Exclusive: French company Puy du Fou worked with a sanctioned oligarch on plans for a Crimea resort longer than disclosed, and later courted Iran and China

In February 2014, thousands of “little green men” – Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms – flooded into Crimea, seizing control of military bases and infrastructure.

Their arrival marked the opening salvo of Vladimir Putin’s annexation of the peninsula, an operation that ultimately escalated into the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

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

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

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

Menstrual and digestive discomfort often coincide, and a researcher who has been looking in to it for a decade tells us what she learned

Every period, right on schedule: the cramps arrive, and right behind them, the urgent need to poop.

If this is your experience, you’re in good company: in one study, 73% of healthy premenopausal women reported at least one significant gastrointestinal symptom in the days before or during their period. Abdominal pain and diarrhea were the most common complaints, but women reported nausea and constipation too.

As boss Stuart Machin unveils a new-look Pantheon the retailer has fashion and overseas challenges ahead

On a hot summer’s evening on London’s busy Oxford Street, a crowd of fashion influencers, models, journalists and the odd City analyst gathered for a first look at the upmarket revamp of Marks & Spencer’s landmark Pantheon store.

Some may have had to double-check they had the right address, such is the scale of the makeover at the 88-year-old outlet, which is intended as a blueprint for change across the retailer’s more than 200 large stores.

A prospective Restore Britain voter and a Green-supporting Chinese immigrant found some common ground over small-boat crossings, but where did they land on foxhunting?

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

Phill, 58, Hertfordshire

Occupation Stairlift surveyor

First it was weddings. Now, going overboard on birthdays, planning murder-mystery breaks or mini-festivals with dress codes and branded merch, is the norm for many. Is this driven by monster egos, or a search for connection in a fractured age?

MikeFest takes place every year, over the August bank holiday weekend, in a large leafy garden on the Cornish coast. Birthday boy Michael’s nearest and dearest turn up in their sparkliest gear (as per the invitation) with tents tucked under their arms. Masks with his face printed on them are handed out, as are handheld fans and sippy cups branded with each guest’s name. Organised fun ensues, including a compulsory talent show. Michael always wins first place with his interpretive dance routine.

Michael is not turning 10; he is about to be 44. And he accepts the title of “birthdayzilla”, admitting that he’s guilt-tripped friends who were unable to make it and barred those who miss two festivals in a row from future events. But he’s quick to defend his fellow birthday fanatics. “It doesn’t feel like there’s much to celebrate these days, and it’s harder than ever to get people together. So yes, I’m militant about my birthday,” he says. “I just think: I’ve managed to build a life I like and a network of people I love, why not make a fuss about it? I don’t think expecting them to show up for me once a year is such a big ask.”

Greek police say 26-year-old foreigner is believed to have left Elisabeth-Jane Ross’s body in derelict building

A man has been arrested over the death of a Scottish woman whose body was found inside a suitcase in Athens.

Greek police said the 26-year-old man was a foreigner. A replica pistol and a knife were found at the suspect’s home and police have filed a case against him for manslaughter, robbery and violation of weapons laws.

People among the more than 50,000 who entered Spanish enclave this week describe the journey and their prospects

Four days ago, Youssef El Abbas saw an opportunity to reclaim the life he had lost seven years earlier. News was circulating that about 400 people had swum from Morocco to the neighbouring Spanish enclave of Ceuta on the north African coast, approximately 12 miles (19km) across the strait of Gibraltar from mainland Spain.

Here was a chance for the 44-year-old Moroccan father of four to return to Spain, from which he had been deported when his residency expired after the loss of his job in Bilbao in 2019.

Wheat is half normal height, while England is seeing earliest ever harvest as farmers battle to salvage what they can of their crops

Britain could face shortages of certain foods after parts of England have faced a punishing drought, the president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has said.

Farms across the country were affected by floods over the winter, making planting extremely difficult, and now in many areas they do not have access to water as irrigation is being restricted due to drought.

Farms and rooftop panels contribute 14.4% to the grid – and figures reveal a surge in new installations

Solar energy supplied more power to Great Britain’s grid in July than in any previous month as households turned to rooftop panels to cut their energy bills.

Solar farms and rooftop panels provided 14.4% of the country’s electricity after some parts of the UK recorded almost twice the average sunshine hours for the time of year.

Review goes down to the wire after ministers speak with victims’ representatives and support services

Andy Burnham is focused on preventing the release of child sexual abuse perpetrators as part of the government’s early release scheme, as urgent talks on which serious criminals could be exempted go down to the wire.

Government ministers are understood to have 24 hours to assess which criminals can be released early to free up prison space, with every exemption weighed up against the threat of the criminal justice system’s collapse.

Exclusive: Outsourced guards, largely from minority ethnic backgrounds, barred from staff hub for mainly white employees

The National Gallery’s security staff, of whom the vast majority are from minority ethnic backgrounds, are facing shocking segregation, a senior curator has claimed.

Its outsourced guards are barred from the building’s high-quality “hub” – bright and airy recreation rooms that are available to the institution’s mainly white employees. They are not allowed to take their breaks there, or even sit in that area.

Labour chair accuses Reform of making ‘grubby pacts’ after contradictory reports emerge on timeline of events

Reform UK is operating under a “stench of sleaze”, Labour has said, after reports that Nigel Farage struck a secret deal to return as leader of Reform months before the general election.

Farage was in discussions about a return to the political frontline from as early as March 2024, despite later claiming he had no intention of returning to politics until June 2024, the Sunday Times reported.

After years of building lives in UK, potentially thousands of EU citizens could be told they have no right to remain

The UK Home Office has started stripping some EU citizens of their post-Brexit residency rights, in a move that has raised concerns about Britain’s compliance with its withdrawal agreement with Europe.

The UK internal affairs authority has told at least 100 people that they were given residency rights “in error”, disrupting their lives just as they come to the end of their five-year “pre-settled status” and prepare to upgrade to the permanent “settled status”.

• Matthew Bostock wins 40km points race for Isle of Man

• Medal table | Hoskins wins gold at 76 | Email Daniel

Australia delivered an unprecedented podium sweep in the women’s mile on the final day of athletics competition at the Commonwealth Games, after Abbey Caldwell upset Jessica Hull to secure one of seven track and field gold medals including a breakthrough victory for Lachie Kennedy’s 4x100m relay team.

The haul exceeds the six gold medals from one day in Auckland in 1950, when Marjorie Jackson and Shirley Strickland were among the winners, to make it Australia’s most successful track and field day at the Commonwealth Games.

I can’t thank [enough] the people who have been in my corner during the highs and the lows of the past 22 years. It didn’t finish the way I wanted today, but I’m proud of what I’ve achieved. I was a flag-bearer for Team Scotland.

[Apart from] stepping away with a medal today, and hearing Flower of Scotland, what more could you ask for, really? To get a standing ovation from a home crowd shows that people appreciate what I’ve done for the sport.

Exclusive: At a launch site in the Ukrainian countryside, members of the elite ‘Magyar’s Birds’ brigade are turning Russia’s vast size into a weakness

Sparrows were cheeping as the sun set over a field of tall yellow sunflowers when a moped-like growl suddenly disturbed the evening calm. The noise rose, dipped, and rose again. Lt Col Ray – a Ukrainian commander with the 414th aviation brigade – took cover in a leafy ditch.

Seconds later a Ukrainian drone roared into a mauve sky. It jerked upwards at a 45-degree angle, orange flames fizzing, and then motored serenely onwards. The flying object resembled a sleek grey biplane with a wooden propeller and tail. It left behind clouds of billowing black smoke and a whiff of gunpowder.

Volunteers painstakingly gather plastic pellets washing up on beaches after ship collision on 19 July

“You’ve got a local community that really cares about the coastline,” said Alice Laverty, reflecting on the huge army of volunteers who had taken to crisis-hit beaches in north-east England with passion and only the most basic tools. “They’ve all got a dustpan, a brush, a bucket, a kitchen sieve.”

On beaches from Cambois in Northumberland to Seaburn on Wearside, up to 2,000 dedicated volunteers have been painstakingly sifting through sand to find tiny, lentil-sized pellets of plastic.

New education secretary says it is ‘false trade-off’ by critics to suggest schools cannot pursue academic excellence alongside technical skills

Lucy Powell has said she wants to be an ambitious “tiger mum” for all young people, whatever their route through education, after the government was accused of dumbing down England’s schools with plans to create more vocational routes.

The new education secretary said secondary pupils should be able to pursue academic excellence as well as high-quality vocational training, and it was a “false trade-off” to suggest schools could not provide both.

For hours we hobbled back, until we were close enough for him to place me down and run for help

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

We had heard there was an incredible waterfall somewhere deep in the Thai rainforest. Seeking it out almost killed me.

In 2003 I was travelling solo through south-east Asia when I met Paul, an American with an easygoing, natural warmth. We were the only two people bunking at a youth hostel somewhere in southern Thailand and got chatting one morning. When the staff told us about a beautiful waterfall not far from where we were staying, we made plans to hike there together.

The singer and actor is partial to Mozart and once did Édith Piaf at karaoke, but to which musical showstopper does she owe everything?

The first song I fell in love with
I used to sing All I Have to Do Is Dream by the Everly Brothers with my schoolfriend who lived over the road, when I was 11 or 12. I sang the harmony and she sang the melody.

The song I do at karaoke
The only time was on holiday in Nice with a friend. We’d been out for a lovely supper and had far too much rosé, and I was about to play Édith Piaf in the West End. I ended up singing Hymne à l’amour, and he did Fools Rush In.

Our new book tracks the growth over nearly eight decades, of the most powerful foreign policy lobby in US history

In 1948, with war raging in Palestine, Harry Truman found himself trapped.

