It’s 10 years since Brexit – and it’s also another one of those weeks in British politics … Guardian columnist Rafael Behr will be here at 5pm to answer your questions about Burnham, Starmer, Brexit and more.

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Welcome to our latest Q&A with a Guardian journalist. Raf will be joining us at 5pm. We have originally asked him to take questions about Brexit as we mark 10 years since the UK’s vote to leave the EU. But … you may well have questions about the last 48 hours as Andy Burnham looks certain to become the next prime minister.

In the meantime, though, Andrew Sparrow is covering another busy and dramatic day in Westminster on the politics live blog and here’s some more on the end of Keir Starmer’s premiership:

As hot weather becomes more common, companies and homeowners are coming up with innovative ways to keep properties cool

When graphic designer Marc Alabaster had a new set of glass doors installed at his West Sussex home eight years ago, he soon realised how they magnified the heat of the afternoon sun.

“The kitchen was 40-plus degrees,” he said. Then he went on holiday to Spain and saw an apartment building wrapped in louvre-like rows of angled fins or blades that shaded the external walls against the sun.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

French PM to hold emergency meeting after heat deaths; London could reach maximum 39C on Thursday

• Tell us: how is the heatwave in the UK and across Europe affecting you?

• Forty drown across France in heatwave and parts of Spain above 30C at night

Italy’s health ministry has declared a red heatwave alert in 15 cities including Milan and Rome on Tuesday and said the number would go up to 16 on Wednesday.

During a red alert – the highest level – the ministry advises people to eat light, stay indoors in the hottest parts of the day and sprinkle themselves with cool water.

Spokesperson did not suggest this would cover the defence investment plan and added Burnham will be allowed civil service ‘access talks’

Peter Walker is a senior Guardian political correspondent.

The Liberal Democrats are marking the tenth anniversary of Brexit by enjoying their favourite pursuit – being rude about Nigel Farage.

Nigel Farage pocketed a £5m “reward” for the damage he’s caused, while the rest of us are paying for it dearly. When he promised we would be better off, he clearly only meant himself. We are taking over billboards across the UK today to say enough is enough.

Key to a serious Jones run seems to what he makes of Burnham’s economic policies in the coming days - including public control of utilities. And whether Ed Miliband ends up as chancellor.

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

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

• UK politics live – latest updates

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

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

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

• UK politics live – latest updates

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

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

⚽ All the latest news from day 13 of the tournament
⚽ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Mail Dominic

Our man in the camp David Hytner goes under the hood (nailed it) of England’s preparations for the Black Stars.

Thomas Tuchel shares his view on what Ghana will bring in Foxborough: “I expect more ball possession. I expect Ghana to rely on counterattacks because they are very physical, very fast and dangerous.”

Foreign Office failed to act on warnings of genocide due to ‘pressure’ from emirates, Yale human rights investigator will tell a parliamentary select committee

The British government had received intelligence that Ethiopia appeared to be supporting a genocidal militia in Sudan’s civil war as far back as 2024 but did not go public with the news for fear of upsetting the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a parliamentary committee will hear.

In May 2024, officials from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) told Nathaniel Raymond, an American human rights investigator at Yale University, that “significant private pressure” from the UAE meant the UK would not publicly divulge information linking Ethiopia and the emirates to their support for the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.

Formal identification yet to take place but family of Lilly, who was reported missing on Saturday, have been informed

Police have launched a murder investigation after the discovery of a body believed to be a missing 14-year-old girl in south Wales.

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

US president says Tehran has committed to ‘nuclear honesty’, while Iran’s foreign ministry says there are no plans for IAEA to inspect sites bombed by US and Israel last year

Oman and Iran said in a statement that the two countries will ⁠form ⁠a ​team to reach an ⁠agreement on “administration of navigation ⁠in ​the Strait ‌of Hormuz” ‌and associated ‌costs and services, Reuters reports.

The two states will hold ⁠talks with ​coastal countries ​and other ​concerned parties, ​the ‌statement ​said.

Representatives of Raise the Colours appeared in court after local council accused them of intimidating staff

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

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

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

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

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

The symbolic power of a stagnant pond beneath Lincoln’s statue has proven irresistible for the president’s critics

Narcissus was cursed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Donald Trump is finding that his effort to overhaul the Lincoln ⁠Memorial reflecting pool in Washington has turned into a perverse tourist attraction and 2,028ft national metaphor.

