The Testament of Ann Lee is a bonkers musical fantasia about an obscure religious sect. Its star and writer-director Mona Fastvold talk fear, bonding – and not needing an Oscar

Not many actors take an interest in the audience’s aftercare. When it comes to The Testament of Ann Lee, however, Amanda Seyfried is hands-on. “Did you watch it with someone you could talk to?” she asks, tilting her head sympathetically, then dipping her full-beam headlight eyes and giving a worried look when I admit that I saw it alone. “It’s nice to process it with somebody else.”

Her concern is understandable. Whatever feelings the film provokes, indifference will not be among them. Heady and rapturous, this is an all-round odd duck of a movie, the sort of go-for-broke phantasmagoria – an 18th-century musical biopic complete with feverish visions and levitating – that was once typical of Lars von Trier or Bruno Dumont. I confess I didn’t know exactly what to make of it, but I knew I had been through a singular experience. Its director, Mona Fastvold, seated beside Seyfried on a sofa in a London hotel room, looks delighted. “That’s my favourite sort of feeling,” she says.

Millions of graduates are trapped by ballooning debts, as their repayments are dwarfed by the interest added

Helen Lambert borrowed £57,000 to go to university and began repaying her student loan in 2021 after starting work as an NHS nurse.

Since then she has repaid more than £5,000, typically having about £145 a month taken from her pay packet. But everything she hands over is dwarfed by the £400-plus of interest that is added to her debt every month, thanks to rates that have been as high as 8%.

What could be better than working at the Friendship Inn with my best friend, Ned? Almost anything else, as it turned out

I adored pubs. They were my natural home. And now, thanks to my best friend, Ned, I’d got a job at the Friendship Inn in Prestwich. It was the mid-1980s, and I was in my early 20s, preparing for the first shift. What could be better than working in a pub called the Friendship alongside my bezzy? And I understood drink – you left Guinness to stand, aimed for half an inch of head on a pint of bitter, and if someone asked for water with a whisky you didn’t fill the glass. Easy-peasy.

As soon as I got behind the bar I panicked. There were perhaps half a dozen people waiting to order, but it looked like a sea of thousands. The bar was particularly tricky because it was shaped like the bow of a ship. Every time I went to one side, customers started calling from the other. I couldn’t remember the faces. Nor the drinks they ordered. I took a funny turn. The faces became twisted, distorted, ghoulish, cackling manically or cursing my incompetence. I felt like Mia Farrow confronting the neighbours’ coven in Rosemary’s Baby, only thankfully I didn’t have a knife.

I poured Guinness for people who had ordered a glass of red, Budweiser for those who wanted a Boddingtons. There wasn’t a thing I didn’t get wrong. And then I broke my first glass. The crowd staring at me got more Rosemary’s Baby by the second. My bitter was headless; my lager all head. I broke another glass. I was getting dizzy, struggling to breathe. My legs were collapsing.

Seeing them separated for the first time felt like a miracle

I was already a mother of three when I lay back for my 10-week ultrasound in 2019. At first, seeing the gel on my stomach and the flickering black and white image on screen was familiar and soothing. Then I saw the look on the sonographer’s face.

She dropped the probe and ran out of the room without a word. I tried not to panic, but by the time she sprinted back in with a doctor, who looked at the screen and said, “Oh my goodness”, I was terrified.

Keep Calm and Carry On: that’s not how people felt as the second world war loomed. But maybe, as Trump stalks, that old slogan is finally making sense

It has become known as the “war of nerves”. An apt name for a jittery, jangling time in British history, consumed with fear of what may be coming, in which the sheer unpredictability of life became – as the historian Prof Julie Gottlieb writes – a form of psychological warfare. Contemporary reports describe “threats of mysterious weapons, gigantic bluff, and a cat-and-mouse game intended to stampede the civilian population of this island into terror”.

It all sounds uncannily like life under Donald Trump, who this week marched the world uphill to war, only to amble just as inexplicably back down again. But Gottlieb is actually describing the period between the Munich crisis of 1938 and the blitz beginning in earnest in September 1940. Her fascinating study of letters, diaries and newspapers from the period focuses not on the big geopolitical picture but on small domestic details, and what they reveal about the emotional impact of living suspended between peace and war: companies advertising “nerve tonics” for the anxious, reports of women buying hats to lift their spirits and darker accounts of nervous breakdowns. We did not, contrary to popular myth, all Keep Calm and Carry On. Suicide rates, she notes, rose slightly.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

The Box, Plymouth
Roof-felters, bawdy boozers, off-duty sailors, whip-wielding dominatrixes … this 100th birthday show in Cook’s home town is an exuberant celebration of working-class frivolity

Generally, you get two versions of England in art: it’s either bucolic vistas, rolling hills, babbling brooks and gambolling sheep – or it’s downtrodden, browbeaten, grim poverty and misery. But Beryl Cook saw something else in all the drizzle and grey of this damp old country: she saw joy.

The thing is, joy doesn’t carry the same critical, conceptual heft in art circles as more serious subjects, so Cook has always been a bit brushed off by the art crowd. They saw her as postcards and posters for the unwashed, uncultured masses, not high art for the high-minded. But she didn’t care: she succeeded as a self-taught documenter of English life despite any disdain she might have encountered. And now, on what would have been her 100th birthday, her home town of Plymouth is throwing her a big celebratory bash.

Labour, Tory and Lib Dem MPs among those criticising US president over claim Nato troops stayed away from frontline in Afghanistan

Back to Trump, and this is from the Labour MP Calvin Bailey.

My Air Medal, awarded for service with the US Air Force Special Operations Command in Afghanistan, is a permanent reminder of the enduring UK–US relationship, and of how NATO answered the call when the United States invoked Article 5 in its moment of need.

The 457 British and 43 Danish service personnel who died are a testament to European commitment and sacrifice in defence of NATO and transatlantic security.

With talks of a confrontation over Greenland receding, attention turns back to ending the four-year war between Ukraine and Russia

French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot will travel to Greenland in the coming weeks to show France’s support for the territory amid interest from Donald Trump.

Speaking on BMF/RMC, he said the date is yet to be confirmed, but Le Figaro speculated the visit could coincide with the opening of the French consulate there on 6 February.

Speculation has spread over whether Burnham will attempt to return to pursue a Labour leadership bid

Keir Starmer’s allies have launched a “Stop Andy Burnham” campaign to prevent the Labour mayor from returning to parliament after the resignation of a Manchester MP triggered a byelection.

Multiple members of the party’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) predicted it would be impossible for Burnham to make it through the selection process given the number of Starmer loyalists on the body desperate to avoid a leadership challenge.

Exclusive: victims in hiding after attacks involving physical assault, attempted arson and the use of firearms

Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism command is investigating a series of “highly targeted” attacks on two Pakistani dissidents living in Britain which may bear the hallmarks of states using criminal proxies to silence their critics.

One person has been arrested after a series of four attacks which began on Christmas Eve. One of the attacks involved a firearm.

Families accuse health board of ‘deceit and cowardice’ after years-long battle to prove contaminated water was linked

All Molly Cuddihy wanted was recognition of what she had gone through. That was what she told the Scottish hospitals inquiry in 2021, where she described the “frightening” fits and rigors she had suffered after contracting a bacterial infection at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth university hospital while undergoing chemotherapy. “I was made sicker by the environment,” the 19-year-old said in her evidence.

Molly had been 15 and revising for her National 5 exams when she was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer. She was treated at the Royal hospital for children and the adjacent QEUH, which are both part of a six-year public inquiry that reached its final stages and heard devastating new admissions this week.

Rolling coverage of the final day of the World Economic Forum in Davos

The weakening world order has been a key issue at WEF’s annual meeting this week, but could space be an area where the big powers, and the rest, can still co-operate?

Max Haot, CEO of Vast Space, is here in Davos, and is optimistic that heightened geopolitical tensions will not undermine the space industry.

Even during the Cold War, we did things with Russia at the time. We connected the Soyuz capsule of Russia with the Apollo capsule, and later on, we worked with Mir and the space shuttle.

We also hope, obviously, the collaboration starts on every level. Everything tells us historically, that there is a really good chance that the symbolism of human spaceflight, the desire to work together, the higher goal, can survive some more short-term tensions in other areas.

Guardian analysis shows images are the same, with Nekima Levy Armstrong looking composed in original but sobbing after alteration

The White House posted a digitally altered image of a woman who was arrested on Thursday in a case touted by the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, to make it seem as if she was dramatically crying, a Guardian analysis of the image has found.

The woman, Nekima Levy Armstrong, also appears to have darker skin in the altered image. Armstrong was one of three people arrested on Thursday in connection to a demonstration that disrupted church services in St Paul, Minnesota, on Sunday. Demonstrators alleged that one of the pastors, David Easterwood, was the acting field director of the St Paul Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office. Bondi announced the arrests on social media on Thursday morning.

Search-and-rescue teams worked through the night at the campground, but there had been no progress in finding missing people, officials say

New Zealand is ‘full of grief”, the prime minister has said, after landslides tore through a house and busy campground, leaving two dead and at least six victims still missing.

Police said emergency crews were still searching for at least six people, including two teenagers, believed missing beneath the debris of a landslide which struck a Mount Maunganui campsite on Thursday morning. Police were attempting to contact another three people. Families enjoying the summer school holiday were among the campers. Recreational vehicles and at least one structure were crushed, images showed.

NHS trust warns that people with ADHD in England are facing gaps in care caused by difficulties with private assessments

Waiting lists for people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in England are being clogged by patients returning to NHS care after difficulties with private assessments, a trust has warned.

The major NHS trust said people referred by GPs to private clinics using health service funding were increasingly asking to be transferred back after care stalled.

Director of al-Hawl camp describes chaotic scenes as Kurdish guards fled and government fighters arrived. Will Christou reports from al-Hawl

The children crowded the wire fence, waiting for the guard to turn his back, and made a break for it. They pumped their little legs furiously but did not make it far in the squelching mud, and were quickly chased back inside, grinning and joking to their friends in Bosnian as another guard scolded them, his rifle swinging by his side while he wagged his finger.

Their mothers, foreigners who travelled to Syria to allegedly join Islamic State (IS) and its blood-soaked caliphate, stood silently behind them. Each had their belongings packed in a bag beside them, ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

By turning conflict into entertainment US games company is ignoring its living legacy, says victims rights’ group

It pits the IRA against the British army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, it lets players plant bombs and make political deals and it promises to wrap up the conflict within six hours.

Welcome to the Troubles – the provisional board game version. The brainchild of a US games company, The Troubles: Shadow War in Northern Ireland 1964-1998, is played with dice, tokens and a deck of 260 cards.

AI evangelist Peter Kyle wants to scale up businesses, attract overseas investors and look out for UK’s poorer regions

The UK business secretary, Peter Kyle, has said he is “betting big” and “picking winners” as the government takes direct stakes in growing businesses to boost economic growth.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where he and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have been talking up Britain’s prospects, Kyle said ministers were taking an “activist” approach to industrial policy.

