For decades, Wildings was the poshest shop in town. But since it closed down in 2019, the storied building has fallen into disrepair and been commandeered as a drug den and a skate park. What happened?

I’m standing outside a lift in a department store in Newport, Wales, looking at the sign, wondering where to go. Stay on the ground floor for shoes, giftware and presents, ladies’ accessories and Estée Lauder? Or up to the first floor for furniture and ladies’ fashions – Annabelle, Tigi-Wear, Autonomy? It’s the second floor for cookshop and homeware. Lingerie is on three, plus Alfred’s coffee shop and tea room. Maybe I’ll go straight there for a cappuccino and a ponder …

But nothing happens when I press the button. The panel is hanging from the wall by its wires and doesn’t look safe. I’d be nervous about stepping into this lift. Plus, it’s dark. I’m using the torch on my phone to read the sign. There’s no giftware on this floor, no presents, no cosmetics counter. Once, this floor would have smelled of perfume; now, it’s musty, cold and empty. Because, on 19 January 2019, after 144 years of trading, this department store, Wildings, closed its doors for ever.

Samantha Niblett says her campaign is about ‘taking control of our Britishness’ – bring on the union jack dildos

We could almost be back in the San Francisco of the 1960s. Tune in, turn on, drop out. Make love not war. A hippy counterculture that turned its back on the American involvement in Vietnam. One determined to shape a new world order.

Fast forward to today and we have one MP who is hellbent on making 2026 the summer of sex. One who wants to focus politicians’ attention on the joys of the orgasm. To return to the simpler pleasures of life. Though without the need for everyone to take acid. The world is hallucinogenic enough. And who’s to say she’s wrong?

With an eye on elections in 2027, Italy’s far-right PM appears to be making a tactful pivot away from US president

• Europe live – latest updates

Six months ago, Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, stood surrounded by men on a stage in Sharm el-Sheikh, where world leaders had gathered to discuss the Gaza peace deal.

In front of her, Donald Trump showered praise and insults on the assembled leaders, before describing Meloni as a “beautiful young woman”. Turning towards her, he added: “You don’t mind being called beautiful, right? Because you are. Thank you very much for coming.”

(Play It Again Sam)
Unsettling breathing, arrhythmic clatter, gloomy piano and military snares underpin a Beefheartian portrayal of a boorish warmonger on the band’s ominous return

Even by the standards of a band noted for their unhurried approach, Massive Attack’s recorded output has dwindled to a trickle in recent years. They’ve seldom been out of the press, but less as a result of their music than their political campaigning: frontman Robert Del Naja was among the 500 people arrested at last Saturday’s Palestine Action protest. It is six years since they last released any new music – a trio of YouTube videos on which their music effectively acted as a soundbed for spoken-word pieces about global system change – and a decade since they released something you could actually buy, a single called The Spoils. Their most recent album, Heligoland, came out in 2010: Taylor Swift was still a country star, Harry Styles was still at school, Instagram and TikTok had yet to be launched.

It means that any new release automatically carries a sense of event, particularly if you’re old enough to remember how significantly Massive Attack altered the musical landscape of the 90s. You could formulate an argument that their debut album, Blue Lines, was the single most influential British album of its era: it spawned an entire subgenre, trip-hop, in its wake; 35 years on, you can still hear its echoes everywhere, from the mainstream pop of Billie Eilish and Lana Del Rey to the nu-soul of Joy Crookes and Greentea Peng to the endless swathes of anonymous “lo-fi beats” that get millions of streams on Spotify.

Dougie and Teresa don’t see eye to eye when it comes to supermarket packing. You decide whose argument checks out

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

She says if you’re bagging stuff at the checkout, you’re holding up the people behind you

He just doesn’t understand the system. The packing shelves at the back are there to help customers

Sid Lowe is our Spanish football correspondent and has been covering an increasingly busy beat for years. He answered your questions on everything from the Champions League to La Liga … and lookalikes

trollercoaster asks: Why have so many Spanish clubs competing in the Champions League or European Cup been relegated? It happened with Real Betis and with Villarreal. We have seen leading Spanish clubs fall to the second division and even to lower leagues, see Deportivo.

Sid:

There are lots of elements at play here, and they are not all the same going back over time, as the structure of Spanish football has changed (collective TV deal, etc), while some clubs had their own specific issues (Depor’s success, built on money they didn’t really have, was what brought their fall, for example). The short-term reason for some teams – look at Athletic this season, for example – is that they don’t always have the resources for both competitions. There’s definitely a financial component to it. Villarreal’s relegation in 2012 was baffling but internally they had overspent – which is unlike them, a stable and financially strong club – although they did learn from that.

Look at the second division now and it is full of massive clubs (historically). Zaragoza are the really clear example … Sporting, Málaga, Depor, similar with Oviedo until last summer. Often laden with debt, often unready for the sudden fall off of income, etc …

I don’t know … I’m not sure that I feel that the people I bigged up (early) have started suffering better fates … have they? It might not have been that bad before. Or maybe it was, ha.

There’s a related issue here, actually, which is part of the daily battle … most pieces are on-demand, so to speak, (the desk asks about an issue or I suggest an issue or whatever), but on Mondays, the regular column linked to the weekend games, I more or less write what I want (over a 38-week season there might be three or four weeks when the desk suggests/wants a certain topic and I’m not totally mad: if it’s clásico weekend then very likely that will be the focus). Which is why you get Leganés or Levante.

Guardian investigation uncovers decision by UK security officials to deny clearance before Mandelson took up role as US ambassador

• Officials debate withholding Mandelson vetting documents from parliament

• Five key questions: Who overruled the decision to deny Mandelson security clearance?

Peter Mandelson failed his security vetting clearance but the decision was overruled by the Foreign Office to ensure he could take up his post as ambassador to the US, an investigation by the Guardian can reveal.

According to multiple sources, Mandelson was initially denied clearance in late January 2025 after a developed vetting process, a highly confidential background check by security officials.

The US president said the countries’ leaders are working on a deal to ‘achieve a lasting peace’

• US and Iran in indirect talks to extend two-week ceasefire

Iran has stopped all petrochemical exports to prioritise domestic supply and prevent shortages of raw materials, Reuters reported.

The state-owned National Petrochemical Company ordered firms to suspend exports until further notice.

John Swinney unveils his party’s manifesto, saying cost of living is the ‘defining issue’ for voters on 7 May

• UK politics live – latest updates

The SNP will cap supermarket prices for essential goods such as bread and milk if it retains power, John Swinney has pledged, after describing the cost of living as “the defining issue of this election”.

With polls pointing to a fifth Holyrood term for the Scottish National party, its leader said he would use devolved public health powers to fix prices on 20 to 50 items such as bread, milk, cheese, eggs, rice and chicken because their rising cost was “impacting our nation’s nutrition”.

Retrial ordered in case of Benjamin Field, found guilty in 2019 of murdering Peter Farquhar, 69, in Buckinghamshire

A church warden who was jailed for life for the murder of a university lecturer has had his conviction quashed at the court of appeal and a retrial has been ordered.

Benjamin Field was jailed for at least 36 years in 2019 after being found guilty of murdering 69-year-old Peter Farquhar in Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire.

Sarah Mullally urges Anglicans to join Leo’s ‘courageous’ call and says human cost of war is incalculable

The archbishop of Canterbury has said she is standing in solidarity with Pope Leo XIV’s calls for peace amid his public feud with Donald Trump.

Days after the US president objected to comments from the head of the Catholic church suggesting a “delusion of omnipotence” was fuelling the US-Israeli war in Iran, Sarah Mullally urged Anglicans to join Leo’s “courageous” call.

Dan Frumkin’s pay deal comes after bank’s near collapse and rescue by Colombian billionaire

• Business live – latest updates

Metro Bank’s chief executive has been handed a £2.6m pay packet – the largest in its history – a year after slashing 1,000 jobs in response to the lender’s near collapse.

The figure is more than double the £1.2m that Dan Frumkin – a former RBS and Northern Rock banker – was paid in 2024. Metro pushed through the pay bump and complex bonus scheme for Frumkin at a shareholder meeting last year.

• Austrian was capped 33 times for his national team

• Manninger won Premier League during Arsenal spell

Alex Manninger, the former goalkeeper who helped Arsenal win the Double in 1998, has died in a car accident in Austria, aged 48.

His first club, Red Bull Salzburg, broke the sad news on Thursday. The Austrian Bundesliga club said in a post on its official X account: “We mourn our former goalkeeper Alexander Manninger, who tragically lost his life in a traffic accident. Our thoughts are with his family and friends. Rest in peace, Alexander.”

Pillars at Cold Ashby, Northamptonshire, and Thorny Gale, Cumbria, bookended the project that modernised mapping

Heritage campaigners are bidding for listing status for two concrete pillars hailed as “modest obelisks of modernity in the countryside”.

These functional 120cm (4ft) stone or concrete “trig points” formed part of a 6,500-strong network of surveying posts that were vital for the development of modern mapping.

Executives from Amazon MGM are no closer to revealing who is lined up for the coveted role, saying, ‘We’re taking the time to do this with care and deep respect’

The new James Bond studio heads have attempted to calm fans about who will play the British spy in the new film.

Speaking at trade show CinemaCon in the US on Wednesday, executives from Amazon MGM studios – which bought the series rights as part of an $8.45bn (£6.9bn) deal in 2022 – indicated that an abundance of caution on their part meant the role was not yet cast.

Transfer of medical services from hospital to former Wilko store is improving healthcare access and boosting footfall

It is a revolution that might just save the NHS – and the high street. Imagine being able to have your eyes tested, mole examined or get an appointment with a consultant without going to your local hospital – and maybe fit in some shopping or a cinema visit afterwards.

That, increasingly, is what people in Barnsley are doing after an unprecedented relocation of medical services from the district general hospital into a purpose-built outpatients centre in the Alhambra shopping centre, which is getting a new lease of life thanks to the experiment.

Trump plans to start anti-mine operations as part of a wider attempt to open the strait, but the clearance is laborious and dangerous

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has said he plans to begin anti-mine operations in the strait of Hormuz as part of a wider attempt to reopen the waterway, which has in effect been closed to marine traffic by Iran since the US and Israel launched their war in late February.

The hip-hop producer, remixer and crate-digger on staying fresh creatively, the influence of David Lynch and giving away his most valuable record

Can you share any regrets or missed opportunities from your career? nnagewad
In 1999, I was approached by Deftones to work on White Pony, but I had just come off of Unkle’s Psyence Fiction album. I was nursing a hip-hop image and reputation, so I was wary of working with anything that felt like it was too alternative or rock-oriented. So I missed out on being a part of a pretty seminal album. I wouldn’t say it’s a regret, necessarily, because I feel like my rationale was sound, but it’s kind of a missed opportunity.

Was your move towards sample-free production on your recent albums driven by the headache and costliness of sample clearance, a desire to keep the creative process fresh, or a bit of both? EditorialJoe
Definitely both. There have been times in my career where I’ve wondered: at the end of the day, am I going to own only 15% of my catalogue because of all the samples? So that was part of it. But equally, I became known as somebody who was trying to be on the vanguard of making music with samples but I always knew I would want to make music in as many different ways as possible.

