Critics link Farage’s ‘Trump-lite’ condescension to female journalists to Reform’s moves against women’s rights

When Nigel Farage told a journalist this week she should “write some silly story … and we won’t bother to read it”, it provoked an instant – and divided – reaction. For some it was a “masterclass” in dealing with mainstream media, but for others it was “rude, dismissive, misogynistic, arrogant”.

Behind the scenes, Farage’s treatment of the Financial Times’s Anna Gross – which was met with mirth and applause among Reform diehards in the room – provoked disquiet and anger among lobby journalists across the political spectrum.

My fellow Brits seem weighed down by endless swiping – I went to the Europeans for a fresh perspective

Last year, I went through a breakup and threw myself into internet dating. I started experimenting with mirror selfies, and spent whole evenings trying to take artful photographs of my own bum. I agonised over my three-line bio. I even put a notebook by my bed with the Hinge prompt “most spontaneous thing I’ve done” written on the first page, so if the answer came to me in a dream, I’d have a pen and paper handy.

I’d spent my early 30s trying to cling on to a failing relationship, which had made me feel stuck in a holding pattern. As if I was fated to have a slightly different version of the same argument every night until I was dead. The thrill of scrolling on Hinge, when I first started dating, was that it felt like shopping for an alternate future. I’d pore over pictures of men cradling small dogs and swinging tennis rackets, and get high on the thought of all the tiny dogs and tennis games we would enjoy together. I started hiding my phone in a cupboard in the kitchen before I went to sleep, because when I kept it in my room, I could feel all my new lives calling to me. Sometimes, when I got up to hide it, I had motion sickness from scrolling so hard and so fast.

The National Gallery’s latest financial woes have brought the possibility of charging visitors back into the frame

For a quarter of a century, visitors to the UK’s national museums and galleries have enjoyed universal free entry to see permanent collections.

The policy, introduced by the New Labour government in 2001, has been widely credited with improving access to culture and significantly increasing footfall to some of the country’s best-known attractions.

The US supreme court ruled against the president. Let’s hope the court removes its pro-Trump glasses on other issues and stands up for the rule of law

There’s no denying that the US supreme court’s long-awaited ruling that overturned Donald Trump’s global tariffs is important, and if the ruling turns out to be a harbinger that the court is ready to abandon its startling sycophancy toward the US president, it could prove hugely important. The ruling this Friday is the first time during Trump’s second term that the justices have struck down one of his policies. Not only that, the policy they struck down is Trump’s signature economic policy – he has used tariffs to bash, lord over and terrorize dozens of other countries and make himself the King of the Economic Jungle.

In the court’s main opinion, joined by three conservative justices and three liberals, chief justice John Roberts used some sharp language to slap down Trump’s tariffs, writing that the constitution specifically gives Congress, not the president, the power to impose taxes and tariffs. (Roberts noted that tariffs are indeed taxes.)

Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues

Few UK nominations this year as industry tries to balance attracting global attention and celebrating homegrown projects

It may be billed as Britain’s premier film awards, but when nominations for the Baftas were announced last month, the lack of British representation in the top categories was hard to ignore. Just one British actor, Robert Aramayo, appeared in the leading actor category, while there were no British nominees at all for leading actress (the UK-based Irish actor Jessie Buckley notwithstanding).

Peter Mullan was the only Briton in the supporting actor category, while representation for best supporting actress fared better, with Emily Watson, Carey Mulligan and Wunmi Mosaku nominated.

Even as weather extremes worsen, the voices calling for the rolling back of environmental rules have grown louder and more influential

In the timeless week between Christmas and the new year, two Spanish men in their early 50s – friends since childhood, popular around town – went to a restaurant and did not come home.

Francisco Zea Bravo, a maths teacher active in a book club and rock band, and Antonio Morales Serrano, the owner of a popular cafe and ice-cream parlour, had gone to eat with friends in Málaga on Saturday 27 December. But as the pair drove back to Alhaurín el Grande that night, heavy rains turned the usually tranquil Fahala River into what the mayor would later call an “uncontrollable torrent”. Police found their van overturned the next day. Their bodies followed after an agonising search.

President announced increase from 10% using different authority from mechanism that supreme court struck down on Friday

Donald Trump announced on Saturday that he would raise a temporary tariff rate on US imports from all countries from 10% to 15%, less than 24 hours after the US supreme court ruled against the legality of his flagship trade policy.

Infuriated by the high court’s ruling on Friday that he had exceeded his authority and should have got congressional approval for the tariffs he introduced last year under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the US president railed against the justices who struck down his use of tariffs – calling them a “disgrace to the nation” – and ordered an immediate 10% tariff on all imports, in addition to any existing levies, under a separate law.

The case against her former husband shocked the world, while her response inspired awe. As she publishes a memoir, she discusses chemical submission, the abuse hidden within her apparently perfect marriage – and why she decided to go public

At Gisèle Pelicot’s new home on Île de Ré off France’s Atlantic coast, she likes to take bracing walks along the beach in all weathers, play classical music loud, eat nice chocolate and, as a gift to each new morning, always set the table for breakfast the night before. “It’s my way of putting myself in a good mood when I wake up: the cups are out already, I just need to put the kettle on,” she says.

But one of her most treasured possessions is a box of letters she keeps on her desk. The envelopes from across the world – some sent on a prayer, addressed only with her name and the village in Provence where she once lived – piled up at the courthouse in Avignon in southern France in late 2024, when she became famous worldwide as a symbol of courage for waiving her right to anonymity in the trial of her ex-husband and dozens of men he had invited to rape her while she was drugged unconscious.

White paper proposes changing criteria under which schools get funding to support the most disadvantaged students

Plans to halve the attainment gap between the poorest pupils in England and their more affluent peers will be set out by the government on Monday.

The schools white paper will detail proposals to change the criteria under which schools receive funding to support the most disadvantaged students.

Exclusive: Irish author, who feared her books being withdrawn from UK, says proscription had been ‘extreme assault’ on rights and freedoms

Sally Rooney has hailed the high court’s decision that it was unlawful to ban Palestine Action under anti-terrorism laws as a victory for civil liberties in Britain.

Ministers suffered a humiliating legal defeat a week ago when three senior judges ruled that proscription of the direct action group, which targets organisations it considers complicit in arming Israel, was disproportionate and unlawful.

Police continue searches at Mountbatten-Windsor’s former Windsor home after arrest on suspicion of misconduct in public office

Buckingham Palace will not oppose plans to remove Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor from the royal line of succession, the Guardian understands, as police confirmed a search of his former Windsor home would continue over the weekend.

Royal sources indicated on Saturday that King Charles would not stand in the way of parliament if it wanted to ensure the former prince could never ascend to the throne.

Rescue teams scoured Yr Wyddfa in north Wales in snow and ice after pair, aged 19 and 20, were reported missing

The bodies of two men have been found in Eryri mountain range in north Wales after a large-scale search, police have said.

The men, aged 19 and 20, were reported missing on Wednesday, which sparked a search operation on the Eryri mountain range (Snowdonia).

Agency statement comes one day after announcement of 6 March target for astronauts’ mission to circle the moon

Nasa said in a blog post on Saturday it is taking steps to potentially roll back the Artemis II rocket launch after discovering an interrupted flow of helium.

The agency said it is taking steps to roll the Artemis II rocket and Orion spacecraft back to the vehicle assembly building at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Wim Wenders says German director İlker Çatak’s Turkey-set warning against creeping authoritarianism gave jury ‘chills’

Yellow Letters, a drama set in Turkey about creeping authoritarianism, has won the Golden Bear top prize at the Berlin film festival, after a 10-day event overshadowed by a row over politics in cinema.

The film by the German director İlker Çatak, born in Berlin to Turkish immigrants, tells the story of two luminaries of the Ankara theatre scene whose marriage comes under severe strain when they lose their jobs after falling out of political favour. Its title comes from the colour of the official dismissal notices.

Colón’s music combined jazz, rock and salsa, incorporating rhythms from Cuba, Puerto Rico, Brazil and Africa

Willie Colón, the pioneering trombonist, vocalist and composer, died on Saturday aged 75, his family has said.

With more than 30m albums sold, multiple platinum records and 11 combined Grammy and Latin Grammy nominations, Colón is among the most successful salsa artists of all time.

A picture is emerging of one of the worst avalanche disasters in US history, and the women among a tight-knit group of friends who died

The ringing of a phone echoed through the Nevada county, California, sheriff’s office just before noon on 17 February.

The 911 call brought devastating news: an avalanche had occurred on nearby Castle Peak – a 9,110ft (2,780-meter) mountain north of the Donner summit in the Lake Tahoe area. A group of backcountry skiers had been on the mountainside, returning home from a three-day expedition, during a heavy winter storm. While six had survived, more than half their group was missing.

Culture ministry hails ‘exceptional historical importance’ of prints that show resistance fighters’ final moments

In his book-filled office, Vangelis Sakkatos took in the images of the men lined up before a firing squad. The executions on May Day 1944 have haunted him since he was a boy.

“Their heroism was the stuff of myth,” said the veteran leftist, casting his eyes over the photographs that have dominated Greece’s press in recent days with a mixture of fury and awe. “The years may have passed, but I haven’t forgotten.”

Karen Newton was in America on the trip of a lifetime when she was shackled, transported and held for weeks on end. With tourism to the US under increasing strain, she says, ‘If it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone’

When Karen Newton left home in late July 2025, she knew that international travellers were being locked up in immigration detention centres in the US. “I was aware,” she nods. “But I never thought it would have any impact on my holiday.” Karen, 65, had a British passport and a tourist visa. She hadn’t been abroad for eight years, and was keen for some guaranteed sun. “I really just wanted to get away from the house.”

She and her husband, Bill, 66, had an ambitious itinerary that would take them through California, Nevada, Wyoming, Montana and then on to Canada over two months. Las Vegas wasn’t to Karen’s taste: “Way too commercialised.” She much preferred Yellowstone, where they saw Old Faithful, the famous geyser, as it shot boiling water into the air, and got up close with some extraordinary wildlife. “There was a bison right next to the car. Another time, a wolf walked past.” Her eyes sparkle at the memory. “It was just amazing.”

The actor on bloodcurdling stage experiences, back yard cricket and the best advice he’s ever received

• Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email

In the spirit of your role as Lord Davenport in Fackham Hall – what is the poshest thing you have ever done?

Taking a helicopter to Royal Ascot. That is one of the poshest things I have done. I became aware of how posh it was when I started calming down and realised I wasn’t going to fall out of it.

This BBC take on the warm, funny books renders various characters totally cheerless. It works fine as a drama, but the humour of the novels is sadly missing

Any fan of Marian Keyes (and we are legion, as her 23 books, 30-year career and millions of sales attest) can give you a potted but passionate account of why (most often) she loves her. Keyes captures life as it is truly lived. It is lived as part of a family (Keyes is mercilessly attuned to the specific cadences and attitudes of a large, Irish Catholic one, but she is adept at rendering it universally relatable). We live as part of a couple, part of an office, part of a community (wanted or – if you are, for example, an addict, a woman having fertility treatment, or a domestic violence victim – unwanted). Or as a sister, a daughter, a polished professional, or a hot mess (the last two by no means mutually exclusive).

