Forgive me if I’m not congratulating officers for investigating Andrew now – instead of, say, many years ago when they were with him in Jeffrey Epstein’s house

How noble that Thames Valley police has let it be known that its misconduct-in-public-office investigation into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is also considering potential offences including corruption and sexual misconduct. On Friday, it made a public appeal for potential victims and witnesses to come forward.

Obviously, the best time for the police to have started quietly asking questions was shortly after Metropolitan police officers – Andrew’s close protection detail – ferried him back from a London nightclub to a house with some other friends in their 40s, and one young-looking 17-year-old girl. Then waited outside till he decided it was time to come home. But as the saying goes: the second-best time is now. No wait, the second-best time was probably when Andrew paid a reported £12m to settle out of court with Virginia Giuffre, despite maintaining he had no recollection of meeting her. (He denies any wrongdoing.) Ach no, the second-best time was when leaked emails suggest the former prince passed his Met close protection officer Giuffre’s birthdate and US social security number and asked him to carry out checks on her. Sorry, wrong again, the second-best time was a full 12 years ago, when Giuffre alleged that she was sex trafficked to and assaulted by Andrew on that night mentioned above, as well as on two other occasions.

Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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

British army is 80-90% short of drones as military exercise aims to build on European defence strategy

Deep in Charing Cross underground station, in the disused terminus of the Jubilee line, a secret Nato command bunker has this week been discreetly at work. Dozens of mostly British soldiers were engaged in a war game defending Estonia from a Russian invasion in 2030, unbeknownst to commuters and tourists bustling above.

The secret chambers are behind two sets of normally locked, metal double doors. A red glow at the bottom of the escalator beyond is the first sign of troops below; next are mocked up newspaper covers pasted over ageing adverts. A British Nato force has deployed to Estonia they blare, in response to a Russian massing of troops on the border.

Addicted to your devices? According to experts, not all screen time is created equal. Here are some healthier ways to spend time online

The average UK adult spends around 7.5 hours a day on a screen, whether that’s a phone, laptop, games console or TV. That figure may even be conservative, particularly for those whose jobs require them to be online. As concern around screen time mounts, the instinctive response has been to demonise it. The reality, however, is more nuanced. As the Guardian’s video games editor and author of Super Nintendo: How One Japanese Company Helped the World Have Fun, Keza MacDonald, recently put it: “Not all screen time is created equal.”

Spending an hour learning a language on Duolingo is not the same as flicking through dozens of short-form videos on TikTok. Video-calling a friend is not equivalent to trolling someone on Facebook. The difference lies in how consciously we engage.

Jane Fonda, Bruce Springsteen and Joe Biden are among the names paying tribute to host of cancelled late-night show

Share your favorite memories from The Late Show With Stephen Colbert

Celebrities, politicians and New Yorkers have paid their respects to Stephen Colbert as The Late Show aired its final episode on Thursday.

The long-running chatshow, which started back in 1993, was cancelled last year by CBS, purportedly because of a financial decision. But many believed it was a result of the network’s increasing closenesss with Donald Trump, whom Colbert regularly criticised.

His starring role in Richard Gadd’s brutal toxic masculinity series is a far cry from his days as Billy Elliot. The actor opens up about gruelling shoots, dancing on toilets – and why he can’t ever just chill out

Not many actors are relieved when they have to film an eye-poppingly explicit sex scene, but that was the case with Jamie Bell on Half Man. His role involved chemsex in saunas, dogging in car parks and illicit quickies in library loos. “Honestly, I was so grateful to be shooting that stuff and not fucking 16-page dialogue scenes, where you’re emoting and it’s so intense,” says Bell. “On days when my character had to have sex with random people, I’d think: ‘Thank God!’ Frankly, it came as a welcome reprieve.”

Richard Gadd’s first TV show since the Emmy-gobbling global Netflix hit Baby Reindeer, Half Man chronicles the combustible, codependent relationship between two “brothers from another lover”. Niall (Bell) is bookish, bullied and closeted. Ruben (Gadd) is the swaggeringly violent ex-con son of his mother’s girlfriend. The six-part drama – which reaches its devastating finale next week – traces the inseparable duo’s toxic relationship across three decades.

Departing Manchester City manager has left huge imprint but equally stands alone in his willingness to adapt

When Pep Guardiola arrived in English football in the summer of 2016, there was a degree of scepticism. The quality of the football produced by his Barcelona had been extraordinary – and it’s perhaps difficult now, 18 years on, to remember the impact that side had when they first emerged, how incomprehensible the focus on passing and the manipulation of space seemed.

But his Bayern Munich had not won the Champions League and it was reasonable enough to ask whether that very precise, technically accomplished style would be as effective amid the hurly-burly of an English winter as it had been in Spain and Germany.

Exclusive: Top British official presented idea in Brussels but sources say it was rebuffed

The UK government pitched the creation of a single market for goods with the EU as the cornerstone of an ambitious attempt to reintegrate British trade back into Europe, the Guardian can reveal.

During recent visits to Brussels, the Cabinet Office’s top official on EU relations, Michael Ellam, presented the idea to deepen the UK’s economic relationship with the bloc.

In interview with Guardian, former health secretary sets out plans for government, including social care, tax and refugees

Wes Streeting has insisted he can win over the Labour left, as he launches a shadow campaign for the party leadership, saying he has “beaten the odds” throughout his life and can do so again.

The former health secretary, who called on Keir Starmer to resign as he quit the cabinet last week, warned Labour MPs that drifting on with Starmer in charge risked a Joe Biden situation that would usher in a Reform government.

Reform UK Makerfield team reportedly arrived as cafe run by people with special needs was holding celebration event

The founder of a community group has asked Nigel Farage to apologise after the Reform UK leader and his entourage entered its cafe unannounced in what she said was an “intimidating and overwhelming” manner, and allegedly took photographs and videos without permission.

Farage was campaigning in Makerfield when he and his team stopped at a cafe run by the Hamlet Wigan CIC for a cup of tea and to use the toilets. The cafe supports young adult trainees with additional needs.

White House reportedly forced Gabbard to resign after she was sidelined from Iran and Venezuela operations and becomes fourth woman to depart Trump’s cabinet

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Tulsi Gabbard is leaving her post as US director of national intelligence following a tumultuous stint in which she was largely sidelined as Donald Trump launched attacks on Venezuela and Iran.

In a letter to the US president, she said she would resign and leave her post on 30 June. “While we have made significant progress … I recognize there is still important work to be done,” she wrote.

Ukraine dismisses Russian president’s claim, saying attack on dormitory in Russian-controlled region in the east ‘exclusively targeted the Russian war machine’. What we know on day 1,550

Russian President Vladimir Putin has blamed Ukraine for what he described as a deadly drone attack on a student dorm in Luhansk, a Russian-controlled region in eastern Ukraine, and has vowed to retaliate. Ukraine’s military denied the Russian accusations and said it had struck an elite drone command unit in the area. The Russian president said in a statement, carried by state TV on Friday, that he had ordered his military to prepare options to retaliate for the attack in Starobilsk that killed six people and wounded dozens, with 15 people still unaccounted for. He said Kyiv’s military must have known what it was targeting. At a UN security council emergency meeting called by Russia, Melnyk Andrii, the Ukrainian ambassador to the UN, rejeced his Russian counterparts’ accusations of war crimes, calling them a “pure propaganda show”. He added that the operations on Friday “exclusively targeted the Russian war machine” with strikes neutralising an oil refinery, “which was fuelling occupation forces, ammunition depots, air defence assets, and also command centres.”

The Czech president, Petr Pavel, has urged Nato to “show its teeth” in response to Russia’s repeated testing of the alliance’s resolve on its eastern flank, suggesting a range of options including switching off its internet, cutting off its banks from global financial systems and shooting down jets that violate allied airspace. Speaking to the Guardian in Prague, Pavel called for “decisive enough, potentially even asymmetric” responses to counter Moscow’s provocative behaviour against the alliance or risk the Kremlin intensifying its actions.

The UN’s nuclear watchdog said on Friday that Ukrainian authorities had advised that a fire had broken out at the Dniprovska 750-kilovolt electrical substation due to military activity, causing a nuclear power station to be partially disconnected from off-site power. The International Atomic Energy Agency said firefighters were tackling the fire but an operating nuclear power plant was partially disconnected from its off site power supplies at the request of the grid operator.

Falling debris from drones has triggered a fire at an oil terminal in Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, injuring two people and damaging several technical and administrative buildings, officials said early on Saturday. The injured men had been in the street when the drones attacked the port and were being treated in hospital. Ukrainian forces on Friday also attacked a Russian oil refinery in Yaroslavl, about 700km from the border. The Ukrainian Defence Ministry said on X on Friday that Ukraine hit 11 Russian oil facilities this month as of 21 May, including Kirishi, one of Russia’s largest refineries.

Hundreds of Ukrainians have marched through Kyiv to demand that the government veto a bill they say could prematurely declare missing soldiers dead. The protest in Ukraine’s capital on Friday targeted Bill No. 13646 which addresses the legal status of missing persons. More than 90,000 people are listed as missing in Ukraine’s registry.

US troop numbers in Europe are expected to drop from 80,000 after a review reflecting wider commitments, US secretary of state Marco Rubio said on Friday. In Helsingborg, Sweden for a Nato foreign ministers meeting, Rubio said it was “well understood in the alliance that the United States’ troop presence in Europe is going to be adjusted … you know, we have obligations in the Indo-Pacific, we have obligations in the Middle East, we have obligations in the western hemisphere”. Last week, the Pentagon said it would halt the rotation of 4,000 more into Poland, only for Trump to apparently reverse that on Thursday night on social media, in a hasty announcement that appeared to catch the Pentagon by surprise.

A bipartisan group of US senators is pushing back on delays by the Department of Defense in sending about $600m in security aid to Ukraine and other allies in eastern Europe. They sent a letter to defense secretary Pete Hegseth on Friday that calls for the funding to be disbursed. Friction has grown between Congress and the Trump administration in recent weeks as lawmakers push for updates on what has happened to $400m in Ukraine aid and $200m more for defense programs in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that was allocated by Congress last year.

Afghan nationals accused of being part of grooming gang, as part of investigation into group-based child exploitation

Seven men have been accused of being part of a grooming gang and charged with rape and child sexual abuse offences, police said.

The Afghan nationals were charged as part of an investigation into group-based child sexual exploitation in Norwich, Norfolk police said. The men are accused of sexual offences committed between August 2023 and May 2025.

Jamil Khalil, 20, of High Street, Dumbarton, Scotland, is charged with seven counts of rape, one count of human trafficking and one count of conspiracy to commit child sexual abuse.

Ahmadin Ahmadzai, 21, of Pottergate, Norwich, is charged with nine counts of rape, one count of human trafficking, two counts of conspiracy to commit child sexual abuse and one count of perverting the course of justice.

Qais Kaker, 20, of Black Horse Opening, Norwich, is charged with four counts of rape, one count of human trafficking, two counts of conspiracy to commit child sexual abuse and one count of perverting the course of justice.

Fazal Auryakhel, 20, of Eleanor Road, Norwich, is charged with one count of rape.

Mohammed Farooq Sinwary, 23, of St Benedict’s Street, Norwich, is charged with two counts of rape.

Ali Ahamad, 21, of Barnards Yard, Norwich, is charged with one count of rape and three counts of human trafficking.

Sayed Wahid Daviodzai, 20, of St Benedict’s Street, Norwich, is charged with four counts of rape and one count of conspiracy to commit child sexual abuse.

Temperatures expected to reach as high as 33C in southern England or Midlands on Monday

• Britain braces for long, hot traffic queues amid extra border checks

Amber heat health alerts have been issued for the bank holiday weekend as record-breaking May temperatures as high as 33C (91F) are expected in parts of the UK.

The alerts – which indicate a possible risk to life as well as potential damage to properties, significant travel delays and power cuts – were announced for the East Midlands, West Midlands, the east of England, London and the south-east, and will be in effect from 2pm on Friday until 5pm on Wednesday.