As she approaches her 44th birthday, we celebrate an actor who can move from dreamy psychodrama for Sofia Coppola to gritty angst for Jane Campion

An elegant, sun-soaked Patricia Highsmith adaptation with fine work from Viggo Mortensen as a con man and Dunst as his wife, holidaying in early 1960s Athens when they meet an American tour guide (Oscar Isaac). It seems tantalisingly unclear at first whether his designs are on the chirpy young bride or her shady older husband.

(EMI)
The podcaster’s third sequin-festooned album in a row is her most retro, with its slightly cringe moments balanced by unerring quality control and opulent arrangements

Recent episodes of Table Manners, the podcast Jessie Ware co-hosts with her mother, Lennie, have begun with a brief advert for Ware’s new album: listeners, it advises, can get 10% off by preordering Superbloom using a special code. The fact that the advert is directing traffic from Ware’s podcast to her music feels slightly telling. As side hustles go, Table Manners has proved extraordinarily successful, attracting A-list guests: Margot Robbie, Jeremy Allen White, Paul McCartney, Robert De Niro. Indeed, it’s proved so successful that it scarcely seems like a side hustle at all: in 2026, Ware is probably better known as a podcaster than a singer. Hats off to her: in an uncertain era, when rock and pop artists are well advised to have a backup plan, there’s something hugely impressive about how big Ware’s has become. Still, there lurks the danger of her music seeming an afterthought: like the 10% off ad, something to get out of the way before the more serious business of enjoying banana bread with Lisa Kudrow.

You can hear the impact of Table Manners on Superbloom in a literal sense: a track called Automatic features a deep-voiced spoken-word appearance from Euphoria star Colman Domingo, previously a guest on the podcast. It’s also an album marked by a sense of doubling down. Ware’s third album in a row to mine a disco-pop hybrid, it’s also the most straightforwardly retro of the trio, sanding away the sheen of futuristic electronica found on 2020’s What’s Your Pleasure? and 2023’s That! Feels Good! in favour of lush orchestration: even the most synth-heavy tracks here speak less of the present than they do the early 80s post-disco boogie genre.

Whether you want to tackle hyperpigmentation or brighten mature skin, these are our expert’s favourite formulas for a glowy complexion

• The best LED face masks, tested

Vitamin C is having a moment in skincare because of its ability to gently brighten, reduce pigmentation and support collagen production. It also helps to neutralise free radicals – those unstable molecules generated by UV light and pollution that can lead to premature ageing – making it an essential part of your morning skincare routine (alongside an SPF).

But is a vitamin C serum suitable for everyone? And if so, how do you know which one is right for you? “Individuals with sensitive, reactive or rosacea-prone skin should approach L-ascorbic acid – the most commonly used active form of vitamin C in skincare – carefully, as it can trigger inflammation in compromised skin barriers,” says pharmacist and skincare expert Dr Sonal Chavda-Sitaram.

Best vitamin C serum overall:
CeraVe skin renewing vitamin C serum

Best budget vitamin C serum:
Elf Skin Brighten + Glow vitamin C + E + ferulic serum

People down the rabbit hole don’t always realise their experience isn’t universal, advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes. You might have more luck trying a new tactic

• Read more Leading questions

My friend of 30 years keeps sending me social media posts and videos that I either don’t find funny or are disturbing. We live far away and rarely see each other, so we communicate through a messaging app. I’ve told her many times that I prefer positive or cute things, and I don’t follow American politics.

Her life is difficult and I understand why she spends so much time on social media. Last week she sent me multiple videos each day that were not of interest to me at all, including one with women slapping each other. She often buys into conspiracy theories until I disprove them. All of it upsets me. It’s like she doesn’t know who I am. I’m not replying to any of these messages but she keeps sending them.

As the president’s men rave about paranormal events and Diet Coke, it seems the US’s only hope is extraterrestrial intervention

People often criticise the Democrats for being overly cautious and never getting anything done. But this week they’ve surprised us all by unveiling concepts of a plan for getting Donald Trump out of the White House.

On Tuesday House Democrats introduced legislation that would create a commission to assess whether Trump is unfit to serve and should be removed under the 25th amendment. I don’t need to tell you what precipitated this: Trump is growingly increasingly erratic, threatening genocide one minute and posting pictures of himself as Jesus Christ the next.

The hatred the duchess inspires – like the mourning of her mother-in-law – reveals hidden aspects of British character and tells us something about public anxieties

Whatever unhinged parasocial relationship the adoring public had with Diana, Princess of Wales, their relationship with the Duchess of Sussex is its shadowy reflection.

For decades, Diana was the subject of public adoration that was locked in a permanent hysterical register. Clive James, for example, captured the hyperbole when he described himself as a “besotted walk-on mesmerized by the trajectory of a burning angel” and Diana as like “the sun coming up; coming up giggling”.

The $95 bus trip to Foxborough highlights a tournament unique in modern times – one that ultimately makes no secret of its disdain for the paying public

Like any journalist with an unerring nose for an offbeat feature, my interest was sharply piqued by this week’s announcement of the $95 bus ride. What magnificent accoutrements might conceivably justify the £70 fare for a half-hour journey from south Boston to Foxborough? An at-seat shiatsu? A pool deck? A five-course dining experience? A brief but moving Céline Dion set in the aisles? At the very least, I felt I owed it to my profession to find out for sure.

Alas upon closer investigation, the Boston Stadium Express being launched for this summer’s World Cup appears to be an entirely regular bus journey on an entirely regular bus with entirely regular bus seats. Your non-refundable ticket – no child concessions – entitles you simply to be dropped off a 15-minute walk from the ground, and picked up again from the same place. There is, in short, no more complex rationale for the Boston organising committee to charge £70 than the fact that they can, and the World Cup only comes once, and if you don’t want to pay then some other rube will.

It’s a relief to see the pontiff decrying brutality, because it seems most current world leaders lack the necessary spine

I have never been a religious or spiritual person, even though I grew up in a religious area and had friends (and strangers) throughout school and university trying to lure me into whatever prayer disguised as organised fun they were up to. I did try it out shortly for a desperate period when I was young, attempting to pray to a god I didn’t really believe in to make me not gay, but blessedly he never answered.

Despite my resistance to organised religion, I have always had a soft spot for nuns and their counterparts. The girlies.

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The skewed perspectives in my A-level curriculum are staggering. Until that changes, harmful ideas about race and migration will live on

• Astrid Barltrop is the winner of the The Guardian Foundation’s 2026 Emerging Voices award (16-18 category) and a year 13 student in Oxfordshire

“Lord Cromer was a successful consul-general of Egypt. To what extent do you agree?” I read this essay prompt in my A-level history class, wondering what “successful” means. Successful in forcing austerity on Egyptians to line the pockets of British financiers? Successful in civilising a country of people he viewed as “subversive demagogues” and “subject races”?

Thankfully my essay could argue that Cromer wasn’t successful if I tried to frame “success” in terms of how he impacted the Egyptian population: he imposed an unfair land tax system and restricted access to education. But even then I had to write it under the implicit assumption that colonial rulers can be successful for a population – it’s just that this one wasn’t. Why doesn’t discussion around Cromer – and the values he embodied – instead centre on the right to rule?

In prison, I witnessed the gap in accountability between the poor and the elite. A banker’s message to Epstein is racist and reductive

Here is an email that should bring shame to Jes Staley:

you want to know why we are not São Paolo, watch the TV adds on the Superbowl. Its all about hip blacks in hip cars with white women.

The group that should be in the streets, has been bought off. By Jay Z

Washington and Tehran will have to make compromises and the current deadline must be extended. But with the will there’s clearly a way

The failure of the Islamabad talks to end the US-Israel war on Iran was hardly surprising, given the stark differences between Washington’s 15-point proposal and Tehran’s 10-point equivalent. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which capped Iran’s uranium enrichment, took more than two years to negotiate, and its roots actually reach back to 2003. The US vice-president, JD Vance, spent less than a full day in Islamabad for negotiations that included the nuclear question and several others.

The surprise was Vance’s explanation for the failure – that Iran rejected the terms presented by the US. The American side was not in a position to dictate terms because Iran stood firm when the 8 April ceasefire took effect. But Vance seemed to believe, as does his boss Donald Trump, that the Iranians had been defeated and the US didn’t have to budge.

Rajan Menon is professor emeritus of international relations at Powell School, City University of New York, and senior research fellow at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies

Keir Starmer can’t be blamed for the crisis in the Middle East, but he has to reassure people that he is prepared for its long-term consequences

Public reassurance is one of the first duties of the government in difficult times. The early months of the Covid pandemic offer a case study in how to get this wrong. Boris Johnson was paralysed by indecision and denial of the severity of what was unfolding. Panic-buying cleared supermarket shelves of essential goods.

Sir Keir Starmer is unlike Mr Johnson in temperament and work ethic, but he too is struggling to get ahead of events in a global crisis. It isn’t easy when the origin of turbulence is a superpower gone rogue. Donald Trump’s impulsive actions can’t be anticipated with epidemiological precision like a virus.

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.

Science rarely produces identical outcomes. Mistaking this for failure turns caution into an excuse for inaction

A new set of studies out this month suggests that as many as half of all results published in reputable journals in the social sciences can’t be replicated by independent analysis. This is part of a long-running problem across many research fields – most visibly in the social sciences and psychology, though concerns have also been raised in areas of biomedical research.

The latest work is a seven-year project called Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (Score), which has now published three studies looking at 3,900 social science papers. It found that newer papers, and those published in journals requiring extensive sharing of underlying data, were more likely to be reproduced. Separately, medical research faces its own constraints: differing patient caseloads and limited sample sizes mean that, in practice, it can resemble the social sciences more than laboratory physics. Clearly, policymakers should be cautious of any claims that don’t have a wide and robust base of evidence.

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.

Responding to an article by the PM, Caroline Lucas says he must be clearer about climate risks, Molly Scott Cato says we must reverse Brexit and Dr Victor Ajuwon applauds Labour’s directness. Plus, letters by Toby Harris and Dr Tracey Elliott

Keir Starmer’s warning that the UK should not be at the mercy of events abroad is well made (The Iran war is a warning: Britain must build resilience – at home and with our allies in Europe, 9 April), but would carry more weight were he to level with the British public about the full breadth of the crises we face. It is extraordinary that nowhere in an article devoted to resilience did he find space to include the growing threat posed to the UK by the dramatic decline in the health of nature around the world. It is even more extraordinary – and, frankly, unforgivable – given that his own intelligence chiefs at the joint intelligence committee (JIC) have recently spelled it out for him in no uncertain terms.

In a report that the government shamefully sought first to suppress and then to redact, so that some of the most alarming warnings were removed, the JIC warned of “cascading risks” from the degradation of some of the planet’s most important ecosystems, including conflict, increased competition for resources and economic shocks. Six ecosystems “critical for UK national security” are all “on a pathway to collapse”, some potentially within five years – in other words, they face “irreversible loss of function beyond repair”. The UK’s heavy reliance on food and fertiliser imports means our food security is particularly at risk, threatening food shortages, higher prices and civil unrest.