In Keyes’ version, all life’s highs are burnished and its lows made bearable by the human capacity for finding the humour in everything. Her books – once dismissed as “chick lit”, “romcoms” or AN Other of the sniffy labels people have attached to novels written by women, largely for women, about largely female experiences (though I think we are starting to move out of that tiresomely reductive era) – hold all these elements in perfect balance.

In the 2000s, the queer scene in Queensland felt small, but Melania Jack fell for Patty Preece big time

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

• Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email

It was 2007 and I was heading out to work on the regional program of an Indigenous arts festival called Stylin’ Up. A car entourage of arts workers were headed to Cherbourg to run beatmaking, songwriting and dance workshops.

As I drove up into Highgate Hill, the sun was just coming up. Ahead of me I saw Patty leaning against a yellow ute wearing a striped ’70s men’s T-shirt, a rat’s tail catching the light. She looked electric. I remember thinking: Uh oh. This person is literally shining.

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

Melania Jack and Patty Preece perform as the multidisciplinary arts duo The Ironing Maidens

Applying cosmetics for concerts and competitions is part of dance culture but many now question the tradition

I recognised the signs straight away: the twirling, the mirror glances, the obsession with her music box. I didn’t need my daughter to ask if I wanted to see her “magic dance show” to confirm it – she was a dance kid.

Despite efforts to offer trucks and tutus, sports with sparkles, I was quietly thrilled. I’d been a dedicated dance kid (and later an unhinged ballet teen) and was excited to see her join the tribe. But when I mentioned ballet lessons to my partner, he was horrified. He spiralled about the pressure, the body image, the gender stereotypes and, most of all, the makeup.

McDonald’s, Wagamama and others scale back plant-based choices in the UK in favour of ‘high-margin’ meat-led dishes

In 2021, vegetarianism and veganism were booming and menus reflected it. Restaurants and fast-food chains rapidly expanded their meat-free offerings, racing to meet growing demand from diners. McDonald’s launched its first plant-based burger, joining a wave of operators embracing non-meat options.

Fast forward to 2026 and the landscape looks markedly different. Last month, the fast food chain announced it was axing most of its vegetarian range – sparing only its McPlant burger – owing to weak sales. Wagamama has removed some vegan dishes from its menu, while Domino’s has also scaled back its plant-based options. The final Veggie Pret, a standalone concept store from the high street sandwich chain that started in 2016, closed in February 2024.

Drawing on more than 100 interviews with senior intelligence officials and other insiders in multiple countries, this exclusive account details how the US and Britain uncovered Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade, and why most of Europe – including the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy – dismissed them. As the fourth anniversary of the invasion approaches and the world enters a new period of geopolitical uncertainty, Europe’s politicians and spy services continue to draw lessons from the failures of 2022

• Victory in 50km mass start breaks record from 1980

• Teammates Nyenget and Iversen lock out podium

At the end of one of the great races in the history of the Winter Olympics, there was the greatest athlete in the history of the Winter Olympics. After a little over two hours of racing Johannes Høsflot Klæbo won his sixth gold medal of these Games when he beat his Norwegian teammate Martin Løwstrøm Nyenget by 17.4 seconds to win the men’s 50km classic.

The triumph meant the 29-year-old set the record for the most gold medals in a single Winter Games, set by the US speed skater Eric Heiden when he won five at Lake Placid in 1980. In an age of exaggeration and in an industry that loves overstatement, it is entirely true to say that there has never been anything quite like it.

Amid the triumphs, failures and broken medals in Milano Cortina, here’s our countdown of the outstanding moments that will live long in the memory

Cheating has been part and parcel of the Olympics since at least Eupolus of Thessaly in 388BC. But crooked boxers from ancient Greece never confessed their indiscretions on live television. The Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid did exactly that after winning bronze in the men’s 20km biathlon for his first individual Olympic medal, publicly admitting he’d two-timed his girlfriend three months earlier and calling it “my biggest mistake” in an overshare for the ages carried live by national broadcaster NRK. Lægreid’s shot appeared to have missed the target one day later when the wronged party, wishing to remain anonymous, told the Norwegian paper VG it was “hard to forgive” what he did.

• Dutch skater claims his first gold since 2014

• Jordan Stolz misses out on fourth medal of Games

Jorrit Bergsma, the mullet-wearing 40-year-old speed skating legend from the Netherlands, won the men’s mass start on Saturday afternoon for his second medal of the Milano Cortina Games and his first Olympic gold since 2014.

Bergsma crossed first in 7:55.50, ahead of Viktor Hald Thorup of Denmark and Andrea Giovannini of Italy, denying American star Jordan Stolz in his bid to become the first man in 32 years to win three long-track speed skating golds at a single Olympics.

Our pick of the best images from the penultimate day of the Games, from biathlon to speed skating

Everything I still need to know after two weeks of the sublime and sometimes bizarre in Milano Cortina

Having avoided the horrific February weather by staying on my sofa for two weeks, I have embraced the Winter Olympics as a quadrennial extra Christmas holiday. It offers pine trees, baubles and the chance to gather around the TV while someone with an RP accent tells us how determined and courageous the British are.

The Olympic Games have always presented something of a paradox – on one hand, they are the peak of human athleticism, and on the other, they can look like an elite school sports day. There’s normally at least one activity that reminds you of your youth, whether it’s table tennis or trampolining. Presumably the skiing and snowboarding on display this month have felt very relatable to swathes of Surrey.

Manchester City are timing their title run-in perfectly, to give Pep Guardiola a fine chance of a seventh title in a decade and to break Arsenal’s hearts yet again.

For fans of each team squeaky posterior time is officially entered. For the neutral the final 11 matches for City and the Gunners promise to be a cannot-miss spectacle.

• Six Nations: England 21-42 Ireland

• Ireland condemn England to successive defeats

So much for all those expectations of a tight two-horse race. For the second week running England were barely in the frame, comprehensively second best to opponents who started well and kept on galloping to a five-try rout. This was a record Irish win at Twickenham and it is Andy Farrell’s side who remain in the hunt for this season’s Six Nations title while England stare down the barrel of a bottom-half finish.

To say Ireland were miles the better side is simply to state the obvious. The seeds of England’s downfall were sown in a calamitous first half which saw the visitors pull away to a 22-0 lead inside 30 minutes. As in Edinburgh they were guilty of way too many errors, with their lineout all over the shop. They also conceded 15 turnovers in the opening 40 minutes alone in addition to another yellow card, this time for Freddie Steward. It was so bad that Steve Borthwick replaced Luke Cowan-Dickie and Steward for tactical reasons even before the half-time oranges had been sliced.

• Fofana’s first of two bookings was for fouling Hannibal

• Burnley: ‘There is no place for this in our society’

Hannibal Mejbri and Wesley Fofana have both been racially abused on Instagram in the wake of the former’s Burnley side drawing 1-1 at Chelsea after the latter was sent off.

Hannibal, who was fouled for the first of the two yellow cards that led to Fofana’s dismissal, posted the abuse he had received via a direct message on Instagram and wrote: “It’s 2026 and there still ppl like that … Educate yourself and your kids pls.” Fofana likewise posted the abuse he received.

• Wales 23-26 Scotland

• Finn Russell scores 11 points in second-half turnaround

Scotland pulled off a dramatic comeback win against Wales to back up their impressive Calcutta Cup success the previous week. Hosts Wales had the lead until the 74th minute thanks to a spark lit by the wing Josh Adams, leaving the visitors with a feeling that they were lucky to come away with five points, which sent them to the top of the Six Nations table.

This was just the third time Scotland have won the match directly after a victory over rivals England in the Six Nations and their second-half resurgence came at the hands of their maverick Finn Russell. Who else could it have been? The fly-half is one of the best in the world and has been the architect of Scotland’s biggest victories over the last few years. He was largely quiet in the first 40 minutes, such was Wales’s impressive start, but two fast-paced tries either scored or created by Russell set Scotland on the comeback path.

Tottenham have rolled the dice and an injury-ravaged side’s anxiety may only get worse as West Ham close the gap

When did the reality dawn? Perhaps it was towards the end of the first half of West Ham’s game at Chelsea at the end of January with the away side leading 2-0. Or perhaps it was when West Ham took the lead against Manchester United 10 days later. As it turned out, West Ham won neither fixture; had they done so they would have had five points more and so been level with Tottenham going into this weekend. And then Tottenham’s proximity to relegation could not have been denied.

West Ham’s revival means this isn’t like last season, when a win at Ipswich at the end of February took Tottenham to 33 points and as good as confirmed their continued presence in the Premier League, allowing Ange Postecoglou to focus on Europe. Were Spurs to pull off something extremely unlikely and beat Arsenal on Sunday, they would move to 32 and, for all the glee their fans would feel, nobody would feel secure.

James Milner showed he can still contribute during his record-breaking 654th Premier League appearance as Brighton won at Brentford. Milner’s inclusion meant he moved past Gareth Barry’s record tally in the competition and it proved an occasion to remember for the Seagulls after first-half goals by Diego Gómez and Danny Welbeck.

The pressure had mounted on Fabian Hürzeler after one league win in 13 games and he turned to the veteran midfielder in an attempt to arrest a worrying run of results after a recent start at Aston Villa. The 40-year-old produced an accomplished display on a landmark occasion before his 90th-minute substitution was marked with applause from both sets of supporters.

• Fifth round: Birmingham 8-0 Chatham

• Hurtré 26 59 68, Sarri 53, Louis 65 89, Lee 70, Leidhammar 76

“It is like me coming up against Usain Bolt,” is how Chatham Town’s manager, Keith Boanas, compared the difference in speed and stamina between his fourth-tier underdogs and full-time professionals Birmingham City. The minnows kept themselves in this contest for far longer than 9.58 seconds, testing the second-tier side for just under an hour, before eventually the home side’s superiority told.

Given they are paid only their travel expenses, while their opponents are chasing promotion to the top tier, that was an admirable effort from the lowest-ranked side in the Women’s FA Cup fifth round. They were powerless, though, to stop Birmingham charging into the quarter-finals with a hat-trick from Océane Hurtré.

• LIV rebel rejects European Tour Group’s offer

• Tyrrell Hatton has settled over seven-figure fine

Jon Rahm’s Ryder Cup future is in serious doubt after the Spaniard failed to join his teammate Tyrrell Hatton in settling a dispute over a seven-figure fine with the European Tour Group over participation in LIV Golf.

Hatton is one of eight players who have agreed to settle all outstanding fines due in Europe and withdraw any appeals in return for releases to play on LIV tournaments in 2026. Luke Donald, who is expected to remain in office for a third stint as Europe’s Ryder Cup captain, wanted the situation with Hatton and Rahm resolved. Donald has only partly got his wish, with Adare Manor in 2027 looming ever closer.

• Brook urges four Indian-owned sides to think again

• England captain will play for Sunrisers Leeds

Harry Brook has called on teams in this year’s Hundred to embrace Pakistan players after it was reported that they would not be considered by the tournament’s four Indian-owned sides.

Brook, England’s white-ball captain, is contracted to Sunrisers Leeds, owned by the Indian media corporation the Sun Group, owners of the IPL side Sunrisers Hyderabad, and is the highest-paid player in the tournament.

In these times of social, political and even environmental instability, is it any wonder that we turn to influencers for instruction?

