When Zac Brettler jumped to his death in London, the coroner recorded an open verdict, admitting: ‘I don’t know what happened.’ The acclaimed author of Say Nothing and, now, London Falling, talks about his search for answers

In the summer of 2023, the American writer and journalist Patrick Radden Keefe was in London for the filming of Say Nothing, the television adaptation of his much-lauded, much-awarded account of a Troubles murder. It was there, on set, that Keefe got talking to a visitor, a friend of the director, who happened to tell Keefe about friends of his, the Brettlers, a London family who had experienced something tragic, strange and terrible.

Rachelle and Matthew Brettler’s 19-year-old son, Zac, had died in November 2019 when he jumped from the fifth-floor balcony of a luxury apartment overlooking the Thames. There had been no reason to believe he was suicidal – but plenty to suggest that he was very afraid. Zac had spent his last few months in the orbit of two men who believed him to be the son of a Russian oligarch, heir to a £200m legacy. Both men had been with Zac on the night he died – one had been in the apartment at the time – and gave varying accounts in police interviews. The family believed that the Met response had been full of holes – key witnesses hadn’t been formally interviewed, bloodstains on the apartment walls hadn’t been tested – and the investigation concluded in 2021 with the Crown Prosecution Service deciding there was insufficient evidence to bring charges for murder and perverting the course of justice. The inquest in 2022 ended in an open verdict. “I can’t fill in the gaps; I can’t speculate,” the coroner concluded. “I don’t know what happened.”

Some people using retatrutide, which is not yet approved, are reporting ‘emotional flattening’, but experts point to a more complex picture

• ‘Traceability is vital’: labs test thousands of unregulated substances amid peptide craze

• What are peptides, are they safe and is there evidence to back up the hype?

A recent TikTok video shows a man in a black baseball cap, with text over the video stating: “strange effects of Reta” and “ruining relationships”.

He is referring to retatrutide, an experimental weight-loss drug that targets three appetite-related hormones. It is still in clinical trials but has generated such interest that some users are already sourcing it illegally online before approval. The “weird theory going around”, the TikTok poster says, is that the drug can “make you fall out of love”.

Knife-wielding skeletons, wild experiments with toilets, an audience with the bassist from The Jam … the team behind the globe-conquering spookfest open up about their astonishing success

‘Oh. Em. Bloody. Gee.” Danny Robins, “high priest of the paranormal”, has removed his trademark red anorak and is pacing around the London Palladium stage telling ghost stories. A phantom baby. A haunted Teams meeting. A … “hairy flasher”. He dissects each tale with parapsychologists Evelyn Hollow (Team Believer) and Ciarán O’Keeffe (Team Sceptic – he exposed Most Haunted’s medium, Derek Acorah, as a fraud in a rift Robins calls “the Biggie and Tupac of the paranormal”). The rapt audience – a harmonious mix of millennials, boomers and gen Z – are eager to share their own stories, too: a woman’s voice quivers into a microphone as she describes a skeleton that wanted to stab her sister. This is the enthralling world of Uncanny.

A lot has happened in the five years since Uncanny started life as a Radio 4 paranormal investigations podcast, with those spine-tingling opening lyrics, “I know what I saw.” In the first episode, The Evil in Room 611, Robins met scientist Ken, who recalled unexplained scares from decades ago in his university halls. Details of an evil dark figure and shaking doors were met with the reaction: “Bloody hell, Ken.” Two experts then shared their theories: parapsychologist Caroline Watt proffered hypnagogic hallucinations, while ordained minster Peter Laws claimed poltergeist activity.

Zendaya and Robert Pattinson’s dark dramedy is a stylish acting showcase, but does it do justice to its weighty themes?

Ever since its first trailer dropped – and, on certain corners of Reddit, even before that – the internet has been abuzz with speculation over just what goes down in The Drama. The auteur production powerhouse A24 somewhat ingeniously pitched writer-director Kristoffer Borgli’s pitch-black film as a tart romantic comedy, with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a seemingly happy couple derailed by a disturbing revelation a week before their wedding. The actors, among a cohort of vanishingly few young movie stars, appeared as their characters in a fake wedding announcement in the Boston Globe; Zendaya’s rumored marriage to actor Tom Holland became a meta discussion point on a press tour that saw her method dressing in “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”, her wardrobe slowly darkening in a nod to something gone horribly awry.

The Norwegian film-maker’s second English-language film depicts what we could loosely call premarital jitters as a psychological unraveling with a surrealist touch. The Drama is lustrously filmed, virtuosically acted and crisply edited – but, inevitably, attention will focus on its very combustible, deliberately provocative premise, one somewhat spoiled by a pre-embargo TMZ headline citing a recent American tragedy. There’s no way to talk about this movie without talking about “the twist” – which plays out less as a dramatic turn of events than as an unsettling divulgence that, depending on your view, the film may or may not justify. Obviously, spoilers ahead, so tread carefully and, presuming you’ve seen it … let’s discuss.

The heavyweight from Dagestan now lives in Canada and describes Saturday’s opponent as the ‘professor’ of boxing

“This guy is the professor,” Arslanbek Makhmudov says of Tyson Fury as he looks forward politely to their fight on Saturday night at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. There is none of the usual bluster and malice of heavyweight boxing as the huge Russian from Dagestan shows considerable respect for the former world champion who is making yet another comeback to the ring.

“Tyson Fury is the professor of mind and boxing,” Makhmudov continues in his functional but effective English. “A lot of boxing is mental and he is a master. But boxing is also spiritual. I am going to be strong, spiritual and smart. You can say this is a war between mental and spiritual and we’ll see who is more successful. Inshallah it is spiritual.”

I don’t want to minimise the scenes in Clapham High Street. But how about dialling things down a notch?

Last week, some teenagers in the Clapham area of south-west London started running up and down the high street. The terms used to describe them ranged from “feral gang” to “chaotic swarm”; evidently, it is in the eye of the beholder as to whether they were closer to animals or insects. Definitely, positively, some of them shoplifted.

Fireworks were let off, which sounds like the kind of mischief the Bash Street Kids would get up to, but is quite scary in real life, and the line between “Beano” and “scary” is finer than I thought. Marks & Spencer needed a police guard and closed early; Oliver Bonas briefly had a security guard, which was like seeing a bouncer outside a library – either a mad overreaction, or the end of days.

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Israeli military warns Iranians to immediately stop using trains or being near railway lines, saying it would ‘endanger’ their lives

Here are some of the latest images coming in from the Middle East as the war continues in week six.

The Israeli military has just warned the people of Iran not to use trains, saying that doing so “endangers your life”.

Dear Citizens, for the sake of your security, we kindly request that from this moment until 21:00 Iran time, you refrain from using and travelling by train throughout Iran.

Your presence on trains and near railway lines endangers your life.

Exclusive: Call for nudity-detection tech on phones as number of under-18s reporting blackmail attempts rises by 34%

• ‘I felt ashamed and scared’: how an online friendship became a sextortion nightmare

Children are reporting online sextortion attempts in record numbers in the UK, as campaigners urge tech companies to do more to stamp out the crime.

The Report Remove service, which allows children to flag intimate images or videos of themselves that have appeared, or could appear, online, said it received 394 reports from under-18s last year of blackmail attempts after sending sexual images to predators. The figure is 34% higher than in 2024.

Exclusive: Health secretary says industrial action in England also threatens to derail NHS progress on waiting times

Wes Streeting has accused resident doctors of “torpedoing” their own pay rises and training jobs by walking out on strike again, as tens of thousands of doctors began a six-day stoppage in England.

The health secretary said there was a “legitimacy” to concerns over jobs and wages but that the British Medical Association had scuppered any chance of a breakthrough when it rejected what he said was a serious offer from the government to transform medics’ conditions.

Increased recognition of crime and perpetrators using technology to track victims are behind rise, say experts

The number of stalking offences recorded by police has soared over the past decade, with experts saying the rise has been driven by increased recognition, and technology making it easier for perpetrators to track their victims.

House of Commons library data analysed by the Liberal Democrats found more than 135,000 offences were recorded last year, up from just under 3,000 10 years ago.

Crew of Orion capsule spent emotional day documenting surface of moon – and paying homage to astronauts who paved the way

• Artemis II sets new record as astronauts travel farther from Earth than ever before

On the sixth day of a lunar mission that has rekindled global interest in space exploration and reinvigorated Nasa’s aims to return to the moon, the astronauts of Artemis II flew further from Earth than any human before them.

Across a six-hour flyby, the crew of the Orion capsule captured views of the moon’s far side that have never been seen before – while honouring the astronauts who paved the way for their record-breaking mission.

Roberts-Smith previously failed in his attempt to sue three newspapers which published allegations he murdered unarmed civilians and bullied comrades

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Australia’s most decorated living soldier, Ben Roberts-Smith, has been arrested at Sydney airport in relation to alleged war crimes.

The Australian federal police and the Office of the Special Investigator announced details of the investigation in Sydney on Tuesday.

Performer is being extended ‘forgiveness’ over antisemitic remarks, says Melvin Benn, despite calls for ban

The promoter of Wireless festival has stood by the decision to have Kanye West perform at the event, despite an outcry over the rapper’s antisemitic behaviour and calls to cancel his appearance.

West, who is legally known as Ye, has been criticised for making antisemitic remarks including voicing admiration for Adolf Hitler. Last year he released a song called Heil Hitler, a few months after advertising a swastika T-shirt for sale on his website.

Government should look at ways to help as firms are paying disproportionate bills, says MakeUK

British manufacturers have said they will have to pay an extra £940m a year in business rates because of changes by Rachel Reeves that come into effect this month.

Manufacturers face a disproportionate business rates bill because they often have large factory floors, according to analysis by MakeUK, an industry lobby group. It said that factories accounted for a fifth of England and Wales’s property by rateable value, despite manufacturers only accounting for a 10th of economic output.

State-funded savings accounts set up for children at birth going unclaimed, with £1.5bn estimated to be sat in bank accounts

As Elle Middlemas approached her 18th birthday, she began wondering if she had a child trust fund, a government savings account given to all children born between 1 September 2002 and 2 January 2011, that can be accessed as soon as they officially hit adulthood.

She quickly hit a dead end. She wasn’t sure if she was even owed the money and could find no information online. An email to HMRC seeking clarity led her nowhere.

Worst polluters hold world’s future in their hands as they benefit from higher fossil fuel prices, but global trends favour renewables

Oil stands at about $110 a barrel and some forecasts have predicted it could reach $150. Food prices are on the rise and are expected to leap further owing to the fertiliser supply crunch, leading the World Food Programme USA to warn that global food insecurity could reach record levels, with 45 million more people pushed into acute hunger. Industries from steel to chemicals have alerted markets that they face shortages and soaring costs, while households across the world are feeling the pinch – people have been told to turn down their thermostats, take the bus or cycle, and cut their speed on motorways.

The impact of the US-Israel war on Iran – the third global shock in six years, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the Covid-19 pandemic – has laid bare how reliant our economies still are on fossil fuels. Simon Stiell, the UN climate chief, said in March: “Fossil fuel dependency is ripping away national security and sovereignty and replacing it with subservience and rising costs.”

With polls suggesting Plaid Cymru, the SNP and Sinn Féin could be in power after May vote, constitutional challenges may lie ahead

In four weeks, the shape of British politics is likely to change dramatically. For the first time, nationalists who aspire to break up the UK are expected to be in control of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland simultaneously. “The change will be seismic,” said Angus Robertson, a senior minister in the Scottish government.

Opinion polls consistently suggest that after the elections on 7 May, England will be flanked by countries run by restless centre-left nationalist parties – Plaid Cymru in Cardiff, the Scottish National party in Edinburgh and, in Belfast, Sinn Féin, which shares power with the Democratic Unionists.

With the UAE under fire from Iranian missies, wealthy investors are turning to Italy’s flat-tax haven

Just over a month ago, Dubai was the obvious destination for wealthy Britons in search of a new home. Few cities allow you to earn vast sums tax-free and spend them across any number of luxury hotels, restaurants and shops.

But as the United Arab Emirates comes under Iranian fire, Dubai’s reputation – in part created by emigrant influencers – as a haven for the global elite is eroding. Super-rich UK nationals are now looking for a route back to Europe; and Milan, the financial centre of Italy, is climbing to the top of the list.

He was the screenwriting colossus behind Flashdance, Jagged Edge, Showgirls and more. Now clean, ‘Hollywood’s Shakespeare’ talks about today’s scared studios, his refugee trauma – and taking acid with Hunter S Thompson

Joe Eszterhas was the swaggering pitchman of 80s and 90s Hollywood; the king of the high-concept, precision-tooled blockbuster. He wrote Jagged Edge, co-scripted Flashdance, and pocketed a then record $3m for his Basic Instinct screenplay. Writers typically skulk near the bottom of the industry food chain but Eszterhas flipped the script to make himself a boss and a brand. ABC called him a “living legend”, while Time magazine posed a breathless rhetorical question: “If Shakespeare were alive today, would his name be Joe Eszterhas?”

Pride, as any hack writer will tell you, usually comes before a fall, and so it was with Eszterhas, who confused success with excess and barely got out of the business alive. “The coke and the booze,” he says, remembering. “Those weren’t helping my creativity, they were holding it back.” His best years in Hollywood were conversely his worst.

Exclusive: Investigation finds alleged Prince Group associates were involved in unusual development in tiny nation on Australia’s doorstep, raising concerns about global spread of online fraud industry

Guests were enticed with the promise of luxury villas overlooking aquamarine seas; a world-first crypto resort where the tech elite could commune over the latest digital innovation in opulent surrounds.

The promotional material from June last year pitched a sprawling, futuristic development that would hug the coastline of Timor-Leste, one of the world’s poorest countries, and donate a percentage of profits to philanthropy.

Lorenazo Ligas is a brilliant but flawed hero in fun new series Ligas. Plus: Do you have OCD? Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Atlantic
Lorenzo Ligas (Luca Argentero) is a debauched genius, a lawyer whose brilliance is matched by his capacity for self-sabotage. This trope isn’t original, but there’s a certain freewheeling relish to the Italian drama. As it begins, Ligas is defending a gone-to-seed pop star accused of murdering a cop. But the clock is ticking. Can our maverick hero exonerate his client before he destroys his own career prospects? Flashy, flimsy fun. Phil Harrison

AI experts say we’re living in an experiment that may fundamentally change the model of work

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Hundreds of thousands of tech workers are facing a harsh reality. Their well-paying jobs are no longer safe. Now that artificial intelligence (AI) is here, their futures don’t look as bright as they did a decade ago.

As US tech companies have ramped up investments in AI, they’ve slashed a staggering number of jobs. Microsoft cut 15,000 workers last year. Amazon laid off 30,000 employees in the last six months. Financial-services company Block eliminated more than 4,000 people, or 40% of its workforce, in February. Meta laid off more than 1,000 in the last six months, and, according to a Reuters report, may cut 20% of all employees in the near future. Just this week, the software giant Oracle laid off thousands of workers. Smaller players like Pinterest and Atlassian also made recent cuts, culling about 15% and 10% of their workforces, respectively. Estimates put the total number of tech layoffs in the past year at more than 165,000, according to the tracker Layoffs.fyi.

With some misgivings, families and aviation enthusiasts bring stepladders and picnics to the perimeter fence

It was a 4.40am start for the Wilkinson family. They packed their car with gear you might take on a trip to the seaside – folding chairs, blankets, a picnic. But instead of heading to the coast, they drove 80 miles from their home in Hampshire to Gloucestershire and set up camp close to the perimeter fence of RAF Fairford to watch American warplanes take off and land.

“It’s definitely cheaper than a trip to a theme park,” said Jonathan Wilkinson, who was there with wife, Katie, and three sons, aged seven to 12. “The sights and sounds are impressive. But it’s a bittersweet thing. These planes are only here because of war. We have to keep that in mind.”

Ancient hill carvings of horses, crosses and crowns have fascinated artists, writers and travellers for centuries. I went in search of their stories

In the churchyard next to Wilmington Priory in East Sussex, I found a yew so ancient and stooped that its trunk had eaten half a gravestone. Its boughs were supported by long poles, a creepy sight that made me shudder. I had come here to see something just as strange, but more benign than this folk-horror vision – the figure of the Long Man of Wilmington on the hillside opposite, on the steep scarp of the South Downs. He treks over the hill, a stave clasped in each hand. Climbing Windover Hill, just beneath the South Downs Way, I saw that while he was once a chalk giant, his lines are now marked with concrete blocks.

The Long Man may be Anglo-Saxon in origin – the shape is similar to the design on a buckle discovered in Kent in 1964 by the archaeologist Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, which probably represents the god Odin (or Woden); but he may be a much later adornment for the hillside, made to be viewed from the priory. His form entranced the photographer Lee Miller and her husband, the artist Roland Penrose, who lived close to the Long Man. Penrose painted a surrealist representation of the Long Man on the inglenook fireplace at Farleys, their home – for them the figure was a protective spirit. It also inspired the Black composer Avril Coleridge-Taylor, the folk collective the Memory Band, and Benjamin Britten picnicked at its feet.

Through no fault of their own, she faces repaying £100 a month until she is 93 or face legal action

My 66-year-old mother has been told that she has been overpaid her civil service pension by £40,000 and must repay it, or face legal action. Once the tax she’s paid on the income is deducted, she owes £32,000.

Her monthly pension payments have now been cut, which means her annual income will fall from £19,700 to £12,000, and she was, additionally, ordered to repay £496 a month for five years. This was later reduced to £100 a month, and a charge was put on her house as security. She’s been told she will have paid everything she owes when she’s 93.

Universities in Britain rely on overseas applicants paying full fees, which has given rise to some unscrupulous recruiters and left many hopefuls and their families deep in debt

When Sam started looking into studying abroad, it didn’t take long for his phone to start ringing. At 24, he was living with his parents in a small city in the southern Indian state of Odisha and he’d been stuck in an entry-level job for four years. He hoped a master’s degree in the UK might lead to a high-flying finance job in London, or at least give him an edge when he came back home.

After filling in a few forms on study abroad websites, Sam soon started receiving calls from unknown numbers. Eventually, he answered one. The person on the phone was an education agent – a recruiter who helps students apply to foreign universities – pitching his services. The offer sounded appealing. The agency would help Sam decide which universities to apply to, advising on the most suitable courses and where he had the best chance of admission. They would help draft his application, and if he got in, assist with immigration. They would do all of this for free. “I was sceptical,” said Sam. “Like, why would you do that?”

Hungary’s prime minister has conducted a systematic attack on independent media. The parallels with the US are chilling

During his state of the nation address earlier this year, Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, outlined a chilling vision of the country’s future. Signalling a new level of aggression in his campaign against the truth if he is returned to power in elections on 12 April, Orbán vowed to purge the country of “bought journalists” and “fake civil society organisations”.

Media repression isn’t just a Hungarian problem. According to the V-Dem Institute in Sweden, a leading democracy monitor, it is the most commonly used weapon in the authoritarian arsenal. Strikingly, its latest report finds that US democracy is now at its worst level since the 1960s, marked by a sharp decline in media freedom.

Amrit Singh is professor of practice and founding faculty director of the Rule of Law Lab at NYU School of Law

These companies now own everything from nurseries to care homes, squeezing vital services for profit while we foot the bill

It was the free croissants that gave it away. And the Scandinavian-style furniture. And the tasteful pastel walls. It was different from other nurseries I’d viewed: marginally more expensive, the aesthetic equivalent of a WeWork for toddlers. I was eight months pregnant, on a tour of various nurseries in south-east London for my daughter. At the time, I didn’t realise that this wasn’t just a nursery, but a prototype for an immense experiment that is quietly playing out across Britain.

The nursery I visited is backed by private equity, a surreptitious and tremendously powerful realm of finance that now has its hands on just about everything. Private equity funds and related asset managers own water companies, apartment blocks, student accommodation, care homes, children’s homes, funeral parlours and more. The titans of this industry have perfected a cradle-to-grave model of investment focused on the places we live, work, grow old, and eventually die, capturing these core services and squeezing them for profit.

Hettie O’Brien is a regular contributor to the Guardian Long Read, an assistant Opinion editor and the author of The Asset Class: How Private Equity Turned Capitalism Against Itself, published 9 April

Aid cuts mean the ethnically-cleansed refugees from Myanmar face a return to cooking over toxic flames, or keeping children out of school to spend all day scouring for firewood

Four years ago the US recognised the genocide of my people, and nations around the world came to our aid. Today, we ask the world to reaffirm that commitment. What do we ask for that will save lives, the local habitat and even dollars for Rohingya refugees?

Cooking gas.

Trying to make ends meet is an impossible effort, and things are rapidly getting worse. It’s time the government listened to people like us

• Ella Michalski is part of Changing Realities, a project working with low-income families

In times of war, it is right that we focus on the human suffering of those affected by military action. But its ripple effects have worsened an already dire set of living standards for families like mine, who simply cannot meet the rising costs of the most basic of essentials. With Bank of England research showing that companies are expected to raise prices rapidly over the coming months, we feel genuinely terrified about the costs we’ll be facing.

What was once considered a temporary fiscal emergency after the invasion of Ukraine is now a persistent, gruelling reality for too many. The term “crisis” suggests something that we could move beyond. But this impossible effort to make ends meet is a constant now for millions. It has been going on for so long that it has become almost normal. Having to make impossible decisions about what to go without, and what vital item of expenditure can wait another week – or more likely month – is not normal, is not right; and it harms millions of families, day after day.

Ella Michalski is part of Changing Realities, a collaboration of parents and low-income families from across the UK working with researchers from theUniversity of Glasgow, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Child Poverty Action Group

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.

Two court cases last month illustrate how confusion over legal definitions are feeding into a culture of poor driving standards

In 2024, 1,602 people were killed on British roads. Only a small proportion of these resulted in a surviving driver being prosecuted. When we hear about the sentencing in such cases, the public reaction is often a mix of sorrow, anger and, increasingly, confusion. Why do some drivers who kill receive only short prison terms? Why are some charged with the lesser offence of “careless” rather than “dangerous” driving? After more than two decades researching this area of law, I believe our legal framework for prosecuting drivers needs to change.

Most of us rarely do anything that could easily kill another person – except when we drive. For many of us, passing our driving test is a rite of passage. It represents independence and adulthood in a car-centric society. When we first learn to drive, we are hyper-aware of the need to concentrate. But once we have passed, most of us never look at the Highway Code again, and the careful habits drilled into us by instructors fade away.

Sally Kyd is a professor of law at the University of Leicester

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

The US chain gives us limited-edition kettle chips; the British, Percy Pig chews. It’s good to know there’s something to nibble on both sides of the Atlantic

You know how you break up with someone, and then everywhere you go, there they are? I’ve been experiencing something like that these last few months, since moving back to London from New York – I can’t go a single day in without seeing a Trader Joe’s tote bag. I knew of this phenomenon of cultural exchange (Brits carry these TJ bags; in the US, they love a Daunt Books one) and while it speaks to the “cousin on your mum’s side” relationship of our two nations, it’s still jarring to see these bags casually hanging out on a London bus. Like bumping into your teacher at Butlin’s in a Hawaiian shirt. It’s not quite right.

For those who don’t know, Trader Joe’s is a supermarket chain in the US that is also the primary source of the type of silly little snacks and convenience dinners that sustain life when you can’t be bothered to do more than throw something in your mouth while lying on the sofa. The limited edition Thanksgiving stuffing kettle chips? I still dream of them. The crispy crunchy okra or the crispy onion chips? Come back, the kids miss you. And of course, the fruity jellies. More than one care package from friends in Brooklyn has contained these since I moved back, and I fall to my knees in gratitude every single time.

Bim Adewunmi is a freelance journalist

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.

Making women more powerful in my farm business and closing the gender pay gap was not just the right thing to do – it has brought commercial benefits

On International Women’s Day this year, I found myself in Selfridges listening to my wife, Geetie, talk about her experiences as a childhood communard, mother, restaurateur, environmental campaigner and, of course, as a woman. I was one of two men in the audience. Some might ask what a 65-year-old male farmer was doing there at all. I would contend, first, that as many of the issues discussed on IWD relate to male behaviour, men should be paying as much attention as women; and second (and more practically) that too many blokes being blokey does not get the strawberries picked.

Success in farming depends on being able to build and maintain relationships. I’d say that’s true of most businesses. When we first measured our gender pay gap at Riverford in 2017, women earned an average of 91p an hour to their male colleagues’ £1. We made excuses and weak efforts at change, but most of the men at the top were unwilling to challenge their unspoken prejudice. My own farm, Baddaford, has been happier, more productive and more profitable since I, and my male head grower, put our best picker – a woman half our age – in charge of the picking and people.

Guy Singh-Watson is the founder of organic veg box company Riverford

Philanthropy increases the gap dividing highly selective, elite higher education from the rest. Ministers need a plan for the sector overall

About 2% of UK universities’ income came from donations and endowments in 2024-25 – slightly less than the previous year. At a time when charitable giving overall is down, the announcement last week of a record £190m donation to the University of Cambridge deserves to be welcomed. Higher education funding should not depend on the choices of rich individuals. But education is a social good and philanthropy has a role to play.

The donor is Chris Rokos, a British billionaire hedge fund manager who describes himself as a socially liberal centrist and has previously given money to the Conservative party. The money will fund a postgraduate school of government that is intended to rival the one at Oxford, which was controversially funded by, and named after, the Ukrainian-born billionaire Sir Leonard Blavatnik.

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.

An expletive-ridden post on social media shamed the office of the US president. Its substantive message, if acted on, would be a war crime

Article 52 of the first additional protocol to the Geneva conventions prohibits attacks on civilian targets. It is on those grounds that the international criminal court has issued arrest warrants for Russian military officers and officials responsible for attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. Such assaults, and the missiles rained on Ukrainian cities and towns in order to terrify and demoralise, constitute war crimes. Exactly the same would apply to the United States, should Donald Trump’s threats to bomb Iran back to the “stone age” this week be carried out.

Such basic tenets of international law bear repeating at a time when Mr Trump and his defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, appear to speak as if from within a bloodthirsty fever dream. Glorying repulsively in his capacity to order death and destruction from the Pentagon, Mr Hegseth, an Evangelical Christian, has presented Operation Epic Fury as a 21st-century crusade “to break the teeth of the ungodly”. On social media at the weekend, Mr Trump topped that by unleashing a stream of expletive-ridden abuse, ranting that unless Iran reopens the strait of Hormuz to shipping, “Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day … Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell”.

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.

This bold step would provide a practical route for restoring the UK to its rightful place within the EU, says Prof Philip Murphy

The prime minister’s comments about seeking closer relations with the EU are to be welcomed as a step in the right direction (Starmer calls for ‘ambitious’ new UK-EU ties as Trump threatens to quit Nato, 1 April). Yet a piecemeal approach to repairing the damage done by Brexit is unlikely to succeed.

A genuinely “ambitious” plan would be for Labour to announce a referendum on whether the UK should open negotiations on re-entry to the EU, promising a general election to secure a mandate to implement the proposal should the British public vote in favour. It would allow the government to seize the initiative, providing it with an issue around which to rally a broad base of electoral support.

Mary Evans, Aidan Walker and Ruth Baker on Simon Jenkins’ suggestion for how to deal with the US president Phoebe Merrick and John Spencer on religion and war, Rev Canon John Longuet-Higgins on Trump’s expletive-laden threat to Iran, and Diana Francis on US bases in Britain

Simon Jenkins is perhaps a little overoptimistic in arguing for what is essentially a waiting game about the politics of Donald Trump and his administration (To a world at a loss as to how to handle Trump, I say this: the only answer may be to wait him out, 2 April). Trump and those alongside him have effectively diminished or abolished central tenets of the legal and civic structure of the US. Not least to have disappeared in this bonfire is that political cliche about the checks and balances over political power. That basic tenet of every political handbook about the US has proved to be a vain hope.

Waiting for the downfall of one individual surely suggests that we should ask two questions. First, will others, perhaps less personally flawed but nevertheless of the same politics, simply take his place? Second, if the country (and a lot of the rest of the world) wishes to go in another direction, when can we see the plan?

Eco-aware family planning and economic degrowth are two of the wiser social paradigms trying to emerge to replace the ecocidal norms of the past, writes Barbara Williams

Your article linking the decreasing birthrate with our housing crisis was infuriating to anyone familiar with the escalating global ecosystems collapse (Want to boost the UK’s birthrate? Fix the housing crisis, research suggests, 1 April). Recent research funded by Population Matters confirms that a sustainable global human population would be 2.5 billion. The Earth Overshoot website reveals that Britain is overpopulated by nearly 50 million.

Growth economics, wealth inequality, patriarchy, colonialism, military supremacy, nationalism and pronatalism are all unwise behaviour patterns in global ecosystems collapse. These can all be categorised as a “fluency” response from our limbic system. Our limbic response is the reason that these unwise behaviour patterns persist; they bypass our critical thinking.

Alisdair McNicol recalls proposals in the 1970s for secure sites with proper accommodation for drivers, which were sadly dropped before the plans took off

Your long read (35,000 pints of stolen Guinness, 950 wheels of pilfered cheese: can the UK’s cargo theft crisis be stopped?, 31 March), which discusses the work of Mike Dawber, the UK’s leading detective in cargo crime, and Michael Yarwood, managing director for loss prevention at the global cargo insurer TT Club, refers to “a shared dream: a truck stop with perimeter fencing, full CCTV coverage, 24-hour guards”.

This particular dream was actually proposed to be fulfilled in the early 1970s, when the government published a design specification that had all of the features referred to, plus a good deal more besides, with a view to establishing a nationwide chain of such facilities.

• Team will not panic in wake of City and Southampton defeats

• Raya set to return in goal for Tuesday’s first leg at Sporting

Mikel Arteta has insisted that Arsenal will not panic after losing successive games for the first time this season but admitted that they must rediscover their identity to get their campaign back on track.

The Premier League leaders face Sporting in the first leg of their Champions League quarter-final in Lisbon on Tuesday after seeing their hopes of an unprecedented quadruple crumble with defeats by Manchester City in the Carabao Cup final and the Championship side Southampton in the FA Cup. Bukayo Saka and Jurriën Timber have been ruled out as they continue to struggle with injuries, although there was better news for Arteta with Gabriel Magalhães, Declan Rice and Leandro Trossard all expected to feature against the Portuguese champions.

Three-time runner-up is determined to put last year’s dramatic playoff defeat behind him and prove he still has the quality to win at Augusta

Squint and you will see Justin Rose’s name twice on the tournament record boards at Augusta National. It’s there on the big bronze winner’s list at the water fountain by the entrance, beneath the entries marking Sergio García’s victory in 2017 and Rory McIlroy’s eight years later, both, as it says in the small print underneath, won in a playoff that Rose lost. Only one other player in Masters history lost two playoffs, and that was Ben Hogan, who had the consolation of winning it twice outright, in 1951 and 1953, in between finishing second in 1942, 1946, 1954 and 1955.

Throw in Rose’s second-place finish behind Jordan Spieth in 2015, when he finished four shots back, and he has come just about as close as any man can to the greatest prize in the game. The only player who finished second more often without actually winning the thing was Tom Weiskopf, who was runner-up four times in the space of seven years. “I will win this tournament one day,” Weiskopf said after he missed a birdie putt on 18 to force a playoff against Jack Nicklaus in 1975. He was 33 and it turned out to be the last best chance he ever had.

• Results elsewhere favour Frank Lampard’s side

• Norwich deal blow to Millwall’s promotion push

Coventry crept closer to promotion to the Premier League despite an off-colour display in a goalless draw at Hull.

Setbacks for promotion rivals Millwall and Middlesbrough meant a win for Coventry would have moved them to within two points of guaranteeing a return to the top flight for the first time in 25 years. While the Sky Blues were second best for large spells at the MKM Stadium and fortunate to avoid defeat, they retained their 12-point lead at the top of the table.

• Reedie also served as president of World Anti-Doping Agency

• Sebastian Coe hails ‘mentor, wise counsel and passionate advisor’

Sir Craig Reedie, a giant of the Olympic movement, who served as chair of the British Olympic Association for more than a decade and was instrumental in bringing the Games to London in 2012, has died at the age of 84.

Tributes have poured in for the Scots-born Reedie, who was also president of the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) when Russia was found guilty of state-sponsored doping across “a vast majority” of winter and summer sports, including at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. During this tumultuous period, Reedie and Wada recommended that Russia be banned from the 2016 Rio Games – a call that was ultimately rejected by the International Olympic Committee.

From exposed anxieties to unexpected heroes, this weekend’s cup contests papered over a weird three-week Premier League break

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The soccer calendar has been particularly quirky this year. There’s always an international break in March, but because this year’s edition involved World Cup qualifying playoffs, most games were scheduled for the Thursday and the Tuesday, which meant there was very little soccer played over the weekend; barely even a smattering of friendlies.

For a Saturday in early spring, it all felt very weird; it was a day for pacing the floors, wondering how on earth people who don’t like soccer fill the time. And with the Carabao Cup final falling the previous Sunday, and the FA Cup sixth round this weekend, that has meant a three-week hiatus in the title race. Which has been disorienting and, perhaps, not entirely to Arsenal’s benefit.

The champions Nottinghamshire batted out a draw at Somerset, while Northampton’s last pair defied Lancashire

Hampshire’s Ben Brown was a disappointed man last night.

“It is a really poor start. The boys are really flat. You come into the season really looking forward to it so to put in that performance at home is hugely disappointing.

Sonia Bompastor believes national team managers will need to be “smart” with her Chelsea players after a gruelling block of games concluded positively, with a 2-1 defeat of Tottenham, earning a place in the FA Cup semi-finals.

Chelsea’s hopes of retaining two of their three titles remain alive after Veerle Buurman’s wonderful drive and strike earned the Blues a win in an end-to-end battle with Tottenham.

While authorities are under pressure to keep learning, TV audience figures suggest the public have not lost interest

There will never be a year when horse welfare is not an issue in the run-up to the Grand National, and that is, in a sense, a positive for the sport. It is a sign that the National retains its status as the biggest race of the year – in terms of audience, betting turnover, name recognition and pretty much any other measure you care to choose. Nearly two centuries after the first running in 1839, it still has deep roots in British culture as an annual sporting rite of spring.

Within the racing bubble too there are few subjects that raise hackles and generate debate quite like the National, not least because for many racegoers and punters it is the race that first stoked their interest in the sport. Significant changes to the fences and other conditions in recent years, with the aim of minimising the risk of serious or fatal injuries, have left some fans, at least, feeling it is no longer the same race that they fell in love with several decades ago.

• Veteran announces return to Prem and would be eligible

• Forward will ‘never forget’ time at French second-tier club

The former England captain Courtney Lawes is returning to the Prem at the end of the season after two years at French club Brive.

The 37-year-old retired from international rugby after the 2023 Rugby World Cup and made the move to France after winning the 2023-24 Premiership title with Northampton Saints.

Experts have been alarmed at the growth of deep misogyny dressed up as self-help on social media. We profile seven men from across the continent who are gaining traction

It is not just Europe and the US that are grappling with a growing landscape of misogynistic influencers online. While Andrew Tate, Myron Gaines, Sneako and other voices grow in toxicity in the manosphere of the west, across Africa – which has more than 400 million people aged between 15 and 35 – several individuals are gaining traction.

The manosphere is a loose network of communities that claim to address men’s struggles such as dating and fitness, but often promote harmful misogynistic attitudes. Sunita Caminha, who leads UN Women on ending violence against women and girls in east and southern Africa, first started noticing its presence in Africa about five years ago, and believes it is on the rise. “Research and data that keeps coming out is very consistent [in] showing this is an alarming issue in different countries and contexts across the continent.”

UN assists in emergency vaccination drive as country battles worst surge in cases in years amid fall in vaccination rates

Bangladesh is battling its worse measles outbreak in years, with more than 100 children dead amid a rise in unvaccinated infants.

The government, in partnership with the United Nations, has begun conducting an emergency measles-rubella vaccination drive for children across the country, after more than 900 cases were confirmed since March.

Claims explosives found near pipeline come before election in which PM Viktor Orbán is trailing in most polls

Hungary has placed the gas pipeline that straddles the Serbian border under military protection, the prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has said, as accusations of a false-flag operation continued to swirl before a crunch election at the weekend and an official visit on Tuesday from the US vice-president, JD Vance.

Orbán travelled to Hungary’s southern border with Serbia on Monday, one day after Serbia said it had found “explosives of devastating power” near a pipeline that carries Russian natural gas to Hungary and beyond.

Signed acoustic guitar used on (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? – the bestselling album of the 90s – could fetch up to £60,000 at Sotheby’s

Incredibly, some critics were lukewarm about Oasis’s second album, with one calling it “laboured and lazy” and another dismissing it as a “marginally less hook-laden reprise” of their debut.

But (What’s the Story) Morning Glory? went on to become the bestselling British album of the 90s and a guitar Noel Gallagher used to write it will, Sotheby’s has announced, be a star lot of its April rock and pop sale.

Woman denies allegations of aggravated kidnapping during Augusto Pinochet’s 1970s military dictatorship

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A former Sydney nanny and cleaner accused by Chile of being a torturer and kidnapper for Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship in the 1970s will be extradited to Chile to face court over kidnapping allegations after losing her seven-year battle to remain in Australia.

Adriana Elcira Rivas, now in her 70s, is accused of participating in the disappearances of seven people in 1976 – including a woman who was five months pregnant – while working for Pinochet’s secret police force.

Jackie and Shadow’s eaglets emerged from eggs on Easter weekend in Big Bear Valley as watched by thousands online

Over Easter weekend, thousands of people tuned in to celebrate something spectacular unfolding 145 feet up a pine tree in southern California’s San Bernardino national forest – the hatchings of two bald eagle chicks.

Two eaglets were born to Jackie and Shadow, the southern California pair that have become avian celebrities thanks to the webcam that has livestreamed their activities since 2018.

Leaders say automated mowers’ blades threaten nocturnal animals as studies highlight risks to wildlife

German mayors have called for a nationwide ban on night-time use of robot lawnmowers to protect hedgehogs and other small nocturnal animals from being killed or maimed in the dark.

Recent studies have highlighted the threat lawnmower blades pose to wildlife active between dusk and dawn, prompting growing calls for regulation. Hedgehogs also tend to curl into a ball when threatened rather than running away, making them harder for a robot mower’s sensors to detect.

Harsh weather is nothing new in Kenya but the country’s climate is showing clear signs of getting hotter and drier

The day is hot and dry but the soil underfoot is soft. “After four months of drought, we received the first rains yesterday,” says Maasai elder Abraham Kampalei. “All we can do now is pray that they continue.”

Kampalei has lived for more than 50 of his 70 years with his family and animals in Oldonyonyokie, a hamlet in southern Kenya’s Kajiado county. He has witnessed the slow decline of the pastures. “I came here because of the abundance of grass for my livestock to graze. Today, there is almost nothing left of it,” he says.

The US has invoked national security to remove protections for the endangered cetacean, of which only about 50 are left

Since before modern humans existed Rice’s whales have been diving to the depths of the ocean to gorge on fat-rich fish while growing to leviathan proportions, their bodies spanning the length of a bus and weighing as much as as six elephants.

Unfortunately for these grand creatures, their only home became a patch of the Gulf of Mexico that the oil and gas industry, much later, became highly interested in for drilling. Only about 50 of these baleen whales still exist on Earth, surrounded by clanging aquatic highways of boats and shifting drilling infrastructure.

Home Office will use mapping technology and crime data to identify up to 250 schools in areas of greatest risk

Schools across England are to receive dedicated support to prevent knife crime incidents in a hyper-targeted Home Office programme that uses mapping technology to identify areas of risk down to the level of specific groups of streets.

Under the £1.2m scheme – part of a series of initiatives launched under a government pledge to halve knife crime within a decade – a maximum of 250 schools will receive help.

From September, trans girls, and young trans women who volunteer, will have to hand in their UK memberships

Angela has two daughters, aged 13 and 10, who both attend their local Girlguiding group in the UK. Like many girls their age, they enthusiastically collect their badges, make new friends and attend the organisation’s large summer jamboree every year.

But as of September, Angela’s youngest daughter will have to leave Girlguiding because she is transgender.

Retailer faces public outcry over treatment of Walker Smith, who tackled shoplifter stealing Easter eggs at London store

Waitrose is under growing pressure to reinstate an employee of 17 years who was sacked after tackling a shoplifter who was trying to steal Lindt Gold Bunny Easter eggs.

The retailer has faced public outcry over its treatment of Walker Smith, who was fired two days after he stopped the shoplifter taking items from the Easter egg display.

Exclusive: Seven of England’s 24 stroke centres still not providing mechanical thrombectomy 24/7 despite ministers’ pledges

The NHS has not made a “life-changing” treatment for stroke available around the clock across England despite ministers repeatedly promising that it would.

The health service was expected to improve stroke care by making a clot removal technique called mechanical thrombectomy available everywhere in the country 24/7 from 1 April.

Archive is freely available online from 18 April, revealing the lives, occupations and secrets of 2.9m people

The first years of independent Ireland tend to be remembered, if at all, as a dreary monochrome of parochialism and conservatism.

After the blazing dramas of the 1916 rebellion and the 1919-1921 Anglo-Irish war, the infant state seemed to limp into a grey period of insularity, the dream of freedom giving way to anti-climax and drab conformity.

US supreme court files brief order vacating lower court ruling that had upheld rightwing media host’s conviction

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Steve Bannon, the rightwing media host and ally of Donald Trump, appears likely to have his criminal conviction dismissed.

The US supreme court filed a brief order on Monday that vacated a lower court ruling that had upheld Bannon’s conviction and sent the case back to the US court of appeals for the DC circuit for “further consideration in light of the pending motion to dismiss the indictment”. The Trump administration had moved to dismiss Bannon’s conviction.

Pramila Jayapal and Jonathan Jackson denounce ‘collective punishment’ amid vast disruption s from US oil blockade

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Two Democratic US lawmakers on Monday called for an end to the “cruel collective punishment” of Cuba after they visited the island to witness the effects of an US energy blockade.

The US House members Pramila Jayapal of Washington and Jonathan Jackson of Illinois met with the Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, as well as members of Cuba’s parliament during a five-day trip ending on Sunday.

“This is cruel collective punishment – effectively an economic bombing of the infrastructure of the country – that has produced permanent damage,” Jayapal and Jackson said in a statement released on Sunday. “It must stop immediately.”

CBI figures showing surprise jump in financial sector’s growth will be welcome news for Rachel Reeves

Britain’s financial services companies have reported a strong recovery in activity at the start of the year, in a surprise boost to the government after a gloomy end to 2025.

Banks, insurers and investment managers said their businesses were growing, with a positive balance of nearly two-thirds noting an expansion, according to a long-running survey by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), a lobby group. That contrasted with the negative balance of 38% in December, despite the start of the US-Israel war on Iran.

US congressman decried bets on when two crew members on the F-15 jet shot down by Iranian forces would be rescued

After strong criticism from a federal lawmaker, the online betting platform Polymarket stopped accepting wagers on when US warplane crew members who were shot down in Iran might be rescued. It promised to investigate how the market materialized.

The criticism came from Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democratic representative who earned two bronze star medals serving with the United States Marine Corps in Iraq from 2003 to 2008 and published an X post describing Polymarket’s acceptance of bets on the downed pilots’ fate as “DISGUSTING”.

Companies using heating oil have already begun rationing their fuel use, says Federation of Small Businesses

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Thousands of independent businesses across the UK are braced for their energy bills to more than double owing to the sharp rise in heating oil costs as the war in Iran pushed Europe’s fuel market prices to fresh record highs.

About 7% of all small and medium-sized companies warm their properties and provide hot water using heating oil, which in some cases has more than doubled in recent weeks.

