But with rumours about a certain workshy Windsor circulating this week, are we actually encouraging joblessness with an overly generous safety net?

Finally, some part of our struggling state is getting a massive budget increase – and it’s not even the welfare bill, like normal. Or maybe it is? The monarchy’s core funding is going to double to £100m. Also mentioned under cover of the same info dump is the fact that the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace is currently coming in at £369m, but the King and Queen don’t want to live there when it’s done.

Personally, I’m a big fan of the gaiety the Windsors add to this nation, willingly or otherwise, but I do worry: are we enabling a culture of dependence that isn’t actually great for any of the people involved? Does the royal economy need rebalancing, if it is simply impossible to own an absolutely vast private network of land and high-end properties without somehow still needing a top-up from the state? You’ve heard of the poverty trap – will no one think of the royalty trap?

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

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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

Economist Prof Mariana Mazzucato says governments must ‘get back their mojo’ and believe they can change the world

Good governments have a vision. They know what they want to achieve, can articulate why, and work out in public how to get there. They don’t just spout slogans about economic growth – because growth is meaningless unless we know what it is for. They understand that there is no trade-off between solving social problems and boosting the economy, and aim to do both, while avoiding rigid fiscal rules that defeat their own purpose by strangling public investment.

If this sounds like a critique of what went wrong with Keir Starmer’s government, it is also a lot more. Mariana Mazzucato, a professor in the economics of innovation and public value at University College London, is a world-renowned economist, adviser to governments, chair of international commissions, prolific author, and PhD supervisor to at least one poet. She was the thinker who inspired Starmer to fashion his political project around five key “missions”, now largely forgotten in the mire of scandals, U-turns and infighting that beset his premiership.

As temperatures soar across Europe, cities are struggling to adapt, further exacerbating socioeconomic divisions

The heatwave afflicting western Europe is the worst ever, with the combination of heat and humidity fuelled by the climate crisis making scores of cities feel unliveable. While for some the adverse impacts amount to disturbed sleep and sticky days in the home office, low-income families are often worse affected by cities’ lack of adequate adaptation measures, with women at the sharp end.

“[It] throws a grenade into every vulnerability you already have,” says Asad Rehman, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, pointing out that vulnerable or marginalised groups often bear the brunt of climate crisis-based hardship globally.

Two chefs lift the lid on the expensive business of creating menus they love

You pay: £21
Restaurant profit: £1.65

Britain has found itself looking for all three protagonists at once. Who gets to stand at the centre of the national story?

It’s been the refrain of the week. Why can’t the country hold on to a prime minister – and how can it be that Larry, the Downing Street cat, has managed to outlast six of them? Have we become ungovernable? Is it because one government after another has failed to halt the slide in living standards – or have online attention spans eroded our patience for change?

But Westminster isn’t the only dramatic platform casting for a new lead at the moment. Amid the political chaos this week, I was struck by a social media comment that this is the first time the UK has found itself looking for a new PM, a new James Bond and a new lead for Doctor Who, all at the same time.

The film-makers and stars of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders docu-series explain the sisterhood and fights for fair pay behind the pompoms

It’s been 30 years since the Dallas Cowboys – who have long billed themselves as America’s Team – won the Super Bowl. But now, thanks to Greg Whiteley’s Netflix docu-series America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders, the most reliable and globally recognizable arm of the Cowboys brand may no longer be the men playing football, but the women dancing on the sidelines.

“The footballers are gonna break your heart,” one fan says in the Season 3 finale. “But the cheerleaders are gonna leave you with a smile.”

Estimated 150 million people in Europe could experience temperatures above 35C today

• European heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis, scientists say

Over in the UK, firefighters are still trying to bring a large wildfire in Derbyshire under control.

The blaze, which has burned over 500 square metres of moorland and woodland on Tintwistle Moor, near Glossop, broke out on Wednesday evening, with fire crews from Manchester and Derbyshire deploying a water-dropping helicopter and six fire engines on Thursday.

Exclusive: Labour peer who fled Nazis as a child says Andy Burnham has chance to ‘correct mistakes’ on refugees

Shabana Mahmood should be moved out of the Home Office and her asylum policies of “performative cruelty” ripped up by Andy Burnham’s administration, Alf Dubs has said.

The veteran Labour peer, who came to the UK aged six in 1939 fleeing the persecution of Jews in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, said the home secretary’s talents “would be better used elsewhere in the cabinet”.

Co-defendants in case against Stockport man in his 60s can be revealed after reporting restrictions were lifted

The identities of 13 men charged in the UK alongside a man accused of drugging and raping his wife can be revealed after reporting restrictions were lifted.

The main defendant in the case is due to go on trial in September. He stands accused of drugging and sexually assaulting his wife over a period of 20 years and conspiring with other men to engage in abuse.

Worst incident of its kind in country for more than 125 years leaves many searching for multiple family members – and pleading for international help

• Scenes of destruction after deadly earthquakes in Venezuela – visual guide

Nearly all of Ligia Level’s family lived in a trio of apartment blocks along Hotel Avenue, a seafront sweep of palm-specked resorts and high-rise condos along Venezuela’s Caribbean coast.

When a powerful “doublet” of earthquakes jolted the region on Wednesday afternoon, those buildings and the lives within them came crashing down.

CPS says decision to withhold names is due to fears Tate and his brother could identify alleged victims online

Andrew and Tristan Tate’s legal claim to be told the names of their female accusers has been thrown out by a high court judge who ruled that prosecutors had acted reasonably in treating the brothers as “notorious”.

Mr Justice Chamberlain on Friday rejected an attempt to compel the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to inform the Tates of the identities of the women whose allegations have formed the basis for charges against the men of rape, actual bodily harm and human trafficking.

Police bodycam footage also shows Vickrum Digwa claiming student was wounded from punch or falling over

The murderer of Henry Nowak, the student whose death sparked riots in Southampton, is seen lying to police officers about being racially attacked in newly released bodyworn camera footage.

Vickrum Digwa, 23, was jailed for life with a minimum of 20 years this month for stabbing the 18-year-old five times in December last year.

Bodycam footage captures moment motorist pulls over to help police officer and calls: ‘Get in the back’

A van driver in Kent has been praised after giving a lift to an armed police officer who was chasing a suspect.

Bodycam footage from the officer captured the moment the motorist pulled over to help the police on 16 June and called out: “Get in the back. Get in the back.”

Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series accounts for eight of the 10 most read books by 11- to 14-year-old boys, while girls the same age enjoy a wider range of authors and genres

Teenage boys are “stuck” reading primary school books such as Diary of a Wimpy Kid, while girls their age are moving on to a wider range of novels, according to a new study.

Among the boys aged 11 to 14 who were surveyed, eight of the 10 most read books were from Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series. Girls’ reading was spread across a wider range of authors and genres including Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper, Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder and Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.

Source: Renaissance

⚽ Latest news from day 15 | Haaland v Mbappé in data
⚽ Third-place table | Player guide | Bracketology | Mail John

Kylian Mbappé and Erling Haaland will go head-to-head later on as France take on Norway and they have both scored the same amount of goals so far this tournament with four. They could go top of the Golden Boot standings this evening but who is currently there? Have a look:

Ecuador fans’ nerves will be eased for now but that is not the case for all the nations yet as all of the knockout spots have not been allocated. Here is how the third-place spots are shaking out:

Sarah Steele waives anonymity to call for greater scrutiny of how US military courts are allowed to ‘rip apart’ vulnerable witnesses in the UK

• Why did a US fighter pilot avoid British trial after strangling a woman in England?

• Explainer: how the US bypasses British courts

A woman strangled by an American fighter pilot at his home in an English city has come forward to criticise the handling of his prosecution via a US court martial, a process she described as “military first, justice second”.

Sarah Steele, a British academic, has come forward to speak about the “distressing and degrading” experience she had with the US military justice system after she was assaulted by the airman in Cambridge.

Efforts of campaign groups, supporters and party figures coalesced after May elections as MPs’ views began to change

The third coming of Andy Burnham began in earnest on the dancefloor of the Ministry of Sound. It was the annual conference of the centre-left pressure group Compass on an unusually hot spring weekend in May 2025. Keir Starmer, a year into his premiership, was deep in the trenches of the welfare battle, and the event’s keynote speakers were Burnham and Louise Haigh.

Under the hot pink lights, the mayor of Greater Manchester joked that he was doing the “rally the troops” slot, inappropriate for a pessimistic Evertonian. But he said there was one reason to still be cheerful.

Despite £369m upgrade, King Charles will never live in palace but aides stress it will remain ‘buzzing hive’ of activity

Not all modern British monarchs have viewed the prospect of moving into Buckingham Palace with unalloyed joy. So in announcing he will never live there, after the completion of its £369m upgrade next year, King Charles has at least grasped that nettle.

Queen Victoria was initially dismayed by the damp, dingy and disorganised building that greeted her and her husband, Prince Albert, in 1837. It was Albert who refashioned it into “Monarchy HQ”. After his death in 1861, Victoria retreated mainly to Windsor, Balmoral and Osborne House on the Isle of Wight.

Up to 97% of autistic people over 60 are undiagnosed. Experts offer up advice for family members on how to support this ‘neglected generation’

There has been a huge shift in awareness around neurodiversity recently, with improved provision for children in schools and increased middle-age diagnosis and detection in women. Still, one group has remained underserved when it comes to support; adults over 60. A recent study estimated that 89-97% of autistic people over 60 are undiagnosed, leading experts in the field, such as Dr Louise Rutter (who last year co-authored a report on the subject for the British Psychological Society) to brand them a “neglected generation”.

It’s an issue facing adult children who might be caring for older parents and recognising traits of autism and ADHD. You may be wondering where to find support – or whether that’s the best course of action (the experts say it is). Here’s a guide.

The late production genius’s chaotic reputation has always preceded him. But could two new books, a posthumous album and a flurry of classic reissues change all that – and put the focus back on his music?

David Katz’s introduction to the world of Lee “Scratch” Perry was bewildering. The Jamaican producer had been living in London for several years, and Katz, a Jewish reggae historian who had fallen in love with the music as a teenager in San Francisco, had moved to the UK capital in 1987 and wanted to interview the notoriously evasive artist.

Katz tracked him down to a recording studio in Rotherhithe, just over the river in south London. Perry welcomed him before insisting he present him with “13 stones from your country” with no further explanation. When Katz informed him he could hardly just pop back to the west coast, Perry told him to “go down to the River Thames and get me 13 stones!”.

As Andy Burnham stuck to his ‘cool dad’ look while the UK sweltered, many in the Paris fashion pack did the same

For many, dressing for an extreme heatwave means wearing as little as possible. But for some men, not even record-breaking temperatures can dissuade them from pulling on their favourite pair of jeans.

This week as temperatures in the UK rose sharply on the back of the climate crisis, Andy Burnham stuck to his tried and tested “cool dad” combination of dark jeans with a dark blue (not black as he pointed out to Kemi Badenoch) T-shirt as he made his way to London to be sworn in as MP for Makerfield.

With country music festival attendances soaring and US artists selling out tours, are British and Irish audiences ready for “the full Southern experience”?

“There’s a certain magic with country music in the UK right now,” says Anna-Sophie Mertens, smiling in hi-vis from the build at State Fayre, the UK’s newest festival for country fans. It is located in Chelmsford but styled like the American South – think clapboard, rusted metal and water points disguised as retro gas stations – and this weekend, the gates will open to 50,000 country devotees.

Country is the UK’s fastest-growing genre, according to data from the Country Music Association (CMA), and has been for three years in a row. Until 2023, UK tastes leaned towards legacy acts, but now modern megastars such as Morgan Wallen, Luke Combs and Cowboy Carter-era Beyoncé have taken the wheel, reflecting a changing of the guard.

RJ Scaringe says firms focused on selling fossil fuel engines risk being ‘woefully behind’ on technology by end of decade

Carmakers that focus on selling fossil fuel engines are at risk of being “woefully behind” on technology by the end of the decade, according to the boss of Rivian, an Amazon-backed US electric carmaker.

RJ Scaringe, Rivian’s founder and chief executive, said the car industry has reached a “fork in the road” in the choice between short-term profits and the heavy investments, particularly in software, that will be required to survive.

Hampden Park, Glasgow
Armed with four drum kits, an arsenal of hits and a 50,000-strong snake pit, Lars Ulrich and co deliver a masterclasss on their marathon world tour

Metallica are welcomed to the stage in Glasgow by relentless heatwave sun and a blast of Ennio Morricone’s The Ecstasy of Gold. It’s a striking start to the closing leg of a three year-plus world tour, which started with the release of the metal legends’ solid 2023 album 72 Seasons. Much of the tour has comprised mini-residencies, with back-to-back “no repeats” shows offering the promise of deep cuts while betting on completists’ deep wallets. This stop in Glasgow is for one night only, meaning a guarantee of both hits and lesser played gems.

The 15-strong setlist showcases the range of the band’s catalogue, from the heavy, pyrotechnics-laden Fuel and Kill ’Em All’s incredible opener Hit the Lights to the moodiness of The Unforgiven and Nothing Else Matters (“I see people crowd surfing,” says singer James Hetfield, bemused. “Whatever it takes, man”). The title track from 72 Seasons is the only song from the band’s newest album to make the setlist, but it still gets two mini circle pits going in the standing area. There’s even a moment of light entertainment during the regular spot for a cover of a local song, courtesy of bassist Rob Trujillo and guitarist Kirk Hammett; tonight, it’s an arguably too easy pick of The Proclaimers’ 500 Miles.

Our expert put in the hard yards to find the top coolers to keep your wine crisp, whether you’re hosting, picnicking or just want to plonk your bottle in something stylish

• The best no- and low-alcohol wines for when you’re off the booze

I’ll admit to being a bit of a wine cooler sceptic – at home, at least. Don’t get me wrong: I love a crisp, cool glass as much as the next summer rosé guzzler. The temperature at which we serve wine is important, but I’m wary of any inessential gadgetry that threatens to take up prime real estate in my already cluttered kitchen.

What’s more, wine coolers are misleadingly named. In most cases, they don’t actually cool a bottle of wine – ie, bring down its temperature – but maintain it. This is the point of one on a restaurant table; for those who order a bottle (admittedly a dying breed), it can be kept at a relatively consistent temperature for the duration of their meal. For everyday drinking at home indoors, however, there isn’t much need for a cooler – we can keep returning the bottle to the fridge in between pours. But as picnic season approaches, coolers can come into their own. No one wants to ruin the romance of alfresco dining with warm wine. And bringing a wine cooler to a picnic definitely shows you mean business.

Best wine cooler for hosting and overall:
Peugeot Equilibreur

Best wine cooler for a picnic:
Le Creuset sleeve

YouTubers reveal how they are challenging traditional broadcast coverage of the tournament with their own audience interaction

For decades, the World Cup belonged to broadcasters. Fans gathered around the television, watched the game live or caught the highlights later that evening. In the UK, BBC and ITV acted as gatekeepers, deciding which stories were told and how audiences experienced football’s biggest tournament.

That world still exists. Millions watch live matches on television, and broadcasters remain dominant when it comes to rights and access. But alongside them, another layer of football media has emerged.

Did you enjoy England’s stalemate against Ghana? Panama are just as seasoned in the art of footballing nihilism

Panama apparently have nothing to play for when they face England in New Jersey on Saturday. After an attritional 1-0 loss to Ghana in their opener, and a slightly unlucky 1-0 defeat by Croatia, there is no path to the knockouts for Los Canaleros.

There is, however, something else at stake: a first point at a World Cup at the sixth attempt. Panama lost all three matches on their debut appearance at the 2018 edition, so getting anything against England would be a statement result.

The New York City mayor has made his mark on the tournament to cap an extraordinary run of sporting success over the last few months

A stunning evening sun was setting behind Union City on Wednesday. It made it slightly harder to see the giant screen that had been set up for the Brazil v Scotland watch party in Hudson River Park, but not enough to ruin the vibe of a New York City World Cup evening. Partly it didn’t matter because the clutch of Brazilians watching the game, kitted out in canary yellow and “100% Jesus” headbands, were already in full samba mode, given how comfortable their 3-0 win was. But mainly it was because this was a beautiful World Cup moment.

This is my eighth World Cup. The outdoor screening, combined with the gentle breeze off the Hudson – I had already navigated the hubbub in Times Square, colonised by chanting Germans and flag-waving Ecuadorians – was as captivating as anything I’ve experienced in Marseille, Seoul, Cape Town or Rio de Janeiro. New York City is perhaps the only place in the world where a World Cup may go unnoticed but the tournament genuinely feels like an intrinsic part of life in large parts of the city, certainly since the Knicks’ victory parade finished. In fact, the feelgood endorphins seem to have segued seamlessly into World Cup fever for many in the city.

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now!

When Paul the Octopus sadly died at an aquarium in Germany in 2010, there was a massive void to fill in the World Cup prediction space. It seemed a huge ask to find a tipster on the same level as the eight-legged maverick one-off. Others tried but Leon the Porcupine, Anton the Tamarin and Petty the Pygmy Hippopotamus were all woefully wide of the mark; this was no golden generation of animal oracles. Things turned dark in 2018 when a new octopus, Rabio, appeared on the scene but was killed by a Japanese fisher despite the sea-dwelling savant getting it right with all three of the Samurai Blue’s group games.

Big Website still has a lot of players ‘writing themselves into the history books’. Surely given the state of books (and history) we need to come up with a new term like ‘entered themselves at the datacentre’ or ‘input themselves into a field on a spreadsheet on the Opta supercomputer’?” – Michael Hill.

Given that the (somewhat logical) German words for semi-final, etc are worthy of a letter o’ the day (yesterday’s Football Daily letters), here by contrast are the somewhat odd Finnish terms. A final is an ‘end match’ (loppuottelu) but recently the boring ‘final’ (finaali) is often used. A semi-final is a välierä, where erä is round and väli is intermediate. So a rather vague ‘intermediate round’. So far so good, perhaps, but a quarter-final is a puolivälierä = a half välierä or in other words a ‘half intermediate round’. The round of 16 is then a ‘a quarter intermediate round’, a neljännesvälierä” – Mike Walsh.

This is an extract from our daily football email … Football Daily. To get the full version, just visit this page and follow the instructions.

Fans, players and coaches have voiced their indignation at the way the game is massively altered by the four-quarter structure

With 22 minutes gone on Tuesday night at Boston Stadium, and an injury delay in train, a clutch of England and Ghana players wandered to the side of the pitch and began taking drinks. This was the signal for a sudden spurt of refereeing indignation, the officials sprinting across in a state of apparently genuine outrage, appalled by the spectacle of unofficial hydration.

The first drinks break, Hydro-Quart-One, was only a minute away. Here we had players basically stealing hydration. Not to mention messing with the most vital part of the show – the advert timings. Guys, the director has not cued the break. David Beckham has the ice-cold faux beer halfway to his lips. Will Ferrell is making hyena-like vocal warm-up noises at the wheel of his crisp-delivery lorry. We’re professionals. Hit your marks people.

The Makerfield MP’s surge towards No 10 is a seductive ad for the power of positive politics. How long that proves effective depends on his next moves

The creation of hope is a vital but risky part of democratic politics. Leaders or would-be leaders who arouse hope attract supporters, motivate activists, achieve momentum and win over voters – and then have a chance of holding together political parties, governments and societies in harder times. From Barack Obama to Clement Attlee, Salvador Allende to Zohran Mamdani, leaders from across the left in particular have heavily relied on hope to launch and sustain their ruling projects.

Meanwhile, an absence of hope has quickly doomed other left of centre governments. Keir Starmer’s decision, only eight weeks into his premiership, to summon the media to the Downing Street garden and tell them that “things will get worse before they get better” in the UK was a mistake from which his administration never recovered. In a society where most lives have been getting harder since the 2008 financial crisis, Starmer’s downbeat manner, however justified by the deep problems he inherited from the Tories, was not an emotional register that much of the electorate desired.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

Plus, World Cup fever, the EU referendum 10th anniversary, feeling the heat in Westminster, and cancer conversations

Hard to believe, but in my 12 and a half years as the Guardian’s political sketch writer, I am about to embark on my seventh prime minister. There was a time when we Britons took the piss out of the Italians for their rapid turnover of prime ministers. Now the laugh is on us.

He’s the only person who can keep Nigel Farage out of Downing Street, so let’s embrace his unique blend of optimism and realism

As Keir Starmer bid a brief and emotional farewell at that pillory of a lectern, there was a moment for some to ask: what have we done, and why? He’s not a bad man, not a Boris Johnson or Liz Truss rogue prime minister. How decadent, if lack of charisma has become a sacking offence.

But the reason why isn’t written in Westminster. It’s there in councils up and down the country where the hard-right Reform UK troopers swept through last month, from Barnsley to East Sussex. Look north, where Sunderland has 58 Reform councillors to Labour’s five. Look next door at South Tyneside, where Labour was nearly wiped out, left with only one councillor. Many Labour MPs now find themselves all but alone, their local parties hollowed out in an alien sea of Reform. Here’s why it matters beyond the green benches, beyond MPs’ personal careers, out in the very real world where services are (or aren’t) delivered locally.

Climate crisis is on show every day when sportspeople do their thing and the rest of us suffer on the sofa or in the stands

Nothing sharpens the distinction between professional athletes and the rest of us like a week of truly hot weather. While we’re apologetically crying off long‑in‑the-diary engagements – so sorry, just can’t face it in this weather – elite sportspeople are blinking the rivulets of sweat out of their eyes while squinting under a hot and heavy helmet, then doing 22-yard sprints with a couple of kilos of padding strapped to their legs.

As one of nature’s non-athletes, I speak not only with admiration but with genuine wonder. My experience of the past week has been working out how not to do things, or, if forced, doing them half‑heartedly because, you know, I haven’t slept. My friends and I message each other the latest innovations in fan strategy (“Apparently putting a frozen bottle of water in front of it helps”) and talk about our journeys on public transport as if we’ve just survived the Somme.

Migration and cultural exchange have always been the norm between coastal European and African nations. We should celebrate this shared history

We are used to mapping the world by continents, dividing the globe into rigid geopolitical blocks. But to understand the complex reality behind each border, we are better off using a different, edible kind of cartography. For most of human existence, the Mediterranean has existed as an intercultural entity in its own right, where peoples and languages from different lands blur the lines that constitute modern frontiers. And nowhere is this shared regional identity more beautifully preserved than in Mediterranean kitchens.

Tracing the Italian Tyrrhenian coast, crossing the sea down to the shores of north Africa and then winding up to the Côte d’Azur, you will find a culinary pattern uniting diverse societies: an elemental batter of chickpea flour, water and olive oil. Baked in blazing wood ovens or deep‑fried in pans, it changes its name at every port, but its soul stays the same: a golden, sometimes crispy, sometimes soft proof that the peoples of the Mediterranean share a singular history that defies modern political boundaries.

Families are right to be angry about devastating care failures in Nottingham. Ministers must respond fast

The painful familiarity of key themes in Donna Ockenden’s review of maternity care failures must not detract from the urgency around this issue. The 400-page report published on Wednesday is a shocking catalogue of what went wrong at Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust. Its contents range from a excruciating case study of the errors leading to the death of baby Harriet Hawkins in 2016 – and the cover-up that followed – to trust-wide problems with staffing, culture and leadership. It also highlights flaws in the wider NHS, citing the finding of the 2022 Messenger review that political pressure can lead bosses “to look upwards to furnish the needs of the hierarchy rather than downwards to the needs of the service-user”.

Given its around 100 action points, implementation is a daunting prospect. Next week, Valerie Amos will add to these, and the more than 700 recommendations of earlier reports, with her own investigation of maternity care in England. Wes Streeting had pledged to chair a new taskforce and his resignation as health secretary alarmed campaigners. Whoever ends up in charge, a commitment to maternity care improvement must be non-negotiable, and firmly grounded in practicalities. The review points to a damaging split between strategy and operations in Nottingham. NHS England must avoid replicating this.

Five years after the fall of Kabul, European states are anxious to send migrants back – regardless of what it takes and what awaits them

Days after Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, the EU’s top diplomat stressed the need to protect women and girls. “Cooperation with any future Afghan government will be conditioned on … respect for the fundamental rights of all Afghans,” Josep Borrell pledged. The regime’s attack on women’s rights began immediately, and has only intensified. The Taliban have barred girls from secondary school and university, legalised child marriage, prevented women from travelling without a male guardian and excluded them from jobs, parks and bathhouses. Women have been literally silenced: their voices are forbidden from being heard in public, even from within their own homes.

A new criminal code introduced last year permits men to beat their wives; even if women are able to prove the use of “obscene force”, a husband may still be sentenced to only 15 days in prison. (In contrast, harming an animal could mean five months in jail.) And restrictions on work, movement and contacts are not merely oppressive. They are often deadly in a country gripped by a humanitarian crisis. UN experts have said that this “widespread, systematic and all-encompassing” assault on women’s rights may amount to “gender apartheid”.

Readers respond to an article by Rafael Behr in which he reflects on the ‘curse of Brexit’ and the reasons for Keir Starmer’s fall

Rafael Behr argues that Brexit created a politics poisoned by nationalism and that the real challenge facing Labour is “a battle to reclaim patriotism” (Keir Starmer couldn’t beat the curse of Brexit – a politics poisoned by nationalism, 24 June). Yet this framework risks reducing Britain’s political crisis to a dispute over competing versions of national identity.

Let us be clear: the social and economic conditions that produced Brexit were not created by nationalism. Regional inequality, economic insecurity and declining trust in political institutions long predated the referendum. Nationalist rhetoric provided a language through which these grievances were expressed, but it did not generate them.

Andy Burnham has a rare commitment to co-designing policy alongside experts and communities, says Kate Pickett

Neal Lawson (This major Makerfield victory has made it inevitable: it’s now time for Keir Starmer to step aside, 19 June) describes Andy Burnham as “open, inquiring and imaginative”, and representative of “a workable alliance for long-term change”.

I know this to be true, having seen first-hand how he operates when the cameras are off. As chair of the Greater Manchester independent inequalities commission and an adviser to its “prevention demonstrator”, I’ve witnessed him systematically use research and frontline expertise to underpin successful regional policies.

Readers on the superfluous words they love to hate

Adding to the discussion of superfluous words (Letters, 19 June), readers might like to know that my MA thesis many years ago had a section on the use of the word “so” in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in which it is used 52 times, about five times less frequently than in his other plays. This is because it was being used as a speech act, or a word that does rather than says something. I thought that it was deployed mostly when Prospero was doing something magic.
Teresa Rodrigues
Crediton, Devon

• “Stunning” has been appropriated almost exclusively by estate agents to misdescribe anything from a bog-standard semi to a view over a car park. Possessed by groupthink, the media and businesses no longer contact anyone – they “reach out”. And don’t get me started on “going forward” replacing “in future”.
Dave Young
St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex

Readers respond to an article that sounded a bum note on the experience of going to see bands

What an ungenerous assessment of live music by Sasha Mistlin (The hill I will die on: Going to a gig is an endurance test, 20 June). As the relatively new owner of an independent live music venue, I can tell you that the joyous experience of coming together for a gig is alive and kicking on a weekly basis. Yes, the economic environment for hospitality in general, and grassroots music in particular, makes it really tough – but that just strengthens our resolve to put on great shows.

Perhaps Mistlin has just not experienced many gigs outside central London and the big festivals. I used to shuttle regularly between London, Hull and Newcastle, often seeing the same band two or three times in a week. Spoiled London audiences are far more cynical and unresponsive than those of us off the beaten track. I watched the incredibly talented Anton Newcombe play a 30-minute encore to a rapturous audience in Newcastle on a Tuesday and then return for one song to a muted crowd in London the next day. Same quality of gig, different quality of audience. You get out of it what you put in.

• Discover and buy more of Ben’s cartoons here

• Order your own print of this cartoon from the Guardian Print Shop

Updates from second day at Trent Bridge from 11am BST
Day one report | Read The Spin | And you can mail James

87th over: New Zealand 370-4 (Mitchell 8, O’Rourke 0) Archer’s looking sharp, starting the over with an 87mph inswinger. Though he follows that up with a loose, wide one. The England quick sends down a couple of bumpers and has his first maiden of the innings.

86th over: New Zealand 370-4 (Mitchell 8, O’Rourke 0) It’s Josh Tongue to have a go from the other end … and he immediately looks the part. Mitchell decides late to leave the ball – an inside-edge travels for four. There’s a leg slip in position, with Tongue – like Archer – tailing the ball into the right-hander.

England midfielder’s remarkable rise started off in League Two with his £116m move to Manchester City confirmation of his relentless progress

At Bristol Rovers the players would fight over being on Elliot Anderson’s team in training five-a-sides because they knew they would be victorious. Even as a teenager, the midfielder was a cut above his more experienced peers, becoming an integral part of the club’s promotion to League One, the first step on his journey to becoming the most expensive British player after Manchester City agreed to pay £116m for his services.

The Rovers loan was not the start of a rapid rise for Anderson, who returned to his boyhood club, Newcastle, to find the squad stacked with talented midfielders and struggled to cement a place. In the end, his main contribution at St James’ Park was helping the club avoid financial penalties, his homegrown status helping when he left for Nottingham Forest in 2024 in a deal that in effect valued him at £15m. It is at the City Ground where he has established himself as one of the country’s best midfielders, causing pain to Geordies.

Quicker points help the 39-year-old at SW19, where Jannik Sinner hopes to show French Open upset was a blip

For the 21st time in his long and fruitful career, Novak Djokovic arrived at the All England Club on Monday and began his preparations for another Wimbledon in earnest. The 39-year-old worked his way through his tentative first steps on the grass courts of Aorangi Park, movement exercises complementing his sparring on court. He found his rhythm against local hitting partners and tussled with other champions. His training sessions included a catchup with his old friend Marin Cilic and then he broke in the grass on No 1 Court with the world No 1, Jannik Sinner, iron sharpening iron.

The ultimate goal is the same as it has been for some time: Djokovic, the seventh seed, returns to Wimbledon again seeking to become the oldest grand slam singles champion in history by winning an unprecedented 25th grand slam title. At 39 years old, his chances of achieving this goal naturally lessen with each tournament, but he has repeatedly shown that, if fortune favours him for two weeks, he is more than capable of taking advantage.

Victory in Barcelona shows Scuderia are improving and they are looking at another engine advance after the summer break

Beneath the sweltering sunshine that bathes the Styrian mountains surrounding the Red Bull Ring there is at least a breeze of anticipatory air for the Austrian Grand Prix. After the opening to a Formula One season defined by Mercedes dominance, that Ferrari may now be applying their own heat is welcome, more so given it is Lewis Hamilton firing it up.

Hamilton’s victory at the last round in Barcelona, his first for Ferrari and the Scuderia’s first since 2024, was greeted by driver and team with understandable exultation; the seven-time champion has gone from his worst season last year to a potential championship contender.

• Broadcaster keen not to antagonise viewers

• Hydration breaks prove unpopular at World Cup

ITV will drop the controversial in-game adverts from its rugby union coverage when it broadcasts the Nations Championship next month as it has been unable to sell the slots due to brands focusing on the World Cup. The commercial broadcaster is successfully cashing in on the World Cup, with advertising revenues running at 30% higher than those sold during Euro 2024, despite opting not to show adverts during the three-minute hydration breaks that Fifa has introduced in each half.

That decision was taken due to ITV’s desire not to antagonise viewers as the hydration breaks have proved unpopular and led to boos from fans when they are called in many stadiums, as well as the commercial restrictions imposed by Fifa.

Kremlin may attempt to test Nato cohesion as Russia comes under growing pressure from Ukraine, according to sources from two countries

Two countries on Nato’s eastern flank have warned that Russia is preparing a possible “provocation” in the Baltic states or Poland in an effort to test the cohesion of the western military alliance.

Western sources also fear there could be danger on the horizon because the Kremlin is coming under pressure from Ukraine’s campaign of long-range attacks on targets near Moscow and St Petersburg.

Experts worked in ocean midwater off Brazil at near-record speeds thanks to cutting-edge tech

A marine biology expedition in international waters off the coast of Brazil has discovered 31 new species in just two weeks.

The researchers believe the speed at which the species were found and identified may be a record, in part because of the cutting-edge technology designed and built by the science and engineering team. For the first time on board a ship, the researchers were able to observe the living 3D cellular structure of microbial life thanks to a technological breakthrough nicknamed the Squid.

The Trevor Project non-profit that helped pioneer LGBTQ+ ‘press 3’ option for 988 hotline is being shut out as it restarts

The Trump administration is moving to restart the specialized LGBTQ+ option for youth who contact the 988 crisis intervention hotline – but the group that helped pioneer the idea is being shut out.

The Trevor Project, the New York-based leading non-profit for suicide prevention in LGBTQ+ young people in the US, may not be allowed to offer the service it had helped develop for the 988 Lifeline just a few years ago.

Three pumped storage hydroelectric power station sites in Scotland on list of 16 long-duration electricity storage plans

• Business live – latest updates

Great Britain’s first new major hydropower projects in more than 40 years are expected to move ahead after the energy regulator gave a provisional green light to three proposals as part of a plan to reduce the country’s reliance on energy imports.

All three of the new pumped storage hydroelectric power station projects are due to be built in northern Scotland, where the region’s lochs will act as natural reservoirs to serve the hydropower stations.

Fears over ‘huge community transmission’ as modelling predicts thousands of deaths in DRC by September

The whereabouts of almost 300 people who have tested positive for Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is unknown, according to Africa’s top public health official.

The humanitarian crisis amid the conflict in the affected areas means more than 1 million people are living in camps to which health workers have no access, Dr Jean Kaseya, director general of the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said on Thursday.

Emerging research suggests datacentres create a heat island effect, pushing up temperatures in the immediate vicinity by as much as 9C

The community living next to the largest datacentre park in Europe say the scorching summer heat has grown unbearable.

On days like Wednesday, said Nabeel Nawaz, the store manager of a Chaiiwala franchise in the centre of Slough, the heat is like something “pinching your body and burning your skin”.

City plans to triple system of underground pipes that distribute chilled river water, reducing need for individual cooling units

As heatwaves intensify across Europe, most cities are reaching for a familiar fix of more air conditioning. But in 1990s Paris, planning began for a different kind of solution: one of the world’s largest district cooling networks.

The system has 120kms (75-miles) of underground pipes distributing chilled water to museums, offices, hospitals, schools and other public buildings including the Louvre, the Grand Palais, and some luxury hotels and office districts. Instead of thousands of individual air-conditioning units, cooling is produced centrally and shared across the city like a utility.

Spanning a six-lane highway and located in a public park, this crossing is part of a larger restoration of endangered Texas prairie land

The Guardian receives support for visual climate coverage from the Outrider Foundation. The Guardian’s coverage is editorially independent

Conservationists emphasise importance of protecting nesting sites used by ‘strongly faithful’ red-listed species

Migratory swifts loyally return every year to their nests in buildings, according to a study, underlining the importance of providing the endangered birds with hollow nesting bricks if traditional nest sites are lost to renovations.

The swift, which is on the red list of conservation concern, is one of Britain’s most threatened species, having declined in number by 70% since 1995 because of the loss of nesting sites, often when old buildings are re-roofed or given better insulation. While Scotland this year made the installation of swift bricks – a simple hollow brick – a legal requirement in new buildings, the government in England has repeatedly refused to oblige builders to include a £35 swift brick in every new home.

Ministers accused of being more hesitant to respond as Reform has risen in polls, due to fear of ‘saying wrong thing’

During the May local elections in England, a canvasser was out in the London borough of Barking and Dagenham campaigning for her party. At one doorstep, the occupant asked if she was Muslim. When she said yes, he told her she should be hanged.

It is one of dozens of stories that Akeela Ahmed, the head of the British Muslim Trust (BMT), the government’s official partner for monitoring anti-Muslim hatred, has heard in recent weeks.

BBC presenter, 62, ‘concentrating on getting better, being back to 100% me and getting back behind the mic’

Trevor Nelson has announced he is taking a break from broadcasting because of health issues.

The BBC Radio 2 presenter and DJ, who has not been on air all week, said he was taking time out after being advised to go for medical tests following a routine check-up.

About 40 members of staff reported to have looked at information of boy, three, who ended up in zoo enclosure

About 40 members of hospital staff accessed the medical records of a three-year-old boy hurt in a crocodile pit, prompting an investigation, it has been reported.

Cambridge University Hospitals (CUH) has referred itself to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and is investigating whether all the workers had a legitimate reason for looking at his information.

Socialists marginalised under current PM are anxious about whether his replacement will again disappoint them

On 10 September 2024, Jon Trickett, a veteran leftwing MP, was preparing to vote against one of his own government’s most incendiary plans: to remove the winter fuel allowance from some retired people, a benefit long seen by many UK households as essential. Senior figures told Trickett he would be the only Labour member of parliament to do so. He said this week: “I said: ‘I don’t give a fuck. I’m going to do what I believe is the right thing.’ And I was right.”

That has since seen as a policy misstep from which Keir Starmer’s government never recovered. Trickett could, perhaps, be forgiven for indulging in a little schadenfreude after Starmer’s resignation this week, just two years after he won a landslide general election victory.

City’s mayor has consistently argued that rising housing costs have made it increasingly unaffordable

A New York City housing board has voted to freeze rent for approximately 1m apartments.

In a major victory for Zohran Mamdani, the mayor who campaigned on a pledge to freeze rent, the Rent Guidelines Board voted 7-1 on Thursday to freeze increases on one- and two-year leases. The decision will provide relief to tenants in more than 1m rent-stabilized apartments, representing over 40% of the city’s rental housing.

Various issues – including a rodent infestation and mold – have left the historic, sprawling Ottawa estate empty

10 Downing Street has two things: mice and a chief mouser. For more than a decade, an officially recognized feline has kept the residence’s rodent infestation to a minimum.

Over a similar period, the official residence of Canada’s prime minister has seen an unchecked explosion of rodents.

Sam Altman announces limited preview of GPT 5.6 in move that echoes launch of Anthropic’s Mythos

• Business live – latest updates

OpenAI is staggering the release of its latest AI model after a request from the US government, in a move echoing the launch of Anthropic’s Mythos product.

Sam Altman, the chief executive of the company behind ChatGPT, told staff this week that GPT 5.6 would be released in a limited preview to a small group of partners, according to the tech publication The Information.

International Maritime Organization says safety guarantees must be confirmed before ships can move again

A United Nations agency has paused the evacuation of ships through the strait of Hormuz after the British military said a vessel was hit by a projectile off the coast of Oman following the passage of several tankers that used a route backed by the UN.

The head of the UN’s International Maritime Organization said on Thursday that the plan to move stranded ships out of the Persian Gulf through the strait would be on hold until the agency could confirm safety guarantees for the ships on the evacuation list and in the region.

High temperatures make some workplaces dangerous, with economists warning disruption will dent growth

Monique Mosley is used to sweltering conditions at the food factory in Yorkshire where she works, but June’s record-breaking heatwave has made conditions unbearable. “We make hot filled food products and it’s common that we see temperatures in the high 30s,” she said. “Thanks to our union, our employer is offering extra breaks, but not every workplace is the same.”

The latest heatwave to grip the UK and much of western Europe has presented significant challenges to employers and their employees, from sweltering offices, disrupted commutes and school closures to dangerous construction sites where workers are at risk of dehydration, heatstroke and other injury.

Airport has also been ‘engaging closely’ with regulator to discuss cost of plan to build third runway

• Business live – latest updates

Heathrow has said that passenger numbers and profits will fall this year because of the war in the Middle East.

Europe’s busiest airport said it expected a 1.1% decline in the total number of passengers to 83.6 million as the Iran war affects air travel.

Hundreds of graduates and interns at finance firm will now have to work in office at least three days a week

• Business live – latest updates

Revolut will haul hundreds of graduates and interns into the office next year, as the digital bank moves away from its “remote-first” policy that has long been used to lure new recruits.

The London-headquartered fintech company had previously allowed its young trainees to choose whether to work from home or Revolut’s offices, reflecting flexible working arrangements offered to all other staff. That included the option of working abroad for 120 days of the year, with the company saying it trusts employees to “explore new cultures while staying productive and connected”.

German firm reportedly considering doubling previously announced staff reductions amid Chinese competition

• Business live – latest updates

Germany’s Volkswagen is to cut up to 100,000 jobs and reduce and eventually stop production at some plants, according to reports.

The company has refused to comment on reports of a management presentation at a board meeting outlining dramatic cost cutting, but if it goes ahead it would mean Volkswagen doubling previously announced staff reductions.

Now 84, the voice of Heat Wave and Jimmy Mack is releasing a new album. She answers your questions on Marvin Gaye, popularising the roundabout and why she hates cover versions of her songs

You were part of perhaps the richest and most exciting era of music since the German and Italian classics of the 19th century. How was it for you and what made it all tick? eamonmcc
William Stevenson discovered me after I had won an amateur contest. It was like a dream come true that a producer would come and approach me and say, “You have talent, come to Hitsville, USA.” I took his advice and showed up the next day unannounced and was immediately placed in a position as secretary [at Motown Records]. It felt real good that I was at the right place at the right time. It was magical to me and it’s all been just a glorious ride.

The Motown production line is sometimes compared to the production line of cars in Detroit. Is there anything to that, do you think? mesm
Motown and Ford are synonymous. My dad worked for Ford and [Motown founder] Berry Gordy worked there as an employee. It taught Berry Gordy the way to represent and how to manage and how to give people assignments. He called it Motown or Motortown. So, it’s all combined: Motor City, Detroit, manufacturing, making music as an assembly line.

The director and activist on her fictional drama Roya, drawing on her experience of imprisonment and torture, and why even in Europe she feels unsafe

Mahnaz Mohammadi is a survivor. The Iranian film-maker and women’s rights activist has been arrested on many occasions and imprisoned several times. In 2011, she was held for months in solitary confinement and tortured. In 2014, she was sentenced to five years and spent several months in prison. A few years ago, she met one of her first interrogators, from an early arrest.

“Do you know what he said to me?” she says. “He said he told his colleagues that after doing all those things, if I were going back behind the camera, it meant they couldn’t do anything with me. When I heard this from his mouth, I thought: ‘He’s right! Nobody can hurt me.’”

Reese Witherspoon’s 00s movie is a beloved cult classic – and now she’s using a spinoff to battle these dark times. The creators of Elle talk miniskirts, car phones and why people need to take teenage girls more seriously

If there’s a young adult romance on TV, we millennial women will watch it. Throw in a love triangle or an emotionally available hockey player having an open conversation about consent, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for a cultural phenomenon. Cover it in girlhood nostalgia and serve it to us every summer for our inner teenager to swoon over.

Teen girl-centric dramas have taken streamers by storm in 2026, with love stories reminiscent of a Taylor Swift song that leave viewers smitten for boys half their age. The likes of hockey romance Off Campus or poetically charming drama Every Year After take a sensational soundtrack and add some coming-of-age pains, friendship dramas and relationship dilemmas.

Will X-Men’s Jean Grey be in the fourth Marvel Spidey film? What about Spider-Girl? Which Hulk will we see? Who is the real villain? And is Marvel fuelling the internet’s frenzied rumour machine on purpose?

It’s hard to pinpoint when Marvel trailers stopped being mere hype and started teeing up their own conspiracy theories, but it was probably around the time that early footage from Spider-Man: No Way Home appeared to show the Lizard getting thumped by thin air – and the internet correctly pointed out the recently deleted digital ghost of Andrew Garfield. Since then we’ve had Patrick Stewart’s voice hinting at a Professor X cameo in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Wakanda Forever revealing a new Black Panther suit while declining to mention that Shuri was inside it.

Now it’s happening again with Spider-Man: Brand New Day. With the fourth Marvel Spidey film out next month, the internet is abuzz with predictions. “This movie is a real mystery,” Tom Holland told Esquire. “And for a large portion of the film even Spider-Man is a little bit at odds and lost and is like, ‘What is going on?’ We’re just trying to find ways to make this movie feel like a detective movie.”

Packed with fun memories from Ben Elton and Stephen Fry plus heartbreaking regret from his former partner, the Bottom star is so adored that this documentary risks descending into cringe – but his punky spirit shines through

Rik Mayall: Magnificent B’Stard is a homage to the man and an elegy for what you have to presume were the lost youths of most of the viewing audience. I don’t know what the current youth would make of it. I suppose they’re not watching television anyway, so the question’s moot.

Plus, of course, it doesn’t matter. This is 90 minutes of television for us – the generation that grew up with Mayall on screen as Rick the Poet (“This is my angriest poem – Theatre!”), then self-styled investigative reporter from and mostly in Redditch, Kevin Turvey, then in The Young Ones as anarchist sociology student Rick and on through its less wildly popular follow-up Filthy Rich & Catflap. Then there was his unforgettable turn as Lord Flashheart in Blackadder II (and as the horndog lord’s equally priapic descendant Squadron Commander Flashheart in Blackadder Goes Forth); the unexpected pivot towards a more restrained demonstration of his comic talents as oleaginous, ruthless, corrupt, entirely fictional Tory MP Alan B’Stard in Marks and Gran’s brilliant The New Statesman; a Hollywood punt as Drop Dead Fred; then the huge success of Bottom as a sitcom and a live show throughout the 90s until a terrible quad biking accident in 1998 trimmed his sails.

They were a big 00s buzz band – but looked in danger of fading out. Empowered by fatherhood and anger at war and AI, the New Yorkers explain why they ‘really showed up’ again

Suits. Gnomic poetry. Moody, insistent riffs. It used to be that you’d know what to expect from NYC rockers Interpol. The band’s first two albums, in the early 00s, were blockbuster successes, shifting half a million units each thanks to dramatic songs also fit for jerking around at an indie disco. Interpol duly jumped up to a major label, but then quickly fell back down again. Their talismanic bassist Carlos Dengler quit, and the band settled into a decade of solidly successful but pretty predictable albums. The most recent, 2022’s The Other Side of Make Believe, only reached No 178 on the US charts.

So it’s a bit unexpected that their upcoming eighth album, This Mirror Weighs a Ton, is their masterpiece. “We just all really showed up,” frontman-guitarist Paul Banks says of a band that has swelled to a quintet as two touring musicians, bassist Brad Truax and keyboardist Brandon Curtis, become full-time members. “The lyrics on the last record, it’s really hard for me to identify with what I was doing,” Banks continues. “I felt as if I made some mistakes.” What were they? “I don’t want to draw attention to them! I just didn’t want to walk away with that feeling again.”

For anyone furious about the state of the world, the London band offer a welcome – and unsparing – blast of catharsis

From South London
Recommended if you like Converge, Trap Them, Misery Index
Up next No One Is Coming to Save Us released 25 September, touring the UK from 26 September

Burner are the extreme musicians we need. They’re observing the world around them, they’re furious about what they see and they don’t feel much hope for the future. Much like the rest of us.

(Dead Oceans)
The US singer took years away from public life after her silvery balladry reshaped pop. Her return is an ornate reinvention

Since her Boygenius supergroup with Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus went on hiatus in February 2024, Phoebe Bridgers has taken a wholehearted break from life in the public eye. Who could blame her? Bridgers became a figure of invasive parasocial behaviour from fans after her spooked, sad second album, 2020’s Punisher, resonated with life under lockdown and made her a superstar. In recent years, young women making introspective and ornate indie-rock songs have risen to startling, pop star levels of fame and scrutiny – and none more so than Bridgers and her peer Mitski. When Bridgers was rumoured to be engaged in 2022, fans possessed by her devastating music rued her happiness; when she started a new relationship, the gossip mill churned. In 2023, she castigated the so-called fans who aggressed her in an airport while on the way to her father’s funeral.

Even her recent analogue return has prompted reactions that might have a less self-possessed artist wondering why they bother. Last month, mysterious posters started appearing in small towns across the US advertising surprise $1 Bridgers shows in intimate venues later that night, before a concluding gig at New York’s gigantic Madison Square Garden. Phones were banned, along with any kind of recording device, including pen and paper, to stop audience members from writing down lyrics from her third album and sharing them online. The backlash to this – some fans accused her of ableism – prompted its own backlash, a tiresome Russian doll of discourse that’s still dragging on.

(Flee)
A treasure trove of field recordings are reshaped into pulsating floor-fillers and sparse baile funk by a range of producers

The Brazilian religious and musical tradition of candomblé is a rhythmic barrage. Originating in the 19th century among enslaved west Africans, candomblé manifested in music as a ritual practice of drumming circles, where polyrhythms were hammered out to induce possession by spirits. Athens-based archival label Flee presents a treasure trove of this ceremonial music from a community in Salvador in the late 1980s, alongside a series of ingenious remixes made by contemporary artists.

Side one of the album hosts the field recordings. Hazy, unbalanced and full of tape hiss, the 10 ritual compositions pull listeners into the frenetic environment in which they were recorded. It is as if we are sitting next to the tape recorder witnessing the overlapping, joyous voices glimpsed in the distance on Ossaim or the singular male voice that wails movingly before disappearing on Xangô. The experience can feel frustratingly fragmented, but if melody is fleeting, the drumming is not. Clattering, clave-style hits produce infectious movement on Ogum, while bells and a mid-tempo swing create the feel of undulating waves on Entrada dos Orixás.

A mouse detective; a fresh take on the Odyssey; a dangerous wish; and the world’s most watched reality TV show

My Dad Can by Stephen Lightbown, illustrated by Claire Sahara Lemp, Quarto, £7.99
Iris’s dad can turn into dinosaurs, unicorns, anything she imagines – though some people see Dad’s wheelchair and believe he can’t do anything. This soft-smudged, colourful picture book celebrates the playfulness and creativity of parenthood.

The Fluffy Futon by Yuichi Kasano, translated by Cathy Hirano, Gecko, £12.99
When Grandma spreads a futon on the sunny porch to air, it’s so fluffy that kittycat, Grandma, hen, chicks and the whole household join each other for a nap in this delightful picture book, perfect for enjoying at bedtime.

The novelist on being inspired by Shirley Jackson, discovering the brilliance of Denis Johnson, and finding comfort in Elizabeth Strout

My earliest reading memory
When I was five and starting school, I would catch a coach from the Oxfordshire village where I lived. Twice a day I read the little metal plaque screwed to the upholstery, which gave the warning “Mind your head when leaving your seat”.

My favourite book growing up
In the late 1970s my dad had a copy of Phenomena by John Michell. Each page covers something strange, which might or might not be true: showers of fish, stigmata, spontaneous human combustion. I would lie on the carpet flicking through the pages and loving the chills it gave me that (maybe) there could be such weirdness in the world.

The son of fugitive leaders of the militant Weather Underground recounts his chaotic, peripatetic upbringing

Every aspect of a family’s life will seem normal to the small children within it; only hindsight can bring what was abnormal into relief. Zayd Ayers Dohrn’s earliest years were spent on the run from the FBI; his parents were members of the revolutionary Weather Underground faction, a group dedicated to the overthrow of the US government.

By the age of three he had been coached by his parents on how to recognise plainclothes officers on the street. “It was a bit like playing a game – a grownup version of dress-up or make-believe,” he recalls. He has fond memories of long night-time drives between safehouses. As well as fellow revolutionaries, his family encountered gangsters, IRA members and abortion activists, along with countless undocumented migrant workers.

Ireland is trembling with nascent social unrest in this labyrinthine tale of one man’s homecoming

Irish author Keith Ridgway’s latest novel deals, both mischievously and menacingly, in ambivalence. The book’s epigraph is taken from a misty-eyed ballad pining for the “lofty” magnificence of the Cliffs of Dooneen. But these lines are appended with a footnote cautioning that “debate continues concerning the cliffs named in the song – whether they are in County Clare or County Kerry, or whether they exist at all …”

Place and knowledge continue to be wilfully unstable categories once the narrative begins. Bartholomew Port, known as Mew, says goodbye to his partner Mootie as he sets off on a trip from south London to his birthplace, Dublin. In the first of the novel’s Alice in Wonderland-style sleights of hand, Mew is transported to the Irish capital not by air or sea, but by slipping through bushes in Camberwell’s Burgess Park.

Normal Golf Game takes a tiresomely easy genre and makes it infernally difficult. Which deserves a round of applause

I have always struggled playing golf. I wish I didn’t. It’s a beautiful game in concept. A leisurely walk in the sunshine, slapping a ball around, sandwiches and beer consumed during and after play. Sure, you have to dress like Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch, and getting membership of an actual club is more complex than joining the Freemasons (although many offer a two for one deal with this), but you don’t have to be fit, you don’t have to even run. It is the only outdoor sport where a fat dad can be the best in the world.

The premise couldn’t be simpler: get the ball in the hole. But there is nothing worse in sport than knowing what you have to do and not being able to do it. Just ask amateur parachutists.

The blockbuster launch is expected to dwarf the box office takings of the year’s biggest movies with one industry analyst predicting it could make $1bn within an hour

It is, quite simply, the most anticipated piece of entertainment since the Star Wars prequels and now, at last, you can reserve a copy. At midnight last night, Rockstar opened preorders on Grand Theft Auto VI, the latest title in the epic open-world gangster adventure series, five months before its 19 November release date on PS5 and Xbox Series S/X.

Prices have also been confirmed, with the standard edition costing $80 in the US, £70 in the UK, and €80 in Europe. An Ultimate Edition (£90/€100/$100) will include exclusive in-game cars, clothes and weapons – the developer has confirmed that there will also be in-game stores that are only open to Ultimate owners. Anyone who pre-orders the game will get a Vintage Vice City pack filled with 80s apparel and other nostalgic items, which look to be straight out of Don Johnson’s Miami Vice wardrobe.

As football fans revel in the real world tournament, its digital counterparts continue to stumble in capturing the ​hyped up ​atmosphere

• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

I come with a warning to all football fans: if you’ve been enjoying the World Cup enough to think, “I’d like to re-enact this on a football video game”, do not go to Netflix and play Fifa World Cup: Launch Edition, the officially licensed game of the tournament, which streams via your smart TV or computer. Developed by the virtually unknown Delphi Interactive, it’s a juddering, dated calamity, with sluggish controls (via your phone, once you’ve downloaded the app) and commentary courtesy of Clive Tyldesley that delivers all the excitement of a robotic train station announcement.

Until this, it was largely agreed that the worst World Cup football game in history was World Cup Carnival, the first official Fifa tie-in, which was released on various home computers in 1986. Publisher US Gold thought it had a deal with the Manchester studio Ocean Software to repurpose its acclaimed title Match Day, but the agreement fell through. With three months to go before Mexico 86, US Gold was forced to effectively rebadge a dire 1984 sim, World Cup Football, by the fading developer Artic. To add some value to the package, the game was released in a fancy big box complete with a fixtures chart, a World Cup facts poster and some flag stickers. Nobody was fooled – the World Cup Carnival was a critical and commercial disaster.

As phrases like easter eggs and looksmaxxing enter everyday language, what other words from the world of video games might soon be mainstream?

Twenty years ago, video games were seen as a niche hobby dominated by hardcore enthusiasts, tucked away in obscure online forums and gaming meet-ups. Back then, the idea that governments would use footage from Call of Duty and gaming terms such as “killstreaks” as war propaganda would have been absurd. Then the 2010s happened: nerd culture popularised, previously online-only spaces began to meld with the real world, and gaming went mainstream.

Now, gaming references have entered common parlance – at the end of 2024, video game terms including “cheat code” and “cutscene” were even added to the Oxford English Dictionary – and they increasingly crop up in politics, too. Earlier this year, the official White House X account posted footage of military strikes on Iran interspersed with footage from the video game Grand Theft Auto. Six days later, another video was posted, this time interspersing military footage with clips from Nintendo’s 2006 game Wii Sports. Video game references aren’t reserved for the political right, either: in February 2026, Democrat representative of New York Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quipped, “Why does this guy always talk like a World of Warcraft npc [non-player character]?” in response to a post on X by Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff.

Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
Full of surprises, Stephanie Lake’s 2018 piece is a feat of logistics as 60 performers display split-second timing

Mass movement can have a walloping impact. Whether in military parades or Olympic opening ceremonies, Busby Berkeley routines or the corps de ballet, a vast number of bodies chiming together in precise formation equals automatic wow factor.

Australian choreographer Stephanie Lake knows it, and her piece Colossus, which was originally made in 2018, has been performed all over the world. Clips from it went viral online. Now it has a UK premiere with a cast of 60 students from the London Contemporary Dance School – enough of them to fill the stage of the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

At Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, until 27 June

Arnolfini, Bristol
The English artist has created a tense world of folkloric psychedelia and pagan aesthetics that is weird, threatening – and utterly compelling

Arms are spread, hands are grasping, lips are puckered: everything in Jonathan Baldock’s eerie, uncomfortable, strange exhibition of tapestries and ceramics at Bristol’s Arnolfini is reaching out to you. The whole exhibition is an invitation to be held, or maybe its cuddliness is a threat, a violent trap.

The English artist has created a tense world of folkloric psychedelia and pagan aesthetics here. Don’t read any of the bumf on the wall, it’s couched in gentle, therapy-lite language about “radical gestures” and “holding space for queer and working-class stories”. It doesn’t fit the show. Not that this isn’t about queerness and the working class, because it absolutely is. It’s just that this isn’t gentle and soft art, it’s weird and threatening and menacing – that’s why it’s so good.

Lyric Hammersmith, London
Four siblings squabble over an art treasure possibly stolen by their grandfather in this riotous play by Ben Ockrent

Ben Ockrent’s black comedy about a family in mourning has distinct strains of the ludicrous, though the cartoonish absurdities creep in gradually. But then families are ludicrous: badly behaved and falling into their early, childish roles, especially in extremis.

The extreme situation here is not the recent death of a mother in itself, which has led four adult siblings to gather at her home and hash out matters of inheritance, but a single item passed down by their grandfather which brings them to blows.

At Lyric Hammersmith, London, until 18 July

The Chinese artist goes large on colonialism, a group show tackles a fun theme and Xanthe Somers’ stoneware fools the eye – all in your weekly dispatch

Ai Weiwei: Button Up!
If any artist can fill the vast home of Factory International, it’s Ai Weiwei, with an installation about world history, colonialism … and buttons.
• Aviva Studios, Manchester, from 2 July to 6 September

Mezzo-soprano who performed with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Welsh National Opera and was acclaimed for her interpretations of Kurt Weill

The mezzo-soprano Meriel Dickinson, who has died aged 86, was recognised internationally for both her classical and contemporary vocal repertoire. In operas, oratorios and premieres of new works, she performed with some of the greatest composers of the last century – Benjamin Britten, Pierre Boulez, John Cage and Aaron Copland – as well as leading conductors such as Adrian Boult and Simon Rattle.

Highlights of her career included Beethoven’s Choral Symphony at the 1969 Vienna festival under George Szell. She recalled: “I was understandably nervous of Szell. His somewhat autocratic manner had been known to subdue the London Symphony Orchestra. However, in the end he was very charming, complimenting me on my voice and German pronunciation.”

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

(Warner)
From Count Dracula organ to choirs crying in Latin, the Devon band are scenery-chewingly preposterous​ yet nuanced on this epic about extraterrestrial life

Barely three minutes of Muse’s 10th album has elapsed before a choir make an appearance: a choir that isn’t singing so much as chanting in Latin, like something you might hear on the soundtrack to an occult-themed horror film. “Sanctus!” they cry. “Dominus!” And, inevitably, “Lucifer!”

The choir are harder to hear than you might think, battling as they are against everything else that’s going on during The Wow! Signal’s opening track, The Dark Forest: a cantering electronic bassline not a million miles removed from those you used to get on the hi-NRG records that soundtracked mid-80s gay clubs; a string section sawing away as if their lives depended on it; a distorted electric guitar playing frantic prog-metal arpeggios; and frontman Matt Bellamy wildly emoting through a chanson-like vocal melody: “Stars extinguish themselves in fear!” he sings. “We will all beg for extinction!”

Exclusive: Unknown hand covered up artist’s depiction of diverse crowd during influx of refugees to Leiden in 1620s

Layers of overpaint have been removed from a 17th-century painting, confirming that it was painted by Rembrandt and revealing that a turban on one of the figures had been replaced with a traditional Dutch soft cap.

A later anonymous hand had amended or sanitised Rembrandt’s original, apparently misunderstanding that its biblical theme – “Let the Little Children Come Unto Me” – is about tolerance, with Christ blessing children as well as adults. In the gospel of Saint Luke, Jesus rebukes his disciples for turning away parents who brought their children to him: “Suffer [allow] little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

The writer and newly installed University of Sydney professor on the lure of Berlin, authors versus AI, and writing ‘from a place of admiration’

Anna Funder is mere days into her new role at the University of Sydney when we meet there on an overcast Friday afternoon; she waves vaguely in the direction of her new office and says she hasn’t yet unpacked. So, with her encouragement, I gamely agree to play tour guide around my alma mater and continue to until, about halfway through the interview, she starts telling me about the architecture – at which point it becomes clear how her easy and self-effacing manner can function as a smokescreen for the sharpness of her mind.

As we set off past the beds of majestic fig trees and the manicured lawns surrounding the university’s sandstone quadrangle, passing backpacked students and fresh graduates posing for photos, I ask the newly installed professor of practice in creative writing what her own experience of studying creative writing was like. She looks stricken: “We’re starting with a confession.

Have you followed the news in football, cricket, tennis, rugby, golf, athletics and cycling?

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

• The best portable neck and handheld fans
• Dyson HushJet Mini Cool fan review

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

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

Best quiet fan for the bedroom and best overall:
AirCraft Lume – preorder now for delivery early July, or consider the cordless version (£179) or table fan (£129) for faster delivery

Best budget fan and best desk fan:
Devola desk fan – currently out of stock

Whether your patch is big or small, tackle long grass and tricky corners with our tester’s pick of the top cordless and corded models. Plus, how to protect wildlife when trimming

• How to create a more eco-friendly lawn

You can mow your lawn as little or as often as you like, but it won’t look truly perfect until you’ve neatened up the edges. As with most garden tasks, you can do this manually, using a decent pair of edging shears – or, if you’re not a fan of manual labour, you can use a grass trimmer instead.

Rather than traditional cutting blades, grass trimmers usually use one or two lengths of nylon string about 1.6mm thick. A motor spins this so fast that it stiffens and can shear through light vegetation such as grass and weeds.

Best grass trimmer overall:
Stihl FSA 50

Best budget grass trimmer:
Mac Allister MCI1198GGT

Whether it’s a surprisingly roomy bag, cargo pants or a don’t-try-too-hard jacket, we’ve rounded up the festival wear for men and women that’s worthy of an encore

• The new rules of concert dressing

You never really know what you’re going to get when it comes to festivals. Veterans know to be prepared for anything, come rain or shine. So, planning your clothing choices is as important as planning your lineup for the day. Nothing kills the vibe like wearing flip-flops or white trainers when the ground resembles more of a swamp than a field.

There is a certain freedom that comes with festival dressing, too. Everyone is there for the same reason – to listen to music and have a good time. If you’re looking to experiment with something different, festivals are the place to do it.

Whether it’s Aquabeads or micro scooters, board games or storybooks, these are the toys that won over our writer and her merry band of testers

• The best gifts for five-year-olds

The good news about shopping for six-year-olds is that they’ll love almost anything you give them. The bad news? That makes it surprisingly hard to choose something really good. Between the plastic toys destined for landfill and the ones that hold their attention for all of five minutes, it can be tricky to find something that actually sticks.

At this age, children are usually in year 1 or 2 at school, able to read a little, full of curiosity, and starting to focus for longer (as long as you’ve got their attention). Play still matters hugely; it’s how they learn to share, problem-solve and build resilience – all without realising they’re learning anything at all.

With a champagne cordial base, this is the perfect drink for long, hot nights

This is our take on a refreshing highball or spritz for those warm summer evenings.

Joe White, Posie, Manchester

Apricot season is about to kick off in earnest, so make the most of that honeyed perfume with this soft, buttery cake

Late June is when apricots begin to appear in earnest, piled high on market stalls and often giving off that elusive, honeyed perfume that suggests they might actually taste as good as they smell. This simple traybake makes the most of them: the cake is soft and buttery, with soured cream lending tenderness and a gentle tang, while the apricots themselves slump slightly into the batter while they bake. The sugar, made fragrant with rosemary, orange zest and vanilla, forms a delicate crust on top.

Beat the heat with pistachio sammies, fruit lollies, mint chocolate semifreddo and green-tea ice-box cake

During a recent traffic jam, on a day so hot it felt stagnant and seemingly eternal, I found myself in a private reverie of superiority. My fellow drivers, slumped in their baking metal shells, were observers to my good fortune: a homemade blackcurrant and white peach ice lolly – sharp and fruity, with a delicate almond flavour (the result of having used slightly underripe peaches) – plucked from the freezer in a rare moment of foresight. I licked it with the conviction that it was the only object of desire between Elephant and Castle and Acton Central in London. Ice lollies are fab(!) You will need silicone moulds and some wooden sticks.

Kitty Travers is owner of La Grotta Ices in London, and author of La Grotta Ices, published by Vintage at £25. To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com.

The standup and Bafta-winner on experiencing grief at a young age, his mischievous grandmother, and why he refuses to learn to drive

Born in Watford in 1993, Jack Rooke is a comedian, actor and writer. He studied journalism at the University of Westminster, and began his standup career in 2014. Rooke’s breakout show, Good Grief, was written with his grandmother, Sicely, and documented their experiences of bereavement following the death of Rooke’s father, Laurie, from cancer. His next show, Happy Hour, became the basis for his two-time Bafta-winning Channel 4 comedy, Big Boys. Rooke is taking an updated version of Good Grief on a UK tour, starting at the Roundhouse in London on 14 August. Rooke is an ambassador for the suicide prevention charity Calm.

I am three years old and being pushed by my nan on a swing. She’s in a lovely powder-blue two-piece while I am sporting an iconic all-in-one black-and-white striped mini boiler suit dungaree scenario. For reasons we will never know, I look rather unimpressed.

More locations are offering debt advice, health services, cafes, social activities and support under one roof

Shortly before lunchtime in a London community centre, older visitors are chatting over coffee and crosswords as young families drift in and out. Kitchen volunteers from the Real Junk Food Project are preparing lunch at a “pay as you feel” cafe, using food that would otherwise have ended up in the bin.

Conversations inside the Victorian building at the East Twickenham Neighbourhood Association (ETNA) community centre range from financial advice to digital support, via childcare and legal services. There are counselling drop-ins and self-help groups, while down the corridor yoga is about to start. Over the course of the day, it all builds a picture of what community hubs offer local people.

Puff Puff, AKA Puffy, came to us aged 13 with no teeth, a broken ear and a cold – but was always there in tough times

Three of our cats had died of old age, leaving my family heartbroken. So Brandy, my wife, looked at our local animal shelter website and saw it had a 13-year-old stray cat with no teeth, a broken ear and a cold. Betty, as the staff had named her, had one day left to live before the shelter was going to put her down.

Brandy sent me along to see her. The warden said no one had visited Betty, but as soon as they opened the cage a Himalayan cat catapulted out of her blanket straight at me. I picked her up and knew I had to take her home.

Meg was married to a man but had fantasised having sex with women for years. When she met Jess, her knees buckled

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

I’d spent so many years visualising having sex with a woman

From a London tower near reservoirs to a Plymouth townhouse close to a historic saltwater lido

Changes due to take effect next year for stocks and shares Isas have become clearer, prompting concern

The way you can invest in Isas will change next April, and for under-65s that will mean a reduced limit on the amount of money that can be saved tax-free in a cash Isa.

This week, the new rules became clearer, prompting concern among investors that they may have to pay tax on some of their holdings.

The Passport Office accepted applications for my two other children but refused the youngest with exactly the same documents

I am a Briton living in Switzerland and my three children are British and Swiss nationals.

When we found out via the Guardian that dual nationals, who live overseas, are now required to hold a British passport in order to enter the UK, we set about applying, so the children can continue to visit their English relatives.

Treasury also promises a new first-time buyer Isa with no upper age limit, as the ‘age at which a first home is bought is rising’

Isa reforms announced on Tuesday promise a new first-time buyer account with no upper age limit, and a tax on interest on cash savings held in a stocks and shares wrapper.

Savers and investors can currently deposit up to £20,000 a year in Isas, which offer the chance to earn returns which are not subject to tax.

How much do our genes determine about our lives, and could they influence traits like risk-taking, antisocial behaviour or even violence? Ian Sample talks to Kathryn Paige Harden, a behavioural geneticist and professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin who studies how genetic factors shape human behaviour. In her book Original Sin she explores how nature and nurture combine to influence our likelihood of committing crimes, and asks whether the ‘cause’ of our actions matters for how we think about culpability

Order Original Sin from the Guardian bookshop

Support the Guardian: theguardian.com/sciencepod

As a kid, I did my best to avoid exercise. As an adult, I endured it for the sake of my health. Then I set myself a clear goal – and motivation was no longer an issue

It’s fair to say I don’t come from a long line of athletes. When I was growing up in the 1990s, sport was something other people did; we were not a family who cycled, much less jogged. In PE I was the wheezing child hiding behind the bins, pretending I’d twisted an ankle. When I contemplated working out – not often – I had the vague idea it was supposed to turn my body into something other people might find attractive.

I evolved from an unsporty child into an unsporty adult. Occasionally, mostly in an attempt to lose weight without having to stop eating croissants, I would attempt something like Couch to 5K, which I’d either abandon after a couple of sessions or see through to the bitter end out of the perverse determination to prove I’d been right all along: exercise was a mug’s game and endorphins an invention of Big Wellness.

Jenny Kleeman investigates ‘Biotech Barbie’ Cathy Tie, the controversial entrepreneur hoping to revolutionise human reproduction by letting parents edit their embryos

Meet Cathy Tie: serial entrepreneur, self-described “Biotech Barbie”, and the woman aiming to revolutionise reproduction by using Crispr to edit human embryos.

Beneath the tech-startup polish lies a provocative mission: to take the biological lottery out of the hands of nature and place it into the hands of parents.

Mobility can’t be tracked on a leaderboard, but it can help you feel better and make daily tasks easier

Fitness is often measured through numbers: how much weight a person can lift, or how fast or far they can run. But one important metric is harder to quantify: mobility.

Mobility gets overlooked, because the relevant exercises do not “have the instant visual appeal of traditional workouts”, says Tyler McDonald, certified personal trainer and senior brand manager for the National Academy of Sports Medicine.

How to start meditating

How to start weightlifting

How to start budgeting

How to start running

90/90 hip switches: Sit on the floor with the front leg bent at a 90-degree angle (thigh out in front of you and calf perpendicular to you) and the back leg bent at a 90-degree angle (thigh out to the side, calf roughly parallel to you). Slowly rotate your knees to the opposite side without lifting your feet off the floor. “This is fantastic for opening tight hips,” McDonald says.

Cat-cow stretch. With your hands and knees on the ground, arch your back towards the ceiling, dropping your head between your arms. Then, slowly drop your back and raise your head and glutes towards the ceiling. This helps with spine mobility.

World’s greatest stretch. Yes, this stretch has quite the name, but for good reason. Start in a plank. Bring the right leg forward into a low lunge position. Stretch the right arm overhead towards the ceiling, twisting the upper body. Then, bring the right hand behind the head and attempt to touch the ground with the right elbow. “It hits your hips, hamstrings and upper back all at once, making it incredibly efficient,” says McDonald.

Brollies are becoming year-round must-haves, as designers from Burberry to Blunt cater to people ducking out of the sun

• Don’t get Fashion Statement delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

A bottle of water and a handheld fan are regularly deployed to keep cool while out and about in hot weather. With temperatures reaching record levels for June, though, a new heatwave accessory has emerged: the sunbrella.

On high streets around the country, people wielding umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun have become a common sight. On Thursday, as the Austrian Grand Prix declared a heat hazard, Lewis Hamilton was spotted in the paddock holding a Ferrari red umbrella that matched his race suit. And they’re popping up on catwalks, too. At the Dior show during Paris fashion week on Wednesday, guests including the actors James Marsden and Mike Faist were handed large cream umbrellas to help ease their discomfort as temperatures hit 38C.

Influential designer of men’s clothes who was inspired by workwear, military kit and expeditionary gear

“I’m like a big giant sieve of history and I just turn it into the clothes,” said Nigel Cabourn of the inspiration for his decades of quietly influential designs for men’s clothes. To Cabourn, who has died aged 76, history meant war – his grandfather’s memories of trenches in the first world war, his father’s stories of Burma in the second, even his own awareness of the US M65 field jacket and other uniform novelties of the Vietnam war, as paired with jeans by students and protesters post-1968.

He was passionate about mountaineering and exploring too, especially Edmund Hillary’s conquest of Everest, and the Antarctic expeditions of Shackleton and Scott. He was also a football fan, thrilled sartorially by the dark-clad figure of Lev Yashin in goal for the Soviet Union in the 1958 World Cup.

Finding the weather too hot to handle? It will be a breeze with one of these soothing sprays

I wrote this from very sunny Corfu, while Britain enjoyed – or suffered, depending on your tolerance – a full-blown heatwave. Dyson’s new HushJet Mini Cool personal fan (£99.99) temporarily sold out (since restocked), and questions about Shark’s viral new ChillPill 3-in-1 Fan, Mist & InstaChill System (£129.99) were racking up in my DMs.

I happened to have the latter with me (so do many of you – it’s sold out in the prettier colours), and while it’s nice to look at and works well, it’s quite fiddly to switch the different heads.

Update the classic outfit when you want to look slick and office-appropriate … in a low-key, faux-effortless kind of way

Jeans and a nice top is a tried-and-tested formula when it comes to dressing for an evening out. It is the little black dress of real life. A local dinner, an outing to the theatre or cinema, a birthday gathering in the pub: these do not require a cocktail dress. Still, you want to look nice. So you wear jeans and a nice top.

If jeans and a nice top is the real life LBD, then jeans and a jacket is the normcore power suit. It is the no-nonsense, I’ve-got-this formula you need for daytime. It is an outfit that comes together in seconds and keeps on looking good and feeling comfortable for hours. It is grown up but not stiff, alpha but not snooty. It is – and this is important in our capricious climate, and when your commute can take you straight from overheated train carriage to chiller-cabinet level air conditioning – pitched neither too warm nor too cold, and offers flexibility. (You are wearing something under the jacket, you see. We will get to that.)

From cliffside views of Lake Garda to post-hike saunas in Sweden, you share your most memorable walking trips

• Tell us about a cooler European coast – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

If you have a head for heights, then you can “walk with the gods” on the Sentiero degli Dei. It’s cut into the vertiginous hillside high above the Amalfi coast, offering heavenly views all the way to Capri and beyond. Ten breathtaking kilometres later, you’ll rejoin the earthly hordes of Instagrammers in the undeniably beautiful but crowded Positano. A super-convenient combined bus and ferry ticket from Travelmar takes you from any of the coastal towns to the start of the walk, in the lovely hamlet of Bomerano, in Agerola, and from Positano back to your base.
Brian

With Cambridge South about to welcome its first passengers, it’s an ideal time to explore some of the university city’s lesser-known treasures on foot or by public transport

Flat fields of poppies and ox-eye daisies stretch out to a wide horizon. There are butterflies, vetches, salad burnet. Skylarks sing overhead and a cuckoo calls from the trees near the river. Legend has it that the poet Lord Byron swam here as a Cambridge undergraduate and, 20 years later, Charles Darwin surveyed its beetles. Heading through flowering meadows towards a nature reserve known as Byron’s Pool, I’ve walked a mile from the new £250m Cambridge South station.

Opening to passengers on 28 June, Cambridge South will be the first Great British Railways-branded station. The towering Biomedical Campus next door is Europe’s biggest medical research facility, with about 40,000 visitors a day. The station itself, with its 1,000 cycle-parking spaces, living roof and solar panels, feels like a model for sustainable transport.

This long-distance coastal trek takes in towering rock faces, isolated beaches and tasty pitstops

The fluorescent green gaiters seemed a ridiculous suggestion, but prove a godsend as we plod across the sand. “I bet you’re glad I told you to get a pair of these bad boys now, aren’t you?” my friend Luke jokes. We’re marching across a wide, crescent-shaped, honeyed beach. The sun is high in the sky and slivers of light flicker through a thick sea fog, as 6ft waves crash and fizz, their white foam licking the towering limestone cliffs.

I’m in Portugal, in the west Algarve, with two friends, hiking part of the Rota Vicentina, or Fishermen’s Trail, a 140-mile (226km) trek that runs from Lagos to São Torpes in Alentejo. Traversing cliffs that lead to wild, remote beaches like this one is part of the trail’s calling card. As the name suggests, it was originally carved out by fishers to reach otherwise inaccessible fishing spots along the Atlantic Ocean. Now it’s part of the Rota Vicentina, a hiking and cycling route spanning 466 miles across Portugal.

The creators of County Cork’s Sheep’s Head Way had to win over hundreds of landowners to complete the ambitious project, but the result is a gloriously unspoilt trail

The Sheep’s Head peninsula is clearly a good place to be a skylark. They seem to warble overhead at every turn, singing their little hearts out – and who could blame them? The hills here are high and heathery, the sea breeze is warmed by the Gulf Stream and the edge-of-the-world scenery is a realm of wild green slopes and endless blue Atlantic. If you had to choose a sky to lark in, the one that crowns this County Cork headland is a bona fide wing-quiverer.

The peninsula wows hikers, too. I’ve come to one of the south-westernmost points on the Irish mainland to trek the Sheep’s Head Way, a long-distance trail opened by the local community 30 years ago this summer. It took serious work to complete – more of which later – but it’s a delight. I’m walking the original 55-mile (88km) loop around the peninsula, although a longer, 63-mile option is now considered the official route. The way attracts a fraction of the numbers drawn to the Kerry Way and Dingle Peninsula trail further north, and thanks to its untrammelled paths and rampant, cliff-edged scenery, the rewards are grand, in every sense.

Luke spoke about how he irons his T-shirts and keeps a strict budget spreadsheet. I was hooked

The Dull Men’s Club popped up on my Facebook feed one day in late 2023. It’s now called Banana for Scale – a reference to a running joke in the group – as there were many clubs with similar names. It’s a place for people to celebrate the ordinary things in life. Every post had this dry sense of humour, which I’m drawn to.

One member regularly posts about his outings with his friend Nigel; others show off their collection of rocks.

Inkpen, Berkshire: Mow, tedder, rake and bale – it all has to be done before the next rainfall, which is increasingly hard to predict

With the weather set fair and a heatwave under way, all around are literally making hay while the sun shines. Last year’s drought produced very little grass to make hay with, resulting in high prices and scarcity over winter. This year, the grass has received good amounts of both sun and rain – the ideal conditions.

Foxglove Farm and Manor Farm are busy at it, but it seems Rolf’s may have sold its crop standing, for someone else to make and take. Other farms on lower-lying, lusher fields made their first crop during the late May heatwave, but the fields here on the higher chalk needed more time to grow.

Figuring out how to best use a shady nook or sunny patio is easiest when the light is strongest

The summer solstice is behind us: where did the year go? But the next few weeks are still a good time to work out where your sunny spots actually are, and where they’re not. And that’s helpful for plotting out everything you might want to do and grow in your garden.

Last June, I was desperate to peer at our future garden so I could figure out just this. We hadn’t exchanged contracts on the place yet and my husband pointed out that the young people who were then renting it would probably refuse me access on the grounds of being weird. Perhaps they would! But I still wanted to see where the sun fell.

Annabel is embarrassed when she spots crumbs in Teddy’s facial hair, but he finds her nudges shaming. Who is being prickly? You decide

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

I don’t want to get his food on my face when I kiss him, and I don’t want him looking silly in public

Aiden is an unforgettable young caregiver in Walthamstow, east London, who has been looking after his mum for over half his life. Every few weeks, Aiden and other young carers get a rare night off thanks to tenacious council worker Satvinder, who fights to improve the recognition of young carers in her borough. This film joins them as they reclaim a few hours of their teenage lives back.

Is Mum OK? is released during Carers Week in the UK, a campaign that celebrates unpaid carers across the country and calls for better recognition and support for them. There are more than one million young carers in the UK – with an average age of 12 – which is the equivalent of two kids in every school class.

We know the monarch paid £24.6m in tax over the last two years, but we still don’t know how wealthy he actually is

• Crown estate makes more than £1bn profit for third year running

• King and Queen will not live at Buckingham Palace after £369m refit

King Charles has become Britain’s first monarch in modern times to reveal how much tax he pays on his private income: £24.6m over the last two years.

It’s a move celebrated by some as heralding an era of greater transparency from the monarchy. But just how open has it been?

People in Caracas and coastal towns describe powerful quakes that collapsed buildings and killed at least 164

As a double whammy of powerful earthquakes rattled Venezuela’s northern coast on Wednesday, residents of the capital, Caracas, scrambled out on to the streets from shuddering, fractured buildings.

“It was horrible. I felt like the house was moving to a different rhythm to the earth. I had to carry my mum out. She was paralysed by fear,” said 18-year-old Sebastian Rodríguez, whose family runs a shop in Centro Plaza, a brutalist commercial centre in the affluent neighbourhood of Los Palos Grandes.

Frontline medics describe extreme heat conditions they feel are unsafe and lacking in dignity for patients

• Hospitals in England declare critical incidents as machines and IT fail in heat

Hospitals in England are declaring critical incidents with radiotherapy machines, MRI scanners, cooling units and IT systems failing owing to the extreme heat.

Here four doctors describe their experiences on the frontline that they say feels unsafe and dangerous for patients amid the worst NHS heatwave crisis in years.

We’d like to hear from people in the UK about their experiences of trying to buy or sell a flat in recent months. Have there been any issues?

Getting on the property ladder is an achievement in Britain but for some flat-owners the home-ownership dream has turned sour.

High service charges, fire safety issues, and onerous leasehold conditions are among the issues that have affected flat valuations over the past decade. There are reports of owners, particularly in London, currently selling at a loss.

How did you cope? What do you remember of that period of hot weather? Tell us and share your pictures

The record temperature for June set in Hampshire in 1976 is expected to be surpassed during this current UK heatwave.

The highest June temperature on record of 35.6C was set on 29 June 1957 in London. This was then equalled on 28 June 1976 in Southampton during that year’s heatwave.

Tell us about your favourite summer trip to a more temperate shoreline in Europe – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break

As heatwaves become an increasingly common feature of European summers, more of us are looking to cooler, northern coastlines for our seaside holidays. From the traditional seaside towns of Germany, northern France and the Netherlands, to the long sandy beaches of the Baltic coast and the islands of Scandinavia, we’d love to hear about your favourite cooler coastal breaks in Europe.

The best tip of the week, chosen by Tom Hall of Lonely Planet, wins a £200 voucher to stay at a Coolstays property – the company has more than 3,000 worldwide. The best tips will appear in the Guardian Travel section and website.

We would like to hear about the best film you have seen this year so far and why

The Guardian’s film writers have compiled their favourite films of the year so far – and we’d like to hear about yours, too.

Which films have captured your imagination this year? Are there any new releases from so far in 2025 that you would recommend watching?

Wake up to the top stories and what they mean – free to your inbox every weekday morning at 7am

Scroll less, understand more: sign up to receive our news email each weekday for clarity on the top stories in the UK and across the world.

Explore all our newsletters: whether you love film, football, fashion or food, we’ve got something for you

Get smart, sustainable shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox, every Sunday

The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.

A weekly email from our star chefs featuring the latest recipes and seasonal eating ideas

Each week we’ll send you an exclusive newsletter from our star food writers. We’ll also send you the latest recipes from our star chefs, stand-out food features and seasonal eating inspiration, plus restaurant reviews from Grace Dent.

Sign up below to start receiving the best of our culinary journalism in one mouth-watering weekly email.

Upgrade your space today, with eight emails packed with tips to brighten up your home - whatever your budget

Embrace your space: the Guardian’s House to Home newsletter is bursting with tips and tricks to help you boost your bedroom and give your living room some love.

Sign up any time, and get eight emails direct to your inbox every Sunday morning.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world