dreamy vistas of the country’s natural beauties are stunningly delivered – but won’t distract from thrilling high-end driving adventures

The Forza Horizon games have always been about drama. Not just the tension and excitement of racing, but also the sensory impact of the natural environment – the sun rising over a dense city, rain clouds hovering above a valley floor. There are moments in this game – perhaps after emerging from a dense forest, or coming up from an underpass – where Mount Fuji briefly appears in the distance, hazy yet majestic, the Platonic ideal of a volcano – and it almost takes your breath away. Fans of this series have been waiting years for Japan and now here it is, the whole country, reduced, remixed and repackaged as a driving paradise.

In many ways, Forza Horizon 6 is a continuation of what this series has always been about. You enter a festival-style driving competition then drive around a vast map splattered with various races and challenges, earning reputation by competing well and buying new vehicles for your extensive garage. There are slight changes this time – you start as a rookie not an established legend, so you have to qualify to enter the festival, and Playground has re-introduced the need to unlock successive levels of competition bringing back the sense of progression from the earliest titles in the series. You start out clattering about in slower C-class vehicles on easier circuits and have to work hard to start lining up against super cars such as the Ferrari J50 or Lamborghini Huracán.

Previously prohibited use of websites such as Omoggle that connect a streamer to a stranger’s video feed now allowed

Last week, at 4am, 19-year-old Sammy Amz was scrolling through X when something caught his eye: a popular Twitch streamer was competing in a 1v1 “mog-off” with a stranger, and losing.

The next day he opened the Omoggle gaming website and began to play. Quickly he matched with another user – green dots appeared on their faces onscreen, as the website began to compare their measurements: canthal tilt, palpebral fissure ratio, nose-to-face width ratio and so on.

Brixton House, London
Paula Varjack’s kinetic play uses lip syncing and dance routines to show how prejudice turned a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ into a career disaster

The year is 2004 and the Super Bowl halftime show is about to begin. What would later become known as “Nipplegate” – in which Justin Timberlake ripped part of Janet Jackson’s bodice, briefly exposing her right breast – will be broadcast to 70,000 spectators in the stadium and more than 140 million TV viewers. This one “wardrobe malfunction”, lasting just nine sixteenths of a second, will lead to Jackson being blacklisted from much of the music industry for years, sending her career into a spiral while Timberlake’s continued to thrive.

Paula Varjack’s play interrogates the role that gender, race and age played in that fallout, while also serving as a loud and proud love letter to Jackson and her music. Initially inspired by a 2019 trip to Glastonbury, where Varjack saw Jackson perform and wondered why she had never played the festival before, the show highlights the injustice of a white, male-controlled and favoured music industry. Performed alongside fellow devisers Pauline Mayers, Julienne Doko, Chia Phoenix and BSL performer Vinessa Brant, the result is a kinetic multimedia analysis that uses lip syncing, killer dance routines, onscreen BSL by Cherie Gordon and puppetry to build their case. Directed by Emily Aboud, the production erupts with high-speed spirit.

Bunting from hospital sheets, drawings on letters from the DWP, an installation made of damp: a new exhibition celebrates art that takes the challenges the artists have faced and turns them into drivers of creativity

“I’m having a flare-up’, is a really common phrase that you hear in the ‘crip’ community,” says Mariana Lemos, the co-curator of Flare Up, a group exhibition focused on art powered by illness, chronic conditions, disability, neurodivergence and deafness. The show includes artists who do and don’t identify as ‘crip’ (a defiant reclaiming of derogatory slang) and underlines the ebb and flow of symptoms to explore illness as anything but static. A flare, adds Lemos’s collaborator Natasha Hoare, “brings light to things that have been kept in the dark, ignored or invisible-ised. There’s a sense of celebration to it, perhaps.”

This would seem to be the case for French artist Benoît Piéron, a leading figure among artists addressing illness and who now also has a big solo show at Paris’s edgiest art space, Palais de Tokyo. In Flare Up, his pastel bunting crisscrosses a ceiling, before pooling on the floor in a heap, its energy apparently drained. Cut from hospital sheets, the party flags defy the infantilised days of the bedbound. The fabric, in its typically soothing nursery colours, has also soaked up the seeping life of the bodies it hides: be that fever sweats or sex. Piéron’s subtle, poetic reminder of the physical reality of an ill person, as well as the ups and downs of a chronic condition, is typical across the exhibition’s witty, ever-surprising artworks.