On one side were Zionist lobbyists and the president’s domestic political advisers, who were urging him to support the establishment of a Jewish state in as much of Palestine as possible. On the other were his top foreign policy and national security officials, led by the secretary of state, George C Marshall. Their unanimous recommendation was to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state, which they believed would trigger war in the Middle East and endanger the future of US relations with the Arab and Muslim world.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions chews on how best to start the day – from porridge to champagne, beer and cheesecake …

Read this week’s new question: What do you wish you could buy in vending machines?

The Commonwealth Games opened in Glasgow earlier this week. As the athletes limber up and engage in protein-maxxing (or is it carb-maxxing?), getting ready to compete, it made me wonder: what is the best breakfast food, or combination of foods, to set you up in the morning? Not necessarily as a top-tier athlete, but simply as someone who is ready to go out there and win the day.
Tom, Tunbridge Wells

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world

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

Your friendly neighbourhood superhero spins a new web of adventures, and the singer returns from Oz with her hopeful eighth album

Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Out now
The sequel to No Way Home maintains the focus on what’s now Spidey’s day job: protecting the city. New characters include crime boss Tombstone, played by Marvin Jones III who, like his character, is an African American with albinism.

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

A poetic coming-of-age tale haunted by racial profiling among the Asian community in Luton, while a BBC documentary unearths troubling allegations against the high-profile celeb. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

The president has blundered into a ‘forever war’ with Iran he can’t win, but refuses to end. Such hubris has a long history

It’s five years this month since the chaotic retreat of US forces from Kabul. The Nato-backed invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, launched after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC, is now widely regarded as a failure. It cost the lives of more than 2,400 US and 450 British troops, and tens of thousands of civilians (the exact number is unknown). Although al-Qaida terrorists were routed, their Taliban hosts reimposed repressive, misogynistic Islamist rule after regaining power in 2021. Afghanistan became a byword for ill-considered western interventionism and nation-building. It was the archetypal “forever war”, a phrase first coined during Vietnam.

If this cautionary tale had any lasting value, it was as a deterrent to politicians and generals tempted to rashly embark on open-ended conflicts without just cause, defined, achievable aims, and an exit strategy. Dismayingly, the forever war lesson had to be learned all over again in Iraq, which the US and UK invaded in 2003 and departed, having caused huge harm for scant benefit, in 2011. “Never again!” was the passionate cry at the time and since. And yet, it seems, the same disastrous pattern is now repeating after Donald Trump’s incomprehensibly foolish decision to attack Iran. A war he termed a “little excursion” is entering its sixth month and has been escalating rapidly. It, too, has a forever feel.

Sharing income tax with England’s regional mayors could tackle inequality but many councils are ill-equipped for an enlarged role

On the road to Downing Street, Andy Burnham promised to transfer power from Westminster to every postcode in the country. After his first two weeks in office, the size and complexity of this project are becoming clearer.

With a date set for the autumn budget, the work of filling in the detail that will underpin his devolution plans begins – starting with his proposal to hand England’s regional mayors a share of income tax to support local economic development.

Some parents are sticklers for the rules, yet mass civil disobedience by parents in England and Wales suggests many agree with me

Perhaps it’s my stage of parenthood, or the fact that I’ve been lying awake at night, but I think I have an idea that could secure the electoral future of the Labour party. All Andy Burnham needs to do to win a landslide at the next general election is abolish fines for parents who take their children on term-time holidays. More than 2 million – around a fifth – have taken their children out of school because they could not afford to travel during holidays, according to a national survey released this month. A record 459,288 fines were issued to parents last year.

This issue has recently become relevant to me because my son starts school in September, so this year will be the last in which we will be allowed to take term-time trips. Obviously, as I contemplate the preposterous costs for summer holidays, I have developed a new and vested interest in being able to get away with my family. It’s deeper than that, though: I didn’t get many childhood holidays, for financial and circumstantial reasons. As a result I feel very passionately that all small people need leisure time away. Without wanting to turn this into a big sob story, I was so desperate to go on holiday like my friends that I used to collect brochures from high street travel agents and spend hours poring over the different hotels, with kids’ clubs, beaches, swimming pools and waterslides that I could only dream of.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist

August usually sends me into an anxious funk, but I think I’ve worked out how to handle 2026’s terrifying heat and apocalyptic images

Unfortunately for hairdressers, “How’s your summer going?” is a loaded question this year. Even basking lizards and barbecue obsessives are wavering in their sun worship as cataclysmic wildfires engulf our nearest neighbours (and threaten the UK), Wales and parts of England experience drought, and farmers issue dire warnings about our food supply in the near future. Rescue centres are filling up with dehydrated hedgehogs and the Environment Agency is having to rescue fish. Lazy, joyful, sunscreen-scented days are giving way to stifling, existentially terrifying ones spent skulking in the dark (assuming you don’t need to be out in the extreme heat, as many workers do), sweatily scrolling through apocalyptic images.

Vanity Fair has decreed it’s a “sad-girl summer”, highlighting the female singer-songwriters soundtracking the myriad anxieties of an “undeniably cruel” 2026 season, but it’s not just the girlies who are sad – many of us are struggling and we still have August to survive. How?

From Grumpy Cat to Moo Deng, viral animals have long united people online. Are they becoming our only source of collective enjoyment?

Anyone who enjoys memes (who doesn’t?) has surely by now accumulated a mental menagerie of internet-famous animals. Mine include: Grumpy Cat, the Ikea monkey, Moo Deng the pygmy hippo, Paul the oracle octopus and – my personal favourite – Roger the hot kangaroo (go on, look him up).

Now we have Jimothy, a raccoon with short spine syndrome. A familiar sight in his neighbourhood in Seattle for his unusually rounded appearance and scuttling movement, Jimothy went viral on Instagram two weeks ago and has since taken over the world. Within weeks of his debut, there has been fan art, merchandise, multiple tattoos, a stadium “theme night” and even a civic ceremony.

Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist

The longevity influencer and his girlfriend, Kate Tolo, say they’re studying women’s health – a worthy goal, but perhaps some skepticism is in order

The tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson has devoted his life to dodging death. The 48-year-old is obsessed with becoming the healthiest person in the world and is on a quixotic quest to reverse his biological age and live forever. As such, Johnson is disciplined about what he eats, takes dozens of supplements a day, and measures every single biomarker possible, boasting that he is “certainly the most biologically measured person ever”.

In short: good luck finding any ice cream in his freezer. But you know what you will find? His girlfriend’s menstrual blood. On Thursday, Johnson, a chronic oversharer, posted a photo of his 30-year-old girlfriend, Kate Tolo, on X with the caption: “Kate’s period blood is in my -80 °C freezer. Around 10 mL.”

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Routine isn’t a failure of imagination – it’s the reward for having done enough experimenting. So, yes, I’m going to my favourite restaurant again – and ordering my favourite dish

Feeling seen isn’t always a positive thing. “Comfort creep: do YOU have it?” Good Housekeeping asked, accusingly. I was certain that I did, even before knowing what it was. And that this was not good.

“Same holidays, same TV shows, same restaurants, same wine … If your life lacks excitement, it’s time for an anti-comfort crusade!” OK, guilty as charged, but hang on a second. When did the comfort zone become a horrific dystopia from which you must escape at all costs? Comfort? Ugh, the worst! Run, screaming, as fast as you can.

Uefa’s call for a boycott and declaration of no-confidence must be the opening salvos in push to dethrone game’s global leader

There is no time to dance around the subject. Gianni Infantino must stand down as Fifa president or otherwise be legally removed. No fresh chances can be made available for an official who has demolished trust in football’s integrity and governance, trashing all remaining credibility of the body that oversees the world’s most-cherished sport.

Infantino was forced into a humiliating climbdown on Saturday morning when he accepted the failure of his plan to sell off portions of the World Cup to private investment. He resolved to resume dialogue about football’s growth “in the spirit of shared interest in our game”. But such a naked attempt to save his own skin cannot hold. Every day Infantino remains in power is a fresh stain on an institution whose reputation is on the floor.

Water is a vital shared resource, and privatisation has made a just transition harder

Compared with rising heat-related deaths, and devastating wildfires in the Cairngorms and Suffolk, the announcement that the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) is considering moving its hydrangea collection from Surrey to Greater Manchester and North Yorkshire might seem unimportant. But it points to geographical differences in exposure to global heating that have arguably never been more evident than this summer, with last month the driest on record. Seven areas of south and east England are officially in drought, along with the whole of Wales.

A drought is less easily measured than a heatwave, which is declared by the Met Office when the maximum temperature exceeds a set threshold on three consecutive days. But the fact that drought is harder to quantify does not make it less damaging. Water shortages are exposing specific vulnerabilities and inequalities, as well as the UK’s lack of preparedness for climate change overall.

Donald Trump may reject the negotiations, but he cannot veto a global effort to make multinational companies answer to governments

Governments are told that public services must shrink because money is tight. Yet a new Tax Justice Network report says that countries could capture an extra $500bn a year without raising corporate tax rates. The answer is to tax multinational profits where real economic activity happens – known as unitary taxation. No new profit is created. Revenue simply shifts from tax havens where profits are “booked” to the countries where workers produce and customers spend.

Making that principle a global tax standard depends on UN talks opening in New York on Monday. Modelled on the UN climate regime, a fiscal framework convention would create the governing body and procedures, with protocols providing detailed rules. The UN wants agreement by late 2027. Donald Trump’s US walked out last year and urged others to follow. None did.

The recent Cockroach Janta party protests had widespread support, says Bhaskar Mani. Plus a letter from Nand Lal Rathore

A crucial point that your editorial on India’s gen Z protests (28 July) missed out was that the protests the Cockroach Janta party (CJP) launched in Delhi, hunger strikes and all, were not just supported by young, restless or unemployed people. It was wholeheartedly supported by their parents and grandparents, the old and the middle-aged, even well-off young adults with good jobs and little children. And this was not just in Delhi, but across the country in the huge metropolises of Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Bengaluru, as well as smaller towns. And it was all peaceful, for which credit goes to the ethos of the protests and the CJP.