Defender’s wife, mother, sister and brothers criticise Thomas Tuchel for excluding player from World Cup squad

Five members of footballer Harry Maguire’s family have now criticised the England manager, Thomas Tuchel, for omitting the Manchester United defender from his World Cup squad.

Maguire has won 67 caps for the national team and was a mainstay under Tuchel’s predecessor, Gareth Southgate, for the squads that reached the final of Euro 2020 and the semi-finals of the 2018 World Cup.

Emerald Fennell says period-realistic scene emphasising Cathy’s lack of razors was shot but did not make final cut

The Wuthering Heights director Emerald Fennell said it was “unfortunate” that a scene showing Margot Robbie’s hairy armpits did not make the final cut, because women in period adaptations are often shown with clean-shaven underarms.

Robbie’s character, Cathy, had “extremely hairy armpits” in the 2026 adaptation of the novel, but “unfortunately the scene that we see them didn’t make it in there”, said the director.

Parents speak for first time about daughters’ heroism on the day and their courage in dealing with critical injuries, scars and trauma

From the outside, the small gathering of young girls looked like an ordinary playdate. They chatted giddily, practised pilates and twirled around in their new outfits to the music of Harry Styles.

But on the sidelines, some of the parents were in tears. The last time these girls shared a room was on 29 July 2024. That day, they fled in fear as a hooded teenager turned a Taylor Swift-themed holiday club in Southport into one of the most horrific attacks on children in modern British history.

A ruthless Thomas Tuchel has left several big names at home for his England squad at this summer’s World Cup.

There was no space for Harry Maguire, Trent Alexander-Arnold, Cole Palmer or Phil Foden – previous stalwarts in former manager Gareth Southgate’s squads.

The announcement comes as the club season nears its end, with a historic week for Arsenal winning its first Premier League title in 22 years, sparking an incredible and diverse celebration from fans.

Lucy Hough speaks to sportswriter and columnist Jonathan Liew

For some transgender men and women – and the campaigners who support them – the updated guidance confirms their worst fears

Stephen Whittle was visiting the Chelsea flower show as a birthday treat with his wife on Thursday afternoon. At around the same time, the updated code of practice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission was published. It confirmed, among myriad updates, that single-sex spaces such as toilets and changing rooms must be used on the basis of biological sex, and that transgender people may not access those that accord with their lived gender.

Among the floral displays, 70-year-old Whittle did not stray from habit. “Of course I used the male facilities, as I have done for the last 50 years. Can you imagine what the guy on security would have said if I’d gone to the ladies?”

By the time a national vaccine blitz was announced this week, unlinked cases had already been reported in four states. Why did it take so long for governments to act?

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The first time the Northern Territory GP and public health medical officer Dr John Boffa learned that the highly contagious bacterial infection diphtheria was spreading in his community was in late March – several months after the outbreak first began.

“By the time we became aware of it, it had been grumbling along for some time,” says Boffa, who is chief medical officer with the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress Aboriginal Corporation, a community-controlled primary healthcare service in Alice Springs.

The BBC series and its breakout teen stars have been lauded as a much-needed antidote to crueller, more toxic entertainment

As he takes a break from searching for walnuts in the ancient forest of Arslanbob, western Kyrgyzstan, 19-year-old Kush Burman reflects on his relationship with his travelling companion and best friend, Jo Diop.

“I think it’s only in the past couple of days that I’ve realised how much I value having Jo here,” he says, his eyes wet with tears. “I just really appreciate the fact that Jo’s always up for sort of looking after me, in a way. I don’t think Jo will understand, like, the difference it makes.

This weirdly endearing show is a total mash-up of genres – espionage drama, buddy caper, retro movie. But that makes it a unique watch, with cracking chemistry and a lot of laughs

I don’t know what it is, but I like it. That, I think, is the fairest summary I can give to Ponies, the weirdly joyful and bizarrely endearing espionage thriller cum female buddy caper set in 1970s Moscow – filmed like a 70s movie (wipe screen! Split screen! Yellow typing across screen!), written with a modern feminist sensibility, and split over eight parts for TV.

Fans of John le Carré should be warned that this new series, from Susanna Fogel (who also directs four episodes) and David Iserson, has none of the revelling in depictions of tradecraft that stories in his tradition usually prize. The setup is almost embarrassingly absurd and dealt with as swiftly as possible – nothing to see here, just accept it and move on to the good stuff! – as the wives of two dead CIA agents persuade their husbands’ boss to take them on as spies, on the grounds that the KGB will never suspect that women have been recruited. It is my understanding that the real KGB were many things, but not as thick as mince, so I am glad our widows are fictitious.

More than 50 people have been arrested over alleged attacks on venues since April, but police still don’t know what’s behind the crime wave

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The white Mercedes E300 sedan is stolen, the number plates cloned. Inside are allegedly three teenagers from suburbs in Melbourne’s outer west, and a jerry can.

Police claim they have been recruited by someone they’ve never met to set alight hospitality businesses for no particular reason.

Manchester City boss went from dressing like an overgrown schoolboy to relaxing the unwritten manager dress code

In 2016, when Pep Guardiola took his place in the dugout for his first game in charge of Manchester City, the fashion plates in the Premier League included José Mourinho, in a quarter zip and mac at Manchester United and Arsène Wenger, dapper in his suit and unzippable puffer jacket at Arsenal.

Guardiola, dressed like an overgrown schoolboy in V-neck, shirt, tie and blazer, didn’t seem as if he was going to be that much of a sartorial threat. But 10 years down the line, he is the undisputed champion of dugout style.

Our reviewer found Woolroom’s supportive, breathable and sustainable Standen mattress a total dream – but luxury comfort doesn’t come cheap

• The best mattresses, tested

The first time I slept on a wool mattress was a revelation. As is so often the case with bed-based Damascene moments, this one happened on holiday. The wool and pocket-sprung mattress in our Lake District hotel room was cosy but breathable even in the height of summer, and it proved far too comfy to leap out of for early morning walks.

Back home, I soothed the post-holiday blues by seeking out wool mattresses to review. First, I tested the Millbrook Wool Luxury 4000, which is excellent but didn’t quite live up to that hallowed Cumbrian memory. Then came this Woolroom Standen Wool mattress, which did – and even nearly toppled the Otty Original Hybrid as best overall in our best mattresses roundup, where I called it “a masterpiece”.

Does Puerto Rican star’s debut collection for Zara spell the end of short shorts?

Men can breathe a huge sigh of relief this week, thanks to Bad Bunny, whose debut collection for fast fashion company Zara includes a pair of shockingly normal mid-thigh shorts.

While for the last few years, short-shorts have threatened to make every day a leg day, the sight of the Puerto Rican star wearing shorts that come comfortably to within a few inches of the knee will signal a welcome shift for many.

There is no universal definition of sex – and questioning what ‘counts’ can open the door to more fulfilling intimacy

I’m a sex educator. At the beginning of each of my classes, I ask a seemingly simple question: “What is sex?”

Some people might think it’s my job to answer that question. I do give accurate and inclusive information about sexual health, relationships and identity. But I don’t tell you what to do with that information or what value to assign that information.

Every choice or omission stands up to scrutiny, although the FA’s tech team did not do such a good job at the unveiling

Message timed out. Too many requests. Too. Many. Requests. Too many. I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t let you do that. Don’t open the doors. I’m afraid, Dave. Harry Maguire’s mum appears to be extremely upset.

And with those magical words the journey begins. A journey into fantasy, joy and beer thrown in the air, into issues of identity and national character. All of it launched with a far more accurate definition of Englishness than Sir Gareth ever managed. Specifically, the fact that nothing ever bleeding well works around here, plus some very solid evidence for always being wary of people called Jez promising tech‑based solutions for things that don’t really need solutions.

Manager was in a joyful mood as he met the media for his final pre-match press conference at Manchester City

Pep Guardiola cracked a joke about fielding questions on facing Aston Villa as he entered the room. But after more than 1,100 press conferences in 10 years at Manchester City he knew this one was never going to be normal, requiring him to run through the past decade in half an hour. He has been building up to this for a while, the end nigh for weeks, the energy levels depleted and a break needed, especially from journalists.

Guardiola recently revealed that John Stones experienced great relief after announcing he would be leaving City and the manager was embracing the same feelings. There was plenty of emotion initially, Guardiola admitting his leaving speech to the players earlier in the day was “a disaster”. Finding the right words in these situations was never going to be easy. It does feel at times as if City is the club Guardiola built. “I like to think my vibe and energy will be there for ever,” he said.

Saints’ self-destruction has left Kim Hellberg and Sergej Jakirovic tantalisingly close to fulfilling their dream in Saturday’s Wembley trip

When the television cameras zoomed in for a closeup it became clear Hayden Hackney was crying.

Middlesbrough’s best player had just watched his teammates lose the second leg of the Championship playoff semi-final 2-1 in extra time at Southampton. As he left his seat behind the away dugout and wandered across the pitch, the Redcar-born midfield playmaker looked utterly heartbroken.

Barcelona’s former coach Jonatan Giráldez can bring insider knowledge to a fourth final between the European giants

You could be forgiven for having a sense of deja vu before a fourth Champions League final between the Spanish champions, Barcelona, and French title-winners, OL Lyonnes, on Saturday evening.

The three-time champions and eight-time champions played each other in the final of Europe’s premier competition three times in six years between 2019 and 2024, with Lyonnes earning a 4-1 win over the Catalan giants in 2019 and a 3-1 win in 2022, before Barcelona delivered a 2-0 defeat of the French side in 2024.

Reijnen chase is sign Reds manager will stay as Moyes admits being despondent over a poor end to season

• Montpellier 59-26 Ulster

• Dominant French side run in nine tries

Ulster’s dreams of claiming a first trophy for 20 years were summarily dashed by a strong Montpellier on a steamy night in Bilbao. Led by a revitalised Billy Vunipola the French side possessed too much power for their opponents and were duly rewarded with their third Challenge Cup triumph in 11 seasons.

Vunipola, who last featured for England at the 2023 World Cup, was at the forefront of an increasingly dominant forward effort which steadily wore Ulster down in energy-sapping conditions. The wing Donovan Taofifénua collected two of his side’s nine tries as Montpellier, currently second in the Top 14 table, claimed the latest trophy of this distinctly French-dominated season.

With temperatures in the mid-30s expected, Leo Cullen’s side will need to be at their best to avoid another sad denouement to a French drama

There was a very different feel when Leinster last came to Bilbao for a Champions Cup final. In 2018 it was wet, grey and could have passed for Ballsbridge in March. Not so this time with temperatures in the mid-30s and another baking afternoon in store for their rendezvous with the warm – in every sense – favourites, Bordeaux-Bègles.

When Leinster’s fair-skinned head coach, Leo Cullen, walked out for the captain’s run it was reminiscent of a David Attenborough documentary featuring a lone polar bear on a fast-melting iceberg. There will be no hiding place for heavy tight forwards, a factor exacerbated by the game kicking off in mid-afternoon. Apparently, an evening slot was impossible for French TV because of a clash with – wait for it – the closing ceremony of the Cannes film festival.

• Year-long dispute led to French Open media protest

• Novak Djokovic chose not to participate in walkout

Aryna Sabalenka insisted the player push for a greater financial contribution from the grand slams is primarily focused on improving the welfare of lower-ranked players as the world’s elite advanced with their eve-of-tournament protest at Roland Garros.

“I feel like the whole point here, it’s not about me,” Sabalenka said. “It’s about the players who are lower in the ranking, who are suffering. It’s not easy to live in this tennis world with that percentage that we are earning.

Upgrades for the grid’s leading team will be unveiled in Montreal, where wet weather could also play a part

Four races into what has been a disjointed opening to the Formula One season, the sport is still in a period of rapid adaptation and adjustment as drivers and teams come to grips with their new cars. While this weekend’s Canadian Grand Prix may offer some indication of the form to come and championship ambitions, it is also something of an outlier.

The focus in Montreal will be of twofold interest centred largely on Mercedes. The team have opened the new season with a dominant car that has claimed all four poles and all four wins. Yet with the new regulations offering enormous scope for improvement, a fierce development fight will define 2026. McLaren, Red Bull and Ferrari all brought their first major upgrades to the last round in Miami; Mercedes bring their opening salvo of major parts to Quebec.