It may not have lived up to its celebrity offspring, but this season has offered brightness in the January gloom. Plus, David Baddiel meets Wilfred the ugly cat. Here’s what to watch this evening

8.30pm, BBC One
A secret Traitor. Fiona v Rachel. The family tree theory. And a contestant with a naked handstand Instagram account. It may not have reached the sensational heights of the recent celebrity series, but The Traitors has delivered on the naughty thrills we need in January. It’s also given us a good bunch of Faithfuls who have actually sniffed out Traitors – but will they make it to the end? Get ready to scream at the screen throughout the final. Hollie Richardson

The Free Solo star will attempt to climb the 1,667ft skyscraper without ropes in a live Netflix broadcast, drawing awe, ethical concern and global attention

Alex Honnold has spent the past three months training for this moment: free soloing – climbing without ropes or a harness – one of Asia’s tallest skyscrapers, Taipei 101. It is an ambition that began more than a decade ago and is now close to being realized.

The climb will be broadcast globally on Skyscraper Live, Netflix’s latest foray into live sports programming. The star of the 2019 Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo insists that climbing Taipei 101 will feel no different from any other of his ascents.

(Columbia Records)
Styles is wonderfully loose and unhurried on the lead single to his new album, taking a bold path away from the rest of today’s mainstream pop

Now the proud owner of six Brits, three Grammys and seven UK Top 10 singles, it’s fair to say Harry Styles has elegantly sidestepped the potholes that pepper the route from ex-boyband member to solo superstar. His well-earned confidence means that rather than fill the gap between 2022’s Harry’s House and last week’s announcement of his fourth album – the confusingly-titled Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally – with various one-off releases, spurious anniversary variants or curated social media moments, Styles basically disappeared. In fact, the only sliver of excitement for his fanbase to grab on to came last September when he ran the Berlin marathon in a very respectable 2hr 59min.

Having endured the music industry at the height of its #content-heavy obsession in One Direction, there’s something old-fashioned about Styles’ absence between album eras. That’s unlikely to be accidental: since launching his solo career with 2017’s muted, 1970s soft-rock-indebted self-titled debut, Styles has cast himself as a cross-generational throwback beamed into the present, albeit one sporting fashion choices that rile gender conformists. Each album has arrived with a list of influences more akin to the lineup on the Old Grey Whistle Test than the current TikTok algorithms, while 2019’s Fine Line, Styles told us, was crafted under the influence of those vintage psychedelics, magic mushrooms.

From the jungles of Colombia to sailing in Croatia, our readers reflect on the life lessons travel has taught them
• Send us a tip on a museum or gallery – the best wins a £200 holiday voucher

I did a circuit of the Old Man of Coniston in the Lake District on a grey, drizzly weekday in October and it quietly rewired my head. I’d been running on always-on mode, and that climb forces you to slow down and breathe properly. From the Coppermines valley up to the ridge, then along the rocky summit and back via Goat’s Water, it’s rugged without being showy. The weather kept the crowds away, and the low cloud made the tarn feel like a secret. I came home muddy, soaked and weirdly calm, and started making space for long walks again.
Brandon Kindell

Oasis, Macca and Radiohead made Help a smash for War Child in 1995. A new reboot packs comparable star power – and was partially produced from a hospital bed

When Kae Tempest was asked to contribute to a new track by Damon Albarn, which would also feature Fontaines DC frontman Grian Chatten, Tempest says he jumped at the chance. It wasn’t just the artists involved, nor the fact that it was for a new compilation benefiting War Child, called Help(2): a sequel to the charity’s hugely successful 1995 compilation Help. After seven solo albums, Tempest had begun thinking about working with others, and so the night before the recording session, he and Chatten repaired to Albarn’s studio and wrote their verses together, “responding to each other”. It seemed to work really well, he says: “A true collaboration.”

Nevertheless, he concedes, the actual recording of Flags proved to be quite the baptism of fire. “Johnny Marr was on guitar, Femi [Koleoso] from Ezra Collective was drumming,” he laughs. “Plus, there was a children’s choir.”

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Since the end of the second world war, all eyes have been on Russia. Yet Trump’s increasingly erratic, hostile presidency is shattering old assumptions

One of the things that the depleted, often denigrated British state is still pretty good at is persuading the public that another country is a threat. As a small, warlike island next to a much larger land mass, Britain has had centuries of practice at cultivating its own sense of foreboding. Arguably, preparing for conflict with some part of the outside world is our natural mindset.

Warnings about potential enemy countries are spread by our prime ministers and major political parties, intelligence services and civil servants, serving and retired military officers, defence and foreign affairs thinktanks, and journalists from the right and the left. Sometimes, the process is relatively subtle and covert: reporters or MPs are given off-the-record briefings about our “national security” – a potently imprecise term – facing a new threat.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

With filibustering slowing the pace to a crawl, there is no chance the legislation will get through – unless the government shows some backbone

The assisted dying bill is about to die, killed off by a small coterie of peers against the will of the House of Commons and voters who have supported the right to die for decades. Can the government let this happen? Keir Starmer, who has voted in favour of the legislation, needs to summon the spirit of Harold Wilson’s 1960s reforms. He has the powers to push it through, whatever it takes.

If the Lords block this, it should be their last gasp. Their outrageous behaviour illuminates everything grotesque about the upper house. There is no telling with any certainty how the vote would go among this eclectic parade of 844 who range from good to very bad indeed, but plainly opponents of the bill think they would lose as they filibuster to prevent a vote at all. Back in the Lords tomorrow and then for seven more Fridays, at this pace there is no chance it will get through in time, unless the blockers give up immediately.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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

After a bombastic speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Trump backed away from his threat to impose tariffs on European countries

In the past few days, Donald Trump turned the US presidency into a tool for his personal glory and vengeance. On Saturday, he threatened to impose tariffs of up to 25% on a bloc of European countries until Denmark agrees to sell Greenland to the US. The next day, Trump texted Norway’s prime minister, saying his failure to win the Nobel peace prize was one of the reasons he’s intent on seizing control of Greenland. After being snubbed for last year’s award, Trump said he no longer felt the need “to think purely of peace”.

By Tuesday morning, as European leaders continued to absorb the shock of Trump’s threats and insults, the president posted an AI-generated meme that showed him planting a US flag on the island, flanked by his vice-president and secretary of state. “Greenland. US Territory. Est. 2026,” the image said. (Trump shared another image, also apparently edited by AI, that showed him sitting alongside a map of the US that includes Canada, Greenland and Venezuela, as he spoke with European leaders assembled at the White House.) Later on Tuesday, when he was asked at a press conference how far he was willing to go to acquire Greenland, Trump responded tersely: “You’ll find out.”

Mohamad Bazzi is director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, and a journalism professor, at New York University

No one is suggesting the sort of decision Brooklyn made is taken lightly, but support networks and the language of therapy seem to lessen the sting

As we continue to unpack the meaning of the Beckham family feud, I don’t think enough attention has been paid to the roast chicken. Perhaps you were busy having a life in December and missed it. But this week’s explosion by Brooklyn Beckham was the culmination of a chain of events triggered last month when Victoria Beckham, advisedly or otherwise, chucked a like at her son’s video of a roast chicken on Instagram.

For some, the takeaway was that Brooklyn’s chicken looked undercooked. For others, it was a reminder that you could draw a face on a balloon and achieve roughly the same level of sentience as Brooklyn in his cooking videos. All of which was to miss the point: that according to the new semiotics of family alienation, Brooklyn’s mother, by liking his post, had crossed a fraught boundary between “NC” (no contact) with her son to “VLC” (very low contact). Had Brooklyn not blocked her and the rest of the family immediately, she may have gone the whole hog and escalated to LC – “low contact” – at which point all bets would’ve been off.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

With Plaid Cymru and the SNP leading polls in their respective nations, can the United Kingdom continue in this – or any – form?

If you were the leader of a democracy, you would hope that the people you govern would, at the very least, want the state itself to exist. It shouldn’t be too much to ask. And yet, if the polls are to be believed, the United Kingdom is in a very interesting position. By the end of May, it is likely that the largest party in three of the four constituent countries of the UK will want the larger polity in which they operate to break apart.

The SNP is currently the overwhelming favourite to have the most seats in the Scottish parliament in the upcoming elections. In Wales, there was polling last week suggesting that the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru was on course to be the largest party inside the Welsh Senedd, just four seats short of a majority. Even more astonishing is that the Welsh Green party was also predicted to get 11 of the 96 seats. This would mean that there would be a majority of parties inside the Welsh parliament whose official policy was for Welsh independence. In Northern Ireland, the party with the most seats at present is Sinn Féin.

Will Hayward is a Guardian columnist. He publishes a regular newsletter on Welsh politics

For a decade, the autonomous territory in Syria has been a bastion of gender equality. It holds important lessons for the fight against authoritarianism

A year ago, I was in north-east Syria, in the Kurdish-dominated area known as Rojava, listening to some of the most determined women that I have ever met. On my first day there, I went to a huge conference where one after another, women in Kurdish, Arab and Assyrian dress roused the audience to chants of “Jin! Jiyan! Azadi!” (Woman! Life! Freedom)!.

When I visited, this region of Syria had for more than a decade been governed not by Bashar al-Assad’s regime, but by an autonomous administration (the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, or Daanes). Its commitment to equal rights has been remarkable – every institution it set up relied on power-sharing between men and women. No wonder many of the women I met there sounded optimistic about their future. “This will be a century of women’s freedom,” one said to me. “We are in solidarity with women in resistance throughout the world.”

Natasha Walter is the author of Before the Light Fades and Living Dolls: the Return of Sexism

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I thought my articles and radio shows made an impact on people. A notice in the staffroom suggested otherwise

I recently spent a day at a secondary school in Birmingham. I agreed to do it because I like being in Birmingham and I like going to schools, and also because the teacher asked nicely. It was only the day before that I read the invitation properly and saw, to my horror, that I was leading what they call a Deep Learning Day. What could they learn from me? Moreover, what could they learn deeply from me?

Whenever I go to schools, I always come away feeling that I’ve learned a lot more from the experience than any students have learned from me. This visit was no different. I came away enriched, but also completely knackered. I’m in awe of the stamina not only of teachers, but also of students. I mean, a whole day of learning, deep or otherwise, is exhausting. Whichever side of it you’re on, it’s a lot.

A notice on the staffroom wall jumped out at me. Apologies to any teachers reading this, for whom the following might well be a hoary old maxim they’re tired of seeing. It went as follows: Learners remember 10% of what they read; 20% of what they hear; 30% of what they see; 50% of what they see and hear; 70% of what they discuss with others; 80% of personal experience; 90% of what they teach someone else.

