Stacey Vint was a long-time addict when she was arrested in Middlesbrough, now she speaks publicly about her experience

The footage spread quickly. A woman falling flat on her face while pushing a burning wheelie bin towards a line of police officers during far right riots in Middlesbrough after the Southport attack. Within hours, the clip had been shared widely online, replayed across news bulletins and turned into memes.

Among those watching was a retired primary school teacher. “I recognised her straight away,” said Satti Collins. “I just couldn’t believe it.”

From passionate romantasy novels to premium television dramas, culture is bringing the agency, desires and interior lives of women to the fore. It’s proving good for business, but is this a permanent revolution?

Do you voraciously read the pages of steamy romantasy bestsellers by Sarah J Maas or Rebecca Yarros? Or flood your group chat with breathless recaps of the latest goings-on in TV series such as Heated Rivalry or Bridgerton? Or even immerse yourself in the divisive and challenging cinematic worlds of Emerald Fennell? If so, you surely can’t have failed to notice that in pop culture, the female gaze – storytelling that highlights the meandering, textured, sublimely messy inner worlds and wants of women – is enjoying an explosion.

On TV, you can see it everywhere, in the interior lives and desires taken up by Big Little Lies, Sirens or Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington’s Little Fires Everywhere. Romantasy harbours it in the shape of powerful maidens and sex in fae (fairy) realms, while Fennell’s Wuthering Heights and Promising Young Woman are marketed with the promise of converting women’s experiences into dark beauty on the big screen.

The damage to the economy dwarfs the upsides from the various non-EU trade deals the UK has struck since 2016

Rachel Reeves joined EU finance ministers for dinner in Washington last week, on the sidelines of the International Monetary Fund spring meetings – the first time a chancellor had done so since Brexit.

It was the latest symbolic step in Labour’s marked shift towards prioritising closer EU relations.

Determined to see their homes, displaced residents use shaky ceasefire to journey to their villages – but the mood turns sombre when they arrive

Mohammed Ashour was on the road at 5am, speeding towards his hometown of Shaqra. The Lebanese army, the Israel Defense Forces and Hezbollah had all told residents of south Lebanon not to return, that it was still dangerous despite a ceasefire. But the 60-year-old had been displaced for 44 days – he had counted each day – and he would not wait another hour before seeing his home.

At 3pm, Ashour was still on the road. The normally two-hour drive turned into 10, as the line of cars returning south stretched for miles down the Lebanese coastal highway. The Lebanese army had worked through the night to repair the Qasmiyeh Bridge into Tyre, bombed by Israel hours before the ceasefire, and cars were inching over the ad-hoc crossing one by one.

“They told me my house was destroyed. But I wanted to come and see it for myself,” said Ashour, still in his car. He had left his family in Beirut, wanting to shield them from the destruction that awaited them in their village.

Sol and João had a whirlwind romance and now have a baby on the way – which has changed their sexual connection for better and worse …
• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

João has been turned on by the changes pregnancy has brought so far

Sol’s pregnancy has changed the way we have sex, but I’m also attracted to the changes

Farmers and delivery firms launch new options for those seeking alternative to traditionally pasteurised product

Raw milk has long been popular, as well as controversial, in the US. While health authorities warn it can carry harmful bacteria, supporters argue it is more natural, and it has also become tied to anti-government and “natural living” movements.

In the UK, it is now gaining popularity, particularly among younger consumers, farmers say, as a less processed option, with new products launching to meet demand.

Prime minister to deliver high-stakes statement to MPs over vetting controversy that has put his position in peril

Keir Starmer will deliver a high-stakes statement to MPs on Monday as he struggles to overcome fears inside his government that the Peter Mandelson vetting scandal could yet cost him his leadership.

In what is set to be a dramatic showdown, the prime minister will set out how Mandelson was able to take up his role as UK ambassador without the Foreign Office revealing it had overruled the decision to fail his vetting.

Trump says US navy ship fired on vessel that tried to get past blockade; Iran has pledged to keep strait of Hormuz closed until blockade is lifted

• Full report: Iran closes strait of Hormuz again ‘until US lifts blockade’

UN secretary-general António Guterres has strongly condemned the killing of a French peacekeeper and the wounding of three others in an attack in southern Lebanon, spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement to the Associated Press.

The UN peacekeeping force came under attack with small-arms fire on Saturday morning, with two of the injured hurt seriously, France’s president and the force known as UNIFIL said.

Exclusive: deputy PM says UK will not join Iran conflict despite Trump’s sometimes ‘incomprehensible’ social-media barbs

Donald Trump’s insults towards Keir Starmer are “small and petty” and designed to put pressure on the prime minister to change his position on Iran, David Lammy has said, as he insisted the UK would not get dragged into the conflict.

The deputy prime minister argued the US president should be able to “disagree agreeably” with allies rather than publishing attacks on social media, and that US actions had “made things worse, not better” as far as global instability was concerned.

Shreveport police say suspect Shamar Elkins, who was fatally shot, killed seven of his children and injured their mother in a ‘domestic violence incident’

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At least eight children were killed, and two adults were wounded in a mass shooting in the Louisiana city of Shreveport, in what police called a “domestic violence incident”.

Chris Bordelon, the Shreveport police department spokesperson, said on Sunday evening that the suspect, Shamar Elkins, killed seven of his own children and wounded their mother, as well as killing another child.

Retail analysts say breaking up food and fashion group would make sense in challenging business environment

Primark may break free from Kingsmill, Twinings and the sugar business this week when Associated British Foods announces plans on a mooted demerger.

The potential split comes at a tricky time for the group controlled by the billionaire Weston family, with its fashion and food arms facing tough competition and rising costs.

Rumen Radev – an EU critic who has called for renewing ties with Russia - looked set to top the polls in the country’s eighth election in five years

Bulgarian ex-president Rumen Radev – an EU critic who has called for renewing ties with Russia – on Sunday hailed a “victory of hope” after his formation topped the eighth parliamentary elections in five years.

Projections from polling agencies put his Progressive Bulgaria (PB) grouping at 44%, which would give him an absolute majority of at least 129 seats in the 240-seat parliament.

Take Back Power, which targets the super-rich, says seven members were arrested at a training session

Seven people from an activist group calling for higher taxes on the super-rich have been arrested by police on suspicion of conspiracy to steal.

Police confirmed that six women and one man were detained in Salford, Greater Manchester, on Sunday over what they said was a coordinated plan to steal from high-end stores.

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, a long supporter of Trump, says president’s feud with the pope is a ‘distraction’

A Republican lawmaker has condemned what he refers to as Donald Trump’s “holy war” against Pope Leo XIV.

Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, a long supporter of Trump and the ultraconservative Maga movement, condemned the president’s attacks on the pope during a Fox News interview on Saturday.

Exclusive: pendant appears in 1635 painting Sir Thomas Aston at the Deathbed of His Wife that hangs in the Manchester Art Gallery

A Hamnet-era mourning jewel has been rediscovered four centuries after it was immortalised in one of Britain’s most enigmatic and celebrated 17th‑century family portraits.

The heart‑shaped pendant was depicted in Sir Thomas Aston at the Deathbed of His Wife, the 1635 life‑size, mourning masterpiece that was painted predominantly in black and white by the Cheshire artist John Souch. It hangs in the Manchester Art Gallery.

Ukrainian president discusses Patriot alternative with other countries; Bulgarian election may be new headache for Kyiv. What we know on day 1,517

Europe must have its own defence system against ballistic missiles and Ukraine is holding talks with several countries to create one, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday. Ukraine relies heavily on scant supplies of the Patriot system, produced by the US, to shoot down Russian missiles, which are often fired at Ukraine’s electricity generation and transmission systems. “I believe, and my idea is, that we should have a European anti-ballistic missile defence system. We are in talks with several countries and are working in this direction,” Zelenskyy told the national TV channel, Marathon. “We need to build our own anti-ballistic missile defence system within a year.”

Fire Point, maker of Ukraine’s Flamingo cruise missile, told Reuters this month that it was in talks with European companies to launch a new air defence system by next year, creating a low-cost alternative to the Patriot which is in increasingly short supply amid extensive deployment in the Gulf because of Donald Trump’s war against Iran. Europe’s only anti-ballistic system, the Italo-French SAMP/T, is produced in relatively small numbers.

A “massive” night-time drone strike on Chernihiv in northern Ukraine killed a 16-year-old boy and wounded four others, the head of the city’s military administration said on Sunday. Russian drones also attacked the southern city of Kherson on Sunday, local officials reported. A man died of his wounds after a drone hit a van driving through the city centre, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of the regional administration. A second man was hospitalised with blast injuries, regional authorities said.

Ukraine hit the Atlant Aero drone factory in the city of Taganrog, the Ukrainian military general staff reported. The site lies about 55km (35 miles) east of Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine in south-western Russia. According to the military, the strike started a fire at the factory, which designs and produces strike and reconnaissance drones, as well as components for more powerful UAVs that can carry guided bombs weighing up to 250kg.

Ukraine’s navy said it carried out the Atlant Aero attack using domestically manufactured Neptune cruise missiles. Russian officials in Taganrog confirmed an attack on “commercial enterprises” as well as a vocational school and multiple cars.

Russia launched 236 drones into Ukrainian territory overnight into Sunday, Ukraine’s air force reported. Of those, 203 drones were shot down while 32 hit targets in 18 separate locations, it said. Russia’s defence ministry said its forces shot down 274 Ukrainian drones during the night, as well as guided aerial bombs and a Neptune cruise missile. The ministry did not say how many struck targets.

The centre-left coalition of Rumen Radev is expected to win Bulgaria’s parliamentary election, though without an outright majority, after polls closed on Sunday. Radev is seen by critics as pro-Russian and Eurosceptic. If he is able to form a government, this could pose another headache for the European Union in its support of Ukraine’s defence.

Though Radev has denounced the Russian invasion, he has opposed military aid to Ukraine and has favoured reopening talks with Russia as a way out of the conflict. It comes after Hungarian voters ousted Viktor Orbán, who cultivated close ties with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and obstructed European help for Ukraine.