A group of young women are about to try colour analysis for the first time. One says she suspects she’s not “supposed to wear gold”, and then holds up both hands swathed in gold rings and bracelets. The video cuts to the same woman with a strip of gold fabric laid across her chest. A sad trumpet sound plays before the strip is whipped off and replaced with a silver one. “See?” the analyst says. “Way better here.” The woman says: “Yeah”, but she sounds unhappy.

Colour analysis is a method of picking out the shades that suit your skin tone. After its first life in the 1980s and 90s, “getting your colours done” found a new audience on TikTok in 2024 and has only become more popular since. This clip was one of many thrown up by my Instagram feed but it stuck with me, largely because it seemed so depressing in its portrayal of the trend as something to be endured rather than enjoyed. Directions on what you’re “supposed” or “not supposed” to wear, it intimated, should be followed even if it means sacrificing your own preferences.

Francesca Newton is a writer and editor

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.

Labour MPs may clamour for bolder spending, but – like their Tory and Reform counterparts – they ask for the unaffordable

Too many Labour MPs want it all, and no amount of pleading from the top of government about the depleted public finances seems to make a difference.

The mainly leftist MPs want all the wrongs of the last 15 years put right and quickly. Their next opportunity to demand more cash arrives when Rachel Reeves delivers her spring statement on 3 March.

I mourn the vibrant life we lived before. But though our faces anxiously turn to the sky, our hands are joined in a solidarity that rises above hunger

Every year, Ramadan comes as a sanctuary for the soul. For Muslims like me, it is a sacred pause in the chaos of life. But this year, as a woman displaced from the familiar streets of Gaza City to a rented room in Al-Zawayda, I am searching for a peace that feels like a ghost. The world calls this a “ceasefire”, yet from my window the silence feels heavy. We are holding our breath because the fear of death has not disappeared, it has just become unpredictable.

I did not welcome Ramadan this year with the golden lanterns that once adorned our balconies. I welcomed it to the roar of bulldozers clearing the bones of neighbouring houses and with the constant buzz of the zanana, the Israeli surveillance drones, overhead. Even as we stand in prayer, that metallic humming drowns out the adhan, the call to prayer, reminding us that we are still watched and that our “calm” rests at the mercy of a sudden strike.

Majdoleen Abu Assi is a project coordinator and humanitarian practitioner based in Gaza, Palestine

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

As the war enters its fifth year, it’s time for Europe to take the fight to Putin on its own terms and tell Trump to get lost

Viewed from Europe, the US’s failure to defend the people of Ukraine against Russian aggression is the greatest and most consequential of a host of recent American betrayals. It’s not just the sickening subservience shown to Vladimir Putin, an indicted war criminal and mass killer. It’s not only the victim-blaming and bullying of Kyiv into making concessions. It’s not even Donald Trump’s crass attempts to monetise the war and milk the misery of millions for Nobel glory, while undercutting Nato allies and trampling sovereign rights.

What really shocks, and hurts, is the sheer bad faith shown by a country that Europeans always counted a friend. As the 18th-century English gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe noted, “few circumstances are more afflicting than a discovery of perfidy in those whom we have trusted”. To echo Trump’s dark warning after he was rebuffed over Greenland: Europe will remember.

Recent incidents involving Anderson Cooper and Stephen Colbert suggest things are not well at the network after the acquisition financed by Trump supporter Larry Ellison

Anderson Cooper decides to walk away from broadcast TV’s most prestigious news show, 60 Minutes. Stephen Colbert takes his interview with a rising Democratic politician to YouTube instead of his own late-night show. The CBS Evening News anchor presents a misleading version of the network’s own exclusive reporting on Ice arrests. And a news producer writes a farewell note to her CBS News colleagues blaming the loss of editorial independence.

If you connect the dots, the picture of what’s happening at CBS becomes all too clear. That picture comes into even sharper focus once you recall an underlying factor: the network’s parent company is trying to get a big commercial deal done and needs the help of the Trump administration to bring it over the finish line.

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

As Botswana’s president here is my plan to renew this country’s beleaguered health system – and my vision for a stronger Africa

Shortages of medicine in Botswana forced me to declare a public health emergency last year. Patients went without treatment – not because health workers failed them, but because the system did. For a nation committed to universal healthcare, free at the point of use, it was a moment of hard truth.

Even outwardly strong public health systems can be fragile. As donor assistance bites across the continent, governments cannot afford to delay building resilience.

As aid trickles into Gaza, Washington channels $10bn into a body chaired by the president. Peace in the region rests on law and sovereignty, not ego and brinkmanship

In Gaza, aid still trickles in at levels relief agencies say are far below what is required. Temporary shelters are scarce. Reconstruction materials are restricted by Israel’s controls on goods entering the territory. Conditions, say the UN, remain “dire”. The violence has not stopped: Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed about 600 people since the ceasefire began. The announcement that the US would transfer $10bn to President Donald Trump’s newly convened Board of Peace is hard to reconcile with the reality on the ground. Even worse is that Washington has paid only a fraction of its UN arrears – $160m against more than $4bn owed.

This raises the obvious question: why is a private initiative being capitalised so heavily while existing UN mechanisms remain severely cash-strapped? Funnelling state funds into a body chaired by Mr Trump suggests foreign policy is serving private interests, not the public good. The board has ambitious plans. Rafah is to be rebuilt within three years with skyscrapers. Gaza is to become self-governing within a decade. An International Stabilisation Force is expected to begin deployment, eventually numbering 20,000 troops. These are dramatic claims. But their delivery is largely notional.

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 decision to grant listed-building status to the brutalist arts complex was bold. Now artists need support to match it

The granting of Grade II-listed building status to the brutalist concrete Southbank Centre, comprising the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Hayward Gallery and Purcell Room, is a bold embrace by the government of this London landmark. It is also timely. Seventy-five years ago, the 1951 Festival of Britain transformed the South Bank. Of its buildings, only the Royal Festival Hall remains.

From its postwar beginnings, the South Bank has grown into a cultural landmark recognised far beyond London. The section of the Thames Path taking in the Southbank Centre, BFI cinemas, Royal National Theatre, Tate Modern and Shakespeare’s Globe is the flourishing successor to the Victorian precinct of the Kensington museums and the Royal Albert Hall. The festival was designed to help the nation to recover from the traumatic years of the second world war, and to look forward to a better future. This month’s decision to protect the 1960s component of the Southbank Centre is a vindication of that vision of hope.

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

Readers respond to an article by Lucy Pasha-Robinson about being shoved in the street by an angry man

Re Lucy Pasha-Robinson’s article (A man pushed me in the street, he wanted to teach me a lesson. Is that OK now?, 17 February), I noticed many years ago how almost all women move aside, unconsciously, out of the path of oncoming men. Sit at a cafe watching – it’s shocking once you realise that this happens all day every day.

I decided to challenge myself to hold my line when walking, and the results are amazing. Men simply presume I am going to move away, and look shocked at me when I don’t. Luckily for me, I am almost 6ft tall and in my 60s, so perhaps I am less vulnerable to the usual aggression. I look like I might verbally “hit back”.

Dr Dave Dawson and Paul Roberts advise on how to combat pigeon invasions – but Nicholas Milton says we should celebrate these remarkable birds and David Jobbins suggests letting nature takes its course

Your feature reminds us that debates over feral pigeons are not new (The Norwich pigeon wars: how birds are dividing a UK city, 17 February). They are the archetypical pest. I studied them as an introduced pest on crops of garden peas in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand, in the 1960s, and again for Ken Livingstone, who misguidedly ignored pigeon friends in Trafalgar Square in the 2000s.

As an animal population ecologist, I asked why the pigeons’ repertoire made them so successful. They’re smart and mobile, flocking to each distant source of food and moving just far enough away to avoid harm when scared.

Readers respond to an editorial on the funding threats to a vital source of information and comfort provided by the BBC

Your editorial on the predicament facing the BBC World Service (The Guardian view on the BBC World Service: this is London calling, 13 February) rightly stresses the strategic importance of this national asset at a time when the global order is under unprecedented attack, not least from an erstwhile ally.

But some home truths need to be stated. It was the Conservative-Liberal coalition government that set in train the withdrawal of the bulk of government funding, previously provided through a grant-in-aid from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Is it too cynical to see this as not simply a desire for cost savings, but also as an attempt to saddle the domestic BBC with the burden of financing the World Service?

Prof Murray Gray on the origin of the boulders used in the sport of stone lifting, and Mo Heard on her great-great-great-grandfather’s work as a ‘ballast-getter’

Your article on the ancient sport of stone lifting in Ireland (14 February) didn’t explain the historic origin of the rocks. Most of these boulders are glacial erratics, eroded and transported by Irish ice sheets during which the rocks have their edges worn down as they grind against other rocks. This explains their rounded appearance.
Prof Murray Gray
Queen Mary University of London

• My great-great-great-grandfather, born in Ireland in 1824, was living in Wapping in 1861, working as a “ballast-getter”. Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1851) said these were “men employed in raising ballast from the river by bodily labour … they are all very powerful men … mostly very tall, big-boned and muscular.”
Mo Heard
Bexhill, East Sussex

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

Sam Rockwell stars in Gore Verbinski’s madcap sci-fi comedy, and the YBA Goat is back with a new exhibition at the Tate Modern

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die
Out now
If Sam Rockwell materialised in an LA diner dressed like something that escaped from an off-Broadway production of Starlight Express, wouldn’t you hear him out? In visionary director Gore Verbinski’s new film, Rockwell plays a man from the future, who has come back to warn us about the perils of artificial intelligence. Sold.

Here’s how to follow along with our coverage – the finest writing and up-to-the-minute reports

A brilliant mystery drama about politics and corruption in 70s Brazil, and a wonderful wallow in misery from the US musician. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Omar Yaghi’s invention uses ambient thermal energy and can generate up to 1,000 litres of clean water every day

A Nobel laureate’s environmentally friendly invention that provides clean water if central supplies are knocked out by a hurricane or drought could be a life saver for vulnerable islands, its founder says.

The invention, by the chemist Prof Omar Yaghi, uses a type of science called reticular chemistry to create molecularly engineered materials, which can extract moisture from the air and harvest water even in arid and desert conditions.

Exclusive: Rami Ranger, who was suspended temporarily in 2023, makes successful bid at party fundraising event

A Conservative donor who was suspended from the party after being accused of bullying and inappropriate language spent £50,000 last week to have dinner with Kemi Badenoch, the Guardian has learned.

Rami Ranger was the successful bidder for the dinner at a Tory fundraising event and will attend the meal with a small group of friends, infuriating those in the party who believe he should not have been readmitted.

DC Mark Luker used offensive language about Romas, Gypsies and Travellers in a WhatsApp group

A police officer who was one of the first on the scene of the 2017 London Bridge terror attack has been sacked for gross misconduct after using “derogatory” language about Romas, Gypsies and Travellers.

DC Mark Luker of the British Transport Police (BTP) used offensive language in a WhatsApp group he was in with other police officers.

Fatalities and injuries reported in avalanches across Tirol after prolonged snowfall and windy conditions

At least five people have been killed in a string of avalanches in Austria, authorities said on Saturday.

The government office of the Tirol region said intense snowfall over the last week had led to accumulations of up to 1.5 metres (5ft). Combined with strong winds and weak snowpack below, the conditions were especially susceptible to avalanches, it said.

Church suspends Stephen Conway as police investigate claim man was sexually assaulted between 2018 and 2025

The bishop of Lincoln has been arrested on suspicion of sexual assault, according to police.