This all sounds about right to me, dispiriting as it is for someone who earns a crust writing things for people to read, and talking about things on the radio, only to find out that 90% of the former and 80% of the latter aren’t recalled at all. That’s a lot of wasted ink and keyboard taps and airtime. Disappointing. Disappointing too, for someone who used to present a lot of television, to read that what you see and hear at the same time scores rather better. Though I don’t much miss working on television, I do occasionally feel the need to tell myself that radio and writing are nobler arts which linger longer than television in the minds of the audience. Hmm. Not according to this they don’t.

The high scorers here are fascinating too. They rather explain the power of the modern echo chamber. If 70% of what you discuss with like-minded people sticks, as well as 80% of your personal experience – what’s become known, without irony, as “your truth” – you can see how your truth becomes the truth. And then there’s the strikingly high 90% recall you have of the point of view – valid or otherwise – that you’ve so diligently inflicted on others. Bit negative all this, I appreciate, but there you go. Every day’s a school day.

• Adrian Chiles is a writer, broadcaster and a Guardian columnist

It was supposed to give Gaza a future, but the US president is using it to attack the UN, international law and multilateralism

One glance at the logo of the Board of Peace tells you all you need to know. It is the globe and laurels of the UN – only gold, because this is Donald Trump’s initiative, and showing little of the world beyond North America.

The charter of the board, formally launched in Davos on Thursday, suggests that this is less America First than Trump Always. It is not “the US president” but Mr Trump himself who is named as chair, for as long as he wishes. He can pick his successor, decide the agenda and axe whomever he chooses – even if they have coughed up the $1bn demanded for permanent membership. It is the institutional expression of his belief that he is bound not by law but “my own morality, my own mind”.

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

Growing concerns about the impact of smartphones on the youngest children must be addressed

The first UK government guidance on young children’s use of tablets, smartphones and other screens, expected in April, cannot come soon enough. The laissez-faire approach to the boom in social media, handheld devices and other digital technology was arguably nowhere less suitable than when such machines were placed in front of babies. The Department for Education’s ongoing Children of the 2020s study has found that 98% of two-year-olds watch screens on a typical day for more than two hours. Those who spent the most time had smaller vocabularies, and were twice as likely as other children to show signs of emotional and behavioural difficulties.

Correlation must not be mistaken for causation. This is still a relatively new area of research, and much remains uncertain. But the findings of a recent survey by the charity Kindred Squared, combined with observations by teachers, are highly concerning. Answers from 1,000 primary-school staff revealed that 37% of four-year-olds arrived without basic life skills such as dressing and eating in 2025 – up from 33% two years earlier.

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

Dr Madeline G Reinecke says any policy focused on protecting children must broaden its scope beyond traditional social media platforms, while Alexandra Cocksworth says real connections are crucial. Plus a letter from Ali Oliver

The government’s consultation surrounding whether to ban social media for under-16s responds to widespread concern about digital harms (UK ministers launch consultation on whether to ban social media for under-16s, 19 January). We in the Neuroscience, Ethics and Society (Neurosec) team at the University of Oxford contend that such investigations should extend also to whether young people should have access to generative AI. In the case of social media, ministers and commentators have focused on features like addictive feeds and age limits; our research team’s work with young people shows that we must also reckon with such considerations – among many others – in an era of AI-driven technologies.

To be sure, concerns about mental health, social comparison and addictive design certainly apply when thinking about young people’s experiences online, but the digital world of 2026 includes far more than Instagram and TikTok. AI-based chatbots are increasingly present in young people’s lives across a host of domains, from education to companionship. And adolescence is a formative stage for developing social understanding, one’s sense of identity and so on. This raises urgent questions, such as: at what age should young people have access to AIs simulating friendship or intimacy? What safeguards are needed to protect young minds from manipulation and dependency grounded in artificial “connection”?

The Aga Khan Trust for Culture has restored eight key areas of the medieval souk, notes Luis Monréal

Your long read article is a powerful account of the impacts of Syria’s civil war on the city of Aleppo (Out of the ruins: will Aleppo ever be rebuilt?, 20 January). However, in stating that “All the reconstruction efforts so far are local”, it overlooks significant international involvement.

Since 2018, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) has restored eight key areas of the medieval souk in Aleppo’s old city, with ongoing rehabilitation planned, reviving shops and covered markets. AKTC’s efforts have motivated traders to privately restore their own shops in peripheral areas of the souk, delivered according to local standards. UN organisations such as Unesco and UN-Habitat are also helping to restore elements of the city’s historic centre.

An article about Hamnet reminded Sean Kaye-Smith of the moving film The Other Side of the Underneath

Re Zoe Williams’ thought-provoking article (The crying game: what Hamnet’s grief-porn debate says about women, cinema – and enormous hawks, 16 January), the tensions between grief-art and grief-porn have been around for decades in British cinema, never more so than when Jane Arden’s The Other Side of the Underneath was released in 1973.

In addition to being the only British feature film to be directed by a woman in the whole of the 1970s, this powerful and harrowing work openly declared its theme to be “women’s pain”, and anyone who has seen the film would strongly affirm that it lives up to its brief. There is still nothing else like it, for the rawness of its emotions and the haunting quality of its visuals.

Watching in horror | Nobel prizes | Spell check, please | Delightful country diaries | Perceptions of ‘south’

I was surprised that your feature (‘What did I just watch?’ The TV shows that utterly baffle us – but we can’t switch off, 20 January) did not include a mention of the popular show News at Ten. When I started watching this years ago, the plotlines more or less made sense, but recently they’ve become increasingly deranged, particularly since the introduction of the weirdly orange-coloured character, “Donald”. However, like many people, I am glued to the show with a mixture of horror and fascination.
Clare Griffel
Bristol

• Maybe we should forget the peace prize and award Donald Trump the Nobel prize in physics for his ability to distort reality?
Tom Stewart
Romsey, Hampshire

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Updates from the evening session at Melbourne Park
Mboko sets up Sabalenka clash after win | Mail Katy

Norrie and Zverev are going through the pre-match formalities. The umpire tells the players to smile big for the cameras. Not sure how easy that is for Norrie, given the British No 2, the last Brit standing in the singles, has lost to Zverev in all six of their previous meetings. The last time they played at the Australian Open was in 2024, when Norrie was denied 7-6 in the fifth set. But Norrie will at least take something from the fact he was able to push Zverev all the way then, and the fact that this is a night match, with slightly slower conditions, may help Norrie, because the rallies will be longer and more attritional and that’s what he loves.

Up next: we’ve got De Minaur v Tiafoe on Rod Laver and Norrie v Zverev on John Cain and Svitolina v Shnaider on Margaret Court.

⚽ The latest football news heading into the weekend
⚽ Premier League: 10 things to look out for | Mail Niall

This weekend’s Premier League games are the reverse fixtures of the season openers, back in sun-soaked August. Looking back, the most jarring result was Nottingham Forest 3-1 Brentford, with the teams taking very different trajectories since then.

“It was certainly a tough day for us all, but it is pretty obvious to see the development that we have made in the months since that, and I am delighted with the progress we have made,” Brentford manager Keith Andrews said yesterday.

Fulham, Chelsea, Aston Villa, Nottingham Forest and Liverpool could be making moves before the window closes

By WhoScored

Shock: Chelsea have been linked with another young player. This time it is the Rennes centre-back Jérémy Jacquet, who would offer something the team is lacking.

James Bord’s consortium is the preferred bidder to take over Sheffield Wednesday but his data-led player recruitment record is mixed, especially with United

Sheffield Wednesday fans will be delighted to hear that one associate of James Bord describes the preferred bidder for their club as “a mini Tony Bloom”, although the professional poker player’s references from the other side of the Steel City are rather less complimentary.

Until it became clear late last year that Bord was planning to buy Wednesday his data company, Short Circuit Science, had a consultancy contract with Sheffield United to assist with their recruitment, which, as their position in the lower reaches of the Championship indicates, has delivered limited success.

England wing on handling Test pressure, the ‘awesome’ setup at Pennyhill Park and Northampton’s big ambitions

Tommy Freeman is known for being multi-talented, so it is fitting that he arrives brandishing a golf club. Thankfully none of the ensuing questions provoke its use in a non-sporting capacity. The Northampton back’s handicap will have to wait, because after a trip to Sale on Saturday he will dive into England’s Six Nations camp, surfacing in mid-March after the concluding fixture in Paris.

Les Bleus are the tournament favourites but if Steve Borthwick’s team stay on an upward curve – they have won 11 straight Tests – there is a decent chance that encounter at Stade de France in seven weeks’ time will decide the title. An expansive Saints side also top the Prem before round 10, and the ever-improving Freeman personifies the prevailing effervescence of club and country.

Today’s rumours have a northern feel

Casemiro’s decision to leave Manchester United when his contract expires at the end of the season will intensify the club’s search for a midfielder. The Brazilian’s exit will also knock £350k-a-week off their outgoings which should bring a smile to Sir Jim Ratcliffe as United look to follow up last week’s derby win when they travel to … oh … Arsenal this weekend.

Not exactly like for like but stories are circulating that Wythenshawe lad Cole Palmer is homesick at Chelsea and pondering a return to Manchester this summer. The twist is that he wouldn’t be heading back to City as Palmer prefers the red of United – the club he, wait for it, supported as a boy. United scouts were also reportedly in Spain last weekend to discuss on-loan Marcus Rashford’s future and check out Real Sociedad’s versatile midfielder/forward Mikel Oyarzabal. Fun fact: both Palmer (equaliser) and Oyarzabal (winner) scored in the final of Euro 2024.

First round at Wijk aan Zee delayed for over an hour after protesters dump coal at venue and unveil banner reading ‘no chess on a dead planet’

Tata Steel Wijk aan Zee, the “chess Wimbledon”, has been sponsored for all its 88 years by the local steelworks, either in its previous incarnations as Hoogovens and Corus or under its current Indian management.

Its relations with the local community have previously been good, but this year protesters targeting Tata Steel drew attention to the company’s heavy use of coal by dumping two tons of it in front of the entrance, and draping a banner reading “No chess on a dead planet” over the sports hall. Play in the opening round eventually began one and a half hours late.

Have you been following the big stories in football, tennis, rugby, golf, ice hockey, F1 and the NFL?

• Fifa chief says he has been ‘hammered’ for 2026 prices

• Fans’ group tells Infantino to focus on cheap tickets

Gianni Infantino made a joke about British football fans’ behaviour and defended ticket prices for this summer’s World Cup in North America during a speech to world leaders on Thursday.

Fifa’s president addressed concerns around the staging of this summer’s finals in the US amid rising domestic tensions there, telling the World Economic Forum in Switzerland how there had been “a lot of critics” before Qatar 2022.

Experts say climate crisis, corruption and lack or misuse of infrastructure among factors driving water conflicts

Water-related violence has almost doubled since 2022 and little is being done to understand and address the trend and prevent new and escalating risks, experts have said.

There were 419 incidents of water-related violence recorded in 2024, up from 235 in 2022, according to the Pacific Institute, a US-based thinktank.