OVO Hydro, Glasgow
Moving seamlessly through extravagant choreography between bubblegum–rap and darker, rockier material, the singer is always in full command

Since her breakout almost a decade ago, singer and rapper Doja Cat has been musically restless: bouncing between the pop-rap of her first album Amala to her darker, toothier 2023 release Scarlet; collaborating with SZA then heel-turning to cover Hole. On last year’s fifth album Vie she negotiated the tension between the pop persona she once denounced as a “cash grab” and her true freak artistic self – a tension she plays to perfection during tonight’s show.

After a prelude where Doja hovers above the stage in Klaus Nomi-esque shoulder pads and a 20-metre long train – perhaps elaborate trolling aimed at fans who complained about her lack of outfit changes earlier in the tour – she arrives fully formed as a purple-clad bandleader for a run of 80s inflected tracks from Vie and 2021’s Planet Her. Fronting a 10-person band, she’s an immediately commanding presence, wearing pasties, a high-waisted bodysuit, tights and gloves, her zebra print microphone matching her heels. She has the look of a scene-kid Prince, the blond of recent shows swapped for an acid green wig. Appropriately, the synergy between her and her band is reminiscent of Purple Rain, or a glam-rock Stop Making Sense. She moves seamlessly between modes and poses, from slow jam Make It Up – more muscular live than on record – to the swagger of Ain’t Shit and Paint the Town Red.

Glyndebourne, Sussex
Caitlin Gotimer’s Tosca goes from 0-60 in mere moments while the London Philharmonic unlock the barely contained violence in Ted Huffman’s long-awaited exceptional staging

Giacomo Puccini died only a decade before the first Glyndebourne festival opened. 92 years later, Tosca – global operatic blockbuster and the work once derided as a “shabby little shocker” – has finally made its Glyndebourne debut, opening the 2026 festival with a high-octane bloodbath presided over by director Ted Huffman. Forget shabbiness (and not just because of the champagne and tuxedos); this show is all about the shock.

But Huffman and conductor Robin Ticciati also play the dramatic long game. The curtain goes up on a mid-20th-century church interior. There are wooden pews and a small Madonna and child on the wall. Boys in uniform assist men in cassocks; there’s a real mop bucket, a real wooden ladder for the artist-hero and real mid-century modern spotlights to illuminate his work (the first of many exquisite details of this production’s lighting). It’s not 1800, but this is unmistakably Tosca, its accoutrements familiar.

A new film, Blondi, takes audiences inside the Führer’s bunker in the final days of the Third Reich, from the point of view of his beloved dog

When Benedict Morrison, who runs the London comedy festival, stood up to present Blondi – a new film about the dying days of the Third Reich – at its premiere at a cinema in Brixton earlier this month, he went in big. Picture the scene, he told the audience: it’s 1924 and FW Murnau has just strapped a movie camera to a bicycle and invented subjective cinematic perspective. The result was The Last Laugh which captured the precariousness of life in Germany after the first world war with such poignant precision it foreshadowed the following decade – and revolutionised cinema.

For Blondi, shot 100 years later, the camera was strapped to a dog. Lexie, a seven-month-old German shepherd, is both the title character – Hitler’s last dog, possibly the most famous hound in geopolitics – but is also the co-director of photography, or cinemadographer if you prefer, as both Pablo Álvarez-Hornia (the film’s producer) and Jack Salvadori (its co-director) certainly do. It makes for a novel cinematic experience. Sometimes you feel a bit sick at the sudden changes of pace and freaky angles. “Some things need to be made uncomfortable,” says Álvarez-Hornia, “and, in a way, it needed to be dirtier and grittier and uglier for it to work.”

The voice of some of Sister Sledge’s biggest hits is touring again, and will take on your questions

Lost in Music, He’s the Greatest Dancer, Thinking of You and We Are Family – many artists would long for just one of these songs at any time in their career, but for Sister Sledge they all appeared on a single side of one of their albums. As she brings these and the rest of the disco group’s still-sensational catalogue to the Electric Paradise festival this summer, Kathy Sledge will be joining us to answer your questions.

Kathy is one of four Sledge sisters along with Debbie, Joni and Kim, who formed the group as children in the mid-1960s, picking up gigs at churches and local events in their home city of Philadelphia as the Sledge Sisters. After flipping the name around, they got a record deal and their first chart success came in the UK in 1973, with the Top 20 hit Mama Never Told Me.