All of this was suppressed in the mainstream media, print and TV, and even distorted to suggest that it was violent in parts. This reflects not just the overwhelming angst and fear of young graduates facing poor prospects, but the significant grievances of a people who are seeing and experiencing their democracy fading away.
Bhaskar Mani
Bengaluru, India

Readers respond to an editorial on the health impact of noise pollution

Your editorial is right that noise pollution deserves to be treated as a public-health issue rather than a mere irritation (The Guardian view on noise pollution: keep it down, 28 July). Yet one obvious source of urban noise receives little attention: modified cars and motorbikes whose exhausts and engines have been made far louder than manufacturers intended.

Anyone living in a city or town knows the difference between the background hum of traffic and the explosive revving, popping and roaring produced by a small minority of drivers and riders. These vehicles can wake entire terraces, disrupt outdoor spaces and make life less pleasant for everyone else.

Mair Garland responds to an article by Rachel Connolly on what makes a good ceremony these days

As a humanist celebrant, I was saddened by Rachel Connolly’s conclusion about humanist weddings (What makes a good wedding these days? I say flirting and chaos, but not three days in a French castle, 29 July). She writes: “The idea of being married in a humanist service by someone wearing, say, skinny jeans and a black T-shirt gives me willies.” I must disclose my ownership of several pairs of skinny jeans, but I have not worn these in my role as a celebrant (though never say never – I’m always guided by couples’ dress codes).

Ms Connolly seems to have the impression that a humanist ceremony represents a compromise to the formal and ceremonial rituals we’d traditionally associate with a religious wedding. On the contrary, humanist celebrants are knowledgable, passionate and unashamedly geeky about creating meaningful non-religious ceremonies that are deeply personal to couples and their families.

Wicked wickets | Regatta antics | Rock salt of ages | Spuds for dinner | Making a meal of it | Chef’s kiss

Regarding your editorial on cricket fair play (30 July), as an elderly cricket fan, I can remember being told as a small boy to watch a Yorkshire wicketkeeper who was known, when standing up to the bowler, to nudge the stumps with his toe when the ball was close enough to make it look like “bowled out”. But in those days, league cricket was serious business and not played for fun.
Tony Brown
Kingston, Ontario, Canada

• May I present the Seagull outboard race scandal of 1963? At a regatta in Coverack, I was hanging over the bow to keep it down when we were overtaken by a faster boat. With a boathook, I carefully pushed his fuel tap shut; he mysteriously stopped several yards short of the finish line. Did we carry away the prize: 2/6d? My lips are sealed.
Jonathan Fletcher
Helston, Cornwall

• Home favourite blazes clear to delight Scottish fans

• Wightman fades to sixth, Myers takes silver

Josh Kerr’s summer of miracle and wonder continued in front of his adoring home fans as he added Commonwealth gold to his glittering collection.

In a slowly run race that frequently resembled dodgems, Kerr made a devastating kick for home with 250 metres remaining to eviscerate a high-quality field and take the title in 3:54.12.

• Para bowler is oldest gold medallist in Games history

• Hoskins: ‘I never thought I’d win at my age. Never give up’

Louise Hoskins has become the oldest gold medallist in Commonwealth Games history, claiming women’s para bowls pairs glory alongside Serena Bonnell.

“It is incredible. I’m still pinching myself,” said 76-year-old Hoskins, who was born during the 1950 Auckland Games and is the oldest competitor at the 2026 Games in Glasgow. “I never thought I’d ever get [a gold medal] at my age. Get out there and have a go, and never give up.”

We look at the best images from the final day of action in Glasgow, featuring netball, bowls, judo and track cycling

• Overall leader adds to stage one victory in sprint

• Stage one: Wiebes claims yellow jersey | Email Alex

115km to go: We’re into the hills now, the first of the five climbs well under way as the riders head up to the summit of the Côte de Chexbres (3.2km at a 5.6% gradient). We’re in the hills for the next 70km or so.

117km to go: Several more attacks, Alison Jackson pushing again and Idoia Eraso (wearing the green jersey) also involved in a few moves. But once again; nothing decisive. It’s all still very tight in Vevey.

Arsenal’s Mikel Arteta is perhaps best placed to fill the void but the coaching contenders are legion as another season looms

This used to be a land of giants. This used to be a land where big men fought. This used to be a land where Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger tussled, then José Mourinho joined the fray. This used to be a land where Jürgen Klopp made Pep Guardiola reconsider, and he changed his style and won anyway.

Not any more. Next season will be the first since the inaugural Premier League in 1992 not to feature any of the five big managerial beasts – not Ferguson, not Wenger, not Mourinho, not Klopp and not Guardiola.

New head coach needs to use the transfer market with defensive cover vital as injuries hamper US pre-season tour

“Faster, faster,” bellowed Andoni Iraola throughout the open training session Liverpool held in Chicago on Friday. His first pre-season tour as Liverpool head coach ends at the city’s famous Soldier Field Stadium on Sunday, with a friendly against Leeds, and “faster, faster” could apply to all aspects of the club’s preparations for a new Premier League campaign that begins in three weeks’ time.

Iraola was in his element as he immersed himself at the centre of every training drill that Liverpool performed at Chicago Fire’s Endeavor Health Performance Center, their base for the past two weeks in the US. “Faster, faster” was the new head coach’s instruction to his players as three teams of seven worked on their pressing games. He also shouted it when they walked over to a different pitch, recently vacated by Robert Lewandowski and his new Chicago Fire teammates, to work on offensive and defensive set-piece routines. Sprints were demanded following every rondo.

• Two stoppage-time goals secure 2-1 win at Pittodrie

• St Johnstone fight back to beat Kilmarnock 4-3

Hearts’ miserable summer continued as they conceded two late goals to lose 2-1 to Aberdeen in their Premiership opener at Pittodrie.

Wouter Vrancken and Hearts looked on course for a much-needed victory after a turbulent few months as they led through Oisin McEntee’s first-half goal. But just as they looked to be closing out a first win at Pittodrie for more than a decade, Lewis Mayo equalised in the 90th minute before Kevin Nisbet won it for Aberdeen with a stoppage-time penalty after Stuart Findlay was sent off for denying a goal-scoring opportunity.

Conservatives once demanded sports stay apolitical. Now they’ve embraced a new culture-war politics, and Sophie Cunningham has become one of its most valuable stars

Invoking a wounded innocence that their desire for sports to be simple, just like they used to be, conservatives for a decade and a half have dreaded the word “politics”. Now they cannot get enough.

Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator Vic Fangio has spent 40 years in the National Football League unknown except for his defensive schemes, but last week opened his press remarks mocking the congressional testimony of Dr Anthony Fauci, jokingly invoking the Fifth Amendment before taking questions. Apropos of nothing, President Trump publicly surmised that LeBron James might be a racist. Indiana Fever guard Sophie Cunningham is now in the act, accepting the role as the right’s anti-Black, anti-transgender culture war ambassador, the role originally intended for Caitlin Clark.

Cunningham intentionally yanked Sheldon down by her neck and was hailed as a protector. A year later, the Mercury’s Alyssa Thomas put her fist to Clark’s throat – accidentally, Thomas says – and was excoriated as reckless and worse. The circumstances were different, but both were undeniable fouls that merited punishment from the league. One player – Cunningham, who is white – earned a flood of new endorsements in the aftermath. The other – Thomas, who is Black – a barrage of death threats.

It’s a truth that is as inescapable as it is difficult to grapple with. Cunningham prides herself on being an open book, but through her representative, declined to discuss the role race played in the public perception of her fight and rise. So, too, did a handful of current WNBA players.

US president claims delay is also in response to requests from Iran and other countries in the region

Donald Trump has said he cancelled planned military strikes against Iran on the basis of “rapidly” reaching a deal on its nuclear programme and the full reopening of the strait of Hormuz.

The US president paused the strikes in expectation of a breakthrough and in response to requests from Iran and other countries in the region, he claimed on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.

• Council wants to trigger emergency general meeting

• Members demand review of Balogun decision

Gianni Infantino is facing a rebellion from members of the Fifa council who are attempting to force an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) that could develop into a full-blown leadership challenge.

The Guardian has learned that moves to call an EGM were already under way before the emergence of Infantino’s abortive plan to sell off stakes in the World Cup, with council members demanding an independent review into the unprecedented decision to lift Folarin Balogun’s suspension during the World Cup, which involved multiple phone calls from Donald Trump.

PM argues for codified model of decentralisation that would fundamentally change centuries-old workings of state

Andy Burnham has said his programme of devolution strengthens the case for a written constitution for the UK, a move that would fundamentally alter the workings of the state that have developed over centuries.

The prime minister has long believed the UK’s “antiquated” political system needs a dramatic overhaul if opportunity is to be shared equally across the country.

Haitian immigrant with mental illness found dead after ICE released her in 20F weather wearing summer clothes

• Family to sue after woman released from ICE custody froze to death

On the night of 26 February this year, the Michel family in Pennsylvania expected to see their loved one, Daphy, again very soon.

After she had spent six months in jail, a judge had dismissed criminal charges against her and one of her brothers was told she would be released soon, probably the next day.

PM has long history of speaking out on realities of global heating but political opponents remain unnmoved

Just over four years ago, Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, visited a small town in the south-western region of Extremadura that had been affected by one of the wildfires devouring tens of thousands of hectares of land across the country.

That summer’s blazes had left two people dead in the northern region of Castilla y León and another man there fatally burned after the excavator he was using to try to dig a firebreak to protect his town was swallowed up by the flames. A street-sweeper in Madrid had collapsed and died from heatstroke while on shift in soaring temperatures that summer. The paramedics who tried to save him noted that his body temperature was 41.6C (107F).

Council leaders say crumbling infrastructure and lack of water are jeopardising government’s plans for new homes

The government’s housebuilding agenda is hitting the stark reality of a lack of water and crumbling infrastructure across the east and south-east of England.

Half the country was declared to be in serious drought this week, for the second consecutive year, with the Environment Agency warning of dire consequences for the economy, environment and wildlife.