More than 30,000 households left with defects after ‘catastrophic failure’ of Tory government schemes

Members of parliament have called for the Serious Fraud Office to investigate the UK’s home insulation sector, after thousands of householders suffered ruined homes, big financial losses and months of disruption from the “clear and catastrophic failure” of two Conservative government schemes.

More than 30,000 households were left with defects, some of them severe, including mould, water ingress and damage to the fabric of walls, with about 3,000 dwellings so badly damaged they presented immediate health and safety risks to occupants.

Majority US-owned venture includes Larry Ellison’s Oracle, private-equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX

TikTok announced on Thursday it had closed a deal to establish a new US entity, allowing it to sidestep a ban and ending a long legal battle.

The deal finalized by ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese owner, sets up a majority American-owned venture, with investors including Larry Ellison’s Oracle, the private-equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi’s MGX owning 80.1% of the new entity, while ByteDance will own 19.9%.

Conservationists hail the ‘desperately needed’ measures and urge greater protection after up to 11% of endangered Tapanuli orangutans wiped out

The floods and landslides that tore through Indonesia’s fragile Batang Toru ecosystem in November 2024 – killing up to 11% of the world’s Tapanuli orangutan population – prompted widespread scrutiny of the extractive companies operating in the area at the time of the ecological catastrophe.

For weeks, investigators searched for evidence that the companies may have damaged the Batang Toru and Garoga watersheds before the disaster, which washed torrents of mud and logs into villages, claiming the lives of more than 1,100 people.

Incident outside Opera House that left two people in critical condition is not being investigated as terrorism, police say

Six people have been injured after a knife attack at a demonstration in Belgium on Thursday evening, police said.

Two of the victims were in a critical condition in hospital after the incident in the port city of Antwerp near the Operaplein (Opera Square), police spokesperson Wouter Bruyns said.

Study also says Balkan levels are often higher than in Beijing – and sometimes among the highest in the world

When we think of the world’s most polluted cities, images of Delhi or Beijing come to mind, but new data has revealed acute pollution problems close to the heart of Europe.

Prof Andre Prevot, of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland, explained: “In winter, the particle pollution in the Balkans is the highest in Europe. Particle pollution levels are often higher than in Beijing and on some days they are among the highest in the world. Sulphur dioxide in winter can be over 30 times greater than what we normally see in western Europe.”

The Andaman Coast has one of the largest concentration of dugong in the world, so why are numbers falling dramatically and what can they tell us about a biodiversity warning cry

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Thailand’s Andaman Coast is home to one of the largest dugong populations in the world, with 273 of the plump marine mammals, sometimes called sea cows, estimated to be living there as of 2022. In recent years, though, more and more dead or stranded dugongs have been washing ashore. Now the Andaman Coast population may have fallen by more than half, experts say.

In late November, I travelled to Phuket, following in the footsteps of film-makers Mailee Osten-Tan and Nick Axelrod, who have been investigating Thailand’s dugong crisis over the past year for a new Guardian documentary.

The fate of the planet’s coastlines depends on how fast Antarctica’s ice sheets melt. We don’t know what’s coming

‘Every time I look at one, I smile!’: how axolotls took over the world

Labour’s warm homes plan is all carrot and no stick for UK households

Pollution from wood burners kills thousands but proposed emissions limit would cut toxic particles by 10%

New wood-burning stoves will carry a health warning highlighting the impact of the air pollution they produce, under UK government plans.

Ministers have also proposed cutting the limit on the smoke emitted from wood burners by 80%. However, the measure would only apply to new stoves, most of which already meet the stricter limit. The new limit would cut the annual toxic emissions from wood burning in the UK by only 10% over the next decade, according to the consultation.

Government says plan will help end postcode lottery in access to diagnostic tests and treatment

Hospitals in rural and coastal parts of England will get more cancer doctors to help tackle stark inequalities that mean people in some areas are far more likely to die from the disease.

The plan is part of a government drive to end the “patchy” nature of NHS cancer care, which is characterised by wide postcode lotteries in access to diagnostic tests and treatment.

Fourteen-year-old was found dead in a storm drain in June 2020 six days after setting off from home on his bike

Six years after Noah Donohoe’s bike ride across Belfast ended in a tragedy that mystified Northern Ireland, an inquest is seeking answers.

Opening statements at Belfast coroner’s court on Thursday marked the formal start of an attempt to fathom what happened to the 14-year-old schoolboy, who left his home on 21 June 2020 and was found six days later dead in a storm drain.

Met says allowing protest would risk serious disorder, including from local people

Far-right Ukip supporters will be stopped from marching through Tower Hamlets for fear of serious violence, including from local people, Scotland Yard has said.

The Metropolitan police said it was not a ban, as the march on 31 January calling for mass deportations could take place in another part of London.

Celebrity chef warns UK government’s plans for higher business rates from April ‘simply will not work’

The celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has accused the government of cooking up a kitchen nightmare at restaurants across the country with tax changes that he says will make hospitality businesses “lambs to the slaughter”.

Ramsay, whose company operates 34 restaurants in the UK including Bread Street Kitchen, Pétrus and Lucky Cat, said the industry was “facing a bloodbath”. He said restaurants were closing every day as a result of rising business rates, which came on top of higher energy, staffing and ingredient costs and little growth in consumer spending.

Exclusive: sources say powerful figures in the regime secretly told US and Qatari officials they would welcome Maduro’s departure

Before the US military snatched Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, earlier this month, Delcy Rodríguez and her powerful brother pledged to cooperate with the Trump administration once the strongman was gone, four sources involved at high levels with the discussions told the Guardian.

Rodríguez, who was sworn in on 5 January as acting president to replace Maduro, and her brother Jorge, the head of the national assembly, secretly assured US and Qatari officials through intermediaries ahead of time that they would welcome Maduro’s departure, according to the sources.

Misinformation technology could be deployed at scale to disrupt 2028 US presidential election, AI researchers say

Political leaders could soon launch swarms of human-imitating AI agents to reshape public opinion in a way that threatens to undermine democracy, a high profile group of experts in AI and online misinformation has warned.

The Nobel peace prize-winning free-speech activist Maria Ressa, and leading AI and social science researchers from Berkeley, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and Yale are among a global consortium flagging the new “disruptive threat” posed by hard-to-detect, malicious “AI swarms” infesting social media and messaging channels.

Giel Malual and John Kuei trekked from Dungeness to John o’Groats to raise funds for new schools in Sudan

When Giel Malual set out to walk the length of the UK to raise money to open a school for displaced children from his home country of Sudan, he did not expect the welcome he would receive from the British public.

“All the houses that we slept in, all the welcome that we were given, all the warmth and the support, the cheers and the encouragement that we have received, it has been overwhelming,” said Malual, who completed the 900-mile walk over a month with his friend John Kuei, who is also from Sudan.

High court ruling marks first time a foreign state has been held liable for domestic servitude by its envoy on UK soil

The United Arab Emirates must pay more than £260,000 to a victim of human trafficking who was exploited by one of its diplomats in London, the high court has ruled.

Lawyers representing the woman said it was unprecedented for a court to order a foreign state to pay for domestic servitude by a diplomat on UK soil.

Sales volume rise of 0.4% in December confounds forecasts as new survey shows sharp rebound in consumer confidence

• Davos: Global economic outlook in focus, as gold approaches $5,000 – live updates

UK retail sales were stronger than expected last month, as the nation’s shops received a surprise boost during the crucial Christmas trading period.

Sales volumes across Great Britain rose by 0.4% in December, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), with internet sales doing particularly well, especially online jewellers.

Despite the recent interest rate cut, many fixed-rate bond or easy-access account rates have held up longer than expected

Savers are being urged to shop around and move fast if they want to get hold of one of the competitive deals still available. These include one-year fixed-rate savings bonds paying up to 4.35% and an easy-access account with a rate of 4.5%.

The impact of the Bank of England’s pre-Christmas interest rate cut – the sixth reduction since August 2024 – has been making itself felt, with reductions to rates on many savings accounts. But some best-buy savings rates have arguably held up better than one might have expected.

James Daley says anti-competitive behaviour led to additional charges that have pushed up costs for millions

The financial campaigner James Daley has launched a £1.5bn class action lawsuit against Apple over its mobile phone wallet, claiming the US tech company blocked competition and charged hidden fees that ultimately harmed 50 million UK consumers.

The lawsuit takes aim at Apple Pay, which they say has been the only contactless payment service available for iPhone users in Britain over the past decade.

Bank hails Dimon’s ‘exemplary leadership’ as package for one of corporate America’s best-paid bosses rose 10%

JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon took home a total pay package of $43m last year, it has been disclosed.

Dimon’s total compensation rose 10% in 2025, according to a regulatory filing, cementing his status as one of the highest-paid bosses in corporate America.

Coogler’s vampire thriller swept the Oscar nominations over Chloé Zhao’s tearjerker and Paul Thomas Anderson’s counterculture thriller. This genre-defying drama about the black experience could now rule awards season
• Full list of nominees
• Sinners becomes first film in history to earn 16 Oscar nominations

Agree with them or not, these Oscar nominations deliver a pert slap to the accepted assumptions of awards season. The industry had been expecting landslides for classy upmarket fare such as Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet, Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, and also for Josh Safdie’s delirious comedy Marty Supreme. And that’s what they got.

But perhaps no one expected these titles to get quite as colossal a smackdown as they got from Ryan Coogler’s vampire drama thriller Sinners: a violent, high-energy fantasia about racism, music and the black experience, which has soared ahead with 16 nominations – the most for any film in 97 years of the Academy Awards. Whatever happens on the night itself, Ryan Coogler has made Oscar history.

The TV chef is rumoured to be replacing Prue Leith on The Great British Bake Off. She is exactly what the show needs right now

When Prue Leith announced that she was leaving The Great British Bake Off, on the basis that “I’m 86 for goodness sake,” there was really only one figure who could realistically replace her. And so it has come to pass. Believe press rumours and the next Bake Off judge is Nigella Lawson.

If it’s true, this is the best possible call for a series that – if we’re honest – has lost its way. Bake Off has become slightly long in the tooth over the last half decade or so. This is partly to do with talent churn (over the years we’ve lost Mel and Sue, Mary Berry, Sandi Toksvig, Matt Lucas and now Prue Leith) and partly because the series is struggling to keep its challenges fresh.