Lionsgate’s Adam Fogelson says there is ‘a ton of incredibly entertaining story’ still to tell, which may include unused footage shot for the first film

The studio behind hit Michael Jackson biopic Michael has revealed plans for a sequel despite the controversy that surrounded the original.

Speaking in a quarterly earnings call reported by Variety, Lionsgate motion picture chair Adam Fogelson said that preparations for a projected sequel “continue to go exceptionally well”.

First major retrospective for the wartime PM’s paintings, shadows of Berlin Dada, hopeful science and the outrageous art of Valie Export – all in your weekly dispatch

Winston Churchill: The Painter
Britain’s eloquent war leader kept himself sane by puffing on cigars, swilling brandy – and painting the world around him.
• The Wallace Collection, London, from 23 May to 29 November

Guardian Australia joins ultrarunner Joanne Walker in an excruciating race through the Blue Mountains, where men outnumber women four to one

Somewhere before the finish line the body starts to break down, Joanne Walker says.

“The pain starts in your feet but before long it moves up to your knees and eventually you feel like you just can’t move your legs any more.”

After 30 hours with no sleep, running alone through the cold darkness of the Megalong Valley, the brain can break as well.

“At one point, I did not even know where I was going; I was swerving all over the shop,” she says.

I was rushing towards the turnstile when I noticed a bundle of clothes in a corner. I walked over, peeled back a dark sweatshirt, and saw him

In the summer of 2000, I could never have imagined becoming a father. I was 34, living in New York City, with a good job in social care, but still in a tiny apartment. I had been with my partner, Pete, for just over three years; we were serious, but we didn’t live together. Becoming a parent was not on my radar.

One August evening, I had finished work late and was hurrying to a dinner reservation I had with Pete. I was rushing towards the turnstile at Union Square station when I noticed a bundle of clothes in a corner. I saw it move and stopped in my tracks. I walked over, peeled back a dark sweatshirt, and saw him: a newborn baby, with the umbilical cord still attached.

From luxury Simba and Otty mattresses to brilliant budget buys, here’s what we recommend – and how to know if you’ve found a good deal

• The best mattresses for back pain
• The best mattress toppers, tested

A good mattress improves your sleep, say mattress makers – and they would, wouldn’t they? But they’re right. The older I get, the more I know it. When I was 20, I could sleep anywhere: a friend’s floor, a sofa – even a phone box one night. These days, I won’t get a single one of 40 winks if I’m not lying on a decent mattress. Comfy but firm, cosy but breathable, and with lots of cool spots for my feet.

Today’s best mattresses promise all this and more. Pocket springs are still around, but they face stiff – well, medium-firm – competition from hybrid mattresses that combine springs and memory foam for the ideal balance of comfort and support.

Best mattress overall:
Otty Original Hybrid

Secateurs, pizza ovens and sparkling rose in a tin … whatever your plans for the long weekend, here’s how to make the most of it

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Reasons to be cheerful #271: a warm, sunny bank holiday weekend. Here at the Filter, we need no excuse to kick off our shoes, grab a cold drink (and some SPF) and head outside.

To help you make the most of the long weekend, we’ve rounded up some of our favourite things. Whether it’s tools to spruce up your outdoor space, tipples to sip in the garden, a fake tan to jump-start your summer skin or fashion for warmer weather, summer starts here.

Whether it’s jigsaws, mud kitchens or electronic pets, four is a fun age to buy for. Here are 22 road-tested favourites

• The best toys and gifts for three-year-olds

Four is a magical age. Children are on their way out of the “threenager” stage, growing in confidence and independence but still needing help and support from parents and friends.

Four was the age at which many seasoned parents told me that “things get a little easier”, and I’ve found this is slightly true now that my daughters are almost four and seven.

Whether you want to improve your home’s security or simply know who’s at the door, the latest generation of smart doorbells will help put your mind at ease

• The best robot vacuums, tested

Doorbells have evolved. Today, they watch us as we approach, let the people inside the home know we’re coming sooner than our finger can hit the button, and give them a good look at our faces before they open the door. They’re essentially security cameras with a chime function.

If you haven’t already installed one of these handy tools, there’s a huge array available. Choosing the best video doorbell can be a bewildering task, with various factors to consider, including how much of your doorstep you want to see and whether you’re prepared to pay for a subscription. To help make the decision a little bit easier, I tested eight popular video doorbells to find the best.