Dr Helen Holt and Dr Peter Davis respond to an article by Polly Toynbee on the latest round of strikes by resident doctors

Polly Toynbee is right that it is time to stop the doctors’ strikes (Both doctors and the government are handling this strike badly – that’s why there is no end in sight, 10 April). She suggests that doctors are not feeling the pain of industrial action, but this is far from true. We are anxious about our patients and their cancelled appointments and procedures; we are exhausted covering work that we are not familiar with; and those being paid overtime for shifts they don’t want to do are uncomfortable about the financial impact on the NHS.

Many of us reluctantly supported industrial action at the beginning, with a government that wasn’t listening – wanting to support junior colleagues whose pay had fallen far behind contemporaries. Now we see how divided and conflicted resident doctors are too, and we long for a resolution. We recognise that the strikes are harmful. Communication and diplomacy are skills we pride ourselves on, and politicians have never needed them more than now. Diplomacy is the way to resolve this crisis for our NHS as well.
Dr Helen Holt
Consultant physician and chair of the medical staff committee, University Hospitals Dorset

Prof Michael Krawczak says the required molecular genetic testing comes at a cost, but should not be ruled out as it was in a recent court case

I read with great astonishment your article regarding the court of appeal’s decision on proving paternity in the case of a child whose father could be either one of a pair of monozygotic twins (Court of appeal says it cannot rule on which identical twin fathered a child, 30 April). I was particularly surprised by the court’s statement that it was “not possible” to say which twin fathered the child. This is definitely not true. The germ cells of monozygotic twins differ with sufficient probability and to a sufficient degree to allow their respective children to be clearly assigned to either of them using molecular genetic techniques.

I and my colleagues first presented the idea for this approach back in 2012, and clearly demonstrated its practical feasibility in 2018. Of course, the required molecular genetic testing entails considerable costs (currently in the five-figure range). However, whether such costs would be so “very significant” (the court’s words) as to preclude genetic testing seems highly questionable, given the potential consequences of inaction for those involved.
Prof Michael Krawczak
Kiel University, Germany

Madge Christopher was featured in an article on Storm Goretti, then Robert called

My photograph appeared in your article on the aftermath of Storm Goretti (‘It has been traumatic’: the Cornwall landmark left battered by Storm Goretti, 3 April), and now I have an extraordinary tale to tell.

Within a day or so of the publication, I received an email from a man called Robert who said that, more than 50 years ago, we had worked in the same local government establishment, which was an office with a small number of employees. But there was more…

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While a church bell clanged intermittently and bits of tumbleweed blew across the pitch at the Emirates Stadium, the Allianz Arena hosted a ding-dong battle that pretty much had it all on Wednesday night. For the second evening in eight days, it was left to Bayern Munich and Real Madrid to pull out all the stops and provide the box-office entertainment as Arsenal once again Arsenaled their way past Sporting in a bore draw to earn their place in Bigger Cup semi-finals. More or less picking up where they’d left off at the end of the first leg, Bayern and Madrid served up a gourmand feast of slapstick goalkeeping, a see-sawing scoreline, much better goalkeeping, near-misses, goals of an at times absurdly high quality, several red cards and no end of post-match salty Spanish tears and recriminations. While Madrid have little or no chance of pipping Barça to this season’s La Liga title, they certainly thrashed them in the ungracious Bigger Cup exit stakes.

The image of Fermín López getting the boot from Juan Musso (yesterday’s Football Daily) clearly shows technique learned from English players. Admittedly, López’s head appeared to be at a dangerous level and one might expect an element of risk from crouching like that. As a life-long Hearts fan, I haven’t forgotten the approximation of a tackle attempted by English full-back Jason Talbot, then ‘playing’ for Livingston, on poor young winger Sam Nicholson in 2015. This was one incident in a match which, I believe, carries the accepted term ‘feisty’ (ie five goals, eight yellow cards and one red). And no, this wasn’t the red” – Ken Muir.

Re: your almost-spot-on analysis of Southampton’s chances of automatic promotion (yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs, full email edition), what you and – to be fair – every other publication I’ve read about this in, have omitted to mention is that Ipswich’s game in hand is away to Saints during the week before the last games of the season. Rather pertinent, I’d say” – Stuart Ainsworth.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

• Scott O’Neil sends rallying cry to staff after reports

• McGinley says PGA Tour could now ‘play hardball’

LIV Golf has insisted the tour intends to continue “uninterrupted and at full throttle” this season amid claims its Saudi Arabian backers will imminently withdraw having funded the breakaway league to the tune of $5bn (£3.68bn).

The future of the rebel tour was mired in confusion on Wednesday following an executive meeting in New York and publication of a new Saudi investment strategy that did not mention sport and emphasised sustainability.

• Three officials have had applications for visas rejected

• Fifa Congress will take place in Vancouver on 30 April

Officials from the Palestine Football Association have been denied entry to Canada ahead of a pre-World Cup meeting of Fifa’s member associations to be held in Vancouver this month.

Three officials have had applications for visas to enter Canada rejected, with the association subsequently asking Fifa to intervene with immigration authorities on their behalf. It comes amid concerns over the ability of some nations to travel freely to this summer’s 48-team tournament, which will be held across the USA, Canada and Mexico.

Scotland’s tournament was overshadowed by off-field uncertainty but, says former international Beth Blacklock, the future is looking brighter

“There were players who were definitely struggling,” says the former Scotland international Beth Blacklock of the contract uncertainty that surrounded the squad before their run to the 2025 Rugby World Cup quarter-finals.

In pre-World Cup camps talks were taking place between players and the Scottish Rugby Union. Some of the 32-player squad had deals which ran until May 2026 but the rest of the team had arrangements which ended in October after the World Cup had concluded.

The former UConn star’s draft night should have been about her talent. Instead, speculation shows how the league is still being viewed through the wrong lens

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For the first time in a while, there was no consensus on who would go No 1 overall in the WNBA draft this year. When the Dallas Wings did make their pick, they chose Azzi Fudd, who had distinguished herself under Geno Auriemma at UConn, including a national championship in 2025.

The moment she was picked was pure: a delighted and seemingly nervous Fudd joined WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert onstage. She took photos with her jersey, made it through the ESPN interview that immediately followed, and beamed at her family and teammates in the audience. Paige Bueckers, who played alongside the 23-year-old at UConn and was the No 1 pick for the Wings in 2025, was there also to celebrate a well-deserved honor for Fudd.

• Mikie Sherrill says taxpayers should not carry burden

• Costs at World Cup have come under increased scrutiny

New Jersey’s governor, Mikie Sherrill, has hit out at Fifa after reports her state’s transport system will charge $100 for a return ticket to World Cup matches this summer.

New Jersey Transit lists the price for a round-trip ticket from New York’s Penn Station to MetLife Stadium, which will host eight World Cup matches this summer, including the final, as $12.90. The new pricing, reported by The Athletic earlier this week, puts the return ticket at more than $100 with no reductions for children, seniors or people with disabilities. NJ Transit told Fox 5 New York that the price has not been finalized. A decision is expected in the coming days.

• 31-year-old has been at club for nine years

• Portuguese says he will be ‘a City supporter for life’

Bernardo Silva has confirmed he will leave Manchester City in May, with the captain saying he will cherish the legacy he helped build in nine years at the club, winning the 2022-23 treble and a record four consecutive titles.

Silva joined City from Monaco in July 2017 for £43.5m and has been a key member of the generational success of Pep Guardiola’s team, winning six Premier League titles, two FA Cups, five League Cups, the Champions League and two Fifa Club World Cups. Including the Community Shield, the Portuguese has 19 honours with City

Newcastle face Bournemouth on Saturday with the manager under increasing pressure at St James’ Park

Eddie Howe has reason to believe that April really is the cruellest month. This time last year Newcastle’s manager was hospitalised with pneumonia and, 12 months later, he can barely switch on a radio or glance at a newspaper without receiving yet another reminder he is “under pressure”.

As fans and pundits debate whether Cesc Fàbregas, Xabi Alonso, Andoni Iraola, Oliver Glasner or AN Other might perform a superior job, one thing is clear: Howe has six games to reassure Newcastle’s hierarchy that he remains the right man to lead his 14th-placed team through what promises to be a significant summer rebuild.

Redevelopment of the National Sports Centre would be a boost to locals and those who have fought for its return

“There were trees growing out of the main stand and on the indoor track and no one was doing anything about it,” says John Powell of the groundswell of despair at a crumbling Crystal Palace barely a couple of years after the Olympics were hosted to acclaim across the other side of London.

A month before Sir Mo Farah secured his second gold of London 2012 on Super Saturday, he had swept to victory in the 5,000m when Crystal Palace hosted its final London Grand Prix. But that summer’s Games appeared to signal the beginning of the end for the venue that had been the home of British athletics for the previous two decades.

More than 100 injured across country after Russia launches nearly 700 drones and dozens of ballistic and cruise missiles

• Europe live – latest updates

Russia has carried out its deadliest attack against Ukraine this year, killing at least 17 people and injuring more than 100 in a wave of drone and missile strikes across the country.

Nine people died in the southern port city of Odesa and four were killed in Kyiv, including a 12-year-old boy. There were three fatalities in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Another person died in Zaporizhzhia oblast.

Lisa Nandy says staff have been strongly affected as some express frustration that high-paid presenters and executives likely to be safe

The BBC’s sudden announcement of 2,000 job cuts has had a “very strong effect” on staff, the UK’s culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, has said, as employees expressed frustration that highly paid presenters and senior staff would not be the prime targets of the cuts.

Nandy, who has been having conversations with BBC staff during discussions about the broadcaster’s charter renewal, is understood to be keen for employees to be involved in making the cost-cutting plan, which will affect as many as 10% of the broadcaster’s 21,000 staff over the next three years.

Critics say efforts to rescue the animal, nicknamed Tommy, unlikely to succeed and could lead to further harm

A last-ditch effort to rescue a wayward whale that has transfixed Germans for weeks has begun in the Baltic Sea despite criticism it has little chance of success and could further harm the 12-tonne creature.

The male humpback whale was first spotted last month near Timmendorfer Strand on the northern coast of Germany, giving rise to its nickname Timmy. It has repeatedly become stranded and then freed itself after human assistance but it is now stranded again, with rescuers saying it is fighting a losing battle for its life.

PM demands real world changes in Downing Street meeting with senior figures from Meta, TikTok, Google and X

Keir Starmer has told social media bosses “things can’t go on like this” in a meeting about internet safety at Downing Street.

The prime minister summoned senior figures from Meta, TikTok, Google, Snapchat’s owner and X to No 10 on Thursday morning as the government considers imposing new restrictions on platforms, including an Australia-style ban for under-16s. Meta owns Facebook and Instagram, and Google owns YouTube.

Scientists who analysed nearly 16,000 ancient remains suggest red hair and fair skin is favoured for vitamin D production

People with red hair who have put up with teasing or “fiery” stereotypes may be pleased to learn that they appear to be winners from an evolutionary perspective. A large genetics study has revealed that, in Europe, the gene for red hair has been actively selected for more than 10,000 years.