Ukraine’s interior minister said on Sunday that two police officers had been suspended after a video circulated online showed them fleeing the scene of the shooting in Kyiv in which six people were killed. “Shameful, unworthy behaviour. This is a disgrace for the entire system. They have been suspended, and an investigation into this is underway,” said Igor Klymenko, the government minister. Zelenskyy, added that “there will be a full review of the patrol officers’ actions”.

Ukraine’s police chief, Ivan Vygivsky, told reporters that the suspect had served in the Ukrainian armed forces before retiring in 2005 and then lived in Russia until 2017. “We checked his social media pages … His views there are negative. You can’t say he had a pro-Ukrainian stance, it was, let’s say, somewhat in the other direction,” Vygivsky said.

Winning and shortlisted works move seamlessly between documentary and invention. Across these images, tender couples hold each other close, people reclaim their identities from the burden of colonial memories and the harsh realities of the war in Ukraine come sharply into focus

• Australian photographer wins at world photography awards with ‘barefoot volcanologist’ image

Sale of vocational training brand and million-pound executive pay deals now subject to Charity Commission inquiry

When electrician Charlie Butler was contacted by City & Guilds last autumn, he received a shock.

He had branched out to launch a new company schooling future sparkies in Essex, offering City & Guilds-affiliated courses and qualifications. When the representative from the training charity called, Butler was expecting a quick conversation about a small uptick in the annual fees.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

This week’s question: Donald Trump is not the messiah. But what does it take to convince people that you are?

What would the world look like if nobody ever made a mistake? Ian Osborne, Worcestershire

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

I was only in my teens when, late at night, my Datsun ended up dangling off a median strip. Bracing to be harassed, I walked into a truck stop to ask for help …

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

My first car was a Datsun, in a delightful shade of baby-poo brown. I’d only been on my Ps a week when I almost drove it to total disaster.

It was 11pm one night in south-west Sydney when I approached the huge intersection that links the Hume Highway with Henry Lawson Drive. I was trying to turn right on to the highway and was the first car at the lights. With the baseless confidence of a 17-year-old, I turned … into the wrong lane.

The comedian and writer on overcoming depression, working on death row, and learning to say no

Born in Glasgow in 1974, Susan Calman worked as a corporate lawyer before starting standup comedy in 2006. She won a Scottish Bafta in 2007 for a Channel 4 sketch show, Blowout, and went on to become a regular on TV and radio panel shows. She hosted the podcast Mrs Brightside, co-hosts Carry On Up and has published two books, Cheer Up Love and Sunny Side Up: A Story of Kindness and Joy. She lives in Glasgow with her wife, Lee, and takes her first show in 10 years, Tall Tales, across the UK from 11 September to 20 November.

I look absolutely adorable, a little bit smug even. I’m sporting a beautiful blond bowl cut, and the outfit is quintessential 1970s. When Dad went to London for work, Mum would join him and occasionally visit Harrods to buy me, my sister and my brother something nice, like this jumpsuit. It would have been expensive, so I was only allowed to wear it for special occasions. In fact, this was the only time I wore it. We got our money’s worth in the end, though – I used this picture on the invitation for my 50th birthday party.

The horror maestro delivers a fresh take on the classic monster schlocker, and the former 1D man is back with a new album of slinky, loved-up R’n’B

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
Out now
You probably know what The Mummy is, but do you know what a Lee Cronin is? Allow us to assist: he’s the Irish director responsible for effective indie horror The Hole in the Ground and the highest grossing entry in the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Rises. His version of this classic horror sees a journalist (Jack Reynor) and his wife (Laia Costa) reunited with their child who went missing in the desert eight years ago, with nightmarish consequences.

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

The artist and national treasure explores the terrifying onset of AI, and Christian Petzold and Paula Beer team up again for a mysterious drama. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

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

Yes, we should all cut our loved ones some slack. But asking me to listen attentively to my husband’s football chat – and mirror it back to him – is definitely a step too far

How do you tell the difference between a sign from the universe and a coincidence? It’s been a challenging couple of weeks in my house, because my husband has been Going Through Something. In other words, Arsenal FC have been up to their old tricks. He’s their most ardent fan, a cheap seats season ticket holder (he can only see half the pitch). I stay out of it, mainly, viewing it as a vaguely amusing masochistic hobby, which probably bodes well for me in a general sense since he remains devoted even though they almost always disappoint, if not devastate him.

Recently, he has been particularly despondent. Yet again, Arsenal were on the brink of triumph, and then started playing as if they were an out of shape pub five-a-side team mistakenly welcomed on to the pitch, like that man who was waiting in the BBC reception for a job interview and ended up live on air. The Guardian’s latest match report compares this season to “watching somebody have their toenails very slowly peeled off with a set of pruning secateurs”.

The vice-president has endured his most humiliating – and damaging – week as his boss’s fall guy. How much more can Maga’s great hope take?

For a would-be president, JD Vance has an unfortunate habit of getting into fights he cannot win. Three losing battles in the past week – with Iranian negotiators, Hungarian voters and Pope Leo – brought censure, humiliation and mockery raining down on his head. None were of Vance’s choosing. All were fought vicariously on Donald Trump’s behalf.

The vice-president is paying a high price for sycophantic loyalty to his boss. His poll ratings are plunging. His Maga succession hopes falter. He suffers by association – although his own inflammatory statements and misjudgments often make matters worse. Yet amid growing doubts about Trump’s mental health and fitness to govern, Vance remains the White House’s next-in-line.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

All good? Busy day? Small talk is a social good with a bad reputation. We dread it, but it’s vital for human connection

Hi there, how’re you? How’s it going? You alright? All good?

As any Briton knows, none of these questions is an inquiry into your emotional state, the material conditions of your life or your opinion on anything. Respond positively – “all good so far, touch wood” is nice – then move on to the purpose of the interaction: “I’m returning an Amazon package?”

Bidisha is a broadcaster, critic and journalist for BBC, Channel 4 and Sky News

A new claim is doing the rounds online: that women who are too nice risk getting an autoimmune disease. And while aspects of this message are clearly dubious, there’s a reason it is resonating

Women, a warning from Instagram: “You really need to be a bitch or you’re going to develop an autoimmune disease. It’s that simple.” Versions of this scientifically dubious statement have caught the imagination of a corner of the internet, getting algorithmically nudged my way multiple times (a TikTok to this effect has 40,000 likes; a Threads post 26,000). Sometimes, it’s set to music; sometimes, it’s the basis for earnest discussion of cortisol and inflammation. Sometimes, it’s evangelical. One woman claims that, “Being a bitch healed my autoimmune disease,” adding: “Being the ‘love and light’ spiritual girlie is probably the reason why you feel depressed and you have IBS.” A Substack evokes the need to break the “good girl contract”, talking about those for whom “setting boundaries, getting ferocious about protecting their own bodies, minds, souls … sometimes allowed the nervous system to settle enough that the body’s natural self-healing mechanisms could kick in and heal”.

As a woman with an autoimmune condition (alopecia), this resonates on a woo-woo level: my hair fell out when I was trying and failing to reconcile incompatible demands; to make everyone happy. It’s also, I recognise, deeply silly. For a start, “women” – yes, all of us – needing to do something, or be a certain way, is a wild generalisation. It’s also definitively not “that simple”, and I would hate to upset a whole community of intellectually rigorous immunologists. I imagine them rhythmically banging their heads against their keyboards, muttering about there being no peer-reviewed cohort studies interrogating the relationship between “being the love and light spiritual girlie”, or putting too many exclamation markers and conciliatory qualifiers in emails, and autoimmune disease.

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.

Being unremarkable is often seen as a sign of moral failure – yet finding joy in the everyday can lead to a mindful, luminous experience

• Making sense of it is a column about spirituality and how it can be used to navigate everyday life

Lately I’ve been playing with a thought experiment: what if I was told the rest of my life would be completely ordinary? Not bad, just unremarkable.

My immediate response is, “well, ordinary is better than awful” (forever the optimist), and then almost immediately (and embarrassingly), “this is not how life is meant to play out! I want something more!”

The singer is not only a hero for gay men. For a young lesbian like me in the 1990s, she was an object of desire and an inspiration

Recently, when Madonna deleted every post from her Instagram profile, it was as if a gay flare had been fired around the world.

Cue a flurry of texts from gay male friends, with one declaring that this “purging of the Sistine Chapel” meant the release of Confessions on a Dance Floor: Part II was imminent, 20 years after her original disco masterpiece, because Madonna had pulled the same stunt on Instagram in 2023 before announcing our gay Christmas: the Celebration tour.

Tiff Bakker is a New York-based writer who specialises in arts and culture

I have a lot of sympathy for Meghan but, at times, I do think that the Duchess of Sussex could do with putting her trials and tribulations in perspective

Iran may have reopened the strait of Hormuz, but a global energy crisis has not yet been averted. The war has already damaged as much as $58bn worth of power infrastructure. Even under the best-case circumstances, these could take years to repair.

Luckily, I think I’ve got a way to get us out of this mess. First we invent some sort of large suction device (technical details to be worked out later). Then we turn it on and hoover up all the rage directed at the Duchess of Sussex. Boom, energy crisis solved.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist

Higher nutritional standards are a good idea. But ministers, like hungry pupils, must avoid looking for ‘grab-and-go’ fixes

For growing children, lunchtime is a vital moment in every day. Full-time education is demanding. Afternoon lessons only work because they come after a break – and food. And children, like adults, often mind a great deal about what they eat. So school menus are important.

Last week’s announcement that school food standards in England are being updated thus deserved its positive reception. It is right that the Department for Education should shape what comes out of school canteens, as should the devolved administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. England’s last review was 13 years ago, and school food has fallen a long way down the policy agenda since Jamie Oliver’s televised war on Turkey Twizzlers. Other pressing issues such as special educational needs provision, and falling school rolls, have taken its place.

A 1,200-year dataset shows the ‘peak bloom’ is arriving earlier. Global heating is unsettling nature’s rhythms – and their cultural meaning

A picture posted on social media last April by Prof Yasuyuki Aono of a spreadsheet, with its blank row for 2026, carries a quiet poignancy. Prof Aono died before he got to fill in this year’s entry for when the cherry blossom fully bloomed in Kyoto. The academic had spent decades reconstructing dates of flowering that go back to the ninth century. His work illuminated how a botanical event long associated with the Japanese idea of mono no aware – a sadness at the passing of things – is shifting because of the climate crisis.

The “peak bloom” now occurs around two weeks earlier than in previous centuries. In the 1820s full bloom arrived in mid-April. In 2023 the full-flowering date was 25 March. An earlier blooming indicates warmer springs – and Prof Aono’s data provides a warning signal that Japan’s “sakura front” comes sooner each year.

Readers respond to an article by Gaby Hinsliff in which she questions whether the Southport killer’s parents share responsibility for his crime

I read Gaby Hinsliff’s article regarding the culpability of Axel Rudakubana’s parents with a sinking heart (Are Axel Rudakubana’s parents responsible for his terrible crime? It’s a question many families will fear to answer, 17 April).

I’m no apologist for the parents, but I’m a lawyer working in the field of mental health and frequently appear before the court of protection in complex cases where we try to balance the need to protect and respect people with complex mental health needs and balance their rights against the rights of the public. It’s not an easy task and the reality is that there isn’t much scope, nor appetite, for taking people into custody who have not yet, and may never, commit a crime.

Ethnicity, culture and access continue to shape who is believed, how quickly, and with what outcome, says Vanessa Haye

I welcome the relaunched women’s health strategy (Streeting relaunches women’s health strategy to tackle ‘medical misogyny’, 14 April) but with caution. The system appears responsive, but the root causes in health inequality outcomes remain untouched.

It names urgent issues many women have long experienced: navigating the gynaecology referral queue that would stretch over 191 miles (if waiting in person), medical gaslighting, delayed diagnoses and systemic bias.

Baby boomer Caroline Stone is dismayed at the rise of tradwife influencers, whose advice was followed for a month by the Guardian’s Lucy Knight

I very much enjoyed Lucy Knight’s article (My month in the tradwife world: ‘I can’t pretend I’m not enjoying myself at all’, 15 April). As a boomer with children and grandchildren, I have no trouble appreciating the very poor hand the young people of today have been dealt and the reason that gingham, herb gardens and sourdough are a comforting fantasy. However, I think it is high time to draw readers’ attention to Sue Kaufman’s very funny and terrifyingly relevant Diary of a Mad Housewife to warn of the dangers of the tradwife ideal.

I would also like to put on record, since my generation is constantly reviled, that when we marched to Aldermaston, campaigned against the death penalty and the incarceration of homosexuals, demanded equal rights (abortion, mortgage without a male backer, etc) and pay for women, tried to persuade the world about ecological issues and the need for recycling (I vividly remember having a rubbish bin tipped over my head by an angry eco-sceptic), demonstrated again, this time against the Vietnam war and later the Iraq war, and are now being arrested for objecting to genocide, we were not trying to create a world in which the young needed to take refuge in tradwife fantasies, from a dismal present and hopeless future. It is regrettable that we failed, but we tried.
Caroline Stone
Seville, Spain

Readers on the purpose of Nato and the merits of increasing military spending in straitened times

I was pleased to see your editorial challenging the rightwing narrative from George Robertson, who is demanding less welfare and more warfare (The Guardian view on defence spending: should the UK’s security rest with Donald Trump?, 14 April).

Why not extend the argument about the purpose of UK defence strategy to Nato more generally? The role of Nato is tied to the declining power of the US, as we can see when Donald Trump resents paying for it, but then expects support when he lashes out at other nations such as Iran.

• Manchester City three points behind leaders after 2-1 win

• ‘Don’t lose focus, we have some long weeks left’

Pep Guardiola urged Manchester City not “to lose focus” after Sunday’s 2-1 win over Arsenal at the Etihad Stadium struck a significant blow for his team in the title race.

The victory moves City to three points below Arsenal, with Guardiola’s team having six games left, one more than Mikel Arteta’s. The manager said: “It gives us hope, I said to the guys: ‘Enjoy the moment but don’t lose focus right now as we have three or four long weeks left.’

Expensive Germany playmaker showed only glimpses of his quality in the Merseyside derby win against Everton

As Mohamed Salah’s farewell tour continues apace, Liverpool are desperately seeking new heroes but are still overly reliant on the veterans. The next generation has to take the team forward but it was the calmness of the Egyptian and Virgil van Dijk that secured a dramatic late victory in the tightest of Merseyside derbies.

The summer’s recruitment was supposed to future-proof the Premier League champions but it has created a season of transition. One of the key arrivals was Florian Wirtz, bought for what was, briefly, a club record fee of £116m from Bayer Leverkusen. The costs of signing world-class players are always going to take the headlines but should soon be forgotten once the individual starts displaying his talents.

• English player wins at first playoff hole with birdie

• Fitzpatrick claims second PGA Tour victory of year

England’s Matt Fitzpatrick beat the world No 1, Scottie Scheffler, in a playoff to win the RBC Heritage for the second time.

Fitzpatrick took a three-shot into the final round at Hilton Head and still held that advantage standing on the 15th tee. But playing partner Scheffler produced birdies at 15 and 16 and Fitzpatrick’s duffed chip on 18 cost him a bogey, sending him into a playoff that he looked second favourite to win.

The finish was chaotic, brilliant, exhausting but, when the dust settles, this perhaps was the afternoon when Aston Villa made a decisive spurt for the finish line to claim Champions League qualification. As Tammy Abraham touched in the winner three minutes into injury-time, Unai Emery ran on to the pitch in celebration. Yet just a minute earlier Habib Diarra had been set clean through with a chance of his own to win it. Emi Martínez, though, stretched up to save his dink, and the road was cleared for the Villa winner.

“We need strikers and goalkeepers,” said Emery. “It was the match – three points for them and no three points for us.”

• British player has been out of action since early March

• Rybakina wins her second Porsche at Stuttgart Open

Emma Raducanu will extend her absence from the WTA Tour because of a viral illness to two months after she withdrew from the coming week’s Madrid Open.

Raducanu has not competed since a 6-1, 6-1 loss to Amanda Anisimova in the second round of the Indian Wells Open on 8 March. She briefly trained on-site at the Miami Open just over a week later before citing lingering symptoms from an earlier viral illness as the reason for her withdrawal. Raducanu had been affected by a viral illness during the Middle East swing in February, which she said had contributed to her poor performances on the court.

• Hosts concede 13 tries as season of regression continues

• McCall: ‘One of the better wing performances I’ve seen’

There was a time when Sale were largely unbeatable at home, their uninviting base on the outskirts of Salford inhospitable to visitors and a fortress to Alex Sanderson’s players. Not any longer.

Not for the first time this season, Sale were reduced to Mancunian rubble in front of their own supporters as they slipped to a record Prem defeat while Saracens romped to a record victory in the competition. Sanderson is a passionate, engaging rugby man but scrutiny will now increase on a tenure stretching over five years in which Sale’s ambitious owners have spent big without reward.

• Bayern bounce back from early concession to win 4-2

• PSG’s title hopes hit after 2-1 home defeat by Lyon

Bayern Munich secured their 35th German league title by beating Stuttgart 4-2 to open up an unassailable lead with four games to play. Sunday’s result sent Bayern 15 points clear of second-placed Borussia Dortmund.

The Bavarian side, who face Bayer Leverkusen in the German Cup semi-final next week before taking on Paris Saint-Germain in the first leg of their Champions League semi-final on 28 April, were a goal down before scoring four times to quickly turn the game around.

• Allen rallies from 5-3 down to win 10-6 in first round

• Hawkins, Williams and Xiao Guodong also advance

Mark Allen revealed how “bad food” and a few drinks fuelled his surge into the second round of the World Snooker Championship after he swallowed up a two-frame overnight deficit to crush Zhang Anda 10-6 at the Crucible.

The 40-year-old was so disillusioned with his display on Saturday, when he failed to rustle up a break over 50, that he set about drowning his sorrows in Sheffield. Allen then returned on Sunday to rifle three centuries in a six-frame streak and advance to the second round.

Martin O’Neill will face his former captain Neil Lennon in the Scottish Cup final after Celtic booked their spot in the showpiece against Dunfermline with an eventful 6-2 extra-time win over St Mirren.

A horror mistake by Saints’ stand-in goalkeeper Ryan Mullen saw Daizen Maeda give the Hoops a first-minute lead at Hampden and to add to their woes the errant No 2 picked up an injury and had to be replaced after just 14 minutes by the 17-year-old debutant Grant Tamosevicius.

Exclusive: George Robertson calls on officials to identify the ‘fit and willing’ in UK’s 95,000-strong strategic reserve

The Ministry of Defence has lost track of military veterans they intend to recall at a time of national danger, according to a key government adviser.

About 95,000 former soldiers and officers are in the strategic reserve but it is claimed that officials have failed to maintain a full record of their contact details.

Former Little Mix singer offers £10,000 reward for information about Land Rover taken from Essex driveway

The musician Jesy Nelson, a former member of the band Little Mix, has pleaded for help after her car, which contained essential medical equipment for her children, was stolen from her driveway in Essex.

The black Land Rover is believed to have been taken at about 3am on Sunday in Brentwood.

Police say 29-year-old arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and drink driving after collision on Soho street

A woman has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a car hit pedestrians in central London in the early hours of Sunday morning.

A woman in her 30s is in hospital in a critical condition and a man in his 50s suffered life-changing injuries after they were hit by a car in Argyll Street, Westminster, at about 4.30am on Sunday, the Metropolitan police said.

Deputy leader ran shell companies that reportedly did not pay tax on profits from 2020 to 2022, during which time his firm donated £1.1m to party

Richard Tice allegedly failed to pay almost £100,000 in corporation tax to the benefit of his investment company, which in turn made donations to Reform UK, it has been reported.

In response to the report in the Sunday Times, the deputy leader of Reform UK posted a lengthy statement on X, in which he said: “A long career with multiple businesses is bound to feature some errors. Naturally I am always happy to put things right and if numbers need rechecking, of course I will pay what is owed – be that more or less.”

Actor who worked with the great French auteurs in the 1970s and 80s and starred in Spielberg’s Catch Me if You Can died of Lewy body dementia, says family

The French film star Nathalie Baye, who starred in a string of highly regarded French films as well as Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, has died at the age of 77, her family said on Saturday.

Baye, a stalwart of France’s domestic cinema, starred in about 80 films and took home the best actress César, France’s equivalent of the Oscars, four times, including three years running from 1981 to 1983. She died on Friday evening at her home in Paris from Lewy body dementia, her family told AFP.

Authors set out to correct under-representation of female sounds – and found some surprising revelations

When we hear the beautiful call of a bird from a high bough, we’re told it’s likely to be a male – singing for territory, or belting out tunes to woo a female. But as the annual dawn chorus reaches a crescendo this spring, a new guidebook is urging us to think again – and turn our ears to the hidden world of female birdsong.

The songs, sounds and sights of female birds have historically been overlooked in field guides and sound archives. In 2016, just 0.01% of the bird sounds in the global Xeno-Canto sound library were labelled female. Another sound archive was just 0.03% female, according to a 2018 study.

A former horticultural nursery in Regent’s Park has been transformed into a diverse mix of habitats, with a wide range of species already spotted ahead of its opening to the public on April 27

When the Queen Elizabeth II garden opens in Regent’s Park this month, the first people to visit the Royal Parks’ £5m biodiversity project will quickly discover they are not, in fact, the first visitors.

That honour belongs to a hairy-footed flower bee, a breeding pair of geese, some dragonfly nymphs, a flock of grey wagtails, a prickle of hedgehogs, an armada of newts, a flutter of spring butterflies and a “very cheeky” fox.

Even as we empathise with these intelligent animals, our relentless push for resources kills them in their thousands, just as whalers once hunted them to the brink of extinction

For weeks now, a humpback whale has been trying to die. Entangled in ropes, it had wandered into the shallow Baltic Sea. Unable to feed, it is now subject to extreme dehydration, since whales satisfy their thirst through the fish they eat.

In such a parlous situation, the whale’s last resort was to strand itself on Poel Island, in the Bay of Wismar. Sadly, it has been a slow death. Beached whales die because they are crushed by their own weight. The German humpback’s agony may have been prolonged because it lay in shallow water and was thus only partly submerged.

Covid, light pollution regulations and faltering global economy affect location and intensity of brightness

Earth continues to get brighter every year, researchers have found, but the location and intensity of the progression has become increasingly volatile because of Covid-19, regulations on light pollution, and a faltering global economy.

Nasa-funded researchers at the University of Connecticut (UConn) studied more than 1.1m satellite images taken over a nine-year period to establish that the planet’s artificial light increased by a net 16% between 2014 and 2022.

Agreements would aim to shield British industry from new steel tariffs and stricter rules on electric vehicles due in 2027

Downing Street hopes to secure deals on steel and electric cars with the EU as it seeks to upgrade the post-Brexit economic relationship.

Amid economic uncertainty caused by the conflict in the Middle East and strains in relations with the US, Keir Starmer is seeking closer economic ties with the EU.

Holiday park firms say such bookings are on the rise because of impact of Iran war on aviation

Holiday companies have predicted a surge in bookings for UK summer breaks after a jump in interest from Britons fearful of flight cancellations linked to the Iran war.

Summer bookings are expected to rise in the coming weeks amid warnings of possible jet fuel shortages and resulting cancellations by airlines across Europe.

Met police looking into whether series of arson attacks against Jewish sites were carried out by Iranian proxies

The chief rabbi has said Jews in the UK are facing a “sustained campaign of violence and intimidation” after another attempted arson attack on a synagogue in London.

The incident at Kenton united synagogue in Harrow, north-west London, on Saturday night caused minor smoke damage to an internal room but no injuries or significant structural damage, according to the Community Security Trust, which monitors antisemitism and provides protection for Jewish communities in the UK.

Once a progressive outlier, Scotland is facing a political reckoning as Reform benefits from growing social division

It’s Monday evening in Aberdeen, and George Preston is wearing his union flag suit to the Reform UK rally. He joined the party in 2024 as it gained ground in the north-east of Scotland with its first councillor defections from the Scottish Conservatives.

Now Preston is out leafleting for the party that polls suggest is vying with Scottish Labour to become the official opposition to the Scottish National party in the Holyrood elections on 7 May.

Federal prosecutor says woman is suspected of dealing weapons to Africa on behalf of Iranian government

A California woman was arrested at Los Angeles international airport after allegedly trafficking weapons on behalf of the Iranian government to contacts in Africa, including Sudan.

Shamim Mafi, 44, of Woodland Hills was detained on Saturday night by federal agents, according to the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.

Former US president and New York mayor read to a group of children and led a sing-along at a Bronx childcare center

Barack Obama met with Zohran Mamdani for the first time on Saturday at a childcare center where the former Democratic US president and mayor of New York City read to preschoolers and led a sing-along.

The meeting comes as Mamdani, a democratic socialist who marked his 100th day in office just over a week earlier, is also trying to build a working relationship with Donald Trump – Obama’s Republican presidential successor.

Pitcairn Register details lives of ‘extraordinarily resilient’ Tahitian women enslaved during notorious mutiny

It is a book that records the 19th-century descendants of some of the most notorious troublemakers in naval history: the sailors responsible for the mutiny on the Bounty.

Now, the Pitcairn Register – a handwritten volume that registered the births, marriages and deaths of the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the mutineers and the Tahitian women they enslaved – is finally returning home to the South Pacific.

Jeremy Hansen praised for speaking French in space after Air Canada chief’s linguistic snub exposed tensions and drew rebuke from PM

Few people foresaw humanity’s quest for the moon as accurately as the 19th-century French author Jules Verne, whose two works –From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon – anticipated many of the features of modern lunar exploration.

But Verne’s language had never been spoken in deep space until the Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen uttered four words during Nasa’s recent Artemis II mission.

Shopkeepers charged millions of pounds, including alleged £10,000 penalty for mistake that cost firm £7.08

Vodafone incentivised its security staff to increase “clawbacks” levied on its own franchisees, as part of a programme that led to the telecoms group fining its own shopkeepers millions of pounds for seemingly small administrative errors.

The policy – which included one alleged case of a £10,000 penalty for a franchisee whose mistake cost Vodafone £7.08 – involved setting “key performance indicators” (KPIs) for the telecoms group’s internal employees to collect total annual fines of £1.5m from the small business people running the FTSE 100 company’s high street stores.

Filings suggest manufacturers’ lending arms have massively underestimated bill from FCA’s £9.1bn redress scheme

Carmakers are under pressure to drum up £3bn to cover payouts for motor finance scandal victims after failing to adequately prepare for a UK-wide compensation scheme that is due to begin this summer.

Company filings show the lending arms of big vehicle manufacturers including Ford, BMW, Stellantis and Volkswagen may have massively underestimated the final costs of the financial regulator’s £9.1bn redress scheme.

Passengers face risk of cancellations due to fuel shortages – and long airport queues due to EU entry-exit system

• What are your rights if your holiday flight is cancelled?

Holidaymakers have faced numerous stresses in recent years when planning and budgeting for the sacred summer holiday. Holiday flights to Europe have kept growing despite a pandemic, a cost of living crisis and long airport queues, but summer 2026 threatens to bring fresh anxieties.

Legacies of Brexit mean longer border checks for Britons and most non-EU nationals to get into much of Europe, and the US-Israel war on Iran has prompted fears that airlines may not have enough fuel for every scheduled flight.

The restaurant is to cut more than a fifth of its outlets amid an onslaught from supermarkets and rival chains

When Franco Manca first opened in south London’s Brixton Market in 2008, its competitively priced sourdough pizzas served in a sophisticated setting quickly drew a buzz.

“It was all the rage,” says food blogger Gerry del Guercio of BiteTwice, who visited in the early days and recalls the novelty of seeing queues forming for pizza in London. “It was just desperately cool, and everyone wanted to try.”

Renowned for her darkly funny novels exploring failed relationships, the writer has been awarded the Windham‑Campbell prize for a body of work. She explains why it will change her life – if not her outlook

Gwendoline Riley and I are talking over Zoom very early on the morning of Good Friday; she sits in a neat room, sipping tea from a mug with a cat on it in lieu of the pet she can’t have in her current accommodation - “a literal garret, but that’s probably where I was always going to end up”, she laughs, although she adds that she loves it.

It’s possible that she might be feeling more tolerant of straitened circumstances because her work has just received significant critical – and material – recognition in the shape of a Windham-Campbell prize. These awards are the antithesis of many other hoopla-heavy literary prizes: each year, eight writers across fiction, nonfiction, drama and poetry are given $175,000 (£135,000) to allow them to work with financial ease and security; previous winners include Anne Enright, Margo Jefferson and Yiyun Li. An anonymous jury selects the recipients from a pool of nominations – nominators and their choices also remain undisclosed, with the criteria being excellence across a body of work – and, aside from a select number of events, there’s little of the media circus about the whole affair. They are, quite simply, a boon to writers without obvious additional means, who are all operating in an increasingly challenging marketplace.

The opera – about the hijacking of a cruise by the PLF who murder a Jewish American wheelchair user – has been subject to protests and accused of romanticising terrorism. Why was the film-maker so desperate to stage it?

In a rehearsal room perched above the labyrinthine backstage of Florence’s starkly contemporary Maggio Musicale Fiorentino theatre, Luca Guadagnino is showing the women of the chorus how to make a second-act entrance. Dressed in a slouchy cardigan and slacks, the Italian director runs forward and stops short at a line of tape indicating the rim of the stage. A little out of breath, he turns past stretching dancers to conductor Lawrence Renes and asks if he minds the sound of stamping feet. “I never mind when we hear them talk, walk, breathe,” Renes says. “It’s live theatre.”

Better known for films like After the Hunt, Challengers and Call Me By Your Name, Guadagnino still sometimes punctuates stage rehearsals with instinctive cries of “Cut!” and “Action!”. But today he is directing an opera. It’s his second ever and his first in more than 15 years – and a highly controversial one to boot. The Death of Klinghoffer, a 1991 opera with music by John Adams and libretto by Alice Goodman, has sparked accusations of antisemitism whenever and wherever it has been performed. It depicts the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro by the Palestinian Liberation Front, their murder of disabled Jewish American tourist Leon Klinghoffer, and the grief and rage of his wife, Marilyn. The story is placed in a historical, even mythic, context.

Barack Obama and Helen Mirren contribute to Queen Elizabeth II: Her Story, Our Century. Plus: David Attenborough’s delightful tour of British backyards continues. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC One

Don’t come to this Canadian show looking for prestige drama. But it is a highly entertaining tale featuring numerous holdalls of cocaine – and Driver having loads of fun with English accents

Television drama loves border country: places hovering between one identity and another, defined by comings and goings, with forbidden bounty forever out of reach on the other side of the line. Near borders, things happen that shouldn’t. Let’s go, then, to the Thousand Islands archipelago, in the St Lawrence River between Ontario and New York state, where there are countless Ozark-y creeks to hide in, not much to do except get in trouble, and cold, cold water to sweep away your corpse if it all goes wrong. The Murder Line has a high old time there.

By choosing that title, ITV is perhaps trying to draw in sleuthing fans who would otherwise be watching Danish or Irish cops crack cases on BBC Four. But originally, in its native Canada, this show was called The Borderline – hilariously, the theme song was a slow, gruffly atmospheric cover version of Borderline by Madonna – and it’s more crime caper than detective drama, not so much a whodunnit as a willhegetawaywithit.

Gadd and Jamie Bell are so frank they’re almost feral in a show so violent you’ll think you can taste blood in your mouth. This man can hit a nerve like no other

Part of the thrill of Baby Reindeer was the feeling of watching the birth of a monster. Comedians starring in their first scripted drama tend to base their characters gently on themselves, prodding at their own foibles without doing proper damage – but Richard Gadd set fire to that safety net by dramatising his own experience of being stalked, along with other, even darker moments of victimhood, with an honesty that was transgressive.

On screen and in his old real life, the helpless Gadd’s unhinged admirer Martha (Jessica Gunning) pursued him unstoppably, like the fiend in a horror movie; once Baby Reindeer’s word-of-mouth popularity exploded and Gadd won major awards for playing himself at his most vulnerable, though, his success made him one of the most powerful creators in television. That queasy disconnect was fascinating. The prospect of watching a new Richard Gadd show is exciting, of course. It’s also a bit frightening.

Transplanted from YouTube, this nostalgic, low-budget revival offers some welcome musical performances – but the chat is superficial

The biggest chatshow news of 2026 so far has been Claudia Winkleman’s foray into celebrity chin-wagging, not least because there was something slightly hubristic about the beloved Traitors host taking on the genre. Not because of any shortcomings on Winkleman’s part, but because chatshows seem almost impossible to get right (especially for female hosts; the UK TV landscape is littered with single-series attempts by Nigella, Davina and Lily Allen).

As the country was watching Winkleman, however, another veteran broadcaster was debuting their own new(ish) chatshow to far less fanfare – and far less pressure. In February, Chris Evans began putting out episodes of TFI: Unplugged on YouTube. Produced by Virgin Radio – where Evans has hosted the breakfast show for the past seven years – this was a lo-fi endeavour that saw the presenter joined by a handful of guests in a poky studio lined by dressed-down staff members professionally obliged to laugh and whoop. Still, the guests were good (Danny Dyer, Chris Hemsworth, Bono, Noah Wyle) and the show quickly built a decent audience – so much so that Channel 4 considered it worth its while to acquire a run of six episodes that have just begun airing at 11pm on Fridays. Will this revival of the 1990s juggernaut turn out to be the real chatshow story of the year?

The Charlatans frontman plays Kate Bush deep cuts in his car and loves a bit of Abba, but which scary industrial noiseniks soundtrack his sexy time?

The first single I bought
I remember seeking out Long Haired Lover from Liverpool by Little Jimmy Osmond when I was six. I bought it from Rumbelows on Northwich High Street – it sold washing machines, TVs, blenders and the Top 40 7-inch singles at the back.

The song I inexplicably know every lyric to
I’ve long been obsessed by Steve Ignorant from Crass. I’ve had various stalls at record markets over the years, and at one, this guy came up and said: “Do you really know the lyrics to all Crass songs?” He tried to catch me out by singing Do They Owe Us a Living?, but I knew them from start to finish.

The storied actor has spent years campaigning to protect green spaces. She invites us into her Surrey sanctuary, where each tree represents a lost loved one

A visit to Dame Judi Dench’s garden in Surrey is bittersweet. The 2.4-hectare (six-acre) plot contains enough trees – about 100 – to count as an arboretum. Among them is a carpet of wild garlic and a wildlife pond from which rabbits like to sip. But each of these trees represents someone she knew who has died. As her eyesight has nearly gone, Dench, who features in the latest episode of the Royal Horticulture Society’s new podcast, Roots, navigates her way around the garden via memories and smell. Here, she shares her stories of the garden and discusses the items that mean the most to her.

From lurid pranks and late-night drives, to why playing in the Revolution was like joining the marines – Prince’s friends and collaborators recount their memories of one of the music world’s most majestic and mercurial performers

George Clinton, singer and leader of Parliament-Funkadelic

(Geffen)
On this giddy first taste of the US pop star’s third album, she sets aside her rock bona fides to revel in the opulent flush of a crush-come-true. But why does it seem so doomed?

Is there anything better than an ink-fresh pop lyric so nailed-on that you can’t believe 60 years of songwriters didn’t get there first? Or like, at least 20, ever since Googling crushes became an entirely normal component of modern romance: “One night I was bored in bed / And stalked you on the internet,” Olivia Rodrigo sings on her comeback single, a casual admission with its own innate melody destined in turn to stalk listeners’ brains all summer. Her perfect couplet heralds an ecstatic chorus about the giddy terror of getting exactly what you wanted, exactly how you wanted it, and barely being able to breathe or stifle puking: “The most alive I’ve ever been / But kiss me and I might drop dead!”

Acute, obsessive, unsparing songs about romance, always with a self-aware handle on their intensity – or a wink at how lovestruck girls get labelled “crazy” – have become Rodrigo’s trademark. (She calls her benign form of online stalking “feminine intuition”.) Now 23, she broke out as a pop star in 2021, after a lifetime as a Disney Channel fixture, and pulled off one of the quickest, most effective and indelible acts of redefinition of any musician to emerge from that entertainment monolith. (Even her pop peer and fellow Disney alum Sabrina Carpenter took five albums to find success on her terms.) Rodrigo’s debut single proper, Drivers License, was an epic heartbreak ballad, though the sticking points of her debut album, Sour, were the pop-punk ragers. She convincingly translated that into her second album, 2023’s Guts, which drew on the influence of her mum’s riot grrrl records; she scored mentorship from St Vincent, brought the Breeders to support her on tour and got the Cure’s Robert Smith to duet with her when she headlined Glastonbury in 2025.

First there was the double tragedy that tore the family apart – then came a deadly diagnosis. The writer reflects on life after the death of her novelist husband

I am alive. My husband, Paul Auster, is dead. He died on 30 April 2024, at 6.58pm here in the Brooklyn house where I am now writing these words. He was diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer in January 2023. But before that, in early November 2022, Paul had a CT scan in the emergency room at Mount Sinai West hospital. The radiologist spotted a mass in his right lung and noted it might be cancer.

We all die, but only some of us know our lives could end soon. Although I had often thought about what it would mean to live without Paul, I began to imagine it more often. I imagined walking around the house alone. I imagined grieving. If your father dies, I said to our daughter, Sophie, I will lose my every day.

The Keeper by Tana French; The Kindness of Strangers by Emma Garman; Mrs Shim Is a Killer by Kang Jiyoung; A Killer in the Family by Amin Ahmad; The Drowning Place by Sarah Hilary

The Keeper by Tana French (Viking, £16.99)
The final book in French’s Cal Hooper trilogy sees the retired Chicago detective drawn into a power struggle for the future of the small Irish town he has made his home. Ardnakelty is a place where everyone is interconnected, with grudges and loyalties lasting for generations, and Hooper, now engaged to local widow Lena and mentor to 16-year-old Trey, is becoming a part of its fabric. When the body of Rachel Holohan, girlfriend of the son of local bigshot Tommy Moynihan, is recovered from the river, the consensus is suicide, but Trey convinces Hooper to investigate. Tommy doesn’t like people interfering in his business, especially when it emerges that Rachel was concerned about his plans for the town. An immersive, slow-burn of a book, as much about the march of time and the inevitably changing nature of Irish rural life as it is about solving a crime, The Keeper is dense, compelling and superbly atmospheric.

The Kindness of Strangers by Emma Garman (Virago, £20)
Set in a Chelsea boarding house in 1953, Garman’s debut novel opens with Jimmy Sullivan – who “wore spiv’s shoes and spoke in unmistakable Cockney tones” – bleeding to death under the dispassionate gaze of the landlady and her lodgers. The big Victorian house, presided over by bohemian literary widow Honor Wilson, is home to a debutante fallen on hard times, a wannabe writer, a young cinema usher with social aspirations, and a Jewish poet who managed to escape Hitler but lost his wife and child in the process. All have secrets, but none more than Honor herself, and the arrival of Jimmy, who claims to be the son of an old family retainer, threatens them all. This is not only an excellent mystery, but an evocative portrayal of a group of people displaced socially and geographically by war and its aftermath, with the moral and topographical landscape of 1950s London superbly rendered.

A clever and beautiful survey of dogs in painting, with a brilliant interpretation of their role at its heart

Thirty-five thousand years ago, in the Ardèche region of France, Paleolithic artists drew a spectacular bestiary on the walls of the Chauvet cave. Their focus was apex predators, so there were lots of lions, as well as mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses. Dogs were nowhere to be seen, and yet in the soft sediment on the limestone floor of the cave, there are traces of canid pawprints next to human footprints. Two fellow creatures, most likely a boy and a dog, stood together, about 10,000 years after the art was made, looking up at the walls in wonder. Here was a moment of shared contemplation, followed perhaps by a glance to see the other’s reaction.

In this luminous book, the American cultural historian Thomas Laqueur explores what he calls “the dog’s gaze”. The dog was the first animal to live companionably with humans, and Laqueur argues that this marks the boundary between nature and culture. It is this threshold status that has, in turn, qualified the dog to play a rich, symbolic part in western art. Just having dogs in a picture – snuffling for picnic crumbs in Seurat’s La Grande Jatte or trooping home in Bruegel the Elder’s Hunters in the Snow – becomes a way for an artist to pack an image with extra resonance and second-order meaning.

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

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

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

I initially dismissed the Wind Waker’s cartoonish visuals as juvenile. But now I try to carry the game’s sense of joy into all aspects of my life

I had a complicated relationship with video games when I was a teenager. I had straightforwardly, wholeheartedly loved the Nintendo games that I’d grown up with, tumbling around primary-coloured dreamscapes in Super Mario 64 and having the time of my life. But as I grew into a pretentious young adult in the early 00s, I started to want more from games, and I wasn’t finding it. So many of them were mindless, or juvenile, or needlessly violent. So few seemed to have anything to say. I started to wonder whether games might really be a waste of time, like the judgy adults in my life kept telling me.

My response to this was to relentlessly intellectualise the games I played, in order to justify the time and attention I was expending on them. I mainlined highbrow gaming magazines and wrote grandiose blogs about serious adult themes in Deus Ex and Metal Gear Solid and the ancient Fallout computer games. My childhood love of Nintendo, with its bright hues and unselfconscious approach to play, felt embarrassing. Then I switched on The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and had a realisation about the nature and importance of play that would shape my life.

Role-playing adventure and superhero comedy among big winners on a varied night in London

With 12 nominations, acclaimed role-playing adventure Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was expected to be the runaway success at the 2026 Bafta games awards, held in London on Friday evening.

And while it couldn’t quite match its nine wins at the Game Awards back in December, it was still the joint biggest winner on the night, taking best game and debut game as well as the performer in a leading role award for Jennifer English.

PC, Xbox; Sad Cat Studios
This pulpy sci-fi thriller is a beautiful, if deferential, homage to the genre greats, with a poignant real-world echo

For all of cyberpunk’s cautionary tales of shady corporations and transhumanist folly, it is the genre’s arresting imagery that looms largest in the pop culture imagination. Petroleum flares light up the perpetually rainy Los Angeles of Blade Runner; in the novel Neuromancer, the sky is the “colour of television, tuned to a dead channel”.

Replaced, a new 2D action-platformer from Belarus-based outfit Sad Cat Studios, leans into the steel and sprawl that the genre is famed for. The game also offers a wrinkle to cyberpunk’s longstanding, somewhat overfamiliar visual palette: it floods the screen with softly diffusing sepia and warm primary colours, particularly in the densely populated residential areas you’re able to explore. The mood is comforting rather than ominous, cosy rather than clinical, as if this dystopian sci-fi has been touched by an unlikely hand – that of cottagecore godfather Thomas Kinkade.

Replaced is out now; £16.99/$19.99

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

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

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

Pragmata is out April 17; £49.99

Sadler’s Wells, London
Tap, waacking, jookin’, footwork and jit are among the traditional, street and club styles that come together as Michelle Dorrance showcases a startling array of forms and talent

The last big US tap dance star to make a splash in the UK was Savion Glover, whose performances centred on extended solos of intense virtuosity. Michelle Dorrance, tap’s current hot property, is a completely different proposition. Her spirit is collegiate, all about collaboration (she was on the Sadler’s Wells stage last month with ballet star Tiler Peck). Dorrance’s vibe is community, and dance being a conversation between different styles, artists and eras.

She has co-created The Center Will Not Hold with choreographer and B-girl Ephrat Asherie, and with a superlative cast including Charles Riley, AKA Lil Buck, pioneer of Memphis Jookin’, who was one of the first dancers to go viral, for his duet with cellist Yo-Yo Ma to Saint-Saëns’ The Swan. Lil Buck’s movement slides and glides on the tips of his trainer-toes, seemingly not touching the floor, like one of those magnetic trains that hovers over its tracks.

But Riley is not the only startling talent. There is also 22-year-old Caleb Lawrence Jackson, whose specialisms are tap and Chicago footwork, legs blurring as if infected with the dancing plague, everything on fast-fast-forward. And the entrancing Tomoe “Beasty” Carr (specialisms: hip-hop, house, waacking), who moves like a bolt of mercurial lightning that’s still deciding where to strike.

The Place, London
This audiovisually immersive, anime-inspired dance piece is full of stylishly fluid movement and thrilling fights and face-offs

Some contemporary dance can make you feel like you need a master’s degree to even enter its zone. Yukiko Masui’s Ronin is not at all of that ilk. Take the kids (the age recommendation is 10+), take your un-arty uncle, take people who are not dance insiders, and they are not going to feel excluded. It’s a show.

It is a show, even so, with its own arcana – samurai swordfighting, anime references, video-gaming – and its own mystique. And running through the switches and jump-cuts of its sundry scenes is the slender thread of some kind of metaphysical quest.

Bush theatre, London
Secrets are exposed during a pub singalong as Franky returns home to find her parents divided in Kit Withington’s drama

You can hear this play before you enter the auditorium. Inside, a karaoke session is in full force with audience members blasting out Friday night pub bangers on stage. The singing resumes when Kit Withington’s family drama begins, with karaoke as the glue that binds together characters at emotional odds with each other.

Several of them are at odds with themselves too, including Franky (Rowan Robinson), who drops into her parental home in a north-west town in the opening scene. Her life is in London now, with a boyfriend and job that prove she is moving on. This town hasn’t done the same and neither have her parents since a tragedy more than two decades ago. Her father, Dez (Deka Walmsley), is behaving oddly, still seemingly overwhelmed by grief and guilt, while her mother, Linda (Sophie Stanton), is seeking happiness elsewhere.

Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
Jack Furness’s unconventional staging for Welsh National Opera sees the orchestra play up a storm under Tomáš Hanus in Wagner’s legend of the man condemned to sail the oceans for eternity

In 1839, the 26-year-old Richard Wagner almost drowned during a perilous voyage across the Baltic from Riga. It was this experience that he claimed inspired The Flying Dutchman, the legend of a man condemned for eternity to sail the oceans in his ghost ship giving the composer the narrative for his first mature opera. Wagner thought of his libretto as a poem, and it certainly grapples with some of the epic questions: birth, life, love and death.

Welsh National Opera’s new staging, directed by Jack Furness, begins with a woman in childbirth, the wild and stormy surges of the overture coinciding with her contractions. So Senta is born, destined, as a small child, to see her mother die, whisked away on her hospital bed into the great abyss. Senta will be a damaged soul, obsessed to the point of derangement by the story of the Dutchman, whose single hope of redemption, the love of a true woman, becomes possible only on touching land once every seven years. Backstories seem to have become a necessary accompaniment to any opera’s overture, which anyway spells out the whole trajectory in its leitmotifs. The strength of this intervention is visual, in the widely sweeping circles run first by Senta the young girl, then as a young woman, a parallel to the Dutchman’s septennial cycles, their dresses symbolic of the blood-red sails of his ship, all metaphors which later return.

Our minds evolved to minimise unpredictability. But if we learn to live with doubt, a world of opportunities opens up

It can feel as though the world is tilting towards chaos: political shocks, economic instability, technological upheaval and a constant stream of bad news. Faced with so much uncertainty, many of us default to a sense of impending doom. But is that reaction hardwired – or can we train ourselves to keep a more open mind?

A useful starting point is humility. Every generation, it seems, believes it inhabits uniquely turbulent times, as literary epics down the ages testify. Uncertainty has always been part of the human condition, and none of us can really know what tomorrow holds.

The Canadian author on good writing advice from Martin Amis, his love for digging and getting rid of billionaires

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Your novels Life of Pi, Beatrice and Virgil, and The High Mountains of Portugal all feature animals in starring roles. If you could be any animal, which would it be, and why?

A sloth, because it has a peaceful, long life. Or maybe a koala. They both look like stoners. A sloth just hangs there in its tree, it sleeps 22 hours a day – or maybe it’s meditating. Most creatures take the strategies of overt camouflage or speed to stay alive, whereas the sloth’s like, “I’ll be so slow that no one will notice me.” It grows a kind of algae on its fur, which makes it hard to see in the South American jungles. So it’s kind of hiding and being at one with the universe.

Ten years after his debut novel, the poet and musician has written a follow-up exploring self-discovery and a life lived on the edge. He talks about sexuality, pronouns and drawing strength from the literature he loves

Kae Tempest sidles into a pub near his house on a weekday afternoon and orders a pint of mineral water. At his side is Murphy, an enormous, 14-year-old alaskan malamute dog with startling blue eyes who settles down on the floor next to his master and goes to sleep. “He’s all right,” Tempest says. “He’s very friendly. He won’t even put his nose up.” The rapper, performance poet, playwright and novelist has a ginger beard and is wearing Timberland boots, baggy jeans and a black hoodie over a blue-and-white striped collared shirt. His hair is hidden by a cap. Years ago, his dramatic russet hair was long, but he cropped it when he dropped the “T” from his first name and came out as nonbinary, a watershed moment in his gender transition. Now testosterone has deepened his voice and his journey has reached its final stage – from they/them to he/him.

As Tempest has been famous since his late 20s, showered with accolades ranging from Mercury nominations for two of his albums (including his debut, Let Them Eat Chaos) to becoming the youngest poet ever to receive the Ted Hughes award for the epic performance poem Brand New Ancients, this odyssey has taken place in public. On his song I Stand on the Line, from his last album Self Titled, Tempest vividly describes the anxiety of having to deal with the hostility of some people’s reactions to his “second puberty” (“Out in the limelight like, please, nobody look at me / I’m looking for myself, all I’m seeing is the bitterness / Coming my way when I’m using the facilities”). So is it a heavy burden to be such a visible trans person? “It’s just my life,” Tempest replies, his voice a soft south London growl, much quieter than the thrilling, declamatory style of his performances. “I’m just glad to be alive. How beautiful,” he adds. “Because you felt like you might not be at some point.”

Your history of being picked on at school has a lot do with your feelings of being ‘faulty’. Getting involved in a group of mixed ages would help avoid memories of childhood

I’m in my late 30s and have a beautiful two-year-old boy and a supportive husband. But when I take my son out I feel like a rejected teenager again, surrounded by groups taking their kids out together.

I had friends when I was younger, but moved schools as a teenager and was badly bullied. It affected my confidence to the point I was painfully shy through most of university. I thought I was ugly, stupid, unlikable and found it hard to make friends. Then I moved to London, where it was also hard to make friends.

It starts with a ‘back in my day’ nostalgic meme – then suddenly your elders are sharing AI-generated ‘boomerslop’ and repeating conspiracy theories …

Graham doesn’t remember his mother ever sharing her political views. He’s not certain she even voted until she met his father, who was a big Labour supporter. She went along with that, only once voting Tory as an act of spite towards the end of their relationship. She later married a farmer who was more conservative, and leaned towards leave in the Brexit referendum. “But, honestly, beyond that, she would never even speak of politics. She just wasn’t interested.”

Graham, who works in the transport industry in the Midlands, noticed a big change in his mother during the Covid pandemic. “I remember walking home from work one day and I got this phone call and all of a sudden she was listing off these conspiracy theories at me.” He now realises how much time she was spending online, on her phone and iPad, cut off from friends, family and the church life that had always been so important to her.

Wedding invites piling up? Whether you need town hall-ready or black-tie chic, we’ve got looks for every type of nuptial – and beyond

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Few social events are as fraught with sartorial anxieties as weddings. From the strict no-white-dresses rule (fair enough) to the semantics of black tie and the even murkier casual codes, dressing for someone else’s celebration can feel even more stressful than dressing for your own.

Weddings are rarely a one-size-fits-all kind of event, with a range of dress codes depending on the venue and formality levels. Summer weddings offer breathing room: florals, bright colours and lighter fabrics that shimmer under the sunlight feel perfectly at home. Town hall ceremonies suit classic tailoring, while country weddings embrace a more rustic romance. Casual weddings allow for a little more experimentation, with statement skirts and coordinated separates fair game. The trick is balance: show respect for the occasion, but rules and regulations are often outdated.

Our gardening expert puts 19 bypass secateurs to the test to find the best for comfort, sharpness and tackling tough stems

• The best pressure washers, tested

Secateurs are the single most valued tool in the gardener’s trug, an implement as personally prized as the bricklayer’s trowel. With time, their weight and shape wear familiarly into the hand, becoming a companionable tool for all garden tasks, from pruning woody shrubs and cutting back perennials to slicing twine and preparing cut flowers.

There are two main types of secateurs, bypass and anvil (see below for their differences explained), and I’ve focused on the former here. If well looked after (we’ve included care instructions at the end of this article), a quality pair can last decades; as a result, gardeners declare staunch loyalties to particular models.

Best secateurs overall:
Burgon & Ball bypass secateurs

Best secateurs for tough stems:
Felco Model 2

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

• The best bike panniers and handlebar bags

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

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

Herbs, spices and love may be the secret to great falafel, but which supermarket versions hit chickpea perfection and which are over-processed duds?

• The best tinned and jarred chickpeas

It was surprisingly hard to find good, traditional falafels in the supermarkets for this test. While most of those on offer were delicious, many had long, complex ingredients lists, other than two standouts made with just chickpeas, herbs, spices and sodium bicarbonate.

Even some of the better falafels had unnecessarily long ingredients lists, despite being relatively minimally processed, but at their worst, some of these falafels were much more processed and included dehydrated potato flakes, pea protein, refined soya bean oil and stabilisers. The best, however, were delicious and contained lots of herbs, spices and even love.

The slightly retro French dessert of gently set baked custard in a caramel sauce, and all in a few simple steps

I don’t know why this classic French dessert isn’t more popular online, given how pleasant it is to watch a softly set custard jiggling seductively on screen, or to admire the way the light bounces off its glossy, caramel top. Worse still, it’s also increasingly hard to find on menus, too. Well, you know what they say: if you want something done well, do it yourself.

Prep 15 min
Cook 50 min
Cool 4 hr+
Makes 6

This place is about so much more than just a portobello mushroom in a white bap masquerading as dinner

Holy Carrot has, cough, taken root in Spitalfields, east London. It’s the second sprouting from this plant-based restaurant with a name that’s especially hard to sell to meat-loving friends. “Please come with me to a vegan restaurant,” one might say. “It’s not one of those pious places, honest! Oh, um, the name? Holy Carrot.” In fairness, though, it’s generally tricky to cajole meaty people to venture anywhere vegan or even vegetarian, because there’s always a sense that your steak addict acquaintance is enduring their meal “as an experiment”, and despite quite charitably being “willing to be convinced”. Sigh … it’s exhausting.

Still, chef Daniel Watkins’ first Holy Carrot restaurant over in Notting Hill has made its name over the past couple of years as a place where you can take a mixed group without someone throwing a tantrum about the dearth of pork chops. Watkins’ preference for live-fire cooking and fermentation led to the likes of roast aubergine with koji mole, smoked tofu stracciatella with rhubarb nam jim, artichoke schnitzel with pickles and curry sauce and sweet potato with corn miso butter. Take your miso-Marmite koji bread, scoop it though some smoked mushroom chilli ragu, then take a sip of your black walnut gimlet to put a sparkle in your eye, or even just a Holy Carrot 0% spritz with no-waste carrot molasses.

From wood pulp in ice-cream to peat in portobellos, science has transformed how we dine. Do you know exactly what’s lurking in the grub we eat?

Microbial slime and a side helping of sand doesn’t sound like much of a meal, but a startling amount of the food we eat today contains ingredients that are, at the very least, unexpected – and, at worst, dangerous, such as heavy metals from polluted soils.

Then there is the thorny question of what ultra‑processed foods in our diets might be doing to us. “While each food additive, so‑called processing aid, fortificant and unrecognisably modified ingredient has been tested individually and declared safe, are they really?” asks Chris Young, who runs the Real Bread Campaign for Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming, and was named joint winner of Slow Food In The UK’s 2025 person of the year award. “The studies are relatively small and short, leaving history littered with additives that we were once promised would not harm us but were later withdrawn or banned on health grounds. What might the long-term effect be of eating such substances, individually or in the cocktails created for each product and across our shopping baskets?”

An intriguing, punchy fusion of Taiwanese and Italian noodle dishes

Last year, the comedian Nish Kumar accused me of being in the pocket of “big cabbage”, because I was waxing lyrical about it. But look here, Nish, everyone is cabbage obsessed. It’s not just the Guardian; the internet is awash with “best cabbage” recipes and there’s a lot to love: it’s cheap, generous and genuinely delicious cooked and wilted down with onions (or shallots), as in this spaghetti. The inspiration behind the dish was a jar of Taiwanese Bullshead shallot sauce, a sweet, smoky and savoury sauce that I love to dollop into and on to all things eggs, noodles, vegetables and rice, but that I ran out of recently, prompting me to make a simple, store-cupboard alternative.

Tomas Telegramma had a platonic chemistry with his colleague Steph Vigilante. But one night as the heaven’s opened, so did his emotional floodgates

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In 2019, I started a job as a junior editor for an online city guide in Melbourne. I was struck by the social media coordinator, Steph, who worked quietly and diligently in a corner of the office, but had a surname that was at odds with her vibe. She was Vigilante by name, but not by nature.

Our shared Italian heritage was an instant bonding agent. We had chemistry, sure, but it was purely platonic. Even when lockdown put a pin in all things in real life, work’s instant messaging app helped our friendship survive working from home. I’d write stories about the city; Steph would cleverly bring them to life on social media. The synergy was real.

Rebecca (left), 26, a stage manager, meets Sophie, 28, a standup comedian

What were you hoping for?
Great conversation, since I’ve had way too many dates where I’ve borne the weight of the chat.

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

• Read more Leading questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

As excitement mounts for the 2026 event on 26 April, fraudsters are cashing in by trying to persuade disappointed hopefuls they can run after all

You didn’t get a place for the London marathon on the ballot and had given up on the hope of taking part this year. But then someone in a discussion group on your running app posts that they are injured and are selling their place.

After contacting them on WhatsApp, they say they can transfer the place once you pay £79 via bank transfer, and give your full name and email address.

Buying a house or having a baby has turned into a financial nightmare for those who are their own boss

Harriett Thompson started her maternity leave at the beginning of 2025, but at the start of this month she still had not received any of the statutory pay she was entitled to.

The freelance makeup artist described what she says is a familiar experience for a lot of self-employed mothers. “Luckily [my partner] Alex started a long contract when our daughter was born, which has enabled us to get by … That’s coming to an end now, with no future work in sight, so I’m getting anxious about receiving the money,” she told us.

Iran war and EU’s new entry-exit system could lead to travel misery this summer, but there are ways to mitigate it

• Can Europe avoid a summer of travel chaos?

The war in the Middle East has prompted fears that potential shortages of jet fuel could result in flight cancellations this summer and warnings that holidays could be severely disrupted.

Airports have said jet fuel could run short within three weeks as a result of supply problems after the strait of Hormuz was effectively closed when war broke out at the end of February.

With prices at the vets soaring by more than 60% since 2016, tests such as MRI scans for dogs can exceed £3,500

Why does my vet charge more than a private hospital for humans? I’ve been quoted £1,500 for an MRI scan for my dog. When I looked at how much it would cost for a person to have the same type of scan privately, it was about £700.

As technology improves, the treatments and diagnostics available for pets are getting closer to what is on offer for human patients. While we used to rely on a vet to assess what was going on inside an animal, they can now recommend hi-tech scans to see exactly what’s happening. But progress costs money.

Bottlenecks in the system and parents’ suspicions mean doctors expect another serious outbreak soon

By 10am on a spring day, the corridor of the clinic in the Transylvanian town of Săcele was already crowded with parents and children. They were all waiting to see Dr Mirela Csabai, one of just seven general practitioners serving a population of more than 30,000.

Most of the cases that morning were routine: colds, checkups, chronic conditions. The calm, however, is recent. In 2024, a measles epidemic tore through this community and left one unvaccinated toddler dead.

Researcher Valentina Bianchi says holding in information can take a mental toll. Here’s how to manage it

• Tell us: do you use AI for fitness?

Usually nothing makes me happier than receiving a message that starts with “don’t share this, but …”. Yet as I played the voice note on my phone, my gleeful anticipation turned to dismay.

It was a juicy bit of gossip, but one I ultimately would have preferred not to know. Now I also had to conceal it from others.

I’m an adult. Why do I regress under my parents’ roof?

I like my own company. But do I spend too much time alone?

People say you’ll know – but will I regret not having children?

From next-day delivery to kids’ TV shows on demand, have we forgotten how to wait for … anything? The good news is that patience is a skill that can be cultivated – by parents and children alike. Here’s how

Your kids want to know why their new book (ordered 18 hours ago) is “taking so long” and need you “NOW” because Netflix “isn’t loading” (it “tu-dums” milliseconds later). For parents who had dial-up internet, endless TV adverts and long car journeys soundtracked by Dad’s AM Test cricket, modern kids’ inability to be patient can feel galling. Except, with our Deliveroo habit and boiling-water taps (who has time for a kettle?), we can be just as bad.

“Our environment and culture has trained our nervous systems to expect immediacy,” says Anna Mathur, psychotherapist and author of How to Stop Snapping at the People You Love (As Well As the Ones You Don’t). “The issue is our brains are plastic; they adapt to the level of easy dopamine we’ve got at our fingertips.” Our brains are changing, confirms child psychologist Dr Michele McDowell: “A recent study indicated the brain instantly responds to notifications and takes seven seconds to refocus. Consequently, the brain is becoming overstimulated and is increasingly more responsive. Over time, this erodes the brain’s capacity to tolerate waiting and to be patient. So each time your phone pings, it’s reshaping your mind’s ability to wait.”

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

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

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

Resurgence of 90s minimalism has caused an explosion in the popularity of denim, but can a pair ever be worth £800?

Denim mania is surging across the fashion spectrum. At one end is the luxury brand Alaia with an Aegean blue, comfortable yet flattering £800 pair. At the other is JW Anderson’s collaboration with the high street brand Uniqlo and a £34.90 price tag. Both are proving wildly popular.

Alaia’s line has only just launched, so there are no sales figures yet, but demand for its Japanese denim is such that customers are advised to reserve certain styles in store or call ahead before visiting. At Uniqlo, the straight cut are said to be the most popular, on the front row of the most recent fashion weeks, and routinely sell out online. Blame the resurgence of 90s minimalism.

Once the preserve of childhood underwear, the patterned knit is now bringing nostalgia and comfort to adults in a fast-changing, unpredictable world

In this very on-brand April, where sun and showers jostle for supremacy and a chill wind is making 16C feel like 9C, you might have spotted pointelle popping up everywhere. On her recent world tour, Rosalía appeared on stage in Paris wearing a pointelle bodysuit. Then Sabrina Carpenter appeared on the cover of Perfect magazine hanging backwards off a bed wearing cyan eyeshadow and a pointelle underwear set. It’s peeping out from underneath shirts and jumpers in air-conditioned offices and on buses. For spring, the heritage knitwear brand Herd is offering “featherlight yet warm” jumpers in its signature pointelle. John Lewis, which said yesterday that online searches for pointelle were up 60% week on week, is selling bandana-scarves and pyjamas made of the same material.

The fabric, more associated with girls’ vests, thermal-wear and underwear, is, according to Merriam-Webster, “an openwork design (as in knitted fabric) typically in the shape of chevrons”. Sometimes peppered with hearts, florals, diamonds or zigzags instead, you probably had a pair of pointelle ankle socks, possibly with a little cotton ruffle. Or maybe you remember that era in the 00s when Whistles churned out lacey pointelle camisoles that grazed bellybuttons inches above Juicy Couture track bottoms.

Got denim overwhelm? Go back to basics with a simple pair of straight leg jeans

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

• The best LED face masks, tested

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

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

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

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

From a beachside bothy to a Highland bunkhouse and lochside inn, here are some of Scotland’s bonniest boltholes

With its cheery, cherry-red tin roof, you can’t miss the sturdy stone bothy on the Ben Damph estate. The family-owned 5,868-hectare (14,500-acre) estate nudges up to Loch Torridon, and the bothy, constructed from the ruins of an old black house (a traditional thatched home), has views over the loch to the mountains beyond. Restored by a team of stonemasons, it has two rooms (each sleeping two) warmed by log burners. The furniture has been made from the estate’s timber by a local cabinet maker. Between the two rooms is a “sitooterie” with picture windows framing views over to Ben Alligin. There’s no electricity, but there is running water and a gas-powered hot shower next to the bothy; a compost loo is in the garden.
Sleeps 4, from £342.50 for two nights, bendamph.com

The machair is nature’s dazzling display on these remote islands, but this rare habitat also plays a vital role for wildlife and the resurgent crofting community

Some 8,000 years ago, behind the retreating glaciers, a remarkable environment was born on the western fringes of Scotland’s Outer Hebridean islands, forged by the wind and waves. It began with rising sea levels and sweeping Atlantic gales depositing crushed shell-sand inland; this settled over glacial sediment to form a coastal belt of lime-rich soil. Buffered from the sea by mounting sand dunes, this winter-wet and summer-sunned substrate produced one of Europe’s rarest habitats: the “machair”, Gaelic for “fertile grassy plain”. Abounding in diverse, colourful wildflowers and an array of associated wildlife, coastal machair is a precious, globally important outpost of biodiversity, supporting everything from purple orchids and nodding blue campanulas to endangered birdlife, otters and rare bumblebees.

As a wildflower fanatic, visiting the Outer Hebrides in peak machair bloom has long been an aspiration. Over the years, I’d read accounts of its arresting, vibrant seasonality – its shifting blankets of red and white clover, yellow trefoil and creamy eyebright, bold against the sky. Although remnant machair is also found in north-west Ireland, its greatest extent lies on this Scottish archipelago, notably the islands of Barra, Uist and Harris.

From the epic landscapes of the Highlands and Islands to intimate local community events, our readers share their best finds in Scotland
• Tell us about a cool neighbourhood in a European city – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

After trekking in from near Oykel Bridge, our group stayed the night at Choire Mhoir and Magoo’s bothies (conjoined Mountain Bothies Association and non-MBA bothies, both free) in the northern Highlands. Emerging from the bothies come morning, a fog hovered between the mountains leading up to the summit of Seana Bhràigh, peaking out above, and Loch a’ Choire Mhóir below. As the sun rose, the fog steadily lifted, but not before creating a magical fogbow above the loch and bothies.
Rory

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

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

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

They disagree on the private rented sector. Can they find common ground over a united Ireland?

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

Diarmuid, 25, London

Occupation Accountant

At my age, I never thought I’d need another qualification. But here I am, grappling with knots and a man overboard in 35 mph winds

I’m at the helm of a 15-foot rigid inflatable boat (Rib) in terrible weather: there are storm clouds approaching from the south-west and the wind is already gusting at 35 mph. Waves are breaking over the bow, dropping a bucketful of water into my lap each time. As I bear off to port, the boat lurches in the heavy swell, and someone at the starboard bow shouts, “Man overboard!”

I should also probably mention that I’m in a reservoir, between the M3 and Heathrow airport, less than 12 miles from my house. And also: the man that’s gone overboard is a buoy with a face drawn on it in permanent marker. I’m not here to save anybody; I’m here in pursuit of a Level 2 Powerboat Handling certificate.

From early English and perpendicular to Deal or No Deal Nigeria, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which world-famous ancient site was the capital of the Nabataean people?
2 What is a shark’s skeleton made of?
3 On 15 February 1971, what went from 240 to 100?
4 Which England footballer presented Deal or No Deal Nigeria?
5 Ju Ae is the daughter and possible heir of which leader?
6 United Downs in Cornwall is the UK’s first of what type of power plant?
7 Which US magazine was founded in 1925 by Harold Ross and Jane Grant?
8 Who was the first British entrant to win Eurovision?
What links:
9 Dead Man Walking; Monster’s Ball; The Green Mile; True Crime?
10 Early English; decorated; perpendicular?
11 Flute-playing rapper; tears in Turin; Paranoid singer?
12 Gretna, Scotland and Marshall Meadows Bay, Northumberland (c2,700 miles)?
13 Solon; Hammurabi; Moses; Justinian; Napoleon?
14 Christie’s rostrum; Comic Relief nose; Coronation emblem; Linn turntable?
15 1949 Orwell novel (35); 1982 Prince song (17); 2014 Taylor Swift album (25)?

Book from Josh Owens tells of punishing work for far-right conspiracy theorist who, far from silenced, broadcasts on

Donald Trump gave rightwing media provocateurs Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens and Alex Jones a shoutout this week, calling them “Low IQs”, “stupid people”, and “LOSERS”.

Jones hit back, saying Trump was “committing political suicide on purpose” and had made a deal to sabotage the midterms. America, Jones said, “is now under the control of a foreign government” and encouraged followers “to fly their flags upside down, because our nation is in distress!”

Exclusive: Former Scottish Labour leader says she feels more scared as a lesbian today and calls for a kinder debate on transgender issues

Kezia Dugdale, the former leader of Scottish Labour, says she is now “quite scared” as a lesbian in Britain and has started to feel nervous holding her wife’s hand in public.

Speaking to the Guardian in Edinburgh on the announcement of her appointment as the chair of Stonewall, the LGBTQ+ charity, she said it was “completely possible” gay rights in the UK could be eroded with the rise of rightwing populism.

With Orbán gone and Meloni distancing herself, EU sanctions on trade and settlers are looking more likely

It was a bad week for Israel in Europe: the country lost its staunchest regional ally when Viktor Orbán was toppled from power in Hungary, and Italy suspended a key defence pact.

The shifts are likely to pave the way for long-delayed sanctions against violent settlers in the occupied West Bank, and add to broader pressure for the EU to reconsider its relationship with Israel over its wars in Gaza and the wider region.

Our wildlife series Young Country Diary is looking for articles written by children, about their spring encounters with nature

Once again, the Young Country Diary series is open for submissions! Every three months we ask you to send us an article written by a child aged 8-14.

The article needs to be about a recent encounter they’ve had with nature – whether it’s a marauding toad, a fascinating flower or a garden bird.

We would like to hear from people who have been so concerned about the behaviour or actions of a child they know that they have considered contacting the authorities

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