Move over, Wonder Woman! The latest MCU spin-off is an intriguing and surprisingly meta affair. Plus: a brilliant documentary about the boyband – and more regency raunch as Bridgerton returns

In terms of audience recognition, Wonder Man is no Wonder Woman. But, as this latest addition to the MCU shows, that can afford a certain freedom. This miniseries is a surprisingly meta affair; a superhero fantasy by way of the kind of behind-the-camera machinations familiar to fans of Seth Rogen’s The Studio. It tells the story of a pair of struggling actors, Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), who are hustling hard to be cast in eccentric European director Von Kovak’s movie Wonder Man. But what seems like a simple Hollywood satire soon develops special powers as Simon finds he shares certain attributes with his fictional persona. Intriguing.
Disney+, from Wednesday 28 January

Jonathan Glazer’s Oscar-winner about the family who live next door to Auschwitz will leave you awestruck, while Jeremy Allen White embodies the Boss. Plus: Marilyn Monroe at her most beautiful

Other awards-garlanded films may come and go, but this drama will inspire awestruck discussion for decades to come. Christian Friedel – unrecognisable from his role in The White Lotus – stars as Rudolf Höss, the Auschwitz commandant who lived with his wife (Sandra Hüller) and children in an idyllic country home adjoining the notorious concentration camp. For the Höss family, domestic life continues as normal, while the screams of industrial-scale murder are often audible just over the garden wall. Jonathan Glazer’s film is an immersive historical drama, but it also makes chilling comment on our present moment, and humanity’s capacity to carry on as genocide takes place.
Saturday 24 January, 9.45pm, Channel 4

Sundance film festival: an often lushly made yet frustratingly undercooked small town indie kicks off this year’s festival with disappointment

And so this year’s Sundance has officially begun, with grief over the loss of founder Robert Redford and its move from long-running home Park City likely to drown out the sounds of anyone talking about the first narrative premiere. It wouldn’t be the first time it has started with a whimper (unofficial opening day films have previously included misfires like After the Wedding, Freaky Tales, Netflix’s Taylor Swift doc and last year’s Jimpa) but there’s something specifically disappointing about a film such as Carousel showing at a festival such as Sundance.

It’s the sort of small, character-driven American indie that has served as the festival’s lifeblood for almost 50 years and, as the system has expanded in some ways and shrunk in others, the sort that has often struggled to make it far out of Park City. Back in 2023, a quiet, disarming and perfectly Sundance film called A Little Prayer premiered yet didn’t get released until late last summer and was seen by a precious few. The world is not kind to films like Carousel at this very moment and while I would love to see this particular subgenre flourish in the way it used to back in the 90s and 00s, it’s hard to muster up much in the way of strong feelings here.

Carousel is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

Scott calls on Davina to help find his long-lost sister in the heart-tugging series. Plus, a Dispatches investigation into Palestine Action. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, ITV1
The DNA show never fails to make your eyes leak. Scott was 12 years old when he learned that his mum and dad were actually his grandparents and his older sister was his mum – and now he’s desperate to find his real older sister who was put up for adoption. Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell help with finding her and navigating the emotional rollercoaster that ensues. Hollie Richardson

(Tiny Tiger)
Moving from dream pop to acoustic clarity, the Dutch-British songwriter delivers her most personal record yet where loss is transformed into something quietly powerful

The warm sounds of folk guitar provide the roots of Tessa Rose Jackson’s first album under her own name, time-travelling from Bert Jansch to REM to Sharon Van Etten in every strum and squeak. The Dutch-British musician previously recorded as Someone, creating three albums in dream-pop shades, but her fourth – a rawer, richer affair, made alone in rural France – digs into ancestry, mortality and memory.

The Lighthouse begins with its title track. Strums of perfect fifths, low moans of woodwind and thundering rumbles of percussion frame a journey towards a beacon at “high tide on a lonesome wind”. The death of one of Jackson’s two mothers when she was a teenager informs her lyrics here and elsewhere: in The Bricks That Make the Building, a sweet, psych-folk jewel which meditates on “the earth that feeds the garden / The breath that helps the child sing” and Gently Now, which begins in soft clouds of birdsong, then tackles how growing older can cosset the process of grief. Her approach to the subject is inquisitive, poetic and refreshing.

(Interscope)
On her third LP, Lennox balances jazz-soaked tradition with flashes of unruly humour and a surefire viral hit

Ari Lennox is one of contemporary R&B’s premier sophisticates, preferring a palette of lush jazz, soul and 90s hip-hop over the more genre-fluid sound pushed by contemporaries SZA and Kehlani. But a few songs into her new album, Vacancy, she makes it eminently clear that tradition and wildness can coexist, with fabulously sparky results: on Under the Moon, she describes a lover as “vicious / Like a werewolf / When you’re in it” and proceeds to howl “moooooooooon” as if she is in an old creature feature.

Vacancy, Lennox’s third album, is far and away her most fun, and if it isn’t quite as ingratiating as her 2022 Age/Sex/Location, it makes up for it with canny lyrics and an airy, open sound. Cool Down is a reggae/R&B hybrid that practically feels as if it is made of aerogel, and which pairs its summery lightness with witty lyrics telling a guy to chill out. On Mobbin in DC, she pairs lounge-singer coolness with withering come-ons (“You know where I be / This ain’t calculus / No ChatGPT”), while the strutting Horoscope, with its hook of “That boy put the ho’ in ‘horoscope’,” is as surefire a future viral hit as I’ve ever heard.

The neo-soul singer and actor answers your questions on being taken to a go-go club as a child, training as an English teacher and getting mistaken for footballer Jill Scott

In a recent interview you gave an invaluable life lesson which involved a go-go bar and your mother’s love. What are your tips for living life between adversities? Integrity411
My mother’s ex-husband was a questionable man and after he picked me up from elementary school he used to take me to a go-go bar where ladies were dancing in their panties. I was a child, so I thought: how nice for them, I hate getting dressed too! They dance all day and then some nice people put money in their panties. The ladies would give me milk or Coca-Cola and give me a dollar, so I wanted to be a go-go dancer when I grew up. At that age I didn’t know there was anything wrong with me going there and I learned not to judge people so quickly. However, when my mother discovered why I was coming home late she kicked into fifth gear. She told the bar not to let me in and instead showed me art, opera, ballet – anything that was free – and changed my palate and perspective. In a way, all that brought me here. Art can get you through things. Cry as hard as you can or even laugh as hard as you can, and hold on to the joy.

A Long Walk is my favourite song of yours, not least because I was blessed to have that same experience. Is it something you shared with a special someone or something you yearned for which has not yet come to pass? Soulisasolis33
Oh my goodness. I’ve had many long walks with dogs, my mother, my mate, my friends, my child. To just take a walk and talk is one of my favourite things to do, or just to take a walk in silence. I’d recommend it to anybody.

LSO/Schmidt
(Heritage)
A 1980 live recording reveals the Danish conductor’s assured handling of a colossal symphony – a balance of architectural clarity and gothic extravagance

Havergal Brian has often been looked at askance, his vast gothic symphony approached like climbing Everest – merely because it’s there – rather than taken seriously as a milestone in 20th-century British music. For the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, the Heritage label has brushed off this 1980 BBC live broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall under Danish conductor Ole Schmidt, the fourth recording of the complete work to enter the catalogue.

Written over eight years and completed in 1927, the work was inspired by the magnificence and eccentricities of the gothic age, Brian’s idiosyncratic response ranging from guileless melody to wickedly complex polyphony. The 35-minute part one is a persuasive three-movement symphony all on its own, but it’s the challenging, hour-long setting of the Te Deum that demands the listener’s concentrated attention. Influences include Bruckner, Berlioz and Sibelius.

The plight of a reluctant medieval king is glimpsed through scattered pieces of the past, in an ingenious novel that asks how much we can really know about history

In a medieval palace an unnamed king chafes under the new and unsought burden of power. His uncertain fate plays out in the present-day imagination of an unnamed curator of unspecified gender, who has been employed by the palace to dress some of its rooms for public viewing in the wake of an undescribed personal tragedy.

It’s likely that you’ll either be utterly intrigued or deeply put off by that summary of poet Rebecca Perry’s debut novel, May We Feed the King, a highly wrought puzzle-box of a book which deliberately wrongfoots the reader at every turn. However, the intrigued will find that it richly rewards those who approach it with curiosity – just not in the ways we as readers (and as interpreters of stories in any form) have been trained to expect.

Feigel uses her own experience as a starting point to examine the past, present and future of separation

This book about child custody is, unsurprisingly, full of pain. The pain of mothers separated from their children, of children sobbing for their mothers, of adults who have never moved on from the trauma of their youth, and of young people who are forced to live out the conflicts of their elders. Lara Feigel casts her net across history and fiction, reportage and memoir, and while her research is undeniably impressive and her candour moving, at times she struggles to create a narrative that can hold all these tales of anguish together.

The book begins with a woman flinging herself fully clothed into a river and then restlessly walking on, swimming again, walking again. This is French novelist George Sand, driven to desperate anxiety as she waits to go into court to fight for the right to custody of her children. But almost immediately the story flicks away to Feigel’s own custody battle, and then back into the early 19th century, with Caroline Norton’s sons being taken away in a carriage in the rain by their father.

When Stuart Green’s wife, an environmental rights lawyer, was shot dead in a car in front of her children in the Philippines, he found books on grief little help. So he wrote his own

The dreaded school run is a daily battle for most parents. Even once out of the door and at the school gates, feigned smiles and small talk with other haggard parents can be a mass performance. For Stuart Green, who spent years wrestling his young twins out of car seats and into coats, all the while keeping an eye on his eldest daughter, it was the small talk he dreaded.

“Is Mummy at work?” someone might ask. Green’s response would be a half truth: “I’m a single parent.” The full story could not be explained in a 15-second conversation on the street.

The Noughts & Crosses author is among the starry ambassadors for the campaign – one of the initiatives aimed at addressing the reading crisis

Last night, the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, announced a £27.5m package for libraries. It’s the latest in a string of reading-focused government initiatives, the flagship being the education department’s National Year of Reading 2026, which kicked off last week with an event at the Emirates Stadium in London.

The Year of Reading campaign comes on the back of research by the National Literacy Trust (NLT), which found reading enjoyment among children and young people is at its lowest recorded level, with just one in three of those aged eight to 18 now reporting enjoying reading “very much” or “quite a lot”.

Quake Brutalist Jam began as a celebration of old-fashioned shooter level design, but its latest version is one step away from being a game in its own right

A lone concrete spire stands in a shallow bowl of rock, sheltering a rusted trapdoor from the elements. Standing on the trapdoor causes it to yawn open like iron jaws, dropping you through a vertical shaft into a subterranean museum. Here, dozens of doors line the walls of three vaulted grey galleries, each leading to a pocket dimension of dizzying virtual architecture and fierce gladiatorial combat.

Welcome to Quake Brutalist Jam, the hottest community event for lovers of id Software’s classic first-person shooter from 1996. First run in 2022, the Jam started out as a celebration of old-school 3D level design, where veteran game developers, aspiring level designers and enthusiast modders gather to construct new maps and missions themed around the austere minimalism of brutalist architecture.

After years away​ revisiting my abandoned island uncovers new features, old memories and the quiet reassurance that ​you can go home again

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Nintendo’s pandemic-era hit Animal Crossing: New Horizons got another major update last week, along with a £5 Switch 2 upgrade that makes it look and run better on the new console. Last year, I threw a new year’s party for my children in the game, but apart from that I have barely touched my island since the depths of lockdown, when sunny Alba was my preferred escape from the monotonous misery of the real world. Back then, I spent more than 200 hours on this island. Stepping out of her (now massive) house, my avatar’s hair is all ruffled and her eyes sleepy after a long, long time aslumber.