The sensational victory didn’t happen by accident, it took years of dedication and clever planning, something the PM – himself a fan – should note

Obviously, I know that politics and football are different. One is a high-stakes endeavour that affects the lives of hundreds of millions of people, with an impact felt around the globe and down the generations – and the other is politics. I know too that there will be plenty of readers who will be like I was until nearly a couple of decades ago: cheerfully indifferent to the beautiful game, even after a week like this one, when the top prize in English football was won. But stick with me, because there are lessons to be learned from what just happened – lessons for politics, for the prime minister and for all of us.

I am referring, of course, to Arsenal winning the Premier League, ending a 22-year long wait that it sometimes seemed would never end. I claim no objectivity here. I became a fan just a few years into that drought, brought into the Arsenal fraternity by my young sons. So there I was, in the crowd that instantly converged on the Emirates Stadium late on Tuesday night, Arsenal shirt and scarf on, singing loudly and beaming at strangers.

Labour’s emerging leadership contest is reopening the EU debate. But if we want to rejoin, Britain needs a more European voting system first

Nowhere is an anniversary more relished than in newspapers. As we approach the 10-year mark since Britain voted for Brexit, countless column inches would no doubt have been reserved for this purpose anyway. Yet the prospect of a Labour leadership contest, at a time when polls are showing four-fifths of the party’s voters at the last election and an even higher proportion of its members want to reverse that June 2016 referendum decision, is transforming what might have merely been melancholic reflection into a more active debate.

Keir Starmer last week made a belated nod to one of his party’s deepest desires by saying that he, too, wants to put the UK back at “the heart of Europe”, even if it was still unclear exactly what he meant. Then Wes Streeting sought to revive faltering ambitions to be the next prime minister with a call for full re-entry into the EU, although he was similarly vague about when that might happen. Meanwhile, Andy Burnham was busy rowing back from a previously expressed hope of rejoining at some undisclosed point in his lifetime, perhaps because he won’t get a shot at Downing Street unless he first wins next month’s byelection in Makerfield, where a majority supported Brexit a decade ago.

Tom Baldwin is the author of Keir Starmer, The Biography

He may be the most brazen of the nation’s leaders, but his ideological spirit is found throughout its government, and beyond

No, you’re not hallucinating: western governments really are condemning Israel, one-by-one, without equivocation. Not because of the ongoing genocide in Gaza that has killed more than 70,000 Palestinians, of course, but because of a PR stunt in which Israel’s national security minister filmed himself taunting foreign activists.

On Wednesday morning, Itamar Ben-Gvir arrived at the port where Israel had detained hundreds of participants in an international aid flotilla that was attempting to breach the naval blockade of Gaza. In a video he posted to social media, the minister can be seen mocking the activists as they are forced to kneel in rows with their heads on the ground and hands bound with zip ties. Israel’s national anthem can be heard blasting over loudspeakers, before we see Ben-Gvir waving an Israeli flag and shouting: “Welcome to Israel. We are the landlords here.”

Ben Reiff is deputy editor at +972 magazine, an independent, online publication run by Palestinian and Israeli journalists

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.

Call it a mix of collectivism and entrepreneurialism or just an overarching vibe, but the mayor’s philosophy could be on the way to Westminster

Among the underrated later work of those revered sons of Manchester the Smiths, there is a completely jaw-dropping song simply titled London. Full of fury and excitement, it depicts a Mancunian as he boards a train, travelling to the capital full of ambition and hope, but also gripped by a gnawing ambivalence. Andy Burnham, whose love of the band is hardly a surprise, may well recognise not only its defining theme, but the song’s accidental encapsulation of his decision to try to make his way to the House of Commons, in a line crooned by Morrissey in slightly mocking tones: “And do you think you’ve made the right decision this time?”

Even if some observers only give him a 45% chance of winning, it looks like Burnham has, particularly when it comes to his pitch for power. Eleven years ago, let us not forget, a somewhat different incarnation of the future Greater Manchester mayor was one of four candidates for the Labour leadership, along with Jeremy Corbyn, and chose to stage one of his launch events at the City of London HQ of the auditing firm Ernst & Young. There he said he might back further benefit cuts, and claimed that too many people associated Labour with “giving people who don’t want to help themselves an easy ride”. In 2022, he told me this was the result of bad advice: “I listened to people that I shouldn’t have, really. It was tone-deaf … it wasn’t me. It wasn’t authentic.”

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

The allegations of rape and sexual assault made by ‘brides’ on the show reflect what many other women experience. Sadly, so do the responses

She said no. She didn’t want it, she made that very clear, but he did it anyway; pushing her feelings aside as though they didn’t matter, because to him they seemingly didn’t. It’s a story so depressingly common that most women probably carry a private version of it in their heads, either buried in their own memories or confided to them by a friend. But still, there’s something profoundly shocking about the idea of it happening right under the noses of a TV audience.

Perhaps you’ve never watched Channel 4’s hit show Married at First Sight, which involves putting total strangers through a purely ceremonial “wedding” and making them live as husband and wife for six weeks to see whether they actually want to make a go of the relationship. But you’re almost certainly familiar with Panorama, which this week told the stories of three former “brides”. Lizzie and Chloe (not their real names) both say they were raped by their on-screen “husbands” – and, in Lizzie’s case, also subjected to alarmingly violent outbursts of temper and an alleged threat of an acid attack – while Shona Manderson, who has spoken publicly, accuses hers of sexual misconduct. All three men, it should be said, deny the allegations.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

The future starts with us: Gordon Brown in conversation
On Thursday 10 September, join Hugh Muir and Gordon Brown to discuss the intricate connections between global instability and civic decline, as explored in Brown’s new book, The Future Starts With Us.
Book tickets here

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As the outrages continue, mainstream outlets just see Trump being Trump

His social media posts are unhinged. He seems to fall asleep in meetings. He proudly proclaims he’s not thinking “even a little bit” about Americans’ personal finances in talks with Iran. And he lies constantly about the supposed success of the war with Iran he started for no good reason.

That’s just the start, of course, when it comes to Donald Trump’s disastrous second presidency. There’s the ruination of the Kennedy Center, the building of a ballroom (or bunker?) to replace the White House East Wing, and the wrecking ball that the Trump-aligned supreme court has taken to the voting rights of Black Americans. There’s the endless self-dealing and the abuse of the justice department’s intended purpose.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

The world’s richest man can’t stop posting about how Lupita Nyong’o was chosen to play an imaginary woman

It was the casting choice that launched a thousand meltdowns. The Oscar-winning actor Lupita Nyong’o was confirmed as Helen of Troy in Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey, and the usual suspects immediately started squealing that the fall of western civilization was nigh.

Elon Musk, a man in possession of the world’s thinnest skin and fattest bank account, is obviously among the aggrieved. Musk started moaning about The Odyssey in January, when it was rumoured that Nyong’o had the role. Since a 12 May interview with Nolan in Time magazine made this casting official, Musk hasn’t stopped whining; he’s spent roughly a week attacking Nyong’o on X and amplifying other angry bigots. His main arguments appear to be that this is a historically inaccurate rendering of a mythological poem; Nyong’o, who was named People magazine’s “Most Beautiful Woman” in 2014, is not sufficiently beautiful; and the casting of a Black woman in a movie nobody is forcing him to watch is inextricably intertwined with a leftwing plot to undermine western society.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Consumer giveaways may soften the blow from the the war on Iran. But Britain’s vulnerability demands deeper state intervention and a faster transition

Rachel Reeves’s announcement of a series of cost of living measures this week shows a government trying to prove it still has agency and relevance. The VAT cuts on summer attractions such as theme parks and soft-play centres, free bus rides for the under-16s in England and reduced import tariffs on food are politically useful, but they do not fundamentally alter the UK’s exposure to imported energy shocks. This is a mini-budget, with the emphasis on the mini. The inflationary impact of the Iran crisis, however, will be substantial. That is why the chancellor is moving into crisis-management mode with industrial resilience funds and thinly veiled threats to tax profiteers. But it is unlikely to be enough.

The repercussions from the closure of the strait of Hormuz are reviving the need for more radical state fiscal intervention. Ms Reeves moved pre-emptively because the energy regulator is next week expected to announce that energy bills are likely to rise by £209 to £1,850 a year for a typical dual-fuel household from July. That is ​an increase of 13% on the current £1,641 ​annual bill. It will be a direct hit to household disposable incomes – and Labour’s central political claim that the cost of living crisis is easing on its watch. Worse may still be to come. If households absorb a summer rise in bills and then face costs rising again before winter, the government risks a return to the levels of financial anxiety felt after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

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The award-winning Tate design at the Chelsea flower show reveals how urban spaces can be transformed by bringing art and nature together

Never mind a gnome, no other garden at this year’s Chelsea flower show can boast a Barbara Hepworth sculpture like the RHS gold-award-winning Tate Britain garden. And few will have such a significant afterlife. Designed by the landscape architect Tom Stuart-Smith, it is a microcosm of a major redesign for the gallery’s Millbank garden, opening next spring.

Visitors to Tate Britain may be forgiven for not noticing that the 1897 gallery has a garden at all. The imposing steps and portico overshadow two rectangles of lawn. But this unloved patch will be transformed into a horticultural haven. The gallery, which like many has struggled to recover visitor numbers since the pandemic, could do with a boost.

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Readers share their reflections on the best works of fiction in English, and ask whether popularity or lightheartedness disqualified books from consideration

As an avid reader, I was excited to go through your recently published book list (100 best novels, 16 May). However, I swiftly became disillusioned at the old-fashioned and frankly elitist lens used to judge the “best”. Why were there so few modern books? Why does “best” so often seem to equate to misery?

The article introducing your list (Who’s in, who’s out, and how many have you read? The story behind our 100 best novels list, 16 May) says “Never has such a list been more needed” and that “reading for pleasure is a dying pursuit”, adding “we are here to help”. But this list will not help non-readers get into reading.

The current Labour government entered office with a landslide of seats built upon a mere 20% of the total eligible electorate, writes Dr Lalith Chandrakantha

Tom Clark’s analysis of our “ungovernable country” expertly diagnoses the symptoms of our political malaise but entirely bypasses the fundamental arithmetic of modern British democracy (The ungovernable country? Why Britain keeps losing prime ministers, 17 May).

Democracy is, by definition, government by the consent of the governed. Yet our electoral system routinely mistakes a gaming of the system for a genuine mandate. The current Labour government entered office with a landslide of seats built upon a mere 20% of the total eligible electorate. To mistake the silence of the 40% who chose not to vote for passive compliance is a fatal error. Previous governments and prime ministers were not very different.

Robert Lodge calls for action to tackle the ‘housing spiral’ in the County Durham village where he grew up, but is now leaving at 18

As an 18-year-old who has grown up in Horden and lived on a street due to be knocked down because of a compulsory purchase order, the housing problem is a stark but unsurprising one that I’ve only seen get worse throughout my lifetime – especially after ownership of the homes went from housing associations to private landlords when I was a kid (A house for £1? What a day at a property auction taught me about the UK housing crisis, 18 May).

I love where I am from so much, but it is an area crying out for change, and the amount of press attention that Horden gets shows it. I myself feel part of the problem as I am relocating to the saturated north-west to start a degree apprenticeship in Manchester – not because I wanted to move away, but I felt as if there wasn’t the same opportunity at home, although I will certainly move back.

Readers respond to an article about France’s ‘viral’ liquid cheese

Yes, we French people do value taste in cheeses (The French are hitting their protein goals – thanks to a cheese that looks like ectoplasm, 18 May). There is a myriad of flavours in our dairy industry, from extreme farmhouse dungy-funk to sterilised stinky plastic. But most of our industrial cheeses sit firmly in the vicinity of savoury hardened fat.