Lincolnshire police confirmed that a 68-year-old man was arrested as part of an “ongoing investigation following an allegation that a man was sexually assaulted between 2018 and 2025”.

Australian collections of the endangered and notoriously unpredictable flowers have popped off in recent years, as ‘personas’ like Putricia, Stinkerella and Smellanie prove a hit with nosy spectators

• Sign up for climate and environment editor Adam Morton’s free Clear Air newsletter here

From little things glorious fetid things grow. Corpse flower blooms, once vanishingly rare, are becoming more commonplace in Australia.

More than a dozen bloomed across the country in 2025, including the infamous Putricia in Sydney, Morpheus in Canberra, Big Betty in Cooktown, and Spud and co in Cairns. But with plants kept in gardens across the country, and blooming more frequently after their first flower, you could catch a whiff of one soon.

Subspecies driven to extinction by hungry whalers returns after ‘back breeding’ programme using partial descendants

Giant tortoises, the life-giving engineers of remote small island ecosystems, are plodding over the Galápagos island of Floreana for the first time in more than 180 years.

The Floreana giant tortoise (Chelonoidis niger niger), a subspecies of the giant tortoise once found across the Galápagos, was driven to extinction in the 1840s by whalers who removed thousands from the volcanic island to provide a living larder during their hunting voyages.

Exclusive: Project Giving Back, set up in 2022 to help charities exhibit show gardens, says this year will be its last

Chelsea flower show is looking for new charity sponsors after the mystery philanthropic couple who have spent more than £23m on show gardens end their support.

Project Giving Back was set up by two anonymous donors in 2022, and since then it has paid for 63 gardens at the most prestigious horticultural event in the world, held each summer at the Royal Hospital gardens in south-west London.

Romney Marsh, Kent: It’s a family outing, raking the wet sand looking for plump shellfish. Out of everyone, though, I’m the most enthusiastic

The vast tidal flats are empty save for the hunched figures of three black-backed gulls considering a decomposed dogfish, and four humans (one rather small) trudging through the endless silt. A light mist obscures the coast with its string of motley houses and, on the breeze, there is only the distant soughing of shallow waves chasing foam over the sand. There is the piquancy of seclusion and its attendant danger here, perhaps the closest thing Kent has to wilderness.

I’m relishing the long walk in this lonely place, but my children are less enthusiastic about our annual pilgrimage to the cockle beds, a typically cold affair as the quality of shellfish diminishes in spring and summer. We’re travelling well armed, brandishing handmade rakes with formidable tines of six-inch nails, while the youngest carries a hopeful white bucket. About half a mile offshore, our labour begins.

Guardian investigation showed Josh Simons falsely linked journalists to ‘pro-Kremlin’ network in emails to GCHQ

Politicians from across the spectrum have said a minister should be sacked after a Guardian report that he had accused journalists of having links to Russian intelligence.

Their comments came after an investigation showed that Josh Simons, who was running Labour Together at the time, had falsely concluded the journalists had obtained information about the thinktank from a Russian hack.

Research project warns fall in homeworking roles could undermine efforts to reduce unemployment

A decline in the number of jobs for people who need to work remotely, including those with disabilities, could undermine the government’s efforts to reverse rising unemployment, according to a two-year study.

More than eight in 10 respondents to a survey of working-age disabled people by researchers at Lancaster University said access to home working was essential or very important when looking for a new job.

After surviving a coup, and with his critics chastened, No 10 insiders say a more combative PM is up for taking the fight to Reform UK

Two days after Keir Starmer had been disowned by the Scottish Labour leader last week, and as a row raged over another controversial peerage, the prime minister decided to pick a fight with a billionaire.

It was a dark week for the prime minister, with the departure of his longtime chief of staff Morgan McSweeney, who had become a deeply divisive figure and who took the hit for the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador, despite his links to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Cherish Bean, 15, and Ethan Slater, 17, were discovered at a rental property in Little Eden Holiday Lodge Park on Wednesday

A teenage couple who died from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning at an East Yorkshire holiday park have been named by police.

Cherish Bean, 15, and Ethan Slater, 17, were discovered at a rental property at Little Eden holiday park, near Bridlington, on Wednesday.

Rightwing Trump ally tells Tucker Carlson Israel has biblical right to land from ‘wadi of Egypt to the great river’

The US’s ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, has contended to the podcaster Tucker Carlson that Israel has a biblical right to take over the entire Middle East – or at least the lion’s share of it.

“It would be fine if they took it all,” Huckabee said to Carlson during an interview posted on Friday. The Trump administration appointee and former Arkansas governor discussed with Carlson interpretations of Old Testament scripture within the US Christian nationalist movement.

Court in Madrid will soon decide whether developers are using construction to force people out of their homes

When the Madrid building where Jaime Oteyza had lived since 2012 was sold to an investment fund two years ago, a local tenants’ union swiftly warned him what to expect.

First the tenants would be told that none of their rental contracts – regardless of their expiry date – would be renewed, the union said. Then, as the 50 or so families in the building grappled with what to do next, a series of construction projects would probably be launched in the building to ramp up pressure on them to leave.

Company behind ChatGPT last year flagged Jesse Van Rootselaar’s account for ‘furtherance of violent activities’

ChatGPT-maker OpenAI has said it considered alerting Canadian police last year about the activities of a person who months later committed one of the worst school shootings in the country’s history.

OpenAI said last June the company identified the account of Jesse Van Rootselaar via abuse detection efforts for “furtherance of violent activities”.

Banner at justice department just the latest example of how president has imposed himself on daily US life

You wouldn’t be alone if you feel that the US more closely resembles North Korea these days – with giant images of the dear leader scowling down on the citizenry, and his name inscribed everywhere from public buildings to street signs, transportation hubs and self-aggrandizing monuments.

Thursday’s unfurling of a massive banner bearing the visage of Donald J Trump, the 47th US president, on the exterior of the Washington headquarters of the federal justice department was only the latest example of how he has imposed himself on every facet of American life. Some critics have called it “dictator vibes”.

Backed by Labour and Conservative figures, he was a controversial choice when appointed in 2001

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of misconduct in public office, bringing his former role as the UK’s special representative for international trade and investment into focus. He denies any wrongdoing. But what was that role?

Iran has shown how plausible blackouts now are, with far-reaching consequences for the internet as we know it

During the height of Iran’s blackout in January, people could still access a platform that, in some senses, was like the internet.

Iranians could message family members on a government-monitored app and watch clips of Manchester United on a Farsi-language video-sharing site. They could read state news and use a local navigation service.

After meeting with unspecified tech leaders, senator calls for urgent policy action as companies race to build ever more powerful systems

Bernie Sanders has warned that Congress and the American public have “not a clue” about the scale and speed of the coming AI revolution, pressing for urgent policy action to “slow this thing down” as tech companies race to build ever-more powerful systems.

Speaking at Stanford University on Friday alongside congressman Ro Khanna after a series of meetings with industry leaders in California, Sanders was blunt about what he called the “most dangerous moment in the modern history of this country”.

Dr Cox is still electrifying, the original cast’s interactions are a joy to watch, and after a couple of episodes it finds its tone – making it just the comfort TV we need right now

It is possible to believe contradictory things. For instance, I believe TV’s reliance on reviving old shows is a risk-averse, creative regression. On the other hand, I love it. I particularly love it when fictional characters have visibly aged. There’s a broken humanity that you don’t get with flawless, collagen-rich skin. You sense you could talk to them about your sciatica and they’d get it.

I got that feeling with the new series of Scrubs (Disney+, from Thursday 26 February), a show I once mainlined on E4. Scrubs was as comforting as tea and toast. Surprisingly malleable, too. In its bones, it was a coming-of-age workplace bromance between junior doctors JD and Turk, played by then newcomers Zach Braff and Donald Faison. Their chemistry was the show’s anchor, balancing sassy racial harmony with irreverence and heart, as they bore witness to universal human drama. But is it healthy enough to survive resuscitation, more than 15 years after its last episode aired?

As Ryan Murphy’s new mini-series focuses on their explosive relationship, aides and experts explain the real-life couple behind the myth

He only met John F Kennedy Jr for five minutes but, three decades later, the memory lingers on. “Oh my God, he had it all,” says Larry Sabato, a political scientist, recalling their encounter at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington. “He had his mother’s poise and his father’s charisma; it was a perfect combination of the two. If there was anybody destined to be president, it was him.”

In the US, the Kennedys occupy territory somewhere between the British royal family and Greek tragedy, a tale of impossible glamour pierced by spectacles of public mourning. More than a quarter of a century after the single-engine plane piloted by John Kennedy Jr plunged into the Atlantic Ocean, killing him; his wife, Carolyn Bessette; and her sister, Lauren Bessette, Camelot is being mined for content once more.

In this week’s newsletter: The race to crown a new 007 has become its own long‑running spectacle, turning the search for​ Bond into an event as big as the films themselves

• Don’t get The Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Callum Turner’s turn as James Bond lasted at most a couple of weeks. No sooner had he been enshrined as frontrunner to succeed Daniel Craig, than he was nudged from the DB5 driver’s seat by the latest heir apparent, Jacob Elordi, installed as the new bookies’ favourite after his smouldering, highly profitable performance in Wuthering Heights. Smarting somewhere in the background is Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who seemed locked in for the job a couple of years ago, enjoying the backing of former 007s Pierce Brosnan and George Lazenby, but now seems to have fallen out of favour. And don’t forget the succession of other dead cert Bonds now banished to the back of the odds market: the long-rumoured likes of Tom Hardy and Idris Elba (both now likely to have aged out of the role); Theo James; James Norton; Josh O’Connor; Harris Dickinson; Bridgerton’s Rége-Jean Page; and approximately 5,000 other predominately British actors who have enjoyed box office success/led a successful TV drama/look good in a tuxedo.

On and on the hunt goes. Five years after Craig’s final outing, one that left absolutely no wriggle room for his return, and not far off a year since Denis Villeneuve was pegged as director of the next, still-untitled instalment, the next 007 has still not been found. Or if he has (and it seems certain to be a he), everyone involved in the Bond operation is keeping characteristically tight-lipped about it.

By portraying the young woman Heathcliff abuses as a sexily willing participant in her own degradation, Fennell’s adaptation betrays the book, and her audience

Tragedy is the beating heart of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights; it’s a gothic novel that takes place in a society built on hierarchy and oppression, and exposes the fragility of love and how easily it is distorted into dangerous obsession. Unsurprisingly, there is no happy ending.

Although every character in the novel is stalked by tragedy, few suffer as much as Isabella Linton. Unaware of Heathcliff’s vindictive motives, she becomes trapped in an intensely abusive marriage, one she is only freed from by fleeing to London. While she is undoubtedly a victim, in the end the character also has agency; Isabella is able to escape her abuser, though not without considerable scars. It’s a pivotal moment for her character, and one that she’s been stripped of in Emerald Fennell’s quote-unquote “adaptation”.