I half-expected Alba to be practically in ruins, but it’s not that bad. Aside from a few cockroaches in the basement and a bunch of weeds poking up from the snow, everything is as it was. The paths that I had laid out around the island still lead me to the shop, the tailors, the museum; I stop by to visit Blathers the curatorial owl, and he gives me a new mission to find a pigeon called Brewster so that we can open a museum cafe. “It’s been four years and eight months!” exclaims one of my longtime residents, a penguin called Aurora. That can’t be right, can it? Have I really been ignoring her since summer 2021? Thankfully, Animal Crossing characters are very forgiving. I get the impression they’ve been getting along perfectly fine without me.

PC; Inkle
The UK game developer’s latest is a database mystery constructed from an archive of fictional books. Their combined contents threaten to crack the code of reality

Bletchley Park: famed home of the Enigma machine, Colossus computer, and, according to the premise of TR-49, an altogether stranger piece of tech. Two engineers created a machine that feeds on the most esoteric books: treatises on quantum computing, meditations on dark matter, pulp sci-fi novels and more. In the mid-2010s, when the game is set, Britain finds itself again engulfed by war, this time with itself. The arcane tool may hold the key to victory.

You play as budding codebreaker Abbi, a straight-talking northerner who is sifting through the machine now moved to a crypt beneath Manchester Cathedral. She has no idea how it works and neither do you. So you start tinkering. You input a four-digit code – two letters followed by two numbers. What do these correspond to? The initials of people and the year of a particular book’s publication. Input a code correctly and you are whisked away to the corresponding page, as if using a particularly speedy microfiche reader. These pages – say, by famed fictional physicist, Joshua Silverton – are filled with clues and, should you get lucky, further codes and even the titles of particular works. Your primary goal is to match codes with the corresponding book title in a bid to find the most crucial text of all, Endpeace, the key to understanding the erudite ghosts of this machine.

Embark Studios’ multiplayer extraction shooter game has already sold 12m copies in just three months. Will it capture you too?

Released last October Arc Raiders has swiftly become one of the most successful online shooters in the world, shifting 12m copies in barely three months and attracting as many players as established mega hits such as Counter-Strike 2 and Apex Legends. So what is it about this sci-fi blaster that’s captured so many people – and how can you get involved?

So what is Arc Raiders?

Park theatre, London
Leigh Douglas plays a sorority girl turned White House receptionist – as well as lecherous side characters – in a timely show

This show arrives in London in a week that US politics couldn’t be more inescapable. While on one hand, audiences may feel that there’s only so much Trumpian lunacy they can take, it also means that newcomer Leigh Douglas’s satirical one-woman show – which had a sold-out run at the Edinburgh fringe last year – couldn’t feel more timely.

The Irish-born, American-raised comic plays Chastity Quirke, a sorority girl turned White House receptionist working for president Ronald Drumpf, whose administration is highly sexist (and other “ists” besides). She begins the show with a fervour for conservatism and a love of Maga-style beauty standards, requesting that the audience scream if they believe in “[making] America hot again”, and gyrating suggestively whenever she gets the chance.

Swansea Grand theatre
Thornton Wilder’s classic American play is transposed for this company’s inaugural production. The result is heartfelt, though its emotional bite can seem uncertain

A revival of Thornton Wilder’s great American play about a provincial town, north of New York, might have carried strong state-of-the-nation resonances at this dark, Trumpian juncture. So it initially seems counterintuitive that this inaugural show for the new Welsh National Theatre, which Michael Sheen has heroically championed, transposes the US backwater to Wales.

But Wilder’s play, premiering in the interwar years, in 1938, is more eternal than political, dramatising a close-knit community navigating life, love and death. And the transposition is convincing here, in spirit, encapsulating the lilt of its Welshness, noisier, more playful and lyrical than the original, especially in its glowing visual imagination and movement design by Jess Williams as well as its emotional lighting by Ryan Joseph Stafford.

Malmaison hotel, London
Theatregoers move from room to room as emotional messiness is laid bare with spirited bridesmaids, painful encounters and ‘call it all off’ nerves

When isn’t there big family drama in the buildup to a wedding? The nerves, the tantrums – sometimes even charges of “inappropriate” first dances. Isn’t it all part and parcel of the apparently perfect day?

That emotional messiness is laid bare in Dante or Die’s utterly gorgeous site-specific show, first performed in 2013, now reprised at a number of Malmaison hotels, including this one in London as part of the Barbican’s Scene Change season.

• Ryan Coogler’s ghost story breaks records

• One Battle After Another in second with 13 nods

• Marty Supreme, Sentimental Value and Frankenstein score nine apiece

• Mescal, Clooney, Paltrow and Wicked snubbed

• Full list of nominees

Sinners, Ryan Coogler’s critically and commercially acclaimed supernatural thriller, has become the first film to be nominated for 16 Academy Awards.

The film starring Michael B Jordan as twin brothers setting up a blues club in 1930s Mississippi while battling racism and vampires has so far taken $368m worldwide. It is nominated for trophies including best picture, director, leading actor, supporting actor (for the British actor Delroy Lindo), supporting actress (for British-Nigerian actor Wunmi Mosaku) and the Academy’s inaugural casting prize.

The follow-up to 2022’s Harry’s House boasts an esoteric title – but experts say ambiguity might be the goal

We don’t know much about Harry Styles’s first album in four years beyond its title – and it’s already causing some grammatical consternation.

The follow-up to 2022’s Grammy-winning Harry’s House is a bit more esoterically named: Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally. In an era when fans clinically investigate every aspect of pop stars’ lives, it was perhaps inevitable that Styles’s choice of punctuation would draw scrutiny.

Opening Night will appear on HELP(2), a charity compilation out in March which also features Olivia Rodrigo, Depeche Mode, Pulp and more

Arctic Monkeys have released Opening Night, their first new song since 2022 album The Car, with proceeds benefiting the charity War Child.

Opening Night is taken from HELP(2), a sequel to War Child’s 1995 album Help, which brought together A-list music names to raise £1.2m for children affected by conflict, including Radiohead, Blur, Sinéad O’Connor and the Smokin’ Mojo Filters (a supergroup of Paul McCartney, Noel Gallagher and Paul Weller).

The first Sundance without founder Robert Redford and the last to take place in Park City, Utah, will see new films starring Natalie Portman, Ethan Hawke and Courtney Love

This year’s Sundance film festival will be notable for a major first as well as a major last. It’ll be the first to take place without its founder, Robert Redford, who died last September at the age of 89, and it’ll be the last to take place in Utah, where it has been since the very beginning back in 1978.

Emotions, which are often on display regardless thanks to films often ruthlessly designed to elicit them, will be high, with events planned to commemorate a figure who helped create a launchpad and then an ecosystem for American indies. But while saying goodbye to both Redford and Park City will be front and centre, Sundance isn’t Sundance without a roster of films to also get attenders talking. Last year, it felt like that chatter was less effusive than usual because while there were films that continued evoking conversation throughout the year (Sorry, Baby, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Train Dreams, Lurker, Twinless, pretty much every documentary premiere) there were more that either died on arrival or crawled toward a slow death months later.

A neat alternative to messing around trying to get the perfect T-shirt tuck. Here a three outfits to get you started

Recognizing the physical and psychological tells is half the battle, says author Emma Gannon

• How to start … anything: expert tips for trying something new

What do you do when you come to a hard stop? When work has got too much, even friendships feel like a drain and you feel like you simply can’t keep going with your life as it currently is?

For Emma Gannon, the answer was extreme but non-negotiable: an entire year of nothing – or close to it. Gannon, the London-based author of fiction, nonfiction and the Hyphen newsletter, burned out with a bang in late 2022. While on a spa weekend with a friend, she had a panic attack, her first ever.

Central heating and chilly temperatures playing havoc? Our beauty expert shares her go-to fixes to hydrate and repair

• The best hand creams to soften dry and chapped skin

January has brought with it dark days, freezing temperatures and Arctic winds. Combined with drying central heating, your skin and hair may look and feel thoroughly out of sorts.

Adding a few extra steps to your routine to hydrate and repair can help, as could some carefully chosen swaps if your skin is particularly parched or irritated.

They’re hyped as fixes for everything from anxiety to insomnia, but can lying under seven kilos of fabric really help you unwind? We put weighted blankets to the test

• I tested the most-hyped sleep aids – here’s what worked

Anyone who’s ever nodded off under the weight of a purring cat or snoring dog already knows how weighted blankets work. The warmth, the softness, the hefty pressure that renders you unable to fidget or indeed move. Worries subside, and you have no choice but to slide into slumber.

Studies have demonstrated some success for weighted blankets as sleep aids, but where these hefty quilts seem to excel is in alleviating anxiety – and not just according to TikTok influencers. Scientists, medics and the NHS are trialling them to comfort dementia patients, soothe neurodivergent children and even relieve chronic pain.

Best weighted blanket overall:
Emma Hug

Best budget weighted blanket:
Silentnight Wellbeing

Looking to cut heating bills or warm just one room without firing up the boiler? We cosied up to 12 electric heaters to find the best

• The best hot-water bottles

Are you in need of a stopgap stand-in for your central heating? Or perhaps you’re looking for an efficient appliance to heat a small space. If so, investing in one of the best electric heaters will rid the cold from your home.

Electric heaters range from compact, fast-acting fan-powered models to oil-filled radiators and wall-mounted panels. Some also have smart functionality, so you can ask Alexa to turn up the heat, and other advanced features such as air purification and adaptive heating. But which are best?

Best electric heater overall:
Beldray 2,000W smart ceramic core radiator

Best budget electric heater:
Russell Hobbs oscillating ceramic 2kW heater

Heated airers claim to dry your clothes without costing the earth in energy. We put 17 to the test to reveal the best, from covered options to mini drying racks

• The best electric heaters, tried and tested

Rising energy bills and perma-drizzle are conspiring to keep the nation’s laundry damp, not least by making it such a turn-off to turn on the heating. No wonder heated clothes airers are having a moment. These modish appliances sell out within hours of reaching shops and inspire evangelistic fervour among owners, who call them “life-savers” and “gamechangers”.

Can a hot clothes horse really change your life, let alone dry your soggy washing as fast as a tumble dryer for a fraction of the cost and with none of the noise? Over the past 18 months, I’ve put 17 bestsellers through their paces – including three new models in the past few months – to find out whether they’re the best thing in laundry since the clothes peg, or destined for the loft.

Best heated clothes airer overall:
Lakeland Dry:Soon Deluxe 3-tier heated airer and cover

Best budget heated airer:
Black+Decker heated winged clothes airer

There’s a ton of winter comfort in the rich, golden and indulgent cake with its appealing orangey edge

A Breton butter cake is a proud product of Brittany’s butter-rich baking tradition: dense, golden and unapologetically indulgent. True to its origins, my version uses salted butter, with an added pinch of flaky salt to sharpen the flavour. It also takes a small detour from tradition: a slick of marmalade brings a fragrant bitterness, while a handful of ground almonds softens the overall richness and lends a tender crumb. The result is still buttery and luxurious, but with a brighter, more aromatic edge.