On Monday afternoon a massive algae bloom had turned the pool a green reminiscent of a plane passenger clutching a sick bag. It also stank, but that did not deter a steady flow of curious tourists snapping photos and TV crews doing eyewitness interviews about the folly of Donald Trump’s $14.7m renovation.

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

• The best TV of 2026 so far

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our cartoonist on the heroes, villains and superstar performances in week two of the tournament

• Buy a cartoon | Some of David’s favourite works

• And his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now

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In 10 of the past 12 World Cups, six goals has been the standard to bag yourself the Golden Boot. Usually a goal per game will suffice. In fact, on two occasions (in 2006 and 2010) a mere five strikes has been enough. Yet a quick glance at the current 2026 Geopolitics World Cup Golden Boot standings after most teams have played two games sees Lionel Messi top of the tree with five goals already from his two outings, having broken Miroslav Klose’s all-time tournament scoring record in the process. The Argentinian’s latest two goals came in a 2-0 victory over Austria in which neither Argentina nor Messi did anything of note other than score – aside from the great man shanking an early penalty miles wide, which is becoming quite the common occurrence for Messi. Think how many World Cup goals he would have if he could beat a goalkeeper from 12 yards (answer: 21, three more than he has).

Lurking just behind are the pretenders to Messi’s golden throne, Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé, who between them are tearing up Group I with four goals apiece. Both the Norwegian and French frontmen have been donated at least one goal by careless Iraqi and Senegalese defenders so far, but have looked razor-sharp up top and will soon meet in a tasty decider to see who tops the group. Both, you suspect, will have designs on ensuring Messi does not hold the World Cup scoring record for long, with Mbappé already level with Klose, two behind the Argentinian. Haaland, in his debut World Cup, is already one goal behind legends like Raul, Romario and Roger Milla, who only managed five across their careers.

The Fifa suits must be loving the fact all the big sexy names are firing on their global stage. It’s as if Big Gianni himself wrote the script, beaming in the knowledge that goals are a universally beloved currency, a useful tool in helping brush all the unpleasantness under the carpet. Even aside from the aforementioned trio, Harry Kane has bagged a double in his only game, Vinícius Júnior has two for the tournament so far and two of the host nations have superstar strikers (of sorts) in the shape of USA USA USA figurehead Folarin Balogun and Canadian ace Jonathan David. There is a significant striking name missing from this list, a longtime rival of Messi’s, but Football Daily is struggling to remember who that might be. Gah.

Consider that this unique GWC will give top strikers an extra game in which to fill their scoring boots and maybe Just Fontaine’s record of 13 goals in a single World Cup, which has stood since 1958, might come under threat. It is possible, likely even, we will get a player in double figures for the first time since Gerd Müller hit 10 in Mexico 1970. What seems certain is this is a golden boot race for the ages, contested by the best players on the planet. For all the cynicism and moral fatigue surrounding this GWC, that is something most lovers of football can get on board with. More goals please, guys.

ITV’s Sam Matterface on Egypt scoring against New Zealand: ‘They’ll be celebrating that goal all the way from Cairo to Giza!’ Coming soon (hopefully): England celebrate a goal all the way from London to Heathrow airport” – Keith Razey.

May I also wade into English v Spanish GWC viewing debate (Football Daily letters passim). I’m Team Telemundo, owing to existing subscriptions and a well-founded antipathy towards Fox Corp. While I can’t understand a thing, I was delighted to see journeyman striker Roque Santa Cruz acting as a pundit the other night. It also got me intrigued to know equivalent figures in each language’s coverage: I’d love to know from our Spanish-speaking friends if there are Telemundo Roy Keanes, Mark Chapmans, Kelly Cates, Ian Wrights, Andy Townsends or (shudder) Robbie Savages out there. ¡Te deseo lo mejor! “ – Martin Clifford.

As a Spurs fan I am keener than ever for the GWC to be over and the new season of the Premier League to commence. However, if you call up the table for the 2026-27 season, it is listed in alphabetical order and by this sorting method, Tottenham already sit bottom. I never thought that I would find a reason to regret West Ham being relegated” – Greg Wynn.