Growers in dismay after scorching weather and lack of rain affect yields, sending wholesale prices rocketing

Pubs, restaurants and supermarkets are having to buy lettuce and broccoli from Spain at what should be the height of UK growing season, as drought and extreme heat hit crops.

The wholesale price of tomatoes is up by more than 60%, iceberg lettuce by 90% and potatoes by more than 40% as a number of farmers struggle to grow in consistently high temperatures. Even those with irrigation systems and reservoirs on their farms say water is running low.

Heat and drought have affected shipping, power plants and tourism across eastern Europe – as well as unearthing some surprises

Baking temperatures and drought across large swathes of central and eastern Europe have driven water levels on the Danube and Rhine rivers to record lows in some areas, hitting shipping, energy production and tourism hard.

Extreme conditions aggravated by the climate emergency left Europe’s waterways from the Netherlands to the Black Sea parched, triggering compounding crises.

Senior officer behind closure says SDS caused ‘incalculable harm’ by infiltrating groups that posed no threat

An undercover police unit that spied on tens of thousands of political activists had to be shut down amid severe criticisms and recriminations, the spycops public inquiry has heard.

Jon Boutcher, a senior police officer who took over responsibility for the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS) unit, concluded within months that it had to be wound up because it was conducting unjustified surveillance and was badly run.

This year’s edition, Eisteddfod y Garreg Las, has gone back to its roots at the castle where a prince first held it in 1176

By 1176, Lord Rhys ap Gruffydd, a medieval Welsh prince, had become one of the most powerful rulers the country had ever known. He’d successfully banished Norman invaders from his lands, made peace with King Henry and rebuilt Cardigan castle in stone.

Prosperous and secure, he threw a grand holiday tournament, inviting bards and musicians to play and compete under his patronage in the first recorded eisteddfod, roughly, a “sitting together” – a tradition that still lives on today. This year’s national eisteddfod, a celebration of Welsh language, culture and creativity, has returned to its roots near Lord Rhys’s castle for its 850th birthday.

Jason Arday was regarded as an academic superstar, but then questions about his work prompted scrutiny of his backstory and counterclaims of racism

When the superstar academic Jason Arday took to the stage at the British Sociological Association’s 75th anniversary conference earlier this year, he delivered a talk called Wanted Dead or Alive: the Playbook.

The youngest black professor in Cambridge University’s history told an audience of his peers that the playbook in question had helped bring down some of the biggest names in US academia. Conservative “activists” were trawling through the work of black academics, looking for anything to use against them: inconsistencies, citation errors, passages in their work that were similar to existing papers.

The Reform UK leader is keeping a low profile and his approval ratings have sunk since Burnham took office. What’s the outlook for the Clacton byelection?

This time last year, Nigel Farage was making the political weather. His freewheeling weekly press conferences filled a sparse news agenda, setting out eye-catching policies on areas such as crime and immigration. This year? Less so.

The Reform UK leader is expected to hold a press conference in London next week. If so, it would be just his third since May’s local elections and the first in the capital in more than three months. The man who was everywhere now appears to be in hiding.

The EU is using a currency revamp as an opportunity to be less neutral and try some finely balanced identity-building

Is Europe best represented by the bold intellect of Marie Curie, the sprawling imagination of Miguel de Cervantes and the intense musical genius of Ludwig van Beethoven? Or by a migrating stork and a bee-eater, swooping across borderless plains and enjoying freedom of movement across European countries?

The quest to settle this issue has engaged a surprising number of people across the continent, after more than 6 million people voted in a survey within just a week of its launch to determine whether the newly redesigned euro bank notes should depict either cultural figures or birds and waterways.

Marijuana plays a sacred role among Rastafari followers and they say criminalising it violates their rights

About a dozen people sang along to the pulsing vibrations of drums and a tambourine in a dimly lit room in Nairobi’s sprawling Kibera neighbourhood. For more than an hour they belted out song after song, the lyrics suffused with references to Ethiopia, Jah, Zion, Rastafari and Haile Selassie I.

One song went: “No night in a Zion, there is no night there / Hallelujah there is no night there / Rastafari is our light, and we need no other light / Hallelujah there is no night there.”

More than 20 people injured in blast near Italian restaurant Balzi Rossi in centre of Russian capital on Saturday night

A homemade bomb carried by a woman killed three people and injured at least 21 in ⁠an explosion near a restaurant in central Moscow on Saturday evening, prompting speculation on social media that the attack may have been linked to the war in Ukraine.

The explosion occurred just before 8pm local time (6pm UK time) close to an Italian restaurant in one of Moscow’s seven Stalin-era skyscrapers at Kudrinskaya ​Square, police said.

Activists in the region say politicians regard LGBTQ+ people as ‘the easiest scapegoats to maintain their power’

A growing number of west African countries are implementing or strengthening anti-LGBTQ+ laws, amid local political pressures and a global pushback against LGBTQ+ rights.

In March, Senegal doubled the maximum prison sentence for gay sex to 10 years and criminalised the “promotion” of homosexuality. Niger criminalised “sexual relations with a person of the same sex” in February, the first time same-sex intimacy had been outlawed in the country.

Investors scramble to make sense of a shock Chinese challenge to the dominance of western chipmakers

Even for the rollercoaster world of AI, last week was particularly volatile as investors scrambled to keep up with developments that threatened the dominance of the largest western chipmakers.

It began with a double whammy. On Monday, the Chinese memory chipmaker CXMT floated on the Shanghai stock market, soaring by 466% in value to 3.3tn yuan (£365bn).

New AI models, advanced robots and specialty computer chips are unsettling markets and the US tech industry

Over the past month, a series of advancements in China’s artificial intelligence, chip manufacturing and robotics technologies have rattled financial markets, caused divisions among US tech moguls and left the Trump administration scrambling to respond.

Silicon Valley has long pointed to China’s tech industry as a competitive threat and used its growth as rationale for why US firms should not face regulatory oversight that could slow them down. In recent weeks, however, China’s progress has pushed US tech CEOs past vague warnings and into open disagreement over how to address Chinese-made products upending their industry.

Whey protein, a key infant formula ingredient, is in growing demand, partly linked to rising use of weight-loss drugs

The rise of “proteinmaxxing” – a trend in which consumers try to eat as much protein as possible – could lead to higher prices for infant formula, experts warn.

Whey protein, a key ingredient in infant formula, has surged in popularity over the past year as health professionals emphasise the benefits of protein.

Adam O’Neal did not give reason for his departure at end of August in another major shakeup at US publication

The Washington Post had realized a state of relative calm in the five months since the paper was turned upside down in February, when nearly half the newsroom was laid off and its unpopular publisher, Will Lewis, abruptly resigned.

But on Friday, staffers were shocked to find out that Adam O’Neal, a millennial hired last year to lead its opinion section, was already leaving.

With smartphones stealing our attention, we’re picking up fewer books than ever. A novelist shares her eight-week scheme to get you back into the habit

Do you feel that it’s harder to read than it used to be? Not harder to read emails, texts and social media posts, of course. We’re reading those all day long. Harder to sit down and lose yourself in a book? How long is it since you even sat down with a weekend newspaper and read it cover to cover? Do you feel that you used to have a life-sustaining reading habit, everything from fun popcorn novels to serious nonfiction, classic and contemporary, many genres and writers, but somehow it’s gone away? It doesn’t feel like a decision that you made. It just happened.

I feel like that. At least more like that than I’m comfortable with. I’m a novelist and I present programs about thinking on the BBC, and yet even I am finding that I’m reading less than I used to. It seems more of an effort and less of a consistent, persistent habit than it was. I hate this feeling. I still have the habit of acquiring books, buying them, getting them from libraries, being sent them. And I do still read. Compared with many people, I probably read an enormous amount, but I know it’s not as much as I used to read. And I know where the time has gone.

As Pokémon Go celebrates its 10th anniversary, its devoted players explain how the game has created a vibrant intergenerational community spanning the globe

Most Pokémon obsessives count rare, absurdly expensive playing cards or pristine, fully boxed game cartridges that have survived decades in the attic among their most prized possessions. But for Mairead Ralph, her Pokémon-related crown jewel is a bit different. “Technically, it’s my husband!” she says.

The pair first locked eyes amid decks of Pokémon playing cards and Pokéballs at a fan event 16 years ago and the rest is history. Ralph was among hundreds of Pokémon fans who flocked to Shoreditch, east London, on Saturday afternoon for a pop-up celebrating the 10th anniversary of Pokémon Go, the massively successful augmented reality smartphone game that has seen millions of players physically venture to all corners of the earth to catch ’em all in person. In that spirit, the surrounding area was full of Pokéheads wandering the streets, their heads in their phones, seeking to catch exclusive Pokémon that had been released.

As AI slop takes over our screens, what better antidote for enquiring minds than a magical film? We ask directors, producers and critics to pick one must-see movie for each year from infancy to early adulthood

***

Screentime has a bad rep these days: it’s allegedly at the root of everything from the collapse of media literacy to the rise of the far right. For parents, and indeed anyone who cares about the future of the planet, the relationship children have to their screens is a particular hot potato.

The actor is a charismatic tour guide as he follows in Homer’s footsteps. Plus: Amsterdam cop Van Der Valk is back. Here’s what to watch this evening

8pm, Channel 4

Christopher Nolan’s smash hit epic has continued to excite and enrage everyone from rightwingers to academics, an old-fashioned throwback to a uniting big-screen event

• Peter Bradshaw reviews The Odyssey

• The Odyssey: jaw-dropping action, dark magic and dolphin cameos – discuss with spoilers

• Go woke, get rich: why rightwing hate campaigns don’t affect the box office

If a high-profile academic is reviewing a movie for the London Review of Books, that movie in question must be making some kind of mark on some kind of culture. And if people are actually reading a movie review in the London Review of Books, and writing thinkpieces in disagreement or favor of said movie or its review, that movie may actually be a cultural phenomenon.