After Spudulike closed in 2024, the reign of the jacket potato seemed over in the UK. But now the favourite is back, piled with new toppings, sold by new companies and promoted all over social media by potato influencers

They were once a lunch option that inspired little excitement – but the jacket potato’s time has finally come. After decades in epicurean exile, the humble spud has made a roaring comeback in the UK and piqued the interest of foodies across the world. A-listers, tourists and trend-hopping teenagers are queueing for hours to get their hands on them. For Jacob Nelson, who sells loaded spuds that have gone super-viral on social media, this was all part of the plan. “We thought: how can we make the jacket potato sexy again?” he says.

The 30-year-old, who runs SpudBros with his brother Harley and dad Tony, was among the first crop of social-media savvy spud vendors to give the jacket potato a much-needed makeover. After a slow start in lockdown, the brothers spoke to some youngsters in Preston Flag Market, where they had set up shop, to find out why they were shunning spuds. “It was an absolute ghost town,” says Harley. “We spoke to one student walking past us. He said to get on social media.” The pair listened, filming their interactions with customers while showing off their mouthwatering loaded spuds, and subsequently went stratospheric on TikTok in 2023.

Spiced rums are a hit but the traditional blends outshine them all

After Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica last October, rum lovers anxiously awaited news from the island’s six distilleries. Hampden Estate, in the parish of Trelawney to the north, was right in the hurricane’s path, and the furious winds deprived its historic buildings of their roofs and the palm trees of their fronds. Then came more alarming rumours: the dunder pits had overflowed.

Dunder pit? This is the one of the most distinctive features of traditional Jamaican rum, a style exemplified by Hampden, which has been in operation since 1753. You typically make rum by fermenting molasses and/or sugar cane juice into an alcoholic “wash”, then distil that into a potent liquor, but local distillers developed several strategies to oomph up the flavour. Dunder is the leftover liquid from the still, and it’s lobbed into the next fermentation for its funky notes, a bit like a sourdough starter. At Hampden, they also use muck, an outrageously smelly, semi-sentient soup containing countless billions of yeast bacteria, plus various bits of decomposing, well, stuff. I’m not sure what would happen if you fell in: possibly die, or perhaps be granted infinite powers, Obelix-style. Then there’s the fermentation process itself: most distilleries use generic industrial yeasts, which typically convert sugars to alcohol over a couple of days, but at Hampden they harness wild yeasts, which can take weeks. Incidentally, Andrew Hussey, Hampden’s owner, has reported that production is now safe, though the communities who live and work around the distillery remain badly affected.

While we’re slogging through the long, dark days of January, a little preparation can make your midday meal a source of comfort and joy

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

Even if you have no truck with Blue Monday, Quitter’s Day or any of the other new-year wheezes concocted by enterprising marketeers, the last weeks of January can feel like a bit of a confused slog. Seasonal colds and lurgies abound. The weather is generally at its rain-lashed and blackly overcast worst. Well-intentioned attempts at self-improvement or abstemiousness are starting to creak in the face of a desire for whatever scraps of midwinter comfort we can find.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to food and, more specifically, the daily puzzle of how to have something nourishing as a working lunch. These can feel like lean days in more ways than one – characterised by tax payments or a painfully slow creep towards the first payday of 2026. And that’s only more apparent now that, after the remote working and pyjama-clad Zoom calls of the post-pandemic era, lots of us have returned to the office for at least the bulk of the week. Even as someone who effectively eats out for a living, there have been plenty of times when I have stood up from the desk of my chosen workspace (often one of the oversubscribed tables at the British Library) with no real plan and wandered aimlessly, only to end up forking out for some insipid sandwich, tepid heat-lamp soup or tray of indeterminate vegetable mulch that is both expensive and unsatisfying.

As a defence lawyer, I rely on witness statements. But one unusual case prompted me to reconsider the role of memory, and a traumatic experience that had affected me for years

I spent nearly 20 years working as a criminal defence lawyer in the remote communities of the Canadian Arctic. Nunavut – roughly the size of western Europe – is home to fewer than 40,000 people, most of whom are Inuit. The brief summers boast endless days, while polar night descends over long winters where temperatures occasionally drop as low as -50C. Despite the lack of urban centres and a small, homogenous population, the territory records one of the highest violent-crime rates per capita in the world.

There are no roads connecting Nunavut’s 26 communities. Aircraft is the only option, except for a brief ice-free window in late summer when supplies and fuel can be delivered by boat. Several times a year, the justice system arrives: a travelling circuit court sets up a temporary courtroom in local gymnasiums or community halls for three to four days.

From naked embraces and sofa snogging to the very final stages of life, a new exhibition proves there is no one way to age

From repurposed engagement rings to parties, tattoos and the wild home renovations of #DivorcedMomCore, relationship splits have entered a surprising new era

Name: Divorce rings.

Age: Relatively new. British Vogue is reporting that they are a thing. And if it’s in Vogue the chances are it’s in vogue.

In China, marriage and birth rates have hit record lows and many people are living in isolation. Is the Are You Dead? app just a practical response to this – or something more troubling?

A few days before Christmas, after a short battle with illness, a woman in Shanghai called Jiang Ting died. For years, the 46-year-old had lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Hongkou, a residential neighbourhood that sits along the Huangpu River. Neighbours described her as quiet. “She rarely chats with people. We only see her when she goes to and from work, and occasionally when she comes out to pick up takeout,” said a local resident interviewed by a Chinese reporter. Her parents long deceased, Jiang had no partner or children to inherit her estate. Her lonely death sparked a debate in Chinese media about how society should handle the increasing number of people dying with no next of kin.

For Xiong Sisi, also a professional in her 40s living alone in Shanghai, the news triggered uncomfortable feelings. “I truly worry that, after I die, no one will collect my body. I don’t care how I’m buried, but if I rot there, it’s bad for the house,” she says.

From an Italian-style townhouse in London’s Chelsea to a country retreat in Dorset where every room is its own gallery

From understanding jargon such as APRs and 0% transfer offers, to getting perks such as air miles or cashback

When you apply for a credit card or personal loan, the lender will quote interest as the annual percentage rate (APR). This is, essentially, the total cost of borrowing over 12 months, shown as a percentage of the amount you have borrowed. It takes fees into account, as well as interest. The rate should give you an idea of how much you will have to pay back on top of the money you want to borrow.

The cinema chain didn’t warn me clearly when I went to see Avatar: Fire and Ash that I needed to register my number plate

I parked at Cineworld in Chichester to watch the new film Avatar: Fire and Ash.

It is more than three hours long and, when I returned to my car, I’d received a penalty charge notice (PCN) for overstaying. I’d watched the previous two Avatar films there without a problem.

A bereaved young customer was baffled by the wildly fluctuating balances the energy supplier claimed on a family’s account

When my mother died of cancer, my aunt adopted me. She, too, died of cancer in 2024. At 26, I am now alone and struggling to deal with enormous, nonsensical energy bills from E.ON Next.

In 2022, I discovered my aunt had been paying massively inflated bills for the flat I shared with her, so I had the account closed and a new one set up in my name. An E.ON agent took meter readings, a smart meter was installed, and a final bill sent showing the account was more than £6,000 in credit. E.ON wouldn’t let me have it in cash, so the credit was transferred to the new account and used to pay the bills for the next two years.

Mini breaks and micro-stretches could help strengthen your neck and reduce pain and stress, say experts

• Read more summer essentials

If you’re reading this on your device, chin tucked into your chest, or leaning over your desk shaped like a question mark, pause for a moment. How’s your neck feeling?

The way we sit, scroll and work means we often hold static positions for too long, creating tension and stiffness that radiates through the upper body.

Pricey deworming remedies are being touted as cure-alls. Supermodel Heidi Klum gave it a go – experts roll their eyes

Last August, supermodel Heidi Klum revealed that she and her husband, Tom Kaulitz, were planning a worm and parasite cleanse.

“Everything on my Instagram feed at the moment is about worms and parasites,” she told the Wall Street Journal, ominously adding: “I don’t know what the heck is going to come out.”

Spruiked by online influencers as a way of gaining insight into our health, experts say at-home tests oversimplify complex factors and can cause unnecessary distress

• Read more in the Antiviral series

For a few hundred dollars you can put your poo in an envelope and post it off to a laboratory. In return you’ll get a report (sometimes generated by AI) outlining your food sensitivities, metabolic fitness, and what pathogens or fungi you’re harbouring.

These at-home gut microbiome tests or “GI mapping” kits are frequently promoted by influencers as a way to “hack your health” and “take control” through analysing some of the trillions of organisms that live in your digestive tract.

As a boy, Tom Stoltman was diagnosed with autism and bullied at school. When he became depressed in his teens, his older brother, a bodybuilder, suggested a trip to the gym

• ‘I was told I wouldn’t walk again. I proved the doctors wrong’: the bike-obsessed pensioner who broke his neck and started afresh

Tom Stoltman was a skinny kid: 90kg, 6ft 8in, with glasses and sticking‑out teeth. Diagnosed with autism as a young child, he felt he didn’t fit in. “I was really shy,” he says. “I got bullied in school for being different.” Back then, the boy from Invergordon didn’t like what he saw in the mirror. He lived in baggy hoodies. “Hood up. That was my comfort.” He loved football but “I used to look at people on the pitch and think, ‘He’s tinier than me, but he’s pushing me off the ball.’”

By 16 he’d hit a “crashing point”. He went from football-obsessed to playing Xbox all day. He’d skip meals in favour of sweets. “Sometimes it was four or five, six bags.”

Slim frames and tinted lenses are reshaping how men present themselves. Glasses have become the must-have accessory – even if you don’t have a prescription

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Last spring, Tom Broughton, founder of eyewear brand Cubitts, was asked to comment on a meme that was going viral, that featured a pair of his company’s ‘Plimsoll’ frames. The small, delicate, and slightly round unisex shape had been worn by British actor, Jonathan Bailey, in leaked stills from the 2025 movie, Jurassic World Rebirth – and had been dubbed by the internet as a pair of ‘slutty little glasses’.

“It all just blew up,” remembers Broughton, noting how the brand struggled to deal with the sudden demand for what had become the sexiest specs on the market. A subsequent capsule collection, made in partnership with Bailey’s LGBTQ+ charity the Shameless Fund, sold out almost instantly, too. Thousands of pairs were gone in minutes, and after multiple restocks, “we’re maybe down to our last 15 pairs,” adds Broughton. Nearly the entire run was bought by men.

I was surprised by the dormant ringlets springing to life as I hunched over the basin, squishing in conditioner to define each tendril

• Read more summer essentials

My housemate has a special phrase for some of my old photos: “Ima’s whiteface era” – hair seared straight down the middle with brassy blond highlights.

