One autumn day in 2023 I bathed in the luminous glow of this utterly authentic star – and while she did have one weak spot, her life and music will speak for themselves

• Celebrity tributes pour in for Dolly Parton: ‘a gift to the world’
• Backwoods Barbie and the ‘God almighty’ PMS Blues: Dolly Parton’s 10 best deep cuts
• Alexis Petridis on Dolly Parton’s peerless career

The great privilege of my kind of journalism is to get the chance to meet extraordinary people – some famous, many not – and very occasionally that person is beyond extraordinary. Dolly Parton, you may not be surprised to learn, was one of them. I’ve only come across it a handful of times. It has nothing to do with extreme fame – I’ve met plenty of A-listers who are dead behind the eyes. It’s not charm or extroversion either, nor beauty, and it’s not what we’d call “star quality” because it’s less showy than that. It’s almost indescribable, but “luminous” probably comes closest. I think it’s partly innate – God-given, Parton might have said – but it also comes from living with humility, gratitude and humour. Parton was luminous, and it wasn’t just the rhinestones.

The cliche that you should never meet your heroes because you’ll only be disappointed only stands if you think famous people have somehow transcended the deep character flaws that make the rest of us human. Everyone has off days, or off years. Still, I’d been slightly dreading interviewing Parton. The machinery that surrounds a superstar interview – the holding rooms, the allotted time slots, the officious publicists – is designed to be intimidating, and it was all present on that autumn day in 2023. And then it was just Parton and me in a London hotel room, borderline uncomfortably close on a sofa, but unusually, no publicist sitting in, taking notes.

The platitudes, euphemisms and cliches are excruciating. But the people who say nothing at all are the worst

Luckily, I already knew having a comic thought at a tragic moment is a natural stress response, or I might have worried. My mum has died, making me an orphan – and what first popped into my head was how annoyed Larry David would be.

In Curb Your Enthusiasm, when Marty Funkhouser’s mother’s wheelchair was run over by a car, he proclaimed himself an orphan. David informed him he was too old to be an orphan. Funkhouser insisted that if your parents are dead, you’re an orphan.

The crowds at the top of Yr Wyddfa, the highest mountain in Wales, are now so huge that seasoned hikers and climbers are simply walking past them. Is everyone just making a mountain out of a molehill?

Name: The Snowdon queue.

Age: A decade and a half, give or take.

The £85m midfielder passed his exams a year early, is studying for a degree and is ready to tackle Premier League learning curve

“He’s like a computer,” the former Lille head of academy recruitment, Mathieu Frison, says of the €100m (£85.7m) Manchester City recruit Ayyoub Bouaddi. “You teach him something, he learns it and can do it immediately.” Bouaddi has the mountainous challenge at his new club of replacing the world’s best central midfielder. It would be difficult for anyone but at 18 it feels monumental, although those who know the Morocco international best would not bet against him.

Bouaddi has known only Lille and Ligue 1 but is entering one of the biggest clubs in the world where a season without a trophy is deemed a failure. For someone so young, however, he has plenty of experience. He made his European debut three days after his 16th birthday and has played three full seasons in the first team, culminating in a place at the World Cup this summer.

The sense of futility hanging over the room was almost overwhelming as Robert Jenrick took the stage

It’s turning out to be one of the longer sulks in Nigel Farage’s already sulk-filled career. Few politicians are better at having a strop and holding a grudge than Nige. At least on this side of the Atlantic. Donald Trump could give Farage a run for his money, but skin doesn’t come much thinner than Nige’s. He’s the soul of the Reform party as long as he’s the centre of attention and the yes-men and women – that’s everyone – around him are saying yes. But the moment reality challenges his narcissism, the mirror cracks.

There was a time when you couldn’t keep Nige away from a TV camera or a gathering of reporters. It’s what he lived for. But ever since the Guardian revealed his £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, Farage has gone all shy. Unable to bear the humiliation of being seen for the man he really is. The posh. The entitled. The venal. The grifter. Everything he has spent the last 25 years trying to persuade people he isn’t.

From influencers gone (really, really) bad and the outrageous Joe Exotic to the greatest reveal in television history – here are Guardian readers’ favourite real-life documentaries and whodunnits

I watched the BBC’s Unsolved: The Boy Who Disappeared when it came out and Damien Nettles, its subject, still pops up in my mind sometimes. It’s a comprehensive, empathetic and gripping investigation into a case I had never heard of. The Serial/Making a Murderer-style approach of showing the investigation, rather than just presenting information, gives the series a much more human angle. I thought it might turn up new evidence; that level of faith in the work being shown is a testament to how thorough it was. AJ, Devon, UK

Latest Nepal police update says 157 bodies have been found after powerful floods in Himalayan border area sweep away houses, roads and bridges

• ‘Major casualties’ feared after flash floods along Nepal-Tibet border

• Tell us: have you been affected by the flash floods on the Nepal-Tibet border?

The British embassy in Kathmandu said it is “deeply saddened” by flash floods in parts of Nepal and urged people in affected areas to follow local advice.

A joint statement with the embassies of Australia, the EU, Finland, France, Norway and Switzerland said:

We are deeply saddened by the devastating flooding in Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts and surrounding areas.

Our thoughts are with all those affected by this disaster. We express our solidarity with the people of Nepal during this difficult time.

PM said he would set bar at £500k, but trade unions say funding reforms could undermine their ability to donate to Labour

Andy Burnham has dropped his support for capping political donations, causing anger among activists and Labour MPs who have long campaigned for change to the way parties are funded.

The prime minister has decided not to back amendments to the elections bill, which would cap the amount a person or an organisation can give in a single donation, according to government sources.

Presenter says he is moving to YouTube to avoid being left ‘behind the curve’ as media landscape changes

The outgoing Today programme presenter Amol Rajan has warned that the BBC is destined to “get smaller at an accelerating rate”, as he prepares to depart for a new project on YouTube.

Rajan, who announced earlier this year that he was leaving BBC News to “unleash my inner entrepreneur” in the creator economy, said he was making the shift to ensure he was not “behind the curve”.

Streeting says role is chance to show strength and challenge stereotype that ‘persists in dark corners of internet’

Wes Streeting has described receiving a mass of homophobic abuse since he was made defence secretary last month, while also saying his appointment had been welcomed by some in the Ministry of Defence (MoD) as a sign of change.

Until 2000, gay men and lesbian women were banned from serving in the UK military, with about 200-plus personnel thrown out of the forces each year due to their sexuality – an estimate, as proper records were not kept.

A prolific performer across stage, screen and TV, the actor starred in Legend, Clue and It, but will always be associated with the flamboyantly camp rock’n’roll musical in which he made his breakthrough

• Tim Curry on sexuality, surviving a stroke – and 50 years of stardom

• Farewell, Dr Frank N Furter: why Tim Curry’s Rocky Horror Show will go on

• Clowns, corsets and kings: Tim Curry – a life in pictures

Tim Curry, the versatile performer of screen and stage, who made his name as the flamboyant Dr Frank-N-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show, has died aged 80. Reports say Curry died at his home in Los Angeles.

The actor’s manager confirmed to Variety that he died peacefully. No cause of death is known as yet.

US tech giant agrees to establish further protections for teens such as daily usage limits and blocks on nighttime use

Meta agreed to significant changes to its Instagram and Facebook apps in a settlement that ended a landmark lawsuit on Wednesday. Dozens of US states had accused the tech giant of addicting and harming children with dangerous products.

The agreement curtails a major trial in California and will require the social media company to pay up to $17bn. Meta agreed to establish safeguards for teenage users, including daily usage limits and blocks on nighttime use nationwide in the US.

US labels group ‘global terrorist’ as Palestine Action challenge against proscription in UK nears supreme court hearing

The US ⁠has ​issued sanctions against ⁠the UK-based direct action organisation Palestine ⁠Action, describing it as a “transnational terror group”.

The US Department of the Treasury labelled Palestine Action a specially designated global terrorist on Wednesday, which allows the US to freeze the assets of foreign individuals and entities.

Firm says ‘early signals … could have triggered an earlier response’ as it releases report into Hugging Face hack

OpenAI staff observed signs of rogue behaviour among its leading-edge AI agents weeks before they escaped their training environment to launch an unprecedented hacking crusade that spread global alarm.

The San Francisco AI company conceded on Wednesday that “early signals … could have triggered an earlier response”, as it released a report into the days-long July hack of a major software repository, Hugging Face, considered the first autonomous agent cyber-attack.

Reform MP seeks to heap pressure on Tory leader amid confusion around details of meeting with Giorgia Meloni

Robert Jenrick has accused Kemi Badenoch of telling “a pack of lies” about her meeting with the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, as he launched a deeply personal attack on his former boss.

The Reform UK MP sought to heap pressure on the Conservative leader amid confusion about whether Meloni urged Badenoch at a meeting in Rome to “be her own woman” and resist doing a deal with his party.

Tributes have poured in for Dolly Parton, the pioneering country music singer, songwriter and actor, who has died aged 80. Stars including Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Oprah Winfrey and Paul McCartney have paid tribute to one of the world’s greatest music artists, with many praising her lifelong philanthropy and advocacy for literacy and LGBTQ+ rights. Lucy Hough speaks to Guardian deputy features editor Jenny Stevens

The US president expected Ottawa to bow to tariff demands, but Canada is striking back – and it could cost Americans

• This was originally published in This Week in Trumpland. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday

Earlier this year, a survey found that Canada, along with Switzerland, was the best-liked country in the world. We all know this kind of polling is about as scientific as a high school popularity contest, but at least anecdotally, Canadians have a reputation for being friendly and welcoming, respectful and polite. Many people would find it difficult to dislike Canadians.

But not Donald Trump, who in a “hold my beer” moment this week demonstrated that he, at least, finds it easy to resent Canadians. The US president called the country “difficult and unreasonable”, and in a particularly hysterical moment, threatened to rename a lake, after trade talks collapsed.

The public health emergencies in 2022 and 2024 saw the virus reported in 145 countries, but in the new cases children appear particularly affected

A fresh outbreak of mpox in Guinea Bissau – the country’s first – means the virus formerly known as monkey pox is back in the headlines. So what has changed?

Since 2022, there have been almost 190,000 lab-confirmed cases of mpox reported worldwide in 145 countries. Before then, outbreaks of mpox tended to be relatively small and in a handful of African countries, where the viral infection was known to be endemic.

Musicians and performers pay tribute to the country legend who managed to be a generational talent, a formidable entrepreneur, a dedicated philanthropist and a truly kind person

Shirley Collins, singer-songwriter

The versatile stage performer will always be remembered for his defining film role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show, which turned him into an icon of 70s underground cinema and proto-punk
• Tim Curry, star of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and Stephen King’s It, dies aged 80
• Tim Curry on sexuality, surviving a stroke and 50 years of stardom
• Clowns, corsets and kings – a life in pictures

Over the past decade, the issues of trans identity and gender fluidity couldn’t have been more contemporary, and Tim Curry was an integral part of what might be called their pre-history in pop culture. He was an icon – though maybe now a dimly remembered icon – of the 70s underground cinema and proto-punk.