Normally, volume of discourse about a movie should not be mistaken for a sign that people are actually seeing it. Sometimes online factions just have a bored fixation not shared by the rest of the world. But Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey has some major receipts at the box office, too: the movie has already outgrossed Oppenheimer, Nolan’s last movie, itself a shockingly popular movie for adults. Though The Odyssey’s audience skewed male in its first weekend, by its second its gender split was closer to 50/50, suggesting reach beyond the stereotypically male-driven action-adventures. It’s also reaching out to older moviegoers, an endangered demographic in a summer where under-25s have driven the success of Obsession and Backrooms. Three-quarters of The Odyssey’s audience has been over 25, while memes inspired by the movie (most popular: Matt Damon’s anguished face portraying Odysseus listening to the sirens’ song and Robert Pattinson’s slimy suitor demanding that “someone get these BEGGARS out of here!”) have indicated that younger people are paying attention too.

Rebecca Lucy Taylor leads David Hare’s rock’n’roll drama, Michaela Coel tells us Chewing Gum Dreams and Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo stars in a murder mystery

Like a time capsule crowbarred open, its fug filling the auditorium, this year’s 50th anniversary production of David Hare’s drama about a 60s rock band’s unravelling made for a fascinating evening. The tunes by brothers Nick and Tony Bicât – plus Rebecca Lucy Taylor AKA Self Esteem’s new number, Maggie’s Song, which expertly matches their milieu – have been collected on a cast recording best played on repeat. Altogether now: “Don’t let the bastards come near you. They just want to prove you’re sane.”

Royal Albert Hall, London
An acted prelude by Jane Mitchell teased out the composer’s motivations for his engrossing First Symphony before the orchestra assayed the work from memory

“Ridiculous,” “offensively trivial”, “a complete disaster,” just some of the critical barbs hurled at Gustav Mahler’s First Symphony following its Budapest premiere in 1889. A babel of such invective echoed around the Albert Hall launching the ingenious theatrical presentation – in effect, a staged programme note – that preceded Aurora Orchestra’s performance of the work in all its maverick majesty. Over an hour, actors and musicians took us on a light touch, deep dive into the circumstances surrounding the genesis of a symphony that frankly baffled its first audience.

“For those that listen closely, everything about me is explained in this music,” declared a beguiling Jack Bardoe, perfectly encapsulating Mahler’s combination of frenetic energy and artistic neuroses (“A bomb encased in razorblades,” is how one-time friend Ferdinand Pfohl put it). The setting was a psychiatrist’s office, with Sarah Twomey a forthright Sigmund Freud (“Tell me about your mother”) linking the composer’s compulsion to write music with a need to re-enact childhood trauma. Paternal cruelty, eight siblings lost in infancy and a disastrous love affair fostered a deeper understanding of what made Mahler tick.

(Republic)
Casting herself as a flower trampled underfoot, the superstar’s eighth album swaps the ​glitz of her Wicked years ​f​or dark blooms of haunted electronics

‘Tell me who’s to blame?” Ariana Grande asks, exasperated, on the title track of her eighth album, Petal. “Is it the people or myself?” As bleary, fuzzed-up drums threaten to drown her out, this shadowy carousel-ride of a song cycles through more questions than answers. Does her success only make her need more of it? Can her new record of No 1 singles stave off heartbreak? Does Grande’s life shape her music, or does her music shape her life?

Moody and muted, Petal is a riposte to the glitz and sparkle of the pop star’s Oscar-nominated turn in Wicked and the theatre kid energy of her last album, 2024’s Eternal Sunshine. She describes this record as one of “unfiltered rage”, and there’s plenty Grande could be angry about: just this week she filed a lawsuit against hackers who allegedly stole and sold numerous unreleased songs.

Combining grand melodrama with nuanced emotional character, Lucy Duncan and producer Niac’s collaboration sounds both timeless and true

From Hastings, UK
Recommended if you like Mary Margaret O’Hara, Tori Amos, Fiona Apple
Up next Old Feelings EP out now, album to follow later in 2026

The first time listening to Luki feels like a miraculous discovery of something timeless and true, as though they’ve been waiting patiently to be discovered in the noisy maelstrom of contemporary pop music. The collaborative alias of singer/composer Lucy Duncan and producer Niac, Luki write off-kilter showtunes performed as baroque art songs, embodying a seemingly contradictory combination of grand melodrama and nuanced emotional character.

(American Dogwood/Empire)
Beneath the Hollywood narrators, Pink Floyd-y interludes and accompanying comic books lies songwriting that proves the Tipsy singer’s breakout success was no fluke

It’s fair to say that if Shaboozey never released another note of music, his place in history would still be assured.

He wasn’t the only Black country-leaning artist brought to a wider audience by a guest appearance on Beyoncé’s 2024 album Cowboy Carter, but no one else capitalised on the exposure quite so remarkably. Released two weeks after his guest appearance on that album’s Spaghettii, his single A Bar Song (Tipsy) unexpectedly eclipsed Beyoncé’s success, becoming the biggest-selling country single of the year – more than 1.75bn streams and counting on Spotify – and for a time, the joint longest-running US No 1 of all time. He’s received three nominations at the Country Music awards, an event traditionally resistant to artists of colour. The accompanying album, Where I’ve Been, Isn’t Where I’m Going, was by far the most successful sustained attempt to fuse hip-hop and country, two genres that have been warily circling each other for some time, spawning the occasional novelty hit such as Nelly and Tim McGraw’s Over and Over Again, the Ludacris-featuring 2010 remix of Jason Aldean’s Dirt Road, and Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road; the baleful, rap-influenced spectre of bro country; and the deep underground sub-genre of hick-hop, a hidden world of Maga politics, confederate flags and festivals held at Georgia mud holes. The album is still on the US chart, 112 weeks after its release.

The Pulitzer-winning author of Less and Villa Coco explores the art of writing humour – plus 10 of the best novels to make you laugh

In March 2020, when the mayor of San Francisco instructed all citizens to remain in their houses due to a pandemic, the first thing I did was order all the books of Agatha Christie. I was not alone; I think many of us immersed ourselves in reliable narratives to drown out the chaos. It did not matter if it ended in marriage or murder; the reliability was what mattered. Later when I realised I would need to hole up for some time, my reading shifted to a different kind of novel. And because, like Christie, our world has an endless supply of new terrors, it is the comic novel that still fills my reading hours.

Nobody knows what a comic novel is. And once you start discussing it, all the fun runs out. EB White compared it to dissecting a frog (you’re left with innards and a dead frog) but I would compare it to turning all the lights on at a party: everyone looks terrible and you’ve ruined the party. Most would agree, of course, that Wodehouse wrote comic novels, but I turn to books hardly anybody would classify that way – Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, for instance – that yet seem to me to be a hoot. I think they are books that decide something is funny, as Jerry Seinfeld once defined comedy. In Moby-Dick, it’s a coin nailed to a masthead. In Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire, it’s the worst best poem you’ve ever read. And yet we feel we’re getting at something the most solemn narratives aim for: an understanding of the human condition, of grief, of love, of death. All the big stuff. The comic novels I love are books that could just as easily have been tragedies. It is simply that the author has decided it’s funny.

The stories in Mrs Leicester’s School, written by a woman who killed her own mother, were suffused with grief, and finally triggered mine as I was teaching a class of students

When my dad went into hospital for what would be the final time, shortly before Christmas last year, I had been finishing up a lecture series on early children’s literature for the university where I teach. My dad had had a drinking problem practically my whole life, but his alcoholism had worsened across decades. Then suddenly, after years of poor health, his liver just gave up on him. He was dead within days.

Shortly after his death I was due to lecture on a relatively forgotten book of stories for children called Mrs Leicester’s School, mostly written by the English writer Mary Lamb but with parts by her more famous brother, Charles. I was not prepared for how moved I would be by the simple message of one of the stories. That often bizarre and sometimes grim collection of tales for pre-Victorian boys and girls changed the way that I, an almost 40-year-old man, think about grief.

This bold family saga explores a search for healing and truth in the aftermath of the Rwanda genocide

How to forgive the unforgivable? How to live in the aftermath of atrocity? Following 2016’s Small Country, French-Rwandan rapper and writer Gaël Faye takes on huge questions in his second novel, Jacaranda, which explores the seismic events of the Rwanda genocide and the aftershocks that continue to ripple through the generations.

Structurally bold, the story opens in summer 1994 with Milan, Faye’s then 12-year-old protagonist, enjoying an extended break from school. Milan’s father is white French and the family’s life in Versailles is the embodiment of first world ease – their holiday that year, as usual, spent sailing at the Île de Ré. Milan’s mother, though, is Rwandan. Venancia arrived in the 1970s, establishing a life for herself, a successful clothing boutique, a family. However, she cannot share the French ease, much less her thoughts on the disturbing reports from Rwanda now making the evening news.

The novelist on learning empathy from Charles Dickens, the playfulness of Irenosen Okojie and avoiding Jane Austen

My earliest reading memory
I was eight when I was given The Water-Babies by Charles Kingsley, after being moved from my grand­mother’s care to live with my mother and her husband, who I barely knew. The story is about leaving one world, adapting to another. Surviving. It gave shape to unnamed feelings and developed my survival imagination: imagining beyond my circumstances.

My favourite book growing up
David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I followed David’s journey from exclusion to belonging. Dickens vivifies his characters; you grow alongside them. The novel taught me empathy, and that some relationships sustain us while others must be left behind.

Hidden gems can be unearthed, but you have to dig deep into the bargain bins of countless outdated Fifas, Wii Fits without the controllers and partially finished quizshow games

As an eternally optimistic charity shop fan, I hold on to the fantasy that one day I’ll walk into my local Oxfam and find a pristine copy of the Sega Saturn shooter Burning Rangers for £1.50. Or perhaps a box full of old Neo Geo carts for a quid each. Sadly, this is now unlikely. Charity shops have caught on to the fact that old video games – like old vinyl albums – are highly collectible, and so they’re putting the good stuff on eBay. That’s fine, it’s their job to raise money, not to provide opportunist swine like me with bargains. But what games can you find tucked away in your local branch of Barnardo’s? To find out I visited about 40 charity stores across the country. Here is what I discovered on the shelves … And please do share your own charity shop gaming finds in the comments!

