Plans involve dredging and expanding docks to allow larger cruise ships to visit with up to 200,000 passengers annually

Janavi Kramer had just enjoyed a swim with friends and was sitting on a bench taking in a wonderful Cornish view – headlands plunging into deep water, bobbing boats, a bustling harbour town.

“We’re lucky to have this space,” said Kramer, who is an artist and scientific illustrator. “We use it for work, recreation and pleasure and it’s so scary to think that this could all be harmed. I worry about what we may be living with soon and what we’ll be leaving for future generations.”

Yvette Cooper’s maternity reforms must change a system that too often fails women when they’re at their most vulnerable

On the third day of being in labour with my first child, I entered a new state of being. It was time to dig deep. This is what I had learned in all the childbirth classes. As long as I remained calm, breathed as instructed, moaned through the pain, things would happen as they were meant to. My body knew what it was doing. Only, it didn’t.

On the fourth day, I started to beg. This wasn’t right. Despite contraction after relentless contraction, I wasn’t dilating. I hadn’t slept, I couldn’t even sit down. I needed help. And still, they waited. For what, I never understood.

Natalie Morris is the author of Mixed/Other: Explorations of Multiraciality in Modern Britain

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

As Stand By Me is re-released for its 40th anniversary, we look at the late actor’s most intense, enduring roles – from a goofball boffin to a narcoleptic hustler

Issue-of-the-week TV movie about elder abuse, with Tuesday Weld as a harried mum taking out her frustrations on her own ageing mother. Phoenix slaps on the hair gel as the essentially decent son who blasts his music too loud, lets his rowdy if unusually spiffy pals put their feet on the furniture and resents the new house guest: “Grandma is really getting on my nerves!”

A man who prized blunt speaking has been selectively eulogised. There’s a balance between decency and honesty: I’m sad he caused such harm

As tributes poured in for Rod Liddle, the Sunday Times and Sun columnist who has died at the age of 66, they were markedly coy and sanitised. Paradoxically, those were the exact deficiencies obituaries praised Liddle for avoiding – they said he shot from the hip and ruffled feathers, remorselessly attacked the liberal establishment and was ebullient. Michael Gove called him “special and brave”. But brave in the face of what? Attacked the liberal establishment how?

This delicacy was particularly noticeable in a segment on Radio 4’s Today programme, of which Liddle was editor in the 90s, between Justin Webb and Amol Rajan. “If there was a golden thread that connected the person you saw back then with the person of a few weeks ago,” Webb said, “it was a distrust of authority.” But Liddle’s targets as a columnist were not the authorities. Often they were Muslims and immigrants, transgender people and chronic illness sufferers, African-Caribbean men from Harlesden. He did not attack the establishment, he attacked the marginalised, constantly.

From mind-boggling murder investigations to decade-long scams, there’s no shortage of documentaries about real-life awfulness. We list the most incredible

Since the true-crime explosion a decade ago – kickstarted by Netflix’s Making a Murderer – audiences have been fed a steady small-screen diet of cold-case killings, catfishing scams and creepy cults. And, after years of varying results, Netflix’s latest show, A Toxic Love Story – which recounts how a California couple framed an innocent woman for stalking, intimidation and recruiting men from Craigslist to rape her ex’s new wife – is being billed as a return to true-crime form. But when it comes to similar shows worth your viewing time, what else is up there?

Here’s a selection of the genre’s 25 standout shows and where to watch them – which, let’s face it, is mainly Netflix. Let the boggle-eyed bingeing begin.

(Atlantic)
Evoking an astonishing range of artists, the US singer follows up her huge hit Love Me Not with stylistic diversity – and lyrics that defy her doubters

It sometimes seems like no musical success in the 2020s is allowed to pass without some degree of online controversy. There are accusations that the artist in question is an “industry plant” – a phrase which, as far as can be discerned, can basically be applied to anyone with a manager or a label deal – or that there’s something deceptive about the way in which they’ve been promoted, or that they’re possessed of some other form of moral bankruptcy that reflects not merely on the performer but the people who like them. Which brings us to Love Me Not, an ostensibly harmless 2024 track by Chicago singer-songwriter Ravyn Lenae.

After enjoying a burst of online virality, it became a huge hit single, making the Top 5 on both sides of the Atlantic. Taken from Bird’s Eye, an album that also featured collaborations with Childish Gambino and Ty Dolla $ign, its blend of retro-soul styling, distorted guitar arpeggios and infernally catchy chorus was noticeably poppier than Lenae’s previous work: it came with a remix that featured British bedroom-pop star Rex Orange County. You could understand why fans of the glitchy, abstract R&B found on 2015’s EP Moon Shoes, or of her more neo soul-flavoured debut album, 2022’s Hypnos, might consider it a straightforward bid for mainstream acceptance. But you’d argue against it necessitating an online interrogation that, Lenae has suggested, involved not just “picking apart what kind of music I make” but “questioning my identity and Blackness”.

Simon & Schuster still plans to publish book by Cambridge academic who resigned this week amid plagiarism claims

Jason Arday, the former Cambridge professor accused of plagiarism and embellishment, claimed he was paid “1.4 million” for his forthcoming memoir detailing his extraordinary backstory.

Arday was dogged by a growing series of questions over his academic work and credentials before he resigned on Wednesday night, saying the “relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love”.

Exclusive: Louisiana firm awarded tender to build rudimentary outpost to house Moroccan troops

Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, which was set up in January to oversee the reconstruction of Gaza, has finally issued its first construction contract in the devastated territory: a project to build a rudimentary 150-person military outpost to house Moroccan troops, a source familiar with the matter told the Guardian.

The contract, which has not yet been finalised, was awarded to Arkel International, a Louisiana-based firm that has previously carried out work with the US government in countries such as Iraq.

German authorities investigating whether a foreign state is involved as they say a ‘ripped’ detonator stopped device going off

A catastrophe with multiple casualties was possibly only narrowly averted by the discovery of a drone carrying explosives at Leipzig airport, German officials said, as they examined whether a foreign state could be behind the plot.

One of the Ukrainian aircrafts next to where the bomb drone was found was loaded with military ammunition, according to a classified police report quoted by the public broadcasters WDR and NDR and the Süddeutsche newspaper.

Stella Gollovena accused of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm after assaults in central London

A 47-year-old woman has been charged after four men were stabbed in central London.

Stella Gollovena, of no fixed address, was charged with four counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and one count of possession of an offensive weapon in a public place, the Metropolitan police said.

Christopher Wright, 73, who shot Richard Dyson and dismembered his remains, given 35-year minimum term

A man who killed his lodger and concealed his dismembered body in a barrel filled with concrete for more than five years has been jailed for a minimum of 35 years.

Christopher Wright, a 73-year-old farmer from South Yorkshire, was convicted in July in Sheffield crown court of murdering Richard Dyson, 55, in 2019. Dyson had been living in his car on Wright’s farm in Hoyland and had been doing jobs for the then 67-year-old when the pair had a falling out.

A spokesperson for the Greens says figures had ‘quadrupled’ in the last year since Polanski became leader

A Reform government will introduce national licensing for vape shops, which Zia Yusuf says will see a decrease of 70% in the businesses on British high streets.

“We will also end financial disincentive,” he says. Reform will establish a central prosecution fund for local authorities to pursue businesses employing illegal workers.

Corporate CEOs have been making a fortune by hiring illegal workers and undermining British youngsters.

Reform will jail them and stop illegal working for good - we will stand up for British workers.

• European body says Fifa statement ‘changes nothing’

• ‘Conditions not met’ to call off boycott of competitions

Uefa has doubled down on its threat to boycott Fifa-run competitions and reiterated its loss of confidence in Gianni Infantino’s presidency.

European football’s governing body said Fifa’s public backing of Infantino on Wednesday night “changes nothing” and explained it had not been provided with certainty that repeats of the past nine days’ crisis will not occur. Last week Uefa’s 55 member associations agreed to boycott Fifa tournaments if Infantino did not withdraw his privately-funded Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) and, although the scheme was scrapped last Friday, it said the terms necessary to avert the boycott have not been met.

Study of accidents in England and Wales shows e-scooter riders three times more likely to suffer traumatic brain injury than bikers

Electric scooter riders are three times more likely to suffer traumatic brain injuries than motorcyclists, according to an analysis of accidents in England and Wales – which found women were particularly at risk of serious harm.

Brain injuries accounted for more than a third of adult injuries on e-scooters, but riders also sustained more internal organ and blood vessel damage than did motorcyclists or pedal cyclists, the study found.

Brandon Relph, who founded first company at 13, joins strategy team in ‘much-needed step’ for the broadcaster

A 26-year-old business prodigy and self-styled gen Z whisperer has been drafted in by the BBC, as it battles to reach young audiences increasingly choosing content creators on YouTube and TikTok over traditional broadcasters.

Brandon Relph, who founded his first company aged 13, and has been praised by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, has joined the BBC’s strategy team to help counter the existential threat of falling audiences among young people.

Madeleine Finlay is joined by Ian Sample, Guardian science editor, to discuss three eye-catching science stories including an investigation that has identified four distinct types of thinker. Also on the agenda is the unprecedented cyclosporiasis outbreak in the US which has now been linked to two fatalities, and the funding cuts that threaten the iconic Jodrell Bank world heritage site, home to the Lovell telescope

Washington-Rabat ties under scrutiny as questions swirl over what led to deadly influx into tiny Spanish territory

The cosy relationship between Washington and Rabat has long been flaunted by both sides, from Morocco’s announcement this year that it would be the first African state to join Donald Trump’s Board of Peace to the congratulatory message recently sent by Trump to mark King Mohammed VI’s 27 years in power.

The latest example landed this week. As Spain grappled with the aftermath of the sudden influx – and swift return – of more than 70,000 people into Ceuta, Morocco’s monarch confirmed he had named a $1bn highway flanking the disputed territory of Western Sahara after Trump.

Their parents were Womack & Womack, Uncle Bobby was a superstar and so was their grandfather, Sam Cooke. The trio explain how, after driving Ubers and being told soul was dead, they joined the family business

Backstage at a London festival, on a Sunday afternoon, the Womack Sisters are assembling themselves on a sofa, still clad in the clothes they were wearing on stage a few minutes ago. They look very stylish in their black dresses, tights and high heels, but they are not, it has to be said, dressed appropriately for the weather, which is sweltering. “You don’t feel anything on stage,” says Zeimani with a shrug. “You just feel amazing, like you’re floating.”

“And we’re committed,” nods her sister BG. “You know, we were taught by professionals.”

The alt-rock veteran answers your questions on Buddhist time travel techniques, duetting with Michael Stipe, and her autobiographical new album

Do you think Throwing Muses would have sounded different were it not for your bicycle accident? [Hersh was struck by a car when she was 16, resulting in a concussion that changed the way she heard sound.] Bhafc99
Yes. I think people might have liked us more, but we would have been more forgettable. Our songs were not very marketable. They came from a place of such utter honesty that it was difficult for us to become a band with an image, ambition or direction, which plays well on a human level, but not on a corporate one. Some people hate our music; they can’t deal with it because it’s triggering [emotionally], which I get.

I was compelled to make music after cracking my skull open and then my life was very upsetting. But at the same time, I had real listeners. If you happen to come across a song that resonates with you, then it’s yours – you can ignore the musician who played it, because they were just the messenger.

The palm-sized greengrocer is bright, loud and abundant, and has long been a collectible item for Australian children

• Revealed: the top 10 invertebrates of the year

Before marbles, stamps and trading cards, there were cicadas.

There are thousands of cicada species globally, but for Australian children the craze centres on one particularly collectible item: the greengrocer.

After his fall from grace, media’s former enfant terrible is now sober and helping others with his addiction recovery newsletter and podcast, The Small Bow

Every other Tuesday, AJ Daulerio wakes up at 5.30am and meditates for five to 20 minutes before beginning his multistep daily journaling protocol: reading a selection from a poetry anthology, then a passage from one of his daily wisdom readers (his go-to is a heavily annotated copy of Leo Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom); writing his Fear of the Day and gratitude list, then sharing his spiritual takeaway in a note to his three kids.

After a banana and coffee, Daulerio trains Brazilian jiujitsu before hitting a 9.45am meditation at Besant Lodge – a community center just below the Hollywood sign that once served as a meeting place for mid-century mystics – immediately followed by him leading a recovery meeting of his own through Zoom.

A retrospective at the Locarno film festival looks back at the era of Huac’s domination of US culture, uncovering some sobering lessons for now

In September 2025, Disney and ABC announced that Jimmy Kimmel and his late-night talkshow would be taken off the air indefinitely, after a conservative backlash against the host’s comments about the murder of far-right influencer Charlie Kirk. President Donald Trump personally championed the decision, calling it “great news for America”. He further called for other programmes critical of his administration to be removed. Though Kimmel’s suspension was reversed within a week, many commentators viewed this concerning development not as a sudden escalation of crisis, but a continuation of Hollywood’s habitual acquiescence to authoritarian pressure.

In a guest essay for the New York Times, journalist and Trump biopic] The Apprentice screenwriter Gabriel Sherman explicitly linked Kimmel’s cancellation to the Hollywood blacklist of the 1940s and 1950s, during which hundreds of film workers were accused of communist sympathies and unpatriotic subversion, barred from practising their craft, some forced into exile. “Each time, studios claimed they had no choice,” writes Sherman. “Each time, they did – and they made it.”

With less than a third of cycling journeys taken by women, Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, is installing bike lanes, teaching cycling and making sure ‘stereotypes are left behind’

Eliana González has a busy morning ahead of her, dropping off her son at school and picking up groceries. Her trusted vehicle to get around in Bogotá is a colourful cargo bike, adapted to carry her two children and occasionally her dog.

“For me, my cargo bike is a way to carry my children safely and comfortably without polluting the environment,” she says.

Restaurant critic and award-winning author Jimi Famurewa meets broth obsessives in unlikely parts of Britain who fell in with the ancient ramen tradition - and found a hungry audience for their new noodle bowls.

The Cambridge academic has rightly now resigned. But that won’t end the targeting of senior black figures or the lazy way institutions promote faux equality

‘To be honest with you, I thought you’d just believe me.” That was the breathtaking response of Prof Jason Arday when the Guardian interrogated the details he provided of an alleged racist campaign of intimidation against him, which involved a severed pig’s head, a masked man wielding a knife and bullets in the post. Arday had been unable to provide evidence, and when the Guardian contacted the relevant parties, including a south London butcher and the police, his claims were either refuted or could not be verified.

Arday, whose appointment as professor of sociology of education at Cambridge became a widely lauded moment in the aftermath of Black Lives Matter, has found himself in the eye of the storm. Allegations of extensive plagiarism in his doctoral thesis, completed at Liverpool John Moores University, recently made their way from the Substack of self-described “race realist” academic Nathan Cofnas into the national press. The defence of Arday had rested on the fact that an investigation had already been conducted, and cleared him of plagiarism. And yet the case has taken on a life of its own.

No, Amazon, I do not want to buy another version of the thing I just bought, or any other random object I don’t recognise or understand

We live, as I’m sure someone’s chief growth officer has recently boasted on an earnings call, in a golden age for data capture. Jeff Bezos knows what I buy, read and watch; Mark Zuckerberg will be aware that I recently sold a car transport box for a medium-sized dog. I’ve been ruthlessly conditioned into clicking Accept All Cookies every time I want to check how much cumin my favourite chilli needs, and I simply accept that my washing machine is probably spying on me.

All of which raises the obvious question: with all of these terabytes of personal information available, why can’t advertisers try to sell me something I might actually like? Every time I swipe open my Kindle, for instance, I dismiss an advert for a bestselling trilogy called something like Ruthless Faerie Werewolves or Evil Mafia Hunk, even though I have never once – in my life – read a book where the main character could be described as a “morally grey shadow daddy”. I stopped watching Stranger Things after one season, and yet Netflix, which should know this better than anyone, has suggested the stage-play version to me so many times that I can recite its ad from memory. Amazon seems to have given up on predicting my needs and advertises the same one-off purchases that I’ve just bought, while Reddit and X want me to buy software products that I genuinely don’t understand.

If you have to Google an internet or Gen Z/alpha slang term, you absolutely shouldn’t be using it. I’m accepting this milestone with quiet dignity

I’ve recently reached an important adult milestone in my life. Getting married? No. Having a baby? No. Buying a house? Don’t be ridiculous, I’m a writer in Australia. This milestone was small, but important: I finally had to Google a Gen Z slang term.

I know this may be something many of you have passed already, along with your houses and babies, but it’s only recently started looming on the horizon for me. I am someone who has been online for a long time. It’s been necessary for my career, but it’s also my favourite hobby: going on the internet.

Projects like London’s Backyard Biennial East are collective endeavours aiming to reach people who feel excluded by art galleries

In 2018, on the outside wall surrounding the entrance of the National Theatre of Bangladesh, I first encountered a work by the artist Reetu Sattar. A group of musicians were perched on construction scaffolding, all dressed in white and playing a single note on the harmonium – an instrument used in Bengali classical music. Together, they produced a low hum that seemed to vibrate through everything around me. The work was called Lost Tune.

I came across the work at a time when I desperately wanted to learn a musical instrument, but music was not allowed in my house. A growing sentiment in many Bangladeshi Muslim households held that music was prohibited in Islam, despite our long histories of musical traditions. It felt as though everything we knew of the past had been locked away inside the Jadu Ghor, the “magic house” (the Bangla words for museum), quietly collecting dust.

The left is increasingly winning within the Democratic party. But it still needs to prove that it can build general-election coalitions capable of beating Republicans

The ideological struggle within the Democratic party continued on Tuesday night with primaries in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Virginia and Washington. The results showed an increasingly intense conflict within the party, with high Democratic primary turnout and bruising ideological battles up and down the ballot.

The Democratic electorate is shifting, becoming more progressive and more willing to challenge party leadership, but not as quickly or uniformly as many assumed.

Long days with nothing to do is the whole point of summer. Turning it into a ‘making memories’ exercise is creepy and controlling

There are a great many things to dislike about modern parenting trends – take your pick from helicopter to snowplow to Fafo – but the least appealing, perhaps, is the temptation present in all of them to treat raising a child like an extended school project.

The latest addition is something called 18 summers, in which clingy parents count down the school holidays they have left with their children before they leave home, pre-grieving the end as they go. There is no quicker way to ruin something than by filtering it through an internet trend, but this one is particularly insidious: an invitation to inject weird notes of anxiety into what might otherwise be an unstudied thing.

A row over a local council candidate reveals a deeper problem with the Tory leader’s diagnosis of her party’s electoral predicament

Kemi Badenoch has been clear about the qualifying criteria for prospective Conservative MPs. They must be “serious people who understand common sense,” she has said. The situation in local government is different, as demonstrated by Mrs Badenoch’s ill-judged support for a former neo-Nazi, selected to stand as a councillor in Somerset next year.

Joshua Bonehill-Paine has convictions for racially aggravated harassment of a Jewish Labour MP and assaulting a police officer among other offences. On Wednesday, as pressure grew on the party leader to repudiate him, he withdrew his candidacy.

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.

A wave of films dealing with the second world war is captivating a nation facing major contemporary challenges

For weeks now, anglophone cinephiles have been focusing their attention on the virtues and vices of Christopher Nolan’s $250m adaptation of The Odyssey. Across the Channel, however, Homer’s epic tale of a flawed Greek hero has been facing stiff domestic competition. A two-part biopic of General Charles de Gaulle, concentrating on his struggles to liberate France during the second world war, has been the word-of-mouth box office hit of the French summer.

It may be that five hours’ worth of De Gaulle attracted some punters seeking air-conditioned sanctuary from the heatwaves. But there have been rave reviews both from critics and audiences, and a notable upsurge of interest among the young. The success of the films has already had a cultural knock-on effect, boosting the number of visitors, for example, to the Museum of the Liberation of Paris.

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

Readers respond to an article by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett in which she argues that Labour should abolish fines for parents taking their children on holiday during term time

I am in support of Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett’s suggestion that we should abolish fines for holidays in school term time (I’m all for the nanny state – but we should abolish fines for holidays in term time, 2 August). She makes all the correct and logical arguments, to which I would add one more. One of the justifications for the fines is that children miss out on valuable learning, but this is simply not the case as teachers turn to movies, games and other distractions in those last weeks of term.

There is very little curriculum learning happening in those periods before the main school holidays. And from what my children describe to me, over the years this “downing of tools” seems to be happening earlier each year. The argument that taking a child out of school a week before the end of term means they miss valuable learning is, frankly, laughable.
Nick Johnson
Dorset

Responding to an editorial, Scott Hunter writes that the benefits of being a devolved authority have not yet arrived in Tees Valley, while John Hall calls for constitutional reform. Plus letters from Richard Dowling and Miland Joshi

Devolution has become the flavour of the month (The Guardian view on England’s centralised state: Andy Burnham must unbundle it, 31 July). The case is well argued and the need for such reform fits neatly into the situation we find in the Tees Valley – chronic underinvestment, lack of economic growth, depopulation, and so on.

But the Tees Valley has had a devolved authority for 10 years and the benefits of devolution have not landed. The Tees Valley authority was issued a best value notice in April 2025, though there’s nothing to show for it.

Jimmy Cricket | Creative science | Clacton vote | Humanists and humanity | Short showers

I remember fondly Jimmy Cricket (No smut, no swearing, wrong-feet wellies and a silly hat: the gentle comedy world of Jimmy Cricket, 4 August) taking over the intercom from the cabin crew who had just announced our flight to Manchester would be delayed. Groans from the passengers quickly gave way to laughter as Jimmy read a letter from the mammy in Ireland and the next hour passed so enjoyably that when the pilot announced take off, disappointment could be heard.
Martin Brayford
Altrincham, Cheshire

• Goodness me, Mick Foster (Letters, 3 August)! Don’t you know that “creativity” is the sole prerogative of the arts? As someone who has recently lived through Bradford City of Culture 2025, I have also learned that a “creative” is someone who paints or is a poet. No way can scientists be allowed in. What next? Engineers?
Les Brook
Saltaire, West Yorkshire

We are trying to keep a pre‑industrial flora alive in a post‑industrial climate, writes Richard Eltringham

Your report (Half of England officially in ‘exceptionally serious’ drought, 29 July) makes me think that perhaps it’s time to admit what horticulturists have whispered for years: the native‑plants‑only doctrine has had its day. We can keep insisting that every garden, park and verge must resemble a 1790s botanical inventory, or we can face the obvious – the climate those plants evolved for no longer exists.

We are trying to keep a pre‑industrial flora alive in a post‑industrial climate. Oak saplings are crisping, beech woods are browning, and “rewilded” meadows are going from hopeful to tinderbox in a single heatwave. Meanwhile, drought‑tolerant non‑natives – Mediterranean shrubs, prairie perennials, desert grasses – sit ready to do the job: hold soil, feed pollinators, stay green, stay alive.

Updates from the hilly 153.4km stage of the Tour
Stage five report | Follow us on Instagram | Mail Luke

138km to go: Nelson is caught. But two of her teammates – Eleonora Ciabocco and Lene Robyn Clay – have been dropped. Mia Griffin, also of Picnic-PostNL, has been dropped too! Did they neglect to have their Weetabix this morning, or did Nelson steal it all at the Picnic-PostNL team hotel?

139km to go: Josie Nelson (Picnic-PostNL) – who hails from Lichfield in Staffordshire – has attacked solo approaching the first climb.

David Owori, who played for the national team, died in hospital after he tried to stop robbers taking his phone

The Ugandan football community is in mourning after the death of a player who was fatally injured during a robbery in the capital, Kampala, on Tuesday night.

David Owori, who captained Sports Club Villa, a Uganda Premier League club, and represented the national team, was attacked after resisting an attempt to steal his mobile phone and other belongings.

• Bid team reach agreement with West Ham to use stadium

• Host city for event to be announced in September

London has submitted its bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships after reaching an agreement with West Ham to allow it to host the event in September.

World Athletics is yet to announce the other candidate cities, but Rome, Munich and Nairobi have also submitted applications for 2029.

• Real Madrid unable to reach deal with Spain captain

• Manchester City will allow midfielder to go for £60m

Barcelona are considering whether to challenge Real Madrid’s attempt to sign Rodri from Manchester City, but have been frustrated in their efforts to persuade Atlético Madrid to sell Julián Alvarez.

While City have not given up hope that Spain’s World Cup-winning captain will sign a new contract after he entered the final year of his deal, they are thought to be willing to allow him to leave for about £60m. Despite weeks of talks with Rodri and his representatives, Real have yet to reach an agreement and Barcelona are hoping to take advantage.

A crop of young players emerges every season in the Premier League. Who will make the grade this year?

By Opta Analyst

Dowman is old news by now, so we’re going to look at someone four months older than him. Much like the fish of the same name, Salmon has risen quickly. The defender became the fourth-youngest player to represent Arsenal last season when he came off the bench against Club Brugge in the Champions League in December at the age of just 16 years and 102 days.

• Club reveal salary to Turkish stock exchange

• Striker will receive 20% from products sold in his name

Mohamed Salah has signed a two-year deal with Trabzonspor and the Egypt forward will receive €17m (£14.5m) a season.

The ⁠announcement to ‌the Turkish stock ‌exchange came ​as Trabzonspor fans prepared to head to the club’s stadium for a ceremony to mark the 34-year-old’s former Liverpool player’s signing on a free transfer the day after ⁠Salah arrived in Istanbul in the team’s kit.

The throwback series rekindles memories of the past, but the focus is very much on realities of the modern game

Just in case you were unaware that the forthcoming series between South Africa and New Zealand, dubbed Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry (RGR), is a “tour like no other”, the Springboks have just unveiled a jersey to prove it. “A jersey like no other” to be worn four times and then consigned to history. Meanwhile, RGR kicks off amid a looming legal battle in South Africa over the series’ commercial identity and the unauthorised use of its branding. And you thought sporting romance was dead.

Enough of the cynicism though. The series promises to be a blockbuster. It is a throwback, with New Zealand’s men facing four matches against provincial sides, starting with the Stormers in Cape Town on Friday, as well as four Tests against the Springboks. The countries’ women’s sides also face each other in a one-off Test. The series has further allure in just how rare tours such as this are these days. Add in the fact that the rugby calendar is pretty much barren at the moment and a series between the two best sides on the planet is enough to quicken the pulse.

Figure raises questions about deal with France despite UK ministers insisting repeat arrivals will be removed

Almost 50 asylum seekers deported using the “one in one out” scheme have been recorded as returning to the UK a second time, the Guardian has learned.

In addition to the returnees detained by the Home Office, an unknown number are believed to have arrived in the UK undetected.

Anthony Fauci’s lawyer condemned the vote from the Republican-controlled committee as a ‘crude political stunt’

• US politics live – latest updates

A Republican-controlled US Senate committee voted to hold Dr Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress after the veteran public health official repeatedly pleaded the fifth amendment to parry a hostile inquisition into his stewardship of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Fauci, the former director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Niaid), who led the agency for 38 years before retiring in 2022, gave the same response to dozens of questions while refusing to give clarifying answers during a tense hearing last week, citing his constitutional protections.

Environment Agency assessments find just 14.3% of country’s surface waters in good ecological status

Every single English water body is polluted with toxic chemicals, new government data shows, while just 14.3% of surface waters achieved good ecological status.

Each of the country’s rivers, lakes and estuaries was assessed by the Environment Agency as part of a six-yearly evaluation of England’s water quality. The EA checked for a range of toxic chemicals, from Pfas – or “forever chemicals” – to microplastics. Waters were also checked against a range of standards covering wildlife, water quality and physical habitat.

Crown court rules architecture firm not responsible for fatal incident but project managers and engineers found guilty of safety breaches

The architecture firm founded by Norman Foster has been cleared over the death of a man killed by a window that fell 90 metres from a newly constructed London penthouse.

Foster + Partners, the practice behind some of the world’s most recognisable buildings such as the Gherkin and revamps of the British Museum and Germany’s Reichstag, were not held to be responsible for the death of Mick Ferris, a 53-year-old coach driver, in 2018.

Fate of historic bicycle name in hands of administrators after Netherlands-based Accell Group fails to find buyer

The bicycle company that owns the historic Raleigh brand has started insolvency proceedings after failing to find a buyer.

The Netherlands-based Accell Group said on Wednesday it had called in administrators after it failed to find a viable solution to continue its operations in their current form.

As another summer of extreme heat rumbles on, warnings about excess deaths, ageing infrastructure and potential food shortages are growing louder. So how well prepared is the UK to cope, both now and in the years ahead? Jessica Elgot and Alexandra Topping examine why politicians have been so slow to act.

Plus, Kemi Badenoch has distanced herself from the former neo-Nazi turned Tory council candidate Joshua Bonehill-Paine, only to offer him him an advisory role instead. What was she thinking?

You can read Jessica Elgot’s interview with the health secretary on heatwaves here

You can read about Kemi Badenoch’s action on Joshua Bonehill-Paine here

Please keep sending your comments and questions to politicsweeklyuk@theguardian.com

Follow and subscribe to the Politics Weekly YouTube channel here

Health secretary says global heating means UK hospitals and GPs will have to prepare for summer as well as winter peaks of demand

• Adapting to global heating: which UK public services are struggling in hot weather?

The NHS has been warned to prepare for potential annual summer crises caused by extreme heat with the same pressures as winter, as heatwaves caused by the climate crisis become routine in the UK.

The health secretary, Yvette Cooper, said NHS staff were feeling A&E pressures that would normally be expected only during flu season – and said the government would use major investment in NHS infrastructure to tackle the health service’s resilience to high summer temperatures.

Current blazes roaring across country more than twice as likely to occur because of fossil fuel-driven global heating

The human-driven climate crisis made the conditions that led to blazes roaring across Canada, which have caused toxic smoke to spew throughout the country and into the US, twice as likely to occur, a new analysis has found.

Heightened global temperatures, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, amplified the risk of fire-prone weather in Ontario and the Northwest Territories, scientists found. These provinces have been racked by fires this summer, causing towns to be evacuated and unhealthy smoke to unfurl across multiple cities in North America.

Fires have destroyed about 850 buildings and forced about 67,000 people to evacuate since they erupted last weekend

Firefighters have taken advantage of cooler weather to begin getting a handle on wildfires that have displaced tens of thousands of people around Washington state’s second-largest city, but hotter, drier and breezier days lie ahead.

Officials reported on Wednesday that firefighters had established containment lines around the perimeters of all three fires affecting Spokane and that they were focused on reinforcing those lines. Temperatures were expected to climb from the 80sF the past two days into the upper 90sF (36C), with less humidity, late this week.

George Holmes was suspended in 2025 over allegations involving financial mismanagement and other misconduct

The University of Greater Manchester’s embattled vice-chancellor has had his contract terminated by the university’s governing body, ending a period of uncertainty over the university’s leadership.

Sir George Holmes, who had led the university for two decades, was initially suspended last year over allegations involving financial mismanagement and other misconduct.

Scheme aiming to stop people turning to terrorism has 39% overall rise in referrals in year to September 2025

A record number of people have been referred to the government’s anti-terror programme in England and Wales, with a 39% rise over the last year, including a 20% rise in referrals for extreme rightwing ideology, according to official data released on Thursday.

A total of 10,293 referrals – up from 7,408 – were made to the Prevent programme in the year to September 2025, which is the highest number since records began 11 years ago.

Lowe questioned on BBC about definition in report for hard-right party that both parents need to be born in UK

Rupert Lowe, the leader of Restore Britain, refused to say he believes King Charles can be classified as a “white Briton” in an extraordinary interview on the BBC’s Today programme.

Questioning Lowe, the MP for Great Yarmouth, over his claims that “white Britons will become a minority by 2063”, the presenter, Nick Robinson, noted that the forecast Lowe referred to defined a “white Briton” as someone whose parents were both born in the UK.

GMB says that as a top-rated ethical company, UK’s largest energy firm should welcome involvement of unions

Workers are pushing for union recognition at the UK’s largest energy company, Octopus Energy, known as a progressive organisation with a focus on renewable energy.

The GMB union is planning to submit a formal proposal for voluntary recognition at the London-based company and says Octopus, as a top rated ethical business, should welcome the involvement of trade unions.

Dhaka accuses India of giving platform to a ‘convicted genocider’ by allowing Sheikh Hasina to address journalists

Bangladesh has lashed out at India for allowing the ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina to address journalists in New Delhi, plunging already strained bilateral relations to a fresh low.

Dhaka accused India of giving a platform to a fugitive it labelled a “convicted genocider” and of undermining efforts to repair ties, after Hasina vowed to return to Bangladesh in December despite facing a death sentence on charges of “crimes against humanity”.

President hails ‘successful’ rescue as country battles endemic kidnapping for ransom and insecurity worsens

Nigerian security forces have rescued more than 300 abducted people in what the president, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, hailed as the largest single-day hostage recovery in the country’s history.

The release was announced on Wednesday after a joint operation, conducted by the military, police and counter-terrorism units, freed victims held captive in the dense forests of the Kainji Lake national park in the north-central region.

First runner-up, Myla Hadley, will represent the state at the Miss USA pageant after Brittany Boltinhouse’s removal

A pageant queen recently crowned Miss North Carolina USA has been stripped of her title after a string of alleged racist posts resurfaced.

Brittany Boltinhouse, 27, was formally dethroned on Wednesday by pageant organizers A Blaize Productions after what it said was “a thorough review of recently surfaced information”.

Government introduces several measures, including monitoring of computers, for pupils aged 16 to 19

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Danish teenagers will have to make an oral defence of their written essays to combat AI cheating, the government has announced.

Pupils aged 16 to 19 at upper secondary school (known in Denmark as gymnasiet) will also be encouraged to do written assignments at school under controlled conditions, including monitoring of their computer screens, rather than at home.

Culture secretary Lisa Nandy says she will not intervene in £85bn deal after securing guarantees on Channel 5

The UK culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, has said she will not intervene in Paramount’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, removing one of the remaining obstacles to the blockbuster deal.

However, Paramount has made significant concessions to secure the UK government’s backing for the $110bn (£85bn) takeover, which will create a global media powerhouse and effectively bolster the influence of Paramount’s CEO, David Ellison.

Airline says it has accepted offer from Apollo Global Management after rival bidder Castlelake walks away

EasyJet has formally agreed to a £5.7bn takeover from US private equity firm Apollo Global Management.

The airline announced it had accepted a firm offer on Thursday after a rival bidder, Castlelake, said it would no longer pursue its own attempted acquisition.

Meta says safeguards are in place to prevent surreptitious filming, but some UK venues now prohibit them from being worn at all

When Meta used superstar Kylie Jenner to promote its sleek new line of “spy glasses”, the social media company hoped the devices would reach the same broad acceptance that tablets and smartwatches have found before them.

But those plans have hit a snag in the UK, where venues from elite restaurants to popular pub chains have banned the £359 glasses in order to preserve the privacy of customers and staff.

New CEO Dave Lewis lifts investors’ spirits by promising strategic overhaul worthy of his nickname ‘Drastic Dave’

Diageo’s new chief executive has unveiled plans to double Guinness production while hacking back a “significant” proportion of its 30,000-strong workforce, in a strategic overhaul worthy of his nickname, “Drastic Dave” Lewis.

Shares in Diageo bounced on Thursday, as the former Tesco boss faced down the first big test of his first half-year in the job, after being parachuted in last November to revive the flagging fortunes of the UK-based drinks company.

The TikTok influencer is now a TV star. But this independent, opinionated woman still lives with her mother, on the Clacton council estate where she grew up. Will she ever leave? And how does she feel about Mum’s curfew?

Since eyes are turned to Clacton-on-Sea and a certain candidate facing questions about a £5m “gift” and a byelection battle with a man dressed as a bin, let’s take a look across the town at a young woman in a pink house and be reminded of some values – generosity, decency – that appear absent from much of public life.

Trewley Precious Temple, who became well known on TikTok, where she has 1m followers, is the star of the Channel 4 show Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives and is fast becoming a phenomenon. The show features her mum, Tina, her sisters Honey, Pearl and Ruby-Anne and her brother Jamie; they’re like the Kardashians, says Temple in every episode’s intro, if the humourless US reality TV family were “fat and broke and on benefits”. What comes across most strongly is the family’s love and big-heartedness, not just for each other, but for their wider community, too.

Murphy is back on form with this gorgeously curated, shot and scored adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s novel – about a serial killer stalking privileged LA teenagers

The world can finally begin to hope again. It looks as though Ryan Murphy has pulled out of his dive and is beginning to find his glorious groove again. The uber-showrunner reached a nadir last year with All’s Fair, a legal drama that was so bad it was existentially awful, garnering a number of rare, zero-star reviews (including mine) and which has duly been commissioned for a second series.

But after All’s Fair came The Beauty. Which was chaotic and underdeveloped but fun. And then there was Love Story, about the short lives and love of JFK Jr and Carolyn Bessette, which was pitch-perfect, properly good trash. And now there is The Shards, Murphy’s adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis’s 80s-set metafictional/autobiographical novel of the same name. I have not read the book. An enfant terrible’s reminiscences are too often simply terrible and I was exhausted by the very idea. But a TV version? Run through the Murphytron? That sounds like a very good idea – and so it has proved. Theirs is a marriage made in pop-culture heaven.

The Shards is on Disney+

Waititi’s eccentric drama sends the late actor into the New Zealand wilderness with his young charge, angry authorities in hot pursuit

The recent sad loss of Sam Neill is a great opportunity to revisit one of his greatest roles, in this tremendous family film from 2016, a goofy mix of Butch and Sundance and Chaplin’s The Kid. It’s arguably the masterpiece of its writer-director Taika Waititi, who adapted the 1986 bestseller Wild Pork and Watercress by New Zealand author Barry Crump, bringing his distinctive irony, comedy and quirk (Waititi has a droll cameo as a wacky vicar), but wisely lets the story and performances do the real work, so the movie continues to win the hearts of audiences.

Neill plays Hector, a grouchy old buzzard who works on a farm on New Zealand’s North Island just below the vast forested wilderness of the breathtakingly beautiful Te Urewera. The property is owned by his big-hearted wife Bella (Rima Te Wiata) who works as a foster parent, regularly taking in troubled kids, and Hector is under no illusions that she married him in the same charitable spirit. But glum, taciturn Hector is not best pleased when Bella takes in the toughest and most recalcitrant teen the state authorities have ever dealt with. This is Ricky, played by Maori actor Julian Dennison, and Rachel House gives an amusing performance as Paula, the child welfare worker who is on Ricky’s case.

Preceding a long-awaited sequel, Griffin Dunne’s supernatural suburban romance gets a big-screen rerelease. With its romcom quirk, buttery cinematography and stabs of black comedy, it remains a zany gem

With a sequel shortly to make an appearance – Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock, Stockard Channing and Dianne Wiest (but not Evan Rachel Wood) all reprising their roles – the original Practical Magic from 1998 is now getting a rerelease. This is Griffin Dunne’s smalltown supernatural goof-fest, adapted from a bestseller by Alice Hoffman; the sequel is based on her own follow-up, The Book of Magic. A zanier adventure in occult romance can hardly be imagined, and the elements of grown up noir violence only make it weirder – it is as if The Witches of Eastwick took on something of Thelma & Louise with a decaffeinated David Lynch. Meanwhile, cinematographer Andrew Dunn bathes the daytime scenes in a golden, buttery light.

In a suburban American anytown, buttoned-up residents and frowning soccer moms are disapprovingly obsessed with the fact that the local Owens family womenfolk are witches. There is an amusing “prelude” scene showing a Salem-style public hanging of one of their ancestors; a stark stab of black comedy. In the present day, the Owens sisters Sally and Gillian, played by Bullock and Kidman, are intensely aware of their magical inheritance, as personified by naughty maiden aunts Frances and Bridget, played by Channing and Wiest.

The return of the country’s most incompetent police force fails to bring enough laughs or any real justification for its existence

Super Troopers occupies a sacred corner of the millennial DVD shelf, a goofy rebuttal to the endless procession of just-the-facts-ma’am TV cops that reimagined America’s most mythologized authority figures as incompetent brats.

The original is a testament to Y2K friendship – the college comedy troupe Broken Lizard, after losing out on an MTV show to The State, pooled their money to make a scrappy indie that became a cult classic. It had Brian Cox gleefully playing against his capital-A Actor persona (a novelty for American audiences in 2001) and offering a glimpse of the Logan Roy fury he would later perfect on Succession, only with lines such as “I’ll believe ya when me shit turns purple and smells like rainbow sherbet.” After generating more than $60m in post-release sales on a reported $3m budget, a film franchise was born.

The comedian and broadcaster narrates the heartfelt and at times self-lacerating account of his relationship with alcohol

A memoir chronicling the comic and broadcaster John Robins’s life in alcohol and his subsequent path to sobriety, Thirst is structured around the drinks that changed his life. There’s the bottle of Jacob’s Creek wine left out on a kitchen worktop which he helped himself to at the age of seven, secreting it into his orange juice, and the beer given to him at scout camp which he drank alone. There’s also his stomach-churning recreation, while on a comedy tour of Australia, of the white russians drunk by the Dude in The Big Lebowski using a gallon of milk, a litre of vodka and a bottle of Kahlua.

As an adult, Robins, who is best known for his shows on Radio X and on BBC5 Live, romanticised pubs, which he saw as places of peacefulness and refuge. He even co-hosted the podcast The Moon Under Water where he invited guests to describe their ideal pub. Robins reveals that what kept him drinking for so long was the lie that he was in control. That he could, on occasion, get through a Dry January convinced him he couldn’t be an addict, although he got a wakeup call when a GP told him to “sort your fucking life out”.

Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In is longest-running No 1 single in UK chart history, and yet it seems to have passed many people by

It’s the biggest song in the UK, but have you ever heard it? That was the question many were asking this week, after Sam Fender and Olivia Dean’s Rein Me In became the longest-running No 1 single in UK chart history, spending an unprecedented 19 weeks at the top.

The British Phonographic Industry said the song had resonated with listeners “in such a profound way”, while Fender thanked Dean and fans “for making this song the juggernaut that it is”.

Unlike their Disney peers, the toothesome trio didn’t pivot to being sexy – and they’re now at their stadium-filling peak. Fans and collaborators explain their unique, cheesy appeal

The Jonas Brothers appeared in the mid-00s in a blaze of smiles, dressed in shirts, suspenders and ties, singing sappy love songs that won the hearts of girls who quickly became obsessed with this Disney-signed band. Many assumed the fraternal trio would fade away, overtaken by whatever new act replaced them in the whims of teenagers. Yet this week marks 20 years since the release of their debut album, It’s About Time, and the toothsome threesome are bigger than ever.

Kevin, Joe and Nick Jonas started out with danger-free pop-punk, evolving into a kind of broad-brush feelgood pop. Their true breakthrough was in 2008 with US No 5 hit Burnin’ Up, teeing up three back-to-back US No 1 albums as they became the youngest group to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone. The usual dreaded “creative differences” precipitated a six-year hiatus and the pursuit of solo careers and acting. But they reformed in 2019 in spectacular style, getting their first US No 1 hit with Sucker, and by last year they had the clout to sell out the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where the World Cup final was later hosted.

Elon Musk may be able to buy a trip to Mars, but when the super wealthy pay to be conductors – as Canadian entrepreneur Mandle Cheung is doing – it makes a mockery of a meritocracy in classical music

There are some pretty gigantic non-negotiables for an orchestral musician. You have to be able to perform the right notes in the right order, with a combination of technical expertise, artistry, skill and understanding that demands years, decades and lifetimes of devotion.

But there is one figure on the orchestral concert platform who is both the most important person in the room – at least according to classical music’s hierarchies – yet who makes no sound, and whose job looks the simplest of all: the conductor, waving their arms about in time with the music and gurning at the players.

The life of the hugely influential ‘people’s historian’ is explored in a wide-ranging new book that brings in everything from wars to civil rights to Matt Damon

Matt Damon may play a great hero in The Odyssey, but one of the star’s own heroes is also set for his time in the spotlight. In Massachusetts in the 1970s and 80s, Damon grew up close to Howard Zinn, now the subject of The People’s Historian, a biography by Dave Zirin.

“Frankly,” Zirin said, “the fact that he’s Matt Damon and oh by the way is now in the biggest movie perhaps since Titanic, it makes it a nice little bauble for the book that I got to interview him.

A young woman is haunted by her childhood in this forcefully imaginative and unapologetically bleak novel from the author of Fire Rush

The world of Sky City never quite settles beneath your feet. The action of Jacqueline Crooks’s second novel unfolds in a recognisable 1990s London, yet everything seems subtly untethered from reality: a council estate suspended above the city, voices drifting in and out through pirate radio, ghosts walking beside the living. The narrative floats just above the surface of the everyday, a world where trauma transforms the mundane into something uncanny.

We first meet protagonist Jaycee as a child, trapped in a west London housing estate she calls the Cyborg House. Her stepfather subjects her to horrific sexual abuse while her mother turns a blind eye, exercising her own brand of cruelty. Families, Jaycee comes to believe, are “dangerous places … like nests of poisonous spiders, huddled in dark, undisturbed corners, their venom, a single drop enough to rot the body inside out”. Eventually taken into care, she finds an unlikely lifeline in Ella-G, another damaged girl whose exuberance masks wounds as profound as Jaycee’s own; both feel “on the outside of the world”. The care home turns out to be similarly brutal, and the pair survive together, forging a friendship that becomes the novel’s emotional anchor.

An Indian mountaineer follows in the footsteps of explorers and conservationists in search of an enigmatic animal

When bored, try the following game – I call it “Purr or Roar?”. Take any feline and guess whether it can purr or roar (it cannot do both because purring and roaring require different anatomical structures). Some candidates are easy: any child knows that lions and tigers roar and that a tabby does not. But between the great cats and our pets are numerous other species, from lynxes to panthers, whose anatomy is not so easy to infer. A leopard, for instance? Roar (or growl). The discreet, mountain-dwelling snow leopard? Purr.

The snow leopard is the protagonist of Kulbhushansingh Suryawanshi’s first book, a compelling and intimate look at this elusive mountain specialist. An Indian conservationist and mountaineer, Suryawanshi pursues the creature through the Himalayas and Gobi desert. This is a gritty and detailed portrait of an often misunderstood and endangered species in an increasingly hostile, crowded and hot environment.

A dysfunctional family comes together for a funeral in this heartfelt, keenly observed novel

Most of us come upon our family’s dysfunctions gradually, like a door that opens a little wider each year. This uncle, you find out, has had an affair; grandma has a hoarding problem. The cremation of the nuclear family illusion is a cornerstone of literature, especially when it’s hastened by one of those unavoidable core gatherings: weddings, births, funerals. But what happens when there was never any illusion to start with; when the story begins in the ashes?

The delight of Brodie Crellin’s accomplished, surprising debut lies in the way it wrestles with this question, and in its depiction of a family that fails to meet any conventional definition of the word. With a cutting eye and wry humour, Crellin finds fantastic power in the story of three maladjusted people reeling in the face of death, whose relationships to one another are endlessly confronting and complex.

There is friendless Patch, riddled with anxiety, who bursts into tears at the memory of the postman’s suicide and falls victim to a terrible haircut. There is Patch’s father, Robin, who is “gay, yes, mostly, but mutable”. And there is Jude, her domineering, malevolently competent cousin, a playwright who “loves to make an entrance”. They’re bound by the newly deceased Mary: Robin’s ex, Patch’s mother, and Jude’s aunt – a woman who “[didn’t] have a problem with gay men” but was lukewarm on lesbians. Orbiting this “isosceles”, as Jude calls it, is Juliette, Jude’s gleefully moneyed mother, and Mel, Mary’s neighbour. Various other characters swing in and out, all fully realised no matter how brief their appearances, my favourite of which was Mary’s poor, forgotten “empath” labrador, Leonard.

The stage is set, as Jude cruises in from Naples, for a fraught collision of past and present. As the funeral draws closer and tensions simmer, Crellin juggles the minutiae of death – chopping vegetables, arranging memorial photos – with fragmented recollections of messy family history. It’s rare to read a novel that can skip in and out of so many points of view and keep the different styles of narration intact. Yet even with regular flashbacks, A Sense of Occasion feels remarkably natural thanks to Crellin’s light touch, especially in the arch, zippy dialogue. There are shades of classic mid-century stories, particularly Dorothy Baker’s Cassandra at the Wedding, and some of the caustic social wit of Edward St Aubyn’s Melrose chronicles, but the boldness feels entirely modern.

It’s a joy, too, to read fiction that understands sex so well, and is neither sentimental nor sleazy. Crellin conveys the importance of sex as a vehicle for each character’s foibles and desires; as a shadowy place where so much can be manipulated and communicated. The book summons up a kaleidoscope of erotic experience across the spectrum, sometimes hot and sometimes ridiculous, including a quasi-incestuous relationship rendered with nuance and consideration.

If the novel leans a little hard on Jude and her mother, Juliette, for its class critiques, it’s easily forgiven on account of just how much fun it is to watch these characters crash into each other, and for the deftly nasty one-liners that they toss out. “Patch lacked the confidence conferred by a private education,” Jude thinks smugly. “But she could also say that Patch was simply less intelligent.” And yet the story never veers into mean-spirited satire, largely thanks to Patch herself, the grief-stricken daughter, who is the heartbeat of the novel. Perennially misunderstood and underestimated – including by her own mother, when she was alive – Patch is awkward but raw, a keen observer of herself and others.

There is immense pleasure and vitality – and ultimately a great deal of tenderness – in A Sense of Occasion’s depiction of flawed, strange people who love badly, and can’t help but get in the way of themselves over and over again. After all, as George Bernard Shaw wrote, “If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”

Explore Antarctica as a flightless bird – and dodge some earthly monsters – in this surreal adaptation of HP Lovecraft

While watching the 2006 animated film Happy Feet with his daughter, Origame Digital founder Naphtali Faulkner noticed something interesting. “[In the movie], they see the digger fall into the ocean, and it has an almost eldritch quality,” he says. Over time, and with plenty of iteration, Faulkner’s inspirations coalesced, from HP Lovecraft to the 1982 version of The Thing and the works of David Lynch. “I’m a big fan of horror that sits in your head rather than in your stomach,” says Faulkner.

In Penguin Colony, players body-switch between species of flightless birds, piecing together cryptic cosmic clues as they tail a Nazi expedition to Antarctica. In the process, Origame Digital draws on Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness. “I’d always wanted to do a creature that’s a manifestation of colonial thought, energy and power, and the idea of it resting and then regrowing,” says Faulkner. “I was looking through the history of Lovecraft and him being a gigantic racist, and this idea of the Nazis sort of came out,” he adds.

Being a woman who loves video games has often felt lonely, like being on a hostile planet – but Metroid’s female space hunter has been with me all the way

It’s 1986, and you’re playing a brand-new game. (You’re in Japan in this scenario, by the way; the game in question, Metroid, won’t come to North America and Europe until later.) Anyway, this new game has you in its grip. You are a lone astronaut exploring a hostile alien planet full of ancient, mysterious structures. This astronaut looks human enough – but this distinctly alien place is full of objects that power up their spacesuit’s capabilities. Each new ability allows you to explore a new area, and as you do, you realise that the entirety of the planetary base you’re exploring is one, massive, interconnected maze. Whoa.

Hours later, you finally defeat Mother Brain and set off a timed self-destruct sequence. Upon your escape, you’re treated to an endgame screen: the little astronaut faces you as text on screen implores you to “pray for peace in space”.

Big developers are discovering that the technical progress of photorealism doesn’t always translate into the creative spark that gives gamers joy – and keeps them playing

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Last week, Asha Sharma, the new head of Xbox, laid out her vision for the future of the console and interestingly, the two titles she picked out as potential areas of growth were Minecraft and Candy Crush Saga – games that don’t exactly scream next-generation entertainment. Neither relies on hyper-realistic visuals, which is the north star that games consoles and gaming PCs have been aiming at for the past 40 years. They are, instead, well-designed, well-loved franchises that you can play and enjoy on almost any PC, console or phone.

The fact is, the quest for visual hyperrealism is breaking the games industry. It’s becoming more and more expensive to put high-end graphics hardware into machines thanks to demand from the AI sector; at the same time, creating superrealistic visuals is an incredibly expensive and complex part of game development, leading to longer development periods. GTA VI, for example, has taken at least eight years to develop and is rumoured to have cost between $1bn and $2bn. By my back-of-an-envelope calculations, that’s around four times more than GTA V. Admittedly, the detail on everything, from the characters’ faces, to the cars, to the cityscapes, is astonishing. But will it be four times better than GTA V? Will it be four times more fun?

Since Stardew Valley rejuvenated the farming sim genre a decade ago, games like Fields of Mistria are capitalising on its popularity with their own special touches

Farming simulator games deliver on an escapist fantasy: going off-grid from the modern work grind, in exchange for charming small-town life and a farm to call your own. While these games have had dedicated fans since the days of Harvest Moon, the most popular today, Stardew Valley, contemporised the genre with a larger range of activities and lovable townspeople to befriend and romance. Created in 2016 by independent developer Eric Barone, it has now sold more than 50m copies and become the mould for so many other indie farming sims.

Fields of Mistria is one of these farming sims in a post-Stardew world – though it updates the core formula. Created by independent developer NPC Studio, Fields of Mistria has already proven popular: it debuted in early access (a pre-release version of the game meant for early players to find bugs and give feedback) for PC players on Steam in August 2024, and in the first month the game racked up more than 4m player hours. It’s for a good reason: Mistria satisfies all of those same farming sim desires but with more expansive character creation and a story steeped in magic.

Missy Mazzoli’s bold new work is about the opioid crisis. The director of its world premiere staging tells of bringing it to life, from tragic arias to blood rehearsals – and a flock of singing sheep

‘We’re not telling this story to impress a tiny crowd of insiders!” There is steely ambition in the eyes of the composer Missy Mazzoli. “Whether you like The Tiger King, Lady Gaga, Poor Things or Cirque de Soleil I’m writing this for you.”

We’re not pitching to HBO at the height of the streaming boom. We’re sipping coffee with librettist Royce Vavrek in the Jonathon Porritt Library at leafy Hawkwood House in Gloucestershire, where maverick impresario John Berry has sent us to work on the structure of an unusual new opera commissioned by his new charity Opera Ventures.

Royal Opera House, London
Mixing contemporary, Cuban and classical works, Acosta has charisma to burn and is accompanied by an impressive cohort

It’s a bit of a stretch to call this undoubtedly enjoyable programme Myths and Modern Masters but granted, it sounds better than Miscellany. Carlos Acosta – superstar dancer, now director of Birmingham Royal Ballet and Cuban company Acosta Danza – has picked and mixed dancers from both companies to offer a very eclectic spread of dance, and added himself into the mix.

At 53, Acosta may not have the physical prowess of his youth, but he brings great presence and depth – and some great dancing, too. That serves very well in José Limón’s landmark 1949 work The Moor’s Pavane, a distillation of Shakespeare’s Othello which boils down the story to four characters – Othello (Acosta), Desdemona (Beatrice Parma), Iago (Max Maslen) and Emilia (Miki Mizutani) – and contains their drama of deception, jealousy and revenge within a stately composition of measured steps and stylised gestures, set to courtly music by Purcell.

Theatre Royal Plymouth
This exuberant revival fizzes like a shaken can of soda, capturing the round-the-clock toil of aspiring performers

As a real-life cohort of performers head to Edinburgh hoping to achieve recognition at the fringe, at the opposite end of the UK a revival of David De Silva’s film turned musical breathes fresh life into its own story of fame-hungry students.

With a book by Jose Fernandez, music by Steve Margoshes and lyrics by Jacques Levy, this is a production pumped with guts and gusto. It erupts like a shaken can of soda and comfortably fills the vast stage at Theatre Royal Plymouth, where Fame received its UK (and European) stage premiere in 1995. It’s directed and choreographed by Tom Jackson Greaves, soon to choreograph the West End’s much-anticipated revival of Rent, and fuelled by an exuberant cast, most of whom fulfilled their own dreams of performing on the professional stage several credits ago and are now flourishing.

Southbank Centre, London
A part-canine cop, a villainous cat and a psychokinetic butterflyfish burst into song as the wildly popular children’s books are adapted for the stage

Perhaps, if you don’t have a child in primary school, you will be blissfully unaware of Dog Man, Dav Pilkey’s series of graphic novels about a cop who – after a terrible injury – has his dog’s head sewn on to his own body, thereby creating a crime-fighting canine/human crossbreed. But if you’ve been swept up by the phenomenon – and Dog Man is a phenomenon, selling more than 70m copies in the decade since the first book was published – then you will know that this mutt has some serious star power: there’s a Dog Man film, video game, board game … and now a musical, arriving in the UK after off-Broadway success.

The Dog Man books are chaotic, hilarious and full of pathos, but writer/lyricist Kevin Del Aguila and composer Brad Alexander’s show leans largely on the former. There’s slapstick humour and jokes about butt-sniffing. When Dog Man is asked how his day is going, he replies: “Ruff!” It’s aimed at the younger end of Pilkey’s readership, which is confusing as there are also Dickens references.

With TV shows Rooster and Vladimir under their belts, the sketch stars and best friends since school have withstood tumours, nerdy perfectionism and US success. So why are they so eager to get back to the fringe?

• Explore the rest of our Edinburgh festival 2026 coverage

There has always been a lot of overlap in the lives of Charly Clive and Ellen Robertson. After bonding on a school trip 20 years ago, the pair have spent the past decade performing sketch comedy together and were flatmates for almost as long.

Recently, though, the similarities have bordered on the spooky. In December 2024, Clive was told she had been cast as Steve Carell’s professor daughter in the HBO campus comedy Rooster. Soon after, Robertson found out she was also getting a new superstar parent: she’d be playing Rachel Weisz’s lawyer daughter in Netflix’s Vladimir, another smart, funny show set at a US university. Both series debuted in March to enthusiastic reviews and viewing figures in the millions.

The £20m reboot shows off exhibits ranging from a giant whale skeleton to tiny ‘scrimshaws’ of carved bone to a very strange mermaid, all telling a gripping tale of a great seafaring city

The star attraction of Hull’s revamped and revitalised Maritime Museum is a colossal 40ft-long skeleton of an North Atlantic right whale, beached more than a century ago. The remains of this leviathan dominate an exhibition space scarcely large enough to contain its stupendous bulk. Children can crawl into its ribcage, like junior Jonahs, popping up in a clear plastic dome as digital images of swimming whales slowly unspool across the ceiling.

Docile, leisurely and extremely blubbery – which meant that harpooned carcasses conveniently floated, as well as yielding copious quantities of valuable oil – the North Atlantic right whale was hunted almost to extinction during the whaling era. Today, it’s estimated that there are fewer than 400 left.

Singer who formed one of the first ‘girl groups’, the Chantels, whose 1950s hit Maybe sold more than a million copies

Almost before the five Bronx schoolgirls who called themselves the Chantels had finished their unaccompanied delivery of a song called The Plea in his office on Broadway one day in 1957, the record label owner George Goldner was fishing in his desk for a contract they could take home and show their parents. Within months the group were high in the charts with a ballad called Maybe, featuring the powerful lead voice of the 16-year-old Arlene Smith.

The Chantels set the pattern for the success of such “girl groups”, as they became known, as the Shirelles, the Crystals, the Chiffons, the Ronettes, and many more.

Designer of ceramics who displayed a keen sense of shape in tableware and its appeal to a mass market

David Queensberry, who has died aged 96, was an adventurous designer with the highest aesthetic standards, an acute business sense and a deep, informed love of ceramics. With regard to his title of the 12th Marquess of Queensberry, he observed: “I come from quite a grand family but inherited absolutely nothing apart from a lot of old plates which were made for them in the late 18th century. So, it’s fortunate that I should be very interested in ceramics.” And love them he did, from industrial mocha wares to raku and stoneware, and the work of his students at the Royal College of Art in London, where he was professor of ceramics from 1959 until 1983.

With Martin Hunt, in 1966 he co-founded the design consultancy Queensberry Hunt, and together they bridged the frequently insuperable gulf between good design and commercial success. Their tableware had a global reach, and included the sculptural Concept range (1976) for Hornsea Pottery, and Trend (1983) for Rosenthal Thomas. Trend exemplified tableware designed for modern informality – symbolised by the pasta plate, a hybrid between a plate and bowl, now a standard form.

There’s a difference between longing for the past and assuming it was better, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. The trick is knowing which you’re feeling

• Read more Leading questions

Is nostalgia a negative emotion? I often feel nostalgic these days. It is a background noise that I am trying to ignore.

It was especially present during the pandemic, when my nostalgia seemed to spread into a species of grief for lost places and activities. I find myself thinking sadly about places I won’t be able to visit for a very long time.

Love a blow dry but not the salon cost? Shark’s versatile brush styles wet and dry hair, making it ideal for refreshing your look between wash days

• The best hot brushes, tested

Not just a pretty brush (although it definitely also is that), Shark’s Glossi is a well-designed styling tool that aims to streamline your routine. It combines wet-to-dry air styling for blow-drying freshly washed hair with a dry styling mode for smoothing and refreshing between wash days.

Hybrid wet-and-dry hot brushes have become increasingly popular in recent years: current competition includes Dyson’s super-premium Airwrap multi-styler, and the Glossi upgrades Shark’s own discontinued SmoothStyle brush.

From capsule to bean-to-cup, espresso to filter, these are the coffee makers our aficionado rates the highest from his test of 30

• The best espresso machines to release your inner barista

When it comes to something as earth-shatteringly important as coffee, everyone has an opinion. Some crave a single perfect shot of espresso, while others seek the milkiest latte; some love Starbucks and others, well, don’t. That’s why the idea of there being a single best coffee machine is fanciful – everyone’s idea of the perfect coffee couldn’t be more different.

As a selfless service to coffee drinkers everywhere, I’ve spent the past two years researching and trialling coffee machines to produce a shortlist of tried-and-tested recommendations. The list spans all the main types of coffee maker: manual espresso, filter, bean-to-cup and capsule. (Not sure what all of this means? Read our dedicated guide to the different types of coffee machine.)

They claim to fix fine lines, blemishes, and redness – but which stand up to scrutiny? After consulting dermatologists and putting them to the test, we have crowned a brand new number one

• The best anti-ageing creams, serums and treatments

LED face masks are booming in popularity – despite being one of the most expensive at-home beauty products to hit the market. They claim to either reduce the appearance of fine lines, stop spots or calm redness, with some even combining different types of light to enhance the benefits.

However, it’s wise to be sceptical about new treatments that are costly and non-invasive, and to do your research before you buy. With this in mind, I interviewed doctors and dermatologists to find out whether these light therapy devices work.

Best LED mask overall:
CurrentBody Multi Light Therapy LED mask

Best budget LED face mask:
Silk’n LED face mask 100

They’re perfect for time-poor cooks, but which deserves your counter space? From combi models to smart designs, here’s what our expert recommends

• The best air fryers

If you’re at a restaurant and hear a ping a couple of minutes before your meal arrives at your table, it’s unlikely to be a good sign. But microwave ovens are a brilliant tool in the home kitchen. They’re fearsomely fast at heating up – or even cooking – food when you’re time-poor and lacking the energy to make something wholesome after a hard day at work. And in hot weather, cooking by microwave isn’t just quick: it also won’t warm your home.

Microwaves work best for heating food with a high water content (they make the water molecules in food vibrate to create heat). However, before testing, I asked around to find out what people use theirs for most, with a view to using this information to shape my tests. I learned a few things – like lots of people eat mug cakes. Who knew? And that wheat bags are a popular alternative to hot-water bottles. But the majority of folk use their microwave for reheating cold cuppas, defrosting frozen batch-cooked meals, warming food, popping microwave popcorn – and, of course, cooking jacket potatoes more quickly. I used these insights to shape my testing.

Most suitcases look hardwearing, but which ones actually are? We dropped bestselling brands’ luggage from a ladder to find out …

• The best carry-on luggage

A suitcase is like the portrait in the traveller’s attic, accumulating more than its fair share of knocks and scrapes while we refresh ourselves on the road. We trundle them over cobbles, see them tumble from luggage racks on the train – and if we choose to fly, there’s a fair chance they’ll be mishandled before we reunite at the carousel.

For our testing, we pushed 11 suitcases to the limit by dropping them on to a hard surface, as if they’d been fumbled by a baggage handler. Air travel is especially tough on suitcases, so you might get away with choosing a less-resilient case if you make the climate-conscious choice to travel by rail or sea.

From a wild corner of southern France, these crisp, minerally whites and silky red blends are unforgettable wines

We all have our coming-of-age story: a transition to adulthood defined by emotional growth. I’ll let my friends be the judge of whether mine’s happened, but in wine terms, I can pinpoint my coming of age to the day I first tasted a white from Côtes Catalanes IGP. What was this nectar? I’d spent a lifetime chugging things I liked (from Um Bongo to supermarket Macon), but this was not a chugger. The bottle was Domaine Gauby’s Les Calcinaires Blanc 2010, a blend of muscat, chardonnay, macabeu and vermentino from the eastern foothills of the Pyrenees in French Catalonia. I had to take my time over something this good, and that felt very grown up indeed.

The Côtes Catalanes IGP (Indication Géographique Protégée) sits within a nook of Languedoc-Roussillon in the very south of France. As an IGP, it is a less prestigious designation than AOP (Appellation d’Origine Protégée), but one that gives winemakers greater freedom to flex their muscles. Where wines from Côtes de Roussillon AOC have to be particular blends with particular proportions, winemakers in the Côtes Catalanes can produce single-varietal wines with a greater range of grapes; many are organic or biodynamic. They have a renegade spirit I’m sure you can taste in wines that are mineral, full of complex fruit and often have notes of garrigue – Mediterranean scrubby herbs such as thyme and rosemary.

The Mediterranean’s best beach ritual, plus melons, cucumbers and cold soups to keep us cool this summer

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Everyone who grew up by the Mediterranean Sea knows that a lazy day on the beach requires a certain level of planning. You should pack everything you’ll need, or may need, and get there early to secure a good spot. But the first thing you need to do when you get there – even before you spread out your blankets and put that sunscreen on – is to drop a watermelon in the sea, so that, by noon, when it’s so hot your skin feels as if it’s about to blister, it is ready for you, all cool and sweet. It’s just about the only thing capable of quenching your thirst and your hunger, while also cooling you down and giving you the sugar you need.

The other important bit about the watermelon – the part that separates wisdom from wishful thinking – is that you also need to tie a piece of string around it, complete with an empty plastic bottle at the other end, so that it bobs above the waves and marks the spot. This is something you learn the hard way – or at least we did. There is a very particular kind of disappointment that comes from standing waist-deep in the sea, staring into the blue, convinced that a whole watermelon cannot simply disappear. We searched. We dived. We accused passing currents. We briefly entertained the idea that another family had found it and were, at that very moment, enjoying our perfectly chilled watermelon. Then again, perhaps it is still out there somewhere, floating towards Sicily …

The skins may be pesky to peel away, but the result is this velvety and vibrant, flavourful pasta dish

There’s no two ways about it: charring and then peeling red, yellow or orange peppers is a messy business. Just out of the oven (if they haven’t burst while baking), roasted and blackened peppers are not unlike mini balloons; the hot juices, which have collected in the cavity, gushing out as the collapsed pepper is manoeuvred from the baking tray to the bowl. Once they have steamed under a plate, and cooled a little, the peppers might be easier to handle, but the thin scales of charred skin are still pesky to peel away, and however hard you try to flick them into the bin, they will stick to forearms and foreheads, as do the slippery white seeds. Having peeled peppers, it is not unusual to find a seed stuck to the back of my upper arm six hours later. Messy and annoying, but also worthwhile, because a strip of peeled pepper freed from its cellophane skin is a wonderful thing: fleshy with velvet texture and a deep, sweet, smoky flavour.

I was taught to char peppers on the stovetop by a friend’s Greek mum, balancing them on the gas ring directly over the naked flame and turning regularly. It is sometimes hard to get them to balance and they often wobble off, but if you use a barbecue regularly, that is another option, as is the oven, and apparently the air fryer, too. Whichever method you use, the aim is flesh that is almost completely or well-patched black, and cracked like bark – a bit shocking the first time, but rest assured that the more charred they are, the redder the flesh underneath.

This powerhouse ingredient injects umami and depth of flavour into a simple green sauce. Come on, chop-chop!

The oil from a tin of anchovies is a powerhouse larder ingredient that you possibly never knew existed. It’s a flavour bomb that carries all the delicious flavour compounds of the fish themselves, especially if you want to add their wonderful flavour to a dish but want to save the anchovies to serve separately or as a garnish.

This salsa verde is based on Giorgio Locatelli’s in his book Made in Italy, and it’s made with a knife rather than a blender. Chopping by hand gives it a much better texture, especially when you’re also using the stalks, which a blender can turn fibrous. The boiled egg is optional but traditional, and helps emulsify the sauce. Locatelli uses just the yolk, but I’ve used the whole egg, not least to avoid the faff of finding a use for the spare white. This sauce is incredible with lamb or mutton and very good with grilled fish.

In an app-based era, new dating tactics emerge rapidly and while you may have deployed one or been subject to one, how many of the following are real?

In the age of app-based romance, fresh dating trends seem to emerge every week. Many of them – in the mould of ghosting and catfishing – are profoundly antisocial, while some are defensive strategies against toxic suitors. More than a few are but new names for disgraceful behaviours as old as time. You may have been the victim of one – or you may have unwittingly deployed one – but how many can you identify? Which of the following are genuine trends, and which are not?

Riya says her boyfriend has road rage, but Declan insists he never loses his temper. You decide if needs to put the brakes on his motormouth

• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Every time Declan chooses kicking off over de-escalation, he compromises our safety

I don’t believe people should get away with dangerous or disrespectful driving

He could seem judgmental, even moody. But the whole neighbourhood mourned when this remarkable moggy went to meet his maker

When my cat Eric passed away from stomach cancer in 2001, I wasn’t sure I would ever be ready to have a pet again. But a few months later I was given another cat, Karl, by an old friend from Camberwell College of Arts in south London, who was moving back to Germany. I had known Karl when I was a student there, where he had been mates with Eric. Karl, an unassuming brown tabby with a judgmental glare, took me back to living in student halls in the 90s.

Karl was perhaps the most average-looking tabby in south London, but on my quiet street he became a legend of sorts. He accompanied my children and me on school runs. He would walk ahead with his belly swinging and take us to the top of the road. There he would wait until I dropped off the children and escort me back home.

Vivian and Thomas both left physically unfulfilling marriages and are rediscovering their sex drives in later life

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

Since menopause and being with Thomas, my interest in sex is much higher

Many UK workers have cash in multiple schemes – should you roll them into one? There are pros and cons

How many pensions do you have? In the days of a job for life, many people had just two: the state pension and the one offered by their employer. But a combination of people changing jobs more often and rules that force employers to enrol workers into schemes automatically, means you are likely to end up with more.

The number of people saving into a private sector workplace pension has doubled since 2012 to reach 23 million, according to the Pensions Regulator, largely because of “auto-enrolment”. On top of that, millions of people have personal pensions and self-invested private pensions (Sipps). And some will have all three.

Reader expresses consternation after enforcement officer issues penalty notice outside station in London

I was outside London Waterloo railway station and was looking for a bin to dispose of an empty coffee cup.

The only bin I could see was completely full, but there was a plastic bag containing rubbish at the base.

Criminals hope by using threats of enforcement action, people will panic and click link to bogus parking app site

You use parking apps a lot – you have several on your phone – but it is not always straightforward. Sometimes there is a lack of reliable mobile signal, or the app crashes or behaves oddly, or it does not seem to want to accept your bank card.

Also, it is sometimes hard to keep track of which apps you have used when. So when you receive a text from RingGo saying you owe it money, you are not totally surprised.

From melted electric sockets to shabby alternatives, readers tell of dealings with platform when things go wrong

Jane Ripley* spent some time researching the best apartment to stay in for her family’s trip to Batumi in Georgia, eventually settling on one with an “exceptional” rating on Booking.com.

But when the Ripleys arrived at 11pm on the first day, they were directed to another property that was shabby and had stains on the furniture and ceiling.

Research suggests addressing risk factors for poor cardiovascular health between the ages of 45 and 65 could help reduce risk of cognitive decline

Scientists claim to have identified three health measures in middle age that can ward off dementia for more than a decade.

Having normal blood pressure, no type 2 diabetes, and not smoking between the ages of 45 and 65 were associated with almost 13 additional years, on average, of dementia-free life, a study shows.

Whether you’re nursing a joint, have an existing condition or just don’t feel like running, these exercises help get your cardio in

The runner’s high might be contagious. In 2024, the fitness tracking app Strava recorded a 59% increase in users attending social running events and run clubs globally. Applications for London’s marathon have increased 40% since 2024, while New York City’s received about 20% more applicants this year. Overall, an estimated 56 million Americans regularly run on a treadmill and 51 million jog, according to a report from the Sports and Fitness Industry Association.

But running has a reputation for being rough on our joints. There is some good news for those chasing the high: one 2023 study found little relationship between recreational running and arthritis of the hip or knee, and another suggests that the impact of running causes cartilage to adapt, fortify and thicken over time.

From the 47-year-old runner who needs a double hip replacement to the 27-year-old CrossFitter with a ruptured ACL, those who push their bodies too hard often regret it. What are the lessons for the rest of us?

Jonathan Price has always been active and exercise-focused. Growing up in south Wales, rugby was his first love. Through school, university and beyond, he also surfed, rowed, played squash and ran competitively – on track, in 10k races and cross-country. Career and family demands meant that much of this fell away in later years, but the running stuck. He found time for marathons, half marathons – “I’d run a half marathon every weekend just for fun,” he says – and, through the working week, regular 30- or 40-minute runs to manage stress and clear his head. “I travel a lot for work,” says Price, now 50, a company CEO. “With running, all you need is a pair of running shoes and you can do it anywhere.”

By his mid-40s, though, Price’s body was beginning to object. He wasn’t recovering so well. “I could run just fine but I’d be in pain for two or three days afterwards,” he says. On top of this, every six months or so, his lower back seemed to seize up completely. A physiotherapist thought it was “tight hip flexors” and pointed Price towards “hip opening” exercises, designed to reduce stiffness and increase range of motion. Someone else prescribed him muscle relaxants, but the pain only deepened, and his range of movement continued to dip. Finally, in the summer of 2023, a chance encounter with a hip surgeon led to the diagnosis of osteoarthritis and, at the end of that year, Price, then 47, had a double hip replacement.

Want to lower your temperature and drift off to sleep quicker? An ice-cold shower might seem the best solution, but the truth is more complicated

It’s another sticky summer evening. You’re too hot to sleep. Surely an ice-cold shower is the best way to cool off and drift away quicker? Not really, says Mike Tipton, a professor of human and applied physiology at the University of Portsmouth.

“If you’re trying to go to sleep, the last thing you want to do is go into a freezing cold shower,” he says. The shock of cold water immersion causes the body to produce adrenaline and cortisol, stress hormones designed to keep us alert. “That’s just about the last thing you want before you go to bed.”

Our guest columnist reveals how he found his personal style, from jumpsuits to high-waisted trousers

Other than the jumpsuits, I don’t think I wore anything particularly groundbreaking when I appeared on The Traitors. I just think the bar for men’s fashion is so low that for me to come on television in a chunky mint green jumper and a pair of high-waisted jeans – which is probably one of the most neutral looks I own – seemed like a revelation. There was no styling budget, so most of what I wore came from my wardrobe.

The discovery of my personal style began when I was at primary school on the Isle of Lewis, off the north-west coast of Scotland. I realised I was different to the other boys when I began experimenting with fashion. From a young age I was turning my hems up, and I was certainly more interested in what the girls in my class were wearing.

‘Looksmaxxing’ culture has led to the rise of facial analysis services – but experts warn they aren’t backed by science and can be harmful to users

Danielle, 37, didn’t always have issues with body image: she used to be a model and recalls receiving positive attention from men. However, when two years of unemployment plunged her into a period of financial insecurity, her confidence faded. “It was easy to wonder, if I was prettier, if some of my features were different, would that help?” she said.

So, when Danielle saw videos on TikTok about a “facial analysis” service that claimed it could provide her with “science-backed” glow-up advice, she bought it without hesitation. Three-hundred and thirty dollars later, after sending in selfies to be analyzed, Danielle received her personalized 30-page report from the company Qoves.

Want to brighten dark circles without accentuating wrinkles? You’re not alone – this is the most-asked makeup question and here is the answer

The most common makeup question asked by women over 35 is this: what’s a good undereye concealer that won’t make lines and wrinkles look cakey and dry? I’m getting to them, I promise. But first, I must say that prep is key – dry, flaky skin will only look more so under makeup, so undereyes should first be hydrated and smoothed with a good, moisturising skincare routine. Only then can a concealer get on with the business of brightening and camouflaging.

Givenchy’s Prisme Libre Skin-Caring Concealer (£37) is my most recommended for fortysomethings and beyond, regardless of skin type. It’s perfectly balanced in that it’s moisturising and softening, but not so much so that it slips and slides and doesn’t deliver on lasting coverage – it has just enough heft. It works as well on the face as it does under eyes and stays fresh looking all day.

Whether you’re in full summer mode or quietly planning for autumn, our fashion expert’s monthly picks will carry you stylishly between the two

• How to create the perfect women’s holiday capsule wardrobe

August: do you buy for the holiday you’ll be melting through this month, or the one you’ll be pretending to enjoy in a jumper come October? Answers on a postcard, please! The key to staying (relatively) sane in silly season is to embrace the contradictions.

Read on for the holiday-coded necklace I’ve fallen in love with and the elegant leather handbag I’m dreaming of when I hang up my straw basket. Plus, a lace camisole and a cosy jumper – and the absolute sweetest grip socks for my pilates girlies.

With great beaches, culture and nature, the resort town of Palanga and the wild Curonian Spit offer an affordable – and cooler – alternative to the Med

The water off Palanga’s sandy white beach is tinged pale green – the colour of the feathery clouds of Furcellaria lumbricalis that occasionally brush against my calves. Underfoot, the Baltic seabed is ridged, the sea so clear and shallow that every ripple is visible. The water deepens very gradually – making it ideal for families. I’m quite far from the coast, but still only thigh deep, the sea still cool as I duck beneath the surface.

Elsewhere in Europe, another heatwave has prompted health warnings and school closures. But here in Lithuania, children scamper on the sand and splash in the shallows as temperatures remain, if not cool, bearable. I’ve come to explore some of the Baltic beaches – here and on the Curonian Spit – which are fast gaining popularity as the Med heats up and prices in southern Europe remain stubbornly high.

From Calais to Le Touquet, the Côte d’Opale is home to thriving fishing ports, grand old seaside resorts and restaurants serving the freshest seafood

Stellio Lestienne, chef at La Matelote in Boulogne’s harbour, shows me his shopping list as we browse the city’s daily morning fish market. He wants to pick up some crab and sole, which are in season, but his usual lobster fisher is still out on his boat, so he’ll have to wait a bit for that. Although I’ve been a regular visitor to both Boulogne and the surrounding Hauts-de-France region for about 30 years, this is my first time in the fish market. Now I’m kicking myself for all that lost time.

It’s not very big, nor is it remotely picturesque, stretching along a nondescript car park in the port. But it does have a fantastic selection of fish and seafood, both from fishers (pêcheurs artisans in light-blue stalls) and retailers (commerçants in dark blue). And it’s considerably cheaper than other fish markets I’ve seen. “People come here from the UK with cool bags to do their shopping,” Stellio says, pointing to a man doing that very thing. I spot filleted roussettes (dogfish) going for €2 each. At another stall, a man deftly slices through a grotesque-looking monkfish, cutting out the prized cheeks.

Globetrotter and TV presenter Alice Morrison trades in her camels and backup team for wild camping in one of Scotland’s most beautiful glens

‘I miss my camels. I miss the sun. I miss the vast emptiness of the desert plains …” These are my thoughts as I trudge through thick conifer plantations and my fifth consecutive hour of rain at the start of the Affric Kintail Way in the Scottish Highlands.

My last big adventure was a world first. I became the first recorded person to walk the full length of Saudi Arabia, north to south, from Jordan to Yemen. It took three years to organise, then 112 days of walking half a marathon a day, and I had a backup team plus Juicy and Lulu, my naughty but nice camels.

From Blackpool to Bournemouth, these quintessentially British institutions celebrate a lot more than fish and chips and amusement arcades

Perched in our glass-fronted eyrie, 300 metres out to sea, we watch a murmuration of starlings rise and fall and swoop around us. When the show is over, we turn our attention to the food. I have a bespoke vegan menu based on the best early summer ingredients: jersey royals, asparagus, strawberries. My boyfriend orders off the weekly changing à la carte: slow-cooked beef dumplings followed by butter-poached halibut.

We are at Ebb, a restaurant at the end of the pier in Worthing, West Sussex, which opened in May. Its art-deco design and fine-dining dishes are a far cry from the fish-and-chip shops and ice-cream parlours more commonly found on seaside piers. But traditionalists need not despair: downstairs at Perch on the Pier, fish and chips – as well as tofish (tofu) and chips – are always on the menu, with a knickerbocker glory to round things off in fine retro style.

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

No Andy Burnham questions this week because – Shock! Horror! – a man with a family has taken a summer holiday with his family. But the Thursday quiz has done no such thing. Fifteen new questions await you on topical news, general knowledge and popular culture. There are no prizes, but you can boast about your score in the comments. Please do! Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 259

The new stars of TikTok have eight furry legs and eight soulful eyes. But are they quite as adorable as real puppies?

Name: Web puppies.

Age: Pet jumping spiders typically live for one to three years.

As Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and their peers have grown richer and more influential, Gil Durán argues they have all but abandoned democracy – and found the perfect government to enable them

In April, Gil Durán was permanently banned from Elon Musk’s X for posting just two words. Durán was responding to a post from the tech company Palantir outlining its 22‑point “technological manifesto”, which praised American “hard power”, western culture and AI weapons, denounced inclusivity and called for compulsory national service. Durán responded: “TLDR: Fascism” (TLDR is short for “too long, didn’t read”).

Durán didn’t break any of X’s written rules, he points out over a video call from San Francisco – so much for Musk’s “free-speech absolutism”. His ban might just have had something to do with his preceding tweet, showing the cover of his new book, The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy. The book’s central argument is that big tech is no longer our friend, as many of its billionaire owners have seized economic and political control and are steering the fate of the planet towards their own bizarre, apocalyptic visions.

Growing up in the Chinese region of Xinjiang, romance was frowned upon – as was much of my Uyghur culture. But one day, exploring a strange house, I found a gateway to both worlds

Many people have a book that changes their life. For me and my wife, one book in particular changed our destinies for ever. We have been in love since we were teenagers, and today we are happily married – all because I accidentally discovered a forbidden novel in someone else’s house.

It was a hot summer’s evening in 2009, in Kumul, Xinjiang. I was 16 and my father insisted I accompany him to visit a distant relative, where they would spend hours chatting about the old days and feasting as if they hadn’t eaten in years. As the well-behaved teenager I tried to be, I sat politely, nodding at their stories and pretending to absorb their “life lessons”, attempting to hide my boredom. The living room, with its small windows and bright lighting, was unbearable.

Parents and teachers worry about the number of kids who vape cannabis. But many of them are using something far more dangerous – without even realising it

I bumped into an old acquaintance the other day. Updating me on his children’s ages, he said, with an eyeroll of resignation: “My daughter’s 15 now; just found a cannabis vape in her room.” It’s an increasingly common and concerning situation for parents – with no way of telling if a vape does in fact contain weed (which comes with its own risks, just like vaping tobacco) or something much worse.

Instead of the natural cannabinoids THC or CBD, these vapes can contain a much cheaper substitute: the “prison drug” spice. Last year scientists from the University of Bath analysed 1,923 vapes that had been confiscated from children in 114 schools in England, and found that 13% contained spice. In London and Lancashire it was 25%. And this is among vapes of all kinds, nicotine included, not just those that purported to contain cannabis. As for vapes labelled as containing THC, CBD or cannabis, when the drug-testing service Wedinos (part of Public Health Wales) examined 297 samples received in the year up to March 2025, it found that 39% contained spice.

Claw machine shops have proliferated in the territory in recent years, filling vacant spaces left behind by businesses that closed during the pandemic

In Hong Kong’s neon-lit arcades, a maze of claw machines illuminates the prizes of the day: plushies, Labubu dolls and an array of Pokémon collectibles.

Across the city, claw machine shops have proliferated in recent years, now surpassing more than 2,500, many filling vacant spaces left by businesses that closed during the pandemic.

If the progressive wins Michigan’s general election, it could redefine the 2028 presidential contest. If he fails, the establishment will call him a cautionary tale

• US politics live – latest updates

In the final stretch of the state’s Democratic primary for US Senate, Abdul El-Sayed challenged voters at a small event in rural Michigan to think about the message they could send the rest of the country when they cast their ballots.

“Who are we? Who do we want to be?” El-Sayed said. “Do we want a state that’s defined by how much money corporations brought in to tell us what we couldn’t have? Or do we want to be a state where we demonstrate to the rest of the country what’s possible when you build a movement of, by and for the people?”

We would like to hear from people for whom the film has increased their interest in poetry or classics in general

UK poetry sales are on course to reach a record high this year, thanks to the success of Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster film adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey.

We would like to hear from people for whom the film has piqued their interest in Homer’s poetry. Has it led to a greater interest in classics or poetry in general? Tell us below.

The government has announced plans to create thousands more apprenticeships. We want to hear from employers about their experiences of recruiting apprentices

The government has announced plans to create thousands more apprenticeships in England as part of wider reforms to technical and vocational education.

We’d like to hear from employers who have taken on apprentices. What has your experience been like? Have apprentices benefited your organisation? What have been the biggest challenges? What changes or government support would encourage you to offer more apprenticeship opportunities?

We would like to hear from people who have recently installed renewable energy sources in their home, or considered doing so

Great Britain has recorded more new solar power installations in the first half of this year than in any six-month period since 2011, with most of the new panels going onto household rooftops rather than large-scale solar farms.

The government’s data also shows a rise in households turning to other low-carbon technology: applications to the boiler upgrade scheme, which offers grants for replacing gas boilers with greener alternatives, reached 4,512 last month – up 21% on June last year – with demand for heat pumps expected to climb further in the months ahead.

We would like to hear your experience of using peptides for therapeutic purposes

In recent years there has been a boom in interest in using peptides, from weight loss to anti-ageing and recovery from injury.

These include approved prescription weight-loss medications based on synthetic peptides that mimic natural hormones. However, sales of experimental and unregulated peptides are rising as online sellers tout them as part of a “wellness” regime.

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