JP Morgan boss warns of risks of higher inflation and interest rates due to Iran war in annual letter to shareholders

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The head of the US’s largest bank has pressed the White House to strengthen Washington’s allies economically in order to “avoid truly adverse consequences”, in the latest intervention in an increasingly testy relationship with the Trump administration.

As the Middle East conflict sparked by US and Israeli attacks on Iran enters its sixth week, Jamie Dimon, the chair and chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, said in his annual letter to shareholders that good US foreign policy should put America first “though not alone”.

The latest in our series of writers paying tribute to their go-to comfort films celebrates Steven Spielberg’s escapist globe-trotting adventure

The ancient Greek philosopher Lucretius writes in his epic poem On the Nature of Things: “It is comforting, when winds are whipping up the waters of the vast sea, to watch from land the severe trials of another person … it is comforting to see from what troubles you yourself are exempt.”

This feeling of living dangerously by proxy is exactly why I find it so relaxing to watch Indiana Jones in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark go through an endless stream of trials and tribulations: trekking through the hot, sticky jungle. Avoiding venomous spiders and snakes. Being betrayed by not one, but two of his colleagues. Jumping over bottomless chasms and outrunning giant boulders, only to be thwarted by his arch-rival and chased by a tribe of bow-and-arrow-toting Amazonians. And that’s just the first 15 minutes of the film.

As a 600-page doorstopper celebrates their groundbreaking costumes, gigs, sleeves and videos, the duo talk about ‘side-stepping the pop-star thing’ – and the naked trampolinist EMI had to censor

In 1988, when he was 20, Wolfgang Tillmans tore an A0 poster off a building site hoarding and nailed it to a wall in his flat in Hamburg. It was advertising Pet Shop Boys’ new album, Introspective, and consisted of thick vertical bars in different colours. “It was just so cool in the context of the time,” the artist says today, admiring how the pop group had gone “one level more abstract”.

Around the same time in Doncaster, teenager Alasdair McLellan – now an A-list fashion photographer – was impressed by the clothes of Pet Shop Boys’ keyboard-player Chris Lowe; for instance the cap, stripy T-shirt and Issey Miyake glasses on the cover of their single Suburbia. “I always thought he was the best-dressed man of the 80s,” McLellan says. “Obviously, he just stood there playing the keyboard and I always noticed what he was wearing, especially all that sportswear stuff. He just seemed to do it better than everyone else.” McLellan couldn’t get style magazines in his village, so his visual education came from pop and the music press. “I got into photography through album covers, Smash Hits and NME.”

DC Universe supremo Gunn’s thinly conceived debut feature gets a glossy repackaging for seemingly no other reason than his later success

This grotesquerie-heavy exercise in comic body horror was writer-director James Gunn’s first feature in 2006; a commercial flop at the time, it was Gunn’s crack at the big time, made long before he went on to direct the likes of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, the most recent iteration of Superman and take over as head honcho for the DC cinematic universe. His subsequent success (apart from that time he got briefly cancelled for ill-advised tweets) might partially explain why this early work is getting a glossy repackaging now. It’s the film industry equivalent of a reputational glow-up, as if a flawed, underwhelming early work should now be considered a misunderstood work of genius.

Sadly, Slither is by no stretch of the imagination a work of genius. Its science fiction elements are thinly conceived, while the use of rubbery practical effects and lame jokes feel much closer to the work of the Troma brand where Gunn got his training wheels. The main conceit here is that an alien lifeform, whose larvae look like flaccid phallic worms with severe sunburn, crash lands on Earth via an asteroid and then proceeds to take over a small South Carolina town. The first to be possessed is Grant (Michael Rooker, a Gunn regular ever since), a good ol’ boy with a unhealthy obsession with his wife Starla (Elizabeth Banks, displaying her typically professional comic chops); she still has a soft spot for local head of police Bill (Nathan Fillion). One by one, members of the town are penetrated through various orifices by the worm larvae, some of them becoming evil minions and some, like unlucky area woman Brenda (Brenda James), turning into hideously swollen incubators for further larvae.

Away from outside discrimination, this documentary brings us into the home of graffiti artist Lana and drag queen Opal

In the small flat shared by Opal and Lana, a young queer couple living in Dundee, love is everywhere. Countless photos of them on fun outings line the walls, interspersed with colourful sketches by Lana, a talented graffiti artist. Scattered around Opal’s makeup table are beautiful wigs, with which she transforms into a glamorous drag persona at night. As trans femme, they face immense discrimination from the outside world. Within these walls, however, there is an oasis of tenderness and care.

In a media landscape that continues to sensationalise trans existence, director Mark Lyken deploys a slice-of-life visual approach. It is as if we are not merely watching Opal and Lana, but are hanging out with them as friends. Closeups and interior shots draw beauty out of the ordinary every day as the bond between the couple is captured through seemingly simple acts of affection and household chores such as cooking or washing-up. Considering that both have faced rejection from their families, these mundane gestures hold a world of meaning.

Notionally about the vampire, Radu Jude’s new movie involves a bizarre troupe of actors doing a floor-show routine

Did Radu Jude just invent pop-up cinema? The Romanian director’s movies have a wildly improvised, no-budget theatricality in the spirit of Brecht or Fassbinder, a make-do-and-mend cinema that looks as if it has been made up on the spot with the materials to hand, including bits of TV ads, bad AI in the service of bad porn (what he, in an earlier film, called “loony porn”) and amdram scenes with actors in ridiculous dress-up. It sometimes seems as if each Jude film is almost to be viewed once only; if you press play again, or go to the cinema to see it a second time, there will be only a blank screen, as if Jude and his ragged company have folded their tents and vanished.

This new movie is crazily stretched out to epic length with knockabout comedy and stretches of tedium redeemed (just about) with angry, pointed satire. It is – notionally – about Dracula; or rather, about a smug and supercilious film-maker (Adonis Tanta) introducing us to the cheapo film he is concocting on the subject on his iPad, using unbearable AI. We also see a rackety troupe of actors doing a floor-show routine about Dracula in what looks like a restaurant, with veteran Romanian actor Gabriel Spahiu playing the aged and delusional old thesp who once thought he really was Dracula, and Oana Maria Zaharia as Vampira, a sexy and, indeed, vampy representative of the undead. This group encourages its audience to have sexual encounters with the cast-members; it also offers families a more wholesome kind of hide-and-seek romp where the audience chase the vampire actors out into the street.

From soundtracking the silent era, via 50s rock’n’roll and the ‘symphonic pop’ of Henry Mancini to iconic works by John Williams and Hans Zimmer, movies are unimaginable without music. Ahead of the London soundtrack festival its artistic director picks 10 scores that moved the dial

The music of cinema’s earliest years played a crucial role in how audiences – with a live pianist or organist soundtracking the silent movie – experienced the stories on screen. But it wasn’t until the advent of synchronised sound that they were guaranteed the same musical experience.

Even that moment, widely regarded to be 1926’s Don Juan – an otherwise silent film – wasn’t a true soundtrack. Warner Bros used the Vitaphone system, essentially a recording on disc that was played with the picture. The same system was used for 1927’s The Jazz Singer, the first film for which voices were synchronised to the picture as well. Playing a disc to picture was unreliable, and it wasn’t long before music could be printed directly on to the celluloid of the film itself and the soundtrack proper was born.

Mindy Kaling is the first celebrity to join Ike Barinholtz in a lovable new series. Plus: a moreish pod about being single in your 30s

“Oh, this is a quizshow?!” exclaims Mindy Kaling, not so much maligning actor and gameshow champ Ike Barinholtz’s (pictured) new podcast as misunderstanding it. She’s soon up to speed with his mix of trivia questions and meandering chat (which in Kaling’s case touches on everything from Chevy Chase to New Jersey Italian food). It is an amiable, low-stakes entry to the arguably oversaturated celebrity interview canon. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

The Blue singer thinks Aqua deserve respect and his mum once did karaoke with a legend. But what record did he buy to please his nan - with mixed results?

The song I inexplicably know all the lyrics to
Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis – the song I sent off on tape as my audition to Blue.

The song I do at karaoke
I had my 30th birthday party in a karaoke bar above a Chinese restaurant. My mum was doing It’s Raining Men by Geri Halliwell, just as Geri herself walked in, so she grabbed her, brought her on stage, and went: “Sing. It’s your song.” I thought: “Mum. She’s just arrived. Chill out!”

The Chicago band’s frantic, urgent guitar melodies celebrate hope, friendship and family in these uncertain times

From Chicago, Illinois
Recommended if you like Modest Mouse, Wilco, Car Seat Headrest
Up next Second album Something Worth Waiting For out 24 April, touring the US from April and Europe in summer

In Friko’s hands, a swirl of influences and experiments curve the many colours of indie rock into an endlessly inventive, radiant ramble. The Chicago band’s upcoming, cheekily titled second album, Something Worth Waiting For, explores the energy of yearning: for growth, for change, for stability. Across nine tracks, Friko take inspiration from their recent spate of touring to orbit the idea of finding things worth moving for and the value of the journey itself.

Set in County Donegal, the poet’s polyphonic third novel wittily explores the fragile dynamics of a family navigating the loss of a father

The dark hull of a shipwreck, beached and rotting on the sand, provides the powerful symbolism in award-winning poet and author Susannah Dickey’s third novel Into the Wreck. Five members of a family mourn the death of a gentle but distant father: a man shaped into silence by the Troubles, and whose absence leaves each of them trying to comprehend a family truth that was never fully articulated.

The story is set in a coastal town in modern-day County Donegal, delivered to us in five separate narratives. Gemma, the middle child of three, is studying for A-levels alongside an awkwardly timed new obsession with boys; she harbours a self-imposed responsibility to maintain the fragile equilibrium of the family home. Anna, the eldest, fled to London at 16 to escape constant confrontations with her mother and is now forced to return for her father’s funeral, while Matthew, the youngest, silently and heartbreakingly carries the weight of the world’s and the family’s problems on his 15-year-old shoulders.

The journalistic adventurer and trans trailblazer is revealed as brilliant, prolific and deeply selfish

Jan Morris had two stipulations before she would agree to sit for a painting for the National Portrait Gallery in London. Ibsen, her Norwegian forest cat, should feature. And so should one of her calves. The gallery acceded, and the resulting portrait shows Morris, then just shy of 80, in a yellow jumper and dark green skirt, Ibsen glowering beside her bare legs. She was pleased with the portrait, though she thought it could, perhaps, have been a little larger.

Could any canvas contain Jan Morris? Janus-faced hardly does her justice. She was a sympathetic historian of empire who became a republican Welsh nationalist ( and who nevertheless accepted a CBE). The author of more than 50 books ranging across travel writing, biography, history, memoir and fiction, she was a workaholic who, as some of those books testify, could be shockingly lazy. A preacher of the “religion of kindness”, she was cruel to her children.

From sad-fishing on Facebook to sensational Substack revelations – today’s readers don’t have to look far for confessional writing. Is this the end of autobiography?

Every day I meet strangers who share intimate details with me. It’s called reading. In a newspaper piece a former sex addict recalls her need for BDSM (“when a sexual partner hurt me, I felt seen”) and how she conquered her dependency. On Substack an actor describes her grief on losing a baby (“After the miscarriage, I became convinced my daughter was backstage. I would push back the costumes on the rack and almost expect to find her”). And then there are the published memoirs, first-person stories of trauma, displacement and heartbreak. It’s not just women who unburden themselves, of course. As Martin Amis says in his memoir, Experience: “We are all writing it or at any rate talking it: the memoir, the apologia, the CV, the cri de coeur.”

Recent memoirs have upped the ante, though. What was once a geriatric, self-satisfied genre (politicians, generals and film stars looking back fondly on long careers) is now open to anyone with a story to tell – “nobody memoirs”, the American journalist Lorraine Adams has called them. Candour is the key, no matter how fraught the consequences. “Most writers I know,” Maggie Nelson writes in The Argonauts, “nurse persistent fantasies about the horrible things – or the horrible thing – that will happen to them if and when they express themselves as they desire”. But she takes that risk, addressing the book to “you”, her fluidly gendered husband Harry (who’s angry when she shows him a draft), while exploring identity, pregnancy, motherhood and sexuality.

As medieval sages understood, putting things off – done well – can open the doors to creativity and purpose

A soft rain hammers at the window. I’ve pushed the couch to the other side of the coffee table because I need to get closer to my floor lamp. In front of me is a stack of 40 student essays, unopened and ungraded. The water I boiled for tea went cold an hour ago and I’m looking up the age of celebrities on Wikipedia. David Hasselhoff (born 17 July 1952). Dannii Minogue (born 20 October 1971). Has my afternoon been wasted? Is this … procrastination?

Today the P-word has a bad reputation. Psychologists link it with increased anxiety, diminished self-esteem and depression. And magazines (like the ones I just sorted into a date-ordered stack) feature articles with headlines such as “How to Stop Procrastinating, NOW!” Am I one of the 20% of the population with “chronic procrastination”, the lifelong tendency to avoid doing the things I should be doing? A few years ago, this would have alarmed me – but now I no longer worry. I embrace days like this. Because an obscure idea I discovered in a work of medieval theology has taught me how to relax.

From a subtle Princess Peach lip jelly to a Yoshi egg that’s been traumatising children, the cosmetic chain’s latest tie-in is out of this world

When The Super Mario Bros Movie came out in 2023, it came with a rather unlikely tie-in: a range of skincare and bathing products from cosmetics chain Lush. The store, known for its devotion to natural ingredients and support for social justice causes, didn’t seem like the obvious partner for a major video game franchise. Because of this, I thought I should try them out, assuming that my dalliance with beauty journalism would be short-lived.

I was wrong. The collection was so successful, Lush later released a Minecraft range, which I also reviewed, and now there’s a Super Mario Galaxy range to tie in with the new movie. Somehow, I have become the Guardian’s Lush correspondent and it seems I am now trapped in a sweet-smelling cycle of video game-branded toiletries. There are definitely worse fates, so I’m just going with it.

PlayStation 5 (version tested), Xbox, Nintendo Switch 2, PC; Deck Nine/Square Enix
Max and Chloe, the two teen protagonists of the 2015 game, reunite as adults – giving players the chance to finally finish their journey

In 2015, Life Is Strange stood out for two reasons: its female protagonists, a depressingly rare feature at the time, and its unique brand of millennial cringe. The thirtysomething Frenchmen who created this series may not have had the best grasp of the 2010s teen lexicon, but they did have a good gauge on what’s important about any coming-of-age story, and that’s the relationships between the characters. Max Caulfield, the shy, time-travelling wannabe photographer, and Chloe Price, the traumatised, punk-rock tearaway, had a memorably intense friendship. It was the heart and soul of that game, and now, 11 years later, they are reunited as adults in this final chapter of their story.

For a lot of players, Max and Chloe felt like more than best friends. The game’s original developers were not brave enough to make this explicit in 2015, but newer custodians Deck Nine retconned a romantic relationship between Max and Chloe into 2024’s Life Is Strange: Double Exposure. You can still play Reunion as if the two really were just friends, resulting in some awkward ambiguity in some scenes. Whichever way you slice it, though, this is a game about first love, and how it always stays with you, even when its object does not. And damned if it didn’t make me feel something.

We are paying more for a PlayStation so that idiots can use ChatGPT to mislead people on dating apps – something is rotten in the state of gaming

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When the PlayStation 5 launched almost five and a half years ago, it was listed at £449 in the UK. If you were to buy one at the recommended retail price today, it would be £569.99, or £789.99 for the updated Pro model. Sony has just raised the price of its console by another £90, the latest in a series of hikes. This is unprecedented: consoles have always decreased in price over time (until they become retro collectibles – the other day, I saw someone asking £200 for a SNES on Vinted). So, what’s going on?

Unfortunately, this is another case of artificial intelligence ruining things for everyone. AI data centres need lots and lots and lots of computing power to be able to present you with lies whenever you Google anything, and this has pushed up demand and pricing for RAM and storage. This isn’t the only reason prices are rising – the wars in Ukraine and Iran have caused global economic disruption, and rampant inflation has eaten into many companies’ bottom line. But AI is the cause that’s easiest to get angry about, because it doesn’t need to be this way.

From an interactive session of Sex With Friends to improvised Robot Karaoke, the Friday Live celebration of play and performance amid the museum’s venerable halls was a reminder of gaming’s cultural clout

In the grand entrance of the Victoria & Albert Museum, beneath a looming dome with ancient statues visible through nearby arches, a programmer/DJ is busy live-coding a glitchy electronic music set. Either side of her, large LED displays show streams of code and strobing pixellated images as the bass pounds. She’s part of a group named London Live Coding, an experimental collective that makes music by writing and manipulating audio programs. It is loud, disorientating and brilliant, and I can’t help wondering what Queen Victoria and her husband would have made of it.

The set is part of the museum’s long-running Friday Late evening series, a collaboration with the London Games Festival. It showcased a range of independent video games and immersive interactive experiences, focusing on the link between play and performance. Visitors were given a map and left to wander the halls, corridors and galleries looking for installations. You could play the Bafta-winning comedy game Thank Goodness You’re Here! on a giant screen beneath a 13th-century spiral staircase. You could wander down the darkened Prince Consort’s gallery and find groups of giggling pals playing the hilarious erotic physics puzzler Sex With Friends, in which ragdoll-like characters have to be guided into (consensual) sexual encounters – much to the amusement of spectators.

Hammersmith Apollo, London
The sitcom star and Taskmaster stalwart is on commanding form as she embarks on Older Than Jesus, her first – and deeply daft – standup tour

That staple realisation of early midlife, that one has now lived longer than Jesus did, usually hits around aged 33. Aisling Bea is 42, and only just getting round to performing Older Than Jesus – a show, or at least a title, you suspect may have been long in the planning. Fair enough: what with hit sitcoms here and a Taskmaster stint there, the County Kildare import has only now embarked on her first standup tour. But there’s nothing rookie about the 75 minutes offered up here: Bea is on commanding and fun-loving form with a set assembling the thoughts prompted by (and sometimes even related to) her recent “accidental pregnancy” and becoming a mum.

Lest that suggest maturity on the show’s part, let me cheerfully note that Bea comes across as unreconstructedly daft and self-involved as ever. Whether she’s recalling a childhood fashioning DIY Dairylea spreadables with secondhand “bodies of Christ”, acting out at the wrap party for a duff Take That movie, or moonlighting as a dad at her sister’s antenatal class, the keynote is always cartoon egotism and a keen sense of her own ridiculousness. Putting her back out when performing a “slut drop”, or later curating the playlist to her own C-section, we’re invited to savour the contrast between the glamourpuss Bea of her own fervent imagination, and the less Insta-friendly reality.

Watermill theatre, Newbury
Screenwriter Daisy Goodwin imagines the old queen revisiting her diaries and reveals a tale of control and coercion behind Albert’s dutiful devotion

When screenwriter Daisy Goodwin read that Prince Albert liked to choose Victoria’s bonnets, she wondered: was this an act of domestic devotion, or of something darker? She explored the heady early years of their relationship in a TV drama – but this new play finds a tale of coercive control within the revered model marriage.

We open at Windsor, in the dank tail of Victoria’s long reign. Amanda Boxer’s queen is a fretful owl in black bombazine, withering and imperious, if no stranger to self pity (“a poor widow with no one to support me through all my tribulations”). An inveterate diary-keeper, her children worry that the candid volumes will be published after her death.

Sadie Coles HQ, London
From holiday snaps to atrocities, Throbbing Gristle album covers to backsides in shorts, the Polish painter reproduces the scattered attention and flattened perspective of our social media age

Wilhelm Sasnal has transformed the ground floor of Sadie Coles’ elegant gallery into a parade of broken images: the Oval Office, a ghastly forest, a blasted tree trunk, the artist’s wife and daughter, a British post-punk band, and the sitting US president surrounded by cronies, his face resembling the burn produced by screwing a lit cigarette into a photograph.

These paintings, most of which are untitled, are broken in the sense that an online link can be broken: it is difficult to connect them to their source. (It would be useful to know the location of that tree, for instance.) They are also broken in that they do not fit together as a whole. What connects that revolting White House interior, with its acid greens and faecal browns, with a spooky forest? What links President Trump to the founders of industrial music?

Dorfman theatre, London
Comedy infuses Winsome Pinnock’s disarming but ebullient drama about two Black academics who are given the job of authenticating the diaries of an enslaver

You don’t imagine many laughs in a story about enslavement legacies and erased Black histories. But comedy infuses Winsome Pinnock’s ebullient drama about two Black academics who are given the job of authenticating a cache of 18th-century diaries written by an enslaver.

Fen (short for Fenella, played by Sylvestra Le Touzel), is a direct descendant of Henry Harford, now managing his illustrious country estate, and it is she who finds the diaries that catalogued life on his Jamaican farm run by enslaved people. She gives Abi (Rakie Ayola) and Marva (Cherrelle Skeete) full rein of the diaries, so that they can authenticate them for posterity. Harford showed every sign of having been an abolitionist, she says in mitigation, although Abi and Marva’s investigations turn up disturbing evidence of his brutality in Jamaica.

‘We performed it everywhere, even on Miss World. Once, on tour, a fan pulled me into the pit – but my hunky Italian security guard put me back on stage’

I had come to England from St Louis, Missouri, in the 1970s to do an album for a singer, and decided to stick around. I was in Slim Chance with Ronnie Lane for a while, and went on tour with Gallagher and Lyle. Then, come the 80s, I started doing more writing and co-wrote songs for Shakin’ Stevens, Elkie Brooks and Paul Young.

Rapper ‘very thankful’ to be given chance to enter mental health diversion program after arrest in LA last year

A judge has allowed Lil Nas X to enter a mental health diversion program intended to lead to the dismissal of charges of attacking Los Angeles police officers.

Judge Alan Schneider told the rapper and singer on Monday that if he sticks to his treatment program and obeys all laws for two years, his four felony counts will be dismissed.

The former member of Migos is in a stable condition after being shot on Monday, with police detaining two people

The rapper Offset is in a stable condition in hospital after he was shot outside a Florida casino on Monday.

The former member of the Atlanta hip-hop trio Migos, whose real name is Kiari Kendrell Cephus, was shot in a valet area outside the Seminole Hard Rock hotel and casino, Offset’s spokesperson confirmed to media.

Popular diet tweaks may boost the hormone a little, but the effect on your pecs is likely to be limited

It’s an increasingly popular idea: “boosting” testosterone with diet tweaks – increasing foods rich in zinc and magnesium – hoping to build muscle faster. But the reality is more nuanced.

Testosterone is an androgen hormone that plays a key role in development, particularly in boys during puberty. Its effect on muscle isn’t simply about how much of it you have, but how your body responds to it.

As a child, Gary Fisher was terrible at card games. How did he end up making his living from one?

Gary Fisher has always enjoyed a game of poker, but after he turned 60, his partner suggested he take it seriously. “She said, ‘You’re really good at it, but you don’t study. You just turn up and play.’” It wasn’t what Fisher expected to hear, but he set about researching the game, completed some online courses, got a coach – and now plays professionally.

So far this year, Fisher, who lives in London, has travelled to competitions in Cyprus, Marrakech, Amsterdam, Tallinn and Paris. He pays to enter, and has won $200,000 (£150,000) in prize money. “I’ve had a very good start,” he says. He is speaking on a video call from his hotel in Dublin where he is taking part in the Irish Open. Next he will travel to Melbourne.

Tell us: has your life taken a new direction after the age of 60?

Whether it’s organising the shed, sharpening tools or giving garden furniture a good scrub, here are tips to prep – and enjoy – your outdoor patch

• The best pressure washers – tested

The winter of soggy malaise is over. Daffs have popped up; the tulips are well on their way; the days are bright, clear and longer than the nights are short. With that comes a sense of the outdoors: the garden. Perhaps this fills you with delight, getting your fingers in the earth after work or dinner. Or perhaps it fills you with a sense of vague dread – you haven’t been out there all winter, and there’s just so much to do.

But our gardens are places for us to enjoy and share with others in our ecosystem. So if you want to spend the summer luxuriating in yours, now is the time to get your sticks together: sow, grow and don’t mow.

Not sure where to begin or want to simplify your current regimen? Our expert demystifies the marketing with her step-by-step skincare guide

• The best anti-ageing creams and serums

Skincare has never been so overwhelming, as we’re bombarded with ads for complicated-sounding products and TikTok routines that promise dramatic results in just days. I get it. Despite having been a beauty journalist for more than 15 years, even I haven’t been able to escape the noise; I’ve stood in front of a bathroom cabinet full of half-used serums, wondering why my skin was left feeling worse, not better.

Somewhere along the way, we were sold the idea that more steps, more products and more intensity equals better skin. But it rarely does, and what works best, ultimately, is consistency – which is boring (sorry) but effective.

Whether it’s a tiered tulle skirt or a hardworking Henley tee, our fashion expert’s Easter basket is brimming with joy

• The best women’s spring wardrobe updates for under £100

I am a big fan of Easter, which is an underrated holiday in my opinion: lots of joy and food, but better weather than Christmas (or at least more daylight) and less stress.

So my April shopping list starts, naturally, with a chocolate egg. More goodies include not one but two stormingly gorgeous new-season high-street skirts. Also, an umbrella to keep you smiling through the inevitable spring rain – and the shades you’ll want when the sun comes out. Because that’s April for you!

Once a corporate trademark, the half-zip sweater is now fashion’s hottest look. Want to avoid cosplaying Rishi Sunak when you wear one? Our menswear expert reveals all

• Men’s spring wardrobe updates for under £100

You’ve probably noticed more quarter-zips around. This time, it’s not the City boys to blame. Rather, it’s that the fashion industry’s attitude has shifted. Once dismissed (not least by GQ, who named it “a joyless jumper for the joyless grind”), the style has been reclaimed by the very people who deemed it uncool – I even wore a Vivienne Westwood design to attend London fashion week.

In menswear circles, the rise has been slow and steady. IYKYK labels such as Mfpen and Amiri introduced them into their autumn/winter 2025 collections, before luxury houses Dior and Louis Vuitton followed suit for spring/summer 26. A few A-list celebs have been spotted wearing them (including People magazine’s sexiest man alive for 2025, Jonathan Bailey). The popularity is measurable, too – in the latest Lyst Index (a quarterly report of the world’s most coveted items in fashion), Polo Ralph Lauren’s cable-knit quarter-zip was named the top menswear buy.

Serve this over sticky rice, to soak up all those spicy, buttery juices

The classic combination of soy sauce and honey salmon is a staple in our house, and works for kids and adults alike. However, sometimes I want to change things up, so here I’ve elevated it slightly with a gochujang dressing – similar principle, but with a bit of heat and depth, as well as richness from the butter. Using butter might seem unusual, but it is often paired with soy sauce in Japan (shoyu butter) with an indulgent result. Serve the fish over sticky rice, to soak up all those spicy, buttery juices, with steamed greens on the side.

The Guardian aims to publish recipes for sustainable fish. Check ratings in your region: UK; Australia; US.

This marvellous staple of the Portuguese kitchen is a rich bean stew with pork and sausages that makes an excellent one-pot feast. You might find it’s perfect for midweek …

If you are trying to incorporate more beans and pulses into your diet, as I am, then this robust, one-pot feast, which food writer Edite Vieira describes as “a marvellous standby of the Portuguese kitchen”, is one to bear in mind. Though each region has its own variations, “basically”, she explains, “feijoada is a rich bean stew with pork and sausages”. The Brazilian version, often cited as that country’s national dish, is the product of the West African “love of beans”, according to the Oxford Companion to Food, with some suggesting that it’s a South American creation that travelled to Europe along with returning colonisers. Others insist with equal fervour that the dish was “born in the north of Portugal, and imported and adapted to what was available in Brazil”. Like so many such homely favourites, its precise history will probably ever remain a mystery; what’s important is that it’s simple to prepare, easy to adapt according to taste and budget, and very satisfying.

It’s wild garlic time again! Try this pesto with an aromatic chicken, fennel and potato stew, then dive into a fudgy banana cake with a tantalisingly crunchy top

I love Mexican chillies for the subtle flavour they give to cooking. Take the ancho, with its sweet, earthy notes of chocolate and plum. That adds immense depth to dishes traditional and avant garde alike, and is now readily available online and in shops. In today’s one-pot, which is a near-perfect way to cook a whole chicken, the ancho adds character to a classic sofrito, while in the pudding the savoury notes and touch of heat complement the dark caramel, helping to create a banana cake that is anything but bland. If you can’t find ancho, try any other medium-heat chilli flake in its place (nora, aleppo), or simply leave it out. The results will be delicious either way.

A cheerful rice bowl fragrant with ginger, garlic and spring onion, and laced with a sprightly chilli bean sauce

With spring in the air, I want a dish that’s the equivalent of turning the key in the ignition, firing up the engine and riding off into the sun. In short: something with a bit of va-va-voom. That dish, for me, is these Sichuan aubergines, a take on the classic “fish fragrant aubergines” (so called because the same aromatics are often used to cook fish). Creamy to begin with, they’re layered with flavour by way of ginger, garlic, spring onion and, finally, laced with delight and good times owing to the bright chilli bean sauce and vinegar.

Experts weigh in on why some people have an inexplicable barrier to responding – and what they can do about it

“There’s no such thing as a bad texter. They just don’t want to respond,” said influencer Delaney Rowe last year on the online talkshow Subway Takes. “People go around thinking being a bad texter is like a pathology, but it’s not. It’s a cop-out.”

“I don’t believe in bad texters,” announced radio host Dan Zolot last year. “If you want to answer you will answer.”

After I collapsed during a run along a beach, my loyal dog Beau sprang into action

When I lost my wife, Jo, to cancer eight years ago, I knew it was time for a fresh start, so I packed up my London home and moved to Poole on the Dorset coast. I longed for a companion, so I welcomed a labrador puppy into my life, naming him Beau in a nod to the time Jo and I had spent living in France.

A gun dog from Derbyshire with a sleek black coat and deep brown eyes, Beau was an adorable and mischievous puppy who kept me on my toes right from the start. When he was six months old, he rummaged in a fisherman’s bucket and swallowed a fishing line and hook. Thankfully, it came out the other end, narrowly avoiding surgery.

Japan’s ban on married couples having different surnames has prompted an event to highlight people’s reluctance to change their name

At the very least, the three men and three women calming their nerves on a Friday evening at a venue in Tokyo know they have one thing in common.

Spaced out across booths, they will soon be placed in pairs and given 15 minutes to get to know one another.

Before Miguel, Sandra’s sex life was rather vanilla. When they got together, he suggested swinging – and all that changed

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

I never thought, when I was a pregnant Catholic teenager, that I’d have this lifestyle, but my God, it’s fun

She can’t get enough of hearing about my hook-ups, and I can’t get enough of the fact that she can’t get enough

The key takeaways for who is eligible and how to seek redress from the new FCA motor finance scheme

Complain now to be at the front of the queue. That is the message from the City regulator and the consumer champion Martin Lewis as a scheme gets under way to pay out about £7.5bn in total to millions of motorists mis-sold car loans.

More information emerged this week about how much money the different categories of people might get and how it will all work after Monday’s announcement that an industry-wide compensation scheme for victims of the UK’s car finance scandal is definitely going ahead.

From a 300-year old building in the heart of ‘cheddar cheese and cider’ country, to a newly renovated smallholding in an area of outstanding natural beauty

Only way to avoid missing a flight because of EES rules: squeeze everything into a cabin bag and skip luggage check-in

Travellers to the EU risk missing their flights because bag drop-off times don’t allow for the long queues to get through a new security system.

My family of four missed our easyJet flight home from Málaga because, although we followed advice from the airport and arrived three hours before departure, the bag drop-off didn’t open until two hours before.

Snappy performance, high-quality screen, best-in-class keyboard and trackpad show cheaper can still be great

Apple’s brand new entry-level laptop is powered by the chip from an iPhone and offers more than just the essential MacBook experience for a great price, putting the PC industry on notice.

The MacBook Neo is the first of its kind from Apple. A 13in laptop that runs on an A18 Pro chip and brings the starting price for a brand new MacBook down to £599 (€699/$599/A$899) – £500 or the equivalent less than the MacBook Air.

I suffered with my mystery illness for decades before gaining a diagnosis. Could retraining my brain be the answer?

By Hermione Hoby. Read by Alby Baldwin

An army of ‘pregnancy prep’ influencers is offering would-be parents everything from sensible advice to quackery and questionable supplements. What’s really needed?

Anything to do with pregnancy can sometimes feel like a crash course in withstanding uncertainty. From getting pregnant in the first place to avoiding complications later on, any parent-to-be is forced to reckon with the limits of their own control.

The stats around this are worth emphasising: about one in seven couples in the UK will have difficulty conceiving. About one in eight known pregnancies will end in a loss. And as many as 29% of low-risk pregnancies will experience some kind of unforeseen complication. Often there’s no rhyme or reason to any of this. “You can do everything ‘right’ and still face delays. That’s biology, not failure,” says Dr Linda Farahani, a consultant gynaecologist and specialist in reproductive medicine at the Lister Fertility Clinic in Chelsea, London.

The practice touted by Nicole Daedone combined spirituality, mindfulness and sexuality. Then came the controversy – and prison sentence

In 2009, the New York Times ran a story about Nicole Daedone and her wellness company, OneTaste, which promoted women’s empowerment through a practice known as “orgasmic meditation” (OM).

“I don’t think women will really experience freedom until they own their sexuality,” Daedone said at the time.

Scottish designers are showcased alongside a backstage set and props including a Chanel-branded megaphone

In 1971, Manolo Blahnik created shoes for the designer Ossie Clark’s catwalk show in London. Relatively new to shoemaking, the Spanish designer forgot to put steel pins in the heels of the shoes, which meant that models wobbled, unbalanced, down the catwalk. Blahnik thought it was the end of his career. But the press thought it was a deliberate style; the photographer Sir Cecil Beaton even christened it “a new way of walking”.

The sandal in question, a green suede heel with ivy leaf embellishments, is just one treasure currently on display at the V&A Dundee’s new exhibition, Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show, which helps bring to life more than 100 years of history, charting its journey from the discreet salons of 19th-century London and Paris all the way up to the extravaganza it is today.

Fabric that once defined Northern Ireland’s capital is at heart of its stylish revival, embraced by designers, royalty and heritage farmers alike

On a cobbled street in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, next door to a hipster coffee shop and opposite an ice-cream parlour that has a near-constant queue since going viral on TikTok, the elegant Kindred of Ireland boutique is doing a surprisingly brisk trade in artfully oversized butter yellow linen blouses and exquisite Donegal mulberry tweed jackets finished with a length of rose pink linen tied in a bow at the nape of the neck.

Half a century after the Troubles, Belfast is finding a new identity through an industry that once defined it. Linen – the fibre that built its wealth and earned it the name Linenopolis – is being woven into a story of renewal. Almost a century after the postwar collapse of an industry that, at its peak, employed 40% of the working population of Northern Ireland, linen is returning as a marker of identity.

The key to stopping pale colours feeling saccharine? Breaking them up with tougher textures – here are three ideas to whip up this weekend from our styling editor

Nevermind the trends, want to know how to dress for actual spring weather? Then read on

It all came to a head, as matters of getting dressed so often do, over black tights. I had wanted to wear my silver skirt, you see. It was a rare blue-sky day and the sunshine was making me crave reflective surfaces to maximise the light. Anyway, you know how it is when you just get a yen to wear something. So I pulled out said silver skirt and then realised I didn’t want to wear the black opaque tights I wear with it in winter, but it wasn’t anywhere near warm enough to wear it with bare legs as I do in summer. I was completely stumped. And it made me realise: I need a refresher course in what to wear at this time of year. Spring has sprung, but I have forgotten how to hop to it.

So here we have it: your pocket primer on how to dress for spring. I’m talking about the spring that happens every year, an actual real-world meteorological phenomenon, not about the fashion trends of this particular moment. The lengthening days, daylight commuting, the juicy greens and yellows of the landscape, the maverick unpredictability of rain. Whether zebra stripes are the new leopard does not concern us today. We don’t need fashion to provide the newness when newness is in abundance in the world. So we can flick back through the pages to remind ourselves of spring’s fashion classics.

Under Anne Hidalgo – mayor for 12 years until last week – the French capital added bike lanes, cut traffic and reclaimed public space, but not without resistance

When Corentin Roudaut moved to Paris 10 years ago, he was too scared to cycle. The IT developer had biked everywhere as a student in Rennes but felt overwhelmed by the bustling French capital. Cars were everywhere. Cyclists had almost no protection.

But once authorities carved out space for a segregated bike lane on Boulevard Voltaire near his home in the 11th arrondissement, Roudaut returned to the two-wheel commute and did not look back.

Some of the best under-the-radar attractions across the Channel include steampunk wonders in Calais and the largest collection of impressionist works outside Paris

You don’t need to venture too far into France to find its wow factor. Indeed, within minutes of exiting the ferry or Channel Tunnel, you can be staring a fire-breathing dragon in the face. The Dragon de Calais is a 25-metre-long mechanical beast that stomps along the renovated sea front carrying 48 passengers on its back (adult ticket €9.50), emitting jets of fire, steam and water from its nostrils. It was created by the team behind Les Machines de L’île, a collection of steampunk wonders including a 12-metre elephant, in Nantes.

Designed as a shortcut between the Atlantic and the Med, today the scenic waterway from Toulouse to Sète is seen as a living ‘work of art’

Centuries before Donald Trump started playing around with the world economy, “tariff” was a levy paid to Spain by ships using the strait of Gibraltar; it was named for Tarifa, the town near the strait’s narrowest point. France’s kings had long dreamed of a waterway linking the Atlantic to the Mediterranean: as well as depriving the Spanish monarch of easy money, it would save ships a long voyage around Spain and Portugal, risking storms and pirates.

From the Atlantic, vessels can reach Toulouse from the Gironde estuary (on the Garonne River), but not until the 1660s did anyone have a viable plan for the remaining 200km to the Med. Considered one of the biggest engineering feats of the 17th century, Pierre-Paul Riquet’s Canal du Midi (finished in 1681 and called the Canal Royal du Languedoc until the revolution) rewrote the history of transport and commerce in the south of France – for centuries it carried wheat and wine, people and post.

Regular swappers say they not only make big savings but create connections. Here is how it works

About six miles from Reims, beside a golf course, is a house with a heated pool and space to sleep 10 people that would probably be perfect for many of those planning to book a family holiday in France.

An hour’s drive from Disneyland Paris, the four-bedroom property is quiet, located near a village with a bakery, has an electric gate that provides security, and is on almost half an hectare (one acre) of land.

The shock of the oil crisis is playing out on Australian streets, where bike sales are up and cycle lanes are busier

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Before the 1970s global oil crisis, city planners in Copenhagen were considering removing bike lanes. Bicycles were considered outdated now car was king, and just 10% of locals were cycling regularly.

But as economic shock waves reverberated around the world, Denmark, which almost entirely relied on imported oil, took a dramatic U-turn, with citizens staging mass protests in the middle of highways demanding better cycling infrastructure.

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Human brains are designed to detect faces as quickly as possible, which can lead to the perception of ‘false faces’

Faces: we see them in clouds, electrical outlets and even a $28,000 toasted sandwich said to look like the Virgin Mary.

Known as face pareidolia, seeing faces in inanimate objects or patterns of light and shadow is a common phenomenon.

I vividly remember thinking how out of line the shopkeeper was. But as I thought more about what she said, I realised she’d done me a favour

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

More than 30 years ago, I set out to build my dream house in a small rural town. It was a stressful process exacerbated by a demanding career that required me to travel across Asia and the Pacific for weeks at a time. The challenges of juggling parenting, marriage, my work and the house felt overwhelming at times. Not to mention the builders were falling behind schedule and often did not show up at all.

One day I found myself in a lighting shop, finally ready to buy light fittings. The woman who ran the shop was not exactly friendly but, as it was the only shop of its kind around, she won my business by default. I asked her a few questions about some lights and received only one- or two-word answers. I made the purchase and, as I was about to leave, she looked me firmly in the eyes and said: “You know, no matter how hard you think you have it, there are always others who have it much worse than you.” With that, she turned and went into the back of the shop.

They disagreed on immigration, but could an IT professional and an engineer agree on ​the Israel-Palestine conflict?

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

Julian, 64, Hayling Island, Hampshire

Occupation Engineer

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

The heroine of Roman Holiday and Breakfast at Tiffany’s knew war and poverty, riches and fame, love and betrayal – yet claimed to have lived a ‘terribly boring’ life. Sean Hepburn Ferrer paints a very different picture in his new biography

Growing up, Sean Hepburn Ferrer says he never felt like the son of a movie star – but he very much is. His mother was Audrey Hepburn, one of the biggest names in the golden age of Hollywood, an Oscar-winner, a screen star and a fashion icon. Hundreds of millions of people all over the world recognise her from classics such as Roman Holiday, Funny Face and My Fair Lady – besotted with the way she laughs, dances, or poses tastefully in Givenchy couture.

Audrey’s image is so ubiquitous in posters, art prints, magazines, on handbags, keyrings or T-shirts, that the family has made hunting for her likeness into a game. “I must have made this crack to my kids,” Sean says. “We were probably waiting for a train or a plane that had been delayed: ‘Three minutes to find Grandma.’ And it became a thing. Now the kids are grown-up, but they do it on their own. I do it by myself and send a snapshot to my wife and we giggle privately.”

Linking UK mainland with Isles of Scilly, this is last season before boat is replaced with a newer model

There was a mix of anticipation and trepidation in Penzance among the passengers waiting on to board Scillonian III.

Some were looking forward to an adventurous voyage on the ferry to the Isles of Scilly, which lie 30 miles off the Cornish coast; others were not quite so keen, knowing that when there is an Atlantic swell, the Scillionian can toss and turn, a tendency that has earned it the unflattering name the “vomit comet”.

From schools in Ghana to workplaces in Britain, underpinned by the colonial roots of ‘respectability’, conversations around natural hairstyle persist

Last month a Jamaican woman said her teenage son had been pulled from lessons because school staff had deemed his afro hairstyle inappropriate.

“The dean of discipline called me to state that my son has been removed,” Michelle Scott said. “You’re telling me that you took him, a fifth-form student, out of classes to go and get a haircut?”

Do you agree with the guidance? Have you been limiting screen time for your child? How is that going?

Children under five should spend no more than an hour a day on screens and under-twos should not be watching screens alone, according to UK government advice.

The guidance was developed by a panel led by the children’s commissioner, Rachel de Souza, and the children’s health expert Prof Russell Viner.

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

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

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

We want to hear from owners of dogs, cats or other pets who have tried these trackers

With a growing number of pet fitness trackers on the market, owners can monitor the stats of their companions as never before. But these devices can be costly, and their necessity is debated.

We want to hear from owners of dogs, cats or other pets who have tried these trackers to hear if such health monitors have proved useful, neutral or problematic.

We would like to hear about your experiences of caring for elderly parents and how this has affected your life

In a recent Guardian opinion piece, Lucinda Holdforth described her experience of caring for her late mother, and her complicated feelings after she died.

It is a common human theme that good parents can never really rest for worrying about their children. But it seems to me that a reciprocal burden exists for good children. We are never entirely free from the psychic weight of our parents’ needs, love and ambitions for us in our youth, and increasingly we now find ourselves taking on guardian-style responsibilities for them during their prolonged old age.

I finally understood the accumulated heaviness of the burden I had carried about a year after my mother died. At 59, I was at last an orphan, which meant I could turn off my phone each night. I woke up one day with the most complete feeling of creative liberty and personhood I’d ever experienced. That feeling has not left me since.

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It’s all about the austere beauty of concrete in photographer Paul Tulett’s starkly stunning shots of the country’s jaw-dropping, rapidly evolving architectural highlights