Curry was a good-looking actor with a tremendous speaking and singing voice, and a versatile performer – he got Tony nominations for his varied stage work on Broadway as Salieri in Amadeus, Alan Swann in My Favorite Year (the part Peter O’Toole played on screen) and as King Arthur in Monty Python’s Spamalot. But it was his strange destiny to be remembered for one role: at once indelibly prominent and weirdly peripheral. He was the sensational Dr Frank-N-Furter in the thoroughly outrageous Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), the screen version of the 1973 stage show.

A shortlist rich in kookiness sees Lara Ricote tipped for the main prize, alongside returning nominees and a new generation of eccentric fringe acts

The shortlist has been announced for the annual Edinburgh comedy award, and it’s a list that majors in whimsy. With an act hymning his belief in healing crystals, another dreamily counting sheep and a third whose show is about “mystery and messages” – and that’s before we even get to the loopy DIY comedy of TV veteran Spencer Jones – this year’s “Oscars of comedy” nominees (for both the best show and best newcomer prize) suggest an art form exploding with creativity but also increasingly oriented towards woo-woo: in full flight, perhaps, from our troubled times.

The award favourite is Mexican-American comic Lara Ricote, co-star of Sam Campbell’s Channel 4 mockumentary Make That Movie and former fringe best newcomer. Ricote’s Inkling is a remarkable hour about picking up on the messages that come one’s way, and how that’s complicated by, in the 29-year-old’s case, being hard of hearing.

With a genuinely impressive lifetime guarantee, Nectar’s mattress outperforms pricier rivals for comfort and motion isolation

• The best mattresses, tested

Memory foam has been called the Marmite of the bed industry. Nice soundbite, but I think it’s more like butter – because many mattresses now include a “comfort layer” of this squishy material to make them more palatable. You wouldn’t eat a whole block of butter, though, and you probably wouldn’t want to sleep on a mattress made entirely from memory foam. Too much squish, too little support.

The Nectar Classic memory foam, like so many of the best foam and hybrid (foam and springs) mattresses, tempers the marshmallowy feel of true memory foam by sandwiching it between other types of foam, namely breathable polyfoam and dense support foam. As I discovered when testing it, this creates a lovely balance of comfort and firmness that feels more like a hybrid mattress, only without the bounce.

The 70s was a golden era for the jumpsuit, but I’m happy they’re back, thanks to Harry Styles, Benson Boone and – of course – me

Since appearing on The Traitors, I’ve become synonymous with jumpsuits. In fact, I’ve been required to wear one at every public appearance I have made since it aired, despite only wearing two on the show. That’s the power of the jumpsuit, I guess.

When I was packing for the show, I wasn’t even sure I would bring them – and not everyone watching liked them. Lots of people did, but I got messages saying: “What the hell is he wearing?”. The memes were also phenomenal. My favourite was my head on John Travolta’s body in a still from Saturday Night Fever.

Editor of Cosmopolitan in its 1970s heyday when it was famous for addressing women’s careers, health and their sex lives

Deirdre McSharry, who has died aged 94, edited Cosmopolitan in the magazine’s golden era. As fashion editor when the UK magazine launched in 1972, within a year she was elevated to the top spot. Under McSharry, “Cosmo” was witty and forthright, addressing women’s careers, style, health and, notoriously, their sex lives. Like its editor, it was guided by joie de vivre.

A 1973 documentary captured a conversation between McSharry and one of Cosmo’s occasional nude centrefolds. The model was irked – the centrefold showed him laughing. He preferred to smoulder.

Fiction sleuths are obsessed with the idea that the book, Life of M, is a flagrant riff on the actor’s life. And despite being a firm Cusk fan, Portman is reportedly not happy

Life of M, the latest book by the critically acclaimed author Rachel Cusk, is being billed by its publisher, Faber, as a “blazing interrogation of fame, power, beauty and truth” – and openly alleged as a thinly veiled portrait of Natalie Portman. For weeks before publication, speculation has swirled that its movie-star main character is based on Portman – to her reported displeasure.

With the book out this week, readers and critics alike are judging it as literature and gossip. Don’t want to read it yourself, but want to have an opinion? Here’s your crib sheet.

Rearguard reactionaries may try to block the idea of a national commission into proportional representation, but we should want more not less democracy

A poll in the Mail on Sunday at the end of June was remarkable. It had not just Reform as low as 21%, but also Labour and the Tories. It was remarkable because it starkly demonstrated the fragmented landscape of the UK’s electoral terrain, as well as the electoral weakness of its main players.

Polls since have varied, not least with the Burnham bounce, but this week’s YouGov voting intention figures put Reform, Labour and the Tories on 23%, 22% and 20% respectively (although it almost no longer matters which exact figure applies to which party). Add in the Greens and the Liberal Democrats on 13% apiece, the SNP dominating Scotland and Plaid Cymru Wales, then Restore UK and independent candidates and you have an unprecedented variety of options laid out before the British electorate.

Neal Lawson is director of the cross-party campaign organisation Compass

China’s fashion giant will list in Hong Kong with a shrunken price tag – and big questions over its business model

In a parallel world, we might now be preparing for the arrival on the London stock market of Shein, the giant Chinese-founded fast-fashion retailer. Or it could have happened already.

The possibility of a London flotation was a running story during 2024 and into last year as politicians from both main parties engaged in behind-the-scenes wooing. Shein was seen as a shot of tech adrenalin for a listless local listings scene, and an opportunity to advertise the UK’s openness to international capital.

The vast majority of the global public wants international cooperation on human rights, climate and AI. Like-minded countries must stand together to deliver

Britain’s new prime minister, Andy Burnham, is already having to make one of his gravest decisions. He has to issue the instructions that he alone gives to the military, setting out the UK response in a doomsday scenario of a nuclear weapons attack on us. He will, as I did two decades ago, sign a piece of paper telling commanders whether or not to retaliate and, if so, whether through targeting civilian conurbations or military sites. These instructions are written down in the aptly named “letter of last resort”.

Now, more than at any time since the 1960s Cuban missile crisis, the European public fears a third world war. With the nuclear Doomsday Clock developed by atomic scientists moving ever closer to midnight, and Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, Poland and Germany contemplating either acquiring nuclear weapons or siting them on their soil, our world is descending from a rules-based order to a power-based one, where might is deemed right and brute force dominates.

Gordon Brown is the UN’s special envoy for global education and was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010

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

Straight women loved her, so did Eminem. Even Donald Trump found something nice to say. Her allure had no boundaries and was truly unique

I was at the National Theatre in London on Tuesday night, at a production of Pride, which tells the story of the unlikely alliance between gay activists and Welsh miners during the 1984 miners’ strike, when news broke of Dolly Parton’s death. Well. Against the sadness, one couldn’t help smiling. At a very gay production, attended by a majority gay audience, I half expected them to stop the show or call out a team from St John Ambulance bearing stretchers. In the script for Pride, references to Judy Garland and Ethel Merman serve as shorthand for gay sensibilities, but it could just as easily have been Dolly Parton. The queen of country and crossover pop was beloved by so many communities – many antagonistic to each other – but it was perhaps her gay fans who claimed her most vociferously and publicly.

When we got home my friends and I danced around to 9 to 5, and on Wednesday morning it was Here You Come, Again (“looking better than a body has a right to” – oh, Dolly) on a loop, along with her 1971 hit Coat of Many Colors.

They should ask the question Reagan asked at the end of his debate against Jimmy Carter: ‘Are you better off now than you were before this presidency?’

The midterm elections are already upon us, and every Democrat and independent running against a Republican should ask voters the question Ronald Reagan asked on 28 October 1980, at the end of his televised debate against Jimmy Carter: “Are you better off now than you were before this presidency?”

Unless you’re very, very rich, the answer is obviously: “No, I’m worse off.”

Energy bills have increased three times faster than the rate of inflation while Trump has been president. The national average monthly utility bill reached $280 in early 2026, a 12% increase since the end of 2024, just before the second Trump administration took office.

Is it because of differences in the flour that’s being consumed? Or something to do with the European approach to getting around?

It’s not just the mass shootings you have to watch out for in the US, it’s also the lettuce – a dodgy bit of iceberg could leave you sick with cyclosporiasis. And then there are the frozen blueberries, recently recalled because of a “reasonable probability” they could “cause serious adverse health consequences or even death”. And the alfalfa sprouts that may harbour salmonella. And the fruit bars that may be contaminated with glass. I could go on: there’s been a surge in foodborne illnesses in the US this year and food recalls have been getting a lot of attention.

Europe obviously isn’t immune to foodborne illnesses either. More than 200 people have become sick in the UK this summer and one person has died because of a salmonella outbreak tied to imported eggs. Still, Europe is widely seen as having far more robust regulations and food policies than the US. There’s endless anecdata online from Americans who claim that American bread and pasta makes them feel bloated and sick, but they can eat whatever they want in Europe and feel great.

In an era of multiparty politics, first past the post risks generating perverse outcomes that delegitimise the democratic process

If the system that elects MPs to Westminster was obviously the most democratic one available, there would be no need to use alternative modes when electing the UK’s devolved assemblies or England’s regional mayors. The fact that first past the post (FPTP) was not preferred when establishing those institutions reflects an acceptance that there are better ways to turn popular opinion into fair political representation. So why should the Commons stick with an inferior system?

This question is raised by an amendment tabled to the representation of the people bill, which returns to parliament next week. The call to establish an independent national commission on electoral reform has been endorsed by 185 MPs.

There’s growing agreement that under-18s need to be protected – but international turmoil is pushing many towards wedlock

Every minute, 23 girls around the world wed, according to the Girls Not Brides campaign, a coalition of more than 1,000 organisations across 100 countries. No child should be married. But girls are far more likely to be affected than boys, accounting for nine in 10 of those wed before 18, and their spouses are often much older men. The consequences, beyond the immediate threat of sexual violence, include the shortening of their education, increased risks of poverty and domestic abuse, and poor health, including high rates of maternal mortality. In spring, the Center for Global Development thinktank estimated that child marriage costs $175bn annually in lost productivity and increased health risks.

The good news is that the last decade has seen a drop in rates; last year alone, Grenada, Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Kuwait and Portugal introduced bans. But there are disturbing signs of regression elsewhere. In May, the Taliban issued a new judicial code enabling child marriage below the previous minimum age of 16, and preventing wives from ending marriages they entered as children if their husbands object. Previous protections were inadequate and often poorly enforced; now even those have been swept away. Activists say forced and early marriages have soared since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, thanks to the ban on secondary education and the state of the economy.

Readers respond to Gina Rippon’s criticism of a controversial TV documentary about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder

Three months ago, at 42, I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Unlike many adults prior to receiving a diagnosis, I had not spent years wondering whether I had ADHD. In fact, I was oblivious until quite recently, when I strongly identified with several things a colleague said about their own experience of ADHD. The more I learned, the more I found myself thinking: “Wow, that’s me.”

My forgetfulness, distractibility, messiness, chronic need for organisation and memory strategies, constant lateness, tendency to lose things daily, persistent perfectionism and habit of going, tyres screeching, right up to the last minute of every deadline suddenly made sense. Things I had spent my life viewing as daily frustrations or personal failings had an explanation. I had ADHD, and had always had it. There was a reason for the constant chatter and noise in my brain, with any gaps filled with, or interrupted by, a song. Honestly, literally anything can trigger a song.

The UK’s response to flagrant breaches of international law is pathetic, writes Bernie Evans, and sanctions against a few individuals have no effect

How long does it take for the penny to drop in Downing Street and the Foreign Office (Israel’s Ben-Gvir posts video of gallows site for hanging Palestinians, 20 August)? Israeli individuals have had sanctions imposed on them for over a year with absolutely no effect, and it is likely that people such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, see them as some sort of badge of honour.

Andy Burnham and Ed Miliband must realise by now that the only sanctions likely to have any effect are those imposed against the state of Israel, so denouncing the issue of tenders for the E1 settlement near Jerusalem as an “unacceptable and destructive act ” is just box-ticking.

Responding to an article in which birds comforted Helen Harris during bereavement, Angela Smith describes her own experience

Helen Harris’s experience (A moment that changed me: my husband died – and birds began behaving strangely towards me, 19 August) chimes with that of a friend of mine who had many close encounters with robins after the death of her father. She too had birds flying into her house as never before but, unlike Helen, she believed that this was the person’s spirit making contact.

My own association between birds and death is rather different. The day my mother-in-law died, a wren had flown into the window of the classroom where I taught, and I found it dead on the ground outside. When we took her ashes to be scattered in the sea, a pheasant hit the car windscreen and died.

Britain and other signatories to the UN convention on the law of the sea should protest against US proposal to lease seabed for mining, says Guy Standing

Your article on Donald Trump’s plan to lease millions of hectares of seabed in the Pacific for deep-sea mining correctly points to the ecological disaster that this could unleash (US territories hit out at Trump plan to explore deep sea mining in the Pacific, 24 August).

However, it does not mention that this plan contravenes international law in the form of Unclos, the UN convention on the law of the sea, which has been ratified by 171 countries and the European Union. The US has not ratified it, but since 1982 has agreed to abide by its rules and procedures.

• Updates from Wednesday’s second-round matches

• Get in touch: email John and follow us on BlueSky

Here’s the first part, for the teams in Europe, though not Brighton in the Europa Conference League. Essentially, it’s whether they are home and away.

Crystal Palace v TBC

Manchester United v TBC

Manchester City v TBC

Sunderland v TBC

TBC v Arsenal

TBC v Aston Villa

Bournemouth v TBC

Liverpool v TBC

• Uefa has received guarantees after ill-fated Infantino plan

• European sides will go to under-20 Women’s World Cup

Uefa is to drop its threatened boycott of Fifa competitions after receiving concrete guarantees that the global governing body will never attempt a repeat of Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell stakes in the World Cup.

European teams have been cleared for participation in the upcoming Under-20 Women’s World Cup, along with subsequent tournaments, after Fifa provided the binding assurances that no equivalent of its president’s ill-fated scheme will be put on the table.

World No 10 is one of the best players yet to win a major and heads to Flushing Meadows in fine form after learning to embrace being uncomfortable

Amanda Anisimova can see the signs now. It is just over three years since the American announced she would be taking an indefinite break for mental health reasons. A brilliant junior, she was a semi-finalist at the French Open in 2019 and seemingly destined for the top, only for her world to be rocked by the sudden death of her father, Konstantin, a few months later. Struggling for motivation and burned out, in May 2023, she revealed she would be stepping away from the sport.

It turned out to be the best decision she ever made. “I learned how important it is to have a great balance on and off the court,” Anisimova says in an interview from New York, ahead of the US Open, where she will try to go one better than last year and win her first grand slam title.

Karen Hills’s side are a blend of knowhow and young talent and are ready to compete 20 years after their disbandment

Guardian writers’ predicted position: 14th (NB: this is not necessarily Sophie Downey’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)

Last season’s position: 3rd (WSL2)

Joe Root’s side have golden chance to claim first series win since 2024 but are dealing with more late-night drama

Here we go again, then. It feels like every Test involving England these days is one of critical importance in some way or other. On one level, this is good for business, showing the depth of interest compared with other, ahem, products. But it is not necessarily a good thing for the team in this instance.

Since Ben Stokes retired and the last of Bazball’s many funerals in June, the players left behind have been trying to wriggle free from their recent past. Problem is, they are finding certain aspects trickier to shake off than others. For the second time this summer, a thumping win to go 1-0 up has been doused instantly by a late night on the drink and the headlines inevitably generated.

Tributes are paid to the much-loved and respected Fleet Street veteran who also tipped as ‘Larry Lynx’

Ken Oliver, who has died at the age of 86, was the Guardian’s racing editor for many years until his retirement in 2004, at the end of a lifetime in racing journalism at publications including the London Evening News, the Sporting Life, the Sun, the London Daily News, the Sunday People – where he tipped as Larry Lynx – and as the editor of Ruff’s Guide to the Turf, the racing equivalent of Wisden.

Ken was the racing editor when I joined the Guardian in 2001 and he was a joy to work with: an old-school veteran of the glory days of Fleet Street, blessed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the sport and steeped in all the rhythms and traditions of daily papers that would soon be ushered into history by the internet. He was also unflappable, understanding when a story or plan went awry, and the best possible company for a pint or two in a local watering hole once the first edition had been put to bed.

• Saudi Arabia’s PIF have ended financial support

• Chief executive working on deal but needs players’ buy-in

LIV Golf informed the majority of its workforce on Wednesday that they will be laid off in the first week of September.

The news ⁠comes three days after the 2026 season concluded in Indianapolis and four months after Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund announced it was ending its financial support ⁠of the league after ⁠spending more than $5bn over the past five years.

• Visma-Lease a Bike dominate final stages to set up Briton

• Mads Pedersen dropped on category-three climb

The British rider and Grand Tour debutant Matthew Brennan of Visma-Lease a Bike sprinted to a second stage victory of the Vuelta a España in Roquetes.

Wout van Aert and Christophe Laporte expertly led out their 21-year-old teammate at the end of stage five, and the youngster confidently demonstrated his devastating speed again to conclude the 173.4km route from Falset.

• Promoter says negotiations are subject to a time limit

• ‘They won’t let it go past the end of next week’

Frank Warren believes that the tortuous negotiations surrounding the proposed fight between Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury are subject to a time limit which will run out by the end of next week. Conceding that he is unsure if the much-delayed bout will happen, Warren also said the decision now depends solely on Joshua and that Fury, whom he promotes, is already in training in the US and ready to fight an alternative opponent in November.

“Nothing’s been signed off as yet,” Warren said in regard to a revised contract for Fury and Joshua to fight in New York. “Everybody’s talking and talking rather than getting on with the business and getting it done. I think it will happen and if it doesn’t, and I think there’s a time limit on it, by the way, it will be one of those fights that slipped by.

Lily Tomlin, Beyoncé, Céline Dion and Oprah Winfrey are among those remembering the queen of country after she died aged 80

• Alexis Petridis on Dolly Parton’s peerless career that turned country music cliches inside out

• Dolly Parton – a life in pictures

• Dolly Parton celebrated by kd lang, Peggy Seeger, Annie Lennox and more

Tributes have poured in for Dolly Parton, the country singer, songwriter and actor, after her death aged 80.

News of her death was shared by her nephew on social media. “Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus,” he said.

The actor had sought $8m in attorney costs resulting from her protracted legal battle with Baldoni

Blake Lively has been awarded more than $400,000 in attorneys’ fees after her 18-month legal battle with Justin Baldoni.

On Wednesday, judge Lewis Liman awarded the actor $363,245.40 in attorneys’ fees and $44,206.35 in costs, figures far lower than the $8m Lively had sought.

Academic was found unresponsive by family members, inquest told, as coroner adjourns proceedings to later date

A coroner has formally opened an inquest into the death of Jason Arday, who resigned as a professor at the University of Cambridge amid allegations of plagiarism.

Arday, 41, died at his home in Battersea, south London on 14 August, nine days after his resignation. Family members watched the 10-minute hearing at London inner south coroner’s court via a video link.

Insecure Men singer has now been dropped by his record label and had tour dates cancelled after two women shared allegations about his behaviour

Saul Adamczewski of Insecure Men and formerly of Fat White Family has been dropped by his record label and had tour dates cancelled after two women shared allegations of physical and emotional abuse against the musician.

One woman said that the pair had a short relationship that resulted in a pregnancy, after which, she alleged, Adamczewski “made it his duty to make me suffer. He has been violent, pushed me, thrown glass bottles at me, showered me with beer […] insulted me, taken my passport from me, stolen my money and more, all while I had our baby.”

Albanian criminal has cut bars, descended sheets and even used human pyramid in escapes in Italy and Belgium

Police in Spain have arrested a dangerous Albanian criminal nicknamed the “escape wizard” who has managed to break out of four jails in Italy and Belgium by sawing through bars, clambering down knotted sheets and even using a human pyramid to breach prison walls.

The fugitive, who has not been officially named, was arrested after officers from the Policía Nacional force discovered he was living in the north-eastern Spanish city of Tarragona. He was the subject of a European arrest warrant issued by the Italian authorities.

ONS data shows rising toll of climate crisis, with officials warning this summer on track to set further records

More than 40,000 extra people died on the hottest days in England between 1988 and 2025 than would be expected in normal temperatures, according to data published by the Office for National Statistics on Wednesday.

The figures do not include this summer, when England has sweltered under a succession of heatwaves and is on track to record its highest ever number of heat-related deaths. The UK Health Security Agency announced on 30 July that an estimated 2,877 people had died in the May and June heatwaves alone. The total is almost double the figure for the whole summer in 2025.

A magical corner of Oregon has the highest US rate of wildfire smoke deaths. How do residents live with the haze – and grief?

Driving into the county, you can’t miss the sign.

“IT’S THE CLIMATE”.

Even low levels of traffic noise can negate the benefits of listening to natural sounds, researchers say

Hearing the trill or whistle of a bird while going about daily life is well known to boost people’s mood. But a new study suggests the psychological benefits of hearing birdsong are being threatened by traffic noise.

Researchers found that even low levels of traffic noise negatively affected the benefits to wellbeing that could otherwise be derived from listening to natural sounds.

There are countless initiatives around the world that can inspire people and spur them into action. Amid the devastation of the climate crisis, our journalists strive to highlight these stories of hope

• Climate campaign 2026: help us reach 30,000 acts of support

The news is very often about the bad things (especially if you’re on the Guardian’s environment desk). Wildfires, floods, tipping points, billionaires making huge profits and buying themselves island refuges for the apocalypse … And yet, ticking along beside that is the steady pulse of what the rest of humanity is doing in response to the climate crisis. From housing developments with no cars to buildings made out of hemp, all over the planet people are ploughing ahead and changing their neighbourhoods and cities and the world.

But as news stories typically need to be about new developments or things people didn’t previously know about, it can be hard to cover all those brilliant initiatives being undertaken in the background – no matter how cheering they are. Which is why, back in 2023, we decided to ignore the usual rules about what constitutes “news” and start writing about them anyway. Readers, we knew, would like to hear about them.

Climate campaign 2026: help us reach 30,000 acts of support

Neil Gilson completes 230-mile challenge after a ‘tough’ 22-hour crossing of Lac Léman

He staggered rather than sprang out of the lake but it wasn’t surprising.

Neil Gilson, a former international athlete, could be forgiven for feeling a little wobbly, having become the first person to swim the 10 largest lakes in Switzerland, a total of about 230 miles (370km).

Sophie Lainault, who worked for Air France, wins legal case linking illness to more than 12,600 hours on flights

A flight attendant in France has succeeded in having her breast cancer recognised as an occupational disease, a first for the country’s aviation industry, her lawyer and a trade union said.

The ruling, which recognised that Sophie Lainault, a former flight attendant for Air France, had frequently worked at night and been exposed to passive smoking, could pave the way for similar claims, the lawyer and the CFDT union said.

Harry, Meghan and family expected to enjoy ‘extended stay’ with children Archie and Lilibet already enrolled at school

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have arrived back in the UK, landing at Birmingham airport, according to reports.

Prince Harry, Meghan, Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, are expected to enjoy an “extended stay” in Britain, with the children already enrolled at school in the UK and due to start next week.

To Nicola, Love Peter will focus on couple’s relationship during 12-year period of embezzlement and fallout of case

Channel 5 is reuniting with the producers of Power: the Downfall of Huw Edwards for a drama about how Nicola Sturgeon’s estranged husband embezzled £400,000 from the Scottish National party and the impact it had on her reputation.

To Nicola, Love Peter will examine the couple’s relationship over the 12-year period that Peter Murrell diverted funds from the SNP while he was the chief executive to spend on items including a £124,550 motorhome and more than £2,600 on a pair of luxury salt and pepper grinders.

Paper products among hardest-hit sectors after trade negotiations broke down, with 25-50% tariffs estimated

• Are you a Canadian boycotting US products? We’d like to hear from you

Using the bathroom or having a cry is about to become more expensive for North Americans as the US and Canada enter a full-fledged trade war that threatens to flush away decades of peaceful trading between the two nations.

After trade negotiations broke down between the two countries last weekend, Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, vowed to match US tariffs “dollar for dollar” and unveiled a list of nearly 900 American goods that will face 25% to 50% tariffs starting on 8 September.

In effort to prime chatbots to make pro-Israel arguments the site published 124 reports, over 560,000 words in nine days, Guardian analysis shows

A pro-Israel messaging website badged with the name of a thinktank that does not exist has published more than half a million words in nine days, built on a commercial platform that promises to optimize content so that AI chatbots will cite it.

The site gives Israel’s position on subjects including the torture of Palestinian prisoners, Israeli war crimes and whether Israel has deliberately starved Palestinians in Gaza, all presented as neutral research.

Scientists found those who had used hormone replacement therapy were 10% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia

Hormone replacement therapy may reduce the risk of dementia, a study has found.

Scientists tracked more than 180,000 postmenopausal women in the UK in the largest study of its kind. They found that those who had used HRT were 10% less likely to develop any type of dementia and 16% less likely to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, the most common form, compared with those who had never used it.

Researchers say benefits of two-dose Shingrix vaccine could be comparable to taking daily blood pressure medication

The current shingles vaccine appears to significantly lower the risk of heart attack and stroke, according to scientists who say it could help prevent thousands of deaths each year.

The research, based on records of 70,000 people in the US, found that those who had received Shingrix had a 12% lower risk of a cardiovascular diagnosis in the following three and a half years. If confirmed, this benefit would be comparable to taking a daily blood pressure-lowering medication, the scientists said.

Uber and Wayve had said they would start trips ‘later this summer’ but launch now looks unlikely this year

• Business live – latest updates

The rollout of robotaxis on the streets of London is unlikely to happen this year, as regulatory and technical hurdles push back the ambitious schedule set out by the UK government.

Only weeks ago Uber and London-based Wayve were granted the first minicab licences in the capital to allow them to offer self-driving taxi rides to paying customers – but with a human safety driver in place, for now – and said they would start trips “later this summer” before a full public launch.

Critics say ownership registers are too costly and too complicated, scuppering attempts to expose alleged money laundering

Since Britain’s offshore secrecy jurisdictions caved in to pressure from Westminster to embrace corporate transparency, finding out who owns a company in one of these island havens is, in theory at least, a piece of cake.

Take the Cayman Islands.

Oliver Blume faces workforce at German HQ as carmaker struggles against Chinese competition and US tariffs

The chief executive of Volkswagen has faced boos and whistles of protest at the company’s headquarters after telling thousands of workers that a comprehensive reorganisation, which could include job losses and factory closures, is vital for its future.

As Oliver Blume urged more than 10,000 workers on Tuesday to “pull together”, saying drastic restructuring measures at the struggling manufacturer were essential, they held up banners and shouted slogans, including: “Our jobs are not your balance sheet adjustments”.

Bitcoin rises above $80,000 for the first time since May amid uncertainty over US fiscal plans

Gold prices hit their highest level in more than three months on Tuesday as continued conflict in the Middle East and ongoing political uncertainty fuelled the latest rally in the precious metal.

Gold is viewed as a safe haven by investors and its price tends to rise at times of uncertainty.

From 9 to 5 to Steel Magnolias to Joyful Noise, the late star had real big screen presence that was impossible to imitate

• ‘I just give from my heart’: how Dolly Parton’s philanthropy focused most on helping children

• Celebrity tributes pour in for Dolly Parton: ‘a gift to the world’

There are an awful lot of singers who take a shot at movie stardom. Most of them start out playing singing ingenues and trail off a few movies later, after their limitations become clear, the novelty wears off or their interests wander back to music. Dolly Parton, who died on 25 August at the age of 80, had the barest outline of such a film career: She had a big hit out of the gate with 9 to 5, endured a sizable flop about a decade later with 1992’s Straight Talk signaling the end of her movie phase, and had a couple of minor postscripts in the years that followed – more cameos-as-herself than fully fleshed-out roles. (Presumably she was busy releasing over a dozen albums, making countless TV appearances, sending books to children, and funding vaccine research, among other endeavors.) Yet within a modest filmography consisting of just half a dozen leading roles in theatrical releases (and more than one widely regarded as a minor disaster), she showed more genuine screen presence than countless other multihyphenates.

Maybe it helped that Parton introduced herself on screen in a non-musical role. Well, almost: 9 to 5, a 1980 workplace comedy where she starred alongside Lily Tomlin and Jane Fonda, did yield a number one charting theme song, the Oscar-nominated tune of the same name. (The titular theme from Fame won, but which one still gets played on the radio more often?) The movie itself, where Parton plays an office secretary whose piggish boss (Dabney Coleman) lusts after her and whose co-workers (initially including Tomlin and Fonda) suspect, incorrectly, that she has given in to his desires, is a far more relatable comedy, sort of a neo-screwball-meets-women’s-picture with an additional early-‘80s feminist spin.

The standup has been the host of the panel show Mock the Week for more than two decades. As it returns to UK screens, he discusses its years as a macho bear pit, the dearth of jokes about Brexit – and why it’s important to punch up

Dara Ó Briain is still having photos taken when I arrive at the studio in west London. A comedian requires comedy pictures, so Pål, the photographer, has him sitting on the floor holding up a scroll of the rust-coloured paper that he’s using as a backdrop. It looks as if the roof is falling in on Ó Briain. He calls over to me. “We can tailor the interview to match the pictures,” he says. “Starting with: do you ever feel like you’re trapped in a box?”

Shoot over, he ditches his jacket and we walk up the road to find a quiet corner in a pub. There’s a new season of Mock the Week, the topical satirical panel show that ran for 17 years on BBC Two until 2022 and has now been reborn on the free-to-air channel TLC. A roster of comedians make up two teams and compete in a faux gameshow, ostensibly to answer questions about the previous week’s news, but really just to be funny.

An adaptation of Peter Heller’s 2012 novel never finds its footing with overly familiar survival beats and a glum lack of energy

Looking towards the end of an August movie dumping ground littered with more unwanted trash than usual, there seemed to be a faint glimmer of hope, a shiny treasure poking out through the dusty mass of unnecessary sequels and sex purge romcoms. Somehow, there was a $110m-budget adaptation of an acclaimed novel directed by Ridley Scott, led by a recently Oscar-nominated rising star with support from two Oscar-nominated actors and an Oscar winner. But why then would such a film be unveiled in between the summer blockbuster season and the upcoming deluge of prestige fall festival big hitters? A cursed weekend that’s recently been home to Jay Roach’s heinous War of the Roses remake, Dennis Quaid’s Ronald Reagan biopic and George Miller’s hard-to-define and even harder-to-love flop Three Thousand Years of Longing.

Ever since The Dog Stars, based on Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, had been yanked from its far more encouraging date at the end of March, there were multiple red flags flying and the rotten end of August has ultimately become an appropriate punishment for a limp and lethargic film that only briefly fascinates in pushing us to wonder what anyone was really hoping this would end up being. It’s yet another grubby postapocalyptic survival tale, an overcrowded subgenre that hasn’t just reached maximum capacity on the big screen but on the small one too. In a world of seven Walking Dead shows, the beats are now far too familiar – artfully dishevelled actors grieve for the past and fear for the future as they scramble to find and protect resources – and there’s nothing new or notable here to conjure anything but deja vu.

This moreish show about a do-gooder keen to save the day stars Hugo Weaving and The Pitt’s Shabana Azeez … and it’s pressure-packed from the get-go

Hugo Weaving plays the eponymous airport chaplain in this pacy and moreish eight-part series, which was co-created by Elise McCredie and Jude Troy, and directed with jittery flair by Bonnie Moir and Tig Terera. In case you were wondering, yes, that profession really does exist.

I doubt the lives of real airport chaplains are anywhere near as frenetic as those of this show’s protagonist, Tobias Wallace (Weaving), whose existence is a testament to that old saying: “Not all heroes wear capes.” Sometimes, they wear hi-vis.

This biopic of the great Gallic general – which culminates at Bir Hakeim, in advance of a second film – is a fine, quietly amusing romp with a touch of classic 60s war films

Perhaps because it is based on a biography by an Englishman – Julian Jackson’s A Certain Idea of France: The Life of Charles de Gaulle – this very enjoyable and gallopingly eventful biopic, directed by Antonin Baudry, has an element of amused detachment. The first of two parts, it offers a good-humoured, though naturally sympathetic, perspective on France’s great wartime hero, played with martyred and faintly preposterous hauteur by Franco-Armenian actor Simon Abkarian.

De Gaulle is the lofty exile in London, refusing to accept the dishonour of the Vichy government and its capitulation to the Nazis, symbolised by Marshal Philippe Pétain (Alain Libolt) and Adm François Darlan (Mathieu Kassovitz). For reasons that will later become clear, De Gaulle’s own story is mysteriously intertwined with that of a hothead young patriot, Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle (Florian Lesieur), who is De Gaulle’s biggest fan. A tiny touch of comedy is part of what makes this resemble an old-fashioned 60s war film, although it has evidently taken until 2026 for French cinema to come to terms with its contentious national icon. No one here is cheeky enough to comment on the nominative determinism of a Gallic hero being called “De Gaulle”.

Another familiar concoction fails to make use of its sunny location and chooses cheap melodrama over romantic charm

A titular sunrise, a summer fling fantasy, exorbitant wealth, impossibly sculpted bodies: such are the profitable story ingredients that make up The Last Sunrise, the latest offering in Amazon’s endless catalogue of “romance content”. I wouldn’t ordinarily use that term to describe a film, but it fits The Last Sunrise (indifferently directed by Carlson Young) like a glove. The movie is an adaptation of the 2025 novel of the same title by Anna Todd, whose After series – itself adapted from Todd’s phenomenally popular One Direction fan fiction – was wrung dry between 2019 and 2024.

In recent years, a particular romance category has yielded high returns for Amazon: from this summer’s Every Year After to The Summer I Turned Pretty’s memorable run, these stories are easily palatable, set in idyllic locations, and orbit attractive, heterosexual, wealthy couples. Nothing new there – one need look no further than any run-of-the-mill 2000s romcom to find the same tropes. But the narrative simplicity that once made room for electric chemistry between leads, perfectly tailored wardrobes and irresistibly depicted locales has given way to cheap melodrama. With its improbable plot twists, family secrets and at least one across-the-face slap, The Last Sunrise is more soap opera than Under the Tuscan Sun.

First-wave punks rejected religion – but come the 90s, bands embracing eastern thought found legions of devotees. Ahead of reformations and reissues, they discuss the Bhagavad Gita, brawls and tulasi beads in the pit

Whether wielded as shock tactic or part of a considered philosophical stance, mockery and distrust of religion have been baked into punk rock’s DNA from the get-go. The Damned, Crass, the Germs and the Dead Kennedys all proffered early potshots and takedowns, and if Bad Brains received a grudging pass for their Rastafari leanings, in general, songs kowtowing to gods or masters were about as likely to win you scene cred as praise for Reagan, cops or nuclear war.

As the 80s ticked into the 90s, however, something curious began to happen: a clutch of bands emerged who were wise to the hardcore classicism of Minor Threat and SSD but also looked east to Krishna consciousness. Leading the way was Ray “Raghunath” Cappo who, barely into his 20s, had already broken down walls as frontman for Youth of Today, a New York band who combined a straight-edge philosophy with animal-rights advocacy and a sense of full-throated positivity. He and guitarist John Porcelly had “witnessed enough young people screwing up their lives that we thought, as simple as it is, it’s a positive message. Let’s rally behind it,” he says. “And it became big, bigger than we expected.”

With their twangy sound, madcap outfits, lusty yodelling and pirouetting pirate frontman, the band became global superstars almost overnight. But, as their guitarist Marco Pirroni recalls, the thrill ride soon hit the buffers

‘The essence of pop is, one, brilliant fucking songs – and the rest is sex, subversion, style and humour. And that was us.” So Adam Ant told me in 1995, describing the reconstructed Adam and the Ants, which formed in early 1980 with the arrival of guitarist/songwriter Marco Pirroni, who was sitting next to him. “We’re responsible for bringing back dressing up, going mad and screaming your head off.”

“That’s it!” grins Pirroni when I remind him of this, as we sit in the shabby-chic lounge of London’s 21Soho venue. Back then, I didn’t tell them I was 15 in 1980, forever sprinting across dancefloors pretending to be Adam Ant, chiffon scarves tied to knees, limbs flailing like a whirling Cossack. Pirroni hears this today and laughs. “That’s what it’s all about,” he hoots. “When I was 13, watching Bowie, Roxy, T Rex, you just go, ‘I wanna do that.’ It’s exciting, sexy, about looking good, Top of the Pops. I can’t imagine anyone saying, ‘Wow, I desperately want to be in Cabaret Voltaire. They must be earning no money, look boring and nobody likes them – that’s the band for me!’”

The oberek is a traditional dance beloved of state folk ensembles – but a new generation of musicians is reconfiguring its music into wild new forms, merging folk steps with electronics and the sound of Chicago footwork

It’s 6pm on the first day of OFF festival in Katowice, and a crowd is gathering in front of one of the stages to watch newcomers Tercet Imperial. Sporting disco outfits of nylon jackets, tracksuits and Chicago Bulls caps, keyboardist Piotr Zabrodzki deploys resonant acid melodies, while drummer Jan Emil Młynarski plays a rapid, irregular rhythm that brings to mind the scattergun beats of footwork, the ghetto-house subgenre that grew out of Chicago in the late 90s.

Not many of those jerking their limbs to the music in front of the stage are likely to realise that they are listening to a distinctly Polish sound: that of the oberek, a traditional dance in triple metre whose name derives from the Polish verb “to spin”, because it usually accompanies couples whirling across dancefloors in a circular motion.

Despite their fast rise, the Manchester indie-pop band are happily going at their own pace. But what – if anything – did they learn from the advice of Duran Duran’s Simon Le Bon?

When Westside Cowboy played Later … With Jools Holland earlier this year, fellow guests Duran Duran offered some advice. “Nerves are just your mind telling you that you’re about to do something extraordinary,” Simon Le Bon told the band, who were “cacking their pants”. Le Bon’s words didn’t really help. “I was hoping for some real advice,” says vocalist and guitarist Reuben Haycocks, laughing. “Like, where do I look?”

The Manchester band have had to learn the ropes quickly. By 2025, only two years after forming, they had won Glastonbury’s emerging talent competition, supported Geese on the year’s buzziest indie tour and signed to a major label. “We’d be lying if we said there wasn’t a little bit of pressure,” says vocalist and guitarist Jimmy Bradbury.

The much-discussed Life of M is the latest in a lineage of celebrity satire that spans from Virginia Woolf to The Devil Wears Prada

In Rachel Cusk’s new novel, Life of M, the famous actor protagonist participates in an event at a book store after hours. The actor, M, is joined by “a writer of some renown” and a fashion model who possesses “some vague self-absorption”. A brand sponsored the affair. I spent literal hours trying to find the real-world equivalent of the opaque fictional passage. I scrolled through the backlogs of influencers I know to appear bookish in their content, who might have fallen prey to Dior’s Ulysses tote bag drop or Miu Miu’s “literary club”. I even stooped so low as to DM a Natalie Portman fan account, asking for leads.

As has been widely reported, M’s character is based on Portman. One journalist was credited with the scoop, but she simply finished her advance copy sooner than the rest of us; it’s clear from page three, when Cusk describes M’s breakout film as having “immediately brought her childhood to an end” (obviously Léon: The Professional; Portman was 11 when she was cast) and a later film about obsessive, wild ballerinas (Black Swan). But the rumor that Portman is unhappy with her portrayal – an impression that cannot immediately be gleaned from the book itself, especially depending on interpretation of its final lines – has trickled down to the raggiest of tabloids.

A terminally ill woman makes a final trip to Egypt in an exquisitely wrought portrait of end-of-life reckoning

Virginia Woolf said of Middlemarch that it is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people. In the shallow and infantilising age through which we are living, Colin Thubron dares to assume that his readers are adults. Passage is a very beautiful, very moving, authentic work of art. Hardly more than a novella, it sits lightly in the hand, but its emotional and aesthetic weight overtips the balance.

Thubron began his career as a travel writer and a large part of the action of Passage is set in a vividly but economically evoked Egypt. This is not the teeming Egypt of Cairo or Alexandria, but of the countryside, the villages, and the great immemorial tombs and ancient monuments. The best travel writers know that “abroad” is most convincingly evoked not by awed exclamations at the world’s wonders, but by an attitude of relaxed familiarity. Thubron is obviously an old Egypt hand, or at least has the skill to convince us that he is.

A brilliant new biography that does its subject the favour of taking her seriously – even if few else did

Barbara Cartland was famous for dictating her novels. With a pekingese clamped to her hot pink bosom she would lie back on a library couch and exhale a story about virginal girls taming wayward dukes, damaged airmen or misunderstood surgeons. Meanwhile Miss Savory, Mrs Smith or Mrs Morgan, picked for being unfidgety and sneezeless, would take everything down in immaculate Pitman shorthand. Cartland reckoned on being able to polish off 8,000 words a day. “In this way,” she told one of the many reporters who quizzed her on her astonishing productivity, “the typescript for an 80,000-word novel is finished in a fortnight.” At her peak she was pushing out 23 books a year which added up to 723 in total. Only Agatha Christie and William Shakespeare topped her lifetime sales of 750m.

Cartland was a dictator in other ways, too. Husbands, dogs, houses and the local council were all expected to bend themselves to her indomitable will. Resistance, let alone opposition, was futile. The managing director of the company that printed her books suggested that she read Nietzsche on the perceptive grounds that they had a lot of ideas in common. Oddly, he also declared himself madly in love with her. Behind that marshmallowy exterior, all pink chiffon, candyfloss hair and soft, smudgy lines, there lurked sinews of high-tensile steel.

A writer and activist links the climate crisis to battles for justice around the world in this vital book

It has become increasingly difficult to change our minds, to question our own views or to find common ground with people we disagree with, all of which makes Natasha Walter’s new book both refreshing and exhilarating.

In her ebullient 1998 debut The New Feminism, Walter hailed Margaret Thatcher as a trailblazer. In this fiercer, bleaker work, she rips into the “glossy language of aspiration feminism”, “the message that the individual woman can do anything she wants if she only has the necessary courage”. That kind of feminism inspired an “explosion of books and films about pioneers and heroines, about bossy women and gutsy girls” which retold the feminist story as “a succession of isolated campaigns, led by outsize individuals”.

An increasing tension between players and publishers about ownership of titles could lead to a divestment from the system the big companies are trying to enforce

At the time of press, there is a well-publicised protest taking place in the video games community. PlayStation 5 owners are being encouraged to log off from their consoles between 23 and 30 August – no playing games, no downloading new titles. The motivating factor is Sony’s decision to cease physical game disc production from January 2028. After that, games will only be released as digital products. In an act of poor timing or wilful defiance, Sony chose this week to send out a mass email reminding customers of their PS5 terms and conditions: “The software is licensed to you, not sold,” states the relevant clause. “You are granted a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and personal license to play … ” It knows, of course, that most customers won’t open the email, let alone read it.

There has always been a tension between game players and game publishers – an underlying sense of mutual mistrust. Players are wary of their favourite franchises being canned, or games being delayed or released with bugs. Publishers and manufacturers are wary of piracy and the capricious tastes of consumers. But now the atmosphere among many game players feels more starkly political than ever. Microsoft has been targeted by the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement for its ties to the Israeli military; the consumer advocacy group Stop Killing Games is gaining support; players have protested over the purchase of Electronic Arts by a Saudi-led consortium – boycotts have been proposed in part due to the possible ramifications regarding LGBTQ+ content in titles such as The Sims. As the games industry has grown and globalised, its impact on culture, society and politics has increased. Yet, on an individual level, gamers and consumers are feeling increasingly powerless.

PC; Nathan Grange, Léonard Lemaitre, Niels Tiercelin, IronEqual
Race across impossible dystopian cityscapes in this exhilarating game of wall-runs, death-chancing leaps and split-second improvisation

At first, Vholume seems like a quick rush through some smartly selected references. Has this breathless yet austere parkour game been designed or ingeniously curated? The urban gymnast moveset comes from Mirror’s Edge. Level names use terms like conapt, first coined by Philip K Dick. And the environments themselves are dystopian and surreal, Half-Life 2’s City 17 colliding with the blasted avenues and mute archways of de Chirico. Many games have influences. Vholume has actual taste.

All the surface stuff fades away when the game is in motion, however. Vholume’s an on-foot racing game in which you hoof it through spectacularly odd environments, moving from one beam of concrete to the next. You’re clipping your wall-runs and power-slides together to bridge seemingly impossible gaps between buildings, forever in search of the next stretch of track, the next turn, the next jump that gets you to the level’s exit and the worldwide leaderboards. And once that’s done, you have a choice: onwards to another gauntlet, or back to the start of this one again to slice a few microseconds off your score? Or maybe you’d rather head over to multiplayer to race against the ghosts of others?

With oversight from Clive Barker himself, and a role reprisal as Pinhead from actor Doug Bradley, Revival aims to introduce new audiences to the discomfort of Hellraiser

If a horror game gives its own director a physical reaction, it’s probably doing something right. While researching the images people find hardest to look at, game director Emil Esov discovered he has trypophobia – a fear of clusters of small holes. Rather than tone the scary images down, he fed them straight into Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival.

The forthcoming first-person action-horror game drops players into a new story in Barker’s universe. Aidan Lynch must use the Genesis Configuration puzzle box to rescue his girlfriend from the Labyrinth as Pinhead, his Cenobites and a cult close in. But Revival is not built around jump scares. The team at Mad Head Games began with one question: what should players feel? The answer was discomfort.

Developer Patrick Grant was born in Australia and lives in New Zealand, but a childhood of British TV inspired him to set a comedy game in a bleak vision of the north

Something is amiss in the dingy town of Slagford, and curious scamp Pip Bunting is the only one who can find out what. So quit your mithering, it’s time to discover just how grim it truly is up north.

A Pocket Full of Slagford is an upcoming retro-styled 3D puzzle adventure game set in a surreal alternative-reality near-future northern England that never escaped the clutches of Thatcherism. The story follows the misadventures of a young local lad from the eponymous Slagford after he takes ownership of a mysterious relic that lets him wreak havoc on reality.

Summerhall, Edinburgh
Gabe Winsor’s inventively staged tale is charming and sweetly lo-fi, but the emotion never quite clicks

Deep sea diving and plumbing the depths of family history make a decent parallel in this nimble multimedia production by Buzzcut, which has a sweetly eccentric air yet leaves a little too much beneath the surface.

The premise is familiar, as Eddie (Morgan Beale) returns to the seaside town where his sister, Ira (Camilla Anvar), still lives in her childhood bedroom and runs the family pub now that their parents are gone. Guilt, resentment and jealousy bubble up as they squabble over which of them was their parents’ favourite and what to do with the business, while Ira shares her doubts about Eddie’s new husband.

At Summerhall, Edinburgh, until 31 August

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Summerhall, Edinburgh
An endurance test for a standup already starring in a fringe hit, this show resurrects the man who drilled the first ever cross-Channel swimmer

‘Who are these people that do what [the rest of us] cannot?” Adam Riches’ solo play The Captain teases at the daredevil spirit, incarnate here in Capt Matthew Webb, the first man to swim the Channel unaided. Riches plays Fred Beckwith, a swimming coach who trains the young Webb for his tilt at greatness. The show takes the form of a lecture-cum-eulogy to the “half man, half fish” Webb, whose body lies under a shroud on a table in the apt surroundings of Summerhall’s Anatomy theatre.

A comedian by trade, Riches offers up a version of the true story here that’s as funny as his comedy elsewhere on the fringe, The Critic’s Way. The gentle sendup of Victorian values is droll. The swimming workshops and cheerleading of Webb’s channel crossing, to which the audience is co-opted with gusto (this is an Adam Riches show, after all), are stirring good fun. And there’s a real relish for the story’s bizarre details – such as Beckwith’s “mystical fifth swimming technique”, the sidestroke. Or the American rival to Webb who completes the crossing before him, albeit in a rubber suit that strongly resembles a boat.

Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh
The comedian delivers a tour of his peripatetic childhood, with stops for risque gags and to ponder his resemblance to a ‘porn Super Mario’

Comedy fans have seen Sami Abu Wardeh in several guises, from a capering clown catching cherry tomatoes in his mouth, to teller (on last year’s fringe) of the historical stories behind the Gaza crisis. But we’ve never seen him deliver straight autobiographical standup – until now. The new direction, the 40-year-old tells us, is thanks to his agent, who’s told him that audiences need to get to know him better. And who may be concerned, Wardeh implies, by recent dust-ups between this “anti-fascist”/pro-Palestine performer and one or two audience members to whom that worldview was unwelcome.

Sami Abu Wardeh Hates You (its title notwithstanding) presents us with a more palatable act, one effortlessly capable of delivering mainstream comedy. From the opening gag about walk-on music, to the tour of his peripatetic childhood (from Kuwait via southwest London to Dubai), to the risque gags about wanking and his resemblance to a “porn Super Mario”, the show might have been designed to demonstrate the Irish-Palestinian’s mastery of standup topics and techniques. But he gives them his own spin; whether that’s workshopping racist slurs with his bully, or orchestrating his Middle Eastern schoolmates in a rap-along to Will Smith’s Men in Black.

Summerhall, Edinburgh
The comedian brings a calm authority to her tale of a haunted house and digs out maximum horror from a minimal staging

Some shows work their magic on you slowly but Kirsty Mann will have you hooked in under a minute. A thunderous sound effect, a flash of blood-red lighting and a DIY ghost costume is all it takes to get the audience strapped in for her comic tale of a haunting. “Are you a believer?” she asks us. Mann may not convince you of supernatural powers but she overwhelmingly proves the power of storytelling.

It succeeds partly because our host is such a natural on stage and so rational, too. Mann quickly comes across as an ordinary neighbour, even while detailing the most uncommon events of moving into her new home. When she and her husband snapped up a semi in east London they knew it was a fixer-upper but it turns out the knotweed is the least of their problems. The previous resident died in the same bed in which they consummate their moving in and it gets creepier by the day. Why does the toilet seemingly flush itself? Are those scratch marks on the bedroom door? What the hell is going on under the apple tree?

Like co-star Tom Felton, Grint will once again play the role that made him famous, in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Rupert Grint is set to reprise the role of Ron Weasley in the Broadway hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

The actor will join the long-running stage show for 17 weeks starting in February 2027.

Songwriter who contributed to the first record made at Motown’s Detroit studio and co-wrote many of the label’s hits

Janie Bradford was a poetry-loving receptionist, not yet out of her teens, when she provided her boss, Berry Gordy Jr, with the lines that helped him complete a song called Money (That’s What I Want). Gordy, then in the early stages of establishing Motown Records and searching for what would become the label’s signature sound, was sitting at the piano in the summer of 1959 when Bradford, who had been listening to him at work, came up with a couplet that drove home the song’s message: “Your love gives me such a thrill / But your love don’t pay my bills.”

Money (That’s What I Want) was the first record to be made at Motown’s new Detroit studios, to be known as Hitsville USA. Sung by the 18-year-old Barrett Strong, it was released in the US in August 1959 and reached No 2 in the R&B charts and No 23 in the pop charts. In recognition of her contribution, Gordy added Bradford’s name to his own in the songwriting credits.

‘Janet had eight children. Her husband drove a boda-boda taxi, but had lost a leg – so she had been working in her local quarry for 10 years. “I am now the husband in this home,” she said’

In 2017, my wife, Adele Brown, was invited to spend three weeks at an NGO in Gulu, Uganda, teaching critical thinking skills to blind high school-age students. I was asked along to document the organisation’s activities. I became fascinated by the town’s main market, where vendors sold goods such as used clothes, fruit and firewood. I asked the Ugandan teachers how I might approach someone to take their portrait. They suggested I offer a modest “model fee” after seeking permission.

One of the students – Emmanuel (Emma) – wanted to assist me. We would visit the market together. When I saw a vendor I wanted to photograph, Emma would approach and seek their consent. Most agreed, but after returning home to New York, I looked at the results and was disappointed. As with other well-intentioned projects, I thought that was the end of it.

Ben Marcin’s stunning photographs show lone houses, derelict homes and makeshift camps that stand as epitaphs to past lives and offer insight into how Americans on the margins live

Dublin’s representative in the traditional festival defiantly reckons with xenophobia and balances Gaelic pride with her Somali heritage

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Last week marked the climax of Ireland’s Rose of Tralee festival, an annual celebration of Irish women, culture and the Irish diaspora. When Suad Mooge was chosen as Dublin’s participant in the festival earlier this year, she quickly became a symbol of Ireland’s fraught conversation around immigration and what constitutes Irish identity.

I caught up with Suad on a video call a week after the festival’s culmination, and found someone reflective and determined in the face of criticism.

As I turned 21, fear was holding me back. So I decided to face it headfirst. It taught me that courage leads to connection – and people who owe you nothing can be astonishingly kind

In May 2024, I decided to spend 30 days getting rejected on purpose.

At first, it sounded ridiculous. After all, most people spend their lives actively trying to avoid rejection – and I was deciding to walk, full force, towards it. But it had become obvious, as I turned 21, that my terror of being rejected was holding me back.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food, and the basic they scrimp on? The former reality star and author talks family heirlooms, organic veg and splurge-worthy jeans with the Filter

• How I Shop with Fred Sirieix

Millie Mackintosh rose to fame as part of the original cast of the reality show Made in Chelsea, filming five series before leaving in 2013. She has since established herself as a fitness, health and beauty ambassador, releasing her own beauty collection with Boots in 2017, and publishing Made: A Book of Style, Food and Fitness.

After choosing to go alcohol-free, she shared her journey in the bestselling Bad Drunk, co-written with Dr Ellie Cannon. Mackintosh speaks candidly about the realities of motherhood, mental health and self-care on Instagram.

Our writer spent weeks putting capsules, sheets and liquid detergent through their paces to find the best for your clothes and the planet

• Sustainable cleaning subscriptions that make life easier

Nothing makes falling into bed more enjoyable than freshly laundered sheets, especially if they’ve just been dried in the sunshine. It’s a definite bonus, though, to know your clean bedding won’t bring you out in a rash or pollute your local river.

Laundry detergent can be a troublesome product. A few years ago, I suffered a full-body rash after using pound-shop detergent on my sheets. I switched to a big-brand product and never had a reaction again, but there’s still the question of whether its ingredients may be causing environmental harm after they’ve gone down the drain.

Brilliant for managing breakouts and refreshing puffy eyes, but after months of treatments, is Shark’s light therapy device the one our writer would buy now?

• The best LED face masks

Of all the LED masks I’ve tested, the Shark CryoGlow feels like the most heavily marketed. Touted as a one-stop shop for anti-ageing, blemish-busting and undereye cooling, it’s trickled its way into countless influencer morning routines and post-work wind-downs, slowly but surely filling up my social media timeline.

As an acne-prone woman whose work life revolves around beauty tech, the adverts are well placed. But that doesn’t negate the fact that, to the average consumer, LED therapy still reeks of pseudoscience. If my younger self got wind that I was strapping a glowing mask to my face every day, she would die laughing.

It’s a saviour at family mealtimes, but which bottle of red sauce does our reviewer relish the most? (Spoiler: it’s not Heinz)

• The best supermarket mayonnaise

I was that kid who put ketchup on everything, from fries to french toast, and if my parents wanted me to eat vegetables, they’d have to cover them in the stuff (the sugar cravings of my youth have subsided, but I still love ketchup mixed into peas). So I was pleasantly surprised by this test group, because even the most economical sauces performed well.

Tomato content varied greatly (though not always in line with price), with the most tomato-heavy products containing almost twice as much fruit as the least. This information is presented in two ways: the first is the amount of raw tomato used before the sauce is cooked down into puree (more than 200g per 100g of finished product is high, less than 150g is low); the second is a straight percentage of tomato puree used, which is a more transparent measure (above 50% is high, while less than that I’d consider low, so check the label if you want more fruit in your sauce). Products made with fewer tomatoes are sometimes thickened with modified maize starch. I’ve also listed the total sugar content.

The cookbook author and owner of Melbourne’s Beatrix Bakes shares a her ‘100% reliable’ formula for freeing bundts from tins

When all the layer cakes are baked and iced, I will always love a slice of pretty patterned bundt. Especially one that is lightened with the perfect amount of baking powder (overly dense bundts are stodgy sadness) and brightened with limes and yoghurt.

Cake goop – a mix of flour, oil and butter – is a gift of guaranteed cake release that I found on the internet, and it means no more stuck bundts. Bless the baker who invented it! Goop has it all – release, plus enough sticking power to hold the batter as it rises and cools, without slumping. Additionally, mixing the flour with oil means you don’t get that fine, white, dusty crust on the outside of the cooked cake. Goop is 100% reliable with a 100% untarnished release record in my kitchen.

This is an edited extract from Sweet Heart by Natalie Paull, with photography by Rochelle Eagle, available in Australia 1 September through Murdoch Books, $49.99

Shake up the remnants of a bottle of ketchup with a splash of sprits, a heap of mayonnaise and a few other simple additions, and turn it into one of the culinary world’s most famous sauces

My new favourite preparation for sauces, marinades and dressings is in a near-empty jar, tub or bottle, so I can upcycle all the remains. Rather than washing it and putting it in the recycling, I instead add a few store-cupboard ingredients to create a dressing or sauce, often re-exploring classics such as a retro Marie Rose sauce or my yoghurt-pot chicken. It’s a convenient way to use up the last dregs of a ketchup bottle, for instance, which often seems to harbour exactly the right amount of sauce.

My Marie Rose recipe is inspired by the one in Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham’s 1997 The Prawn Cocktail Years. It’s wonderfully simple, with the sophisticated addition of a dash of cognac, though other recipes use brandy. I had neither, however, but I did have some sweet vermouth left over, which worked exceptionally well, so feel free to experiment with whatever spirits you have to hand – vodka, for instance, works brilliantly, and gives the sauce a nice kick.

Serve this cold curry with a hot, fenugreek-flavoured preserve for a seasonal refresher

This lovely summery “curry” is a cold, refreshing dish from Karnataka in India, and is eaten widely in Tamil Nadu, just 20 miles across the Palk Strait from my ancestral Tamil homeland in north and eastern Sri Lanka. Along with chefs Louis and Seb in our development kitchen, we decided that smacking the cucumbers helps give them a silky texture, and means the fragrant yoghurt base can get into all the nooks and crannies. It’s wonderful with plain rice and a side of fenugreek-heavy hot Tamil pickle, made with English gooseberries rather than superfood nelli, both of which are said to make your skin shine and hair bouncy.

Sauces, reductions, deglazing: our expert panel has plenty of options for making the most of undrunk vino – whether you’ve got just a capful or a whole carafe to get through

What can I do with wine left over from a party?
Rob, by email
This is a novel concept, perhaps, but the answer essentially comes down to the quantity: “If we’re talking dribbles of red or white, that’s simple,” says Jon Atashroo, head chef/owner of Where There’s Smoke in North Yorkshire. “They go into sauces, whether that’s for pasta or to deglaze a pan before making a gravy.” Joe Otway, chef/co-owner of Higher Ground in Manchester, couldn’t agree more: “Reducing wine, be it white or red, in the base of anything is generally a good idea.” Take something tomato-based, such as ragu or chilli, as an example: “Once you’ve sweated the vegetables and there’s caramelisation on the bottom of the pan, a glass of red wine will add acidity, depth and sweetness.” And remember, you can always freeze wine dregs for later use: simply pour into ice-cube trays and stash.

Moving on to medium amounts, we’re talking “stewy, fish-type things”, Atashroo says, perhaps moules marinière. Another good option is pickling: “A basic recipe is one part caster sugar, one part white-wine vinegar and one part white wine. And if you’re pickling something like beetroot, cook it in that mix, while if you’re using cucumbers, say, they go in cold.” That said, a current Atashroo go-to is altogether sweeter: “Weigh some red wine, though I don’t see why it wouldn’t work with white wine, too, add 20% of its weight in sugar, and reduce to a syrup – you’re looking for the consistency of strawberry sauce.” The result is complex and acidic, “almost like reduced port”, and great for drizzling over vanilla ice-cream. While we’re talking desserts, few things are better than fruit (peaches, figs, pears) poached in wine, either.

Got a culinary dilemma? Email feast@theguardian.com

With many adults admitting they feel lonely, meetup platforms offer the chance to make new connections

Would you pay £20 a month for the chance of making a friend, on the understanding that an algorithm – not you – gets to decide who you’ll meet?

Driven by the decline of “third spaces” such as youth centres and pubs, an increase in remote working and rising loneliness – 40% of adults aged 16 to 29 feel lonely “always, often or some of the time”, according to the Office for National Statistics – paid social events are now in vogue.

Research shows young adults often feel isolated. So alongside embracing ‘grandma hobbies’, they want to get involved with the places they live and be good neighbours

Name: Community-maxxing.

Age: The portmanteau is recent, but Homo sapiens have always been social creatures.

He has chased a deer across a dual carriageway, eaten an entire tray of chocolate brownies and jumped head first into a canal. But despite all the worry he brings us, he is extraordinarily lovable

Ernie found his way into our hearts and home about nine years ago, when he strategically crawled into my lap during a family visit to meet a litter of puppies. While all the other beagle puppies ran wild, Ernie sat comfortably on me with his long, soft ears dangling down. We chose him because of his placid nature and named him Ernie after my mum’s late dad, who coincidentally also had short legs and a bit of a round belly.

After a few weeks we realised that Ernie was anything but placid. His gentle temperament quickly morphed into an unruly and persistent need to find his way into danger.

Following the all-clear, Kevin and Jade found a new openness in discussing sex and intimacy – and also a shared desire for exploring polyamory

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

Since the all clear, my relationship with my sexuality has shifted a lot

We want our balance back, but we can’t access the money to pay for essential repairs and settle an electricity bill

Last November, Lloyds Bank informed me, in my role as treasurer of my parish church, that the church account was to be closed and that I should open a new business account instead. This can only be done online, but a fault with their system prevented me – and local branch staff – from doing so.

At the branch staff’s suggestion, I opened the new account with a different bank in early March. Since then, I’ve been trying in vain to get Lloyds to transfer the balance from the closed account.

It has not paid me for months and I am in severe financial distress, and apart from my husband while I try to sort it out

I stopped receiving my NHS pension in May and, when I rang to ask why, I was informed that I was deceased.

I have repeatedly called to no avail and my emails have received auto-generated responses.

Sign-up perks may capture the attention but should the focus be on the interest-free overdraft?

• Students on their biggest financial shocks

• The best student deals and discounts

• An insider’s tips on student money

In the scramble to sort out university accommodation, join freshers group chats and work out how a student loan payment is meant to stretch across a whole term, there is one big decision that is easy to put off but worth getting right: which student bank account to open.

Student accounts work like any other current account but come with two extras that don’t apply to the general public: an interest-free overdraft, and a lot of perks designed to hook you in as a customer for life.

It said that was what I was due after I submitted a claim for £300 for energy exported through my solar panels

British Gas paid me more than £38,000 by mistake, then had no idea how to reclaim it. I receive quarterly feed-in tariff (Fit) payments for energy exported by my solar panels.

In May, I submitted a claim for £300, based on my meter reading, and I received an email stating that I was due £38,611.59.

Discussing people’s bodies can be fraught. We asked eating disorder experts how to do so – or not – responsibly

In the age of Ozempic and people being open about plastic surgery, discussion about people’s bodies is rife. At the same time, nobody seems quite sure how to talk about them, as shown by recent coverage of celebrities like Ariana Grande.

It is a fraught topic. We asked eating disorder experts for guidelines to follow when talking about other people’s bodies, and how to do so without doing harm.

Creatine has become the go-to supplement for anyone wanting to give their fitness a boost and build muscle. It’s even made it out of the gym, with influencers touting its cognitive benefits. But what’s the science behind creatine, and does the evidence stack up? Madeleine Finlay hears from science editor Ian Sample and Dr Justin Roberts, professor of nutritional physiology at Anglia Ruskin University

Is it true that … we should all be taking creatine?

Athletes and fitness influencers use creatine, but what is it? And does it work?

Foundayo will be available on private prescription, with pharmacists warning of counterfeit GLP-1 problem

A new daily pill that treats diabetes and helps with weight loss will be available in UK pharmacies from Monday.

Pharmacists said the move would be welcome for people who cannot use weight-loss jabs, but also issued a warning over the growing problem of fake, unlicensed or counterfeit versions of GLP-1 tablets.

Miranda Luby was only 36 years old when her tinnitus arrived in the middle of the night, without warning and for no clear reason

One night two years ago, I was lying in bed when I began to hear a high-pitched, electronic hum. The scene that followed would be comical if it wasn’t so traumatic. I roamed around the house in my PJs, frantically pressing my ears against various electrical appliances. It took half an hour to realise the sound was coming from inside my own head.

I’d heard ringing in my ears before, rising then falling, like a one-note crescendo of an orchestra. As a kid, I used to believe the myth it was the sound of dying ear cells, playing a swan song for a frequency I’d never hear again. This was different. This time, it didn’t stop.

The event feted its 25 year anniversary with labels like Zambesi, promising emerging designers and an explosion of Māori and Indigenous culture

New Zealand fashion week took place in Auckland this week at the heritage-listed Shed 10 on Waitemata harbour and other venues across the city. Founded by Dame Pieter Stewart in 2001, now run by entrepreneur Feroz Ali, the 25th anniversary featured a mix of established names, exciting newcomers and a dramatically enhanced Indigenous program. The event boasted three separate group showcases of creatives from not just the Pacific region, but India, Taiwan and the US, in addition to the inaugural New Zealand Indigenous fashion symposium.

If ‘lifespan’ is the time you’re alive and ‘healthspan’ the years you’re disease-free, then ‘hotspan’ is the period you’re attractive and vibrant. Want to increase yours? Experts share their tips

Forget 12-step skincare routines, red light therapy and injectables – the single most important thing you can do for your skin is wear UV protection. “Not just sun protection, but UV protection, every single day, regardless of weather or season,” says Dr Jennifer Owens, resident aesthetic expert at the Reborne Longevity clinic in London. “Up to 90% of visible skin ageing is caused by UV exposure – nothing else comes close in terms of impact.”

Cute, egoless canines offer a break from a world that feels dominated by ‘nepo babies’ and ‘Maga lady aesthetic’

What do Nicole Kidman, a pair of “nepo babies” and a beagle called Sansa Martínez Berlingeri have in common? They all appear on the covers of the all-important September issues of Vogue and Dogue. But the winner of the unofficial battle of the covers? The one with the keenest sense of smell and a penchant for playing with socks.

The September covers of British Vogue and Vogue US have come under intense scrutiny after their recent release, while their canine counterpoint, Dogue, has been almost unanimously celebrated.

From Nike’s infamous 110s to £250 and back again, sneakerheads are rediscovering why cheaper shoes can be worth just as much hype as much more expensive ones

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When Nike’s Air Max 95 trainers first landed in Britain back in the mid-1990s, they looked unlike anything else. Created by footwear designer Sergio Lozano, the shoe had wavy layers running down its sides, neon yellow accents, and visible ‘Air’ bubbles underfoot. But in the UK, one detail quickly became as famous as the shoe itself: its £110 price tag.

The Air Max 95 immediately picked up the nickname “110” because spending £110 on trainers seemed outrageous at the time. Owning a pair quickly became a status symbol among young men across Britain, while in celebrity circles they were worn by everyone from Jay-Z to Kylie Minogue.

In the shadow of the crowded Lake District, this quiet coast path offers great views, breathtaking nature and a striking new hotel on the historic waterfront

What’s the edgiest region in the UK? I don’t mean in the sense of sketchy or fashionable, but where on the map of these four nations feels most at the margins of everywhere else? For my money, the north Cumbrian coast is a strong contender. Hemmed in by the Lake District fells on one side and the Solway Firth and Irish Sea on the other, this strip of towns and villages, farms and nature reserves, clinging to the low-lying littoral, has been battling nature, weather, geology and geography throughout its history.

Coastal erosion is part of the challenge. Like the railway navvies before them, the planners and builders of the England Coast Path (ECP) have done sterling work at plotting a viable footpath and shoring it up. But there are and always will be sections that are compromised and even impassable. I chose a section that would take three days, walking southwards, and my final destination, St Bees, was only reachable via a diversion. It’s all part of the adventure, and we’re lucky to have the ECP as a national trail, as it means issues and obstacles on the English coast will usually be promptly addressed.

From smoked kippers in Northumberland to dolphin spotting in Dorset and a palm-fringed village on a sea loch in the Scottish Highlands

The historic harbour is the hub of this working East Neuk fishing port, home to a fleet of about 30 small trawlers and creel boats. Their catches are sold at the covered market on the quay each weekday morning, and served at the harbourside Dory Bistro and Chip Ahoy at the Larachmhor pub. Pittenweem (which means “place of the cave”) also has a Victorian-era swimming pool next to the beach, which is filled by the tide twice a day. After falling into disrepair, it was saved by a local group called the West Braes Project and reopened in 2021, along with the crazy golf course. Early each August, there is an annual arts festival with exhibits by nearly 200 artists in harbourside spaces, heritage buildings, homes and studios. Pittenweem is flanked by two other pretty harbour villages, St Monans and Anstruther, while a third, Crail, is a little further north; the Fife Coastal Path links them all. The Bank in Anstruther has harbour-view rooms (doubles from £120 B&B).

The city’s rich history and culture have so far flown under the radar, but its fiercely proud inhabitants are determined to change that

We have hardly begun walking before I spot the side alley, curving away from the main road in a patchwork of sunlit yellow walls, shuttered windows and shadowy archways. “What’s up there?” Elena, my guide to the city, pulls a wry smile. “That is Carmine. As a kid, I was warned not to go there.”

I turn up the alley. There’s a lot of graffiti. Next to an anarchy symbol, someone has sprayed “morte al decoro” – death to decorum. I’m intrigued. We go further, finding a labyrinth of colourful streets filled with bars and restaurants, a few just opening up for the day.

Five travel writers share their favourite holidays at home, from gravel biking in Scotland and a steam train ride in Yorkshire to rowing all the way from Oxford to London

One of my best UK holidays was the week I spent in June 2013 rowing from Oxford to London with two friends, James and Tom.

From bowl cuts to extreme mullets, punk dos to bad dye jobs, a terrible hairstyle can never be forgotten – even decades after it has grown out

It’s the late 1990s. Big, round, feathered fringes are a huge deal at my primary school. Most of my friends have one, influenced by Britney Spears or Emma Bunton. I, too, have a fringe. Mine, as you can see, appears more inspired by Kevin Keegan circa 1993.

Service charges used to be a matter of choice, but now consumers feel obliged to pay them for even a cup of coffee. How do we navigate this minefield and who is really profiting?

In a London pub, Greg Double was brutally confronted with the reality of Britain’s evolving tipping culture. “I was annoyed about the pint being eight quid, but then when you put service on top, it’s absolutely criminal,” he says. In the past, you might have told the bar staff to keep the change or have a “drink” on you, but since when did we routinely tip in pubs? Or coffee shops? Or, worst of all, at self-service machines? Tip creep is happening.

Tipping was awkward enough in the UK when the general rule was 10% at a restaurant, plus anxiety about whether you should tip the hairdresser, babysitter or food-delivery driver. Now, with tipping suggested ever more frequently, US-style, it has become a minefield to Britons. The amounts edge higher – in fancier London restaurants, a 15% service charge is relatively commonplace. And it’s often asked for – in coffee shops for example, when you pay – before any service is delivered.

Dutch sustainable smartphone revamped with new chip and more RAM without sacrificing modular design

Fairphone’s top Android for 2026 is a little faster with more memory while maintaining full compatibility with its previous phone, including its repairable and ethical chops.

The Fairphone 6+ continues the Dutch cooperative’s mission to make consumer electronics longer lasting and more sustainable, containing 51% either recycled or ethically sourced materials while being fully repairable at home with just the one screwdriver included in the box.

They relayed to me that the driver wanted more money. I went to grab my wallet, but they told me to put it away

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I travelled alone a lot when I was younger and often got myself into stupid situations. You think you’re immortal when you’re in your 20s.

One such occasion happened when I was 25 and travelling solo in Egypt, not long after the turn of the century. I had taken an overnight bus from Cairo to Dahab, which dropped me and my fellow passengers off in the middle of nowhere. I had to get a shared taxi into town at about 3am – one where everyone sat up the back in a ute tray – then find somewhere to stay.

MVRDV – the firm behind Marble Arch Mound – says Rotterdam ROCKS! will inspire visitors to live sustainably. But in an era when the greenest building is the one that already exists, this tottering cairn looks set to misfire

‘It looks like something Shrek would throw up,” sniffed one online commentator, unflatteringly comparing Rotterdam ROCKS!, the recently unveiled proposal for a waterfront site in Europe’s largest port, with the vomitings of a cartoon ogre. Designed by Dutch architectural firm MVRDV, which gave London the supremely underwhelming Marble Arch Mound in 2021, Rotterdam ROCKS! (the use of EMPHATIC CAPITALS connoting an in-your-face energy) is the winner of a major architectural competition intended to create “a new world wonder”.

But instead of a modern Hanging Gardens of Babylon or contemporary Colossus of Rhodes, MVRDV’s super slick renderings depict a pile of artificial “rocks” (or ROCKS!) stacked together in a humongously scaled tottering cairn, wreathed in suspiciously luxuriant foliage and sluiced by a preposterous waterfall.

North Shields’ Gabriele Keenaghan was 12 when she was evacuated from Nazi Austria in 1939. She remembers the shock of leaving her family at Westbahnhof station

Gabriele Keenaghan still remembers the day in April 1939 when she said goodbye to her grandmother at a Vienna railway station for a Kindertransport to Britain – tears were strictly forbidden.

“I was apprehensive and I was worried because Nazis in black uniforms were on the platform,” she said. “I was only 12 years old so I think they were frightening … terrifying.

Hundreds of millions of pounds of dirty money are being deposited at post offices every year. So why are the police reluctant to investigate the scale of the problem?

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Leicestershire police won’t say who first told them about Jigar Gheewala, but you can see why, once they had heard of him, they decided to find out more. Gheewala was unemployed, had no apparent income, yet lived in a £1.3m house and sent his three children to private school. “He was a declared bankrupt, with a bank account that was absolutely not reflective of what it should be,” said financial crime supervisor Laura Panter of Leicestershire police’s economic crime team. “That was our starting point.”

Over the course of 2020, despite being on benefits, Gheewala’s bank account received more than £880,000 in cash in 200 different deposits. He was, it turned out, a money launderer, but not the kind you’ll see in the movies. Gheewala’s deposits had been made not in Liechtenstein or on Grand Cayman, but at various post office branches in Leicester, one thick wodge of banknotes after another.

Floods and mudslides have swept away houses and roads with many hundreds missing

Hundreds are missing and at least 22 people have died after torrential floods ⁠hit the Himalayan border areas of ⁠Nepal and in ​Tibet in China. An avalanche of ice and rock triggered massive flash floods causing widespread damage to villages and infrastructure.

Officials said 384 tourists, including 291 from countries including India, the United States, the United Kingdom and Malaysia, were reported missing.

We would like to hear your tributes and memories of country music star, actor and philanthropist Dolly Parton – whether you met her, or appreciated her work

The death of country music legend Dolly Parton was announced today. She was 80.

The singer-songwriter known for hits such as I Will Always Love You, Jolene and 9 to 5 also invested millions in child literacy, Covid-19 vaccine development and other causes.

As people grow used to AI chatbots, we’d like to hear your views about Google’s search engine

Google has put artificial intelligence at the front and center of its search bar. The most-visited site on the internet still shows the same list of links to users, but they have to scroll past a summarized response from an AI chatbot, a feature Google calls AI Overviews. The change to what was once the gateway to the rest of the internet has been profound, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting.

“AI is driving the most significant upgrade of the Google Search experience ever,” Liz Reid, Google’s vice-president of search, wrote last August. In May, the company said more AI is coming.

How did it affect your plans for either further education or getting a job? Did you go through resits? Tell us

The government plans to introduce a new “stepping stone” qualification from 2028 for students in England who do not achieve a pass in GCSE maths or English.

The new preparatory level 1 qualifications - one level below GCSEs - will “give students the essential knowledge and skills before they resit English or maths GCSE,” in an effort to “end the resit treadmill”, the government said.

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