The study did not aim to uncover the reasons for the trend, but focused on the broader question of whether human evolution has plateaued since the advent of agriculture. By analysing DNA from nearly 16,000 ancient human remains and more than 6,000 living individuals, the scientists provided compelling evidence that, in fact, biological evolution has continued apace.

Sustainability certification by Marine Stewardship Council may be obscuring labour abuses in seafood supply chains, say researchers

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), which operates a “blue tick” scheme to indicate the sustainability of fish, has been accused of creating an “illusion” of ethical sourcing, after a study reported that widespread labour abuses have taken place on the fishing vessels it approves.

One in five vessels where the crew reported abuses to the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) over the last five years took place on ships catching seafood certified as sustainable by the MSC, researchers found.

For his project ‘De Oförtrutna’ (The Relentless), photographer Christer Björkman pictured Swedish scientists working in the spirit of Carl Linnaeus, the botanist who created the modern taxonomic system that classifies organisms based on appearance. Each scientist brought to the shoot a book and an item of importance to their work

Scientists say finding is ‘very concerning’ as collapse would be catastrophic for Europe, Africa and the Americas

The critical Atlantic current system appears significantly more likely to collapse than previously thought after new research found that climate models predicting the biggest slowdown are the most realistic. Scientists called the new finding “very concerning” as a collapse would have catastrophic consequences for Europe, Africa and the Americas.

The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (Amoc) is a major part of the global climate system and was already known to be at its weakest for 1,600 years as a result of the climate crisis. Scientists spotted warning signs of a tipping point in 2021 and know that the Amoc has collapsed in the Earth’s past.

Map reveals most severe concentrations of ammonia emissions, which are dangerous to health and environment

Ammonia pollution hotspots have been identified in areas with some of the greatest numbers of intensive pig and poultry farms in Britain, research has revealed.

A new map for the first time reveals the most severe concentrations of ammonia emissions are clustered in Lincolnshire, Herefordshire and Norfolk. These regions all have a high density of intensive poultry and pig units that drive dangerous levels of ammonia, according to researchers from Compassion in World Farming (CiWF) and Sustain.

Heather Hallett hails scheme but urges ministers and health services to promote better vaccine awareness

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The UK’s Covid vaccination programme was “an extraordinary feat” which developed and delivered protective jabs in record time, but work is now needed to rebuild trust in vaccines and ensure better access before the next pandemic, an official inquiry has found.

Heather Hallett, the chair of the statutory inquiry into the pandemic, said the vaccine rollout and the identification of an inexpensive steroid that saved the lives of thousands of UK patients, were “two of the success stories” of the pandemic.

Establishing a pharmaceutical expert advisory panel to oversee the UK’s preparedness to develop, procure and manufacture vaccines and therapeutics.

Producing targeted vaccination strategies and communications to increase vaccine uptake and reduce inequalities.

Improving monitoring and evaluation of vaccine uptake and delivery to ensure efforts to boost uptake are effective.

Helping regulatory bodies to access healthcare records for ongoing safety monitoring of new vaccines and therapeutics, and

Assessing the vaccine damage payment scheme as soon as possible.

No injuries and no damage reported in Wembley incident and Met says it is not being treated as terrorism

A teenager and two men have been arrested after an attempted arson attack at the offices of a Persian media organisation in north-west London, the Metropolitan police said.

Officers on patrol were told at about 8.30pm on Wednesday that an “ignited container” had been thrown towards the site in Wembley, landing in a car park where the fire immediately died out. There were no injuries and no damage was reported.

Nadia Fall calls for bold thinking as she announces new shows including anti-Trump version of Thelma & Louise

Theatres facing financial difficulty can only prosper by “programming their way out of it”, according to the Young Vic artistic director, Nadia Fall, who has announces her new slate of shows, including an anti-Trump musical version of Thelma & Louise.

Fall, who took the helm at the Young Vic in 2025 and oversaw staff cuts after a £500,000 deficit in the last financial year, said theatres must put on unmissable productions in order to balance the books.

Exit of former Newsnight editor as chief content officer comes after appointment of new CEO Priya Dogra

Channel 4’s content chief, Ian Katz, who holds responsibility for the broadcaster’s £650m annual programming budget and output, is to leave after almost nine years in the post.

Katz, a former senior executive at the Guardian, became the channel’s director of programmes in January 2018 after moving from the BBC where he was editor of Newsnight.

Health secretary faces questions in packed House Ways and Means committee hearing

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Chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Dan Caine says the US military remains ready to re-engage in combat “at literally a moment’s notice”.

He says the blockade covers Iran’s ports and coastlines and applies to all ships, regardless of which flag they are sailing under.

Pedro Piscal pisco is latest Chilean brand to resemble a Hollywood name – and others have fought off the lawsuits

The actor Pedro Pascal is waging a legal battle against a Chilean pisco merchant who has chosen a cheeky name for his brand of the country’s national spirit: Pedro Piscal.

David Herrera registered the brand name with a Chilean commercial regulator in 2023 and began selling his pisco in off-licences and restaurants.

Tycoon’s media empire accused of pushing far-right ideas, as writers say: ‘We refuse to be hostages in ideological war’

• Europe live – latest updates

More than 100 writers have quit the historic French publishing house Grasset in protest at its conservative billionaire owner, Vincent Bolloré, whose media empire has been accused of promoting reactionary and far-right ideas.

In an unprecedented walkout, dozens of writers including the acclaimed punk feminist novelist Virginie Despentes and the philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, signed an open letter against Bolloré, 74, who is close to far-right figures.

Leader of leftwing Economic Freedom Fighters was convicted last year for firing rifle in the air at 2018 rally

The South African leftwing politician Julius Malema has been sentenced to five years in prison for firing a rifle in the air at a political rally in 2018.

Lawyers for the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, South Africa’s fourth largest political party, immediately appealed, and Malema will remain free while the appeal proceedings are under way.

These digital security organizers bring the fight for online privacy to dance parties, wine meetups and reading groups

Imani Thompson shows up at Wonderville Bar in Brooklyn looking ready for a DJ set, or to drink, or to dance the night away with friends. While she’ll probably do the latter, she’s also a cybersecurity organizer leading the evening’s event.

Thompson is the host, along with the New York City-based tech organizing coalition Cypurr Collective, of Break Up With Google. Its purpose isn’t a mystery; the main goal is to help attenders understand how to mitigate their vulnerability to surveillance through major tech services. But it’s also important for people to have fun while they do it, Thompson said – hence the DJs playing until the wee hours of the morning.

ONS figure for February suggests Britain was gaining momentum before conflict dashed hopes of recovery

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UK GDP expanded by a stronger than expected 0.5% in February, official figures show, suggesting the economy was gaining momentum before the onset of war in the Middle East dashed hopes of recovery.

The jump, reported by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), was significantly bigger than the 0.1% forecast by economists. January’s flatlining figure was also revised up, to 0.1% growth.

Budget airline says passengers are leaving it later to book flights owing to economic uncertainty

• Business live – latest updates

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The budget airline easyJet has warned the impact of the Iran war on bookings and oil prices will hit its profits, having driven up fuel costs by £25m in the last month alone.

It said it expected to report an increased pre-tax loss of £540-£560m for the six months to March, up from £394m in the first half of 2024-25. The carrier typically makes its money in the second half of the year which includes the peak summer period.

Exclusive: Climate action blockers including Saudi Arabia, Russia and major fossil fuel firms set to make extra $234bn by end of 2026

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The world’s top 100 oil and gas companies banked more than $30m every hour in unearned profit in the first month of the US-Israeli war in Iran, according to exclusive analysis for the Guardian. Saudi Aramco, Gazprom and ExxonMobil are among the biggest beneficiaries of the bonanza, meaning key opponents of climate action continue to prosper.

The conflict pushed the price of oil to an average of $100 (£74) a barrel in March, leading to estimated windfall war profits for the month of $23bn for the companies. Oil and gas supplies will take months to return to pre-war levels and the companies will make $234bn by the end of the year if the oil price continues to average $100. The analysis uses data from a leading intelligence provider, Rystad Energy, analysed by Global Witness.

‘Trauma-bonding’ with his future wife on Big Brother, selling their wedding pics to OK!, walking off Buzzcocks, writing hits for stars like Kylie and Olly Murs … as the singer returns, he looks back at a tumultuous career

‘I hated being famous,” Samuel Preston says. “I hated, hated, hated it.” Twenty years ago, Preston, who presented himself by his surname to emulate Morrissey, was experiencing a very intense type of notoriety. He had been NME-famous with Worthing band the Ordinary Boys, whose socially conscious ska-influenced indie-punk had a strong cult following known as the Ordinary Army, thanks to hits such as Boys Will Be Boys. But his stint in the 2006 edition of Celebrity Big Brother, and the national interest in his will-they-won’t-they relationship with fellow contestant Chantelle Houghton – the fake “celebrity” sent in to dupe the B-listers – was what sent his profile through the roof.

After leaving the show, he says, “I was on loads of Prozac. I was in a weird space.” Now, after years living on-off in the US, becoming a successful songwriter for hire (to the likes of Kylie Minogue, Cher, Olly Murs, Liam Payne and Jessie Ware), and surviving a near-death experience and OxyContin addiction, Preston is making a comeback with the Ordinary Boys. The band’s new single Peer Pressure is their first music since 2015 (not counting a Christmas single with Olly Murs).

Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac are a miserable couple who run a country club and get blackmailed in a rich v poor potboiler that has been done so much better before – not least in the stunning first series. What a shame

We may have to start calling it White Lotus Derangement Syndrome. This is a condition spreading through the television commissioning system since Mike White debuted his brilliant anthology series five years ago, whereby drama is produced by setting poorer Americans alongside richer Americans in a location the latter choose to come to and the former can’t escape. In The White Lotus, they are the staff and guests at a variety of luxury resorts. In Sirens, the personal assistants of kabillionaires. In whatever Nicole Kidman is in they can be single mothers with children at assisted places at schools with the cashmere-clad elite, servants to expats nursing secret sadnesses in luxurious apartments, masseuses and other service providers at exclusive spa retreats, or exploited or sexually harassed nannies to people who think nothing of exploiting or harassing their nannies. In non-Kidman derivatives, the dogged blue collar viewer-avatars can also include cops, struggling novelists or academics. Unless the academic is a tenured professor, in which case the underdog becomes a sexually harassed student, who should probably unionise with the nannies.

Now we have the second season of Beef to join the throng. The first, starring Steven Yeun and Ali Wong both doing career-best work, played out to near-universal acclaim as the story of a minor altercation in a car park between their two characters that gradually transformed credible pettiness into a credible psychodrama that built to an operatic climax. The new one stars Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac as a married couple who oversee the running of a luxury country club. Josh is the general manager (with a penchant for gambling and camgirls), Lindsay is the interior designer-cum-hostess (with a penchant for restoring the social status she had as a posho in her native England and an icily ruthless streak). They are both frustrated with where life has led them – so close to real money, but so far from having it themselves.

Irish director Lee Cronin follows his Evil Dead reboot with what feels like another Evil Dead film but without a real sense of humour

Warner Bros would prefer that you referred to their new hard R take on The Mummy as Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, a bafflingly grandiose insistence that has earned some deserved ridicule online over the past few weeks. It’s partly to separate it from Universal’s upcoming return to the 90s-00s franchise (Blumhouse, the horror hit-makers behind the film, on X posted: “BRENDAN FRASER IS NOT IN LEE CRONIN’S THE MUMMY” last week) as well as what those films represented – safe, family-friendly and easily theme park-able. It’s also an attempt to capitalise on our pop auteur moment, one that Warners has helped to create with Ryan Coogler and Zach Cregger both front and centre of the campaigns for their hit genre films last year (The Mummy’s trailer notably heralds it as “from the studio who brought you Weapons” as if that were to mean all that much).

While it is refreshing to see a studio focus on pushing a director over an actor (the last attempt at a Mummy movie relied on the star power of Tom Cruise, a decision that couldn’t stop the film from losing a considerable amount of money), it also speaks to an unearned indulgence and an expedited crowning of a genius before one has really had the chance to prove oneself (a lose-lose of-the-moment trend we need to move away from and one that, to his credit, Cronin was unsure about being a part of). Cronin, an Irish film-maker who has made just two films to date (The Hole in the Ground and Evil Dead Rise), is an undeniable visual talent but his Mummy is also absurdly, watch-checkingly overlong (134 minutes is an unacceptable length for a genre film as thin as this), tonally unsure and, fatally, not all that scary. It’s also, for something so clearly attributed to just one person, a film so deeply influenced by the work of many, many others. It might not feel like a Mummy movie you’ve seen before but it’ll feel like a great deal else.

After losing his property, O’Connor’s rancher finds himself relocated to a trailer park and starts the long road to healing in this subdued, sweet drama

Here is a sweet, sad country song of a movie directed by Max Walker-Silverman; stoic and subdued. Josh O’Connor plays Dusty, a Colorado rancher who has just been hit by a wildfire, losing to the flames property which had been in the family for generations. The movie begins with the stark panorama of charred trees in a scorched and arid landscape; the farmland is still his, but utterly barren for the forthcoming decade, a grim assessment made by a bank official who rejects Dusty’s application for a loan with the land as collateral.

Like many local people in the same situation, Dusty now has to live in a spartan trailer in a government-funded emergency camp, and he takes a mortifying job working on the highway. His crisis has meant a new poignancy in his connection with ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy), 10-year-old daughter Callie-Rose (Lily LaTorre) and his kindly, caring but ailing mother-in-law Bess, played by Amy Madigan (recently an Oscar-winner for her performance in Weapons). When Dusty collects Callie-Rose for regular visits, she now has to come to his grim trailer and they have to park up by the local library in his pickup to pinch the wifi so Callie-Rose can do homework on her tablet.

Impressive film is full of exquisite fight scenes and action-movie stalwarts who overcome a ridiculously tangled plot

Recently becoming the most successful wuxia film of all time at the Chinese box office, Blades of the Guardians offers a duly impressive spectacle, chock-full of epic set-pieces that lean more on physical effects than CGI, and of course lashings of exquisitely choreographed fight scenes mostly using – as the title suggests – swords.

One wouldn’t expect anything else, given it is directed by veteran fight choreographer Yuen Woo-ping, best known to western audiences for his contributions to films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the Matrix movies and Kill Bill. Asian viewers might revere him more for directing classics such as Drunken Master, the Tiger Cage pictures, Iron Monkey and many more. In addition, Blades puts megastar Wu Jing at the centre of the story, a performer who got his big break back in the 90s working with Yuen on Tai Chi Boxer. From there, Yuen fills out the cast with lots of stalwart action-movie faces, including good ol’ Jet Li as a levitating evil general and Tony Leung Ka-fai as a noble father, plus up-and-coming faces like popstar/actor Yu Shi as a bounty hunter and Chinese opera star Chen Lijun as a plucky princess who’s handy with a bow and arrow.

The stars of David Lowery’s psychodrama on the secrets behind creating music for a fictional pop diva

As David Lowery, the director, was writing the fictional pop star Mother Mary for his new film of the same name, he spent a lot of time studying the last 25 years in music. He listened to Taylor Swift (whose Reputation concert film inspired the performances in the film), Lorde and FKA twigs, who appears on screen as a medium named Imogene. But as the film’s haunted love story between Mary (played by Anne Hathaway) and her former best friend and designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel) emerged, his listening habits shifted.

“The pop music fell away and other music started to enter that sphere,” he says in A24’s New York offices. He’s sitting beside twigs and Hathaway the day after the trio attended the film’s premiere in the city. “James Blake and Aldous Harding really captured the emotion that I was trying to type out between Sam and Mother Mary. They began to help me channel the feeling of the movie itself.”

Hasselhorn/Bushakevitz
(Harmonia Mundi)
The German baritone’s all-Schubert disc with pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz is full of communicative diction and poetic phrasing

Now in his mid-30s, German baritone Samuel Hasselhorn is a major player in a veritable rat-pack of high-flying young lieder singers. His growing discography includes an ongoing series with pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz, part of Harmonia Mundi’s Schubert 200 project to record all the composer’s songs, from 1823 onwards, ahead of the 2028 bicentenary of his death.

The year 1826 found Schubert in affirmative mood, a torrent of lieder reflecting a newfound sense of optimism. The album, appropriately entitled Hoffnung, the German word for hope, opens with a nuanced account of the expansive Im Freien. The combination of Hasselhorn’s communicative diction and Bushakevitz’s poetic phrasing brings a rapt intimacy to this six-minute celebration of nocturnal beauty.

The poet reconnects with the landscape of the May Day Mountains in Jamaica where he grew up in a personal story of migration, race and rural life

An award-winning poet living in Roundhay Park, Leeds, Jason Allen-Paisant spent his early childhood living with his grandmother in Coffee Grove, a hilly rural district of Jamaica which was cut off from basic amenities such as electricity and water. Seen through the eyes of a child, Coffee Grove was, he notes, “both a tiny place and a huge planet”. There he developed a close relationship with the local plant life through climbing trees, picking fruit and helping his grandmother harvest yams on the “grung”, the local name for their small plot of land.

Allen-Paisant later yearned for pastures new, moving first to Paris and then to Britain to study at Oxford. His dream of upward mobility had become a reality, yet in the UK he noticed his interactions with nature were few and far between. He came to realise “just how much class keeps people in Britain from the privileges of land and soil and also keeps them from the tenderness that comes with forming kinship with the earth”.

Mould’s fearsomely loud power trio Sugar rode the wave of grunge, but called it quits when the scene lost its innocence. Now the band are reuniting – before it’s too late

The beating heart of Sugar was always the sound of Bob Mould’s guitar: a colossal, metallic, thunderous thing, like a sonic boom you could whistle. “It was incredible, being engulfed by that wall of sound,” remembers bassist David Barbe from his office at the University of Georgia, weeks before the group are due to play their first shows in more than three decades. “Bob was so loud, there were times on stage when I could see Malcolm drumming, but I couldn’t actually hear him.”

“I didn’t wear earplugs when I started playing with Bob,” adds Malcolm Travis, the aforementioned drummer, from his home in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. “But soon afterwards, I did. It was just deafening.” And while everyone involved is 30 years older than the last time they played together, age has not withered them; anyone who’s caught Mould playing solo in recent years will attest that his guitar is still fearsomely loud.

She brought Irish Gaelic to Top of the Pops, featured on soundtracks including Titanic and King Arthur and showed that folk could find pop success
• Clannad singer and harpist Moya Brennan dies aged 73

Moya Brennan’s voice was an unusual instrument to arrive in the Top 20 in November 1982, especially on a Top of the Pops episode featuring the very different delights of A Flock of Seagulls, Eddy Grant and one-hit wonders Blue Zoo. As light as a leaf in the air, it provided a sacred counterpoint to the low, looming drones of a Prophet 5 synthesiser, and, in its breathy solo lines, guided the layered harmonies of her Clannad bandmates – her brothers and uncles – to somewhere new. A week later, Theme from Harry’s Game – the closing song on a radical Yorkshire TV series about The Troubles that played out over three consecutive nights – had jumped to No 5 in the charts, the highest ever position for a song sung in Irish Gaelic.

The lyrics were about the never-ending cycle of life, and how all things must pass, plucked from a proverb from a book of her grandfather’s, by her brother and bandmate, Ciarán. Even to non-speakers, Brennan’s voice sounded like a new kind of spiritual guide, much needed in the anxious early days of Thatcherism and only a few months after the IRA London park bombings. Her impact also expanded the transportive possibilities of traditional music in film and TV. Brennan’s voice became a mainstay of soundtracks, later among them ITV’s Robin of Sherwood series, Titanic and the 2004 feature film adaptation of King Arthur starring Keira Knightley, entering public consciousness in a way similar to how the avant garde output of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop had in the 1960s.

The premise – Instagram influencer is confronted by pioneer reality – is genius. But does this high-concept debut live up to the hype?

Could Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear be the first great tradwife novel? This was my hope: finally, a literary response to the unhinged social trend of women cosplaying “traditional Christian values” – pronatalism and obeying one’s husband – to large social media followings. I am not immune to hype, and Yesteryear has been hyped to high heaven, prompting massive auctions for the rights, and landing a film deal with Anne Hathaway.

You have to admit that the premise – Instagram tradwife wakes up in what appear to be the actual pioneer days, and finds that traditional wifedom is not as much of a hoot as her whitewashed social media re-enactment had implied – is genius. As one of the “Angry Women” our heroine Natalie so disparages, I was looking forward to some sweet schadenfreude.

The horrifying story of the Catholic-run institutions that incarcerated thousands of women and girls

Many readers, and surely most Irish readers, will finish this book in a state of white-knuckled rage, mingled with sorrow and at least a pang of guilt. It is a detailed, thoroughgoing and appalling account of the Magdalene laundries, the most famous, and most infamous, among Ireland’s extended and varied landscape of penal or correctional institutions, which operated for most of the 20th century (the last of the laundries was closed in 1996).

As the academic Louise Brangan points out in The Fallen, it is easy to become confused by the number and variety of prisons, mental asylums, orphanages, workhouses and homes for unmarried mothers that proliferated in Ireland between the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the late 1990s. However, the Magdalene laundries were unique. Dr Brangan writes: “In a regime distinguished by its excessive inhumanity, the Magdalene laundries were its deep end. In 1951, when the laundries were at their height, for every 100,000 males, 27 were in prison … [while] for every 100,000 females, 70 were in a laundry. These were not peripheral: they were Ireland’s main carceral institution.”

A man who meant to be a priest is faced with a moral crossroads in this ambitious and affecting first novel

Jon Doyle’s debut novel tells the story of Mack O’Brien, a young man who went to a seminary to study for the priesthood but was asked to leave because he had no real calling, and has therefore returned to his family home in Wales to work out what to do with his life. Cheek by jowl with his ailing, deeply religious mother, and a father struggling to process the grief of his own parents’ recent deaths, he finds himself drawn into participating in a local theatre production – playing a disciple in Owen Sheers’s now-legendary Passion of Port Talbot, an immersive community-led re-enactment of the crucifixion that took place over several days in Port Talbot in 2012, starring Michael Sheen.

Mack is recruited after a steelworker from the plant where he works as a security guard drops out of the show. Material enough for a novel already, one might think, but all this becomes more or less background noise when, on the same night he agrees to be in the play, Mack bumps into Siwan, a young woman he was close to at school. Siwan’s mother was an environmental activist who ended up going to prison for her protests. Siwan had visited him at the seminary on the day he agreed to leave the priesthood and said to him, “forgive me father, for I am about to sin”. The nature of the sin she is intent on committing becomes the focus of the novel.

The former children’s laureate missed the announcement of the award in Bologna due to post-Brexit passport rule changes

Michael Rosen, the poet and author known for books such as We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and Chocolate Cake, has won the 2026 Hans Christian Andersen award for writing in recognition of his lifelong contributions to children’s literature.

The former children’s laureate is the fourth Briton to win the award, following Eleanor Farjeon, Aidan Chambers and David Almond.

PlayStation 5 (version tested), Xbox, PC, Switch 2; Capcom
Engineer Hugh is sent from Earth to investigate a malfunctioning research station and meets a young android who helps him fend off murderous mechs

When Pragmata was announced alongside the PlayStation 5 in 2020, its shiny trailer promised slick sci-fi action in outer space. While it certainly delivers those futuristic thrills in spades, what I didn’t expect was a tender tale of paternal love. This is Capcom’s belated, surprisingly soulful first entry into gaming’s sad dad genre.

In this near-future fiction, a corporation named Delphi has established a research station on the moon’s surface to experiment with advanced 3D printing tech, using “Lunafilament” to easily recreate everything from tools to entire buildings. Predictably, things soon go very wrong. As the station suddenly goes dark, engineer Hugh is sent from Earth to investigate.

Pragmata is out April 17; £49.99

In a post-apocalyptic landscape of cutthroat scavengers, surprisingly peaceful players are opting to team up and open up – a phenomenon that’s intriguing game developers and psychologists alike

The video game Arc Raiders is set in a lethal imagining of an apocalyptic future for humanity. Survivors have been forced to live deep underground in colonies while mysterious, murderous AI machines patrol the surface. Only the desolate ruins of former cities survive, and reckless human “raiders” take trips topside to conduct dangerous scavenging missions.

For all the menace of these armed robots, called Arcs, the deadly droids are not the biggest threat in this hugely popular game, which was released late last year and has sold more than 14m copies. Raiders operate with the constant anxiety that another person will shoot them on sight and steal their loot. Mercilessness is rewarded in this kind of competitive, high-stakes world.

‘Unc’ (short for uncle) is meant to disparage older players, but the industry should make games for all generations

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While researching women’s experiences in multiplayer video games recently, I came across this thread on the subreddit about Bungie’s latest live shooter, Marathon. “I’ve played a lot of shooters, and as a feminine-presenting player tbh it’s often a struggle,” it reads. “I’ve heard all the ‘get back to the kitchen’ jokes … ​But Marathon has been completely different, guys. I haven’t had a single issue, people have been incredibly kind and helpful… ​The community feels genuinely welcoming to everyone.”

The top-voted reply? “Benefit of being an unc game.”

As The Super Mario Galaxy Movie storms the box office, we look back at the best forgotten games inspired by Tetris, Lemmings and … vitamins?

It should be no surprise that the latest Super Mario movie is smashing box office records – despite the, let’s say mixed, reviews. Nintendo’s iconic plumber has been a pop culture staple for 45 years, starring in some of the bestselling video games ever made, from the original Donkey Kong through to the joyous Super Mario Bros Wonder and the chaotic Mario Kart World.

But as with any storied showbiz career, there have been some lesser works. Who can forget – or actually remember – Hotel Mario, a door-shutting puzzle game for the doomed Philips CD-i console? Or what about Mario Teaches Typing, a 1992 educational game for the PC in which players navigate the Mushroom Kingdom by … correctly inputting words. Yet there have also been genuine treasures lost along the way. Here, then, are seven of our favourite much-overlooked Mario odysseys.

Victoria Miro, London
Mischievous, moving and troubled tales of female oppression unspool across the largest ever exhibition of the artist’s drawings, which show an intuitive touch her paintings lack

When Paula Rego was nine, she drew her grandmother sitting comfortably in a chair. The old woman’s hair is pinned back, and she wears dangly earrings and thick-rimmed glasses on a chain. She might be reading or sewing – it’s hard to tell. Whatever it is, she’s absorbed in the task at hand. Just like the young artist, who, even as a child, diligently signed and dated her work, in neat script shooting up from the tip of her grandmother’s shoe like a flare in a night sky.

This small, tender sketch is part of the largest exhibition of the Portuguese-born artist’s drawings to date. Curated by her son, Nick Willing, the show features works on paper from the 1950s, right around the time that she settled in Britain, to her death in 2022. Unspooling from lines in pencil, pastel, pen and ink are tantalising tales of people and places real and imagined, and periods in Rego’s own life when she felt afraid, inspired or fierce. Sometimes the tales intertwine. Sometimes they stand alone. They can be mischievous, moving, troubled. All are full of feeling.

Old Vic theatre, London
Director Clint Dyer brings a fresh political focus to Ken Kesey’s story of disempowerment but the relentless misogyny of the text feels retrograde

When Randle P McMurphy is thrust into an American psychiatric hospital in the early 1960s, the torpid air begins to crackle. As the anarchic McMurphy, Aaron Pierre gives a storming performance but although Clint Dyer’s stirring take on Ken Kesey’s 1962 novel boldly reframes the story, the text can’t support his ideas.

McMurphy immediately locks horns with authoritarian Nurse Ratched (Olivia Williams). He pivots and provokes, urging fellow patients to resist, play and party. Pierre roams the space with a pumped-up strut or an incongruous dainty scamper. He gives good fraternal hugs, but there’s a frantic vulnerability beneath the booming laugh.

Temple church, London
An unlikely alliance cut a swathe through folk songs, Janáček and music from Australia and New Zealand in an eclectic and beautiful evening

Many musical instruments are basically bits of hollowed-out wood, and if you think of it that way then the four played here by the enduringly experimental Brodsky Quartet and William Barton – violin, viola, cello and yiḏaki, or didgeridoo – don’t seem such distant cousins after all. This programme, already widely toured outside the UK, is well run-in – a good thing, considering that Barton’s didgeridoo was stuck in airport baggage control and arrived at the venue barely half an hour before the concert. It mixes up the two hemispheres in unapologetically eclectic fashion. Barton’s opening didgeridoo monologue segues into a Purcell Fantasia, and Robert Davidson’s Minjerribah – a lyrical evocation of place in which the didgeridoo, although a later addition by the composer, seems an essential and persuasive voice – rubs up against the yearning spikiness of Janáček’s String Quartet No 1.

It was Barton whom we heard first, offstage. Through a soundscape of whistles and pulsing low notes, he conjured a sense of vastness that spoke to the feeling of space under the Temple church’s arches. Throughout, the building’s warm acoustic seemed to render everything beautiful even at moments when, in the Janáček in particular, the Brodskys might have been aiming for more harshness. And it helped carry viola player Paul Cassidy’s voice as he sang his own arrangement of She Moved Through the Fair, the other performers weaving atmospheric detail around him. This established a fitting folk-song context for Barton’s own, weightier Square Circles Beneath the Red Desert Sand, which followed with Barton as vocalist and player.

Various venues, Leeds
Roderick Williams could breathe life into a telephone directory, but found much better material in his recital with Iain Burnside. A later concert featured atmospheric soundscapes from local composer Martin Iddon

Leeds’s top-tier celebration of the vocal arts continues to push the envelope. Two vastly different concerts were typical of director Joseph Middleton’s determination to think outside the box while honouring the festival’s roots in the traditional recital.

Haiku, which premiered last year in Minnesota, sprang from the fertile brains of baritone Roderick Williams and pianist Iain Burnside. The roughly 90-minute programme revolved around eight poems taken from a collection of haiku written by Japanese Americans interned during the second world war. Libby Larsen’s settings – sung in both English and Japanese and collectively entitled Mobile/Not Mobile/ … – are distilled musical morsels, stuffed with imagination, exploring themes of exile, detention and deportation.

Singer and musician who was a founder member of Clannad and lent an ethereal beauty to the theme of the TV series Harry’s Game

Moya Brennan, who has died aged 73, was a founder member, lead singer and harpist with the Irish folk band Clannad. It was Moya’s ethereal singing voice that contributed to the band’s distinctive sound, particularly on the theme music for the television series Harry’s Game in 1982. Moya later pursued a successful solo career, collaborating and recording with an impressive number of performers across the musical spectrum.

Formed in 1970, the band was initially called Clann As Dobhar (the family from Dore), which was soon shortened to Clannad. The band members were all related: Moya’s brothers, Ciarán and Pól Brennan, were joined by Pádraig and Noel Duggan, identical twins who were Moya’s uncles, though very similar to her in age. For a time, Moya’s sister Enya was also a member, until she left to pursue her highly successful solo career.

Footage of As Deep As the Grave screened in the US, featuring an authorised visual deepfake of the actor who died in 2025

A trailer has been released for the first film to star an authorised generative AI version of a major Hollywood actor.

Val Kilmer was cast in western As Deep As the Grave before his death in April 2025. Production delays meant he never shot any scenes, but the creative team worked with UK-based company Sonantic to create an AI speaking voice based on his old recordings.

One of the great Bollywood singers whose thousands of songs ranged from ghazals to dance tunes and pop

Asha Bhosle, who has died aged 92, was the best-known singer in India, an extraordinary artist whose career spanned over eight decades, during which she recorded about 12,000 songs.

She first became famous as a playback singer – recording songs that would then be lip-synced by actors in Bollywood movies. Though she was not on screen, her voice made her even more celebrated than those pretending to sing her songs. She also recorded extensively under her own name, and after establishing her reputation in Asia became known to western audiences first through Brimful of Asha, the 1997 tribute song by Cornershop, and then through her collaborations with musicians as varied as Boy George, Kronos Quartet and, most recently, Gorillaz.

Actor known for playing Monica Sutton in Coronation Street, her many stage roles, and film and TV appearances with her father, Donald Pleasence

On 1 January 1968, viewers of the TV soap opera Coronation Street experienced a mild culture shock as a clump of hippies decked out in floral shirts, Afghan coats and John Lennon spectacles temporarily took over the house at No 11, former home to Elsie Tanner. Among the somnambulant invaders was Monica Sutton, who plucked the black wig dreamily from her head as she entered, and handed it to the bemused tenant. Offered a snack, she replied: “I’ll have a tomato, darlin’.” She then contemplated the food as if hypnotised by it. “Blows my mind,” she sighed.

The hippies scarpered four episodes later, but television audiences over the next half a century became accustomed to the wan, haunted face of Angela Pleasence, who played Monica with such economical wit.