I fear James Vortkamp-Tong’s missive (yesterday’s Football Daily letters) is a familiar spin on an email seen here many moons ago. Possibly about Watford. However, like Dad’s Army repeats, it is admittedly more amusing than newer material. Can’t beat the classics” – Andrew Taylor.

Vinyl has baffled youngsters at the team’s hotel but spells of opening victory against Croatia showed side in the groove

Inside the foyer of the England team hotel in Kansas City, along with the TV screens that show the World Cup matches, there is an anachronism. It is a record player and it is worth reporting there were younger members of the squad who looked genuinely baffled by it. What were these strange plastic circles that went on it?

The Football Association found out the favourite songs of each player and obtained vinyl versions of them. And very popular the whole thing has been, even if Harry Kane has been determined to play country and western on it. Harry, this is not leadership.

• Argentinian eclipses Klose to reach 18 goals at finals

• Check out the top scorers in men’s World Cup history

An exhausted Lionel Messi savoured the “special” feeling of becoming the World Cup’s all-time record goalscorer after his double gave Argentina a 2-0 victory over Austria.

Messi broke Germany striker Miroslav Klose’s record, set in 2014, by scoring his 17th goal on this stage seven minutes before half-time, adding another with the final action of the match. He had earlier missed a penalty and admitted his matchwinning contributions were necessary to wash away the taste of that aberration.

Major tournaments bring people together and Scotland’s welcome presence adds to the case for a 48-team event

I could watch videos of the Scots online for hours. Wearing kilts, they marched through Boston playing bagpipes. In the stadium, the Tartan Army roared their team to victory against Haiti, their first World Cup win in 36 years.

Afterwards they went to a baseball game and, singing and wearing knee-length red socks, turned a Boston Red Sox home game into part of the World Cup – and one of its highlights, too. In the stadium they had the rules of this sport, which we Europeans find difficult to understand, explained to them.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blame my uncle and his contempt for rules and regulations

My uncle has a mature and beautiful gingko tree, which also goes by the name of memory tree, which is a little ironic because he can’t remember where he put his hearing aid batteries, and yet he can recollect with pin-sharp detail the exact moment this tree’s predecessor was confiscated by a customs official on the way back from the unnamed country he was smuggling it in from.

“Smuggling” was a large and entirely wrong word for a tiny sapling that wasn’t harming anyone, he said, but they took it off him anyway and destroyed it, a decades-old outrage that felt pretty fresh. I’m a little hazy on how the current tree came to arrive in his garden, whether that first one was a decoy and he was packing two trees, but let’s just say that couldn’t possibly have happened because this definitely isn’t the same uncle who brought seven varieties of seed potato back from a family wedding in Germany in 1985, by putting them in my and my siblings’ pockets, because what kind of customs monster would search a child?

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 Brexit vote showed that class still matters in British politics – and the changes needed are ones the EU would never have allowed

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

On the morning after the vote for Brexit, the Guardian’s newsroom was deathly quiet. There was disbelief that the public had voted the way it had, and the place was in mourning. With one exception the paper’s columnists had backed remain, and the shock of defeat was all the harder to bear because they had expected their side to triumph.

The exception to the house view was me – and I certainly received some old-fashioned looks from my colleagues that day. Judging by my inbox, both then and thereafter, my colleagues were more in tune with the readers than I was, but the editor thought it important that my leftwing case for Brexit should be given a hearing. Ten years on, that case is worth restating.

The first strand in the argument is that Europe isn’t working, and hasn’t been working for a long time. There has always been an economic case for EU membership but it has become harder to make down the years. When Britain was first applying to join what was then the European Economic Community, the major European economies were growing a lot faster than Britain, and were also closing the gap with the US. That is no longer the case. In the more than 17 years since the financial crisis, the US has grown by 87%, compared with the EU’s 13.5% – more than six times as fast.

True, the Office for Budget Responsibility has estimated that the economy will be 4% smaller in the 15 years after the referendum than it would have been had the UK remained in the single market – but this finding should be treated with some scepticism. As Jeremy Hunt, who campaigned for remain, told the BBC last week, for the economy to be 4% bigger today it would have had to have grown as fast as the US – something the former chancellor finds implausible.

The second is that Brexit highlighted the weaknesses of Britain’s financial services-dominated economic model, and provided the opportunity to try something different. While it would be wrong to blame Brussels for all Britain’s economic woes, any serious repair job requires a freedom of manoeuvre that EU membership made more difficult.

The government’s decision to impose tariffs to protect Britain’s steel industry and to cut duties on 100 imported food products to ease the cost of living crisis are examples of that freedom being used. If Andy Burnham is serious about reversing “40 years of neoliberalism”, that will require curbs on the free movement of capital, goods and people – all expressly forbidden by single-market rules.

And third, Brexit was a howl of anger from those parts of Britain that felt marginalised and forgotten. It was a vote for a different economic settlement to put right the damage caused by deindustrialisation and globalisation.

Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist

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

Keir Starmer won power but never explained Britain’s crisis. The new MP for Makerfield offers a sharper diagnosis – and one that voters can understand

Political careers often end when circumstances demand qualities that a politician cannot supply. That seems especially true of Sir Keir Starmer. On Monday, he stepped down as Labour leader, hours before Andy Burnham arrived at Westminster to take his seat as MP for Makerfield.

Sir Keir’s achievements were real. He won a large parliamentary majority in 2024, provided more cash for the NHS and was steadfast in his support of Ukraine. He undoubtedly restored a measure of seriousness after years of Tory psychodrama. But the 2024 victory was always more brittle than it seemed: Labour’s vote actually fell from 2019 and Nigel Farage’s decision to stand candidates in 2024 fractured rightwing votes. Sir Keir won power; he did not change the political weather.

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 work of one of Italy’s greatest scholars focused on ordinary lives oppressed by power and prejudice. That approach resonates today

Reflecting on the genesis of his most famous work, Carlo Ginzburg wrote that by immersing himself in the trial of a 16th-century miller burned by the Roman Inquisition, he turned a possible footnote into a book. Fifty years on, after being translated around the world, The Cheese and The Worms still stands as a supreme exemplar of historical research devoted to the lives of “the persecuted and the vanquished”.

Ginzburg’s death last week, at the age of 87, means that one of the last living links with a remarkable postwar generation of historians has gone. In its passion for reconstructing the fabric of lives previously thought too marginal to bother with, his writing had affinities with EP Thompson’s “history from below” movement and the Annales school in France. As the rise of 21st-century authoritarianism creates new generations of scapegoats and misfits, the approach of one of Italy’s greatest scholars speaks directly to our times.

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

Readers react to the news that Keir Starmer is to step down as prime minister, with Andy Burnham his most likely successor

What an enormous betrayal. A whole load of selfish MPs, opportunist cabinet members and self-seeking lightweights have destroyed the work of a decent, rational and honest man and prime minister. As a member of the Labour party since 1959, for the first time I am profoundly disappointed by our collective behaviour. We are now going to have a drastic change of government.

Ministers will be changed, policies will change, but will have no time to mature. After two more years, the country will move to the chaotic right. Nothing will have been achieved by this mess. Andy Burnham, Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner, and their turncoat supporters, will all have played a part in sending the Labour party into the political wilderness for a generation to come.
Arthur Gould
Loughborough, Leicestershire

Dr Denis MacShane says Labour figures were willing to break ranks over Europe, and implores Conservatives to tell the truth about Brexit. Plus a letter from Zhengli Zhou

Timothy Garton-Ash is right to be worried that Brexit Britain’s political class is now monolingual, with very little personal contact with deciders in the EU (If the UK wants to rejoin the European Union, it first needs to understand it, 15 June).

He lists pro-EU forces in politics and polls, but it is an error to assume that politicians will not buckle and bend faced with the united onslaught of media Europhobia, especially the Musk-Vance bottomless purses to campaign on behalf of Donald Trump against Europe.

As well as a government apology, parents, charities and mother and baby homes should take responsibility, writes Christine Hayes

The adoption of babies in the 1960s and 70s has become a hot topic again (Forced adoption survivors to get full apology from UK government, says Phillipson, 17 June). As an adoption social worker at that time, I remember the trauma suffered by birth parents when their babies were removed for adoption. However, I’m afraid that the parents of these women cannot be let off the hook.

Young women and girls who became pregnant outside of marriage were told by their parents that they had brought shame on the family, and that they were to go away and not return until the baby was no longer with them. This was the norm in society then, and children’s charities played a big part. Mother and baby homes were carrying out what society requested.

Michael Pyke says those sitting on piles of unearned wealth should be willing to help out a less fortunate generation

Your correspondent asserts that the increase in the value of his house since he bought it “just about covers all associated costs over that time” (Letters, 15 June). If that is true he has been remarkably unlucky. A house bought in 1965 for £3,500 would now be worth around £87,500 had its value simply kept pace with the rate of inflation, rather than its current market value of £350,000. A house that cost £20,000 in 1975 would now be worth around £220,000 instead of £900,000.

It is hard to imagine what “associated costs” would come anywhere near such huge increases in value. As for the idea that anyone could buy a house if they avoided “fancy holidays”, “£50,000 weddings” and “ridiculous £90,000 cars” (cars costing this much made up, at most, 0.75% of new registrations last year), this kind of thinking was parodied in the novels of Charles Dickens.

• Australian veteran says four-year ban is a ‘disgrace’

• ITIA says strong testing means unpredictable timing

Ajla Tomljanovic has described the lengthy doping ban administered to Marketa Vondrousova, the 2023 Wimbledon singles champion, as a disgrace and she has accused the tennis anti-doping authorities of being out to get players even when they have done nothing wrong.

The International Tennis Integrity Agency announced on Monday that Vondrousova had been handed a four-year suspension by an independent tribunal after the Czech player had refused to provide a sample to a doping control officer at her home last December at around 8pm.

• Sanjay Patel owns more than 75% of SMP73’s shares

• County say work was done before his appointment

The England and Wales Cricket Board is planning to review a payment of £1.75m from Yorkshire to a company controlled by their chief executive, Sanjay Patel, for consultancy work relating to the Hundred sale.

The club’s 2025 accounts, which were circulated to members last month, show that Patel’s company SMP73 Ltd received a commission of £1.75m last year for “corporate broker services in connection with the sale of Northern Superchargers Limited”. Patel was one of the key architects of the Hundred in his previous role at the ECB and was among a small group of executives who received bonuses worth a combined £2.1m in 2022.

From that crunch classic in Paris to the Red Roses’ trailblazing and Rhys Carré’s try, our pick of the moments that made the 2026-27 season

Best games attended
1) 14 March, France 48-46 England. Thirteen tries – including four for Louis Bielle-Biarrey – and a last-gasp winning penalty from Thomas Ramos. Truly magnifique.

• Champions expected to make an approach for forward

• Fee could be around £100m for Villa’s England player

Arsenal are expected to make an approach to sign Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa after identifying the England forward as their primary transfer target this summer.

The Premier League champions want to strengthen Mikel Arteta’s squad and are hopeful of bringing Rogers to north London, although he could cost up to £100m. Talks with Villa have yet to commence but they are expected to make contact in the coming weeks. The former European champions do not want to sell the 23-year-old, who also has interest from Chelsea and others, but Arsenal are confident of doing a deal.

• San Francisco Giants pitchers wrote Bible verses on hats

• MLB had warned players over violation of league rules

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has defended the league’s policy over Pride celebrations in a letter to Republican senator Josh Hawley.

Most of MLB’s 30 teams celebrate Pride month with a themed game to acknowledge the LGBTQ community and its baseball fans. During a 12 June game against the Chicago Cubs, San Francisco pitchers Landen Roupp, JT Brubaker and Ryan Walker wrote Bible verses on their hats, which featured the Giants’ logo in rainbow colors, while pitcher Sam Hentges chose not to wear the themed cap at all.

Michel Barnier says UK could also join a new European security and defence council

Whoever becomes the next UK prime minister will have plenty of political space to move closer to Europe, polling expert John Curtice has said.

His comments come as many domestically and in Europe begin to question whether the potential future British prime minister will move further away or closer to the EU than Keir Starmer.

“Labour’s vote is something like three-quarters to four-fifths pro-Rejoin [the EU] vote.

Labour has always had much more potential political opportunity to be able to go further in terms of our relationship with the European Union, but it does mean that the Labour Party has to end its hang up about the ‘Red Wall.’”

“Actually the reason why public opinion has shifted from what was, 52:48 in favour of Brexit no being roughly 60, 40 rejoin is partly to do with the fact that leave voters are less likely to say they would vote to stay out, than remain voters … say rejoin.