Where I grew up, in a regional coastal town, the gold standard was sandy blond beach babe.

I’ve got a feeling this is the year skirts regain their main character energy

I never stopped wearing skirts, I just sort of stopped thinking about them. They were a plus-one, not the main event. For the past few years I have planned my outfits around my obsession with pleated trousers, or my latest experimental jean shape. Or I have worn dresses. Sometimes I have ended up in a skirt, but the skirt was kind of an afterthought. For instance, at one point last year when it was chilly and I needed to look smart as well as cosy, I picked out a sweater and a pair of knee-high boots, and then slotted in a plain midi in satin or wool, just something to sit in between.

Things could be about to change. I’ve got a feeling that 2026 could be the year that skirts get main character energy again. For a start: hemlines are getting shorter again, which makes skirts more attention-grabbing. If you left the house with your eyes open at any point in 2025, you will have noticed this happening: generation Z and Alpha wear very, very short skirts – she says, trying and failing not to sound about 150 years old – but the trend for above-the-knee hemlines crosses all generations. Adult women with their legs out was very much a feature of the pre-Christmas party season. But what is noticeable is that the mini renaissance is much more about a skirt, than it is about a dress. A short skirt feels cooler; more about your style and less about your body than a minidress.

Musée Rodin was the venue for the designer’s second men’s show for the house, and he sought to shun normality

He is one of fashion’s greatest ruminators so where better than the Musée Rodin in Paris to stage Jonathan Anderson’s second menswear show for Dior. Guests including the actors Robert Pattinson and Mia Goth, and Formula One driver Lewis Hamilton wandered past Auguste Rodin’s The Thinker as they made their way to their seats on Wednesday afternoon.

Speaking backstage before the show, Anderson, dressed in his signature faded Levi’s jeans and a navy cashmere sweater, described the collection as “another character study”, explaining that this time he set out to explore “the idea of a new aristocracy”, questioning “what it means today” and “what can it be?” The-41-year old designer said when it came to the social hierarchy he wanted to “ignore the aspect of money” and instead home in on “their eccentricity”.

GeoKarst is a new EU-funded project highlighting a unique landscape of caves, gorges and medieval villages near Trieste

Our guide turns out the lights and suddenly there is nothing. Just total darkness, the sound of gentle dripping and a creeping feeling of unease. The switch is flicked back on and the shadowy world that lies deep beneath the Karst returns. I’m in Vilenica, thought to be the first cave in the world ever opened to tourists, with records of visitors dating back to 1633. It’s a magical sight: a grand antechamber sculpted through erosion, filled with soaring stalagmites and plunging stalactites streaked in shades of red, terracotta and orange by iron oxide, and dotted with shimmering crystals.

Vilenica is just one of a network of thousands of caves located in the Karst region of western Slovenia and eastern Italy, which is known for its porous, soluble limestone rock. Above ground, this creates a distinctive landscape, filled with rocks bearing lined striations and pockmarked by hollows known as dolines, where the limestone has collapsed underneath. But below ground is where it’s really special, with enormous caves, sinkholes and subterranean rivers. Later in the day, I visit the region’s other main visitor cave, Škocjan, where I’m amazed to see an underground river thunder through a chamber almost 150 metres high. It’s an almost surreal sensory experience, with the rush of the rapids echoing around the walls.

With 64% of the city’s residents relying on buses and trains so overloaded that up to 10 passengers die a day, anger is rising over a taxpayer-funded road most will never use

Mumbai is known for its graphic inequality, its gleaming high-rises where the rich live with panoramic views of the Arabian Sea standing next to windowless hovels perched over drains. It is home to 90 of India’s billionaires, but also to more than six million slum dwellers, about 55% of central Mumbai’s population.

Now Mumbai has a new symbol of the gulf between rich and poor: a high-speed, eight-lane motorway on its western coast, which critics say serves only the wealthy despite being built with taxpayers’ money.

The city’s architecture travels through time and continents, incorporating everything from slabs of the Italian Alps to meteorites that hit southern Africa 2bn years ago

In the heart of London’s Square Mile, between the windows of a tapas restaurant, a 150m-year-old ammonite stares mutely at passersby. The fossil is embedded in a limestone wall on Plantation Lane, sitting alongside the remnants of ancient nautiloids and squid-like belemnites. It’s a mineralised aquarium hiding in plain sight, a snapshot of deep time that few even glance at, a transtemporal space where patatas bravas meet prehistoric cephalopods.

How often do you give thought to the stones that make up our towns and cities? To the building blocks, paving slabs and machine-cut masonry that backdrop our lives? If your name’s Dr Ruth Siddall, the answer to that question would be yesterday, today and every day for the foreseeable. Her passion is urban geology, and it turns out that the architecture of central London – in common with many places – is a largely unwitting showcase of Earth science through the ages.

Forget draughty bunk rooms and awkward social encounters, hostels now provide home comforts and a sense of community private rentals will never match

‘Penguins? In Snowdonia?” I asked incredulously. “That’s right!” came the enthusiastic reply from our newest hostel companion. We were standing in the large kitchen of The Rocks hostel in Capel Curig, a village in the north-east of Eryri national park (Snowdonia), chatting amiably while waiting for our teas to brew.

“Head up Moel Siabod to the lake, and that’s where the penguins are. You’ll see a sign warning about feeding them,” he said. “But even if they’re hiding and you don’t see one, it’s one of the best walks in the area.”

Randy thinks throwing in a line or two lightens the mood. Taylor says it’s an avoidance tactic. You decide who’s out of tune

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

He will throw in lines from songs during serious conversations – it is an avoidance tactic

Yes I should tone it down, but a lyric can lighten the mood and there’s one for every occasion

This ancient Scottish tavern was a raucous, cross-generational hangout where everyone – young and old, locals and tourists – sang themselves hoarse to Fairytale of New York

This is said to be one of Scotland’s most haunted pubs, but for me it’s haunted with happy memories, the ghosts of hazy nights out, the spectre of my younger self, and of course the cantankerous clergyman who stalks its walls from beyond the grave.

Solid doors are being replaced with sliding ones, or even transparent cubicles. For furious guests, this is a cost-cutting measure too far

Name: Hotel bathroom doors.

Age: Solid doors have existed since ancient Egypt.

When I swapped my iPhone for a Nokia, Walkman, film camera and physical map, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But my life soon started to change

When two balaclava-clad men on a motorbike mounted the pavement to rob me, recently, I remained oblivious. My eyes were pinned to a text message on my phone, and my hands were so clawed around it that they didn’t even bother to grab it. It wasn’t until an elderly woman shrieked and I felt the whoosh of air as the bike launched back on to the road that I looked up at all. They might have been unsuccessful but it did make me think: what else am I missing from the real world around me?

Before I’ve poured my first morning coffee I’ve already watched the lives of strangers unfold on Instagram, checked the headlines, responded to texts, swiped through some matches on a dating app, and refreshed my emails, twice. I check Apple Maps for my quickest route to work. I’ve usually left it too late to get the bus, so I rent a Lime bike using the app. During the day, my brother sends me some memes, I take a picture of a canal boat, and pay for my lunch on Apple Pay. I walk home listening to music on Spotify and a long voice note from a friend, then I watch a nondescript TV drama, while scrolling through Depop and Vinted for clothes.

Amateur conservationist and social media influencer Theerasak 'Pop' Saksritawee has a rare bond with Thailand’s critically endangered dugongs. With dugong fatalities increasing, Pop works alongside scientists at Phuket Marine Biological Centre to track the mammals with his drone and restore their disappearing seagrass habitat. Translating complex science for thousands online, Pop raises an urgent alarm about climate change, pollution and habitat loss — before Thailand’s dugongs vanish forever

A brief encounter set off a chain of events that culminated in a public rebuff to the US president from Keir Starmer

When Kemi Badenoch met Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, on Monday evening, she pressed him on two issues: the Chagos Islands deal and North Sea oil drilling.

Neither participant was part of their respective executive branch, and neither issue was at the centre of the crisis that has engulfed transatlantic politics. But before long, the meeting had some very real political consequences.

Scale and speed of president’s moves have stunned observers of authoritarian regimes – is the US in democratic peril?

Three hundred and sixty-five days after Donald Trump swore his oath of office and completed an extraordinary return to power, many historians, scholars and experts say his presidency has pushed American democracy to the brink – or beyond it.

In the first year of Trump’s second term, the democratically elected US president has moved with startling speed to consolidate authority: dismantling federal agencies, purging the civil service, firing independent watchdogs, sidelining Congress, challenging judicial rulings, deploying federal force in blue cities, stifling dissent, persecuting political enemies, targeting immigrants, scapegoating marginalized groups, ordering the capture of a foreign leader, leveraging the presidency for profit, trampling academic freedom and escalating attacks on the news media.

In Oscar-shortlisted documentary short Cashing Out, a little-known industry that saw dying LGBTQ+ people sell their life insurance policies is remembered

During the summer of 2020, at the onset of the Covid pandemic, the documentary director Matt Nadel was back home in Boca Raton, Florida. He remembers one particular evening walk that he took with his father, Phil, as they weathered out those early months.

As they strode through the neighborhood, Nadel, now 26, said that the prospect of a vaccine was exciting, but the idea of pharmaceutical executives profiting off a devastating virus left him feeling uneasy. Phil grew concerned by the complex ethical predicament that his son laid out, and Nadel could quickly tell that his father was acting strangely.

We’d like to hear from people in Jenrick’s Newark constituency about how they feel about him defecting to Reform UK

After months of denials, Robert Jenrick finally defected to Reform UK last week.

Nigel Farage called it the “latest Christmas present I’ve ever had”, while Conservative MPs called him a “coward” and a “traitor”.

We would like to hear from people who have used chatbots for companionship or mental health support

AI Chatbots are now a part of everyday life. ChatGPT surpassed 800 million weekly active users in late 2025.

Some people are forming relationships with these chatbots, using them for companionship, mental health support, and even as therapists.

Has a chatbot helped you get through a difficult period in life? If so, we’d like to hear about it.

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

We’d like to hear your questions ahead of the next episode of It’s Complicated

The team from our It’s Complicated Youtube channel are looking at how eating throughout the day has become normal in many Western contexts, what that might be doing to our bodies, and whether this new wave of wellness fasting really does what it claims.

We’d like to know what you want explained. If you could sit down with a leading expert on fasting, what would you ask them? Send us your questions, large or small via the form below. Your questions could help shape our reporting and be featured in the show.

Our clothes can be one of the most powerful non-verbal communicators – tell us yours reflect who you are and what you do?

From uniforms to suits to tracksuits to costumes, clothes keep us warm and covered – but they are also one of the most powerful non-verbal communicators, a second skin which reflects who you are and what you do.

We want to hear from people about why they wear what they wear. Do your clothes help you in the workplace? Are they making a statement? Maybe you’re a waiter and have worn the same work uniform for years, or maybe your job involves wearing very little. Please tell us about yourselves.

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