She might have the same producer as Graham Norton, but will Claudia Winkleman’s new series succeed? Seasoned pros from Esther Rantzen to Kirsty Wark reveal their tips and tricks for creating interview gold

Claudia Winkleman’s new chatshow will land next month, and its enthusiast army are already excited. Winkleman herself, who doesn’t come off at all breathy, said: “I can’t quite believe it and I’m incredibly grateful to the BBC for this amazing opportunity.” Kalpna Patel-Knight, who commissioned The Claudia Winkleman Show, observed: “Claudia is a true national treasure – warm, witty and endlessly entertaining.” Graham Stuart, long-term producer/buddy of Graham Norton, who runs So Television, which produces both, said of his new venture: “How can you possibly follow [Graham Norton]? By booking a host equally as brilliant. So we have.”

And if anything proves how hard it is to create great chat, it’s those quotes. If anyone was ever that bland and blow-hard on one of their chatshow sofas, most TV people would punch themselves in the head. No wonder so many chatshows struggle when they first come out – it’s not that the expectation is too high, exactly, so much as the fanfare is too boasty. Brilliant as she is, then, the success of Claudia’s new series is far from given. But how exactly do you go about creating chatshow magic?

Puerto Rican singer sells out concerts in Portuguese-speaking Brazil with breakthrough ‘anti-American agenda of emancipation’

There is a saying in Brazil that Brazilians realise they are Latin only when they travel to the US or Europe.

Among the many reasons for this is that the largest country in Latin America is also the only one in the region where Portuguese is spoken rather than Spanish.

The 22-year-old singer is up for two Brit awards thanks to her frank songs about family strife and predatory men. She explains why she’s fighting for her fellow council estate kids

Although she is on course for pop stardom, with two nominations at next week’s Brit awards, 22-year-old Skye Newman lives in a cabin at the bottom of her sister’s garden in London. It’s the backdrop for the music video to her song Hairdresser, which has 7.5m views on YouTube. In the clip, she is made up, her hair in rollers, lounging with a gaggle of friends. Licking her fingertips to roll a joint, she laments a one-sided friendship with another woman: “When I’m needed, know I’ll be there first / You don’t reciprocate and, girl, that hurts.”

It’s typical of Newman’s songcraft: ballad-driven contemporary soul that goes beyond romantic heartbreak to cover all kinds of pain and recrimination.

The enigmatic Bradford producer is moving into eerie new territory informed by folklore and delivered with a tangibly menacing low end

From Bradford, UK
Recommended if you like Adrian Sherwood, Kris Baha, Guerilla Welfare
Up next New EP Don’t Forget the Ritual released on 28 February

Miles J Paralysis maintains a low profile, with just a handful of releases available on Bandcamp and a sparse, faceless Instagram presence. The enigma suits the music he has been making and sharing under the alias since early last year: dark, dubby and complete with obscure vocal samples and titles such as Always Liked Scarecrows and Cursed Moor.

(Cuculi)
The Bristol-based folk ensemble travel widely on their first album, exploring global influences with sparkling, springlike warmth

Hedera are a band of five tightly knit friends – violinist Lulu Austin, violin/viola player Maisie Brett, violinist/double bassist Beth Roberts, accordionist/harpist Tamsin Elliott, and clarinettist Isis Wolf-Light – named after the Latin botanical term for ivy. The group’s debut album combines influences from Bulgaria to Bali, Ireland to Georgia, and establishes its mood of knotted, hypnotic locked groove from its opening track, Sterretjie (named after an Afrikaans word for the coastal tern bird, which also means “little stars”). Brett’s violin passes the track’s melody to Wolf-Light’s clarinet and Elliott’s accordion with a bright, sparkling swiftness.

Many other moments of joy, lithe and spring-like, lift these 12 tracks. Roberts’ waltz about a Cornish meadow, Mayflies in June, travels from minor key to major and back again, buoyed along by Elliott’s harp-playing. (Elliott similarly impressed on 2023’s So Far We Have Come, her Anglo-Egyptian album with oud player Tarek Elazhary.) Sekar Jagat (Balinese for “flower of the universe”) twitches sweetly into life on prepared harp and plucked strings, then makes hay with a melody originally written for gamelan; on Shen Khar Venakhi, a 1,000-year-old Georgian hymn that survived Soviet purges, all five women’s voices join together in a dense, glowing mass.

BookTok influencer Jack Edwards motivates himself with reading goals – and he’s not alone. Authors and avid readers discuss the rise of metrics, and reveal how many books they finished last year

Every January, thousands of readers log on to Goodreads, Instagram or TikTok and make the same declaration: this is the year I read 50 books. Or 75. Or 100. Screenshots of spreadsheets circulate, templates for tracking pages and percentages are downloaded, friends publicly pledge to “do better” than they did last year. What was once a private pastime is announced, quantified and, in some corners of the internet, judged.

The appeal is obvious: in a distracted age, reading can easily become crowded out by work, screens and fatigue. Literacy rates in the UK are stagnating: in 2024, around 50% of UK adults read regularly for pleasure, down from 58% in 2015.

The Barbecue at No 9 by Jennie Godfrey; A Sociopath’s Guide to a Successful Marriage by MK Oliver; A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford; Holy Boy by Lee Heejoo; A Stranger in Corfu by Alex Preston

The Barbecue at No 9 by Jennie Godfrey (Hutchinson Heinemann, £16.99)
Most of the action in Godfrey’s second novel takes place during the Live Aid concert on 13 July 1985, at a barbecue hosted by the Gordon family in a new-build cul-de-sac in an unspecified part of England. As neighbours arrive and music plays, we gradually learn the backstories of the main characters, from teenage Hanna, who is planning to run away from her pale, preoccupied father and house-proud, socially ambitious mother, to mysterious Rita, newly arrived from Australia to begin a new life, and shell-shocked ex-soldier Steve, whose paranoia is exacerbated by the shadowy figure watching the street. Like Godfrey’s debut, The List of Suspicious Things, this is not so much a whodunnit as a wonderful slow-burn story about friendship, community, and secrets within families, the choices we make and the lies we tell to protect ourselves and others, with the bonus of a terrific built-in soundtrack and a nostalgic vibe.

A Sociopath’s Guide to a Successful Marriage by MK Oliver (Hemlock, £16.99)
Former headteacher Oliver’s first novel centres on yummy mummy Lalla Rook, who lives with her banker husband Stephen and their young children Nelly and Nathan in the leafy north London suburb of Muswell Hill. It’s a privileged existence, but Lalla, who is not only admirably resourceful but also manipulative and utterly lacking in empathy, has her eye on a larger house in considerably pricier Hampstead as well as a place at an exclusive school for Nelly, who is already demonstrating that the antisocial apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Murder, body disposal, blackmail – Lalla will stop at nothing to achieve her ends, but things get complicated when it begins to looks as if the intruder she dispatched with a kitchen knife minutes before the start of four-year-old Nathan’s birthday party was trying to uncover her murky past. Told with gusto, plus wonderfully twisty plotting and lashings of lifestyle porn, this satirical thriller is the perfect antidote to the winter blues.

Leaving behind Cumbria for Oxford in the late 1950s, Bragg navigates class and culture in a world on the brink of change

It’s October 1958, and a nearly 19-year-old Melvyn Bragg is on the platform at Wigton railway station, saying goodbye to his childhood sweetheart, Sarah. He is off to read history at Wadham College, Oxford, one of the youngest in his cohort because national service is being phased out. Another World starts here, picking up the story left off in Back in the Day, Bragg’s previous memoir about his childhood and youth in this small Cumbrian town.

Oxford to Bragg seems “more a theatre than a city, a spectacle rather than a habitation”. After his prelims, the weeding-out exams in his second term, he is left alone until his finals. He discovers Ingmar Bergman and has many earnest pub conversations about whether Pasternak will get the Nobel prize, or jazz is superior to rock’n’roll. He goes on the Aldermaston march and joins the anti-apartheid movement – although in hindsight he sees this as inspired by a residual faith in empire, with South Africa as Britain’s moral responsibility. Even after Suez, he owns a pencil sharpener in the shape of a globe on which the empire is “a continuous governing blur of pink”.

The dark past of a seemingly perfect couple is gradually revealed in this observant debut of obsession and control

Glimpse them chatting in a restaurant or posing on Instagram, and you might think they have it all. The pair live in London but often travel, drawing the eyes of other guests, their skin glowing, their limbs artfully at ease. She writes affirmations on hotel stationery; he claims to taste notes of bark and tobacco in his chianti. As Sean Gilbert’s dark, observant debut opens in Istanbul, this apparently perfect couple bicker and sweat, for secrets lurk behind their facade – and one of them might be murder.

An unexpected reunion gets their sightseeing off to a shaky start. The unnamed narrator and his wife, Elle, have not seen Benny for 15 years when they cross paths outside the Hagia Sophia. An irksome university acquaintance who has become a second-rate rapper, Benny has the grip of a limpet. As the trio browse stalls and pull on saliva-slicked shishas, talk turns to the past.

Creators say they’re offering Africans a ‘hopeful, utopian feeling’ of retrieving objects looted by colonial armies

A new South African video game lets players take back African artefacts held in western museums in a series of heists, amid a growing campaign to repatriate treasures looted by colonial armies.

Players of Relooted become South African sports scientist and parkour expert Nomali, as she leaps and dives through museums to retrieve 70 real objects. They include an Asante gold mask that was taken by the British army when it destroyed the Asante empire’s capital, Kumasi, and is now in the Wallace Collection in London. Another object is the skull of the Tanzanian king Mangi Meli, which was taken to Germany after its colonial regime executed him in 1900.

The updated QuickShot II brings retro gameplay into the modern era while preserving the no-frills button smashing and endearing flaws that fans loved

Nostalgia is big in the modern games industry. It’s ironic that the most technologically obsessed art form on the planet is just as watery-eyed about the past as cinema and music. And to prove it here is the new version of the legendary QuickShot II, a plasticky joystick from the early 1980s that wasn’t even that good the first time round. It was, however, cheap and it resembled an actual fighter plane control stick with its multiple fire buttons and ergonomic shaft. If you wanted a rugged and precise controller you’d go for the Competition Pro, but that one didn’t let you pretend to be in Star Wars or Airwolf. Plus, the QuickShot II had suckers on its base so you could stick it to your cockpit control panel – sorry, I mean MDF computer table.

The new QuickShot II from Retro Games and Plaion Replai is almost an exact replica in terms of its dimensions. You can grasp it in your fist and wrap your thumb and forefinger around its large red buttons. Yes, you can stick it to your table; the designers have even included the original auto-fire switch at the rear for players who weren’t prepared to hit the fire button repeatedly while playing Green Beret.

Nintendo Switch 2; Nintendo
This ruthlessly competitive game will have everyone from your granny to semi-pros trying to set fire to their opponent’s side of the court with powered-up ‘fever rackets’

Tennis has been a regular hobby of Mario’s for the past 30 years, beginning with the headache-inducing Mario’s Tennis on the Virtual Boy and most recently resurfacing as the surprisingly complex Mario Tennis Aces on the Switch. Now he’s back in his whites (and reds) with a charming new take on the sport that dials back the difficulty level and adds lots of fun modes and features, aiming to appease complete newcomers and Djokovic-esque veterans.

At first, the range of options is almost bewildering. You can opt to play in one-off matches with up to three other players or NPCs, or enter a more structured tournament of singles or doubles play. Then there’s the extremely fun Mix It Up, which offers a range of fun tennis derivatives. These include Forest Court where piranha plants appear and gobble any balls that get close, and Pinball where bumpers and barriers pop up as you play. Trial Towers, meanwhile, presents a tower of increasingly tough tennis challenges which all have to be completed to open the next two buildings; fail more than three times and you’re sent back to the beginning – yes, it’s Mario Tennis: The Roguelike.

Milano Cortina​ has cutting‑edge replays, chase‑cam drones and exuberant commentary ​bringing a wave of unexpected nostalgia for anyone who grew up on 90s extreme‑sports games

• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

As someone whose childhood holidays consisted of narrowboating along the Grand Union canal or wandering the harbour-side at Whitby looking for vampires, I have never been on a skiing break. The idea of plummeting down a hill on anything but a plastic sledge is totally alien to me. And yet, my wife and I have been gripped by the Winter Olympics, especially the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events. And I think I know why. Those events are really channelling the look and feel of the wintery sports sims I’ve always loved – especially those that arrived during a golden period in the mid-1990s.

This was the era in which snowboarding was exploding in popularity, especially among twentysomethings with disposable incomes and no responsibilities – which coincidentally was the games industry’s target market at the time. Perhaps the first title to take advantage of this trend was Namco’s 1996 arcade game Alpine Surfer, which challenged players to stand on a snowboard-shaped controller and swoop as quickly as possible down a mountainside – it was one of the most physically exhausting coin-ops I ever played. Later that year came the self-consciously hip PlayStation sim Cool Boarders, and then in 1998, my absolute favourite, 1080° Snowboarding on the N64, with it’s intuitive analog controls and incredibly authentic sound effects of boards cutting through deep, crisp snow.

A musical number about a woman’s letter to her husband on the second world war frontline unlocked my ability to blub – and made me a happier person

I am sure I must have cried as a child, but by the time I was a teenager it had stopped. It was probably a boarding school thing. Very stiff upper lip. My parents are not the most emotionally available human beings, either. I like to tease them by saying: “I love you.” You can see the panic in their eyes. They will normally say: “All right then, bye.”

My gran died when I was about 18, and I was sad, of course, but in terms of tears there was nothing, no water. I never cried at movies. I didn’t cry on my wedding day, nor at the birth of either of my daughters. It never alarmed me. I actually thought I might have underactive tear glands. Looking back, it was probably all about control.

Yin Xiuzhen builds cities from donated clothing while Chiharu Shiota weaves found objects into vast webs of thread. Now the two are exhibiting their massive, moving installations in two parallel exhibitions

These clothes are not “secondhand”, says Yin Xiuzhen, the Beijing-born artist known for creating large-scale installations out of found garments and keepsakes. “I prefer to call them ‘used’ or ‘worn’,” she explains. “Clothes that have been ‘worn’ carry a lot of information … like a second skin, imprinted with social meaning.” In some of Yin’s works the clothes are her own, telling a personal story. In others, the clothes are collected, stained and stretched across towering steel frames resembling planes, trains or organic forms.

Yin is showing a selection of these works in Heart to Heart, an exhibition occupying the lower floor of London’s Hayward Gallery. “Worn clothing acts as a narrator in my work … the lived experience is embedded in the fabric,” she says.

Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
After a book, a film and a Ted Talk, William Kamkwamba’s heroically inventive response to floods, drought and starvation is now delivered with energetic songs and dancing

William Kamkwamba’s extraordinary story has been told many times. It deserves to be heard again, for its remarkable feat of resourcefulness, prodigious child’s intelligence and great, against-the-odds narrative arc. A Malawian boy living through a climate of floods and drought that left his village facing famine, he built a wind turbine out of scraps, as a 13-year-old, to life-saving effect for his community.

Following Kamkwamba’s memoir, co-written with Bryan Mealer, and Chiwetel Ejiofor’s film, along with a much viewed and celebrated Ted Talk by Kamkwamba, this musical version of the story is its own distinct thing. Directed by Lynette Linton, it is an exuberant creation, filled with warm light, humour, a gorgeous grass-roofed set design by Frankie Bradshaw as well as vivid costumes (patterned fabric, bright colours, great headdresses) and vibrant African sounds and movement.

Catalonia’s most celebrated son kicks off his centenary in style, Derek Walcott energises his friend Doig and the Colombian great gets her first UK retrospective – all in your weekly dispatch

Beatriz González
A survey of this Colombian political painter and mixed media artist who died in January.
• Barbican, London, from 25 February to 10 May

The Working Arts Club is working to counter the stark class disparity within the UK creative sector

‘The problem the art world has with class is a systemic issue and the need for support is everywhere,” says Meg Molloy, the founder of Working Arts Club, which aims to help people from working-class backgrounds secure jobs in the arts.

Founded in 2024 as an independent initiative in London, it has collaborated with the likes of the V&A, Royal Academy, Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Frieze London.

From the dire Hathaway and Franco double act to the charming Fey and Poehler combo, the choice of MC is vital to a show’s success. With Alan Cumming set to helm the Baftas on Sunday, here’s what he needs to know

No modern film awards show is complete without a wisecracking host, who has the tricky job of compering the evening, bringing people on and off stage in rapid succession, keeping a restless audience entertained, and coming up with a decent comedy routine themselves. Hence the attention that is paid to the annual announcement of the Baftas, Golden Globes and Oscars hosts; they are gigs that can flourish in the cultural memory, such as Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s multiple turns at the Golden Globes, or become infamous, such as Anne Hathaway and James Franco’s double act at the Academy Awards in 2011, which saw them castigated as “children” and “spectacularly unwatchable” by the media.

In December, the Baftas announced that Scottish actor Alan Cumming was to host of the 79th edition of the event, which takes place on Sunday; he takes over from fellow actor and Scot David Tennant, who occupied the berth in 2024 and 2025. Tennant was given a middling review for his efforts last year by the Guardian’s Gwilym Mumford, who called him “a game host, a willing song and dance man, but he definitely needs more help from whoever’s writing his gags” – but that was glowing compared with the notices that arrived for Absolutely Fabulous star Joanna Lumley after her turn in 2019; in an article headlined “Is Joanna Lumley the worst Baftas host of all time?” the Guardian said: “Watching it on TV was excruciating. Not only were the jokes bad, but the Bafta audience responded with a total, ominous silence.” Following the Lumley debacle, Bafta managed to claw back some credibility by hiring Graham Norton in 2020 (“a safe pair of hands”) and a well-reviewed Rebel Wilson in 2022 (“rescues Baftas”).

Influential documentary-maker whose films eavesdropped on the relationships between people and institutions

In 1960, when a small group of American documentary film-makers named their work direct cinema, they might have been accurately describing the films of Frederick Wiseman, who has died aged 96. Although he came along a few years later, Wiseman, more than the others in the movement, exemplified the credo of direct cinema, which believed in an immediate and authentic approach to the subject matter.

Avoiding planned narrative and narration, Wiseman recorded events exactly as they happened. People were allowed to speak without guidance or interruption, while the camera watched them objectively, not interfering with the natural flow of speech or action. This was made possible by the advent of light, portable cameras and high-speed film, which allowed more intimacy in the film-making – what Wiseman called “wobblyscope”.

Fans celebrate unmatched talent on screen, while those who met the actor in person remember his kindness

Another one of the greats has passed. What a career. I sincerely believe Duvall was the best actor in a generation of best actors: De Niro, Pacino, Hoffman, Nicholson and more. What made Robert stand above these other figures was how he disappeared into a part. There was no Duvall persona. He was invisible. There were just the characters he played. He could do loud and angry – see his sublime turns in The Great Santini or his seminal Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. Yet I loved his quieter performances more, which would slowly sneak up on you, pull you close and then blow you away with the brilliance of his choices and the risks he took.

The Mumford & Sons frontman on farming, the fallout from contact sports as a kid and the four-letter word that’s banned at home

Born in California, Marcus Mumford, 39, formed the band Mumford & Sons in 2007. Two years later, they released their Brit award-winning debut Sigh No More, which included the song Little Lion Man. In 2013, Babel won album of the year at the Grammys, and in 2025 the band had their third No 1 album, Rushmere. Their latest release is Prizefighter and on 4 July they play BST Hyde Park in London. In 2022, Mumford made a solo record, Self‑Titled. He is married to the actor Carey Mulligan, has three children and lives in the West Country.

Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Sickeningly, it’s probably my wife, because she’s a legend.

Tax authorities warn sole traders and landlords to act, as the biggest change to self-assessment in decades looms

Spring is “the time of plans and projects”, wrote Leo Tolstoy in Anna Karenina. For hundreds of thousands of self-employed people and property owners, those words are ringing true – and have never felt more daunting.

This spring, HM Revenue and Customs is introducing the biggest shake-up of the self-assessment tax system in decades.

Which supermarket shortcrust pastry puffs up proudly, and which comes up short?

• The best supermarket unsalted butter

Puff pastry is made by wrapping a block of fat (ideally butter) in a sheet of dough, then rolling it out, folding it over itself, and repeating the rolling and folding process several times more. This creates dozens of thin layers of fat between each layer of pastry. It’s skilled, arduous work, but that’s where ready-rolled puff pastry comes in. This miraculous product makes baking your own pastries, vol-au-vents and upside-down tarts very simple indeed.

I baked a small rectangle of pastry from each brand for 10-15 minutes at 180-200C (or according to the manufacturer’s instructions). I noted the height of the rise as well as the lamination (the separation of layers), texture, flavour, ingredients and value relative to quality.

If you’re aiming to heat the human, not the home – or just love snuggling under something cosy – these are our best buys from our test of 24

• The best heated clothes airers to save time and money when drying your laundry

Aside from hugging a fluffy hot-water bottle, sipping whisky and ramping up the thermostat, an electric blanket or heated throw is the best way to ward off the winter chill.

When you consider that more than half of a typical household’s fuel bills goes on heating and hot water, finding alternative ways to keep warm – and heating the person, rather than the whole home – seems like a good idea. Many of the best electric blankets and heated throws cost about 2p to 4p an hour to run, so it’s hard to ignore their potential energy- and money-saving benefits.

Best electric blanket overall:
Carmen C81190 fitted electric blanket (king)

Best budget electric blanket:
Slumberdown Sleepy Nights (double)

Whether you’re hanging a picture or putting up a shelf, we’ve drilled down to find the best tools for every DIY job

• 11 clever home storage hacks

There’s immense possibility in a good cordless drill, electrically and functionally. These tools can be creators, destroyers and connectors, with functions (depending on the type of drill) including screw driving, hammer-drilling into brick or stone, mixing building materials, and plain-old drilling.

Most DIY drills are powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion battery – so there’s no cause to swear at an innocent power cable as you accidentally yank it from the plug socket. Usually, the same battery can also be used across a brand’s range of tools, including Bosch, Makita and Ryobi.

Best cordless drill overall:
Makita DHP490Z 18V LXT brushless combi drill

Best budget cordless drill:
Guild 18V cordless impact drill with 100 accessories

Our expert rounds up the best waterproof jackets and raincoats for everything from a drizzly coffee run to hiking in the wilderness

• The best umbrellas for staying dry in the wind and rain

In the words of Alfred Wainwright, “there is no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing”. When you live in boggy Britain, where it rains more than 150 days a year, waterproofing is a serious business – and a great waterproof jacket is a year-round wardrobe staple.

Whether you’re climbing a mountain or heading out on the commute, it’s worth investing in a decent jacket that’s fully waterproof, breathable and fits you properly. I’ve put 15 through their paces in rainy hike conditions to find the very best women’s waterproof jackets.

Best waterproof jacket overall:
Montane Torren

Best budget waterproof jacket:
Craghoppers Caldbeck II

Nostalgia and comfort combine in abundance in this retro dessert that’s strictly for kids of all ages

The first time I had rhubarb and custard together was in a boiled sweet from a big jar in my mum’s corner shop. You could flip the sweet in your mouth and rub the flavour you wanted with your tongue. Too tart? Flip to the custard side. Too creamy? Flip again. It was one of the best ways to spend 10 minutes as a seven-year-old in the early 1990s. A few decades on, a lot has changed. Mum no longer has a corner shop, I don’t love boiled sweets any more, but eating rhubarb and custard is still a fantastic way to spend 10 minutes (at the very least).

Taking inspiration from Chile’s traditional borgoña, this red-wine cocktail makes for a great aperitif

A Chilean twist on a wine cocktail: elegant, vibrant and built on the balance between the depth of pinot noir and the bright sweetness of cherries. It takes inspiration from Chile’s traditional borgoña, a drink where red wine meets fruit (usually strawberries), but layers in cherry liqueur and soda for a modern, effervescent edge. I sometimes add a few drops of fresh lime juice to sharpen the sweetness and make the fruit flavours really pop. It’s refreshing yet sophisticated, and a great aperitif.

Nico Einersen, head chef, Mareida, London W1

A bright, fruity pudding topped with a toasted pebbly crumb

Rhubarb brings its late-winter brightness to this favourite pudding, while ripe, buttery pears soften the edges and add a gentle creaminess. Instead of the traditional rubbing-in method, the crumble is made by pouring warm browned butter straight into the dry ingredients, creating a pebbly topping with a deeper toasted flavour. Leave out the crushed fennel seed, if you prefer, but this small addition, bloomed briefly in the butter, gives the whole thing a subtle aromatic lift.

As pancake day and Orthodox Maslenitsa – or cheesefare week – overlap, I’m leaning into halloumi scones, oozy taleggio galettes, and sweet and savoury crepes

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

In terms of religious food festivals, this week is kind of a double whammy. First up was pancake day, which is always a whole-day affair in our kitchen, with both sweet and savoury stations, crepe pans and all the toppings (you can always rely on Felicity Cloake for a foolproof recipe). And, because of the way the calendars fall this year, we are also celebrating Orthodox Maslenitsa, or cheesefare, week at the same time.

OK, so the sentiment is pretty much the same (it’s the week before the start of Lent, when people ease into their strict fasting period), but these two celebrations can often be weeks apart (blame the battle of the Gregorian and Julian calendars). For those of Orthodox faith, last week was all about eating meat, and this week is all about dairy. Essentially, you are trying to consume all the animal products and get them out of the house in preparation for the 40-plus-day fast. And, whether or not you are religious, in my book any tradition that means you get to eat loads of cheese is a win.

Freya, 23, a master’s student, meets Greg, 24, a civil servant

What were you hoping for?
Somebody friendly and kind, and an interesting chat.

From never arguing to knowing exactly what the other thinks, the signs your relationship is in trouble aren’t always obvious. Experts reveal what to watch for – and how to get the spark back

You would think this is a sign of perfect harmony. Not so if you have stopped arguing completely. “Stopping disagreeing isn’t a sign of peace, it points to emotional withdrawal,” explains Simone Bose, a relationship therapist at Relate. It happens, says Bose, because couples are “likely protecting themselves from feeling disappointed or from conflict itself, but are becoming emotionally numb”. Clinical psychologist and Couples Therapy star Dr Orna Guralnik agrees, noting that “some people don’t argue because they’ve come to a state of acceptance of who each other are, but some don’t argue because they’ve given up. It’s a cold, detached form of not arguing – a resignation.” For Oona Metz, a social worker, psychotherapist and the author of Unhitched: The Essential Divorce Guide for Women, “Couples who stop arguing even when they have major disagreements are on a collision course towards either an unhappy marriage or a divorce.” This is because “unresolved issues get swept under the rug and eventually come out in some other way”.

While other countries are deep in a sex recession, the Danish drive shows no signs of stalling. How do they stay so frisky?

Copenhagen on the Thursday before Valentine’s Day is intoxicatingly romantic. That’s not hyperbole – you could breathe in and be drunk on it. The canals have frozen over, which only happens about once every 13 years, and couples are skating on them. You can see cosy bars from miles away because they’re strung with fairy lights – apparently not just a Christmas thing here. Everyone is beautiful.

But none of that comes close to explaining why young Danes in Denmark, unlike gen Z across the developed world, are still having sex. Winter isn’t even their frisky season. “You feel the atmosphere in the springtime,” says Ben, 35, half-British, half Danish. His friend Anna, also 35, originally Hungarian, says: “Post-hibernation fever, you can feel the sexual energy. Everyone is on. Everyone swims in the canals, a lot of the women will be topless – they’re like herrings.” (Which is to say: they are typically Danish, they love the water and they don’t wear clothes … I think.) Ben and Anna are millennials, of course, rather than gen Z: they provide the outsiders’ perspective.

It is reasonable to avoid hurt after such a big betrayal, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith, but don’t mistake isolation for safety

• Read more Leading questions

I was in a relationship for 26 years, married for 17, and my husband had an affair. It was hidden, long term and denied until discovery. I divorced him but that was delayed and I had to live with him for a further two years. I spent a year alone in my new house with my now adult sons. Now I am a little over a year into a new relationship and suddenly panicking about it. I’m scared to go forward. I’m not sure I can commit to long term again, and if I see him looking at other women (we work together in a predominantly female workplace), I panic! I’m older than him by nine years and I feel like I want to end things to prevent getting hurt. But then I feel I’m being cowardly. How can I stop going down this road in my head?

Eleanor says: On behalf of everyone everywhere, let me say: what a schmuck thing for your husband to do. That is such a big betrayal. And the cruelty you’re living through now is that as well as teaching you to be mistrustful of others, betrayal on that magnitude teaches you to be unsure of yourself. If I misread things once …

City minister Lucy Rigby acts after woman faced repossession of house burned down by controlling husband

A woman who was nearly killed by her abusive husband has been invited to advise the government on measures to support victims of financial abuse after the Guardian highlighted her story last weekend.

Francesca Onody was left homeless and penniless when her husband doused their cottage with petrol while she and her two children were inside. Her husband, Malcolm Baker, died when the property exploded.

From a former Georgian hospital in a Scottish Borders town to a converted greenhouse in the Kent countryside

New technology has workers spooked, but experts say it’s creating an opening for a resurgence in worker power

In 2026, it’s a scary time to work for a living.

Gone are the days of quiet quitting, the Great Resignation, and the highly visible union-organizing battles that began the decade and signaled that perhaps worker power was on the rise again in the US. Instead, much of that momentum is being crowded out of our minds by anxieties: a worsening affordability crisis, geopolitical instability and the specter of artificial intelligence looming over the workplace.

Its ‘fibre checker’ tool confirmed I could have a connection, but a month later it changed its mind

My internet provider informed me by email that full fibre broadband had become available for my property, confirmed by Openreach’s “fibre checker” tool.

After a month, Openreach declared the connection uneconomical due to blockages in the conduits below the road.

Making choices can be difficult when options are not clearly better or worse than each other – how does one even begin to decide?

I love cats. I’d been idly keeping an eye out for a less allergenic breed, when bam – a kitten became available. Suddenly I had to decide whether to take the leap.

Even though I’d been considering cat ownership for a while, I felt anxious. I mulled over all the responsibilities: vet bills, stubborn allergies, years of commitment. One big sticking point was travel. Having a cat would be rewarding, but did I want it right now if it meant I couldn’t decide on a whim to book a cheap last minute flight to another city? Did I want to buy Fancy Feast, or stay fancy-free?

With more than 200 possible symptoms, long Covid isn’t easy to treat and diagnose. Rolled-back federal funding has led longhaulers to ask: is this all in my head?

I am 30ft below the surface of the Blue Grotto, a crystalline diving hole in central Florida. Between the water’s embrace and the restriction of my wetsuit, my blood pressure finally stabilizes. The long, deep breaths I pull from my respirator keep my heart rate nice and low.

I feel lighter than I have since April 2022, when I first contracted long Covid. I feel childlike at the fact that I can do this at all – get scuba certified – when on land I’m often confined to a wheelchair or a walker.

The average person does not need to be adding anything to their water

• Read more in the Antiviral series

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Attitudes towards hydration have become another faultline in the generational divide: while the giant “emotional support” water bottle is ubiquitous among gen Z, those of the writer Ian McEwan’s vintage find the modern obsession with hydration “deranged”. McEwan and his ilk will be even more perplexed then that even those guzzling from their Stanley Cups throughout the day are being told they are still not sufficiently hydrating themselves.

Influencers are telling their followers they “don’t understand what hydration is” if they’re not adding electrolytes such as sodium and chloride (salt) as well as magnesium and potassium to their water to help their cells “hold on to and use” it. Often spruiking the sachets wellness companies are selling, they claim these fancy salt formulations are essential to avoiding migraines and muscle cramps, anxiety and mood swings. Some TikTokers are adding sachets alongside other ingredients such as coloured ice cubes, edible glitter and fruit into the aforementioned massive cup in a trend known as “loaded water”.

The hit podcaster, author and former GP says a failure to regulate big tech is ‘failing a generation of children’. He explains why he quit the NHS and why he wants a ban on screen-based homework

A 16-year-old boy and his mum went to see their GP, Dr Rangan Chatterjee, on a busy Monday afternoon. That weekend, the boy had been at A&E after an attempt at self-harm, and in his notes the hospital doctor had recommended the teenager be prescribed antidepressants. “I thought: ‘Wait a minute, I can’t just start a 16-year-old on antidepressants,’” says Chatterjee. He wanted to understand what was going on in the boy’s life.

They talked for a while, and Chatterjee asked him about his screen use, which turned out to be high. “I said: ‘I think your screen use, particularly in the evenings, might be impacting your mental wellbeing.’” Chatterjee helped the boy and his mother set up a routine where digital devices and social media went off an hour before bed, gradually extending the screen-free period over six weeks. After two months, he says the boy stopped needing to see him. A few months after that, his mother wrote Chatterjee a note to say her son had been transformed – he was engaging with his friends and trying new activities. He was, she said, like a different boy from the one who had ended up in hospital.

Gentler take on mullet has flowed over shoulders at Winter Olympics and is now tossed on red carpets

Hair cut ideas are typically drummed up in the salon, but recently a more unconventional source of inspiration has appeared: the vegetable aisle.

“Lettuce hair” is trending. A gentler take on a traditional mullet, the new salad style consists of more subtle differences in the length between the back, sides and top of the hair. Lettuce hair features a loose and often wavy top, softly tapered sides and a feathery tail that skims the back of the neck, resembling leafy greens.

British labels move focus from innovation to style as names drop off show schedule owing to financial pressure

“London fashion has leant too much into being theatrical. Drama is great, but style is a huge piece of why we buy fashion,” said Mario Arena, the creative director of Joseph, at its first catwalk show in eight years.

Arena has a subversive idea to re-energise London fashion week. More polish, less pantomime: clothes that sell, rather than clothes that scream.