Brightly coloured yam, long enjoyed in east Asia, has been appearing in drinks, desserts – and, of course, TikTok feeds

Bright purple coffees and cocktails made with a root vegetable called ube have hit the high street in the UK after the yam’s striking hue caused a sensation on social media. Many are calling ube the “new matcha”, and it has a nutty, creamy, sweet taste, like a mix between coconut and vanilla.

Ube coloured and flavoured drinks became popular in the US last year, after an earlier boom in Australia. Farmers in the Philippines, where the root vegetable is often sourced, have been struggling to meet demand.

Transporting little ones by bike is fun, practical and good for the planet – here’s how to get started

• The best bike panniers and handlebar bags

In the least weird way possible, strapping children to bicycles is a longstanding tradition in my family. My grandparents used to haul their three kids around in a rickety wooden trailer hitched to the back of their tandem (see picture below), and some of my earliest memories involve being wedged into a bright red child seat with a gargantuan foam mushroom of a helmet obstructing my upper peripheral vision. Now that my son is old enough, it’s our turn to pick up the baton.

Turns out, there are a lot of ways to strap a kid to a bike, and I’ve spent the past six months researching all the options to figure out what’s best. I’ve also spent lots of time using trailers and rear-mounted seats, as they were most appropriate for my son’s age and my bike setup.

Squeeze the day with our expert’s pick of the best juicers, from cold press to anti-clog to budget

• In the US? Read the best juicers in the US
• The best blenders, tested

Long before we became a nation of smoothie lovers, with blenders gracing our worktops, the health-conscious kitchen was always home to a juicer. Those early models could be tricky to keep clean, or require herculean effort to produce a mere dribble – but modern juicers are more efficient, easier to maintain, and can often produce more than just fruit juice.

There are some solid reasons to buy. Homemade juice is the original health drink: squeezed straight from fruit and vegetables, it has none of the preservatives sometimes found in shop-bought blends, nor is it treated to make it last longer or stay the right colour. Juicers can, however, leave behind some of the important fibre found in fruits’ skin and flesh.

Best juicer overall and best on a budget:
Nutribullet juicer

Best compact centrifugal juicer:
Philips Viva Collection juicer

Hot brushes promise bouncy blow-dries and voluminous curls – without the salon price tag. We put 14 to the test to reveal the best, from budget buys to multistylers

• The best hair straighteners – tested

Few things put a spring in your step quite like a beautiful, bouncy blow-dry from your favourite hair salon. However, if you don’t want to spend your days – or your money – at the salon, then a hot brush could be just the styling tool you need.

As the name suggests, a hot brush is a round or paddle-shaped hair-styling tool that either heats up like a straightening iron or uses warm airflow like a hair dryer to dry and style your hair. Depending on the shape and size of the brush, a hot brush can give you anything from a straight, sleek style to volume and lift, or even red-carpet curls.

Best hot brush overall:
GHD Duet Blowdry

Best budget hot brush:
Revlon One-Step Volumiser

Our tester hauled, hurdled and army-crawled his way to crowning the best carry-on luggage. Plus, Michelle Ogundehin’s shopping secrets and meal kits, tested

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Want to get fit, quick? Try testing the best cabin bags over a muddy assault course in Leeds. Seldom have I showered so gratefully or slept as soundly as I did after this product test.

The first and thorniest challenge was logistical. How would I get a selection of suitcases – the seven top performers in routine testing – from my house to the West Leeds Activity Centre, on the other side of the city?

The best spring jackets for women: 12 favourites for every forecast

The best mascaras for longer, fuller and fluttery lashes: 12 favourites worn and rated by our beauty expert

How I Shop with Michelle Ogundehin: ‘We grownups have enough stuff already’

‘A good, strong squeak’: the best supermarket halloumi, tasted and rated

The best water flossers, tested for that dentist-clean feeling

‘Fresher than anything in a shop’: the best recipe boxes and meal kits for time-poor foodies, tested

Tonic is much more than a bit player in a G&T. A lot of it’s good enough to drink solo

If a tonic is something that “makes you feel stronger and happier”, my tonics come in the form of good wine, bad chocolate and an ageing whippet called Ernie. Recently, though, I’ve found myself craving the OG tonic – tonic water – which started life as a malaria treatment in the age of the British empire.

In the 17th century, Jesuit missionaries brought quinine, a bitter compound found in the bark of American cinchona trees, to Europe. They knew that indigenous people had been using it to treat fevers, and by the 1700s it was routinely being used as an antimalarial in tropical colonies. But there was a snag: quinine is unpalatable. To offset its impossible bitterness, it was combined with water and sugar to make a drink that enabled those stationed in the tropics to self-medicate every day. By the Victorian times, that self-medication had taken on a different aspect; not only had tonic water become fizzy, but it was routinely combined with gin for a drink now emblematic of the British Raj.

Penne may be the default short pasta all-rounder, but this variation on an alpine classic is soft, warming and a bit special

In December 2023, the magazine La Cucina Italiana ranked Italians’ favourite pasta shapes, according to data gathered by Unione Italiana Food (“the leading association in Italy for the direct representation of food product categories”). I love this sort of thing. According to the UIF, by processing NielsenIQ data (comprehensive market research, consumer intelligence and retail measurement), they identified the five most popular shapes from over 500, and examined how preferences vary in different regions.

In first place was spaghetti, while penne came in second, with these two shapes – which also takes in thinner spaghettini, chunkier spaghettoni and both ridged and smooth penne – accounting for 78% of all pasta sold in Italy in 2023. The regional variations of three, four and five are as follows: in the north-west and north-east, fusilli, short pasta and mixed pasta for broth or minestra; in central Italy, short pasta, fusilli and rigatoni; in the south, mixed pasta for broth or minestra, short pasta and tortiglioni. It has to be said that the regional variations are a bit baggy, considering that short pasta takes in eight shapes: conchiglie, farfalle, mezze maniche, orecchiette, pasta mista, penne again (which is confusing), paccheri and trofie. All of which is justification for calling this week’s column the second highest-ranking pasta shape in Italy with potatoes, cabbage, butter and cheese (while also noting that you can instead use the shapes ranked number three, four and five).

This Lombardian ‘village cake’ is simple, delicious and endlessly adaptable

Old sourdough is my secret ingredient. To stop it going mouldy, I take it out of any plastic packaging and keep it in the bread bin with plenty of airflow around it – that way, it will dry out slowly, rather than turning mouldy. Any odds and ends, meanwhile, I store in a cloth bag to use in various dishes, from pangrattato (or poor man’s parmesan) to strata, a savoury bread-and-butter pudding.

My new favourite recipe discovery for using up stale bread is today’s torta paesana, or village cake, from Lombardy. The best way I can come up with to describe it is that it’s a bit like a firm baked custard.

Savoury, sour, funky and spicy – it’s no wonder there are multiple uses for a lime pickle

I’m obsessed with lime pickle. It’s savoury, sour, funky, spicy and full of bold personality that enlivens anything it’s smeared on. It’s made by salting and fermenting limes with chillies and spices for a fierce, flavour-packed condiment that’s traditionally eaten as a side to poppadoms or with simple dal and rice. Over the years, I have also folded it into grilled cheese toasties, marinades for fat prawns to barbecue in the summer or made compound butters with it to smother over sweet potatoes before roasting. It’s an instant flavour bomb and my pantry is never without a jar.

A university researcher and a property manager may have found (some) common ground on leaving the EU – but what about affordable homes?

• Want to meet someone from across the divide? Click here to find out how

Graham, 76, Pangbourne

Occupation Property manager

Studying on different continents is a challenge for Veronika and Fabio … Can their young love go the distance?

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

There have been days when we’ve been on the phone for 10 hours at a stretch

When I’ve flown back to see her, we’ve tried to make up for lost time

Turn your attention to your internal landscape rather than the next building project. Make your next project yourself

My wife and I are in our late 60s. The past 20 years have felt like treading water, as all my funds are tied up in a property that, for complex reasons, I am unable to sell. We are both creative. Over the past year or so I’ve made some improvements to our house, things that make people say wow. I enjoy seeing their pleasure, but their praise isn’t hugely important to me. In fact, I am somewhat reclusive. I do not enjoy being part of a wider community and I’m content with a handful of close friends.

Last year my father died, and after a period of despair, during which I found myself contemplating suicide (I did not share this with my wife), I turned first to Samaritans, then a therapist.

Alda feels Rachel should follow jewellery ‘rules’, but Rachel likes to mix things up. You decide whose argument rings true
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

I know she’s expressing herself, but when you mix everything up, it looks thrown together and cheap

They’re not Alda’s hands to worry about – I like my mismatched mess. Why does it matter to her?

Now I’m being threatened with debt collectors because I don’t have a tenancy agreement or a mortgage

British Gas opened an account in my name for an address that I have never occupied, and sent me a £571 bill. It declined to open a complaint because I “refused” to provide a tenancy agreement or mortgage statement which, since I’ve long since paid off my mortgage, I don’t have. It is now threatening me with a debt collection agency.

IW, Northampton

There are many options, from cards to buy now, pay later. We find out the best – and the effect on your credit score

Until recently, if you wanted to buy something you couldn’t afford upfront, you reached for a credit card or took out a loan. Now, when you get to the checkout, you are likely to be faced with other options, including buy now, pay later (BNPL).

With so many ways to borrow, the true costs and complexities aren’t always clear. Which option will actually save you the most money in the long run? And how might each option affect your credit score? We spoke to financial experts to get some answers.

Swedish retailer continued to advertise partnership with Soly and failed to offer me any advice

I am one of many left thousands of pounds out of pocket after signing up for solar panels via Ikea’s website late last year.

Ikea had partnered with the European installer Soly, and the fact the panels were being advertised via such a well-known company gave us confidence.

Fraudsters send emails claiming storage is full or nearly full, then trick people into clicking on links that can expose bank and personal details

For a while you’ve been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full”. They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take aren’t being uploaded.

You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of 99p a month for more storage. But it seems that you can’t keep putting off the inevitable: you have received an email which says your iCloud account has been blockedand your photos and videos will be deleted very soon. To keep them you need to upgrade immediately, it says.

Informal migration, plus climate change and rising numbers of cases globally, are complicating the tireless efforts of the landlocked African country to eradicate the killer disease

The freezer is filled with blue-lidded tubes of cows’ blood, ready to be defrosted and used to feed the colony of mosquitoes. “Also, you can use your arm,” says Nombuso Princess Bhembe, who tends the mosquitoes at Eswatini’s national insectary, an unremarkable building in the town of Siphofaneni, part of the southern African country’s push to eliminate malaria.

But the landlocked nation of 1.2 million people, formerly known as Swaziland, is facing headwinds from not only the climate crisis, aid cuts and insecticide resistance but also economic migration from countries with higher case numbers.

You might think of breathing as automatic, but dysfunctional breathing can arise even if you’re healthy

We’re often taught that breathing is automatic. We barely think about it, as with blinking or the quiet, constant work of the heart. But many otherwise healthy adults have dysfunctional breathing.

“Dysfunctional breathing, also known as breathing pattern disorder, is when breathlessness and/or difficulty in breathing is felt,” said Dr Stephen Fowler, a professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Manchester. It can occur outside the context of any disease. If a related condition is present, like asthma, the breathlessness might feel disproportionate to that condition, he said.

When your boss asks to meet, do you assume you’re about to get fired? Experts explain this common pattern

Your boss asks you for a meeting later in the week; you have never received negative feedback, but you automatically assume you’re about to get fired. Thoughts begin to swirl as you imagine the consequences: soon, you’ll be unemployed and unable to pay your rent.

Or, perhaps, when your partner is a little late coming home, you visualize a terrible accident on the motorway, their car crushed in the pile-up.

Having diverse microbes in the gut has been promoted as a way to boost immunity, but studies suggest it’s more complicated than that

The trillions of microorganisms that live in and on our bodies – known as the microbiome – have been hailed as the key to better immunity. “Lots of studies correlate the types of bacteria in your microbiome with health and disease across almost every mental and physical condition,” says Prof Daniel M Davis, head of life sciences at Imperial College London and the author of Self Defence: A Myth-busting Guide to Immune Health. “But most of that evidence is correlative, and we still need to understand exactly how the microbiome affects health.”

Scientists often look at one measure: diversity. In other words, how many different species of microbes live in the gut. “The more diverse your microbiome is, the more it seems to correlate with not being ill.”

British designer aims to bring eco-friendly awareness to the high street in second collection with retailer

Stella McCartney, the luxury fashion designer who refuses to use leather, fur or feathers, is returning to the high street for a sustainable collection with H&M.

The collaboration between the British designer and the Swedish retail company will go on sale in May.

Even the promise of stronger, healthier hair could never quite tempt me to use products as opposed to cutting it. Until now …

There are few brands one can credit with having changed the beauty game, but the launch of Olaplex just over a decade ago invalidated the assertion that the only way to fix damaged hair is to cut it.

It used a patented ingredient (the unpronounceable bis-aminopropyl diglycol dimaleate) to strengthen and rebuild all types of hair bonds ravaged by bleach, colour and other chemical or heat treatments.

Designer who left fashion house in January said to be considering options for his 40% stake ahead of talks with lenders

Stefano Gabbana left his post as the chair of Dolce & Gabbana at the start of this year, the fashion house he co-founded with his then partner, Domenico Dolce, has said.

The Italian luxury brand said Gabbana had tendered his resignation, effective as of 1 January, “as part of a natural evolution of its organisational structure and governance”.

Don’t save them for holidays – with the right styling white trousers will be the linchpin of your spring wardrobe

The Lincolnshire village, the height of fashion a century ago, offers fascinating history, a woodland cinema, excellent cycle routes and a deeply restorative feel

It was 6.30am, the cockcrow slot at Jubilee Park lido, and still not quite light. I hadn’t wanted to come this early – it was the only time I’d been able to book. But as I slid into the pool – heated to a delicious 29C – I realised it was a gift. Vapours rose dreamily into cool air laced with owl hoots and the whiff of dewy blooms, and I swam into a sunrise that became more vivid with every stroke. A man in the next lane paused to admire the reddening dawn too; he was hungover, he said, but had come to do his morning lengths nonetheless. A cure of sorts.

Bath, Harrogate, Buxton – Woodhall? This Lincolnshire village isn’t one of Britain’s headline spa towns. Most probably don’t know where it is – 18 miles (29km east of Lincoln, for the record. But at the turn of the 20th century, Woodhall Spa was among the most fashionable places to be seen, to be healed.

The vertiginous Valais canton offers adventures aplenty, from abseiling down gorges to wild swims in glacial pools – and nights swapping hiking tales in mountain huts

Thick grey-green mud squidges through my toes as I step into the icy, irresistible water. I’m on the descent from the Britannia Hut at the foot of the Allalinhorn in the Valais canton of the Swiss Alps, and this turquoise pool of glacial meltwater has been on the horizon tempting me for an hour. I peel off all five layers of clothing and plunge into the murky water. After a night in a shared dorm without showers it’s bliss.

In winter, the jagged ridges of the Valais are the domain of expert skiers and ice climbers, but in summer the lower slopes become accessible to hikers, with the added bonus of the ski lift infrastructure. You can be surrounded by dramatic peaks with the security of well-marked trails ranging from gentle strolls to serious alpine routes. I’m here to hike to mountain huts, test my nerves on via ferrata routes, and fill my city-dweller lungs with clean Alpine air.

Taking a leaf out of Kenneth Grahame’s book, our writer spends a few days getting lost among the woods and riverside villages of Oxfordshire and Berkshire

Strolling through a deep tangle of beech trees to get some fresh air after a long drive, I think of the scene in Kenneth Grahame’s wistful story The Wind in the Willows, where Mole gets lost in the Wild Wood. “There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worst of all, no way out.”

I’ve come to South Oxfordshire to explore what was once Grahame’s old stomping ground. Although I don’t share his character’s fear of the woods, I do share his own wonder for this part of the country, close to suburbia yet wrinkled with pockets of wildness. It’s one of those spring days when the light feels elastic and daffodils brighten the verges of muddy lanes. The moon is rising, however, and smoke drifts from the chimney of a cottage just beyond the woods. Nocturnal creatures may be rousing but I’m feeling the pull of a cosy burrow. I leave the trees and head back to my accommodation, Bonni B&B, in Hill Bottom.

Good wine, cheap tapas, ramshackle decor and a sense of history are the key ingredients of these Madrileño institutions. I went on a bar crawl to find my favourite

The first hurdle to overcome when searching for the Spanish capital’s top bodegas is the correct interpretation of the word “bodega”. It is defined as a warehouse, winery, wine cellar and wine shop or bar specialising in wine. In Spanish slang it can also mean a convenience store.

I asked several people working in the Madrid wine trade, and they all struggled to define exactly what a bodega is – and sometimes disagreed with each other. For example, while La Bodega de los Reyes fits the description because it has a wine cellar, a nearby bar owner said it couldn’t be classed as a bodega as it was just a wine shop.

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

It is time for the Thursday news quiz, where even the most distinguished appearances can conceal a lingering doubt. A perfectly groomed moustache may suggest authority – until, thanks to our illustration from Anaïs Mims, it starts curling into a question mark of its own. Fifteen questions await – frankly rather more on the general knowledge side than topical news because the quiz master has been on holiday in Brighton and wrote most of it in advance, but it is what it is. There are no prizes, but we always enjoy hearing how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 243

Thomas Delaney’s addiction issues started when he was a teen and worsened through his 20s. Eventually, an argument with his mother led him to change everything

Thomas Delaney never used to believe he was “good enough to be loved”. Growing up, he internalised the hurt he saw playing out at home. “I thought I was useless, I wasn’t a nice person … I even thought that my mum and dad didn’t love each other because of me.”

When I visit him (and his extremely affectionate black-and-white cat, Figaro) at home in Glasgow, Delaney, dressed in a jumper printed with the words “nicotine is dumb”, is frank about the impact his childhood had on him. “I had suicidal ideations from a very, very young age because I assumed that, if I was dead, maybe my mum and dad wouldn’t be arguing.” Later, he became addicted to ketamine. At his most unwell, he weighed just 38kg (6st).

In the past few months, there has been a boom in tradwife novels, while the accounts of influencers only grow more popular. What is it about this culture that makes it so compelling to young women?

‘No one I know wants to go spend their one wild and magical life being a shill for some billionaire tech asshole,” says Shannon, a character in Yesteryear, the buzzy new novel about a tradwife influencer by Caro Claire Burke. Shannon is a gen Z woman who is working as a producer for the protagonist, Natalie, a 32-year-old social media star seemingly with more than a little in common with some aspects of the real-life influencer Hannah Neeleman, who rose to fame documenting her life as a wife and mother on her ranch, Ballerina Farm.

“Just so they can breastfeed in a broom closet someday,” Natalie quips back.

From the moment I started climbing the 7,000-metre peaks of the Pamir mountains in Tajikistan, something felt off. What followed will stay with me for ever

I didn’t have a reason for my terrible feeling of dread – and that was part of the problem. From the moment I arrived in Tajikistan with my boyfriend, Tim, to climb two 7,000-metre (23,000ft) peaks, something felt off. It wasn’t a fear I could name: it was more like a constant, unnerving low hum.

A helicopter dropped us off – landing on a jagged glacier that was to be our base camp and act as a refuge from avalanches from the towering peaks that surrounded it. The helicopter flew far too low, skimming the glacier ice that looked sharp enough to tear it open. You could see it from the helicopter because there was a gaping hole in the back – a part was missing because it was so old.

Francia Márquez, the country’s first Black vice-president, opens up about the strains in her relationship with the president and the obstacles she has faced: ‘The Colombian state is a racist state’

In the historic centre of Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, a gallery of portraits at the vice-president’s official residence displays the faces of all former vice-presidents since the country became a republic in 1886. All of them are white.

When the current president and vice-president leave office in August, the wall will include an Afro-Colombian face for the first time: Francia Márquez, 44, the first Black woman to become vice-president in a country where at least 10% of the population is Afro-descendant.

Some campaigners are frustrated at slow pace of change, while those impacted are trying to work out what it means day-to-day

A year ago, the supreme court made its landmark judgment on single-sex spaces. In a long-running case against the Scottish government brought by gender-critical campaigners For Women Scotland (FWS), the court ruled that, for the purposes of the Equality Act, the legal definition of a woman was based on biological sex.

The judgment has significant ramifications for who can access women-only services and spaces, such as refuges or toilets. But most service providers are still awaiting practical guidance on how to apply the ruling.

Leaders of Poland and Germany hail Péter Magyar’s majority as a turning of the tide – but analysts say there were other reasons for defeat of prime minister

For Poland’s Donald Tusk, the crushing defeat of Hungary’s illiberal prime minister, Viktor Orbán, after 16 years in office was evidence that the world was no longer “condemned to authoritarian and corrupt governments”.

Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, also believes the two-thirds majority secured by Orbán’s centre-right challenger, Péter Magyar, in Sunday’s elections was “a clear signal against rightwing populism” that showed “the pendulum is swinging back”.

We would like to hear your experience of job interviews that were conducted partially or wholly by AI

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Have you been affected by the recent rise in mortgage rates? What will this mean for you?

The crisis in the Middle East is also being felt far beyond the region, with the conflict undermining broader business and consumer confidence.

One aspect of this has been the impact on the UK mortgage market.

Have you experienced reactions from other people when using your blue badge? We’d like to hear from you

Scepticism about people’s right to a blue badge, as well as discussion of Motability, has created an atmosphere where disabled people are facing public questioning about their eligibility for the measures.

Some disabled and chronically ill people report that they have been accused of “faking” their impairment while using their blue badges. Others say they have been accused of “scrounging” after using a car believed to be via Motability.

We’d like to hear about the local election leaflets you’ve received from political parties in your area

Have you received local election leaflets through your door? We’d like to see them. In an era of political turmoil, we’re particularly interested to see who each political party sees as their rival in their local area.

You can tell us about the leaflets you’ve received – and share pictures of them – below.

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