There is a bit of a gut [feeling] there, but we have to remember now that there are 10 years worth of our population who were too young to vote in 2016.

And if you actually look at the perceptions of the people who did not vote in 2016, whether they were too young or not, they, and their perceptions of the consequences of Brexit, including on the economy, look much closer to the views of remain voters than those of leave voters.”

Rights campaigners and MEPs say meeting would normalise regime that erases women from public life

Rights campaigners and MEPs have warned that a meeting between EU officials and a Taliban delegation in Brussels risks normalising a regime that has banned girls from school beyond the sixth grade and sought to erase women from public life, while its ranks include two leaders accused of crimes against humanity.

A spokesperson for the Afghan foreign ministry confirmed that a delegation representing the ⁠Taliban had travelled to Brussels after the Belgian foreign ministry issued five single-day visas.

Trump boasted of assassinating Héctor Guerrero Flores but details are scarce and experts doubt it will harm drug trade

At 10am on 9 June, a huge explosion rattled Las Claritas, a ramshackle town on the edge of a vast goldmine carved out of the Venezuelan Amazon.

“The blast was so powerful that my sister’s house shook, and she was 10 kilometres away,” said one miner, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. “Imagine the impact.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forced to stay home or switch jobs, working mothers are bearing the brunt of the climate crisis as classes go online for weeks or months at a time

Outside, the temperature has passed 41C (105.8F). Inside Sakshi Katyal’s city apartment, the air conditioner is blasting but it does little to relieve the stress of balancing housework and helping her five-year-old log in on a laptop to online classes. Her daughter’s school closed in May and Katyal is not clear when it will reopen. Probably not till the autumn.

Schools across Delhi and in about half of India’s 28 states have been ordered to close from mid-May until the end of June, when in many places the summer break starts. There is no official record of closures in past years but the Guardian has spoken to school officials who say the number of days schools are shut for because of the heat has risen sharply. The impact on families, especially on working women, has been huge.

Force describes footage of police response to incident in Rotherham as ‘nothing short of shocking’

South Yorkshire police have described video footage that appears to show officers shoving and drawing batons and stun guns on teenage girls as “nothing short of shocking”.

The footage, widely shared on social media over the weekend, shows officers being confronted by a number of girls dressed up for a night out, before one of the officers appears to shove one of the teenagers and then draws his baton.

Turner prize winner Helen Cammock withdraws piece after 50 peers criticise claim former PM ‘starved people’

An artwork by a Turner prize-winning artist has been removed from the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) after a row about the role Winston Churchill played in the 1943 Bengal famine.

The Persistence video installation by Helen Cammock was taken down on Monday after a week of criticism as pressure mounted on the gallery.

Reseller is also ordered to refund more than 50,000 fans, while its rival Viagogo remains under investigation

• Business live – latest updates

The online ticket reseller StubHub UK has been fined almost £900,000 and ordered to make payments to more than 50,000 fans for not showing the full price of tickets at the time of booking, an illegal practice known as “drip pricing”.

The UK competition watchdog, which launched an investigation into the sales practices of eight companies including the rival reseller Viagogo UK last year, said StubHub must issue refunds exceeding £590,000 to customers.

Exclusive: Charities say they ‘cannot continue to absorb the impact of child poverty’ without government support

Four hundred thousand children in the UK were supported by baby banks in 2025, an 11% increase from the year before, prompting warnings from charities that they “cannot continue to absorb the impact of child poverty on this scale” without government support.

New research from the Baby Bank Alliance, set up by Save the Children UK and other organisations to represent and advocate for more than 400 baby banks across the country, found that an average of 1,096 children were being supported by baby banks every day, with some essential items soaring in demand.

The latest decree from Afghanistan’s rulers makes it impossible for women and girls to leave unwanted or abusive relationships, even with family support

When Fatima arrived at a district court in northern Afghanistan in late 2025 with her parents, she hoped a judge would finally allow her to leave her calamitous marriage.

She had never met her husband before their arranged wedding in the summer of 2024. Each time her family asked to see him, they were told he was shy. It was only on the wedding day, relatives say, that Fatima understood what had been hidden from her: her husband had severe intellectual and physical disabilities and could not eat, wash or dress himself without help.