Best video doorbell overall:
Google Nest Doorbell (battery)

Best budget video doorbell:
Blink smart video doorbell with Sync Module 2

A lower-ABV highball that brings together cherry cola, red wine and Italy’s favourite bitter artichoke aperitif

Our highball menu at Circle 13 champions lower-ABV pours for relaxed evenings of petanque. This one’s a favourite at our park takeovers, as well as a nod to the Basque-inspired pintxo kitchen at our first permanent site in east London.

Marc Sarton Du Jonchay, Circle 13, London E2

You don’t have to buy a ticket to enjoy decent festival food – here are a few ideas for bringing the party home

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This weekend, my social media was flooded with swoon-worthy shots from the Ballymaloe Festival of Food in Ireland, one of my favourite events in the food world’s social calendar. It really is exceptional, because of its range of stalls, personalities and demos, and because you also get a glimpse into the world of the ever-inspiring Allen family (I desperately want an outbuilding purely for fermenting and making sourdough, à la Darina).

Weekends such as this are becoming more and more popular, and they’re undoubtedly a fun and great way to try a range of cuisines, but you don’t have to go to a food festival to enjoy decent festival food. Almost all festivals have great culinary offerings now – I’ve had some highly memorable meals at the likes of Glastonbury, End of the Road and Latitude. Forget living off kebabs and chips after a day dancing in a field; some of my highlights have been meals such as Tibetan momos, vegan thali with sweet chai and Goan fish curry. While there is no Glasto this year, there are plenty of other places to get your fix – you could even bring the party home.

Versatile, aesthetically ambiguous and cultish in its appeal, chenin blanc is the Tilda Swinton of grapes

My wine consultant friend, Ruth Osborne, often wears a cap embroidered with the words “chenin blanc”. As someone who is proud to include hats from Toad bakery and Celine Dion’s 2017 UK tour in her collection, I know all about headwear as a signifier of personal brand, and Ruth isn’t the only person in the business to extol the virtues of chenin. But why?

Chenin blanc shape-shifts with soil and climate perhaps more than any other grape, and it is this chameleon quality that sets wine enthusiasts aflutter, as does the fact that it’s a late-ripening variety with good acidity, so lends itself to a whole spectrum of profiles, from dry to sweet. Versatile, aesthetically ambiguous and, as my friend’s hat testifies, cultish in its appeal, it is the Tilda Swinton of grapes.

Luscious, herby ricotta and breadcrumb balls, simmered in a rich tomato, basil and chilli sauce … that’s one weeknight dinner sorted

To begin with, the situation looks far from promising. Having given up its protein for cheese, the whey that has been returned to the huge pan is thin, opaque and not unlike cloudy washing-up water. The situation changes slightly when whole milk is added to the whey, along with rennet, and it’s then reheated, or re-cooked (ri-cotta). For a while, nothing happens. Then follows a slight, just perceptible wobbling, before, quite suddenly, like scudding clouds moving into view, scraggy clumps of coagulated protein, albumin and globulin appear on the surface. These are lifted out in the same way as foam from a pan of broth: scooped off with a large slotted spoon. At least that is how it is done by Filippo Privitera at Caseificio Privitare in Castellana Sicula in the province of Palermo. The coagulated protein, otherwise known as ricotta, is then dropped into perforated plastic tubes on a slanting surface so it can drain some more, before being eaten in many ways.

For the Feast newsletter a few weeks ago, I wrote about the many ways to eat ricotta. Like many, I have long known what a useful ingredient it is, but, going through decades of archives, I was reminded just how versatile ricotta is, moving with ease between savoury and sweet, and both straight from the pot and cooked. However, since writing that newsletter, things I forgot to mention have also scudded into my head: how good ricotta is in pastry (a roast pumpkin, mushroom and chestnut pie is especially good); that it can be whipped with coffee for Anna Del Conte’s quick pudding; mixed with flour for sweet fritters; or made into polpette di ricotta e pane (ricotta and breadcrumb balls), which can be deep-fried or simmered in a rich tomato, basil and chilli sauce.

Reading with him, I am reminded of the world of words his mother and I shared. I no longer feel so overwhelmed

As I removed my dead wife’s favourite novels from the bookshelf, a photo of her fell to the ground and a wave of guilt swamped me.

The photo was of my wife with her sister in the 1980s. They were toddlers. My wife’s eyes, wide and bright, and her hair, blond and shaggy, looked just like our four-year-old son. But I felt no joy in seeing her beauty and genes passed on. I felt as though I was suddenly drowning.

Although it might seem like a minor irritant, the consequences of email incivility can be far-reaching

Received a rude email at work? You’re not alone.

When I was weighing a move from full-time to freelance work, a terse email from a colleague – demanding I redo a task from scratch over a technicality – settled the matter instantly. I quit on the spot. Around the same time, thousands of US government workers received an email requiring them to justify their employment “with approx 5 bullets of what you accomplished this week” – or resign.

Clarissa Brincat is a freelance health and science journalist

She might look like a wolf, but Nya’s temperament is so sweet that she now helps people who have a fear of trains and travel

I got Nya, a German shepherd, when she was a puppy. She has such a good temperament – she’s really calm around people.

When she was five years old, I decided to register her with Pets As Therapy, an organisation that brings therapy pets into hospitals, care homes, schools and other places to befriend people, and help reduce stress and anxiety.

When Sousan Samadani saw a video about soil degradation, she suddenly knew she would commit everything she had to the cause. Soon she was travelling thousands of miles to raise awareness, skydiving, hitchhiking and cycling

Sousan Samadani was watching videos on YouTube one day when she came across a post about how the world’s soil was degrading so rapidly that it was in danger of extinction.

The video – posted by the Save Soil movement – “was like a shock for me”, Samadani says. “I thought: ‘How is it possible that the soil that gives us food is dying?’”

From a farmhouse with a wildflower meadow to an award-winning London flat with a neat garden for al fresco dining

Parents can can claim up to £2,000 a year for each child – but many are put off by the clunkiness of the scheme

Any parent who has ever used the UK government’s tax-free childcare system knows what a painful experience it is. Each month when I log into my account, I feel a sense of dread and frustration. Why is something that is such a lifeline for so many parents so difficult to use?

The scheme gives working parents an extra £2 for every £8 they spend on childcare. You can claim up to £2,000 a year for each child (or up to £4,000 a year for a disabled child).

Special anniversary edition of award-winning headphones are some of the best sounding you can buy, but cost far more than top Sony noise cancellers

Sony’s latest noise-cancelling headphones are a special anniversary set made to celebrate a decade of its prized 1000X series, designed to be plusher, slimmer, more comfortable and the best sounding yet.

The original 1000X launched in 2016, igniting a fierce rivalry with the dominant Bose and its QuietComfort line, which would push noise-cancelling technology dramatically forward as each tried to outdo the other with subsequent releases.

The bank’s interim chief executive says ‘this issue should never have happened’, but warns it may take time to process claims

National Savings and Investments bank will start to contact thousands of families affected by a missing savings scandal next week, as it confirmed how much they are owed.

In March, the chief executive of the state-backed bank was forced out after it emerged there had been long-running problems with the tracing of accounts belonging to customers who had died.

Cancer Research UK figures show number diagnosed with most serious form of skin cancer has risen above 20,000 for first time

The number of cases from the most serious form of skin cancer have reached a record high across the UK, according to analysis by a leading cancer charity.

Melanoma cases in the UK have risen above 20,000 for the first time ever, with 20,980 people being diagnosed with the form of cancer in 2022, according to analysis of the latest figures by Cancer Research UK.

Retreating from reality is a brittle way to feel better, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Find people who feel as you do and then face these problems together

• Read more Leading questions

I’m 21, and all my life I’ve been anxious about the future. It’s not getting better. There are a lot of things that worry me – no job prospects even with a degree under my belt; I won’t be able to find a partner who will respect me; I’ll never own a house. And outside these, of course, I’m worried about climate change and global politics.

The advice I have been offered is to “not think about it” or “focus on what I personally can control”. But I have dreams and aspirations; I want to be a writer and an artist and I am working harder than ever to make those things happen, even if AI might make those fields even more competitive. So my question is: How do I balance my dreams and aspirations practically, and take care of myself, without living in a bubble?

UK scientists find tocilizumab, used for rheumatoid arthritis, may help antidepressant-resistant patients

Immunotherapy could be used to treat depression among patients who have not responded to conventional antidepressants, according to the results of an early clinical trial.

Researchers at the University of Bristol investigated whether tocilizumab, an anti-inflammatory drug commonly used for immune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, could improve symptoms of difficult-to-treat depression.

The more we learn about the gut, the more we realise how central it is to health. Here are 16 ways to look after it, from making sure we get enough fibre to not taking phones to the loo

“Our gut is a complex machine,” says Dr Ajay Verma, a consultant gastroenterologist at Kettering general hospital in Northamptonshire. “It is constantly providing us with the nutrition we need, initially to grow and develop, and then for us to survive, thrive and repair from injury and illness.” How can we keep it functioning well? Put simply: “Make sure what you put into it is balanced, and that you clear out its waste products adequately,” says Verma.

Take your lead from Harry Styles and go for short shorts, or dig out your favourite knee-length pair

The floaty, feminine aesthetic being worn by young pop stars like Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter has been around since the 1960s. So why all the fuss?

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In the music video for her recent single Drop Dead, pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo saunters beguilingly through the ornate rooms of the Palace of Versailles, her eyes fixed on the camera. It is an all round soft-girl production, shot by Petra Collins who captures a hazy teenage aesthetic close to a carbon copy of Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film, Marie Antoinette. But when the video aired last month, it was met with instant backlash online – not for her halting tourists from visiting the world heritage site for the day, but for Rodrigo’s Pinterest-inspired, pastel blue, babydoll ensemble.

The outfit – a floaty off-the-shoulder Chloé pre-fall 2026 babydoll top, styled with silky bloomers peeking out underneath and white pointelle knee socks – did not impress the keyboard warriors (likely, bots), who accused the singer of infantilising herself and invoking a ‘Lolita’ aesthetic. A few weeks later, Rodrigo donned a similar look (pictured top) on stage in Barcelona for Spotify’s Billions Club Live concert: a pink and white floral puff-sleeve babydoll top with matching ruffled bloomers from the small brand Génération78, offset by chunky black knee-high Dr Marten boots, equal parts soft and severe.

The latest character dressing trend may be a little silly but there’s an off-kilter pleasure in its mellow, vintage vibe

Welcome to the season of the Posh Grandpa, fashion’s newest main character. We’ve had Brat, we did Coastal Grandma, we loved Tomato Girl Summer. The world is pretty heavy right now, as you’ll have noticed, so any opportunity to lighten up is precious. The nonsense is the point.

Character dressing is style that makes you smile, but it’s not just that. There is infinitely more joy in these looks, however silly they are, than there is in aspiring to look rich and pretty, which is where the aesthetic centre of gravity of our culture swings back to again and again. The esoteric sides of fashion’s personality capture something important about style, which is that it needs a bit of friction to make it interesting. The pebble in the boot, the surprise to snag the eye. This is where the magic happens.

Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest collection pairs uptown elegance with downtown pop culture and street style

The allure of travelling in style helped make Louis Vuitton the biggest luxury house in the world, and no expense was spared for a trip to New York to showcase Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest collection.

The first model stepped on to the catwalk carrying a 100-year-old Louis Vuitton suitcase on which the artist Keith Haring had doodled several of his signature grooving stick figures in 1984. Prised from the Vuitton archives, the case heralded a collaboration with Haring’s estate that will include the classic LV Speedy handbag reissued with the artist’s dancing babies and barking dogs.

Eccentric public art, strange ruins, eerie landscapes, follies … Britain has a rich store of curiosities. An enthusiast selects 10 of the quirkiest finds from his new book

One thing unites the British more than anything else. It stands there in plain sight but is rarely spoken about. We may try to hide it; we may not admit it to ourselves; but under the surface, deep down, in the nicest possible way, we are all a little odd. Not in a sinister way, just eccentric, weird, unpredictable and downright wonderful. As a nation we have an artistic and creative zest and boffin-like inventiveness. In fields of innovation, we led the tech world with some of our brave and crazy inventions. Even our landscapes are damn weird, with some of the oldest, most mysterious and diverse geological oddities in Europe, and plentiful legends too. I spent years exploring the enchanting strangeness of Britain, discovering follies, eccentric public art, strange buildings, mysterious ruins and eerie landscapes for my Weird Guide, which features about 300 of these curiosities. Here are some of my favourites.

The Yorkshire Dales Explorer is a little-known alternative to the Settle to Carlisle rail route, and takes you deep into wonderful walking country

Limestone stretches on all sides like an inland ocean – appropriately enough, since the shimmering white rock has its ancient origins in coral, shells and the skeletons of sea creatures. We advance carefully, stepping on clints (blocks of rock) and avoiding grykes (the deep fissures between them). It’s a warm, dry day and, even if it were not, limestone drains better than most types of terrain. For a long while, it’s broad, flat and hallucinatory and then, suddenly, the rocky sea collapses like a waterfall and we’re at the edge of a huge fault. The words Yorkshire Dales might evoke pretty villages and walled-in sheep fields, but this landscape is raw and wild, the kind of natural realm WH Auden celebrated in his poem In Praise of Limestone, and the kind that prompts geological speculation and inward ruminations. To cap it all, there are just three of us and nothing much and no one else all the way to the far horizons.

It’s my first decent yomp of the spring. I’ve come here with two walking pals on the egregiously under-promoted direct train that connects Rochdale and Manchester with the national park and Yorkshire’s Three Peaks. While the Leeds-Settle-Carlisle service – which recently celebrated its 150th birthday – is deservedly famous, the Yorkshire Dales Explorer, which started in June 2024, is much less celebrated. It’s also far less frequent. Trains travel between Leeds and Settle, continuing to Carlisle or Morecambe, 20 times a day Monday to Saturday, 11 times on Sundays. Trains between Manchester Victoria and Settle run on Saturdays only and just once in the morning each way and once in the late afternoon.

Wonderful walks, wholesome adventures and friendly farmyard animals await at this collection of cabins and cottages in Perthshire

On a January morning in 1938, Pitmiddle’s last resident, James Gillies, closed the door to his cottage for the final time and walked away through the snow. High on the south-facing slopes of the Sidlaw Hills in Perthshire, the village is now little more than a jumble of half-ruined walls gradually being reclaimed by the land.

My children pick around the overgrown stones like explorers discovering a lost civilisation, before scampering back through the gate and over the grass to our cabin in a neighbouring field. Called the Pitmiddle Hut, it’s the latest addition to Guardswell Farm, which spans 81 hectares (200 acres) of countryside halfway between Perth and Dundee (an hour and a half from Glasgow or Edinburgh). “People gradually moved away from Pitmiddle’s way of life,” says Anna Lamotte, who runs Guardswell with her husband, Digby Legge, often aided by their four-year-old daughter and a smiley 10-month-old in a vintage pram. “Villagers each had a pendicle, the small area they could farm, a system of outfields, infields and ‘kailyards’ – a Scots word for a kitchen garden.” Anna and Digby grew up on farms and small-holdings nearby, and today they rear cattle, sheep, goats and chickens and tend to the vegetable gardens, alongside welcoming guests to stay.

With state-of-the-art fitness and spa facilities onsite and everything from hiking to kayaking the beautiful Bay of Kotor, it’s a perfect base for an active break

I was lying on a bed with no trousers on. A young man helped me into some crotch-high boots and zipped them up. He turned the lights down low, put on some music, pressed a button and left the room. Argh! The boots started to slowly inflate from the toes up, like a giant blood-pressure cuff. As they clenched around my upper thighs, I started to panic. What if they just got tighter and tighter until my legs exploded? As I was about to shout for help, the pressure suddenly released, leaving my legs feeling deliciously light. I took a deep breath and submitted to another 19 minutes of this sweet torture.

I was at Siro Boka Place in Montenegro, having compression boot therapy, which is supposed to boost circulation and reduce swelling. “It’s especially effective on women over 35,” my youthful assistant had told me, helpfully. The hotel, which opened last year, is proud of its “state-of-the-art wellness facilities”. In most hotels that means a poky gym. At Siro the facilities are so good the Montenegrin Olympic team is training here ahead of Los Angeles 2028.

Being a carnivore is often seen as an expression of manhood, but the need has never been greater for men to cut down their intake

• Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint

• Got a question or tip for reducing household emissions? Email us at changebydegrees@theguardian.com

Eating too much of it risks chronic disease, growing it contributes about an eighth of human-made climate pollution, and there is evidence linking it to certain cancers.

But there’s no denying meat – especially red and processed meat – remains a firm fixture on dinner plates. This is especially the case for blokes, posing a masculine challenge to the climate crisis.

Looking at your veg patch with fresh eyes can be inspiring – and a helpful way of rectifying past mistakes

Regular readers might remember me having a wobbly time in the garden last year. Life was lifing (as the kids say) and with that came many hiccups and failures. The veg patch had a wanton disregard for my hopes during growing season, which taught me the importance of finding value and beauty in what was growing, instead of lamenting all that was not.

This season, I’ve found myself approaching the veg patch with a more determined attitude. It’s been six years since my partner and I cleared the couch grass and nettles from the parcel of earth at the bottom of our garden, moved a ton or so of compost on to it to create vegetable beds, and grew the first crops in our new home. And now feels like the right time to take a look at our growing space with fresh eyes. It’s not a blank space, of course, but I’ve been asking myself how I’d grow here if I’d just adopted this patch.

Willington, County Durham: On a fine May morning, there’s no better time to look at the stunning array of ways that bees and flowers have co-evolved to interact

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a wild flower in possession of a fortune in nectar and pollen, must be in want of a pollinator,” Jane Austen might have written, had she been a botanist. All along this former railway line, on a sunny May morning, there are thousands of newly opened flowers laden with such inducements, vying for the attention of foraging bumblebees. And none delivers its pollen with such deception and violence as broom (Cytisus scoparius).

A large bumblebee arrives, settles briefly, finds no nectar and departs, leaving a deranged tangle of stamens protruding from the petals. What happened? Poking my finger into an intact flower, to mimic the visitor, there’s an explosion of pollen as 10 stamens and a coiled stigma, confined in the boat-shaped keel petal, break free. Simultaneously, they deliver and collect pollen, with a gut-punch to the insect’s furry abdomen. Bumblebees don’t seem to mind; the trap has been tripped in almost every flower on this bush.

From furniture with ‘skinny legs’ to making sure spaces work for multiple purposes, three experts who live in tiny homes share their best lessons

In 2010 Colin Chee picked up the keys to his 37 square metre off-the-plan apartment in Melbourne’s city centre. “It was only then that I realised how shit it was.”

With no design experience and a limited budget, his quest to find inspiration eventually led to the birth of Never Too Small, a YouTube channel showcasing clever designs for small spaces from around the world. Launched in 2017, it now has more than 3 million subscribers.

Gardeners tending to allotments were terrified to see animal roaming wild after mauling one of its keepers – but critics have long been concerned

A tiger on the loose among garden allotments. Panicked residents summoning armed police ill-equipped to deal with a dangerous predator. And, behind it all, Germany’s self-proclaimed “Tiger Queen” and her private menagerie.

In startling scenes over the weekend in the eastern town of Schkeuditz, near Leipzig airport, the mix proved fatal for a big cat named Sandokan and left a keeper seriously injured.

The giant of stage and screen is 87 and still hates looking in the mirror. At home with his husband, he talks about weeping, sleeping with Daniel Craig, terrifying directors and the joys of white wine and a nap

Derek Jacobi is chatting to the photographer in the living room. His voice is unmistakeable – rich, buttered, every sentence beautifully parsed and phrased. I’m in the kitchen with his husband, Richard Clifford, who is making coffee. He tells me they have been together 47 years. “We met when I was 22 and he was 39.”

“I’m a child snatcher,” guffaws Jacobi from the lounge.

When pupils could no longer play outside, St John’s school in Barnet decided to act, enlisting Trees for Cities to help rethink its outside space

The play area at St John’s Church of England primary in Barnet, north London, used to flood so severely it was often unusable. “It would get so bad that the children couldn’t be dismissed from the playground,” says Macci Dobie, the school’s headteacher. “We had to dismiss them from different parts of the school or, literally, parents were stepping into puddles to lift their children out of the classroom.”

Because the school sits in a basin with clay foundations, rain would pool on the grey tarmac and just sit there, often denying the children a proper break for play outside.

We would like to hear about what you love about the great outdoors

As summer comes and our gardens, parks and woodlands burst into life, many of us are heading outdoors.

Scientific evidence shows how vitally important greenery and the natural world are for our mental and physical wellbeing.

Wherever you’re planning to watch the matches – we’d like to hear from you

The men’s World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada is nearly upon us, kicking off on 11 June.

Amid the excitement around the tournament, there has been controversy over Fifa’s ticketing process, the cost of travel, and security concerns for fans travelling to the US.

The Pensions Commission said 15 million people were currently not saving adequately for their retirement

Fifteen million people are currently not saving enough for their retirement, according to the Pensions Commission, who have warned this could rise to as many as 19 million without action.

The independent group of experts warned as many as 45% of working-age adults were not saving into a pension at all, despite nearly half of them being in work.

We would like to hear from people who have emigrated - or are considering doing so – due to rising anti-migration sentiment or policies

The Unite the Kingdom march attracted tens of thousands of people to the capital on Saturday. While some insist it was a display of national pride, others see the Tommy Robinson rally as a hostile display of anti-migrant sentiment. US vice president JD Vance appeared to align himself with those who attended the march at a White House press briefing on Tuesday.

We would like to hear from people who have emigrated - or are considering doing so - because of anti-migration sentiment or government policy. Since the UK is just one country where anti-migration sentiment has flared, we’re keen to hear from people globally who have made life decisions because of the current climate.

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