Playing as recent arrival Lena, your challenges include learning a new language and uncovering family secrets – its developer hopes it will spread ‘a little more compassion’

The cosy house-sorting sim has become a much-loved staple of the PC indie scene. Titles such as Unpacking, A Little to the Left and Momento charm players with their detailed interiors and quiet narratives of lives lived and shared within the same four walls. For Clean Start, Polish developer Serious Sim has taken a different approach – here you play as domestic cleaner, Lena, an immigrant who has arrived in an unspecified western country with little knowledge of the local language, and a family to support back home.

From here, you’re tasked with cleaning a series of houses and apartments, polishing tables, tidying shelves and scrubbing muddy pawprints from kitchen floors. It seems you’re able to rearrange the rooms, giving them a personal feel, which is after all one of the most pleasing elements of the genre. You can also, we are reassured, pet the dog.

Deep underground the player joins a colony of ruthlessly exploited pit workers who could be taking on the bosses. How things play out will depend on you

It is rare for video games to feature industrial action as a key theme, but it does happen. There’s the shady Dockworker’s Union in Disco Elysium and the Orbital Workers Union in space adventure Tacoma; then there is Lynx, the evil union-bashing corp in Hardspace: Shipbreaker. Soon we can add A Line Held Tight, a visual novel that puts workers’ rights – and workers’ lives – at the very centre of the narrative.

In the distant future, a colony of miners digs far beneath the surface of an isolated planet, searching for veins of some exotic ore, protected from the poisonous atmosphere within giant mech suits. But the working conditions are woeful and as a strike looms, an unpopular employee named the Canary must decide whether or not to stand with colleagues and fight against suppression. The player, of course, takes on the role of the Canary, navigating personal as well as political struggles in a world rendered in stark monochrome.

PC, Xbox, PlayStation 5; Halo Studios/Xbox Game Studios
Halo’s modernised introduction to all that was great about the 00s’ first-person shooter is also a welcome return trip for those of us who were there at the time

This 25th-anniversary remake of Xbox’s most iconic shooter comes loaded with symbolism. It arrives at a time when Xbox’s whole gaming division (and indeed the games business as a whole) is in turmoil. It’s been made by Halo Studios, an outfit that has arguably never quite recaptured the magic conjured by Halo: Combat Evolved’s original developer Bungie, a studio now owned by rival Sony. It has been polished and prettified using Unreal Engine 5, making it look and feel more modern at the expense of visual uniqueness: Halo now looks similar to hundreds of other games made with those same tools, where Bungie’s 2001 original, made with a bespoke engine, still looks austerely distinctive. I never wanted to become this person, but: perhaps things were better in the old days?

I had my misgivings after the opening level, in which freshly defrosted supersoldier Master Chief fends off an alien attack on a disintegrating spaceship. Originally this was a masterclass in explosive action: you wake up, you look around (once a clever way to determine whether you needed to invert the controls), and you get right into it, firing gaming’s best pistol at chittering alien grunts who scatter from your bullets. Now it’s wrapped in needlessly expanded cutscenes and explanations. Where Halo Studios has made changes to Combat Evolved’s pacing, it really feels noticeable.

Halo: Campaign Evolved is out now

In this week’s newsletter: ​H​idden creators ​reveal how invisibility can be a shield and spotlight in an era of relentless self‑exposure

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In 1985, an anonymous group of women disguised in gorilla masks burst on to the art scene in New York. At night, the Guerrilla Girls, as they named themselves, fly-posted around the city: funny, eye-catching posters highlighting gender and racial biases in museums and galleries. (“Do women have to be naked to get into the Met. Museum?” read one now-famous poster.) “Of course, we were afraid that if we blew the whistle on some of [the art world’s] most powerful people, we could kiss off our art careers,” a founding member explained in an interview for their 1995 book. “But mainly, we wanted the focus to be on the issues, not on our personalities or our own work.”

The collective is still active; 55 members have come and gone over the years. When giving interviews, they use pseudonyms borrowed from dead women artists: Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Käthe Kollwitz. Only a handful of their true identities have been revealed over the years, mostly after their deaths or due to lawsuits. But this week, a Guerrilla Girl made headlines when she chose to unmask herself on her own terms. “I’d had a pact with another Girl that whoever died first, the survivor would bring her out,” said the 83-year-old artist Joyce Kozloff (codename: Liubov Popova). “But I suddenly realised that if I were dead, I couldn’t tell the story my way.”

Soho Place theatre, London
This multifaceted and personal homage to – and collaboration with – composer Philip Glass is a transcendent tapestry suffused with joy and wonder.

A show that doesn’t happen (and one that’s never seen); a shattered coffee table; the I Ching; Maurice Sendak; a flotation tank; Deep Democracy. Just some of the disparate fragments that are lovingly assembled by the Tao of Glass into what writer and co-director Phelim McDermott has called “a storytelling tapestry – part concert, part performance”. Premiered at 2019’s Manchester International festival, this beguiling meditation now makes its London debut – albeit without the figure who looms tousle-haired and scowling behind it: composer Philip Glass.

Glass’s music has been, McDermott explains, a “river” through his life. The award-winning director’s fascination started as a teenager, lying on his bedroom floor listening to Glassworks on repeat, later crystallised by a little light stalking (the young McDermott follows Glass through the streets of Covent Garden) and professional collaborations on the composer’s operas.

Gwen John’s singular poetic world, Enid Marx’s signature designs for the London Underground and the rural gothic of LR Vandy – all in your weekly dispatch

Gwen John: Strange Beauties
This excellent and moving encounter with the Welsh modern painter, touring from Wales’s National Museum, takes you deep into John’s silent, poetic world.
• Modern Two, Edinburgh, from 1 August until 4 January

Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London
Family show brings gleeful playfulness to the story of a 12-year-old whose escape into extravagant daydreams has begun to alarm him

The more children you bring along to this new family show – the latest co-production from the Globe theatre and Splendid Productions – the more fun you’ll have. It’s ostensibly about a 12-year-old school boy, Cass, who is struggling with his doubts and fears and considering reining in his imagination altogether. However, what makes this stubbornly ambitious production so special is the gleeful sense of playfulness it ignites in the young audience, as well as the parents watching alongside them.

The story unfolds in young Cass’s imagination; a place populated by a host of cracking make-believe characters. There’s classical Shakespearean actor Sarah, played with a twinkling sense of pomposity by Kerry Frampton (also a co-writer on the show). Then there’s Tanvi Virmani’s plucky Cobweb - a minor Shakespearean character who has stuck around in Cass’s mind thanks to a brilliant production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Finally we have Zachary Willis’s Big Guy, one of Cass’s favourite TV characters, who spends most of his time enacting very silly and very funny play-fights.

The comedian and Drag Race Down Under judge on Harry Styles, not having the legs for short shorts, and why sleep is the most expensive beauty product

You’re back on the judging panel of Drag Race Down Under vs The World. What do you think gives Australian queens the edge?

I think our drag tends not to focus as much on female impersonation. It’s about building a character. People like Lazy Susan, who’s on the judging panel this year, is one of my favourites because there’s no illusion about this being a man in women’s clothing, but there’s creativity to it. I think Australian drag is about creating art, as opposed to creating a woman.

Veteran actor best-known for playing Salvatore ‘Big Pussy’ Bonpensiero, friend of Tony Soprano who becomes FBI informant

Vincent Pastore, a veteran actor who played mobsters and tough guys, and was best-known for playing Salvatore “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero on The Sopranos, has died. He was 80.

Bob McGowan, who had managed Pastore since his run on The Sopranos, told the Associated Press that he learned of his death Saturday from another client and actor on the show, Vincent Curatola.

As his 12th feature film, I Want Your Sex, hits theaters, the cult gay film-maker is as fired up as ever

Is straight sex the most perverse sex of all? Gregg Araki’s new film makes a convincing case. Titled I Want Your Sex, the movie is a deliriously fun and often hilarious study of desire, power and art that features bondage, full-frontal and a vagina made out of pink chewed-up bubble gum. “For me, it is a very queer story,” the director says, speaking the week of the film’s release in a video call from his Los Angeles home. “It’s a take on kink and alternate sexuality that goes right across the straight-queer spectrum.”

While it is not the first heterosexual movie by Gregg Araki – that honor goes to his 1995 acid trip of a road movie The Doom Generation – it features the new queer cinema pioneer’s starriest cast in years, perhaps in a sign that Hollywood at large has caught up to the cult director’s anarchic vision. Forty years into his career, we still want Araki’s sex: the film is set to reach the director’s biggest audience to date, opening to 700 US screens this week, a stunning figure for an independent film and a wider opening than recent films by indie veterans like Nicolas Winding Refn and Jim Jarmusch.

The singer on falling in love with dance, surviving the paparazzi, and reuniting with Kimberley Wyatt and Nicole Scherzinger

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1981, Ashley Roberts joined the Pussycat Dolls in 2002. Their debut single, Don’t Cha, spent three weeks at No 1 in the UK in 2005. The sextet sold more than 55m records worldwide before splitting in 2010. Roberts has since appeared on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! and Strictly Come Dancing, and was a judge on Dancing on Ice. She hosts a show on Heart 00s every Saturday. The Pussycat Dolls – now a trio of Nicole Scherzinger, Roberts and Kimberly Wyatt – are currently on a 21-date tour.

This tutu picture was taken at my first ever dance recital, and I’m happy as can be. It was the 80s, so everything’s pink and fluffy, and I have big hair and a serious fringe. I love the way my feet and hands are angled a little bit abnormally. I thought I was posing for the gods.

Fabric, fit, weight and drape – there’s more to picking the perfect tee than meets the eye. Our menswear expert rounds up his favourites

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

I didn’t think about Marlon Brando when I got dressed this morning. Or James Dean or Steve McQueen, for that matter. But every time you pull a white T-shirt over your head, they’re the ones you should have in the back of your mind.

Before they came along, a white T-shirt was just underwear. They made the silhouette cultural shorthand for effortless style and, ever since, it’s been the simplest – and coolest – thing in every wardrobe. These days, Jacob Elordi’s off-duty wardrobe usually consists of a white T-shirt – whether that’s under a cardigan, tucked into tailored trousers, or just visible at the hem of a zipped-up work jacket.

We put 10 tinned and jarred varieties to the test to see which anchovies are the best catch for your cash

• The best supermarket tinned sardines

To taste these anchovies, I invited a friend, the food journalist and author Sudi Pigott, to join me. Arriving with a packet of Pujadó Solano anchovies and her new book, Consider the Anchovy, in hand, she and I tasted 10 brands of anchovies straight from the tin or jar with sparkling water and cucumber to cleanse the palate. According to Pigott, the best anchovies are “juicy, plump and velvety, with a sweet, nutty taste of jamón!”

The anchovy supply chain has been heavily affected by El Niño, which caused abnormal weather events in Peru, where the most economical anchovies in our test were fished. But premium anchovies sourced from the Bay of Biscay (the Cantabrian Sea) have also faced external pressures. A lack of supply, among other factors, has increased prices and left some supermarket shelves bare.

Our writer spent the hottest weeks of the year churning through the top ice-cream makers, from compressor models to the cult favourite Ninja Creami. Here’s the scoop

• Kitchen gadgets top chefs can’t live without

I love a scoop or two of the good stuff, even more so when the mercury hits 30C and ice-cream starts feeling less like an indulgence and more like an essential survival tool. This is why owning an ice-cream maker has always made sense to me. I’ve been using the original Ninja Creami for years now, but before that I was spending a small fortune on gelato, fruity sorbets, frozen yoghurt and other such desserts from the frozen aisle.

Some might argue that the best ice-cream makers are a luxury, but if you’re a true dessert devotee, I believe they can earn their keep in no time. A tub of Häagen-Dazs will set you back almost £6 nowadays, which is an expensive habit if you’re getting through a pot a week during the hottest months of the year.

They promise clearer, younger-looking skin, but is your money better spent elsewhere? Dermatologists and experts weigh in

• How to build the perfect skincare routine

Countless faddy products have crossed my desk over the years I’ve been reviewing beauty tech, from app-connected toothbrushes to AI-powered hair dryers. Few, however, have held such sustained interest as LED face masks.

At first glance, I assumed these scary-looking, space-age skincare devices would fizzle out of favour as quickly as they appeared. Instead, they’ve become a staple in some people’s skincare routines, including my own.

Stick vacuums are a convenient alternative to corded designs, but which model wins for overall cleaning prowess? Our expert reveals all

• The best robot vacuums
• How to make your vacuum last longer

Choosing a cordless vacuum isn’t a decision that should be taken lightly. You’re likely to keep a vacuum cleaner for years, relying heavily on its ability to suck up dust, crumbs, mud, pet hair and any other dry spillages or sheddings that end up on your floor. Choosing the right model can be the difference between an effective cleaner that’s a delight to pull out of the cupboard and a dud that you dread having to unblock, detangle and clean after every use.

In this review, I took 16 of the leading cordless vacuum cleaners from a range of manufacturers and at various prices and inflicted the same cleaning tests on each one. That takes all the guesswork out of picking your next cleaner: I can tell you exactly which ones picked up the most mess.

Best cordless vacuum cleaner overall:
Shark PowerDetect Clean & Empty IP3251

Chez Rose offers a sort of hospitality that feels centuries old, but when done well, will never be old hat

Chez Rose has just appeared on Pollen Street, Mayfair, but to the casual passerby, it looks as if it could have been established in 1974. This is, of course, poudre aux yeux; until recently, this was Jason Atherton’s Little Social. Yet, with some strategically placed tables en terrasse, vintage mirrors, thoughtfully scattered doilies and, later, bread baskets, and what you have is France in the eye of the British beholder. Not the full ’Allo ’Allo-ification, but that elegant, sexy pastiche of everyday French dining that adult Brits gobble up like school kids devouring Milka chocolate. Crepes Suzette, poulet rôti with vin jaune and morels, dover sole meuniere with Menton lemon… Ooh là là. If you can’t get into Bouchon Racine in Farringdon, go here instead.

Chez Rose is by Spencer Metzger, whose CV is an embarrassment of edible riches: The Ritz and Row on 5 were his culinary sandpit, until Chez Rose allowed him to model a whole place in tribute to his late grandmother, Rosemary. There are framed photos of the Metzger family around the room, and some items from her house, if diners would stop stealing them. Rosemary wasn’t French, and neither is Metzger, but within one mouthful of the first snack of red prawn and tomato on a crisp crostini, zinging with a mouthy lemon, which arrived on a pretty doily, it feels churlish to quibble. In fact, if Metzger’s non-Frenchness upsets you, it just leaves more 70% chocolate souffle with vanilla ice-cream for the rest of us.

Across Latin American households in the US, the steaming broth nourishes while keeping family traditions alive

When Patty Rodriguez hears the word caldo now, she thinks fondly of home. But as a child growing up in southern California, she despised eating the piping-hot soup-like meal during the summers. Rodriguez would swirl around the chunks of fish with her spoon and imagine that she was performing a magic trick where the dish disappeared. She would roll her eyes as she asked her family why they served the dish more often when it was hot outside. “This is not a hotel,” Rodriguez recalled her mother and aunts saying. “You don’t choose what you want to eat. You’re going to eat what we make.”

As an adult, Rodriguez realizes that caldo, which translates to broth in Spanish, was an inexpensive meal that could feed her Mexican American household for several days. It provided the nourishment and hydration needed during the hot summer months.

Conjuring memories of sun-drenched holidays and cool tapas bars, this dish is deliciously messy

As a devotee of the small, sweet and winningly cheap cold-water prawn, I don’t often find myself at the court of the king variety, but as a way to conjure happy memories of holidays past, sunny terraces and cool tapas bars, this particular dish is hard to beat. Served sizzling hot and drenched in red, garlicky oil, it’s deliciously messy stuff, and best paired with bread and an icy drink.

Prep 5 min
Cook 15 min
Serves 4 as a tapa, 2 as a starter

These roasted oyster mushrooms are meaty, savoury and chewy, made even more satisfying in a south-east Asian-style dressing

Not every plant makes a great burger filling. You might think pulses or potatoes for heft, but the lack of texture and propensity to mush can be unsatisfying. This is where mushrooms excel; they trade in satisfaction. Roasting them brings out their natural umami and removes water content, leaving them chewy, caramelised and occasionally crisp. They can also make friends with the most unlikely of ingredients, like they have here with peanut butter, soy, agave and sesame.

Rachel forked out £700 for beauty treatments, Kojo confessed to a £25 cigarette habit, and Jake indulged his love of fancy timepieces. Were their other halves forgiving or furious?

Rachel and Kojo, Northampton

The cabaret performers met while on tour in Canada. But it wasn’t until her new partner befriended her mother that Sachie realised how thoughtful he was

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

I met Trent in 2012 in a car park in Winnipeg. We were handing out flyers on the Canadian fringe circuit. I was wearing a pink tutu for my contemporary clown show and Trent was in the tight black suit of his vaudeville character the Birdmann. We barely spoke but I had this strange feeling, almost as if I should avoid him – a feeling I sometimes get around people who go on to become important in my life.

Backstage at the next festival in Edmonton, Trent kept trying to give me liquorice but I don’t like it. I wasn’t sure why he was paying me so much attention, although I wondered if he was impressed by seeing me play trumpet in the show.

Richard, 63, a communications consultant, meets Katrina, 60, a GP

What were you hoping for?
Easy conversation with someone interesting, smart and relaxed.

Daniella doesn’t want to go to bed early. Seamus says she shouldn’t offer the sofabed if she doesn’t want guests. Who has room for improvement?

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

It’s not that I don’t want him here, but he needs to understand that I am giving up my space to host him

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whether it is SpaceX or a bank, getting the right facts about a firm can offer vital insights before you invest in it

When Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched on to the stock market, tens of thousands of Britons clamoured to buy a stake, putting the spotlight on DIY investing.

Going it alone and buying shares in individual companies can be rewarding, but also risky. Unless you have a huge amount of cash, you are likely to end up investing in far fewer companies than if you invested in a fund. This means you are more exposed to the ups and downs of those companies’ fortunes.

We told it of our 11pm arrival time but when we got there our room was no longer available as it had ‘overbooked’

I booked and paid for a room in the Travelodge London King’s Cross Royal Scot hotel six weeks in advance. It was for myself and my husband, who has heart disease and dementia.

I had called the hotel on the day of arrival to advise that we would be checking in at 11pm and was told that was fine.

Avoid espresso martinis and wear the right pyjamas: experts give tips on how to sleep when it’s hot outside

• Tell us: what impact have GLP-1s had on your relationships?

Getting a good night’s sleep when it’s hot out can feel impossible. Unfortunately, worrying about not being well-rested doesn’t help.

Experts say worrying about sleep in warm weather will inevitably make you feel worse. “When people cannot sleep because they are too hot, it often becomes both a physical and a mental challenge,” says Dr Shelby Harris, founder and director of NY Sleep and Psychology, and author of The Women’s Guide to Overcoming Insomnia. “They may start watching the clock, worrying about how tired they will be the next day, or trying harder to force themselves to fall asleep.

Women and men exhibit different heart attack symptoms. Knowing these lesser-known factors can help save your life

A few months ago at work, when I rose from my seat and walked a few steps, something felt off. There was a strange pressure in my chest and rib cage, but I ignored it, took my water bottle from the kitchen and returned to my desk.

The next day it happened again. There was no pain and my breathing was fine. But whenever I stood up and took a few steps, the odd squeezing would return. I work at a hospital as a neurosurgery coordinator, and the wall was lined with posters about stroke and heart distress signs. I barely glanced at the pictures, having memorized them years ago.

The classic gym routine doesn’t isolate your stomach muscles as much as you might think, but here are five that will

If someone in a film or TV show wants a six-pack, chances are they’ll drop to the floor and start doing sit-ups. According to Dr Lee Brown, senior lecturer in strength and conditioning at the University of East London, that’s more Hollywood than science.

“It’s embedded in the archaic practices of boxing coaches and therefore everyone seems to follow it,” he says. “But they’re far from the best exercise for training your core.”

Stress, the cost of living, long working hours and even excessive exercise have all been touted as reasons the illness is rising among women in their 30s and 40s. What can be done to help them?

The “lightning strike” pain was like nothing Francine Jones had experienced before. “That is the only way I can describe it,” she says, of the stabbing in her torso that would occur every 10 minutes or so. “It was a really sharp, intense pain, as if someone was giving me an electric shock … it took my breath away.”

It had started in May with a strange pricking sensation under her bra. Then 10 large blisters, plus a host of smaller ones, formed in a band from her stomach to her back. They burned, “like someone was putting an iron on me. I don’t think I wore underwear for five or six weeks.” Showering, or even a cold flannel, would make her skin burn. Then came “the itch”, which lasted for five weeks and was so intense that she was lucky if she slept for four hours a night. “It was like something was crawling all over me all the time.” I can hear her wincing.

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

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

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

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

Private White VC’s James Eden says PM should not be criticised for wearing a high-quality British-made brand

It has not yet been two weeks since James Eden, the founder of the Manchester men’s clothier Private White VC, saw one of his best-known customers move in to No 10 Downing Street.

In any sane world the man who makes the prime minister’s jackets would be popping open the champagne. His garments have been seen by millions of people and described by journalists all over the world writing about Burnham’s buttoned-down style.

Celebrities including Charli xcx and Gabbriette and avant-garde brands honour tradition while also rejecting it

If a wedding day brings to mind a bride dressed in a big white dress, the styles coming down the aisle in the near future may strike you as a little different. Whether it is through celebrity references, or new brands, wedding gowns are entering a more experimental era.

For Charli xcx’s marriage to the 1975 drummer George Daniel last year, the bride wore a minidress and sunglasses.

Minty fresh flavours are out, gold plated toothbrushes are in, and dental experts are sceptical

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First it came for handwash. Then deodorant. Now, the fancification trend has claimed its next victim: dental products. From £20 toothpastes to bottles of mouthwash that sound more like a perfume than a breath freshener, a new wave of oral care is blurring the lines between function and fashion.

Rather than being shoved in an old tumbler on the back of the shelf, today’s iterations of toothbrushes and pastes are at the forefront of social media sink shots, proudly displayed alongside a three-wick candle and curated pile of skincare.

Falling in love with a novel motivated these five travel writers to immerse themselves in locations from the Yukon and Kyrgyzstan to the Côte d’Azur

Inspired by Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express

Rabat is a gorgeous seaside city with great food and culture, but for book lovers there’s an added incentive to go this year

The first book I read willingly was Bridget Jones’s Diary. I was 19. Up to that point, I hadn’t been much of a reader. I’d been more into football, or Baywatch, or Robin Budd in the year above – anything really. Given the choice between reading a book and staring at a wall, I would have plumped for the latter.

After finishing my A-levels, I worked in a barbecue restaurant in Portsmouth – which is where I found Bridget Jones. The book was lying around in the staffroom. I picked it up and read a few pages, and then a few more, and then a few more. It felt exciting. Like I’d met someone. Like I was suddenly in a relationship. Over the next few days, I remember cancelling nights out so I could go to bed and read. My mum thought I was depressed.

From Dervla Murphy’s Northern Ireland to Elena Ferrante’s Naples, readers share the stories that inspired them to travel
• Tell us about a trip to Europe’s lakes and mountains – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Inspired by Dervla Murphy’s A Place Apart

Small boats and kayaks connect the sparse communities and flourishing wildlife living on the thousands of islets on the Baltic coast

At 5am on Arkösund bay, it is so light it could be midday. I slip out of the pretty clapboard Arkösunds hotell, opened in 1895, as a small boat putters into the Baltic Sea, the sun sparkling on its calm waters. A wooden boardwalk invites me on to a string of tiny islets as geese arrow overhead and a mother swan coaxes her fluffy cygnets into a nook under a bridge.

I’m on Sweden’s east coast to explore the Östergötland archipelago, a sprawl of about 9,000 islands scattered across the Baltic Sea a few hours south of Stockholm. Quieter and less crowded than the better-known isles off Stockholm or Gothenburg, it covers several pockets of coastline and smaller archipelagos: Arkösund, Sankt Anna, Gryt and Tjust. The larger islands are flecked with traditional red timber summer houses, and are home to seals, sea birds, and dense, verdant forests of alder, cedar, oak and pine.

Pencil marks in the margins of books gathered over a lifetime was proof of a life lived. So when it came time for Andrew McKean to move into aged care, leaving his books behind made the self thinner

My wife, Patricia, and I came to our nursing home with little more than clothes, a few photographs and some books we could still carry. The shelves we left behind still stand in the emptied rooms of the house we called home for 30 years. Those shelves once groaned under the weight of books we had gathered, page by page, year by year.

Our books told of who we were, or who we thought we might become. There were the novels Patricia read in the long evenings after the children slept, their spines cracked from her hands. There were the histories I brought home from the library sales, dusty volumes of wars and voyages that filled the quiet hours when rain beat on the roof. Poetry too, slim books with thin paper, marked where a line struck true. We kept them not only for the stories printed inside but for the story they made of us.

Britons move away from trend of grey paving and pristine lawns in an embrace of colour, with lavender a top choice

If you manage to spot a garden in bloom this summer, beyond the strips of bleached and torched grass, there may be one colour you see more than any other: purple, the horticultural hue of the season.

Plants such as lavender, salvias and catmint are in vogue, according to the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), which conducted extensive research into the colours Britons best love to see in their gardens.

Sick of doomscrolling? From venues with smartphone swear jars to cabins with absolutely no signal, here are the fun and freeing ways to ditch your device

There’s a ritual at the start of every event hosted by the Offline Project. Run by Pelé Zachariah, the activities vary – it could be a group walk, a collage‑making class or a supper club – but each one begins in the same way, *with an invitation to hand over your phone. Devices go in a lockbox. Once they’re all in, Zachariah closes the door and turns the key. “I don’t place them in for people, because it’s nice for them to physically put it in the box themselves, walk away, and think: for the next two or three hours, I’m fully present.”

He has been running these screen-free events in London since August 2025. First-timers can be apprehensive about being separated from their phone. “You can sense the vibe when they’re putting it away,” says Zachariah. “People have said to me, ‘I felt really weird’ or ‘I felt super uncomfortable for the first few minutes not having my phone on me.’ Then they’ll say, ‘I didn’t know how much I needed that.’”

A year-long project exploring the lives of young people in coastal areas required a great deal of groundwork to give them a genuine voice and ensure they were properly heard. Their stories captured the imagination of audiences and policymakers alike

Our journalists always try to spend as long as they can in places to more fully understand things and explain what’s going on. But they don’t often get the chance to keep returning and reporting over a period of 12 months.

“You very rarely have the resources and time to be able to have that back and forth over a year and form ongoing relationships with people,” says Guardian journalist Lisa Bachelor, who was able to do just that as part of a long-term project exploring the lives of young people in coastal towns across England and Wales. The year-long series, Against the tide, wrapped up last week.

Alfred Drummond-Herdman’s extraordinary timelapses have been viewed by millions – and led him to identify new species

Alfred Drummond-Herdman is possibly the only person in the UK who is sent animal faeces in the post out of goodwill. His bedroom in Edinburgh is full of the stuff: clothes have been removed from his wardrobe and cupboards, replaced with terrariums and plastic containers housing sections of cowpats, grouse droppings and rabbit pellets.

“I have a very understanding housemate,” he says.

Some in Dover say their town is being exploited by content creators and politicians, but others claim there is a genuine problem

If you believe rightwing influencers and politicians, Dover and the wider Kent coast has been the site of an “invasion” for years now. And, for an online audience of millions, they and their camera crews have been the vanguard in the nation’s defence.

Indeed, if you believe all you see on the algorithms of amateur Channel watchers, the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, braved a hail of French gunfire as he took to the water in a fishing boat this week; an attempt by the French authorities, he suggested, to deter him in his mission of highlighting the small boats crisis.

We would like to hear your experiences of accessing, providing or relying on adult social care in England

Andy Burnham has said he is prepared to use his “political capital” to reform England’s adult social care system, with the new prime minister arguing that fixing social care is essential to easing pressure on the NHS.

Whether you receive care yourself, support a loved one, work in social care or are an unpaid carer, we want to understand what adult social care in England is really like for the people who rely on it every day.

We want to hear from people who have recently completed an apprenticeship or planning to go on one

The government has announced plans to reshape education for young people in England from the age of 14, with a greater focus on technical and vocational learning, alongside an ambition to create thousands more apprenticeships.

As part of plans to encourage more young people into apprenticeships, the work and pensions secretary, Pat McFadden, has announced a new bursary aimed at ensuring families are not financially worse off if their teenager starts an apprenticeship.

We want to hear how people are dealing with the very hot weather.

UK forecasters have predicted a fourth heatwave of the year, with temperatures forecast to reach as high as 35C by Wednesday, triggering heat health alerts.

Fire chiefs have also appealed to people to take care in parched parks and rural areas.

We would like to hear from people living near AI datacentres about their experiences and any concerns they might have

There are around 450 large data centres across the UK. These warehouses contain computing infrastructure that power cloud services and, increasingly, AI.

There is much debate about how datacentres affect their local areas, with concerns raised by nearby residents about land use, pollution, noise, and the “heat island effect”.

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