The increasingly popular shade has appeared on fashion week catwalks and award season red carpets

On the fashion colour wheel, green has long carried a reputation for being “tricky” – a shade that clashes with others and flatters only certain skin tones. Yet this year, a particular apple green has been steadily gaining popularity. It has appeared on catwalks and even on the red carpet, defying the old adage that red and green should never be seen.

Arriving at the Berlin film festival, Pamela Anderson wore an apple-green wrap by Carolina Herrera over a dress in tonal pinks and greens. Amal Clooney chose a green gown by Versace for a Golden Globes afterparty, while Rose Byrne wore green Chanel for the ceremony itself. With award season in full swing, there is speculation the shade could make a strong showing at the Baftas this Sunday.

​T​he backwards cap, a 90s accessory once dismissed as juvenile​, is emerging as the latest shorthand for laid‑back confidence

• Don’t get Fashion Statement delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Within the first 20 minutes of Love Story, Ryan Murphy’s new take on the often tumultuous relationship between John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette, the youngest son of the former US president is depicted wearing five different caps. They include a Kangol flat cap as he cycles to a newspaper kiosk in uptown NYC to read the latest headlines about himself, a Yankees cap as he runs topless on a treadmill and a navy baseball cap as he joins his mother, Jacqueline, for dinner, where she promptly reminds him “no hats at the table, please”.

For Kennedy Jr, hounded by the paparazzi and tabloid press who nicknamed him “The Hunk” and more often than not “The Hunk Who Flunked”, you might think this penchant for peaked caps was thanks to the fact that they let him go somewhat incognito. But he preferred to wear his backwards, pulling the cap downwards over his signature flop of lush black hair, and leaving his full face on view.

A cricket match kindled my love affair with the Greek island, inspiring both a literary festival and my new novel

This is not where you would expect an article about one of the Mediterranean’s most beautiful islands to start. It’s the tail end of winter, 2021. Kensal Green Cemetery in west London: the imperial mausolea canted and crumbling, low clouds dissolving into rain. We are still  in that  strange phase of the pandemic when we are masked, newly aware of our bodies and the space around them. We are here to bury Nikos, a man who for me, for many, was the incarnation of Corfu.

I had spent my 20s trying to find the perfect Greek island, hopping from the well-trodden (Mykonos, Santorini, Cephalonia) to the more obscure (Kythira, Symi, Meganisi). None quite matched the vision I had dreamed into being as a child, when I segued from Robert Graves to Mary Renault, then to Lawrence Durrell and John Fowles. Greece was an idea before it was a place: freedom and deep thought, a constellation of sand, salt and thyme.

The best places to seek respite from the wintry UK weather in France, Italy and Germany

• Tell us about a family adventure in Europe – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Saint-Jorioz in Haute-Savoie will provide a springtime lift for your spirits. On the shore of Lake Annecy, it’s a short bus ride from the city of Annecy, but less busy and with superior lake and mountain views. Hike to the surrounding peaks, towards the lesser-known Col de l’Arpettaz, or cycle on the excellent greenways. Relax by the cool blue alpine water. Behind you lies the underrated Les Bauges Unesco Geopark. The department only joined France in 1860, and has its own Italian-influenced regional cuisine.
Brian Lowry

A trail named after a brutal marcher lord passes through tranquil countryside between Shropshire and Herefordshire but is rich in reminders of the area’s turbulent past

In the UK, there is a proud tradition of naming long-distance walking paths after talented reprobates. I mean the various opium fiends, international terrorists and child murderers who make up our colourful national tapestry (see the Coleridge Way, Drake’s Trail and the Richard III Trail). So perhaps a 30-mile weekend walk dedicated to the Mortimers, and their most notorious scion, Sir Roger, is an appropriate addition to the weave.

After all, this is the man who allegedly slept with a reigning queen (Isabella), probably killed her husband (Edward II), and certainly became de facto tyrant of the realm for three turbulent years in the 1320s, feathering his own nest relentlessly during that time. They don’t make world leaders like that any longer, do they?

A cabin on a farm near Hawick, known for its whisky and woollens, offers wild seclusion – and a great base for exploring an overlooked region

The tiny, off-grid cabin looked almost unreal: made of repurposed oak it stood by a private lochan, with separate cedar sauna, cold outdoor shower, sunken hot tub, and a jetty with two hammocks and a pair of paddleboards. It screamed Finland or Sweden, not a sheep and deer farm in the Scottish Borders. It was the sort of isolated location that would set Ben Fogle’s heart racing in New Lives in the Wild. Two swans bugled my arrival. I felt a little embarrassed that all of it was mine.

Sometimes, we need to escape to a place where the phone coverage is bad enough to make you believe you’re somewhere truly wild. Tiny Home Borders, hidden in rippling foothills 10 miles east of Hawick, is such a place. Last August, owners David and Claire Mactaggart opened a second two-person cabin on their farmland (the first opened in 2022) and I jumped at the chance to stay, swim, soak, and – crucially – switch-off.

With waits for council plots in England decades-long, Roots is renting out green space – but some communities are digging in

When police arrived at the field outside Bristol in October 2023, two old cars, wheels removed, were blockading the gates. Protesters had hauled them across the entrance to stop developers building on the slice of north Somerset green belt. The threat was not housing or industry, but a company building vegetable patches.

Roots builds privatised allotments to give city dwelling customers a place to grow food. It was co-founded in 2021 by Christian Samuel, Ed Morrison and William Gay, who were frustrated by a 28-year waiting list for a plot in their area of Streatham, south London. “We thought: ‘This is crazy’,” says Samuel, 32. “‘Why don’t we just build our own?’”

I’ll have no one to watch Deadwood with any more, but at least we can fix the ceiling in his bedroom

For the last couple of months, a dining room table has been squatting over the coffee table in our living room, like one animal threatening another. It’s not in the way exactly, but it’s still a strangely oppressive use of space. Anyway, in a few days it will be gone.

The oldest one is leaving home for the third time – or the fourth, if you count going to university, which I do, because I cried that time, my vision blurring as I tried to punch my registration number into a car park ticket machine.

From thorn, seat, shout and stew to Bruno Mars and Bette Midler, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 What, in Spain, is the world’s largest Renaissance building?
2 Which rock group’s name was inspired by a label on a sewing machine?
3 The body produces about 2 million what every second?
4 What is the only non-US team to win baseball’s World Series?
5 Who did Violet Gibson try to assassinate in Rome in 1926?
6 Financially, what rose from £85,000 to £120,000 in December 2025?
7 Which bird can dive to depths of more than 500m?
8 The Sonderbund civil war in 1847 was what country’s last military conflict?
What links:
9 Thorn; seat; shout; stew?
10 Nicole Kidman; Bruno Mars; Bette Midler; Jason Momoa; Barack Obama?
11 Circular orders; rectangular information; triangular warning?
12 Hannah Montana: The Movie; Lara Croft: Tomb Raider; On Golden Pond; Paper Moon?
13 Argentina; Mexico; New Zealand; Qatar; Senegal; Spain?
14 Black; brown; Philippine forest; Polynesian; ricefield?
15 John Flamsteed (1675) and Michele Dougherty (2025)?

Five multiple-choice questions – set by children – to test your knowledge, and a chance to submit your own junior brainteasers for future quizzes

• ​Submit a question

Molly Oldfield hosts Everything Under the Sun, a podcast answering children’s questions. Do check out her books, Everything Under the Sun and Everything Under the Sun: Quiz Book, as well as her new title, Everything Under the Sun: All Around the World.

Amateur climber’s conviction over girlfriend’s death could put people off activity, say experts

• Climber convicted of manslaughter after leaving girlfriend on Austria’s highest peak to seek help

The decision of an Austrian court to convict an amateur climber of manslaughter after he had left his girlfriend behind to die on an Alpine peak in winter is certain to be examined closely throughout Europe.

In his decision in Innsbruck, the judge, Norbert Hofer – a climber, and an expert in Austrian law relating to the mountains – ruled that the “galaxies-wide” disparity in experience and skills between Thomas P and his late girlfriend Kerstin G meant he had been de facto acting as her mountain guide “as a favour” despite no financial arrangement having been involved.

Campaign launched amid fears land in heart of Kent town that has been put up for sale could be turned into flats

Tunbridge Wells locals still talk about the time Arrested Development played at the minuscule music venue on the edge of its picturesque commons. The hip-hop stars enjoyed a picnic beside the spectacular rocky outcrop on the leafy 106 hectare (256-acre) common land in the heart of the Kent town.

“Now we want development arrested for the commons,” said John Barber, a local resident and the former chair of the Friends of Tunbridge Wells and Rusthall Commons charity.

Israeli police raid compound, arrest staff and curb Muslims’ access as Ramadan begins

A six-decade agreement governing Muslim and Jewish prayer at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site has “collapsed” under pressure from Jewish extremists backed by the Israeli government, experts have warned.

A series of arrests of Muslim caretaker staff, bans on access for hundreds of Muslims, and escalating incursions by radical Jewish groups culminated this week in the arrest of an imam of al-Aqsa mosque and an Israeli police raid during evening prayers on the first night of Ramadan.

As the Winter Olympic Games enter their final weekend, we would like to hear your favourite moments

As the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics enter their final weekend, we would like to hear about the moment will stay with you. Wherever you are, what was your favourite moment and why?

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

We would like to hear your story of serving a nightmare patron

A diner in a Sydney restaurant has been caught on CCTV sprinkling armpit hair into their food “in attempt to get a free meal”. After confronting the head chef, the man allegedly then left without paying, having ordered the most expensive items on the menu.

With this delightful story in mind, do you have a story of dealing with a rude or generally bad customer while working in hospitality?

We’d like to hear your stories about the ways you’re using chatbots to assist with your social life or important life decisions

Lots of people now use chatbots as personal assistants, not just for work but in everyday life and social interactions. We want to hear your stories about the ways you’re using chatbots to navigate your social life or significant life decisions.

Have you ever drafted a breakup text using AI? Or crafted a message to delicately cancel plans? Have you consulted AI on whether to take, or quit, a job? Or sought advice from a chatbot on a tricky friendship or relationship?

We would like to hear your story of losing and finding something by miraculously good fortune, persistent detective work or the kindness of another person

What is the craziest or strangest thing you’ve lost but then found again? Whether it was by miraculously good fortune, persistent detective work or the kindness of another person, you can tell us all about it below.

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

Wake up to the top stories and what they mean – free to your inbox every weekday morning at 7am

Scroll less, understand more: sign up to receive our news email each weekday for clarity on the top stories in the UK and across the world.

Explore all our newsletters: whether you love film, football, fashion or food, we’ve got something for you

Get smart, sustainable shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox, every Sunday

The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.

A weekly email from our star chefs featuring the latest recipes and seasonal eating ideas

Each week we’ll send you an exclusive newsletter from our star food writers. We’ll also send you the latest recipes from our star chefs, stand-out food features and seasonal eating inspiration, plus restaurant reviews from Grace Dent.

Sign up below to start receiving the best of our culinary journalism in one mouth-watering weekly email.

Upgrade your space today, with eight emails packed with tips to brighten up your home - whatever your budget

Embrace your space: the Guardian’s House to Home newsletter is bursting with tips and tricks to help you boost your bedroom and give your living room some love.

Sign up any time, and get eight emails direct to your inbox every Sunday morning.

The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, Ramadan in Gaza, Russian airstrikes in Odesa and flooding in France – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists