Pressing tasks for new director general also include an expiring royal charter, and finding a new top team

Matt Brittin may have only just been announced as the new BBC director general, but his inbox is already overflowing. Here are his immediate challenges:

In the hugely popular pre-school animation, composer Joff Bush references and rearranges classical tunes in all the right places – and never plays it for cheap laughs. Plus, the Wigmore Hall sees the writing on the wall

Classical music’s continued battle for relevance and impact continues to find new nadirs, from tired experiments with formats to bathetic look-at-me clickbait. But what if there was an answer – a joyous, creative and positive one – staring at us with irresistibly big eyes?

There really might be, in the shape of a blue heeler puppy. I’m talking, of course, about Bluey, the Australian cartoon for children of all ages. The numbers are huge: it was the most streamed show in the US last year, with more than 45bn minutes watched, and a billion streams and counting across the world for Bluey’s albums and soundtracks, all written by Joff Bush, the Australian musician who has led the composition of the music for each of the 154 episodes so far.

A well-timed jibe by the prime minister at Nigel Farage’s side-hustle seemed to provoke the party leader into staging a mass walkout

Much of good comedy lies in the timing. We were about halfway through Wednesday’s prime minister’s questions and Keir Starmer was answering an obviously planted question from a Labour backbencher on the government’s plans to ban political donations from overseas donors and via cryptocurrency. Having done the serious bit, Starmer couldn’t resist the opportunity to sign off with a pop at a man whose party survives on overseas donors and crypto. “There is only one party leader who has shown he will say anything, no matter how divisive, if he is paid to do so.”

Without missing a beat, the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, announced the next questioner. “Nigel Farage”. The Reform leader didn’t seem to find this quite as funny as most other MPs. Nige is becoming more and more thin-skinned these days. Maybe it’s that his party’s lead in the polls has narrowed substantially since the beginning of the war. Maybe it’s that he doesn’t like having policies examined too closely. Maybe he’s pissed off that his income stream from Cameo has temporarily dried up. Or maybe it’s just that he’s actually quite unpleasant.

Some gen Z men are using the term to describe an easy meal consisting of ground beef, rice, and a vegetable or fat

Recently, after a long day of sending emails, I assembled a bowl of food I had prepared over the weekend: brown rice, ground turkey and half an avocado, all drizzled in hot sauce. As I snarfed my meal on the couch, my husband peeked into my bowl and said: “Having some boy kibble?”

It turns out he was not just making a rude comment about my slop. On social media, health-conscious gen Z men have started using the term to describe a quick and easy meal: ground beef, rice, and sometimes a vegetable or fat. The brown, lumpy concoction is praised by gym bros as an easy, relatively cheap way to get the carbs and protein necessary to maximize their workout gains.

Salmon with rice and vegetables

Greek yogurt with fruit and granola

Eggs with whole grain toast and avocado

Stir-fry with tofu, vegetables, buckwheat noodles, and crushed nuts and sesame seeds

A whole grain wrap filled with black beans, guacamole, veggies, cheese and salsa

Whole grain pasta with turkey meatballs, zucchini spirals, olives, parmesan cheese and tomato sauce

France’s National Rally missed key targets in local elections ahead of next year’s seismic presidential vote – and the mainstream is doing OK elsewhere, too

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The Rassemblement National is not invincible. A year out from a make-or-break presidential vote, that might be the main lesson (though there are others, which may prove more significant) from last weekend’s local elections in France. What’s more, news elsewhere – Giorgia Meloni’s referendum defeat in Italy, Janez Janša beaten in Slovenia, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán in trouble, the left bloc largest in Denmark – might suggest the rest of Europe’s far right are not having it all their own way, either.

But let’s focus first on France – if only because while local elections are rarely a wholly accurate guide to future national outcomes, these ones seem to provide some pointers – and the stakes in the country’s next major election are vertiginously high.

Money-off vouchers won’t do. Instead, the government needs to offer a lasting vision for energy security – because we already know what Reform’s is

In a time of fear, heroes must rise. There’s a gathering storm rattling at the windows, tearing through the family WhatsApp groups. Use your air fryer instead of the oven. Book your summer holiday now to avoid spiralling flight costs. Colin, a caller on LBC, has heard a rumour (the radio phone-in equivalent of “forwarded many times”) that there are abundant oil and gas reserves off the Falkland Islands and wants the government to fund an expedition to go and get them.

Meanwhile, Ed Miliband has been on TikTok, patiently explaining to his 26,800 followers what the government is doing to protect you from the coming war-flavoured price shock. Energy bills are coming down in April. There’s a £50m heating oil fund for poorer households. Fuel duty is being frozen until September. There are unspecified “measures to advance our plans for clean power”. And, of course, the government is “working with our allies to bring this conflict to an end”, which definitely seems to be doing the trick so far.

Jonathan Liew is a Guardian columnist

White House claims 15-point plan was ‘never confirmed’ and that talks are continuing as Iran’s foreign minister denies any negotiations have happened

• Analysis: Trump pitches Iran peace plan but military buildups rarely veer to off-ramp

• Iran rejects US ceasefire plan and submits its own amid push for talks

Iranian nationals with valid Australian tourist visas will be blocked from entering the country for six months, Australia’s home affairs minister said, citing concern some may decide to stay longer than they’re allowed.

Tony Burke said the direction was necessary as there was a risk Iranians on tourist visas visiting Australia may be unable or unlikely to leave when their visa expires.
The order only applies to people with a valid tourist visa outside of the country.
The government said “sympathetic consideration” would be given to citizens with Iranian parents.

The government said it would closely monitor global developments and adjust settings as required.

If you’re just joining us, here’s a quick recap of the day:

An Iranian military spokesperson mocked US attempts at a ceasefire deal, insisting Americans were only negotiating with themselves. Lt Col Ebrahim Zolfaghari’s statement came after the Trump administration reportedly sent a 15-point ceasefire plan to Iran through Pakistan.

Even as Donald Trump claimed productive negotiations to end the war were ongoing with Tehran, Iran’s relentless bombardment of the Gulf states showed no sign of relenting. Kuwait and Bahrain were both hit with damaging strikes on Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning, as the patience of the Gulf states after rebuffing constant attacks for almost a month began to wear thin.

The World Trade Organisation warned disruptions to international fertiliser supplies caused by the closing of the strait of Hormuz will cause food scarcity and high prices. A third of the world’s fertilisers normally transit the strait.

Oil prices fell nearly 6% and Asian shares gained, after reports Donald Trump had sent a peace plan to Iran fuelled optimism in the market. A barrel of Brent crude was down 5.92% at $98.30, while benchmark US oil contract, West Texas Intermediate, was down 5.01% at $87.72.

Israeli strikes on Lebanon killed nine people, state media reported. Citing the health ministry, Lebanon’s official National News Agency said strikes had killed people across towns and a Palestinian refugee camp.

News that Trump had approved the deployment of more than 1,000 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division to the Middle East further undermined the US president’s repeated claims of successful peace talks. Iran has previously threatened to mine the gulf surrounding the island if the US appeared to be landing troops.

Human Rights Watch and others say they have documented use of weapon in civilian areas during war on Gaza

When the M825-series 155mm artillery projectile bursts, expelling its felt wedges containing white phosphorus, it leaves a distinctive knuckle-shaped plume. That is how Human Rights Watch (HRW) researchers said they were able to verify that Israel was again using the notorious weapon over south Lebanon, reigniting accusations that it is breaking the laws of war.

The New York-based rights group said it had verified and geolocated eight images showing airburst white phosphorus munitions exploding over residential areas in the southern Lebanese town of Yohmor in the opening days of Israel’s assault during the war on Gaza.

Explosions lit up Tehran skyline as Israel launched new airstrikes but by morning joggers were in the park

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The days after Nowruz, the Persian New Year, are usually a bustling time in Tehran, with spring arriving, trees blossoming, businesses reopening after the holidays, and people returning to work and school.

This year, however, Iranians are trying to maintain a semblance of ordinary life against the constant backdrop of explosions, airstrikes – and a conflict many fear may drag on for weeks or months.

Six-week trial including whistleblowers and top executives at Meta and YouTube was first of its kind to go to trial

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Meta and YouTube have been found liable for negligence for deliberately designing addictive products that hooked a young user and led to her being harmed, a jury ruled on Wednesday. The tech companies have also been found liable for failure to warn. The jury awarded the plaintiffs in the case compensatory damages of $3m.

It took nearly nine days of deliberations for the Los Angeles jury to reach its verdict. Jurors also awarded punitive damages, which will be decided during the next phase of the trial.

British Medical Association blame government for longest proposed walkout so far, with NHS leaders warning it could cost £300m

Resident doctors in England will strike for six days after Easter after rejecting what they said was the health secretary Wes Streeting’s final offer to end the long-running pay and jobs dispute.

The British Medical Association blamed the government for its decision to undertake its longest stoppage so far, from 7am on Tuesday 7 April to 6.59 on Monday 13 April.

Cabinet Office thought to have a number of exchanges between the friends, which are expected to be released within weeks

The Cabinet Office is understood to hold a number of text and email exchanges between Peter Mandelson and Morgan McSweeney, despite the theft of the former chief of staff’s phone in October last year.

The whereabouts of McSweeney’s messages with Mandelson has been under intense scrutiny since it was reported his work device was stolen last year shortly after Mandelson was sacked as US ambassador.

Legislation subject to MPs’ approval but will be backdated due to urgency of threat to UK democracy, says minister

Keir Starmer is set to embark on a fundamental overhaul of the political finance system, starting with an emergency ban on cryptocurrency donations and £100,000 cap on donations from Britons living abroad in a blow to Reform UK.

In a hugely significant move, the government said it would bring in the annual cap as well as a moratorium on crypto donations from Wednesday as part of its new elections legislation.

Requiring third-party campaigners to declare donations all year round, not just election periods, and allowing funding only from permissible donors.

More stringent checks on the source of funds from political donors, bringing it more into line with know-your-customer checks in the financial services industry.

Preventing donations from shell companies by ensuring funding is from post-tax profits rather than revenue.

Requiring foreign consultant lobbyists to join the official register, from which they are currently exempt because they do not charge VAT.

Banning foreign-funded political adverts outright.

Members call for reparatory justice as landmark resolution aims for ‘political recognition at the highest level’

The United Nations has voted to describe the transatlantic chattel slave trade as the “gravest crime against humanity” and called for reparations as “a concrete step towards remedying historical wrongs”.

The landmark resolution passed on Wednesday was backed by the African Union (AU) and the Caribbean Community (Caricom). It had been proposed by Ghana’s president, John Dramani Mahama, who said: “Let it be recorded that when history beckoned, we did what was right for the memory of millions who suffered the indignity of slavery.”

Archaeologists believe remains found in Maastricht, Netherlands, may be of soldier who inspired novel character

More than three-and-a-half centuries after a musket ball to the throat put an end to decades of exemplary swashbuckling, the French soldier who inspired Alexandre Dumas and went on to be immortalised on the stage and screen – not to mention as a plucky cartoon dog – may rise again.

Workers repairing a church in the Dutch city of Maastricht have discovered a skeleton that could belong to the 17th-century Gascon nobleman Charles de Batz-Castelmore – better known as d’Artagnan – whose exploits led Dumas to make him the hero of the Three Musketeers.

Three men from Derry charged with murder of journalist, who was hit by bullet while observing 2019 rioting

Three men accused of the murder of the Belfast journalist Lyra McKee have been linked to the scene by clothing and physical features, a court has heard.

The New IRA claimed responsibility for the death of McKee, 29, who died after being hit by a bullet as she stood close to police vehicles while observing rioting in the Creggan area of Derry on 18 April 2019.

Independent Office for Police Conduct examining how Hertfordshire police treated three women’s allegations

The police watchdog is investigating a force’s handling of sexual abuse allegations against the social media influencer and self-described misogynist Andrew Tate.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said it was investigating Hertfordshire constabulary’s response to reports made by three women after their case was closed in 2019 following a four-year investigation.

Oscar winner will take on role of Jessica Fletcher in 2027 film from Pitch Perfect director Jason Moore

Oscar-winning actor Jamie Lee Curtis has been confirmed to take on the role of Jessica Fletcher in a big-screen reboot of Murder, She Wrote.

The 67-year-old star of Halloween and Everything Everywhere All at Once will play the mystery author and amateur detective made famous by Angela Lansbury in the long-running television series.

Over two days in October 2025, up to 10,000 people are believed to have been massacred; a further 40,000 civilians from the Sudanese city are still unaccounted for. This is the story of what happened

In the pistachio green Toyota Land Cruiser rattling over the desert plain, Aboud Khater pressed his foot to the floor. Behind, the sun rose above El Fasher. Smoke belched from the stricken city. Khater was driving the last vehicle of the final evacuation convoy from El Fasher.

It was 5:45am on 27 October 2025. He couldn’t have waited any longer. The historic capital of Sudan’s sprawling region of Darfur would capitulate in the next two hours.

A court in the US has ordered Meta to pay $375m after a jury found that the company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, enabled harm including child sexual exploitation on its platforms. The landmark victory marks the first time the social media corporation has been successfully sued by a US state over child safety issues. Could it set a new precedent for holding big tech to account? Lucy Hough speaks to the investigative reporter Katie McQue.

The theft of the ex-Labour chief of staff’s mobile has raised eyebrows in the context of the scandal over ex-ambassador

Morgan McSweeney is not the first person to have had their phone snatched on a London street, but the fact he was at the time Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, and that his phone most likely contained messages to and from Peter Mandelson, has prompted questions. So what do we know about the circumstances surrounding the theft of McSweeney’s phone?

After almost two decades at Google, the corporation’s incoming director general is taking on British media’s most powerful and treacherous job

In recent months, Matt Brittin, the Doctor Who-loving fitness fanatic and former Google executive, has made no secret of his desire to make the jump from big tech to the world of broadcasting.

At the end of last year, he told an event filled with some of television’s most senior figures that he had wanted to break into their industry “for a very long time”.

She has survived heartbreak, death threats and nauseating sexism. In her Mayfair club, the Yorkshire star talks about superfans, viral hits, running away to sea – and her bid to become a Nashville icon

Whatever else has changed for Jane McDonald, between the working mens’ clubs the cruise ships and the arenas she is increasingly packing out, one thing has remained. It’s there on TV, where she remains the only Bafta-winning broadcaster liable to go full Cilla and break into song: she plays to the women. “Never acknowledge the men,” she advises cheerfully. There are a lot of husbands. “And they’re like, ‘Oh God …’” She pulls a face. “‘Jane McDonald.’” Increasingly, however, her audiences may not contain many straight men: her social media-led renaissance as an icon of northern high camp means she will perform at London queer festival Mighty Hoopla this summer.

I meet McDonald at her members’ club in Mayfair on the morning she releases her 12th album, Living the Dream. At the age of 62, she’s gone country. Recorded at the elite Blackbird Studios in Nashville – Coldplay and Taylor Swift have recorded there – she is dealing in unabashedly big country flavours. Less Cilla, more Shania.

The US staple was doomed to fail in cynical Britain. But after grabbing the attention of the most powerful man in the world, we should root for it to ruffle some more feathers

Keir Starmer and Donald Trump’s “special” relationship? It’s complicated. This week, hours before a scheduled phone call between the two leaders, Trump shared a clip of another conversation. It was a sketch from the inaugural episode of Saturday Night Live (SNL) UK, in which a nasal and stressed Starmer, played by George Fouracres, repeatedly tried to get out of calling the president. “I just want to keep him happy, Lammy,” moaned the PM to his deputy. “You don’t understand him like I do – I can change him.”

After weeks of very real tensions over what Trump perceives as a lack of British support for US military action in Iran, the humiliating clip was a nightmare for Downing Street. But you know who it was a dream for? SNL UK, which just had its arrival announced by the most powerful man in the world.

• UK participation levels more than doubled in 2025

• 860,000 Britons played padel at least once last year

It was once seen as a quirky upstart or continental fad. But padel now has nearly a million players across the UK after participation levels more than doubled in 2025.

According to LTA figures seen by the Guardian, 860,000 Britons played padel at least once last year – up from 400,000 in 2024 and 129,000 in 2023 – as the racket sport’s dizzying rise continued.

The true quality of a fabric is revealed by a neutral tone – one that beautifully offsets the brighter tones of 2026. Just don’t mention John Major

Sometimes a colour name is a whole mood. Rouge Noir: the stamp of cult 1990s glamour. Millennial pink: the colour of overthinking and oversharing. Elephant’s Breath by Farrow & Ball: the imperial age of the gastro pub.

I have a new favourite. Pairs is a lovely little Scottish brand which makes great quality socks at good prices. There are many cute names – Frosting Pink, Milky Tea Beige – but the one I just had to click on was Correct Grey, “a warm grey with nods to a classic British school sock”, according to the website.

Playful dressing is back, and our menswear expert has picked his top staples and styling tweaks for the new season, from stripes to moustaches

• How to buy secondhand clothes online that you’ll actually wear

Over the past couple of years, the runways have felt hushed: classic colours, minimal silhouettes, understated accessories. This season feels like a gear change: the mood has lifted, and designers are getting playful again. We’re talking colour, stripes, brooches, bandanas, resort wear, jewellery, denim jackets, even pyjamas … Personality and feelgood dressing are back on the agenda.

I’ve put together a list of 50 tips and tricks to get you on top of your fashion game for the upcoming season. For spring, your best investments will be transitional layers that wake up your wardrobe – think denim jackets, long-sleeve bretons and argyle knits.

We all know a person who sees every chat as an opportunity to go on and on about themselves. And sometimes that person is us …

Name: Conversational narcissism.

Age: Christened in 1979.

‘US soldiers would look for “suspected terrorists” in Iraqi homes and usually find nothing. This could be my grandma’s living room – it shows that insane violence can continue amid normal life’

I took this picture during my first time in Iraq, 20 years ago. It was the first entry in a body of work about the US post-9/11, at home and at war, which has occupied a good chunk of my professional life for the last two decades. I had turned 25 the week before and it was a formative journey on a personal level. It was the first time I experienced war, and my understanding of my country and its relationship to the world developed in the crucible of this extremely violent situation, which was descending into civil war while I was there.

I had been embedded in Iraq with the US military for six weeks or so at this point, and had taken some good pictures. But this one was different and it still means something to me today. It was the first I had taken that wasn’t overtly channelling the history of war photography – which largely focusses on violence, horror and victims. Those are important things to show, but I wanted to understand this particular conflict, and how my position as an American of the same generation as those fighting could help me interpret it for the public. I guess the image crystallised something I had seen – this vast machine of military might mobilised in the Middle East; the momentum of all these young men with powerful weapons patrolling cities in search of people identified as enemies of America, enemies of democracy.

Latest crisis is yet another reminder that reset in industrial policy is needed, including a more strategic one for energy

The cost of energy for British business was a crisis even before the Iran war sent prices higher: the UK already had the highest electricity prices for industry among G7 countries. Now comes the next whack. How big will it be?

Projections from the energy consultancy Cornwall Insight are steep for electricity and gas. For the former, it thinks increases of 10-30% are on the cards; for the latter 25-80%. The ranges are wide because, unlike with households, there are no price caps for businesses. Contracts are a negotiation, more or less, between supplier and customer.

We have two choices: be paralysed by fear or just continue with what we are doing. I know what I choose

In the past, my response to any given large-scale world crisis has generally been to do nothing, which, as well as aligning with my personality, has the advantage of being exactly what the experts recommend.

During periods of intense market volatility, we are advised not to look at our investments, let alone touch them. If we are rushed at by a bear, we are supposed to stand stock still (unless it’s one of those bears you have to bang pots and pans at, but let’s leave them aside). The result of this is an avoidant philosophy hingeing on the motto “it’ll probably be fine”, that, this week, as Tehran mocked the US for pretending peace talks were under way, was accompanied by a cold, rival notion: what if this time it’s different?

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

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

Trump’s oil blockade is starving the island of vital resources. His brute force isn’t making America great again – it’s breeding resentment across the globe

The US has become a power that knows only how to destroy. In the Ramón González Coro maternity hospital in Havana, Cuba, I saw what that looks like in human terms.

Maria lies on a hospital bed, wrapped in a dark blue blanket, two friends at her side. She is 50, with terminal cervical cancer, and nothing but praise for her doctors. But she is also a victim of a decades-long US siege, drastically intensified by Donald Trump’s decision earlier this year to threaten tariffs against countries that deliver fuel to Cuba. The result has been no fuel imports for three months, meaning the island is running out of diesel and fuel reserves. The electricity grid is collapsing and life is grinding to a halt.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

The fragility of the global food system fills me with dread – and the war with Iran has exposed just how close to collapse it is

The fate of environmentalists is to spend their lives trying not to be proved right. Vindication is what we dread. But there’s one threat that haunts me more than any other: the collapse of the global food system. We cannot predict what the immediate trigger might be. But the war with Iran is just the right kind of event.

Drawing on years of scientific data, I’ve been arguing for some time that this risk exists – and that governments are completely unprepared for it. In 2023, I made a submission to a parliamentary inquiry into environmental change and food security, with a vast list of references. Called as a witness, I spent much of the time explaining that the issue was much wider than the inquiry’s scope.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Installed in my home, Bert is a conversation starter like no other. It usually begins with: ‘What on earth is that thing?’

I came across something that makes me happy every day. It’s a figurine of a cheery chef chap holding up a menu board in one hand and giving a big thumbs up with the other. I found it in a reclamation yard in Old Hill in the Black Country. It’s run by a bloke called Bert, who’s very funny in a bone-dry kind of way. The first time I met him he told me he was also a West Brom fan and asked me about our poor season. I told him I couldn’t face discussing them. Half an hour later, as I was negotiating a price for something, I asked him if there was a discount for West Brom fans. He looked at me and said, “You didn’t want to talk about them a minute ago.” There was no discount.

Anyway, I decided to name my chef statue after him. Technically I suppose it’s more of a statuette but that’s a bit feminine-sounding for Bert. I was charmed by Bert – both Berts, actually, but here I refer to the statue – the moment I saw him but, as is the way of these things, I didn’t buy him because, you know, where do you put such an object? A week or two passed, though, and his cheeky little face kept coming to mind. So I went back to buy Bert from Bert and he was mine. And mine he will remain until death doth us part.

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 president promised to spill the beans about little green men. Is that why the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency registered the domains alien.gov and aliens.gov?

There are some very important files sitting in a US government building right now, full of shocking details that certain entities would prefer to keep hidden. For far too long the public has been kept in the dark but, thanks to the self-proclaimed “most transparent administration in history”, the truth could be about to be revealed.

Obviously I’m not talking about the Epstein files. I’ve got a funny feeling we’re never going to see the rest of those. FBI agents have been paid nearly $1m in overtime to work on the “Epstein Transparency Project”, also referred to as the “Special Redaction Project”, but even with all that special redacting, more than 2m documents have reportedly not been released. No, I’m talking about proof of alien life – which is far less fanciful than the idea that powerful people might actually face accountability.

The conflict in Iran has absorbed global attention, but attacks on civilian infrastructure and occupation threats must be challenged

The intense focus on Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran has meant scant attention paid to the Israeli war in Lebanon. Yet almost 1,100 people have now been killed there by strikes, according to the health ministry, and a fifth of the population has been displaced.

When Hezbollah fired rockets into Israel shortly after the attack on its patron Iran began, Israel responded with what it called “precise and targeted strikes”. But the offensive quickly escalated. On Tuesday the Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, announced another occupation of Lebanon – describing a “defensive buffer” running up to the Litani river, about 30km north of the border, and by implication likely to be prolonged. That would be illegal in itself. Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, has called for annexation outright.

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.

Events in Denmark and Italy show geopolitical instability is creating opportunities for a centre-left response to the far right

In the lead-up to Denmark’s snap election on Tuesday, it was revealed that blood supplies were flown into Greenland in January in order to treat Danish military casualties in the event of a US invasion. Against that surreal backdrop, the country’s Social Democrat prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, did not need to work too hard to justify a “stick to what you know” message in uncertain times.

Ms Frederiksen’s surprise gamble in calling an early poll duly paid off, but only just. Donald Trump’s threats to annex territory belonging to a Nato ally handed her party a patriotic lifeline, after it had endured a historic humiliation in local contests last November. But in a campaign dominated by domestic issues, the hoped-for Trump bump was modest, meaning that any Frederiksen-led coalition will depend on centrist support. The Social Democratic party remains comfortably the biggest political force, but its vote share dropped markedly compared to the last general election, while rivals to the left and on the far right made notable gains.

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 the news that some of the world’s poorest countries are going to lose aid from the UK

The recent announcement that the UK government is set to make significant cuts to direct aid to Africa and the Middle East is deeply disappointing (Report, 19 March). It is plumbing new depths by proposing to balance increased defence spending on the backs of the world’s poorest by slashing development aid.

Such a move also breaks Labour’s 2024 manifesto pledge to restore development spending at the level of 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) “as soon as fiscal circumstances allow”.

Julius Pursaill, Andy Roberts and Jane Oberman respond to Polly Hudson’s article that decried Josh Wardle for creating a new game

Josh Wardle, the inventor of Wordle, a game that gave huge pleasure to so many people during lockdown, reportedly sold it for a seven-figure sum. According to Polly Hudson (The Wordle guy’s latest move tells us a lot about modern-day ambition, 22 March), he now has the temerity to create another word game, Parseword, rather than kicking back on his yacht. Imagine if everyone who has a creative impulse kicked back after their first recognised achievement – if Michelangelo had kicked back after creating the Pietà, or Picasso had kicked back after Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. Well done to Wardle, keep creating.
Julius Pursaill
London

• It seems a little unfair to characterise Josh Wardle’s new game as trying his luck again, equating it with naked ambition. It certainly seems out of kilter to be drawing parallels with that and the rampant egotism displayed recently by Timothée Chalamet. Wardle just strikes me as a bit of a word nerd and coder who likes making games. His new one seems to be a love letter to cryptic crosswords – it certainly isn’t a tilt at creating another viral sensation.
Andy Roberts
Witney, Oxfordshire

UK’s advantageous position in the field is down to sustained long-term public investment from UK Research and Innovation and its partners, says Prof Charlotte Deane

Dr Simon Williams (Letters, 19 March) writes that ambition in quantum computing cannot succeed without sustained investment in people and fundamental science. He is correct on that point, but wrong to say that UK’s investment plans risk losing quantum computing talent.

The UK’s advantageous position in quantum has only emerged through sustained long-term public investment from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and partners into fundamental physics research projects, and the best people, infrastructure and partnerships. It is through this that the UK is poised to reap the benefits of the quantum revolution.

Merfyn Turner’s legacy | Life under Trump | Millipede banknotes | Mickles and muckles | Swallowing tea

The former prisoner’s letter (22 March) was heartbreaking to read. The Welsh prison social worker Merfyn Turner opened Norman House in 1955, where he and his wife, Shirley, provided a loving, caring, supporting family atmosphere from where former prisoners, jobless and without kinship support, could rebuild their lives and heal. None of those who lived in these houses reoffended. Merfyn recognised their emotional needs as well as their practical ones. We need someone like him to create new Norman Houses now.
Margaret Owen
London

• “The sense that the US is in the grip of a deranged figure is quite common among Iranians,” writes Patrick Wintour (‘Stop this savage being’: Iranians fear postponed Trump attack is merely disaster delayed, 23 March). Just Iranians?
Tim Smith
Settle, North Yorkshire

⚽️ WCL updates from the 8pm GMT kick-off at Old Trafford
⚽️ Arsenal 3-1 Chelsea | WSL trophy revamp | And mail Luke

Don’t forget you can email me with your thoughts.

Preferably on tonight’s match.

• Merseyside club to demand formal explanation from Premier League

• Chelsea docked no points for rule breaches, unlike Everton and Forest

Everton are exploring a possible legal challenge against the Premier League for their handling of Chelsea’s undisclosed payments sanction.

The club are understood to be preparing to write to the Premier League requesting a formal explanation for its failure to take any sporting sanctions against Chelsea, with their legal options also being considered.

• ‘Double London Marathon’ plans backed by mayor’s office

• 2027 event would raise tens of millions more for charity

The London Marathon is in advanced talks about staging a two-day event in 2027, allowing tens of thousands more runners to take part in the iconic race and to raise tens of ­millions more for charity.

While the Double London Marathon, as it is being called internally, has not been granted formal approval it is believed to have the backing of the mayor’s office for it to be staged on Saturday and Sunday 24-25 April next year.

• Nigel Dewale, 60, given suspended prison sentence

• Offensive messages were sent during Euro 2025

A 60-year-old man has received a suspended prison sentence after pleading guilty to sending offensive messages about the England international Jess Carter during the European Championship last summer.

Nigel Dewale, of Great Harwood in Lancashire, was sentenced to six weeks, suspended for 12 months, after a hearing at Blackburn magis­trates court. He also received a four‑year football banning order and a requirement to engage in a 10‑day rehabilitation programme.

Before meeting with Bosnia and Herzegovina, head coach has urged his players to step up and embrace the occasion

“Have you ever seen Usain Bolt in the 100m?” Craig Bellamy asks a crowd of journalists in the Wynnstay auditorium at Wales’s hub in Hensol, on the eve of the World Cup playoff semi-final against Bosnia and Herzegovina. “He’s smiling, waving – all right, it does help he knows he can run at 60% to win – but he has discovered the art of being relaxed and calm to be able to run at his best speed. If you’re tense, you’re fighting yourself.”

Bellamy has been there as a player but as a head coach, while intense and fiercely driven, he believes cool heads will prevail at the Cardiff City Stadium on Thursday and, if they get the right result, in the playoff final at the same venue five days later. It is a message he has relayed in each session, every conversation, since his squad gathered on Sunday. “We all want something, but the more you want something, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get it,” he says. “In sport, I dislike the word ‘pressure’. It is a privilege to be where we are now. Why wouldn’t you enjoy this? If you can’t enjoy this and you only feel pressure, you ain’t made for elite sport. You put that on your shoulders, it gets you nowhere.”

• State department to expand program on 2 April

• Algeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Tunisia, Cape Verde affected

• No apparent exceptions for athletes or officials

A newly expanded policy from the Trump administration could require travelers from five World Cup-qualified countries to front a bond of up to $15,000 in order to enter the United States for the tournament.

Visa bonds operate like security deposits: a one-time payment meant to be refunded after a traveler exits the US under the terms of their visa. The amounts generally run between $5,000 and $15,000, and are required for passport holders from certain countries to enter the US legally under B-1 or B-2 visas, the types required for business travelers or tourists.

Reform’s use of the football club has shocked fans and left the ownership red faced but how did it happen?

When photographs of Nigel Farage’s visit to Portman Road went viral on Tuesday morning, a wave of shock quickly spread among Ipswich Town’s staff. Some were furious, others genuinely devastated by the carelessness that saw the club allow itself to be leveraged for Reform UK’s political gain. The anger was palpable and hardly assuaged by an email sent to employees by the chief executive, Mark Ashton, who sought to douse the fire by stating there had been no intention to endorse Farage nor his policies.

The problem for Ipswich is that the horse has bolted. At best, they were grievously naive in letting Farage and his social media team run amok after arriving for a pre-booked stadium tour; a less generous reading would be that they simply stood by and let it happen, fully aware of Reform’s propensity to create sensation from the smallest gulp of oxygen. A photo of Farage holding an Ipswich shirt aloft, seemingly in their press conference room, was swiftly emblazoned as the banner on his party’s X account. Before long Farage, ever the opportunist, was launching a video from the scene and cockily linking himself with the Ipswich manager’s job.

• Home nations frontrunners to host Women’s World Cup

• United’s New Stadium Development wants showpiece

The FA is resisting lobbying from Manchester United to nominate a rebuilt Old Trafford as the venue for the 2035 Women’s World Cup final.

The chief executive of United’s New Stadium Development, Collette Roche, went public with the club’s aspirations to host the 2035 final for the first time on Tuesday but the FA is committed to staging the showpiece occasion at Wembley.

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With ratings declining, it was inevitable ties needed to be severed without commissioning a new season of a cherished Liverpudlian mainstay. This is what happens when things get tired, they can never replicate what they were in their prime. It is no great shame to have such a long run, collect plenty of awards on the way and finally realise the industry has moved on and there is nothing fresh you can bring to compete with the elite rivals. Plenty of drama and joy was provided, testing the boundaries of what was possible and changing a nation in the process by challenging the establishment. But in the end, time caught up with Brookside and it had to go.

Legislation initiated by far-right Otzma Yehudit party drew mounting criticism from opponents and rights groups as it moved through the Knesset

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Israel’s parliament has advanced a contentious bill to impose the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of terrorism to its final vote, after the Knesset’s national security committee approved the measure on Tuesday.

The legislation, initiated by the far-right Otzma Yehudit party led by the national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has drawn sharp criticism from opponents who warn it would mark a significant escalation in Israel’s penal policy. Members of Otzma Yehudit have worn noose-shaped pins in support of the bill.

Former hedge fund manager warned ex-employee he had groped that Financial Conduct Authority may question her

The financial watchdog has accused the former hedge fund manager Crispin Odey of attempting to “manipulate” a victim of sexual assault into silence.

Odey texted his former employee, whose breasts he had groped, a warning in 2022 that the Financial Conduct Authority could question her about him.

New unitary councils will replace 43 county and district councils, in latest round of local government overhaul

Fifteen new councils will be created in the south and east of England under the latest round of a major local government overhaul, aimed at boosting economic growth and accelerating mass housebuilding plans.

The new unitary councils will replace 43 counties and districts across Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex and Hampshire, with hundreds of councillors’ roles axed. A decision on future arrangements for East Sussex and West Sussex has been delayed.

Former Olympic rower to lead corporation as it hammers out future funding model with government

The BBC has turned to a former tech executive to steer it through a critical period in its history, as it attempts to navigate government talks over its future and huge changes in media consumption.

Matt Brittin, who stepped down as Google’s president in Europe, the Middle East and Africa last year, will replace Tim Davie as the corporation hammers out its crucial future funding model with the government.

Pair aged 45 and 47 arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life, say Metropolitan police

Two men aged 45 and 47 have been arrested in connection with an arson attack on four ambulances belonging to a Jewish community service in London , the Metropolitan police have said.

The force said the men, both UK nationals, were arrested on suspicion of arson with intent to endanger life and both men had been taken to a London police station for questioning. Police were searching two addresses.

US, top carbon emitter in history, has ‘a lot of responsibility’ for causing ‘substantial’ harm globally, scientist says

The US has caused an eye-watering $10tn in global damages to the world over the past three decades through its vast planet-heating emissions, with a quarter of this economic pain inflicted upon itself, new research has found.

By being the largest carbon emitter in history, the US has caused greater harm to worldwide economic growth than any other country, ahead of China, now the world’s largest emitter that is responsible for $9tn in GDP damage since 1990, according to the findings of the paper.

A long-running experiment in Colorado provides an ‘alarming’ view of how rapidly unchecked global heating could transform fragile ecosystems

Every summer, people descend on the wildflower capital of Colorado to see grasslands flush with corn lilies, aspen sunflowers and sub-alpine larkspur. In January 1991, scientists set up a unique experiment in these Rocky Mountain meadows. It was one of the first (and longest running) to work out how the changing climate would affect an ecosystem.

At the time, it was believed a temperature increase could lead to longer, lusher grasses. But instead of flourishing, the grasses and wildflowers started to disappear, replaced by sage brush. The experimental meadows morphed into a desert-like scrubland. Even the fungi in the soils were transformed by heat.

Small farmers and community-led conservation groups are trying to protect one of the biggest semi-arid forests in the world – under threat from expanding agriculture, wildfires and the ‘logging mafia’

Jorge Luna stands in a piece of Argentina’s Gran Chaco forest that he calls his own. Birds sing as he surveys skyscraping molle trees, known as pepper trees, palo santo and algarrobo, or carob trees. “It’s good wood,” says Luna, 55. “I was about to cut them down.”

Selling timber promises quick and easy money in the sprawling ecosystem that covers parts of Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil. But it comes at a steep price, contributing to rampant deforestation and irreversible damage to the forest.

Regulator for England lacks powers to deal with what the public accounts committee calls an ‘out-of-control plague’

The Environment Agency is too weak to tackle an “out-of-control plague” of waste dumping, a powerful group of MPs has said.

The public accounts committee (PAC) said the EA had gaps in its powers and intelligence gathering which meant it was not set up to deal effectively with the rise in waste dumping.

The founder of Europe’s largest celebration of Black literature and champion of inclusive reading becomes Queen Camilla’s inaugural National Reading Hero

Selina Brown has been named the inaugural National Reading Hero recipient of the Queen’s Reading Room medal, a new literary award unveiled by Queen Camilla.

Brown, founder of the Black British book festival, will receive the honour in recognition of her work establishing Europe’s largest celebration of Black literature and bringing inclusive stories into primary schools in areas with low literacy rates.

Former prisons minister pleads guilty to four drugs charges stemming from raid on his Surrey home

The former justice minister Crispin Blunt has been fined £1,200 for possessing illegal drugs after he told a court he entered the world of chemsex parties to help inform government policy.

Blunt, 65, a former Conservative MP for Reigate, pleaded guilty at Westminster magistrates court to four charges of possessing methamphetamine – commonly known as crystal meth – cannabis and the chemical sedative GBL.

Ofcom says decision is ‘real win for children and families’ but some users raise concerns over privacy

Millions of Apple iPhone customers in the UK will now have to confirm they are 18 or older to use all available services, including by showing a credit card or by scanning an ID.

The move, believed to be a first for a European market, comes amid pressure on tech companies from the government to do more to protect children online.

Tristan Roberts, who expressed misogynistic views and had fascination with American Psycho, carefully planned attack

An 18-year-old man who expressed misogynistic views and had a fascination with the horror film American Psycho has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 22 years and six months for killing his mother with a hammer.

Tristan Roberts carefully planned the crime, researching methods of killing and how to avoid being caught before buying potential weapons such as knives, hammers and an axe.

Some airports advise travelers to arrive four hours before their scheduled flights as TSA staff, who have been working without pay for over a month, are not reporting for duty

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Top officials at agencies affected by the ongoing Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shutdown are testifying on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. The lapse in funding for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Coast Guard and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has lasted 40 days with little end in sight.

During opening remarks, the Republican chair of the House homeland security committee, Andrew Garbarino, said that the shutdown has caused “massive disruptions” across airports, “weakened our nation’s cybersecurity posture” and “left states unsupported with less than 100 days until the start of major events across the United States, such as FIFA World Cup”.

Danish palace says it has asked Mette Frederiksen to try to form new majority with her Social Democrats and leftwing parties

Denmark’s outgoing prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, has been given the first shot at forming another coalition government after an election which saw her leftwing bloc and the opposing rightwing parties fail to win a parliamentary majority.

A statement released by the Danish palace on Wednesday said Frederiksen had been asked to see if she could pull together a new majority involving her Social Democrats, who had their worst general election since 1903 but remain the biggest force in parliament.

Giorgia Meloni made public request for Daniela Santanchè to quit in effort to restore credibility after voters rejected judicial reform

Italy’s embattled tourism minister has resigned, heeding a call to step down as the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, strives to restore credibility after a bruising defeat in a referendum that has thrown her far-right government into turmoil.

The resignation on Wednesday of Daniela Santanchè, a prominent and brash member of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, came after the prime minister took the unusual step of calling in a public statement for her to go.

Wael Sawan warns of pressure on diesel and petrol if strait of Hormuz does not reopen to oil and gas shipping

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Europe could face a shortage of energy and fuel as soon as next month without a reopening of the strait of Hormuz, Shell’s chief executive has said.

The boss of Europe’s biggest oil company said it was working with governments to help them address the oil and gas supply crisis, which has already led to energy rationing in Asian countries.

February annual rate in line with expectations, but Food and Drink Federation fears it is ‘calm before storm’

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The UK inflation rate held steady at 3% in February, before Donald Trump’s Iran war drove up global energy costs, threatening a renewed price jump.

Official figures showed the consumer prices index remained at the same level as the previous month, in line with economists’ expectations but still well above the government’s 2% target.

GB Energy’s Jürgen Maier says production could bring economic benefits and give supply chains ‘time to transition’ to renewables

The head of the UK’s national green energy champion has joined other high-profile renewable energy leaders in making the case for more North Sea oil and gas production as the government braces for an energy cost crisis.

The GB Energy boss, Jürgen Maier, used a social media post on LinkedIn to reject the claim that more North Sea oil and gas could help to bring down energy costs, which have soared as the war in Iran has escalated.

Tech firm ‘says goodbye’ to Sora, made publicly available in 2024, just six months after its launch of a stand-alone app

In an abrupt announcement on Tuesday, OpenAI said it was “saying goodbye” to its AI video generator Sora. The move comes just six months after the company’s splashy launch of a stand-alone app where people could make and share hyper-realistic AI videos in a scrolling social feed.

“To everyone who created with Sora, shared it, and built community around it: thank you,” the company wrote in a post on X. “What you made with Sora mattered, and we know this news is disappointing.”

Czech billionaire Daniel Křetínský ‘deeply sorry’ for late letters but says Royal Mail is delivering a service ‘nobody else in Europe is doing’

Daniel Křetínský, the Czech billionaire who bought Royal Mail’s parent company for £3.6bn last year, has insisted that service has not declined under his ownership, despite heavy criticism of late deliveries and price rises.

In a defensive and sometimes impassioned performance in front of MPs on the business select committee, Křetínský said he was “deeply sorry” for any letters that arrive late.

The comedian on learning from Stewart Lee, forging gags from chats with friends and his niche joke about Magic FM

Who did you look up to when you were starting out as a comedian?
I wanted to learn everything at once, so I found as many DVDs and videos of standups as I could. The people who stood out were the ones doing it a bit differently. Obviously, the standard answer is Stewart Lee. When I saw his 41st Best Standup Ever show, I realised you can do anything when you’re up there. People like Rhod Gilbert, Lee Mack and Noel Fielding, in the early days before they were famous, also blew my mind.

How would you describe your style of comedy?
I do one-liners. I’m a joke teller. A gagsmith.

Mark Simmons: Jest to Impress is on tour in the UK and Ireland until 28 November.

A group of American dancers face off against Hungarian gangsters, and a hammy Uma Thurman, in a cheap and cheerful Friday night adventure

Last year’s Ballerina, or as Lionsgate’s marketing team would prefer us to say From the World of John Wick: Ballerina, failed as both proof that the Keanu Reeves-led franchise could support expansion and that “ballet action thriller” could be a worthy new genre. The title, in whichever format audiences came across it, was both confusing and misleading, the film ultimately featuring very little in the way of actual dance moves.

For those who left the cinema enraged at Ana de Armas’s lack of arabesque kills, they can get their fill at home this week with Amazon’s fresh-from-SXSW actioner Pretty Lethal, a film all about ballet dancers actually using their skills to slaughter a string of eastern European bad guys. It’s a neat idea, positioning women who might be untrained fighters but who have grit and stamina learned from a gruelling form of dance many underestimate, and in an overcrowded field, it gives it a slight yet elegantly extended, leg up.

Sinkholes, storm drains, manmade labs miles underground … this documentary, based on Robert Macfarlane’s book, burrows deep into some of humanity’s great unknowns

There are some arresting questions and potent images in Rob Petit’s ruminative essay-documentary Underland, based on Robert Macfarlane’s bestselling book of the same name about the spaces under the Earth’s surface and what they tell us – or withhold from us – about human existence and the Anthropocene.

Mexican archaeologist Fátima Tec Pool descends into a cenote, a freshwater sinkhole, on the Yucatan peninsula, the entry point to a mysterious subterranean zone; these were revered by the Maya people as Xibalba, the underworld, and once upon a time explored by them using just firelight. Meanwhile, theoretical physicist Mariangela Lisanti studies dark matter in a special ultra-clean facility constructed miles below the Earth’s surface in Canada, and urban explorer Bradley Garrett roams the scary and dark storm-drain tunnels below Las Vegas and discovers evidence that people live there; poor people driven underground.

Late-night hosts discussed Trump’s restrictive voting bill, ICE agents at US airports and a mysterious ‘gift’ from Iran

Late-night hosts mocked Donald Trump’s mail-in voting as he tries to end mail-in voting, ICE agents in US airports and a mysterious “gift” from Iran.

Ken Burns’s new three-part documentary shows why it’s not too late for us to learn from the great naturalist

Henry David Thoreau is a new PBS documentary in three parts, each an hour long. The project comes with a voiceover cast of heavyweights, with narration from George Clooney, Jeff Goldblum playing the great essayist and additional voices from Ted Danson, Tate Donovan and Meryl Streep.

The project began life as a short film. Don Henley, the Eagles frontman, has long worked to preserve Walden Pond, in the woodlands outside Concord, Massachusetts, where Thoreau lived between 1845 and 1847 and wrote his great book: Walden; or, Life in the Woods. Seeking to capture the place’s magic, Henley approached Ken Burns, the legendary documentarian. As executive producer, Burns entrusted the project to two regular collaborators, brothers Erik and Christopher Loren Ewers. Like the ferns and fiddleheads that carpet the forest floor at Walden, the film began to grow.

Barbican Hall, London
John Butt’s Dunedin Consort premiered Davies’s new Passion: a startlingly sensual meditation with a sense of ritual – and an electric guitar hidden amid the baroque instrumentation

Most period-instrument bands spend Lent playing as many Bach Passions as they can schedule, but here were the Dunedin Consort and conductor John Butt adding to their already impressive list of premieres with a brand new Passion. A co-commission with the Edinburgh international festival, where it will be heard in August, it is the fruit of the composer Tansy Davies’s long fascination with the elusive figure of Mary Magdalene.

Davies’s text draws on several sources including the second- or third-century, non-canonical Gospel of Mary, and weaves in evocative poetry by Ruth Fainlight. It unfolds steadily in a 90-minute span divided into seven episodes, related by eight singers – four women, four men. Mary Magdalene herself, radiantly sung here by Anna Dennis, is a visionary, with long passages of almost mystical words, the melody leaping from note to note; the other three women sing in chords, giving voice to an Oracle. It’s more of a meditation than a Passion-setting in the traditional sense, but there’s no new-age looseness: Davies’s score is tautly written. And the story gets told, if not in quite the usual way. Jesus’s first words – addressed here by the otherwise velvet-voiced baritone Marcus Farnsworth to Tim Lilburn’s countertenor demon – are an angry “Shut up!”, and some of Fainlight’s poetry is startlingly sensual.

(Young)
After 2018’s meditative Honey, the Swedish star returns to her trademark skin-tingling electro bangers – but this time she’s unpicking her trademark fixation on romantic love

The self-proclaimed Fembot has always pushed people’s buttons. Robyn might be best known for bringing raw emotion to the dancefloor, but her pop bangers about desire and despair are often spiked with commentary on social programming: “Plug me in and flip some switches,” she once quipped, posing as a sexed-up cyborg with a bloody, beating heart. So it’s not a shock to find the Swedish star in a lab coat on Dopamine, her first single in seven years. The song rushes with glittering, arpeggiated synths, but Robyn, now 46, holds it at arm’s length. “I know it’s just dopamine, but it feels so real to me / I’m tripping on our chemistry,” she muses, taking notes as her synapses tingle. “Is love more than chemicals?” she seems to be asking. Does it matter if it’s not? But this time the song is no social critique – it’s a whole new philosophy.

Sexistential, Robyn’s ninth album, unravels the fixation on romantic love that fuelled her biggest songs. Gone are the soft edges and pulsing, sensual house of her previous album Honey, and back are the sharp electronic sounds of 2010’s Body Talk through a new lens. With long-term collaborator Klas Åhlund and a few familiar faces (including Metronomy’s Joe Mount and Swedish pop royalty Max Martin), Sexistential reimagines Robyn’s discography without romance as a vehicle. The title track is a sub-three-minute case study in her new mentality. Over minimal, jerking 80s house Robyn raps about hooking up while undergoing IVF as a solo parent: “Fuck a single mom, I’m not judgmental,” she winks, cleaving sex from reproduction and nuclear family. Its counterpart is Blow My Mind, a revamp of her billowy 2002 single made psychedelic, faster, sharper – no longer a textbook love song, but a song about loving her young son.

Often completely out of tune and rarely in time, the group of sisters forced to play together by their father gained an army of fans from Frank Zappa to Kurt Cobain. A new documentary celebrates their cult status

When Austin Wiggin Jr was a boy, his mother read his palm. She foretold that Austin would have two sons she wouldn’t live to see; he’d marry a strawberry blonde; and his daughters would play in a popular band. By 1965, the first two omens had come true. Austin felt this was reason enough to pull Dorothy, Betty and Helen Wiggin from school in pursuit of musical superstardom.

Austin’s domineering daily regime began immediately: mail-order homework, calisthenics, and constant band practice under his watch. Whether they liked it or not, the sisters were now the Shaggs – and barred from being anything else. They were rarely permitted to leave their home, save for church, shopping, and a gig every Saturday at the town hall in Fremont, New Hampshire, where for five years they played to peers they never got to know.

(Human Re Sources)
Almost overstuffed with musical ideas, the singer’s second studio album can be self-indulgent and messy, but it’s a heartfelt and exuberant grand statement from an artist determined to go her own way

Last autumn, Raye was the subject of a lengthy profile in a major fashion magazine. In it, the singer told an anecdote that placed her in precisely the position you would expect following her successful debut album: ensconced in the studio with a very big name producer, the better to capitalise on its success. But the recording session was, she suggested, “fuckshit”: the producer simply turned up with a beat and expected her to sing over it. Raye declined to, as she put it, “do that dance … I was just thinking: ‘Get me out of here.’”

This story seems telling in light of This Music May Contain Hope, an album that very much suggests an artist determined to go her own way. It’s about an emotional breakdown occasioned by romantic woe, online criticism, a troubling call from her grandmother and, she notes, “seven negronis”. And, like Lily Allen’s West End Girl, it flies in the face of perceived wisdom about how people consume music in the streaming age, being a 17-track, 73-minute concept album divided into four sections and evidently intended to be listened to from start to finish.

Drawing on a real-life 1960s experiment, this story of an out-of-work actor paid to cover himself in a black leather bag fizzes with wit and invention

The unnamed narrator of Black Bag, an out-of-work actor living in London, has finally landed himself a role, and it’s a doozy. Advertised on the “admirably candid” website strange-acting-jobs.org, the role demands that he sit silent and unmoving at the back of a university lecture theatre for one whole term, dressed in nothing but a black leather bag. He will be paid in cash. He cannot believe his luck. “This is my big chance to do absolutely nothing, as thoroughly as possible.”

Black Bag is the hilarious new novel from Luke Kennard, a poet whose second collection made him the youngest ever nominee for the Forward prize in 2007, and whose debut novel was the similarly surreal and equally enjoyable The Transition. Both works operate as Black Mirror-style satires of late-capitalist, technocratic societies, where discontented thirtysomethings find themselves embroiled in bizarre social experiments.

Nostalgia, shame and gossip from Alan Bennett in the fourth instalment of his diaries

In the introduction to this new instalment of Alan Bennett’s diaries, which run from 2016 to 2024, the author worries about what to write: “I have said everything before. At 90 it’s impossible to avoid repetition.” And, indeed, I was halfway through the entries for 2020 before they started to seem familiar. It turns out that I had already reviewed Bennett’s pandemic diaries when they were released as a slim standalone volume in 2022.

Here they are again, then, this time embedded in a much longer stretch of journal-keeping, characterised by Bennett’s customary looping between past and present. The repetition turns out not to matter because the prose is sufficiently layered to take on new meanings as the context shifts. Bennett’s pandemic years read differently now that Covid is in the rearview mirror. The first time round, I got the impression that, devoted to the NHS though he is, the banging of pans on a Thursday evening struck him as a bit daft. Reading the section again, I’m convinced he detested the whole performative palaver.

Grief, betrayal and moral complications are explored across nine tales of quiet power that take us from Argentina to County Wexford

The title of Colm Tóibín’s new story collection seems to promise, at first glance, a return to familiar territory: a tour, perhaps, of old stomping grounds; a reconnection with earlier work. But as the pages turn, that suggestion of affinity is revealed to be a subtle bait and switch. The stories in this collection, it turns out, have to do with displacement, not familiarity; their news is not from Dublin, but from the places where Dublin’s news might land. They interrogate what it means, and how it feels, to live at one remove: from home, from loved ones, from the past.

That sense of dislocation is established in the opening story, The Journey to Galway, set during the first world war, in which once again the interaction between title and content proves delicately wrongfooting. This “journey”, we discover, is not about attaining a longed-for destination, nor even really about forward motion; rather, it’s a moment of suspension, between one reality and the next. An unnamed woman remembers the morning on which she received a telegram telling her that her son, a pilot in the British airforce, had been killed in action over Italy. On hearing the news, she knows she must take the train to Galway, to inform her son’s wife, Margaret. “In Margaret’s mind,” the woman realises, as she stares out of the train window, “Robert was still alive. Maybe that meant something; it gave Robert some strange extra time …” And it is this liminal time, untethered and provisional, that is the “journey” of the title – a Schrödinger’s-cat caesura, in which the terrible event both has and hasn’t taken place. “Until she appeared in the doorway of that house, there would not be death,” the woman thinks. “But once she appeared, death would live in that house.”

This novel is stacked with ideas about Black art and aesthetics – but its language is too clumsy and academic to bring them to life

Brandon Taylor’s third novel, following the Booker-shortlisted Real Life and 2023’s The Late Americans, is full of hands. It’s set in the years after a pandemic that made many people desperate “to touch and be touched”. Long before then, no one had ever held the hand of its chief character, a young painter called Wyeth – not even his mother. In the doldrums, he recalls a conversation with a printmaker who extolled lithography because the images it produces reveal the strength and dexterity of an artist’s fingers: human marks. Poring through a company’s digital files, he has a near-seizure when he comes across a handwritten ledger: “There was something almost romantic about the curves of the numbers, elegant and swooping.”

Wyeth was born in Virginia, a state where, within living memory, Black farmhands developed cancer because they weren’t given gloves to pick the tobacco that would later poison their blood. He grew up in a trailer park with his white mother, a nursing assistant. To be working class, fatherless and from the south: this was, for him, a kind of isolation chamber. It led him to imagine that “the future and history belonged to another species of human that did not include him and his family and their distant relations”.

Huge cuts announced this week show that truly no developer working in games is safe from corporate whims

The video game industry is currently experiencing a seemingly endless bout of ruinous deja vu. Every month, another publisher posts an all too familiar statement about job losses in its development studios. There will be airy expressions of regret and platitudes praising the skill and contribution of the imminently jobless; it is all filtered through layers of corporate doublespeak intended to disguise the human cost of downsizing.

On Tuesday, it was the turn of Epic Games, creator of Fortnite, one of the most successful titles on the planet. In a note posted online, CEO Tim Sweeney announced that more than 1,000 jobs would be lost – this followed the cutting of 830 staff in September 2023.

As physical media makes an unlikely comebac​k​ among younger gamers, the humble VHS emerges as an unexpected archive of gaming’s messy, magical evolution​ that I saw first time around

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As I am nostalgic and of a certain age, I recently bought a VHS video recorder, just for the retrospective thrill of it; then I won a 32-inch CRT television at an auction in Shepton Mallet. Partly, this was to play a few old videos I had found in my loft, including one of me appearing in a 1990s youth TV show talking about sexism and Tomb Raider. (I was against the sexism, to be clear). But it was also because I wanted a new way of spending my money on fragile video-game nostalgia.

The rise of the games industry in the 1980s and 90s coincided with the explosion of the home-video business, and the two crossed paths in lots of interesting ways. There are the obvious treasures I want to get hold of: VHS copies of Street Fighter: The Movie and the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, naturally, as well as early games-inspired hits such as The Last Starfighter, The Wizard and WarGames. I rented most of these from my local video shop in the 80s – which, like many others, also sold computer games by the budget publisher Mastertronic, another interesting (at least to me) crossover between these two entertainment formats.

From owing a debt to obscure Japanese horror Sweet Home to the influence of Aliens and Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the franchise continues to petrify players three decades on

To many of us playing and writing about video games in the 1990s, Resident Evil seemed to come out of nowhere. The emerging PlayStation and Saturn consoles were all about slick, bright arcade conversions – the shiny thrills of Daytona and Tekken – and Japanese publisher Capcom was in a rut of coin-op conversions and endless sequels to Street Fighter and Mega Man. Scary games were rare at the time and mostly confined to the PC. So when the news of a horror title named Biohazard (the Japanese name for the series) started to emerge in 1995, it caught the attention of games journalists as it seemed radically out of step with prevailing trends. Games were about power, but as early demos quickly revealed, Resident Evil was about vulnerability.

Thirty years later, it’s still here. The series has sold more than 180m copies worldwide, with 11 core titles and dozens of spinoffs and remakes, as well as film, television and anime tie-ins. Its characters and monsters are icons, its tropes now embedded in game design practice. What has allowed it to not only survive but flourish in such a rapidly changing industry? Why do we still let it scare us?

The fates of two ostensibly similar online games released this year, Marathon and Highguard, prove that success is becoming close to unattainable

What does success look like for developers of online video games? In 2026, the answer could not be clearer: no one has a clue.

Consider Highguard, 2026’s first big flop. Signs were promising on its launch on 26 January, with a peak of 100,000 concurrent players on Steam – plus those enjoying the game on PlayStation and Xbox, which do not make player counts public. As a free-to-play game, the barrier to entry for Highguard was low. And thanks to a prime advertising placement at the end of December’s The Game Awards – a buzzy spot usually reserved for known hitmakers, not free-to-play upstarts – curiosity was high.

Intimate monologue or performance art? The singer’s recent gigs give a tantalising idea of what a stage adaptation of her album might look like

‘This conversation’s too big for a phone call,” sings Lily Allen on her new album, West End Girl. Maybe those conversations are too big for its 14 tracks as Allen is in discussions about turning the album’s painful account of uncovering infidelity into a play. The singer has just completed a tour of theatre venues, performing West End Girl in its entirety, culminating in last weekend’s shows at the London Palladium. Those gigs give a tantalising idea of what a fully fledged stage adaptation could look like.

Allen’s semi-autobiographical album has theatre at its core – even the songs’ visualisers feature pierrot costumes and a St Martin’s Lane marquee with a tongue-in-cheek nod to The Importance of Being Earnest. The plot includes her being cast in a West End production (mirroring her assured debut in 2:22: A Ghost Story in 2021) and while she is hardly the first pop star to do theatre, it’s still refreshing to hear the line “I got the lead in a play!” on an album.

Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon
Co-artistic director Tamara Harvey stages a well-acted production that never hits as hard as it should

The bellicose patriotism in this, the last instalment of Shakespeare’s Henriad, makes it a perfect drama for today – showing us the repeated history of war, invasion and acquisition in the name of nationalism.

Those parallels are unspoken in this production, traditionally rendered in period dress. Director Tamara Harvey begins with a flashback – from Henry IV, Part 2 – to an ailing Henry IV and a son keen to don his crown, to denote the ambition that now lies within the younger Henry. Alfred Enoch makes a genial young king, with a limber playfulness at the outset that carries the last embers of “wildness” from his dissolute days with Falstaff. Enoch harnesses his likability to spur on the fight in his “once more unto the breach” speech and Saint Crispin’s Day rallying call.

Ikon, Birmingham
The Spanish artist’s oeuvre is full of objects that look broken but are still powering on – much as she has since she suffered a disabling stroke

Crumpled and crumbling, Angela de la Cruz’s artworks are all on the verge of collapse. Her canvases are broken and folded in on themselves, her sculptures are barely assembled junk, and look as if they might turn right back into rubbish if there’s a strong breeze.

Just as you walk into this quiet, sparse show of the London-based Spanish artist’s work at Birmingham’s Ikon – her first UK solo show outside London despite being nominated for the Turner prize in 2010 and generally being one of the biggest art names in the country – there’s a black-painted canvas wrapped around an old two-legged table (which once belonged to Guardian art critic Adrian Searle). Next to it sits a painting in thick, brown gunk – a fecal monochrome, its bottom corner snapped off but gaffer taped back on, the whole thing wedged upright. It looks and feels like a body that doesn’t work, faulty and leaky, patched up and forced back to the vertical.

Festival theatre, Cambridge Buddhist Centre
Cambridge Handel Opera Company capture the self-referential charm of this mid-career novelty operetta

Any opera with two pairs of young lovers inevitably gets compared to Così fan tutte. But in the case of Handel’s mid-career novelty Imeneo, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a better point of reference. There may be unexpected Mozartian depths to this intimate comedy of duty and desire, but there’s none of Così’s cynicism or cruelty in a piece whose games are played strictly at opera’s own expense.

With the vogue for Italian opera all but over, deposed in the 1740s by the new fashion for English oratorios, Imeneo is Handel in mischievous, end-of-term mood. This operetta (the composer didn’t dignify it with the weight of a full opera) sets up conventions only to knock them down. Da capo arias? Occasionally. Mad scene? Not really. Happy ending? Certainly not. It’s exhilarating, often meta-theatrical stuff, and director Guido Martin-Brandis and the Cambridge Handel Opera Company capture all its knowing, self-referential charm in this delightful staging.

Promising ‘unprecedented access’, the programme will recount the singer’s story, including full details of the harrowing attacks that drove her into hiding for a decade

It was a great music industry mystery: after becoming one of the biggest pop stars of the 2000s with her debut album, 2008’s Rockferry, the Welsh pop star Duffy vanished from the public eye. In 2020, she revealed what had happened to her: in 2010, she said, she had been drugged, kidnapped and taken to another country where she was subject to violent abuse and raped.

Duffy, real name Aimée Anne Duffy, 41, will tell that story in depth for the first time in a new documentary, produced by Disney+ and Hulu Original, with production set to begin soon. A press release promises “new, unprecedented access” to the Mercy singer, who will tell her entire life story, as well as interviews with friends, family and music industry associates.

Comedian and avid Tolkien fan to write the Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past, a new Peter Jackson-produced film based on unadapted chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring

Stephen Colbert has lined up his next job after finishing up as host of The Late Show in May: writing a new Lord of the Rings film tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past.

Film-maker Peter Jackson, who directed the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit trilogy, made the surprise announcement in a video on social media on Tuesday. Colbert is an avid, lifelong JRR Tolkien fan and even had a small cameo in Jackson’s 2013 film The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug alongside his wife and children.

Roy’s memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me and Doucet’s The Finest Hotel in Kabul are joined by books on exile by Ece Temelkuran and Judith Mackrell and an ode to the arts by Daisy Fancourt

Arundhati Roy, Lyse Doucet and Judith Mackrell are among the writers shortlisted for this year’s Women’s prize for nonfiction.

Jane Rogoyska, Ece Temelkuran and Daisy Fancourt are also in contention for the £30,000 prize, launched in 2024 to address the persistent gender imbalance in UK nonfiction prize winners.

To browse all books in the 2026 Women’s prize for nonfiction shortlist, visit guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Disquiet aired over the subject matter of film about a couple whose engagement is upended after they reveal to each other ‘the worst thing you’ve ever done’

• This article contains major spoilers for The Drama

The father of a child murdered in the Columbine school shootings has expressed his unhappiness at the film-makers behind forthcoming movie The Drama.

The film, which is written and directed by Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli, is a dark romantic comedy starring Robert Pattinson and Zendaya as a couple whose upcoming wedding is cast in doubt after she reveals that she once planned a school shooting, but backed out at the last moment.

The moment I stepped into English National Ballet’s studio, I stopped being just a patient. Among fellow spirits, I have rediscovered my sense of joy and agency

Fourteen years ago, a neurologist told me: “You have Parkinson’s.” I remember his face before I remember his words: calm, certain, kind. Parkinson’s: a progressive neurological disease. No cure. In my mind, it was an old person’s disease. Something that happened to other people, later in life. Not to a single man in his early 50s who believed there was still time for romance, adventure, reinvention.

What terrified me most wasn’t the tremors or the stiffness. It was the imagined future. I pictured a partner signing up not for love, but for care. I thought: who would choose that? Who would choose me, knowing this?

The ancient city – with its gardens, hammams and Moorish architecture – comes alive in spring and its Holy Week processions are among the most authentic in Andalucía

As I turned the corner on a narrow, cobbled street in Granada, I felt as if I had stumbled upon a slightly sinister re-enactment society. Mysterious men dressed in white robes and tall, conical, face-covering hats with slits for their eyes were followed by women in black dresses and mantillas, holding pillar candles and crosses, then children wearing caped cloaks, carrying baskets of prayer cards.

It was indeed a re-enactment of sorts, but deeply rooted in Catholicism, representing the Passion of Christ, staged during Holy Week (Semana Santa), which runs from 29 March to 5 April this year. Easter processions are held across the country, but this Andalucían city hosts one of the most authentic in Spain.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food and the basic they scrimp on? Henry Holland talks Labubus, vintage Prada and swapping Calvins for Skims with the Filter

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Henry Holland rose to prominence in 2006 with his collection of “fashion groupie” T-shirts, displaying rhyming slogans referencing fashion icons (such as “I’ll Show You Who’s Boss Kate Moss”), and founded his own brand, House of Holland, in 2008.

He discovered a passion for ceramics during the pandemic, and in 2021 launched the lifestyle brand Henry Holland Studio, selling handmade ceramics and homeware.

Our kitchen expert spent weeks chopping to find the blades that cut it. Plus, how to travel with kids, and the best tools for a home and garden spring reset

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Many budding chefs among us have blamed a bad knife for a poor dinner. But how do you know which ones will make light work of slicing tomatoes gossamer thin – and which will leave you hacking away at the waxy skin?

Here at the Filter, we decided it was high time to find the best kitchen knives. In collaboration with the newly launched Guardian Food Quarterly, we recruited a professional to put 14 knives through their paces. The professional in question was Ben Lippett, former chef turned home cook and food writer, and author of How I Cook, who describes himself as “opinionated”. “I know what I like, and I’m not a sucker for style over substance,” he writes.

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‘Alive, fruity and with a soft texture’: the best supermarket frozen peas, tasted and rated

Our expert taste-tester gives peas a chance – but which received a frosty reception?

• The best supermarket oven chips, tasted and rated

The sweetness of a pea is more than just a desirable taste; it’s an indication of a pea picked at the perfect moment. As the sugars convert into starch, peas lose their sweetness rapidly after picking, leading to a less sweet, more fibrous and lower-quality product.

That’s why high-quality peas are picked, blanched and frozen as quickly as possible, usually all within two and a half hours. That said, other factors such as soil, seed quality, transportation and a stable freezer temperature all affect a frozen pea’s quality.

From budget to Japanese-style models, here are chef Ben Lippett’s sharpest picks for comfort, cut and cost after weeks of chopping. Plus, what to know before you buy

• The kitchen gadgets top chefs can’t live without

A great chef’s knife is less a tool and more an extension of the person holding it. In the kitchen, your knife effectively becomes your right (or left) hand. Balance equals control; good steel spells confidence and longevity; a sharp edge means ease.

I’ve put a handful of knives through the only trials that matter: shallots diced to translucence, tomatoes sliced gossamer thin, herbs chiffonaded to perfume. I’m looking past marketing into geometry, materials, grind and ultimately how each knife feels – at minute one and hour 10. Does it bite eagerly, or wedge and bruise? How does it feel in your hand – is it perfectly balanced or too blade-heavy? Does it sing on the board, or thud? Will this knife need lots of TLC, or will it look after itself?

Best chef’s knife overall:
Wüsthof classic chef knife, 20cm

Best budget knife:
Victorinox Fibrox chef’s knife, 20cm

Vegetables take centre stage in this relaxed menu of cheesy asparagus loaf, mushroomy filo tart with a chilli crisp crust, punchy feta salad, and a no-bake strawberry matchamisu

Vegetables are in my blood. I grew up surrounded by them; boxes upon boxes scattered around my childhood home, a perk from my father’s job as a wholesale purveyor (of bananas, specifically) at Sydney’s Flemington Markets (now known as Sydney Markets). Our family enjoyed an embarrassment of nature’s riches; an endless supply of succulent Asian greens, rotund cauliflowers, glossy aubergine, perky spring onions, and bulging cabbages that overflowed from crates in and around the kitchen and dining room. We needed to step over trays of stone fruit and cartons of oranges to get to the bathroom.

In the summer, I gorged on apricots and cherries until I was sick (true story) – I had no self-control when it came to the fresh stuff. This overindulgence ended abruptly when my father died when I was 15. The endless parade of fresh vegetables and fruits ceased but my deep connection with vegetables lives on. Today, chopping a head of broccoli, peeling a carrot or charring a wedge of cabbage makes me feel closer to my dad. It is a daily ritual that keeps his memory alive.

The sense of feeling alive is never more present than during the transition from winter. Spring, or chūn as it’s called in Cantonese, is actually the first season of the Chinese Lunar Year and somehow, that feels fitting for how we should approach eating during this time of year. As the brisk air thaws and the skies lift, the feeling of renewal and new beginnings punctuates my approach to cooking and feeding others. Bright acidity, twists on classic dishes, and pantry staples used in unexpected ways. Spring is the time to be bold, take risks in the kitchen and reawaken your tastebuds.

Can you beat a traditional spiced yeast bun at Easter? There’s only one way to find out. Bring on the rhubarb and custard version, the red velvet, the chocolate and fudge, the tiramisu …

Hot cross buns, the Easter treat traditionally eaten on Good Friday, now appear in our shops as early as January. And it’s not just the spiced ones packed with dried fruit that you’ll find on supermarket shelves: it seems that any enriched-dough creation can be described as a hot cross bun, so long as a flour cross has been slapped on top.

Step into a Marks & Spencer food hall and you will be greeted with displays full of garish pink “red velvet” hot cross buns, while Tesco has more than 10 varieties available this year, as well as a tear-and-share brioche. Purists may turn up their noses, but Becca Stock, who reviews food on TikTok and Instagram as @beccaeatseverything, says that, to enjoy a non-traditional bun, you have to view it as a separate product. “For me, they sit in different categories,” she says.

These are the new titles for your kitchen shelf – plus a classic to dust off

Nandên: Recipes from my Kurdish Kitchen by Pary Baban

Nandên by Pary Baban (Ryland, Peters & Small, £25). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Rooted in tradition yet delivered with a modern spin, these dishes are simple, comforting and flavourful

Tempeh, which is originally from Java, has gained popularity in British supermarkets and kitchens in recent years, especially among vegetarians and vegans, as a natural, fermented source of protein that’s been praised by nutritionists and scientists alike. Indonesian tempeh, which has a nutty, mushroomy flavour, absorbs spices beautifully and creates comforting, deeply layered dishes that are rooted in Indonesia’s plant-based traditions. Today’s recipes are pretty simple to make and feature familiar ingredients, yet are also full of bold flavours.

Her job was to tackle slugs in the garden, but she soon found a way into my home – and my heart

Harriet came into my life when I asked my vet if I could get a hedgehog to come and live in my garden and deal with the slugs. She found me Harriet in Tiggywinkles, a Buckinghamshire-based wildlife hospital. Harriet was rather shy. I brought her home in a cardboard box and put it on the ground, on its side. She poked her nose out and, as soon as she saw me, scuttled off to hide in a corner of the garden.

Harriet settled in well and did her job efficiently, eating all the slugs. She slept in an old compost bag in the garden, to which I added some dried leaves to make a bed for her. One day, sitting on the sofa with my legs stretched out, I felt something touching my bare toes. It was Harriet, examining them. She had come in through the cat flap.

Zack Rogow thought he was ready for love after the end of a long relationship – but not everyone agreed. How did he get over the rejections?

When Zack Rogow’s relationship ended, he joined an online dating site. Aged 66, Rogow prepared for his first date with a mixture of grief at the loss of a love he’d thought would last a lifetime, and euphoria. “I was gaga – ‘Oh, I’m single again. I can meet people!’” In the event, one match led to another and he notched up 75 first dates over 18 months.

Some dates were outdoorsy walks. Others took place in wine bars, in cafes or at the movies. He kept notes, jotting down each woman’s career and family situation so he wouldn’t put his foot in it on a second date. It must have started to feel like a job.

Joe had never dated a bisexual man before, while Matt took time to trust his new partner, but now both are happy swapping roles in the bedroom
• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

Once I really trusted Matt, I started to enjoy being more dominant

When Joe worried he couldn’t compare, I told him I’d be fine never sleeping with a woman again

The actor and presenter, and his dad, on winding each other up, learning to be resilient and the joys of family life

Born in 2000 in Rawdon, West Yorkshire, George Webster is an actor and presenter. In 2021, he made history as the first BBC children’s presenter with Down’s syndrome. As well as his regular hosting role on CBeebies, Webster has appeared in The Railway Children Return, Casualty, and the 2022 Strictly Come Dancing Christmas special. His fourth book, George and the Dragons: Lava Goes Wild!, is out now. Webster’s dad, Rob, is the chief executive of NHS West Yorkshire.

Mid-range handset gets chip, storage and MagSafe upgrades to offer more essential iOS features for less

The cheapest new iPhone has been upgraded for this year with a faster chip, double the storage, automatic portraits and MagSafe, providing even more of the core Apple smartphone experience for less.

The iPhone 17e is an upgraded version of the mid-range “e” line launched last year with the first iPhone 16e and is the latest member of the iPhone 17 family. It starts at £599 (€699/$599/A$999), undercutting the iPhone 17 and iPhone 16 by £200 and £100 respectively to be the cheapest new iPhone sold by Apple.

Screen: 6.1in Super Retina XDR (OLED) (460ppi)

Processor: Apple A19 (4-core GPU)

RAM: 8GB

Storage: 256 or 512GB

Operating system: iOS 26

Camera: 48MP rear; 12MP front-facing

Connectivity: 5G, wifi 6, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3, USB-C, Satellite and GNSS

Water resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)

Dimensions: 146.7 x 71.5 x 7.8mm

Weight: 170g

Fraudsters exploit isolation and search for human contact to often devastating effect. These are steps you can take to avoid them

As you have got older, retirement has left you with more time on your hands. Loneliness has set in. Luckily, you have found a friend through one of the online motoring groups you are in, and a close bond has blossomed over your common interest in cars.

But your new friend has found themselves short when it comes to paying for their university textbooks, and has asked you for £50. It’s not much, and you get on so well that you agree to pay via bank transfer.

Those planning for uni in England and Wales this autumn can apply for student loans from Monday. Here are the options for families worried about debt

Our child is heading to university soon – should we try to pay their tuition fees upfront so they are not saddled with a debt for decades?

Our child is a recent graduate and their student loan debt is ballooning – should we help pay off some or all of it?

Bypassing animal health certificate system by using cheaper pet passport issued abroad could backfire, experts say

British pet owners who want to take their furry friends elsewhere in Europe have been warned not to try to dodge expensive health certificates by using a pet passport issued abroad.

Before Brexit, taking a cat, dog or ferret to the EU was relatively simple: the Pet Travel Scheme meant an animal needed a microchip, vaccination against rabies, a pet passport and, for dogs, there were also requirements concerning tapeworm treatment.

Need for abstinence before fertility treatment questioned as study finds sperm deteriorates as it stays in body

Encouraging men to have more frequent ejaculations may boost their fertility, according to researchers who found that sperm deteriorates over time as it remains in the body.

The longer men went without sex, the more their sperm showed signs of DNA damage and oxidative stress, and the more tests rated the sperm as less viable and poorer swimmers.

We’re told that sleep is a superpower, making us smarter, healthier and happier. But how much is enough? And is insomnia as bad for us as we think?

‘Once, after I did a presentation, someone came up to me and said, ‘I don’t get eight hours of sleep a night. Am I going to die?’” says Prof Russell Foster, head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford. “And I said, ‘Well, yes, you’re going to die. But, you know, we all die eventually.’”

This exchange is, hopefully, comforting, but it also shouldn’t be too surprising. Over the past decade or so, we’ve been repeatedly told that sleep is everything from a legal performance-enhancer to an actual superpower – and, conversely, that if we don’t get enough shuteye we’re risking an early start to our eternal slumber. But how bad is a lack of sleep, really? And if we seem to be coping fine on six hours a night, is there a chance we’re still setting ourselves up for problems further down the line?

Researchers detail ‘surprisingly large’ cardiovascular health benefits of small shifts in behaviour

Sleeping for 11 minutes more each night, doing 4.5 additional minutes of brisk walking and eating an extra 50g or so of vegetables each day can significantly reduce a person’s risk of heart attack, a study has found.

Academics found these small changes could help people avoid major cardiovascular events, including heart attacks and strokes, by about 10%. Small behaviour changes were more “achievable and sustainable”, the research team said.

To shift the pounds you need to create a calorie deficit, which means changes to your diet, exercise, or a combination of the two

In order to lose weight, most people need to maintain a calorie deficit over a sustained period, says Bethan Crouse, a performance nutritionist at Loughborough University. “This can be done by increasing exercise to boost your calorie expenditure and therefore create a deficit,” she says. “In that case, exercise might be the key to losing weight. But you could approach it the other way: by choosing less calorie-dense foods and reducing your energy intake, you can create a deficit without changing how much you exercise.”

Relying on workouts alone for weight loss can be challenging. “If you’re aiming to burn an extra 300 to 500 calories a day, that’s an awful lot of exercise. You’re likely to need some kind of nutritional intervention as well to create that gap between energy intake and output.”

Buying lard-like tubs of boring moisturiser is not your only option – ungreasy, effective derma body lotions are now available

I could write a thesis on derma body lotions, but it would be as boring to read as they are to use. You know the ones – rows of near-identical white and blue family moisturisers for extra dry skin, smelling of nothing, feeling like lard and standing unhappily away from the fun aisles full of fruity, silky and whipped creams costing half as much.

The joyless, pricey pharmaceutical aisle is where we dryness-, cracked-, eczema- or sensitivity-prone skin types must shop, because a vat full of something more elegant would barely lubricate an elbow.

V&A South Kensington, London
The Italian designer loved to shock and this dazzling show is like sashaying through a party in 1930s Paris with Schiap and her darling friends Cocteau and Dalí

Naked mermaids and prancing horses, silk carrots and unshelled peanuts, gilded elephant trunks, drums and masks – and those are just a few of the buttons. The V&A’s lavish spring show is a weird and wonderful tumble down the rabbit hole that is Schiaparelli, fashion’s house of surrealism.

Elsa Schiaparelli designed clothes to be witty, not just pretty, and that lively spirit runs through this show. A shoe becomes a hat, bones grow on the outside of a dress, a telephone dial becomes a compact mirror. A stroll through the galleries feels less like admiring a beauty pageant lineup of frocks, and more like taking a turn through a 1930s Paris cocktail party with Schiaparelli and her friends Salvador Dalí and Jean Cocteau: bracingly avant garde, mildly unsettling, all visual puns and in-jokes and never a dull moment. Turn a corner from a Man Ray painting of a lit candle wearing a harlequin coat and you encounter a mannequin perched on a ledge, wearing a jacket that sprouts gold palm trees at the shoulders. It is wild, and it works.

A neat cuff can elevate an outfit in seconds – but it takes more than a quick fold to get it right

Trousers – they’re not rocket science. But there are plenty of ways to mess them up, or to elevate them above their primary role of covering legs. A classic styling trick has emerged recently: the turn-up. Harry Styles had them for his pinstripe trews at the Brits, actor Chase Infiniti turned her trousers up at Paris fashion week and hefty turn-ups feature on baggy blue and ecru jeans and olive-green track trousers in JW Anderson’s latest collection for Uniqlo.

Turn-ups are the bread and butter of preppy labels such as J Crew-adjacent brand Alex Mill. Head to the website of this New York label and turned-up jeans paired with purple loafers and pink socks, or with letterbox-red ballet flats and yolk-yellow socks, will wash over you like salt spray. At John Lewis, meanwhile, turn-ups run the gamut from pencil-thin to the depth of an Oxford English Dictionary.

The spring equinox is here, which means days in the park, ice-cream selfies and an extra layer for the evening

It isn’t only climbers who get misty-eyed about the awe-inspiring mountains and ancient pinewoods of Britain’s first national nature reserve, created 75 years ago

The waymarked quartzite path glimmers in the sun, flanked by amber-gold grassland. Beyond, one of Scotland’s finest landscapes opens up before me, a woodland of ancient Caledonian pines leading my eye to the metallic glint of Loch Maree. On the other side of the water, a winding river separates the steep, stacked rocks of Beinn a’Mhùinidh from Slioch, one of the great mountains of Wester Ross, rising to a knuckle ridge of Torridonian sandstone.

I’m walking the four-mile mountain trail looping through Beinn Eighe national nature reserve (NNR), Britain’s first NNR, which celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. In a crowded list, you’d be hard pushed to find a more soul-stirring landscape in all of Scotland.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

• This week’s question: American football takes for ever. In which other sports do you spend most of your time not playing the game?

From what I can see, travelling in many cases has zero effect on a person’s outlook and prejudices. If that were not so, then high-flying politicians of all stripes would be among the most broad-minded people on the planet as they constantly jet from city to city. I can think of several proverbs that are extremely true, or at least seem so, such as “A stitch in time saves nine”, or “Many a mickle makes a muckle”, which it patently does – or especially the universally true, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”. But what other proverbs or quotes or apparently clever soundbites are untrue, for at least some of the time? “Fine words butter no parsnips”? And how do questionable assertions become sayings in the first place? Neil Ashby, Powys

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Our writer first hiked in the Lake District, Eryri and Dartmoor in the 1970s. Their beauty remains unrivalled, but they are more popular than ever. So, here’s how to avoid the crowds

Before we enter the clouds on snow-capped Helvellyn, I glance back down at Ullswater. The early morning sun is bursting around the dark corners of High Dodd and Sleet Fell, sending a flush of light across the golden bracken and on to the hammered silver of the lake.

Further away to the south, ragged patches of snow cling to the high gullies. The nearest village, Glenridding, can barely be seen behind the leafless trees and all I can hear is the gurgle of the stream. It is the quintessential Lakeland scene: the steep slopes above the water, the soft colours and hard rock, all combining into something inimitable. And judging by the photographic and artistic record, it is one that has hardly changed since the Cumbrian wind first ruffled a Romantic poet’s curls.

The wild moors and gentle dales of the UK’s oldest national park are just as inviting today as they were when it was created in 1951

Look at a satellite photograph of Britain taken on a clear night and the only things visible are the glowing street lights of towns and cities. If you cast your eyes to the centre of northern England, the distinctive, cupped-hand-shaped boundary of the Peak District national park is clearly outlined as an island of darkness washed by an ocean of light from the industrial conurbations of the north and Midlands.

It was established in April 1951 as the first national park in Britain. And that view from space gives the clearest indication possible of why this site was chosen – it put a national park where it was most needed in the country. It has been estimated that about a third of the population of England and Wales lives less than an hour away from the Peak District.

Hove, East Sussex: Loading it up with many different species – oak, elder, hazel, willow and birch – has turned it into a thriving ecosystem

In the garden, the log pile is a whole world. I hear frogs croaking from within it, I watch wrens foraging for insects. It’s a mixture of different species: apple from neighbours who were cutting a tree down, walnut from a pollarded giant at the allotment, hawthorn lost to a storm.

There’s also oak, elder, hazel, willow and birch. I stop tree surgeons and ask if I can take a log or two, replacing the sadness of another felled tree with the hope of the life its dead wood will support. I like taking new logs home for my log pile.

Researchers believe rock samples taken from the Apollo missions gave scientists a misleading impression

How magnetic is the moon? Analysis of rock samples from the Apollo missions suggested that the moon had an extremely strong magnetic field in its early history – even stronger than Earth’s.

But no one could figure out how such a small planetary body could have such a strong field. Now a fresh study has cracked the mystery.

Former mill towns in the West Pennine Moors tell the story of the workers’ rebellion against power looms, the new machines decimating their livelihoods

There’s a massive hole in the ground at the top of Whinney Hill – a shale quarry that once supplied raw materials for Accrington’s famous Nori brickworks (as used in the Empire State Building and Blackpool Tower). It’s fitting, as there’s a chasm in history when it comes to this unprepossessing spot on the edge of the West Pennine Moors.

On the morning of 24 April 1826, about 1,000 weavers met on the hilltop to plan their day and, no doubt, get the lie of the land and the weather before setting off. A banking crisis in December of the previous year – dubbed the Panic of 1825 by historians – had hammered the cotton industry. Lancashire’s weavers, who had already suffered years of declining wages and living standards, faced destitution and even starvation.

Struggling to find the right buzzwords to adorn your CV, or to put a gloss on a series of professional setbacks? There’s a translation app for that

Name: LinkedIn Speak.

Age: One month old.

Abel Ortiz was brought from Mexico to LA when he was just two months old and has been​ living undocumented​ ever since. Now 38, he has a full life​ cutting hair, building a community, loving​ a city that has never fully loved him back.​ ​In a time of escalating ICE raids and the ache of uncertainty, Abel has made a radical decision: he’s leaving – not because he has to, but to escape perpetual limbo and be free to see the world

They’re not armed and they keep a relatively low profile. But the Home Office’s immigration compliance and enforcement officers have searched thousands of business in pursuit of illegal workers. Are they abusing their powers?

Diners were tucking into their upmarket Indian lunch when the Ice agents slid through the restaurant’s back fence. Clad in stab vests, the 11-strong unit blocked off every entrance before moving in on their target: Mandira’s Kitchen. This wasn’t a scene from California or Texas. It happened near Guildford, England, among the rolling Surrey Hills.

Before the Home Office’s immigration compliance and enforcement (Ice) officers stormed the restaurant in September, they came up with a codeword in the event they were attacked with any weapons that might be at hand in a kitchen. What they found were customers eating biryani and samosas in a converted barn decorated with plants and a rickshaw bicycle hanging from the ceiling. When they reached the kitchen, they found five junior members of staff cooking. The officers demanded to see their passports. “They didn’t explain. They didn’t ask for permission,” says the restaurant’s owner, Mandira Moitra Sarkar. That 11 officers could burst into her business with no warrant and question staff is “astounding”, she says. Moitra Sarkar was on holiday in Tanzania when Ice arrived; she was notified by a frantic call from a member of staff.

YouTube gamer planned audacious alibi, appeared grief-stricken at wake and apparently spied on victim’s family

• Man who used false gaming alibi found guilty of Natalie McNally’s murder

To get away with murder, Stephen McCullagh planned an audacious alibi: he would trick the world into thinking he was at home livestreaming a video game when in fact he was 17 miles away, extinguishing a life.

He prerecorded a six-hour session of him playing Grand Theft Auto and uploaded it on the night of 18 December 2022, to give the impression to his YouTube channel’s 37,000 subscribers that he was at home in Lisburn, County Antrim, wearing a Santa hat, eating snacks, sipping Guinness and making jokes. “I am not leaving the house tonight,” he said.

Despite the supposed end of the fighting last year, casualties in the territory continue to rise, with volunteer ambulance driver Abed Elrahman Hamdouna joining the long list of those killed by Israeli forces

Of all their seven children, Abed Elrahman Hamdouna’s parents worried about him the most during the war in Gaza. Hamdouna was a volunteer ambulance driver in northern Gaza, “risking his life to help people who were injured”, says his father, Hosny Hamdouna. They knew about the repeated Israeli attacks on Gaza’s health facilities which have claimed the lives of hundreds of healthcare workers.

So when a ceasefire was reached in October 2025, they were cautiously relieved. But that relief turned to shock after Hamdouna, a 31-year-old father of two, was killed in a reported drone strike west of Gaza City two weeks ago, as he was on his way to a family Ramadan iftar, to break fast with his brothers.

Were you surprised by your bill? How did you manage the cost? We would like to hear from you

The UK’s competition watchdog has ordered vets to cap prescription fees at £21 and proposed a cost-comparison website.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said public satisfaction with the cost of services was “low” after a two-and-a-half-year investigation that found “there is not strong competition between veterinary businesses”.

We’d like to speak to people in the UK who are cutting back on fuel use after the increase in petrol and diesel prices linked to the war in Iran

We’d like to speak to people in the UK who are cutting back on fuel use after the increase in petrol and diesel prices linked to the war in Iran.

Are you taking fewer journeys or using alternative modes of transport? Are you still travelling to work the same number of days a week? Have you cited fuel costs as a reason to work from home?

We’d like to hear from volunteers who have experienced a charity closing

Across the UK, many small charities face increasing financial pressures, forcing some to shut their doors. When this happens, it can leave the people who relied on those services without support - and volunteers and communities trying to step in and keep things going.

We’d like to hear from volunteers who have experienced a charity closing. Have you or others tried to continue the work informally and what were the challenges of doing that? Did you try to keep it going - and what difficulties did you face? What happened to the people who depended on the service?

Health officials, schools and a university in Kent are working to contain an outbreak. We want to hear from those living in the area

A meningitis outbreak in Kent has been linked to a strain that most young people are not routinely vaccinated against, with two people confirmed to have died and 11 more in hospital. Health officials have offered antibiotics to those at risk, as authorities work to contain the spread.

We want to hear from people living in Canterbury and the surrounding area whether the outbreak is being well managed by the authorities.

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