Note reportedly said kidnappers her didn’t mean to kill mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie, but she died shortly after her disappearance

A ransom note related to the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie – the mother of Today show host Savannah Guthrie – said the 84-year-old had died, CNN and other news organizations are reporting, citing law enforcement sources.

Some media outlets had previously reported receiving ransom notes tied to the case in the days after Guthrie’s disappearance in early February from her home in the foothills just outside Tucson, Arizona.

Guardian staff contributed reporting

Videos showed suspect armed with a long gun shooting at police in Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood

A suspect armed with a long gun opened fire on Monday at a Montreal hotel, killing a police officer before officers returned fire, killing him, police said. A civilian also died but it wasn’t immediately clear who fired that shot.

The police chief, Fady Dagher, said a second officer was seriously injured in the shooting in the city’s Côte-des-Neiges neighbourhood but is in stable condition.

Withdrawal of TPS designation puts workers who fill vital role in peril – and risks further shortages in US health system

When Dolores Jacoby’s doctor told her there was little she could do to treat her acute myeloid leukemia, a deafening silence filled the hospital room, where she was surrounded by her family. Dolores had only recently been diagnosed with the rare aggressive cancer. Her beloved nursing assistant, Janeth, was standing just outside her room. After the doctor left, Janeth entered with a tray containing each family member’s favorite beverage. “If there’s anybody who can recover, it’s your mother,” she told John Jacoby, Dolores’s son, before leaving the room as inconspicuously as she had arrived.

It was 2012. More than a decade later, John still remembers that day in his mother’s hospital room in the San Francisco Bay Area clearly. “We had just heard the worst news of our lives, and Janeth injected life into my mom, into her veins, into the atmosphere, you know, for all of us,” he said.

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

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

Martin Seidenberg, group chief executive of International Distribution Services (IDS), took home £6.9m in pay, bonus and long-term incentive scheme awards in the year to 31 March, compared with £2.1m the previous year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Move for greater prominence on social media comes as ministers warn online misinformation risk becoming ‘existential for our democracy’

Plans to hand established broadcasters and media companies greater prominence on digital platforms such as YouTube and TikTok have been unveiled, as ministers warned online misinformation risked becoming “existential for our democracy”.

In proposals that set up a new clash with global tech companies, content from the likes of the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 would have to be awarded more promotion by their algorithms – with special rules considered for times of social unrest or crisis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the third of five quizzes, curators at the Box Plymouth set 10 fiendish questions to test your knowledge of their collections

In HBO documentary The Welcome Table, director Josh Fox brings together people from across the world whose lives have been dramatically altered by the climate crisis

In an age of division, director Josh Fox is hoping to bring people of all kinds together. Specifically, he wants them to share a table – to break bread for a meal, and come together in exuberant song.

In his new documentary film The Welcome Table, the director of the the Emmy-winning Gasland travels around the world to talk to people at the leading edge of global warming’s effects. The film is part stark warning of the climate crisis, part opportunity to enter into the experience of those living in the corners of the globe. It culminates with the sounds of these individuals together at an enormous table in New Orleans, eating and rejoicing.

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 quiet fan for the bedroom and best overall:
AirCraft Lume

Best budget fan and best desk fan:
Devola desk fan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• The best sunglasses for every budget

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

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

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

• The best supermarket strawberry jams, tasted and rated

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

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

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

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

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

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anna, ‘in her 40s’, Exeter

Occupation Education academic at the University of Exeter

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to start meditating

How to start weightlifting

How to start budgeting

How to start running

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. Super syllabus

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

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

Runners gather before the start of the marathon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Together my best friend Annabel Rook and I worked to support victims of gender-based violence – until she became one herself. Now I feel like a part of myself has been erased. Why aren’t more people outraged?

It is the summer of 2005, and we are staying on the sun-kissed shores of Busua, a coastal community in Ghana. The sand here is made of crushed pink shells. Annabel and I pick up handfuls and scrub our stained feet in the shallows. We’ve been wearing flip-flops for months, trailing through the rich red dust at the refugee settlement where we work. The Atlantic is rough and alive. Its tumbling motion and the wind are making me feel euphoric. Annabel is smiling to herself, too, and jumping in and out of waves.

“Mori,” she shouts, “it’s like being beaten up by an old friend!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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