So it’s no surprise that cancoillotte is making a comeback! In Paris in my late 20s, every single night out (or in) started with an apéro dînatoire (drinks and snacks). And cancoillotte was a staple. Why? Because if you microwavay it for 30 seconds, you get a great cheese dip for chips, bread, veggies, spoons. Cheap, tasty enough and quick. And now it’s deemed healthy? I rest my case.
Mel Garcon
Sazeray, France

Former general Petr Pavel says Moscow’s testing of alliance’s eastern flank should be met with firm line

The Czech president, Petr Pavel, has urged Nato to “show its teeth” in response to Russia’s repeated testing of the alliance’s resolve on its eastern flank, suggesting a range of options including switching off its internet, cutting off its banks from global financial systems and shooting down jets that violate allied airspace.

Speaking to the Guardian in Prague, Pavel called for “decisive enough, potentially even asymmetric” responses to counter Moscow’s provocative behaviour against the alliance or risk the Kremlin intensifying its actions.

Dave Henshaw is enchanted by archery’s curiously addictive qualities and its ability to attract all-comers, including those turned off by other sports environments

Dave Henshaw can’t quite explain the fascination of archery. That’s despite him coaching archers to Olympic events, helping his club become a diverse and thriving community, and earning a King’s honour for his services to the sport.

“When you pick up a bow and start shooting, there’s just something about it,” the 83-year-old says. “Don’t ask me what it is – I don’t know.”

Backlash grows among European staff against radical cuts to pay off Covid-era debt, with some accusing council of ‘colonial attitude’

The historic Palacete building at 31 Paseo del General Martínez Campos in Madrid’s upmarket Chamberí district has been home to the British Council in Spain for about 70 years.

About 5,000 students each year pass through its 35 classrooms, learning English, attending exams, and forging cultural ties with the UK. Over the years that is hundreds of thousands of Madrileños (people from Madrid), while it also serves as a centre for the expat community.

Authorities in Orange county say tank holding methyl methacrylate ‘actively in crisis’ and urge residents to leave

Authorities in Orange county, California have ordered the evacuation of 40,000 people over concerns about a chemical leak that threatened to spill or explode.

The problem arose on Thursday at a facility owned by GKN Aerospace in the town of Garden Grove, where a storage tank holding methyl methacrylate began off-gassing and threatened to fail. The chemical, which is highly flammable, is used to fabricate resins and plastics.

London mayor accused of ‘putting politics above public safety’ for rejecting deal to use AI in intelligence analysis

• UK politics live – latest updates

Palantir has accused Sadiq Khan of “putting politics above public safety” after the London mayor blocked its £50m contract with the Metropolitan police in a move that has also led to tensions inside Labour over its involvement with the US tech company.

Louis Mosley, who heads Palantir in the UK and Europe, accused Khan of politicising procurement after he rejected a two-year deal for Scotland Yard to use AI to process intelligence in criminal investigations, as first revealed by the Guardian. Mosley said: “What Londoners value is not being mugged, not being raped by a serving police officer.”

Figures show domestic flower growers are expanding their market share, as the government gives sector official recognition

British flower farmers have long resembled David faced with their own particular Goliath – the imported flower industry. More than 80% of cut flowers bought by UK consumers are shipped or flown in. However, recent figures show domestic growers are expanding their market share.

Chloë Dunnett, the founder of Sitopia Farm, a London-based organic farm growing food and flowers, says: “Our flower sales are up 65% for the year and turnover is increasing year on year as the public and florists look for flowers that are seasonal, environmentally friendly and hyperlocal – consumer power can be very effective.”

What does a surge in ocean temperatures, compounded with El Niño, bode for the summer?

An enormous marine heatwave off the US west coast is ringing alarm bells among ocean and atmospheric scientists as new data shows its ecological and environmental effects are intensifying.

The unusual area of warm water has persisted since peaking in size during September 2025 and still stretches thousands of miles from the California coastline – more than halfway across the Pacific – affecting a vast triangle-shaped region of oceanic habitats from Hawaii to British Columbia and southward to Mexico.

In the country’s north, mining has ravaged Indigenous lands and lives for decades. Is history repeating itself as renewable energy schemes arrive on their doorstep?

In the heart of the dry tropical forest, Maria Elena Aguilar Uriana walks past towering cacti, her ancestors’ graves, and patterned clothes blowing in the wind. Her brow is furrowed, her hands fixed on her hips. She points to a former watering hole, now nothing but dust.

“Our children are malnourished and dying,” she says. “It’s all because of the mining. It has destroyed our landscape, our homes, our lives.”

Resolution backed by 141 states hailed as ‘new chapter’ that could improve climate diplomacy and litigation efforts

When the UN general assembly voted overwhelmingly in favour of a landmark climate crisis ruling on Wednesday, the Pacific island of Vanuatu’s prime minister hailed the result as the start of “a new chapter” in climate action.

“The task before all of us now is to translate legal clarity into meaningful action, stronger cooperation, and greater protection for present and future generations,” said Jotham Napat.

Judge says it is ‘disappointing’ there will have to be retrial of prisoners accused over Lostprophets singer’s death

The jury in the trial of two prisoners accused of murdering the disgraced former Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins has been discharged for legal reasons.

The judge at Leeds crown court told jurors on Friday that there would be a retrial. “Very reluctantly, I’m going to discharge you and the case will have to be retried,” said Mr Justice Hilliard.

MP Jess Phillips says sentences given to three boys in Hampshire seem ‘unduly lenient’ and send ‘bad message’

The government is urgently reviewing the “unduly lenient” sentences given to three teenage boys who avoided custody for the rape of two girls.

The MP Jess Phillips, who was the minister for safeguarding and violence against women and girls before resigning this month, said that giving the boys youth rehabilitation orders sent a “bad message”.

Replacement scheme worth about 40% less than current funding greeted with scepticism by headteachers

Funding for primary school sport in England is to be cut by Labour, including the abolition of a grant designed to cement the 2012 Olympic legacy, to the dismay of school leaders.

The Department for Education (DfE) said that the £320m fund paid directly to primary schools each year through its PE and sports premium would be scrapped and replaced by a “sport partnerships network” worth £193m a year to cover primary and secondary schools.

Thames Valley police believe more witnesses may be out there in inquiry into alleged misconduct in public office by former prince

Police investigating Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor want witnesses to contact them if they believe they have information about alleged sexual misconduct, corruption, fraud or the sharing of confidential information involving the king’s brother.

In a sign of the potential expansion of their “unprecedented investigation”, Thames Valley police vowed to rigorously investigate claims against the former Prince Andrew.

Israeli prison service denies claims of abuse during detention of 430 people trying to take aid to Palestinians

Activists released from Israeli custody after being detained on a flotilla trying to take aid to Gaza were subjected to abuse, organisers have alleged, with several hospitalised with injuries and at least 15 reporting sexual assaults, including rape.

Israel’s prison service denied the allegations, and Reuters was not able to verify them independently.

The launch is the 12th test flight of the mega-rocket that CEO Elon Musk is building to get people to Mars one day

SpaceX launched its biggest, most powerful Starship yet on a test flight Friday, an upgraded version that Nasa is counting on to land astronauts on the moon.

The redesigned mega-rocket made its debut two days after SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced he’s taking the company public. It blasted off from the southern tip of Texas, carrying 20 mock Starlink satellites for release halfway around the world.

Videos in this batch show unidentified aerial phenomena but offer few clues to existence of alien life

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The Pentagon on Friday released a second tranche of videos and documents of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) – or UFOs – answering few questions about the existence of alien life but fueling what has quickly become a ratings winner for the White House.

The first reveal earlier this month of 162 files of previously secret or rarely seen accounts of UAP sightings received more than a billion hits on the government website set up to house them, according to a press release from the war department, the Trump administration’s preferred term for the Department of Defense.

Change criticized by advocates marks the latest significant move by the Trump administration on immigration policy

Foreigners seeking to adjust their immigration status in the United States to secure green cards will have to do so from outside the country via the state department, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said on Friday, in a move criticized by aid groups, policy analysts and immigration attorneys.

USCIS announced the move in a policy memo, which directed officers to consider relevant factors and information on a case-by-case basis when determining whether extraordinary relief is warranted.

Phone company launched by Donald Trump’s family says names and contact details appear to be affected, but not credit card or banking information

A phone company launched by Donald Trump’s family business is investigating a potential security flaw on its website that appears to have exposed the personal details of an estimated 27,000 people who sought to buy a gold-coloured smartphone.

Trump Mobile said in a statement that it was investigating the issue – “with the assistance of independent cybersecurity professionals” – in which the full names, addresses and phone numbers of people who filled out preorder forms appeared to be exposed.

Former Wall Street banker takes over amid growing concern over cost of living – and disapproval of Trump’s agenda

• US politics live – latest updates

Kevin Warsh has been sworn in as chair of the US Federal Reserve, tasked with steering the world’s largest economy as the Trump administration faces mounting pressure over Americans’ financial wellbeing.

Warsh, hand-picked by Donald Trump, takes charge of the powerful central bank as it comes under extraordinary pressure from the US president to cut interest rates, even as prices climb.

The bank, formerly a building society, has carried the name of the Yorkshire town since 1853 and most locals think it should be preserved

On a moody afternoon, near the sandstone terraces of Halifax’s Gibbet street, David Glover, a local historian, is opening the gates to Lister Lane cemetery.

Usually closed to the public, the burial ground is being opened today as an exception. Because here, among towering spires and the tombs of wealthy industrialists, lie the founders of one of West Yorkshire’s most famous exports: Halifax building society.

US social media firms acting on orders from Middle East kingdom accused of being ‘instruments of repression’

Major US social media companies including Meta’s Facebook and Instagram platforms have blocked the accounts of Saudi Arabian dissidents so they are no longer visible inside the kingdom, following orders by Saudi authorities.

Those affected include Abdullah Alaoudh, a US-based activist and vocal critic of Saudi human rights violations, and Omar Abdulaziz, a Canada and UK-based activist who worked closely with Jamal Khashoggi before the journalist’s murder by Saudi agents in 2018.

As a standalone, the new adventure is perfectly fine matinee fodder – but the galaxy is now so congested that we seem doomed to shiny retreads of the same old story

When Disney bought Lucasfilm for roughly $4bn in 2012, it must have felt like an obvious piece of business: who wouldn’t throw wads of cash at a saga boasting an entire galaxy in a box? For a while, it seemed too good to be true. The Force Awakens made more than $2bn worldwide. Rogue One did more than $1bn. The Last Jedi conjured up more than $1.3bn, even while triggering a culture war so radioactive it could power the Death Star. Most of the fandom hated The Rise of Skywalker, but that most execrable of movies still earned Disney more than $1bn.

Then came Disney+, the perfect delivery system. No more waiting years between films: just hang around for a few months and something else would pop up on the conveyor belt. Andor, The Book of Boba Fett, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka, The Mandalorian. Plot holes were filled, animated side characters got their magnum opus, and we all learned far more about the middle-management structure of galactic fascism than we had ever imagined possible. So why are we, almost 14 years on from that monumental shift in the Star Wars power structure, reading yet another slew of critical notices declaring that the saga has run its course? The Mandalorian and Grogu, at time of writing, has a rating of 61% on Rotten Tomatoes, pushing it just into the “fresh” category. The positives, broadly speaking, are that it is charming, brisk, visually polished and has Baby Yoda, a character precision-engineered for adorability. On the negative side, critics have complained the film feels thin, formulaic and weirdly televisual, less a grand restoration of Star Wars on the big screen than three Disney+ episodes.

The Booker prize-winning novelist and screenwriter shares the tune he’d want played at his funeral and why he’d have a couple of pints with Charles Dickens but not three

You’ve written books, films, TV shows and plays. Which of your projects do fans most want to talk to you about?

The one that people react to most, particularly women, is The Woman Who Walked Into Doors [about a woman experiencing domestic violence]. It came out in 1996, but even now – I was at a book signing event in Auckland a couple of days ago and two women told me quietly that that book meant so much to them. I think it’s possibly the best book I’ve written.

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Roddy Doyle is speaking at Sydney writers’ festival on Saturday 23 May at 6pm. His latest book is The Women Behind the Door (Penguin)

Cannes film festival: This could be better paced but the crisis which descends on an up-against-it dairy farm is delivered by some very memorable goons

There’s nothing like a home-invasion suspense thriller to provide a change of pace in the Cannes competition, and Léa Mysius’s film – adapted from the French bestseller Histoires de la Nuit by Laurent Mauvignier – isn’t at all bad, although it runs out of narrative steam in the third act and one particular shock-twist appears to unshock and untwist itself. Yet the film certainly delivers some sinister rural strangeness in the France profonde countryside and some gonzo shootouts; plus there is a ripe turn from Benoît Magimel, who with every film seems to morph further into a cross between Gérard Depardieu and Christopher Walken.

In a very remote bucolic village, Thomas (Bastien Bouillon) is a hardworking dairy farmer who took over the family smallholding after his father killed himself. After a whirlwind romance, he married Nora (Hafsia Herzi), a rather glamorous city-slicker of a woman who just showed up in the neighbourhood; they have a daughter, Ida who has recently irritated Nora by posting a wacky video of the three of them doing a goofy “family dance”, which has gone viral. The family gets on very well with an elegant artist who lives alone next door, played by Monica Bellucci on pretty stately form. Thomas has clearly got money worries; we see him on the phone trying to borrow cash from someone who has reluctantly helped him out before, as he needs €300 to pay for Nora’s approaching 40th birthday party. On the day itself, three sinister tough guys show up in the house, played by Magimel, Paul Hamy and Alane Delhaye. We might think we know who they’ve come to see and why – but things are a little more complicated than that.

As this year’s Cannes ordinaire draws to a close, our chief critic examines what went wrong and predicts the who’ll take home the prizes – including the fabled Braddies

The 2026 Cannes film festival comes to an end with an uneasy consensus that this has very much not been a vintage year. It’s a Cannes ordinaire.

There has even been some dark muttering from older veterans about comparing 2026 to the dreaded 2003 Cannes, the year of Vincent Gallo’s epically embarrassing erotic road movie The Brown Bunny.

Cannes film festival: Lukas Dhont’s first world war-set gay romance is a heartfelt examination of cowardice and lives lived in secret amid the brutality of battle

The word of the title is not used at any time in this film, but the relevance is clear. On the western front in the first world war, Belgian soldiers get permission to form a theatrical troupe, often in drag, to entertain their comrades when they are behind the lines and raise their morale (not entirely unlike the now despised 70s BBC TV comedy It Ain’t Half Hot Mum). The director is Lukas Dhont who explored gay and transgender issues in movies such as Girl and Close, and this story of a gay affair in the army is heartfelt and well acted, if rather earnestly researched.

The motley “band of rejects”, evidently excused frontline combat duty for various reasons, is led by Francis (Valentin Campagne), a tailor in civilian life who has now ecstatically flowered in the new role the war has given him. He is exuberant, mischievous, imaginative and genuinely committed to his theatrical art. The resulting entertainments look professionally accomplished. (Did these first world war gang shows really have people playing flute and clarinet?) One stolidly handsome, shy soldier called Pierre (Emmanuel Macchia) is fascinated by these theatrical types and by Francis himself; he deliberately stabs his own hand with a bayonet on the field of battle so he can join their group.

A misogynist is made to learn the error of his ways in this painfully dated and embarrassingly star-packed sexism comedy

In its attempt to become a one-stop shop for just about every form of nostalgia possible, Netflix has now decided to revive the dreadful British comedy of the 2000s. Films such as Sex Lives of the Potato Men, Three and Out, Fat Slags and Lesbian Vampire Killers saw creatives boldly stand up to Hollywood and declare that whatever they could do, the UK film industry could do it 10 times worse.

The all-deciding algorithm has somehow deemed it necessary for a return to that cursed era with the release of Ladies First, a broad and chintzy new comedy that would have felt old hat even back then. It’s an excruciatingly unfunny high-concept thought experiment, imagining a world with flipped gender politics, that’s far too happy with itself and what it’s allegedly achieving to be passed off as just some charming throwback. Like the other misfires it recalls, it’s also a criminal waste of talent, a murderers’ row of actors who hopefully got paid handsomely for the embarrassment of this whiffing up their IMDb pages.

In a collapsing world, artists like Slayyyter and Cobrah are chasing extreme highs with hyperactive music and debauched lyrics. Is their trashy vibe emancipating – or a bit contrived?

If any year demanded a soundtrack of self-aggrandising female mayhem, it’s 2026. Amid the terrors of war, AI and the climate crisis, women are expected to be symbolic vessels of order and stability: thin, beautiful and perpetually 25 – a state of perfection newly available for purchase thanks to weight-loss drugs and the deep plane facelift.

Covered unironically in leopard print and rhinestones, a cohort of young female pop stars are defying this familiar con with brash electronic pop, shamelessly hedonistic lyrics, anarchic sexuality and an obsession with what was once dismissed as “white trash”. It’s an aesthetic embraced by performers such as Slayyyter, Kim Petras, Cobrah, Demi Lovato, Snow Strippers’ Tatiana Schwaninger, Tove Lo and returning scene godmother Kesha.

The five-piece combine traditional musical styles with mountains of synths and hurried drums – rejecting computerised production in a pointed anti-AI statement

From João Pessoa, Brazil
Recommended if you like Hermeto Pascoal, Mr Bungle, King Crimson
Up next Celestial album released 7 August, touring the UK and Europe from 15 August

Thanks in part to its famed music department at the local Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa – the easternmost city in South America – is a hotbed of artists playing different folk styles from all over the continent. Papangu sound like all of them at the same time. The five-piece blend a long list of genres: bossa nova, the circle-dance song ciranda and forró, with its dry-tuned accordion and pulsing rhythm section, plus the more ubiquitous progressive rock and extreme metal. The band’s virtuoso chops and intensity keep their songs from buckling under the weight of those ideas, from the hurried drums to the mountains of synthesisers and pianos.

(Unheard of Hope)
The Guatemalan newcomer and US veteran find striking common ground on an intimate collaboration full of agitation, complexity and uncanny chemistry

This dreamlike, intimate album unites one of experimental music’s current stars with one of its most prolific veterans. During an interview promoting 2024’s acclaimed Sentir Que No Sabes, 34-year-old Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti praised Bill Orcutt, the 64-year-old US guitarist whose disjointed, aggressive four-string playing – honed in 90s noise-rock band Harry Pussy – graces more than 100 records. Orcutt reached out, and they started sharing files. While their friendship is new, Almost Waking reveals a deep kinship between these true originals.

The album centres on conversational duets between Fratti’s cello and Orcutt’s guitar. On the overdriven Forced & Forced & Forced, Orcutt’s trademark string-snapping plucking is matched by Fratti’s fragmented, agitated bow-scraping. Just as both players can wrestle with their instruments, they know how to make them feel like voices. On Steps of the Sun, the cello and guitar harmonise tenderly and take turns as lead, performed with the complex phrasing and dynamism of a sung duet.

(Decca France)
The trumpeter’s improvised soundtrack for the new wave director’s 1957 film still glows with sensuality, tension and nocturnal beauty in this lavish reissue

When Miles Davis was dying in September 1991, an invisible, neighbouring trumpet player, who this writer would frequently hear practising graceful classical phrases, began playing homages to Miles’ voice-like, blues-inflected melodies instead. It was a poignant personal tribute to a unique instrumental sound, and a unique imagination, that had profoundly enriched 20th-century music.

This month marks Miles’s centenary, and a clamour of celebrations of a musical life that led him to be dubbed (by Duke Ellington, allegedly) the “Picasso of jazz” for the many styles he explored. A standout this month is his 1957 movie soundtrack Ascenseur pour l’Échafaud – now repackaged on vinyl and CD with restored audio, beautiful photographs and revealing essays.

Memoir tells how the Jewish and Catholic parents of actor Isabelle and Caroline Huppert fell in love amid the rise of the Nazis. She explains why she wanted her ‘children’s children’ to know the story

Families have a way of appointing their own historians, even if the recruitment process remains obscure. In the late 1990s, Caroline Huppert – the fourth of five siblings, of whom the youngest is actor Isabelle – found herself alone with her father and a tape recorder. Over five days, he opened up about his life before and during the second world war. “I think I had that privileged position with him, because he had a taste for history, too,” she says. “But we didn’t have the same vision. I like the approach of what is called the nouvelle histoire, things like details of daily life in the past. With him, it was more emperors, kings, dates.”

More than 25 years later, their exchanges have led to her memoir, Une Histoire Cachée (A Hidden Story), a work that bundles up quotidian intimacy and big-ticket history in telling the story of how her parents, Raymond and Annick, fell in love. Their relationship so easily might never have happened: he was Jewish, she Catholic, and after they met in 1934 at Paris’s HEC business school, her haute-bourgeois family were opposed to them marrying. A big enough obstacle even before the Nazis invade France, and the young lovers are forced to flee the capital for the Free Zone near Lake Annecy. “I wasn’t aware of any of it in the least,” says the 75-year-old on a phone call from her home in Paris. “My parents weren’t people who talked about the past. They were always absorbed in the present, in action.”

A bunny who loves to bake, illustrated poems about amazing animals and a YA verse novel of dancefloor salvation

Ban Ban’s Bakery by Elena Hiroko Magee, Do Re Mi, £12.99
Ban Ban the bunny loves baking with Grandma – but will she be able to turn Dusty Cottage into a bakery of her very own? A cute, enticing picture book full of mouthwatering, pastel-hued treats.

Daddy Is Cleaning by Angel Dike, illustrated by Ebony Glenn, Nosy Crow, £12.99
Baby is helping with laundry, cooking and planting – so Daddy is cleaning, a lot! This tender picture book perfectly evokes the love, humour and exhaustion of managing a day’s chores with an enthusiastic toddler.

In this lurid, big-boned, often brilliant book about a sculptor and a true-crime documentary, state-of-the-nation commentary and gruesome chills combine

Claire Fuller is fascinated by corpses: by the moment when a supple, beloved body turns into inert, heavy matter. In her masterful 2021 Costa winner Unsettled Ground, adult twins veer between pathos and gawky comedy as they attempt to dress and bury their dead mother, floored by the sheer, awful weight of her. Now in Hunger and Thirst, Ursula’s destiny is shaped by encounters with two cadavers. And as the book oscillates between social realism and gothic horror, these two unruly corpses destroy her life.

The first is Ursula’s itinerant, troubled but loving mother, who’d been busking with her child alongside her since giving birth at 16. Aged seven, Ursula spent an appalling two days stuck in a bathroom in Morocco, with the door trapped by her mother’s dead body after she died of dengue fever. By the time the novel opens in 1987, Ursula is 16, and has been moved between seven children’s homes before ending up at a “halfway house” alongside recovering addicts and released prisoners. She lands a trial job in the postroom at Winchester School of Art: there she makes friends with bold, madcap Sue, who thrusts on Ursula an unfamiliar intimacy, introducing her to her enviably warm and rambling family. Ursula is narrating the book 40 years later, and it’s clear from the start that something will go so horribly wrong between Ursula and Sue that a prurient documentary-maker will end up making a film about Sue’s murder. Scenes from this documentary, Dark Descent, punctuate the book, adding to the sense of foreboding.

Packed with gossip and incident, this book is also a fascinating study in the gestation of genius

Among the many great pleasures of Daniel Okrent’s new biography of Stephen Sondheim – a book perfectly weighted between the gossipy and erudite – is its rendering of the milieu beyond its immediate subject. You come for the biography and stay for the world of mid-20th-century New York, in which Leonard Bernstein says terrible things about Sweeney Todd (“disgusting”), Sondheim says terrible things about Barbra Streisand (“doesn’t have one sincere moment left inside her”), and Arthur Laurents says terrible things about everyone. In the early 2000s, during a particularly poisonous exchange of letters between Laurents and Sondheim, the latter told his old collaborator, “you’re just good enough to know you’re mediocre”.

The entire book is sheer delight and Okrent, formerly an editor at the New York Times and a baseball fanatic who effectively invented the modern fantasy baseball league, does a terrific job of telling Sondheim’s life story alongside shrewd analysis of his body of work. We meet Sondheim’s mother, known as Foxy, whom the writer and composer made an elaborate play of hating his entire life and who Okrent brings to life in order to get behind that particular performance.

Driving sims were overtaken by open world fantasy adventures, but new upgrades show how much joy there is in the genre

I have spent the last week careening around Japan in a Porsche 911, seeing the sights, racing other cars and occasionally veering off the road to plummet through an ancient bamboo forest. You all know what’s coming next … this wasn’t in real life, folks – it was in Forza Horizon 6, the latest instalment in Microsoft’s series of open world driving games set in authentic-looking, real-world locations.

Reviewing this game (which is out now on Xbox and PC, and coming to PS5 later in the year) has reminded me of the sheer fun and exhilaration that driving games can provide. It’s easy to forget, but this was the biggest genre in town from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Consoles were sold on how good their racing games were: the original PlayStation had Ridge Racer, the Sega Saturn had Daytona USA. Later came the dirt-track thrills of Colin McRae Rally, the chaotic destruction of Burnout, the sophisticated realism of Gran Turismo. They were the bestsellers of the era, showcasing the future of real-time 3D visuals.

Why are Nintendo releasing a straight-up remake of the space-flight shooter – with many of its original limitations – rather than a fresh new take?

The Nintendo 64 was not my first video game console, but it was my formative one. Getting to grips with 3D movement in Super Mario 64 with that weird three-pronged controller is one of my most visceral childhood memories; the long, long wait for The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the background noise to a huge chunk of my youth. But back in the 1990s (in the UK at least), it felt as if nobody had an N64. When everybody had a PlayStation instead, I felt I was the only kid in my whole city who cared more about Banjo-Kazooie than Crash Bandicoot.

If even Zelda seemed comparatively niche in Europe in the 90s, Lylat Wars (known elsewhere as Star Fox 64) was a real deep cut. It’s a 1997 space-flight shooter starring Fox McCloud and his squad of animal pilots laser-blasting across different planets in nimble crafts called Arwings. I played this game to absolute death in 1998, when I got it for my birthday alongside the fabled Rumble Pak, which made your controller vibrate and shudder whenever something cool was happening on screen (fun fact: Lylat Wars was the first console game to feature controller rumble). But I really hadn’t thought about it much since. Then, last week, Nintendo announced a Switch 2 remake.

Microsoft; PC, Xbox Series X/S (PS5 due later)
Dreamy vistas of the country’s natural beauties are stunningly delivered – but won’t distract from thrilling high-end driving adventures

The Forza Horizon games have always been about drama. Not just the tension and excitement of racing, but also the sensory impact of the natural environment – the sun rising over a dense city, rain clouds hovering above a valley floor. There are moments in this game – perhaps after emerging from a dense forest, or coming up from an underpass – where Mount Fuji briefly appears in the distance, hazy yet majestic, the Platonic ideal of a volcano – and it almost takes your breath away. Fans of this series have been waiting years for Japan and now here it is, the whole country, reduced, remixed and repackaged as a driving paradise.

In many ways, Forza Horizon 6 is a continuation of what this series has always been about. You enter a festival-style driving competition then drive around a vast map splattered with various races and challenges, earning reputation by competing well and buying new vehicles for your extensive garage. There are slight changes this time – you start as a rookie not an established legend, so you have to qualify to enter the festival, and Playground has re-introduced the need to unlock successive levels of competition bringing back the sense of progression from the earliest titles in the series. You start out clattering about in slower C-class vehicles on easier circuits and have to work hard to start lining up against super cars such as the Ferrari J50 or Lamborghini Huracán.

Previously prohibited use of websites such as Omoggle that connect a streamer to a stranger’s video feed now allowed

Last week, at 4am, 19-year-old Sammy Amz was scrolling through X when something caught his eye: a popular Twitch streamer was competing in a 1v1 “mog-off” with a stranger, and losing.

The next day he opened the Omoggle gaming website and began to play. Quickly he matched with another user – green dots appeared on their faces onscreen, as the website began to compare their measurements: canthal tilt, palpebral fissure ratio, nose-to-face width ratio and so on.

Wolterton, Norfolk
From an explosion of plywood chairs to something akin to bubblegum stuck to the walls, this imaginative exhibition reverberates with Barlow’s punk irreverence

Wolterton Hall is folded so deeply into the countryside of the Bure Valley that you can’t even see the grand Palladian mansion when you enter the gates to the estate. This was once one of the four power houses of Norfolk, built by Thomas Ripley for Horatio Walpole. Inside, Wolterton is dripping in 18th-century treasures, furniture, then-fashionable Belgian tapestries, fusty old portraits of important types – but now also, knobbly bodily things, strange almost familiar shapes stuck to walls and chucked down the stairs, as if someone– namely Phyllida Barlow – had come in and trashed the place.

It’s a difficult thing to know what to do with these former country stately homes. Many have adopted a contemporary art programme as a way of challenging their history and bringing in new visitors. Simon Oldfield – Wolterton’s artistic director, brought in by the new owners, the Ellis family, two years ago – has done more than that. He has reinvented the space, making room for new ideas to take over. There’s no better artist for that than Barlow, whose works seem to take on a life of their own wherever they go. Her exhibition begins at the entrance, where the explosive installation Untitled: Stacked Chairs greets you. The cacophony of red plywood chairs feels like a statement about throwing things out and starting again. It’s rebellious, disruptive and direct.

Brixton House, London
Paula Varjack’s kinetic play uses lip syncing and dance routines to show how prejudice turned a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ into a career disaster

The year is 2004 and the Super Bowl halftime show is about to begin. What would later become known as “Nipplegate” – in which Justin Timberlake ripped part of Janet Jackson’s bodice, briefly exposing her right breast – will be broadcast to 70,000 spectators in the stadium and more than 140 million TV viewers. This one “wardrobe malfunction”, lasting just nine sixteenths of a second, will lead to Jackson being blacklisted from much of the music industry for years, sending her career into a spiral while Timberlake’s continued to thrive.

Paula Varjack’s play interrogates the role that gender, race and age played in that fallout, while also serving as a loud and proud love letter to Jackson and her music. Initially inspired by a 2019 trip to Glastonbury, where Varjack saw Jackson perform and wondered why she had never played the festival before, the show highlights the injustice of a white, male-controlled and favoured music industry. Performed alongside fellow devisers Pauline Mayers, Julienne Doko, Chia Phoenix and BSL performer Vinessa Brant, the result is a kinetic multimedia analysis that uses lip syncing, killer dance routines, onscreen BSL by Cherie Gordon and puppetry to build their case. Directed by Emily Aboud, the production erupts with high-speed spirit.

Bunting from hospital sheets, drawings on letters from the DWP, an installation made of damp: a new exhibition celebrates art that takes the challenges the artists have faced and turns them into drivers of creativity

“I’m having a flare-up’, is a really common phrase that you hear in the ‘crip’ community,” says Mariana Lemos, the co-curator of Flare Up, a group exhibition focused on art powered by illness, chronic conditions, disability, neurodivergence and deafness. The show includes artists who do and don’t identify as ‘crip’ (a defiant reclaiming of derogatory slang) and underlines the ebb and flow of symptoms to explore illness as anything but static. A flare, adds Lemos’s collaborator Natasha Hoare, “brings light to things that have been kept in the dark, ignored or invisible-ised. There’s a sense of celebration to it, perhaps.”

This would seem to be the case for French artist Benoît Piéron, a leading figure among artists addressing illness and who now also has a big solo show at Paris’s edgiest art space, Palais de Tokyo. In Flare Up, his pastel bunting crisscrosses a ceiling, before pooling on the floor in a heap, its energy apparently drained. Cut from hospital sheets, the party flags defy the infantilised days of the bedbound. The fabric, in its typically soothing nursery colours, has also soaked up the seeping life of the bodies it hides: be that fever sweats or sex. Piéron’s subtle, poetic reminder of the physical reality of an ill person, as well as the ups and downs of a chronic condition, is typical across the exhibition’s witty, ever-surprising artworks.

OVO Hydro, Glasgow
Moving seamlessly through extravagant choreography between bubblegum–rap and darker, rockier material, the singer is always in full command

Since her breakout almost a decade ago, singer and rapper Doja Cat has been musically restless: bouncing between the pop-rap of her first album Amala to her darker, toothier 2023 release Scarlet; collaborating with SZA then heel-turning to cover Hole. On last year’s fifth album Vie she negotiated the tension between the pop persona she once denounced as a “cash grab” and her true freak artistic self – a tension she plays to perfection during tonight’s show.

After a prelude where Doja hovers above the stage in Klaus Nomi-esque shoulder pads and a 20-metre long train – perhaps elaborate trolling aimed at fans who complained about her lack of outfit changes earlier in the tour – she arrives fully formed as a purple-clad bandleader for a run of 80s inflected tracks from Vie and 2021’s Planet Her. Fronting a 10-person band, she’s an immediately commanding presence, wearing pasties, a high-waisted bodysuit, tights and gloves, her zebra print microphone matching her heels. She has the look of a scene-kid Prince, the blond of recent shows swapped for an acid green wig. Appropriately, the synergy between her and her band is reminiscent of Purple Rain, or a glam-rock Stop Making Sense. She moves seamlessly between modes and poses, from slow jam Make It Up – more muscular live than on record – to the swagger of Ain’t Shit and Paint the Town Red.

TV presenter who became a household name for her sunny broadcasts from holiday destinations in ITV’s Wish You Were Here

Long before people scanned Tripadvisor or started booking their own holidays, they looked to TV travel shows to tell them where to go, and foremost among these was Wish You Were Here …?, fronted by Judith Chalmers. A triumph of middlebrow escapism, the show ran on ITV for nearly 30 years, from the early 1970s to the early 2000s.

Chalmers, who has died aged 90, was the welcoming, lightly glamorous face of Wish You Were Here, on which she was part champion of “abroad” and part consumer watchdog, balancing those roles with a warmth that made her one of the most admired and accomplished broadcasters of her generation. In many years’ worth of globetrotting – from African safaris to US theme parks to funiculars in the Alps – she never lost her poise. TV travel royalty was how she was widely regarded.

They blew up a van full of banknotes. They sold high-end Ukrainian vodka to Selfridges. Now art duo Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn are auctioning their past works – to launch their most ambitious project to date

This Saturday, artists Hilary Powell and Dan Edelstyn are auctioning off their work from the past decade and a half. The reason? To help fund a community-led renewable power station in Nigel Farage’s Clacton constituency. Former YBA Gavin Turk will be wielding the gavel and the couple hope to raise at least £250,000 for the project.

The big-ticket item going under the hammer will be the remnants of a gold Ford Transit van containing £1.2m in fake banknotes that the pair blew up in London’s Docklands in 2019 as the climax – or money shot, if you will – of Bank Job, a film about their attempts to fight toxic debt culture with art, a battle that involved printing cash to wipe out more than £1m debt.

A new film, Blondi, takes audiences inside the Führer’s bunker in the final days of the Third Reich, from the point of view of his beloved dog

When Benedict Morrison, who runs the London comedy festival, stood up to present Blondi – a new film about the dying days of the Third Reich – at its premiere at a cinema in Brixton earlier this month, he went in big. Picture the scene, he told the audience: it’s 1924 and FW Murnau has just strapped a movie camera to a bicycle and invented subjective cinematic perspective. The result was The Last Laugh which captured the precariousness of life in Germany after the first world war with such poignant precision it foreshadowed the following decade – and revolutionised cinema.

For Blondi, shot 100 years later, the camera was strapped to a dog. Lexie, a seven-month-old German shepherd, is both the title character – Hitler’s last dog, possibly the most famous hound in geopolitics – but is also the co-director of photography, or cinemadographer if you prefer, as both Pablo Álvarez-Hornia (the film’s producer) and Jack Salvadori (its co-director) certainly do. It makes for a novel cinematic experience. Sometimes you feel a bit sick at the sudden changes of pace and freaky angles. “Some things need to be made uncomfortable,” says Álvarez-Hornia, “and, in a way, it needed to be dirtier and grittier and uglier for it to work.”

Guardian Australia joins ultrarunner Joanne Walker in an excruciating race through the Blue Mountains, where men outnumber women four to one

Somewhere before the finish line the body starts to break down, Joanne Walker says.

“The pain starts in your feet but before long it moves up to your knees and eventually you feel like you just can’t move your legs any more.”

After 30 hours with no sleep, running alone through the cold darkness of the Megalong Valley, the brain can break as well.

“At one point, I did not even know where I was going; I was swerving all over the shop,” she says.

I was rushing towards the turnstile when I noticed a bundle of clothes in a corner. I walked over, peeled back a dark sweatshirt, and saw him

In the summer of 2000, I could never have imagined becoming a father. I was 34, living in New York City, with a good job in social care, but still in a tiny apartment. I had been with my partner, Pete, for just over three years; we were serious, but we didn’t live together. Becoming a parent was not on my radar.

One August evening, I had finished work late and was hurrying to a dinner reservation I had with Pete. I was rushing towards the turnstile at Union Square station when I noticed a bundle of clothes in a corner. I saw it move and stopped in my tracks. I walked over, peeled back a dark sweatshirt, and saw him: a newborn baby, with the umbilical cord still attached.

As temperatures soar across the UK, chill your space – and avoid energy-guzzling aircon – with our pick of the best fans, from tower to desk to bladeless

• The best portable neck and handheld fans

Our world is getting hotter. Summer heatwaves are so frequent, they’re stretching the bounds of what we think of as summer. Hot-and-bothered home working and sweaty, sleepless nights are now alarmingly common.

Get a good fan and you can dodge the temptation of air conditioning. Aircon is incredibly effective, but it uses a lot of electricity … and burning fossil fuels is how we got into this mess in the first place. Save money and carbon by opting for a great fan instead.

Best fan overall:
AirCraft Lume

Best budget fan and best desk fan:
Devola desk fan – stock expected at end of May

From luxury Simba and Otty mattresses to brilliant budget buys, here’s what we recommend – and how to know if you’ve found a good deal

• The best mattresses for back pain
• The best mattress toppers, tested

A good mattress improves your sleep, say mattress makers – and they would, wouldn’t they? But they’re right. The older I get, the more I know it. When I was 20, I could sleep anywhere: a friend’s floor, a sofa – even a phone box one night. These days, I won’t get a single one of 40 winks if I’m not lying on a decent mattress. Comfy but firm, cosy but breathable, and with lots of cool spots for my feet.

Today’s best mattresses promise all this and more. Pocket springs are still around, but they face stiff – well, medium-firm – competition from hybrid mattresses that combine springs and memory foam for the ideal balance of comfort and support.

Best mattress overall:
Otty Original Hybrid

Secateurs, pizza ovens and sparkling rose in a tin … whatever your plans for the long weekend, here’s how to make the most of it

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Reasons to be cheerful #271: a warm, sunny bank holiday weekend. Here at the Filter, we need no excuse to kick off our shoes, grab a cold drink (and some SPF) and head outside.

To help you make the most of the long weekend, we’ve rounded up some of our favourite things. Whether it’s tools to spruce up your outdoor space, tipples to sip in the garden, a fake tan to jump-start your summer skin or fashion for warmer weather, summer starts here.

Whether it’s jigsaws, mud kitchens or electronic pets, four is a fun age to buy for. Here are 22 road-tested favourites

• The best toys and gifts for three-year-olds

Four is a magical age. Children are on their way out of the “threenager” stage, growing in confidence and independence but still needing help and support from parents and friends.

Four was the age at which many seasoned parents told me that “things get a little easier”, and I’ve found this is slightly true now that my daughters are almost four and seven.

A lower-ABV highball that brings together cherry cola, red wine and Italy’s favourite bitter artichoke aperitif

Our highball menu at Circle 13 champions lower-ABV pours for relaxed evenings of petanque. This one’s a favourite at our park takeovers, as well as a nod to the Basque-inspired pintxo kitchen at our first permanent site in east London.

Marc Sarton Du Jonchay, Circle 13, London E2

You don’t have to buy a ticket to enjoy decent festival food – here are a few ideas for bringing the party home

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

This weekend, my social media was flooded with swoon-worthy shots from the Ballymaloe Festival of Food in Ireland, one of my favourite events in the food world’s social calendar. It really is exceptional, because of its range of stalls, personalities and demos, and because you also get a glimpse into the world of the ever-inspiring Allen family (I desperately want an outbuilding purely for fermenting and making sourdough, à la Darina).

Weekends such as this are becoming more and more popular, and they’re undoubtedly a fun and great way to try a range of cuisines, but you don’t have to go to a food festival to enjoy decent festival food. Almost all festivals have great culinary offerings now – I’ve had some highly memorable meals at the likes of Glastonbury, End of the Road and Latitude. Forget living off kebabs and chips after a day dancing in a field; some of my highlights have been meals such as Tibetan momos, vegan thali with sweet chai and Goan fish curry. While there is no Glasto this year, there are plenty of other places to get your fix – you could even bring the party home.

Versatile, aesthetically ambiguous and cultish in its appeal, chenin blanc is the Tilda Swinton of grapes

My wine consultant friend, Ruth Osborne, often wears a cap embroidered with the words “chenin blanc”. As someone who is proud to include hats from Toad bakery and Celine Dion’s 2017 UK tour in her collection, I know all about headwear as a signifier of personal brand, and Ruth isn’t the only person in the business to extol the virtues of chenin. But why?

Chenin blanc shape-shifts with soil and climate perhaps more than any other grape, and it is this chameleon quality that sets wine enthusiasts aflutter, as does the fact that it’s a late-ripening variety with good acidity, so lends itself to a whole spectrum of profiles, from dry to sweet. Versatile, aesthetically ambiguous and, as my friend’s hat testifies, cultish in its appeal, it is the Tilda Swinton of grapes.

Luscious, herby ricotta and breadcrumb balls, simmered in a rich tomato, basil and chilli sauce … that’s one weeknight dinner sorted

To begin with, the situation looks far from promising. Having given up its protein for cheese, the whey that has been returned to the huge pan is thin, opaque and not unlike cloudy washing-up water. The situation changes slightly when whole milk is added to the whey, along with rennet, and it’s then reheated, or re-cooked (ri-cotta). For a while, nothing happens. Then follows a slight, just perceptible wobbling, before, quite suddenly, like scudding clouds moving into view, scraggy clumps of coagulated protein, albumin and globulin appear on the surface. These are lifted out in the same way as foam from a pan of broth: scooped off with a large slotted spoon. At least that is how it is done by Filippo Privitera at Caseificio Privitare in Castellana Sicula in the province of Palermo. The coagulated protein, otherwise known as ricotta, is then dropped into perforated plastic tubes on a slanting surface so it can drain some more, before being eaten in many ways.

For the Feast newsletter a few weeks ago, I wrote about the many ways to eat ricotta. Like many, I have long known what a useful ingredient it is, but, going through decades of archives, I was reminded just how versatile ricotta is, moving with ease between savoury and sweet, and both straight from the pot and cooked. However, since writing that newsletter, things I forgot to mention have also scudded into my head: how good ricotta is in pastry (a roast pumpkin, mushroom and chestnut pie is especially good); that it can be whipped with coffee for Anna Del Conte’s quick pudding; mixed with flour for sweet fritters; or made into polpette di ricotta e pane (ricotta and breadcrumb balls), which can be deep-fried or simmered in a rich tomato, basil and chilli sauce.

Reading with him, I am reminded of the world of words his mother and I shared. I no longer feel so overwhelmed

As I removed my dead wife’s favourite novels from the bookshelf, a photo of her fell to the ground and a wave of guilt swamped me.

The photo was of my wife with her sister in the 1980s. They were toddlers. My wife’s eyes, wide and bright, and her hair, blond and shaggy, looked just like our four-year-old son. But I felt no joy in seeing her beauty and genes passed on. I felt as though I was suddenly drowning.

Although it might seem like a minor irritant, the consequences of email incivility can be far-reaching

Received a rude email at work? You’re not alone.

When I was weighing a move from full-time to freelance work, a terse email from a colleague – demanding I redo a task from scratch over a technicality – settled the matter instantly. I quit on the spot. Around the same time, thousands of US government workers received an email requiring them to justify their employment “with approx 5 bullets of what you accomplished this week” – or resign.

Clarissa Brincat is a freelance health and science journalist

She might look like a wolf, but Nya’s temperament is so sweet that she now helps people who have a fear of trains and travel

I got Nya, a German shepherd, when she was a puppy. She has such a good temperament – she’s really calm around people.

When she was five years old, I decided to register her with Pets As Therapy, an organisation that brings therapy pets into hospitals, care homes, schools and other places to befriend people, and help reduce stress and anxiety.

When Sousan Samadani saw a video about soil degradation, she suddenly knew she would commit everything she had to the cause. Soon she was travelling thousands of miles to raise awareness, skydiving, hitchhiking and cycling

Sousan Samadani was watching videos on YouTube one day when she came across a post about how the world’s soil was degrading so rapidly that it was in danger of extinction.

The video – posted by the Save Soil movement – “was like a shock for me”, Samadani says. “I thought: ‘How is it possible that the soil that gives us food is dying?’”

From a farmhouse with a wildflower meadow to an award-winning London flat with a neat garden for al fresco dining

Parents can can claim up to £2,000 a year for each child – but many are put off by the clunkiness of the scheme

Any parent who has ever used the UK government’s tax-free childcare system knows what a painful experience it is. Each month when I log into my account, I feel a sense of dread and frustration. Why is something that is such a lifeline for so many parents so difficult to use?

The scheme gives working parents an extra £2 for every £8 they spend on childcare. You can claim up to £2,000 a year for each child (or up to £4,000 a year for a disabled child).

Special anniversary edition of award-winning headphones are some of the best sounding you can buy, but cost far more than top Sony noise cancellers

Sony’s latest noise-cancelling headphones are a special anniversary set made to celebrate a decade of its prized 1000X series, designed to be plusher, slimmer, more comfortable and the best sounding yet.

The original 1000X launched in 2016, igniting a fierce rivalry with the dominant Bose and its QuietComfort line, which would push noise-cancelling technology dramatically forward as each tried to outdo the other with subsequent releases.

The bank’s interim chief executive says ‘this issue should never have happened’, but warns it may take time to process claims

National Savings and Investments bank will start to contact thousands of families affected by a missing savings scandal next week, as it confirmed how much they are owed.

In March, the chief executive of the state-backed bank was forced out after it emerged there had been long-running problems with the tracing of accounts belonging to customers who had died.

From infections and allergies to brain diseases and autoimmune disorders, a wave of trials offers hope

Clinical trials of immunotherapies have rocketed in the past decade as researchers have turned their understanding of the body’s defences into powerful new treatments. Leading the pack are cancer therapies, but researchers have other conditions in their sights, from infections and allergies to brain diseases and autoimmune disorders. Here, we explore how these therapies work.

Cancer Research UK figures show number diagnosed with most serious form of skin cancer has risen above 20,000 for first time

The number of cases from the most serious form of skin cancer have reached a record high across the UK, according to analysis by a leading cancer charity.

Melanoma cases in the UK have risen above 20,000 for the first time ever, with 20,980 people being diagnosed with the form of cancer in 2022, according to analysis of the latest figures by Cancer Research UK.

Retreating from reality is a brittle way to feel better, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Find people who feel as you do and then face these problems together

• Read more Leading questions

I’m 21, and all my life I’ve been anxious about the future. It’s not getting better. There are a lot of things that worry me – no job prospects even with a degree under my belt; I won’t be able to find a partner who will respect me; I’ll never own a house. And outside these, of course, I’m worried about climate change and global politics.

The advice I have been offered is to “not think about it” or “focus on what I personally can control”. But I have dreams and aspirations; I want to be a writer and an artist and I am working harder than ever to make those things happen, even if AI might make those fields even more competitive. So my question is: How do I balance my dreams and aspirations practically, and take care of myself, without living in a bubble?

UK scientists find tocilizumab, used for rheumatoid arthritis, may help antidepressant-resistant patients

Immunotherapy could be used to treat depression among patients who have not responded to conventional antidepressants, according to the results of an early clinical trial.

Researchers at the University of Bristol investigated whether tocilizumab, an anti-inflammatory drug commonly used for immune conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, could improve symptoms of difficult-to-treat depression.

Take your lead from Harry Styles and go for short shorts, or dig out your favourite knee-length pair

The floaty, feminine aesthetic being worn by young pop stars like Olivia Rodrigo and Sabrina Carpenter has been around since the 1960s. So why all the fuss?

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In the music video for her recent single Drop Dead, pop sensation Olivia Rodrigo saunters beguilingly through the ornate rooms of the Palace of Versailles, her eyes fixed on the camera. It is an all round soft-girl production, shot by Petra Collins who captures a hazy teenage aesthetic close to a carbon copy of Sofia Coppola’s 2006 film, Marie Antoinette. But when the video aired last month, it was met with instant backlash online – not for her halting tourists from visiting the world heritage site for the day, but for Rodrigo’s Pinterest-inspired, pastel blue, babydoll ensemble.

The outfit – a floaty off-the-shoulder Chloé pre-fall 2026 babydoll top, styled with silky bloomers peeking out underneath and white pointelle knee socks – did not impress the keyboard warriors (likely, bots), who accused the singer of infantilising herself and invoking a ‘Lolita’ aesthetic. A few weeks later, Rodrigo donned a similar look (pictured top) on stage in Barcelona for Spotify’s Billions Club Live concert: a pink and white floral puff-sleeve babydoll top with matching ruffled bloomers from the small brand Génération78, offset by chunky black knee-high Dr Marten boots, equal parts soft and severe.

The latest character dressing trend may be a little silly but there’s an off-kilter pleasure in its mellow, vintage vibe

Welcome to the season of the Posh Grandpa, fashion’s newest main character. We’ve had Brat, we did Coastal Grandma, we loved Tomato Girl Summer. The world is pretty heavy right now, as you’ll have noticed, so any opportunity to lighten up is precious. The nonsense is the point.

Character dressing is style that makes you smile, but it’s not just that. There is infinitely more joy in these looks, however silly they are, than there is in aspiring to look rich and pretty, which is where the aesthetic centre of gravity of our culture swings back to again and again. The esoteric sides of fashion’s personality capture something important about style, which is that it needs a bit of friction to make it interesting. The pebble in the boot, the surprise to snag the eye. This is where the magic happens.

Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest collection pairs uptown elegance with downtown pop culture and street style

The allure of travelling in style helped make Louis Vuitton the biggest luxury house in the world, and no expense was spared for a trip to New York to showcase Nicolas Ghesquière’s latest collection.

The first model stepped on to the catwalk carrying a 100-year-old Louis Vuitton suitcase on which the artist Keith Haring had doodled several of his signature grooving stick figures in 1984. Prised from the Vuitton archives, the case heralded a collaboration with Haring’s estate that will include the classic LV Speedy handbag reissued with the artist’s dancing babies and barking dogs.

Eccentric public art, strange ruins, eerie landscapes, follies … Britain has a rich store of curiosities. An enthusiast selects 10 of the quirkiest finds from his new book

One thing unites the British more than anything else. It stands there in plain sight but is rarely spoken about. We may try to hide it; we may not admit it to ourselves; but under the surface, deep down, in the nicest possible way, we are all a little odd. Not in a sinister way, just eccentric, weird, unpredictable and downright wonderful. As a nation we have an artistic and creative zest and boffin-like inventiveness. In fields of innovation, we led the tech world with some of our brave and crazy inventions. Even our landscapes are damn weird, with some of the oldest, most mysterious and diverse geological oddities in Europe, and plentiful legends too. I spent years exploring the enchanting strangeness of Britain, discovering follies, eccentric public art, strange buildings, mysterious ruins and eerie landscapes for my Weird Guide, which features about 300 of these curiosities. Here are some of my favourites.

The Yorkshire Dales Explorer is a little-known alternative to the Settle to Carlisle rail route, and takes you deep into wonderful walking country

Limestone stretches on all sides like an inland ocean – appropriately enough, since the shimmering white rock has its ancient origins in coral, shells and the skeletons of sea creatures. We advance carefully, stepping on clints (blocks of rock) and avoiding grykes (the deep fissures between them). It’s a warm, dry day and, even if it were not, limestone drains better than most types of terrain. For a long while, it’s broad, flat and hallucinatory and then, suddenly, the rocky sea collapses like a waterfall and we’re at the edge of a huge fault. The words Yorkshire Dales might evoke pretty villages and walled-in sheep fields, but this landscape is raw and wild, the kind of natural realm WH Auden celebrated in his poem In Praise of Limestone, and the kind that prompts geological speculation and inward ruminations. To cap it all, there are just three of us and nothing much and no one else all the way to the far horizons.

It’s my first decent yomp of the spring. I’ve come here with two walking pals on the egregiously under-promoted direct train that connects Rochdale and Manchester with the national park and Yorkshire’s Three Peaks. While the Leeds-Settle-Carlisle service – which recently celebrated its 150th birthday – is deservedly famous, the Yorkshire Dales Explorer, which started in June 2024, is much less celebrated. It’s also far less frequent. Trains travel between Leeds and Settle, continuing to Carlisle or Morecambe, 20 times a day Monday to Saturday, 11 times on Sundays. Trains between Manchester Victoria and Settle run on Saturdays only and just once in the morning each way and once in the late afternoon.

Wonderful walks, wholesome adventures and friendly farmyard animals await at this collection of cabins and cottages in Perthshire

On a January morning in 1938, Pitmiddle’s last resident, James Gillies, closed the door to his cottage for the final time and walked away through the snow. High on the south-facing slopes of the Sidlaw Hills in Perthshire, the village is now little more than a jumble of half-ruined walls gradually being reclaimed by the land.

My children pick around the overgrown stones like explorers discovering a lost civilisation, before scampering back through the gate and over the grass to our cabin in a neighbouring field. Called the Pitmiddle Hut, it’s the latest addition to Guardswell Farm, which spans 81 hectares (200 acres) of countryside halfway between Perth and Dundee (an hour and a half from Glasgow or Edinburgh). “People gradually moved away from Pitmiddle’s way of life,” says Anna Lamotte, who runs Guardswell with her husband, Digby Legge, often aided by their four-year-old daughter and a smiley 10-month-old in a vintage pram. “Villagers each had a pendicle, the small area they could farm, a system of outfields, infields and ‘kailyards’ – a Scots word for a kitchen garden.” Anna and Digby grew up on farms and small-holdings nearby, and today they rear cattle, sheep, goats and chickens and tend to the vegetable gardens, alongside welcoming guests to stay.

With state-of-the-art fitness and spa facilities onsite and everything from hiking to kayaking the beautiful Bay of Kotor, it’s a perfect base for an active break

I was lying on a bed with no trousers on. A young man helped me into some crotch-high boots and zipped them up. He turned the lights down low, put on some music, pressed a button and left the room. Argh! The boots started to slowly inflate from the toes up, like a giant blood-pressure cuff. As they clenched around my upper thighs, I started to panic. What if they just got tighter and tighter until my legs exploded? As I was about to shout for help, the pressure suddenly released, leaving my legs feeling deliciously light. I took a deep breath and submitted to another 19 minutes of this sweet torture.

I was at Siro Boka Place in Montenegro, having compression boot therapy, which is supposed to boost circulation and reduce swelling. “It’s especially effective on women over 35,” my youthful assistant had told me, helpfully. The hotel, which opened last year, is proud of its “state-of-the-art wellness facilities”. In most hotels that means a poky gym. At Siro the facilities are so good the Montenegrin Olympic team is training here ahead of Los Angeles 2028.

Being a carnivore is often seen as an expression of manhood, but the need has never been greater for men to cut down their intake

• Change by degrees offers life hacks and sustainable living tips each Saturday to help reduce your household’s carbon footprint

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Eating too much of it risks chronic disease, growing it contributes about an eighth of human-made climate pollution, and there is evidence linking it to certain cancers.

But there’s no denying meat – especially red and processed meat – remains a firm fixture on dinner plates. This is especially the case for blokes, posing a masculine challenge to the climate crisis.

Looking at your veg patch with fresh eyes can be inspiring – and a helpful way of rectifying past mistakes

Regular readers might remember me having a wobbly time in the garden last year. Life was lifing (as the kids say) and with that came many hiccups and failures. The veg patch had a wanton disregard for my hopes during growing season, which taught me the importance of finding value and beauty in what was growing, instead of lamenting all that was not.

This season, I’ve found myself approaching the veg patch with a more determined attitude. It’s been six years since my partner and I cleared the couch grass and nettles from the parcel of earth at the bottom of our garden, moved a ton or so of compost on to it to create vegetable beds, and grew the first crops in our new home. And now feels like the right time to take a look at our growing space with fresh eyes. It’s not a blank space, of course, but I’ve been asking myself how I’d grow here if I’d just adopted this patch.

From furniture with ‘skinny legs’ to making sure spaces work for multiple purposes, three experts who live in tiny homes share their best lessons

In 2010 Colin Chee picked up the keys to his 37 square metre off-the-plan apartment in Melbourne’s city centre. “It was only then that I realised how shit it was.”

With no design experience and a limited budget, his quest to find inspiration eventually led to the birth of Never Too Small, a YouTube channel showcasing clever designs for small spaces from around the world. Launched in 2017, it now has more than 3 million subscribers.

Authorities are cracking down on rights activists fighting for Indigenous people threatened by authoritarianism, extractivism and climate breakdown

The operation began at 9am Moscow time, but took place across all of Russia’s 11 time zones. Almost simultaneously, agents of the federal security service (FSB) raided the homes and workplaces of 17 Indigenous rights activists.

Officers carried out searches, confiscated laptops and phones, and arrested and interrogated activists about participation in international forums. Most were let go; many have since left the country. Others remain in Russia, but will no longer speak up.

Byron Allen’s show Comics Unleashed will take the 11.35pm time slot vacated by the cancellation of The Late Show

Viewers accustomed to watching The Late Show With Stephen Colbert at its typical 11.35pm time slot will be greeted with a different show starting on Friday: Comics Unleashed, hosted by Byron Allen.

While it’s standard for networks to pay a host like Allen, 65, his deal with CBS is a little different. He will be paying the network for Colbert’s old time slot through a 16-month-long lease agreement while selling advertising for the show himself.

Gardeners tending to allotments were terrified to see animal roaming wild after mauling one of its keepers – but critics have long been concerned

A tiger on the loose among garden allotments. Panicked residents summoning armed police ill-equipped to deal with a dangerous predator. And, behind it all, Germany’s self-proclaimed “Tiger Queen” and her private menagerie.

In startling scenes over the weekend in the eastern town of Schkeuditz, near Leipzig airport, the mix proved fatal for a big cat named Sandokan and left a keeper seriously injured.

We would like to hear about what you love about the great outdoors

As summer comes and our gardens, parks and woodlands burst into life, many of us are heading outdoors.

Scientific evidence shows how vitally important greenery and the natural world are for our mental and physical wellbeing.

Wherever you’re planning to watch the matches – we’d like to hear from you

The men’s World Cup in the US, Mexico and Canada is nearly upon us, kicking off on 11 June.

Amid the excitement around the tournament, there has been controversy over Fifa’s ticketing process, the cost of travel, and security concerns for fans travelling to the US.

The Pensions Commission said 15 million people were currently not saving adequately for their retirement

Fifteen million people are currently not saving enough for their retirement, according to the Pensions Commission, who have warned this could rise to as many as 19 million without action.

The independent group of experts warned as many as 45% of working-age adults were not saving into a pension at all, despite nearly half of them being in work.

We would like to hear from people who have emigrated - or are considering doing so – due to rising anti-migration sentiment or policies

The Unite the Kingdom march attracted tens of thousands of people to the capital on Saturday. While some insist it was a display of national pride, others see the Tommy Robinson rally as a hostile display of anti-migrant sentiment. US vice president JD Vance appeared to align himself with those who attended the march at a White House press briefing on Tuesday.

We would like to hear from people who have emigrated - or are considering doing so - because of anti-migration sentiment or government policy. Since the UK is just one country where anti-migration sentiment has flared, we’re keen to hear from people globally who have made life decisions because of the current climate.

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The Ebola outbreak, Israeli strikes in Gaza, Putin in Beijing and Arsenal win the Premier League – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists