It is one of the world’s finest collections, full of Monets, Miros and Picassos. But is the great Swiss architect’s extension for the Beyeler Foundation a worthy addition? Or is it a bit luxury boutique?

In the early 1960s, when Peter Zumthor was a teenage apprentice in his father’s cabinet-making workshop, he designed his first cupboard. He later recalled the satisfaction of fitting the door so perfectly that it closed “with a special sucking sound”, saying his father instilled in him “the Basel pride in the well-built object”.

Six decades on, with a fleet of globally celebrated projects to his name, the 83-year-old Swiss architect is back in Basel, beaming with the same local pride. He is gazing out at his latest well-built object, which is also his first project here: a monolithic new gallery that looks chiselled from the earth, its layers of pale crumbly concrete hammered into shape, its big oak and bronze doors – their handles wrapped with leather cord – closing with that same satisfyingly expensive Swiss swoosh.

Since Nicole Brown Simpson’s murder in 1994, Denise Brown has devoted herself to ending domestic violence. She talks about her beloved sister, the trauma she witnessed in the couple’s marriage and how lives can be saved

The last night Denise Brown spent with her sister Nicole Brown Simpson was at a restaurant for a family celebration. Nicole looked out of the window. “All of a sudden she goes, ‘Oh my God, there he is.’ He was driving by.” Brown looked out, trying to get a glimpse of her sister’s ex-husband, the former American football star OJ Simpson. “I saw these headlights. She said, ‘He’s constantly following me.’” They went back to talking about their plans for the summer.

The following morning, 13 June 1994, Brown was up early at her parents’ house in Orange County in southern California, when the phone rang shortly after 6am. “I heard my mom scream a scream that I had never heard from a human being,” says Brown. “It was so guttural. Just awful.”

Wētāpunga can weigh as much as a mouse and its numbers dwindled across New Zealand due to predators and habitat loss

The population of New Zealand’s endemic wētāpunga – believed to be the world’s heaviest insect – is officially “recovering” thanks to a groundbreaking breeding programme that has overseen the release of 11,000 insects into the wild.

“The future of wētāpunga is looking bright,” said Dr Chris Green, an honorary researcher at the department of conservation, who documented the success of the project for the New Zealand Journal of Zoology. Green co-authored a report released on 2 October that outlines the success of the breeding programme.

Working-age adults such as my son, who is autistic, face a fragmented and unreliable system, yet ministers talk only of a national care service for older people

Seemingly brilliant conference speeches are often followed by a hangover, and so it has arguably proved with Andy Burnham’s. It was, it has to be said, something of a triumph, but there is now a familiar sense of nagging angst over how his big idea of a national care service is actually going to work. But equally, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to be more generous and patient. The policy issues are vast. The new PM’s commitment to serious change is clear. And having been urgently needed for years, the basics of what he wants – personal, home-based care delivered free at the proverbial point of need – will be on their way if Labour wins the next election.

Here, though, is a question that is much less finely balanced. Neither Burnham’s speech nor the much shorter address given by Yvette Cooper, the new health and social care secretary, contained a single mention of what roughly half of England’s social care budgets are spent on: provision for working-age disabled adults. Why not? I get the politics: fixating on older people’s care and the pensions triple lock makes everything clear and relatable. But England’s fragmented, unreliable system for younger disabled adults is in need of the same radical level of reform, and it’s the source of just as much fear and worry for the people who either depend on it, or eventually will do.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

The Tory leader says the party’s plans to cut people’s benefits are no more than ‘common sense’

It’s a thought. A bold one. Possibly a career-ending one. But a thought nonetheless. When Theresa May told the Tory conference in 2002 that under Iain Duncan Smith the Conservatives had become “the Nasty party”, many members took that to mean they had become undesirable. Within a few years, David Cameron had moved the Tories closer to the “hug a husky” centre and by 2010 he was prime minister.

Kemi Badenoch takes a rather different view. For her, being the Nasty party is a badge of honour. An aspiration. People had had it far too good with austerity, Brexit, Covid and the Liz Truss mini-budget. The country needed a reality check; a return to old-fashioned unpleasantness. A taste of genuine hardship. People had got far too used to getting something for nothing. Especially the physically and mentally ill. What they needed was a short sharp shock of intense labour from 8am to 8pm. That would make them feel better. And anyone found skiving would be banged up for a short time in prison. Say 10 years.

The actor, who is performing on the West End, was filmed telling theatre fans ‘you can’t come 20 times and sit in the front row, it’ll drive me mad’

Gillian Anderson has come under fire after the actor was filmed telling a group of fans that they were “distracting” her by repeatedly sitting in the front row while she performs in London’s West End.

The Sex Education and X-Files star was filmed outside the Soho Place theatre where she’s performing in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, telling a group of fans: “You guys cannot sit in the front row. I do not care; you cannot sit in the front row. It’s so distracting.”

Aircraft leave Gloucestershire base to return to US following arrest of dual British-Iranian national in central London

The US Air Force has pulled its bombers from RAF Fairford following an investigation into an alleged planned terror attack at the base.

The bombers were redeployed back to their home bases in the US, according to a Pentagon official who was not authorised to discuss sensitive military movements and spoke on Sunday on condition of anonymity.

Former prince to challenge whether Thames Valley police acted lawfully over searches relating to his arrest

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is taking action against Thames Valley police to challenge the legality of search warrants that led to his arrest earlier this year, a judicial spokesperson has said.

A private high court hearing is due to take place before Mr Justice Hilliard on Thursday to determine whether documents related to the the former Duke of York’s call for a judicial review can be made public; with Thames Valley police in opposition.

Election called after rightwing parties voted down emergency legislation aimed at tackling housing crisis

• Europe live – latest updates

Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has announced a snap general election three days after rightwing parties torpedoed the emergency legislation his minority government had put forward in response to growing public anger over the country’s housing crisis.

Sánchez, who has been in office since 2018, used a televised address to communicate his decision, which had been widely expected.

Andrew Griffith makes speech today as Reform UK accuses party of copying policies they ‘announced weeks and months ago’

• Tories to pledge to scrap Environment Agency and Natural England

Yesterday, as a gimmick, the Tories were handing out “Bottler Burnham” bottles of water (“0% strength”) to make a point about Burnham supposedly cancelling plans for an early election under pressure from the Tories. It is a version of a stunt they pulled in 2008 when they gave journalists bottles of a “Bottler Brown” beer. (Gordon Brown did pull plans for an early election at the last minute; this time the jibe is unfair, because there were no Burnham plans for an early election.)

The new bottles feature the image of Burnham produced by the Manchester artist Stan Chow.

The SNP’s effective ban on new nuclear energy in Scotland flies in the face of common-sense.

No part of Great Britain should be missing out on plans for new nuclear renewal.

Far-right challenger and son of disgraced ex-president Jair Bolsonaro put in a stronger than expected showing, with Lula calling the result ‘unexpected’

Brazil’s presidential race will go to a second round after the far-right candidate, Flávio Bolsonaro, beat the incumbent leftwing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but failed to secure the outright majority he needed to avoid a runoff.

With 99.9% of votes counted, the 45-year-old son of the disgraced former president, Jair Bolsonaro, had won 47%, meaning he will now face a 25 October showdown with his 80-year-old rival. Lula received 45.1%. Bolsonaro received 56.1m votes to Lula’s 53.8m.

Demonstrators gather in south coast town as nearly 150 people trying to reach UK by small boat brought ashore

Anti-migrant protesters have scuffled with police in Gosport, Hampshire, as they opposed the rescue of nearly 150 people trying to reach the UK by small boat.

The demonstrators gathered in the south coast town as news of the vessel’s expected arrival spread. It was the second time protesters had targeted the town amid rumours of rescued people disembarking there.

Ex-lawyer for woman Tennessee attempted to execute says defense filings said she was at risk for ‘exactly what happened’

A former lawyer for Christa Pike says he was not surprised that Tennessee botched its attempt to execute her because attorneys had warned that problems accessing her veins could make the procedure dangerous and potentially cruel.

James Crowson, who represented Pike during part of her post-conviction appeals, said he had followed the case from afar before the failed execution at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville on 30 September.

Vivien Lichtenstein says she believes motion is unhelpful as anger grows over Zack Polanski’s absence for vote

• UK politics live – latest updates

The head of the Jewish Greens has said she may leave the party after it voted to adopt a policy that equates Zionism with racism and calls for Israel to be replaced by a single Palestinian state.

Vivien Lichtenstein said that while opinion among Jewish members of the party was split on the motion passed at its annual conference in Brighton on Sunday, she said she believed it was unhelpful and it was “possible” she might quit.

Three scientists to share 12m Swedish kronor prize for their work on ‘light-gated ion channels and optogenetics’

The Nobel prize in physiology or medicine 2026 has been awarded to three scientists for their work on investigating the mysteries of the brain.

Karl Deisseroth of both Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Stanford University, Peter Hegemann of the Humboldt University of Berlin, and Georg Nagel of the University of Würzburg have been awarded the prize “for their discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.”.

Exclusive: Cop31 leader calling for global curbs on climate-heating gas has landfills producing some of world’s worst plumes

Two or three nights each week, the smell descends. Residents of villages on the rural outskirts of Istanbul don’t know what the smell is, but they have been plagued by it for years: a smell so bad they have to sleep with their windows closed even during hot summer nights. They know the source, too: the huge Silivri municipal waste dump a few miles away that is belching out stinking gases as food and other organic waste rots.

“The smell is not subtle. It suffocates you,” said Kemalettin Özenç, sitting outside a tea shop in the village of Yolçatı. “It’s worse when the air is still: sometimes families linger until midnight out here. Even when you go inside it’s inescapable.”

As trawlers compete with Greenland sharks for halibut and cod, conservationists and fishers clash over what to do about misunderstood species

‘When I accidentally catch a shark, I bring it to my dogs,” Henrik Jensen, a 27-year-old from Greenland’s west coast, says casually. “I don’t let it back down because [the sharks] bully me and cut my lines.”

Jensen has fished for halibut in Ilulissat, Greenland’s third largest town, for a decade. He works an hour north of the town’s main iceberg-laden fishery, which sustains the livelihood of nearly 400 fishers. There, the halibut are bigger and more plentiful, but so are the Greenland sharks.

Cost of living crisis and drop in international students hits market for purpose-built accommodation

“It was dead in the middle of summer, it was a shock,” says Nathalie Sriwiboonrattan. The fourth-year game design student at Abertay University was at home with her family thousands of miles away in Thailand when she discovered the owner of her Scottish studio flat had abruptly gone bust.

“I was like, my hands are tied. I’m not in the country. I don’t know what to do,” she says. Sriwiboonrattan was forced to act quickly to secure new housing for the academic year, which has just begun, paying £850 to have her possessions moved.

Alejandro G Iñárritu’s film may be about to become one of the biggest bombs Hollywood has ever seen – but it is destined to be re-evaluated with time

• This article contains spoilers for Digger

I feel for film critics, I really do. Tom Cruise’s latest film Digger put them in an impossible position: you can’t really talk about it without spoiling what makes it, in my eyes, a masterpiece. Or completely terrible – as many, many critics have argued over the last week, without being fully free to say why.

That is not their fault: media screenings around the world opened with a plea from Warner Bros to not spoil the film’s central reveal. This seems like it may have been a misstep, because curiosity and Cruise alone were clearly not enough to get bums on seats. Digger is now projected to lose around $150m, after taking a paltry $20m globally in its opening weekend. Warner Bros is trying to make the best of a bad situation, first crowing about the stinker reviews – “insufferable” and “smug” have been repeated a lot – then pivoting to a new sell: the Yanks don’t get it, so it must be good.

As Andrew Lloyd Webber’s enduring gothic melodrama celebrates its 40th birthday, producer Cameron Mackintosh and cast members from down the years recall what makes it so special

There is something about Andrew Lloyd Webber’s masterly musical The Phantom of the Opera – celebrating 40 years on the West End this month – which seems to take hold of its fans in a special way. For me, it was the show that first sparked my love of theatre and inspired me to work in the industry. Even today, Phantom is still the memory that gets my heart racing as I sit in the stalls, waiting impatiently for the curtain to come up, hoping for an experience just as intoxicating and all-consuming as that very first experience all those years ago.

It’s not just the fans, either. When I talk to a cluster of key creatives, all of whom have a special working relationship with the show, each of them seems a little spellbound by Phantom. Sierra Boggess, who plays Carlotta in the 40th-anniversary production, talks tearfully about the lingering spirits of original director Hal Prince and choreographer Gillian Lynne. Jordan Donica, now starring as the Phantom in the West End, speaks passionately about the power of Lloyd Webber’s music (“It feels like heaven to me”), and John Owen-Jones, who has played the Phantom more than anyone else in the West End, talks tenderly about his long-term history with the show: “I’ve got a picture of me in full Phantom get-up holding my baby daughter. It’s an incredible thing to be part of.”

A beloved family pet, she is also the best employee ever, brilliant at her rescue work. If everyone could be more like Poppy, the world would be a better place

When we picked up a nine-week-old black labrador from a couple just outside Callander, Scotland, I had no idea that she would soon be an employee of mine. Poppy became the family fur baby and we realised early on how clever and empathic she is. I work as a Special Operations Response Team paramedic and we decided to involve her in my search work in 2021 when she was only a year old because we knew it would play to her strengths. She took to it immediately.

Poppy and our team of dogs look for missing people. My colleagues and I then provide any medical assistance needed. She is trained to search without needing to smell someone’s scent from an item such as clothing. During training, we hide our volunteers along the riverbank, in the woods, beside lochs and canals, and set the dogs off. They have to find the people and come back. Poppy’s curious nature has served her well. She loves the undergrowth, sniffing about and finding things.

When Barbara Scully tried to get a job after years as a stay-at-home mum, no one would hire her. So she made her own work as a writer and broadcaster – and soon found herself on TV and stage

If anyone had told Barbara Scully five years ago that she would soon be enjoying her “sixth career” – this time as a standup comedian, or comic storyteller – she would have laughed in their face. “But once you get to 60, you realise that failure isn’t a big deal,” she says. “As long as nobody’s going to die, that’s grand.”

Scully, who lives in Dublin, is now performing her one-woman show Because I’m Worth It around Ireland to capacity audiences of up to 200 people. “I’m on a mission to try to tell women in particular not to fear getting older, to embrace it, to push back against all the bullshit about how you should be fighting ageing,” she says. “The more women like me who are willing to stand up and say: ‘This is me and I am 64 and I’m not really bothered about spending my time and money and energy on trying to look younger …’” She trails off. “I’m actually spending my time and money and energy doing stuff that makes me happy.”

We pick the best youngsters at each club born between 1 September 2009 and 31 August 2010, an age band known as first-year scholars. Check the progress of our classes of 2025 | 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 … all the way to 2014

Longer battery life, better screen, upgraded Siri and new variable aperture camera in refreshed design from last year’s model

Apple’s smaller Pro iPhone gets the best kind of spec bump for 2026: longer battery life, faster chips and a fancy new variable aperture for the main camera.

The iPhone 18 Pro is one of a pair of slab phones launched alongside Apple’s first folding phone, the iPhone Duo, and is the cheapest of the new phones, with a regular iPhone 18 yet to be announced.

Screen: 6.3in Super Retina XDR (120Hz OLED) (460ppi)

Processor: Apple A20 Pro

RAM: 12GB

Storage: 256GB, 512GB or 1TB

Operating system: iOS 27

Camera: 48MP + 48MP UW + 48MP 4x, 18MP front-facing

Connectivity: 5G, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 6, Thread, USB-C, Satellite, UWB and GNSS

Water resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)

Dimensions: 150 x 71.9 x 8.75mm

Weight: 211g

A story of storico ribelle, produced by a small group of mountain herders according to a traditional farming system based on seasonal and rotational grazing

My journey into the world of storico ribelle began with a shared passion for photography and the mountains. A close friend of mine lives in the Orobie Alps. He loves the mountains and the natural environment that surrounds him, and we share the same passion for photography. When I finally went to visit him, I discovered a way of experiencing the mountains that was very different from the one I knew growing up in the Apennines, where I come from.

What struck me was not only the landscape, but the relationship people still have with it. Here, I discovered a world where the mountain is not simply a place to visit or explore, but a place to live and work. A world where cheese is still a tradition rather than an industrial product, and where the rhythms of the seasons, the animals and the daily work of the alpeggiatori – the mountain herders – are still deeply connected.

This is a chance for the PM to advance his progressive agenda and tackle urgent issues such as AI regulation and climate action

Among the many crucial decisions Andy Burnham has to make over the next few weeks, one has gone almost completely unremarked: what Britain’s priorities will be when it assumes the presidency of the G20 next year.

Burnham has said he wants to concentrate on domestic policy. But with the world in turmoil, chairing the group of the world’s largest economies will be one of his most important responsibilities.

Michael Jacobs is professor of political economy at the University of Sheffield and a former energy and climate change adviser to Gordon Brown when he was prime minister

As winter approaches and the fifth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion looms, it’s worth remembering that this mode of warfare rarely crushes morale

Vladimir Putin’s army hasn’t made much headway in Ukraine this year, and his territorial goals – annexing four Ukrainian provinces – remain elusive, despite more than four and a half years of war. That explains his recent efforts to sap Ukrainians’ will to resist by launching relentless drone and missile strikes against their cities – targeting, among other sites, residential buildings, large open-air markets, shopping malls, the Dobrobut medical centre and the National Academy of Sciences, both in Kyiv. The capital has been hit the hardest, but other cities – Dnipro, Kharkiv, Kherson, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Sumy – haven’t been spared.

Air-raid sirens pierce the quiet of night. People scramble to shelters (assuming there are any nearby) or, in Kyiv, race to below-ground subway stations. Even walking along city streets, shopping, or filling up your car at a garage forecourt – which are prime targets – can lead to injury, or even death.

Rajan Menon is a professor emeritus of international relations at the City College of New York and a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies

From microcheating to quiet quitting to weaponised incompetence, new terms to describe relationship failings are abundant. But that doesn’t mean there’s not space for some more ...

Are you committing “attention infidelity”? The New York Times alerted me to this expression, coined by the public opinion researcher Daniel Cox in a new book on the “crisis of human connection”. It’s exactly what you’d expect: failing to focus fully on your partner because you’re indulging in what the NYT calls, rather judgily, “the banal distraction of dead-eyed scrolling”. Who are you calling dead-eyed? This reel of an armadillo in a paddling pool has my animated attention!

Surely we’re all a bit attention-unfaithful – only saints don’t sometimes absent-mindedly thumb through medieval manuscript hedgehog memes while their partner relates a boring anecdote about how they thought they saw a strange bird that turned out to be a plastic bag. What I find more interesting is how we seem now to need a lexicon of relationship bad behaviour.

Mounting evidence about how slavery shaped Britain shows that teaching about its history cannot be a matter of choice

I often think back to my years as a secondary school history teacher, and to what I was and wasn’t able to teach. History is a foundational subject in England, taught to children from the age of five to 14 to build critical thinking, weigh evidence and help pupils understand the world they’ve inherited.

The key stage 3 national curriculum, covering ages 11 to 14, states that pupils should understand how “Britain has influenced and been influenced by the wider world”, including a historically grounded understanding of empire.

Our ‘genius’ president is revealing his ignorance of economics, fueling concerns about the threat he poses to the world

Donald Trump recently made a bold claim about his abilities, writing on Truth Social: “The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!”

But in the days before and after that post, Trump made one mind-boggling statement after another, including one that raised the possibility of cutting off all trade with dozens of the US’s trading partners. The president’s statements had many experts questioning not just his intelligence, but also whether he – and the outlandish policies he was proposing – were a clear and present danger to both the US economy and the world economy. Public respect for Trump’s economic sense has fallen so low that just 7% of Americans think he should take the lead in regulating AI, according to a recent WSJ poll.

Amnesty International is calling for an end to the agency, whose record of violating human rights dates back decades

ICE must be abolished.

That’s the conclusion we at Amnesty International have reached after documenting the chilling pattern of human rights violations across the US during immigration enforcement operations.

The government pledged to end an unfair system. Ministers must give homeowners power over costs, rather than another place to complain

“To the millions of leaseholders across the country, you have my word. The days of you being squeezed for every penny are coming to an end,” Andy Burnham told the Labour party conference. Only a few hours earlier, his housing secretary, Angela Rayner, had announced that the government would legislate for a new independent regulator and launch a consultation to cap “rip off” administrative fees. While these are undoubtedly steps in the right direction, they are miles away from Labour’s manifesto promise to “finally bring the feudal leasehold system to an end”.

In its modern form, leasehold in England and Wales turns homes into income streams for freeholders. It should be abolished. There are powerful vested interests – billionaires, aristocrats and big businesses – that would oppose this move. But the system of service charges is crippling the housing market because its exorbitant cost puts off prospective buyers. The average annual service charge for a flat in England and Wales is now £2,405, up 32.6% since 2020 and 55.6% over a decade. Owners of flats in high-rise blocks in London are paying service charges of more than £7,000 a year. Little wonder that first-time buyers are increasingly bypassing flats.

England’s strong results in an early learning study are a Sure Start legacy that ministers must build on

Recognition of the importance of babyhood and early childhood continues to grow. It is widely understood by many ordinary people, as well as experts, that what happens to us when we are very small, and our brains are at their most malleable, has lasting effects. As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) put it in a study of early years education, “the first five years of a child’s life represent a window of opportunity, but also of vulnerability”.

New Labour’s grasp of this underpinned its pioneering Sure Start programme. Much of this was dismantled under the Tory-Liberal Democrat austerity programme. But despite that loss, England’s results in this year’s OECD Early Learning and Child Well‑being Study were strong. This study does not have the high profile of the programme for international student assessment (Pisa) comparing the academic performance of 15-year-olds. It is newer and relies on a far smaller sample size. But while its findings should not be treated as gospel, it is heartening that England’s five-year‑olds were found to be thriving. On a social-emotional development measure, they came out on top.

Readers respond to an article on the urgent need for palliative care reform

Jane Turner is right that end-of‑life care needs fixing (MPs, you told us clearly that end-of-life care in the UK is broken. So now we need you to fix it, 28 September), and I argue that it needs fixing on two fronts at once. My husband, John, died in March aged 43 after nearly six years of bowel cancer treatment. He endured more than 70 rounds of chemotherapy, determined to watch our children grow up. He spent his last three months in a hospice, receiving the best palliative care on offer. Even so, he suffered terribly.

Some pain cannot be controlled quickly, and some suffering cannot be treated at all. One evening he screamed in agony while stranded in a bath, unable to move, for nearly an hour before relief took effect. As the cancer swelled his torso, he slowly suffocated – and no drug could prevent it. He was fully aware throughout, and told me repeatedly that he could not go on. In his last hours, I wore earplugs to bear the sound of his gasping.

The home secretary’s language of ‘compassion’ and ‘international obligations’ is at odds with the party’s record in protecting vulnerable migrants, writes Eleanor Luxton

Regarding your article (UK to open new refugee resettlement routes for Afghan women and Palestinians, 27 September), rather than focusing on whether or not Shabana Mahmood’s policy change will deter small boat arrivals (which it won’t), shouldn’t we be in uproar over her use of the language of “compassion” and “international obligations”?

Considering Ed Miliband’s admission at the Labour conference that the party has not done enough to support the Palestinian people – and the abrupt closure of the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy and Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme with almost no notice on 1 July 2025, again under Labour leadership – is this not a case of too little, too late?

Emma Claassen responds to an article by Adrian Chiles on the recruitment crisis in scaffolding

Adrian Chiles is right: scaffolding is hard work (Britain’s scaffolding should be a source of national pride – instead we’re struggling to recruit workers, 1 October). It demands physical resilience, skill, judgment and proper training. That will naturally mean it is not a job for everyone – men or women.

Which is why the conversation about the skills shortage should be less about who traditionally became a scaffolder, and more about who is willing and able to learn the trade and meet the same standards.

Readers respond to an article about a mother who feels let down by the family courts

Hannah Summers’ article raises disturbing concerns about the misuse of parental alienation allegations in family courts (‘Just like that, I lost my girls’: the mother who feels betrayed by the family courts, 29 September). However, I believe that it would benefit from a clearer distinction between the discredited theory of “parental alienation syndrome” (PAS) and genuine, demonstrable alienating behaviour.

PAS proposed that a child’s unjustified rejection of a parent could be identified as a distinct syndrome. It is no longer an accepted clinical diagnosis, since a child’s rejection of a parent cannot itself establish manipulation, therefore treating it as diagnostic risks overlooking abuse or other legitimate reasons for the child’s feelings.

Pressure continues to build on the Gunners’ head coach, while powerful London City Lionesses demolished Spurs

Travelling Arsenal fans showed no animosity towards the head coach, Renée Slegers, despite their side’s run of one win in six games all competitions, and the north Londoners slipping 10 points behind Manchester City. Slegers walked over to applaud the 2,000 away fans after the 4-2 defeat at Etihad Stadium, and they applauded her back. Slegers said: “I mostly went there to thank them, and connect with them, and show them that I care for them and appreciate them coming to Manchester. And also showing to show them that I feel – not sorry for them because I’m, of course, a big part of it and things are within my control – but they’re coming here and they’re not getting the rewards, just like the team. So I just wanted to connect with them instead of walking away and hiding.” Tom Garry

Match report: Manchester City 4-2 Arsenal

Match report: Manchester United 1-0 Liverpool

After working with nearly all of Spain’s World Cup-winning squad in their formative years, the coach is also a huge fan of English football. He’s now pitting his wits against both

At the end of a 2-0 defeat by England in Prague, the Czechia coach turned left, walked along the touchline, shook Thomas Tuchel’s hand and said something he thinks he had never said at full-time: “See you soon.” To which Tuchel said back: “See you soon.” Seven days later, via Oviedo and Rijeka respectively, they meet again, at Wembley. “Four matches in 11 days, no time to train, for anything; I haven’t heard a single national coach say they like the new setup,” Santi Denia says, but it’s not all bad and there’s a big smile too.

This is the start of a new life, yet familiar faces await, warmth in every word. Very familiar faces. If Czechia’s opponents in this Nations League could not have been much worse, they could not have been much better either. In Oviedo, Denia’s team played his country, his players; in London, for the second time in a week, they play the nation he knows better than any other, more footballers he has seen grown up. Hello, again.

• Midfielder’s thigh injury a blow for Bournemouth

• He will miss England games on Tuesday and next month

Alex Scott has withdrawn from the England squad and could be out for two months with a thigh injury. The Bournemouth midfielder excelled on his full debut during the 7-0 win over Croatia on Saturday, but he felt discomfort before the game and the problem worsened after playing through the pain.

Bournemouth are unlikely to be delighted with how the situation has been handled, but Scott was determined to take his opportunity. He impressed alongside Elliot Anderson in Rijeka and was expected to be handed another start when England host Czechia in the Nations League on Tuesday. Thomas Tuchel will have to adjust his midfield for his side’s fourth and final game of the international break and for November’s games against Croatia and Spain.

The Republic of Ireland manager, Heimir Hallgrímsson, has called on Uefa to keep his side away from Israel in future draws after a pair of fixtures he said “has been tough on us all”. Ireland were pegged back to a draw in another tetchy encounter on Sunday, played without fans at TSC Arena in Backa Topola, Serbia.

Hallgrímsson did not want to comment on a half-time confrontation, after which a member of his backroom staff alleged he was spat at by an Israeli player. The Icelandic manager said that was better left to a disciplinary committee.

Kansas City beat the surprisingly feisty Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday. They already look like a very real contender after a lost season in 2025

The rivalry between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Las Vegas Raiders goes back to the formation of the American Football League in 1960, when the Chiefs were the Dallas Texans, and the Raiders resided in Oakland. At no time in that rivalry had both teams faced each other with a record of 3-0 or better until Sunday’s game at Las Vegas’s Allegiant Stadium. An unbeaten record wasn’t entirely surprising for the Chiefs with Patrick Mahomes, but the Raiders? The team won only three games in the whole of last season, but this new Raiders team under Klint Kubiak presents all kinds of challenges for opponents.

At first, it appeared that the Raiders might go on to their first 4-0 start to a season since 2002, when they made it all the way to the Super Bowl, where they were vivisected by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and their former head coach, Jon Gruden. Kubiak’s team held a 13-10 halftime lead on Sunday, and Kubiak told CBS’s Tracy Wolfson at the half that his team was going to win the game.

Former Brighton and Birmingham stopper has his family getting their hands dirty rebooting Leeds club

They held a sweepstake in the FC Farsley office. How many fans would come for the first men’s game at their Throstle Nest ground in more than two years? David Stockdale, the owner and first-team manager, was cautious, predicting 140. After all, the old club, Farsley Celtic, played in Buxton for much of the 2024-25 season and missed the 2025-26 campaign after going into liquidation.

When 480 came through the gates to watch the all-new FC Farsley play Collegians FC in a Yorkshire Amateur League contest, Stockdale realised the scale of his achievement in getting the club back on their feet. There remains an enormous amount of work still to do – and Stockdale was operating a digger before this interview – but it was the first step of a fresh journey for the Leeds-based club.

• England, Australia and India say no space for extra events

• No new international tournaments until 2031 at earliest

The International Cricket Council (ICC) will not introduce a World Club Championship or more international multilateral tournaments until 2031 at the earliest after resistance from England, Australia and India.

After informal discussions between the ICC and member boards over several months, a cricket operations workshop in Dubai last week concluded without any additional events being proposed. This means the next addition of the Future Tours Programme (FTP) covering 2027 to 2031 will mirror that of the current cycle.

• Antonelli and Hamilton led the criticism in Sepang

• Race delayed after software problems in wet conditions

Formula One drivers issued a damning condemnation of the sport’s current engine regulations that caused the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia to open with farcical scenes of cars stopping on track and unable to accelerate because of software problems in the electronics that control the engines.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won in Sepang but only after F1 suffered the embarrassment of a host of cars barely able to complete two ­formation laps in the wet as they were making their way to the grid.

• Winning rider Barzalona hails ‘exceptional horse’

• Stud beckons over bid for unprecedented third win

It was a very different, distinctly brutalist Longchamp that last saw a colt go back-to-back in the Arc, and 48 years on from Alleged’s second victory in 1978 with Lester Piggott holding the reins, the uber-modernist new grandstand rose to acclaim its first legend here on Sunday as Daryz produced the same overwhelming turn of finishing speed down the straight that had carried him to victory in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe 12 months ago.

Daryz and Mickaël Barzalona did not hit the front until inside the final furlong, but they had been closing on Bay City Roller, who had disputed the lead for much of the way, to such effect from well over a furlong out that the result was in no real doubt.

Exclusive: Average of nearly five sexual crimes a day against under-13s were reported to police between 2021 and 2025

• From unwanted touching to rape: the scale of child-on-child abuse in English and Welsh schools

Lawyers and campaigners have condemned the “horrifying” scale of child-on-child sexual abuse in schools after a Guardian investigation revealed thousands of sexual offences against under-13s, including multiple rapes, are reported to police every year.

Close to five sexual crimes against children aged 12 and younger were recorded on average by police every day in primary and secondary schools in England and Wales, according to Guardian analysis of police data for 2021-25.

Precautions in place in several hospitals in eastern Russia amid uncertainty over death of Darya Shipilova

Several hospitals in Siberia have been placed under quarantine after the death of a woman who worked at an anti-plague institute.

Darya Shipilova, an employee at an institute in the eastern city of Irkutsk, died on the night of 2 October at a regional hospital in the nearby town of Shelekhov two days after falling ill.

President to visit Grand Island as his plan to allow more foreign beef imports proves unpopular in agriculture-rich state

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JD Vance, widely considered to be the Republican frontrunner for the presidential election in 2028, is aligning himself with the Make America Healthy Again (Maha) movement as some say it is shedding its grassroots supporters in favor of political and corporate interests.

The US vice-president has positioned himself as the inheritor of Make America Great Again (Maga), and attaching himself to Maha, which many in the Trump administration believe helped to win the 2024 election, signals a greater overlap between the two movements as the administration’s popularity plummets amid the war in Iran and rising prices.

While ⁠operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our ​assets and forces in ‌real time, we can acknowledge ‌now that all US bombers that were deployed to ‌RAF Fairford have redeployed to their home stations in the United States.

Rising fuel costs are pushing hundreds of firms out of business, threatening school transport, firms say

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Coach operators have said record diesel prices could force cuts to services including school transport, as hauliers warn rising fuel costs are pushing hundreds of firms out of business.

The average price of diesel on UK forecourts hit a fresh record of more than £2 a litre last week, as the war in the Middle East continues to disrupt global fuel supplies.

Natural History Museum and British Museum among cultural institutions leveraging collections and exhibitions

They are often free to visit but museums are bolstering their finances by putting their stamp on everything from upmarket hotel suites to trendy jumpsuits and virtual reality experiences.

Forget buying a T-shirt. If you can afford the “from £724” price tag, you can spend the night in the Natural History Museum family suite at the Park Plaza London Riverbank hotel, which has an interior inspired by the museum’s founder, Sir Richard Owen, complete with Tyrannosaurus rex bunk beds.

Temperatures in US state forecast to hit high 30s celsius this week, while regions in Indonesia grapple with wildfires

The National Weather Service in the US has issued extreme heat warnings for parts of southern California, including Los Angeles, until Thursday, as temperatures are expected to hit the high 30s celsius. Burbank, a suburb north of Los Angeles, recorded 39C on Saturday, a few degrees shy of the October record for the region set in 1987. A persistent area of high pressure will remain in place this week, leading to further hazardous hot weather and increased fire risk.

Parts of Indonesia are in the midst of an extreme wildfire season, which has peaked over the past month. Western Kalimantan (Borneo) and southern Sumatra have been particularly badly affected. The lack of rainfall has dried the usually water-logged tropical soils, meaning that fires have been able to spread quickly, above and below the surface. Indonesia’s soils are also extremely rich in peat, meaning that the smoke produced from the fires contain higher levels of toxic gases such as sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide. Cities in surrounding areas and as far as Malaysia and Singapore have experienced reduced air quality in recent weeks as a result. Drought and wildfires are more common in this part of the world during El Niño events owing to suppressed thunderstorm activity.

Union says staff left with no choice but industrial action after breakdown in pay talks with Texas oil firm Apache

A looming strike by oil workers in the North Sea could “severely disrupt” UK fuel supplies, the Unite union has said, adding that staff were left with no choice after a breakdown in pay talks with the Texas oil company Apache.

The union said Apache workers had “emphatically” backed strike action after being given what it said was an unacceptable pay offer that amounted to a real-terms pay cut for many employees, at a time when the company was “raking in eye-watering profits”.

FOI request shows wildfire risk scheme scrapped, as survey highlights many fire services lack proper protective gear

The government quietly scrapped plans to prepare the countryside in England for wildfires, it has been revealed. This was despite new data showing fire crews do not have the proper protective gear to tackle them.

This summer has been a potent reminder of the scale of the threat posed by the climate crisis, with the UK experiencing record-breaking wildfires after punishingly hot and dry weather turned large parts of the countryside into a tinderbox.

Jukka Salovaara, who served in London during Cool Britannia era, will be ‘very close’ to negotiations as Burnham government resets relations with EU

Jukka Salovaara, the newly installed European Union ambassador to the UK, is likely to become a ubiquitous figure in national politics as the Andy Burnham government grapples with the question of its future relationship with the European Union.

Burnham has been clearer than his predecessor Keir Starmer in saying that what exists now is not working and that a full range of options, including rejoining, has to be on the table ahead of Labour’s next election manifesto.

Experts say country does not have plan to feed people in a crisis and is unprepared for future shortages

Britain does not have a plan for how to feed people in a crisis and is unprepared for potential future food shortages, according to a warning from more than 150 experts delivered to Andy Burnham.

The climate crisis, geopolitical shocks, cyber-attacks and energy outages are among the threats to food chain security, according to the open letter, which claims the government is “complacent about food as a national security matter”.

Establish a new system of local food resilience committees under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.

Audit the UK’s reliance on a few very large food companies and food imports.

Realign national food production around nutritional needs.

Create national, regional, local and community food storage schemes.

Support the decentralisation of the UK’s food supply.

Plans to shed as many as 2,000 employees have been announced in stages, and staff fear further cuts in 2027

Morale at the BBC has been severely dented by a gradual “bloodletting” that has seen plans to shed as many as 2,000 staff slowly announced over several weeks, members of the corporation’s staff have warned.

More internal meetings have been called for this week to discuss further details of the cuts, which aim to save £500m. Some staff already fear that further waves of cuts will follow soon after in the new year.

Many cases involve criminals using other people’s identities to sell fake event tickets to friends and family

The total amount stolen by criminals who hack into people’s emails and social media accounts and then pretend to be them has risen by more than 400% in a year, official UK data shows.

In many cases, the scammers are hijacking people’s accounts in order to use their identity to sell fake event tickets – such as to sold-out gigs – to unsuspecting friends and family.

The announcement came hours after Iranian-backed Houthis reportedly cut a vital supply route to besieged city of Taiz

Yemen’s Saudi-backed government has announced the start of a new military operation to retake all territory held by the Houthis, even as the militant group made fresh gains on the ground, reportedly encircling a government-held city.

Rashad al-Alimi, the head of Yemen’s presidential council, said in a statement on Sunday: “I announce today the start of military operations to retake the remaining territories of the republic and extend the authority of the state and its institutions across the entire national territory.”

Nine years on from a failed independence push, former president Carles Puigdemont will find times have changed

After years of legal wrangling, Spain’s constitutional court is expected to remove the last obstacle to the return of the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont after nearly nine years in exile this week.

Puigdemont fled in 2017 to avoid being jailed for his part in the failed and illegal independence push for which nine of his colleagues were imprisoned on sentences of up to 13 years, although all were released within three years.

Parti Québécois promises to hold independence referendum in Canada’s French-speaking region by 2028

Voters in Quebec are going to the polls in provincial elections which will probably result in victory for a party that has promised to hold a referendum on independence from Canada within the next two years.

If polls are correct, the Parti Québécois (PQ) will form the government of the province of roughly nine million, the first time that the separatist movement will have gained power in the French-speaking region for more than a decade.

More than half of organisations providing HIV care surveyed by International Planned Parenthood Federation said they had run out of stock at some point during past 12 months

Aid cuts have affected HIV drug and test supplies across the world, with some providers reporting they are out of stock of key medicines, according to a survey of 40 countries.

Organisations providing HIV care revealed that more than half (55%) had run out of stock within the past year, with a critical scarcity of HIV tests and pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) – a prescription medicine that people take to reduce the risk of getting HIV.

France’s Cac 40 index slides as announcement of snap election in Spain also helps fuel eurozone uncertainty

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The euro has slumped to the lowest level against the dollar in 17 months amid growing concern France’s debt position could threaten the stability of the wider single currency bloc.

The single currency fell as much as 0.8% against the dollar in early trading on Monday to below $1.12, its lowest level since May 2025, before recovering slightly. It has slumped by about 1.2% this month, accelerating a drop of about eight cents against the greenback from a peak of $1.20 in January.

German-owned supermarket beats Morrisons to become fifth largest grocer in Great Britain

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Lidl’s sales in Great Britain jumped 10% to more than £13bn this year, as shoppers sought out cheaper fresh meat, fruit and vegetables and snapped up its Deluxe range.

Pre-tax profit at the German-owned supermarket’s arm in Great Britain grew by 30% to £245.5m in the year ended in February, up from £156.8m in the previous year.

Move would strengthen Britain’s case to be included in new legislation to protect European manufacturing

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The UK is reviewing whether to impose tariffs on Chinese car imports to align itself with the EU and strengthen its case to be included in new legislation designed to protect the European manufacturing sectors including autos and chemicals.

It is understood the EU has raised the question of tariffs with the UK as part of the discussions on the upcoming “Made in Europe” legislation, known as the Industrial Accelerator Act.

Virgin Media O2 complains of ‘stitch-up’ over rival provider, which has 1.5m customers

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BT has agreed to buy the broadband supplier TalkTalk out of administration in a £400m rescue deal that will save 900 jobs.

The company said it had struck a deal to acquire TalkTalk and its wholesale business PlatformX Communications (PXC) on a debt-free basis, in a move that is expected to cost it £400m.

From underwater explosions to PlayStation joysticks, the Lebanese artist makes art inspired by sound. Can this work in a space known for its chattering day-trippers, overstimulated schoolkids and echoing acoustics?

Tarek Atoui is drumming the fingers of his right hand against the table. Listen! His left hand waves a cigarette at the surrounding world. So I listen. I can hear a busker on the riverside in front of Tate Modern and the hum of people walking the promenade. The low rumble of a plane flying over London and the wash of a boat under the bridge. You can identify a city by how it sounds, the artist is telling me, as much as by how it looks. And not only that! You can play a city, just like he is playing the table, so that it sings.

This is what Atoui, a musician and an impresario as much as an artist, does. He listens to the world around him, then he coaxes a tune out of it. Previous exhibitions have resembled recording studios in the midst of an especially far-out improvisation session, littered with instruments seeming to have been built out of scavenged materials on the instructions of a dream: someone might be playing a tentacular wind organ; wires might snake across the floor from a bleeping synthesiser; a glass booth may function like a walk-in flute, whistling around your body; marble boulders could emit woozy pulses, while drums beat to shifting patterns and your footsteps are picked up by microphones and fed back into the music. A world in miniature, made of sound.

The singer-songwriter owes a lot to Georgie Fame and likes the romantic side of Jimi Hendrix – but which ringtone song can put him in a bad mood?

The first song I fell in love with
The Wind Cries Mary by Jimi Hendrix, which came out in 1967 when I was 12. Hendrix was known for outgoing music, but I was a romantic soul, so the emotional side of his music led to that strain in my own writing.

The song I do at karaoke
Karaoke? Certainly not. I do this for a living. Would you have made my great-grandfather dig ditches for fun? I prefer to live vicariously through Bill Murray singing (What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding in Lost in Translation.

This biopic of Sergiu Celibidache, the renowned Romanian conductor who refused all recordings, is a sturdy labour of love directed by his son

Here is an old-fashioned biopic from central Europe that is also a labour of love on the part of its director: a little stolid and stately, yes, but robustly made, heartfelt and high-minded, with workmanlike performances and decent visual effects work. It is the story of the Romanian conductor and composer Sergiu Celibidache, a brilliant musician who became renowned among musical connoisseurs in the years following the second world war for his unique and uncompromisingly purist belief – derived from his Zen Buddhist studies – that music should never be recorded. He believed that LPs and CDs were inert and dead, and that music had to be experienced live, in the passionately authentic present.

The director is the musician’s son, Serge Ioan Celebidachi, and as an older man in his rural French retirement, he is played with unsubtly querulous hauteur by John Malkovich, especially in the misjudged opening scene where he yells at Japanese executives for presuming to offer him a recording deal. Ben Schnetzer is the younger Celibidache, a prodigy whose musical ambition infuriates his old-fashioned father (Sean Bean), a well-regarded functionary who assumed that his son would follow him into public office. Celebidache Sr therefore demands the return of his birthday gift, a certain type of yellow tie that had been favoured by generations of the family’s menfolk, and which here becomes a fetish of the heartbroken young Sergiu’s need to please his father but also break away from him.

Based on Lagerfeld’s biography, director Nick Hooker gets access to the designer’s inner circle, but ultimately fails to find the man behind the high collar and sunglasses

Karl Lagerfeld had never set foot inside a supermarket before he had one built on a catwalk in 2014, featuring models browsing aisles with baskets shopping for Chanel-branded fromage. It was classic Lagerfeld: very silly but a stroke of genius. The fashion designer was easy to poke fun at, with his white bouffant-plus-ponytail hairstyle and black leather gloves. But behind the persona was a man who spoke four languages fluently, a workaholic still running Chanel, Fendi and his own label Karl Lagerfeld into his 80s.

This dutiful, uncontroversial documentary is based on William Middleton’s biography Paradise Now: The Extraordinary Life of Karl Lagerfeld. As well as archive footage of Lagerfeld, film-maker Nick Hooker gets access to the designer’s inner circle, but ultimately his documentary fails to chip away at the persona. (This is no criticism: I once interviewed Lagerfeld, a frustrating 30 minutes during which the dark glasses stayed on and he answered questions with bon mot witticisms but gave nothing away.) In a clip at the start of the film, Lagerfeld admits that he has spent so long performing a role that not even those closest to him really know who he is.

Decent effects and a late-stage twist show promise, but this gore-fest needs to be more disgusting, funny or unnerving

The film opens with a lone figure striding into the foreground. He’s an amateur entertainer on his way to a gig, and he’s not been met at the station as planned. Still, not to worry – a car pulls up, and he gets in. But needless to say, his days (indeed, his minutes) are numbered. The murder that goes down in short order features plenty of blood but somehow fails to terrify the viewer. This is a problem unfortunately not limited to the opening scene: despite the various gruesome killings on show, there’s not much in the way of scares.

The plot involves an adventure park in danger of going out of business, with the band of workers trying to get the place back on track providing plenty of fodder for a killer who spends some of the time dressed as a creepy clown. It’s easy to be dismissive of demon-clown films like Terrifier but they are effective in what they seek to do. Charlie Shaw’s Revenge isn’t – partly because the performances generally land some distance short of plausible, and partly because the writing itself is painfully thin. (The effects work, on the other hand, is decent, and the use of real locations with real animals is very welcome in a film-making era of green screen and expensive but hastily cobbled together CGI.)

This gag-packed adaptation of Eric Morecambe’s children’s books – by the writing team behind Alan Partridge – is full of stunning comic talent. Bill Bailey, Ross Noble, Tom Davies, Sian Clifford and Asim Chaudhry are all brilliant

Oh my goodness; how long has it been since we all had a lovely teatime treat? Too long, that’s how long! But now joy is at hand, courtesy of Neil and Rob Gibbons (the pair behind the most recent incarnations of Alan Partridge) and The Reluctant Vampire. It is their adaptation of Eric Morecambe’s 1982 children’s book of the same name and its 1983 sequel, The Vampire’s Revenge. They have kept the books’ warmth and daftness and added their own talents to the six-part series for youngsters. There are jokes for parents in there too, but the brothers have wisely kept the exquisite cruelty with which they craft Alan’s misadventures safely stowed away.

Here is the tale of an undead royal-ish family (temporarily usurped a few generations back when the paterfamilias choked on a scab), living a traditional vampiric life in their traditionally gothic castle. There is proud patriarch Victor (Tom Davis), who revels in the hunting and draining of the humans he despises (“I see,” he says, looking round the overdecorated bedroom of his latest about-to-be-victim, “you have a keen eye for tat”). He is married to Valeeta (Sian Clifford) – they share a hot-to-trot vibe with Gomez and Morticia of The Addams Family films – and they have two children. Vernon (an absolutely wonderful turn from Gabriel Nagy in his first major screen role) is a chip off the old block, loving the vampire life and able to identify blood vintages with a single sip (“Poor circulation … lavender … the neck of a Flemish merchant?”).

The Guardian columnist and former Greek finance minister tackle big political questions in a hugely entertaining chat. Plus, why was actor Nkechi Simms placed in foster care?

This new series from the Guardian columnist and senior economics commentator is a lively interview show that tackles politics’ big questions. First up, it’s former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis for a hugely entertaining tour of his career, dissection of democracy and attempt to apply some long-term thinking to the UK. Or in his words: “How long do you think it’ll be before Andy Burnham is pushed out for someone else?” Alexi Duggins
Widely available, episodes weekly

Milton Court, London
A contemporary piece by David Fennessy is framed by JS Bach and Arvo Pärt in a show characterised by uncanny sounds and ghostly chorales

It’s not every day a concert promises “Bach & Blood”, nor delivers it so thoroughly. There were no massacres from the Scottish Ensemble, mercifully, just a characteristically singular bit of programming from this ever-adventurous string orchestra that framed Irish composer David Fennessy’s 2024 Blood with music by Bach and Arvo Pärt.

On 7 July 1720, while JS Bach was away in Carlsbad, his wife Maria Barbara died suddenly, buried before he could return. She was just 35. “Sei solo” – you are alone – the composer wrote at the top of his collection of Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin completed soon after. A slip of pen, misspelling “Sei Soli” (six solos), or a deliberate play on words? The intensity of the works – particularly the monumental 15-minute D minor Chaconne, with its weeping chromatic theme – suggest the latter.

Corn Exchange, Edinburgh
Derry’s answer to the Ramones play 30 songs in a breakneck and breathless ride through the punk humour and new-wave surrealism of their repertoire

“This is the first record we ever made. Still sounds good to me,” smiles bassist Mickey Bradley, deliberately downplaying the song released in 1978 that secured the Undertones’ legacy for almost 50 years and counting. Played hard and unceremoniously tonight, Teenage Kicks still sounds lonely, horny, thrilling: it’s the stuff of raw teen spirit, but has also aged poignantly with the Derry band and their now silver-haired audience, with something moving to say about the weight of nostalgia.

When brothers John and Damian O’Neill’s guitars crash to a halt, many in the crowd are hugging – but the Undertones are already on to the next. This anniversary tour is far from sentimental: ripping through 30 songs in 90 minutes, it’s a breakneck ride through the punk humour, new-wave surrealism and open vulnerability of their first two albums.

The Undertones are touring the UK and Ireland

From Northern soul and 90s bangers to disco classics and indie anthems, readers share the floorfillers that never fail to start the party

My now-husband and I attended a wedding. The reception was boring. No one was dancing and people were wondering if it was too early to leave. We sat at our table thinking what song would get everyone up on to the dancefloor. We chose I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’. When I asked the DJ to play it he laughed and said: “That’s appropriate.” We danced by ourselves and people started joining us. The party kicked off and we all had a great time. Years later, we played the song at our own wedding. It makes me happy. Rachael, 46, Warrington

The Talking Heads frontman considers the dormant ideas that made a comeback – from Indian irrigation to Kafka

There’s barely been a moment in  the last half-century when David Byrne hasn’t been zinging about, dancing forward, opting odd. The art-school dropout frontman of Talking Heads, he moved sideways into ballet, dance and experimental theatre, collaborated on the proto-ambient LP My Life in the Bush of Ghosts with his fellow polymath Brian Eno, directed films, wrote musicals (on – of course – Imelda Marcos), co-founded a label (Luaka Bop) that introduced the likes of Os Mutantes and William Onyeabor to a new generation, brought out books of tree drawings, and designed bicycle racks.

Byrne’s career – by most measures a remarkably successful one – has been built from code-switching, fidgety intelligence, stylistic infidelity. At first glance then, it’s surprising that Sleeping Beauties is devoted to failure – to artists who were ignored, laughed at, forgotten; to ideas deemed batty or heretical; to ways of thinking about the world – sustaining it, replenishing it – that, often for political reasons, were found wanting, and wiped from our collective memory banks. Sleeping beauties is (of course) a term he first encountered in an academic paper by Leiden University scientometrics professor Ton van Raan. That was in 2004: this book, like a lot of the ideas and energies it animates, needed time to ferment.

The novelist has expanded her devastating 2014 short story about an imagined affair between Daphne du Maurier and a fictional Polish-Jewish housekeeper

The rollcall of notable novels that began life as short stories is surprisingly long and various. Two years before Clarissa Dalloway famously shopped for flowers in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway she was shopping for gloves in Woolf’s short story Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street; Evan S Connell’s Mrs Bridge and Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides began life as stories published in the Paris Review. Rachel Cusk’s story Project, which ran in the New Yorker in September 2025, serves almost word for word as the opening for her new novel, Life of M.

The newest addition to that list is Rose Tremain’s 17th novel, The Housekeeper, which pays homage to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca by imagining the events that might have inspired it. Tremain first explored the idea in a 2014 story, also called The Housekeeper and included in her acclaimed collection The American Lover. Her protagonist, then and now, is Lilianne Danowski, a Polish Jew who fled the pogroms with her father as a child and who presides with reserved efficiency over a large staff at Manderville Hall near Fowey in Cornwall. When Du Maurier comes to lunch, it is Danowski, known to her employers as Danni (Danowski was “a mouthful of fishbones”), who is deputised to show her around the house, who proudly encourages Du Maurier to look through the clothes in her dead mistress’s fastidiously maintained bedroom and takes her down to the boat house. It is Danowski who, after a passionate year-long affair with Du Maurier, will be twisted into the malevolent Mrs Danvers.

The co-founder of the Right to Roam campaign and author of The Book of Trespass discusses the Oxfordshire riverside community he calls home and how Hardwick Hall has been taken back by the people

On the banks of the Thames in South Oxfordshire, the Hardwick estate has been owned by the Rose family for generations. When Sir Charles Rose, a banker, sportsman, yachtsman and aviator, sped through the lanes in his Rolls-Royce in the early days of motoring, he inspired Kenneth Grahame to create Mr Toad in The Wind in the Willows. Grahame’s character became a symbol of decadent aristocracy whose foolishness leads to the temporary loss of a fine house to weasel-socialists.

Now Toad Hall has been taken over for good and Nick Hayes, artist, writer and co-founder of the Right to Roam campaign, has had a riverside view of this striking turn of events. When Hayes, who lives on a beautiful wide-beamed barge on the Thames, became the Hardwick estate’s artist-in-residence, he discovered that Rose’s heirs are, in effect, disinheriting themselves. The estate is gradually being turned into a charity which will be run by the tenants and the alternative community that has grown up in its shelter.

Her last novel sold 5m copies and was adapted into a hit series. Nearly 10 years on, the Korean-American author has written another epic. She discusses ambition and the diagnosis that inspired her to leave work and write

Back in 1995, when she was in her mid-20s, Min Jin Lee quit her job as a corporate lawyer. As a teenager she had been diagnosed as a hepatitis B carrier and doctors told her she was highly likely to develop liver cancer in her 20s or 30s. “I thought, if I’m going to die, I’m going to write a book first,” the now 57-year-old Korean-American author says of her decision to turn her back on a regular pay cheque and healthcare. “I was told so many times that I was going to get sicker and sicker, that I’ve always felt that if I can get a really good book out then I’m done.”

Lee, looking very much alive and well, is on a video call from her home in Harlem, New York, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves behind her. We are meeting to discuss the publication of her third novel, American Hagwon, the final part in what she calls her “Korean trilogy”, following Free Food for Millionaires in 2007 and her 2017 international bestseller, Pachinko, stylishly adapted for Apple TV in 2022. “Korean quartet!” she corrects me now. Thanks to experimental drugs, she is now so healthy she can commit to another book. “Before I turn 70, I should turn in my manuscript,” she jokes. “I’m writing the four books that I wanted to write and after that I’m going to take a long nap.”

Xbox, PC (version tested); The Coalition/Xbox Game Studios
E-Day boasts the best combat in 20 years of Gears games – but everything surrounding it is disappointing

Every Gears of War game released in the last 20 years has made reverent reference to Emergence Day, when alien creatures emerged from the earth, single-minded in their savagery. In E-Day, you’re there to witness it: the police lights, flipped cars, ground tremors, civilians running, aliens pouring out of fissures in the earth and ripping faces off. You’re at ground zero in a squad of four soldiers called Gears – Marcus Fenix, the leader; Dom, who wants to retire; Lucas, a green cadet with a buzzcut; and the dishonourably discharged Mags. Only this dysfunctional quartet can turn the tide. With guns. Lots of ’em.

Instead of answering questions raised by the ending of 2019’s Gears 5, we’re back to the start to find out why Marcus has a scar on his lip and why these soldiers started strapping chainsaws on to their assault rifles. Anything that was left to the imagination is here, for you to point at and say: “I understood that reference. This is a thing that I have seen.”

There’s no Leon, Claire or Ada Wong in Cregger’s adaptation. Instead, it re-creates something more fundamental – the strange, terrifying experience of actually playing the game

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I’ve been surprised by the number of Resident Evil fans complaining on social media about Zach Cregger’s cinematic adaptation of the survival horror series. “It’s not a real Resident Evil movie,” they’ve claimed. Were we watching the same film? Certainly, it doesn’t feature any of the familiar heroes – there’s no Leon, no Claire, no Ada Wong – and there’s a distinct lack of recognisable antagonists and well-known locations. Despite all of this, Cregger’s interpretation is one of the most accurate and interesting video game films ever made.

On the surface, it’s about a zombifying virus that gets accidentally released in Raccoon City by the Umbrella Corporation. These are, of course, the foundations of the Resi mythos. More interestingly, Cregger seeks to replicate and explore the structural and narrative conventions of the series. In the film, the player character, hapless courier Bryan Hodukavich, is thrust into a viral outbreak, with no weapons and no idea what’s going on. He is then submerged into an uncanny shadow world of escalating peril and body horror. The film takes us through a series of locations dragged straight from the games – an abandoned farmhouse, a road tunnel crammed with abandoned cars, a hospital and the obligatory sewer level. As he progresses, Bryan finds increasingly powerful weapons, from a handgun to an assault rifle – but he is always short on ammo. And there are typewriters in at least two scenes!

PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC (version played); Bandai Namco
The game generates blood-pumping moments as you twist, turn and weave through the skies, while your locked-on missiles speed away to obliterate an enemy plane

The core appeal of any Ace Combat game lies in the moment when the beautiful clouds part, the sunlight glints off your perfectly rendered state-of-the-art fighter jet, and guitar-shredding music kicks into overdrive as your locked-on missiles speed away to obliterate an enemy plane. All of that is 100% present in Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve. What’s new is the way it delivers its unexpectedly compelling story.

Set in the Earth-like alternative world of Strangereal, where every country is absolutely obsessed with fighter planes and giant superweapons, Ace Combat drafts you into the role of a fake ace pilot called the Wings of Theve – a propaganda invention to raise the morale of a besieged nation, similar to real-life rumours about Ukraine’s Ghosts of Kyiv. You rapidly find yourself becoming an actual legendary pilot, soaring through the skies with your buddies and raining hell upon your oppressors as everybody cheers on the radio. Speaking of ghosts, you have one in your ear – your predecessor, whom nobody else can hear, a gravelly voice waxing lyrical about flying, war and whatever else is on his mind as you flit about.

I’ve been holed up in an flat, affectionately dubbed the ‘brotel’, with my son for weeks – and we’ve revisited the first game we ever played together

I have spent the last three weeks living with my 22-year-old son in a two-bedroom flat he has dubbed the ”brotel”. We cook curries and watch Lanterns. We barbecue meat and analyse Tarantino movies. We get pizza and we play video games. Boy, do we play video games!

The first game I ever played in co-op with him was Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 in 2009, when he was five. He wasn’t the most accomplished sidekick, not so great at placing a mobile gun turret while under fire from what seems like a bazillion enemy soldiers, but we had a laugh. It started the video game bond between us before his sister introduced him to Banjo-Kazooie and Rayman, and he stopped being a preschool warmonger. Probably for the best. So how would it be tackling the same game nearly two decades later?

Minerva theatre, Chichester
Nina Segal’s revisiting of the Sophoclean story is pleasingly innovative – but not all the ideas work in Jeff James’s fourth-wall breaking production

Libations were typically poured to appease the gods and honour the dead in Ancient Greece, but as a black, tar-like substance is dribbled here, forming a runny circle on a bright yellow stage, the image conjures danger. It’s befitting for the court of this particular King Creon (Max Bennett), whose condemnation of his niece Antigone (Nina Cassells) after she defies him in retrieving her brother’s body for burial, is framed as an inability to even question let alone reconsider his own laws. The tar circle becomes a dividing line, separating the hypothetically welcome from the unwelcome in Thebes. The line is eventually crossed in more ways than one, and the oily substance spreads, smearing those irrevocably affected by the mess.

Nina Segal’s revisiting of the Sophoclean tragedy is keen to explore the far-reaching consequences of our actions and their trickle-down effects. It’s pleasingly experimental, but not all ideas coalesce in Jeff James’s production, in which a combination of fourth-wall breaking and direct address sees the boundaries blur further. Cast members break away from their Greek characters to relay anecdotes that could well be their own. Reaching for a mic that hangs suspended above the stage, one tells of watching a fox decompose, another of a husband dying and another of his teenage daughter’s suicide. The stories are moving, even if links to Antigone’s own plight are somewhat tenuous.

An emphasis is placed on emotions over actions, but having each key player describe their anger, fear or sadness, rather than showing us, has a distancing effect that prevents this production from striking the chords it might. Watching them mine seemingly personal memories in order to find a connection to these centuries-old characters is a little like watching a workshop in method acting.

Antigone Exits runs at the Minerva theatre, Chichester, until 17 October

Chisenhale Gallery, London
A young man possessed by the spirit of a mythical Buganda warrior leads the film-making collective’s explosive new diatribe against the theft of cultural artefacts – with the help of a ‘video joker’

Wakaliga Uganda makes action movies with a cast from the Kampala streets, props built out of scrap, desktop special effects and a bucketload of wit. The studio’s breakout hit, Who Killed Captain Alex?, followed a martial arts master on a mission for revenge against the mafiosi who killed his brother, a Ugandan military officer sent to clean up the capital’s slums. Featuring helicopter gunships, shootouts and kung fu showdowns, and reportedly made for a few hundred dollars, this blockbuster bears little relation to the films you might expect to find in an art gallery (setting aside the shoestring budgets). Which is to say, it is very good fun to watch.

Founded by Harriet Nakasujja and Isaac Nabwana, the film studio also known as Wakaliwood came to the attention of the wider art world in 2017 when it was included in the German art festival Documenta. That influential show was part of a general turn towards the culture being made by independent collectives outside Europe and North America, especially those that pioneer unconventional ways to fund their activities (indicatively, the studio used the money to install fibre-optic cables in its neighbourhood). Its entry on to the international art circuit brought higher production value and – if the new commission now showing at the Chisenhale is any guide – a subtle shift in direction and purpose.

Sylvia: A Musical Revolution, the hit show about the Pankhursts and the suffrage movement, is going on a tour of England and Scotland. We took a first look at Leicester’s Curve theatre

Barbican, London
Spinning off from the classic symphony with composer Caroline Shaw and artist Sarah Crowner, Tanowitz’s dancers find fresh thinking space

Pam Tanowitz’s work is the antidote to the trend in dance for dark and shadowy stages, buckets of theatrical haze, claustrophobic soundscapes and gloopy movement. This stage is so bright and clean, like a sharp palate cleanser, and full of white space – literally, and in a more figurative manner. Tanowitz’s dance can be eccentric, odd even, but it’s also seriously thought-through and specific, every choice utterly distinct and deliberate, every angle planed to the exact degree.

This UK premiere of Pastoral is a collaboration between New York choreographer Tanowitz, Pulitzer prize-winning composer Caroline Shaw and artist Sarah Crowner. Inspired by Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony and the idea of the pastoral in art, Shaw pulls apart and deconstructs the Beethoven, with three live musicians (on various reed instruments) and excerpts of orchestral recordings that emerge like echoes or memories, plus real-world sounds of the street, the skies and the city.

A new documentary by Eleanor Coppola goes behind the scenes on her daughter’s 2006 punk classic, Marie Antoinette. To mark its release, Sofia Coppola will be taking your questions

To say that Sofia Coppola grew up on screen would be an understatement. The youngest child and only daughter of filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola and documentary-maker Eleanor Coppola, she appeared in all three Godfather films: as the baby being christened in 1972’s The Godfather, as a child on the steamboat in 1974’s The Godfather Part II, and, aged 19, as Mary Corleone in 1990’s The Godfather Part III.

In between came small roles in several of her dad’s films, including 1983’s The Outsiders and Rumble Fish, 1984’s The Cotton Club and 1986’s Peggy Sue Got Married, in which she played Kathleen Turner’s younger sister Nancy. She also popped up all over 1990s music videos, playing a wild-eyed Joan Crawford in Sonic Youth’s 1990 Mildred Pierce, a troubled drifter in the Black Crowes’ 1992 Sometimes Salvation, one of Madonna’s clubbing friends in 1992’s Deeper and Deeper, and an injured gymnast in the Chemical Brothers’ 1997 Elektrobank, directed by her then-boyfriend Spike Jonze.

The actor will perform famous TV sketches – as well as new material created with Richard Curtis, Ben Elton and Howard Goodall – in Rowan Live, which opens in February

Rowan Atkinson will return to the stage next year to play Blackadder, Mr Bean and other comic characters from across his career in a West End show, Rowan Live. The production, which will have a short run of 30 performances, is to feature new routines as well as his famous sketches from TV shows including Not the Nine O’Clock News.

“It is 40 years since I last did a comedy sketch show in the West End,” said Atkinson. “I thought it would be fun to perform again the sketches that began it all for myself and [writer] Richard Curtis, and in which my most well-known characters originated, alongside some surprise new material written especially for this show.” He and Curtis will be collaborating once more with Blackadder writer Ben Elton and its composer Howard Goodall.

At a landmark exhibition at New York’s Met Museum, Mrs Pollock finally steps out of her spouse’s shadow

In addition to managing her own career as an artist and being a devoted partner to an often unpredictable and tumultuous Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner had at least one other duty – acting as the unofficial publicist to her husband’s career.

“She was a great champion of Pollock’s work, but also so aware of the gender politics of the time,” says curator David Breslin, who alongside Brinda Kumar worked for three long years to bring a new blockbuster dual show, exploring the arc of Pollock’s and Krasner’s careers, to the public at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. “She was such a realist, she knew if there was one person in the couple who would sell, it was him. She wanted to pay the bills.

Alejandro G Iñárritu’s critically panned satire took just $20m globally in its opening weekend, against a reported $150m production budget and $100m marketing spend

Digger has flopped in its opening weekend with a $20m global box office, handing Tom Cruise one of the worst debuts of his career and serving as a bitter final note for Warner Bros as a standalone studio.

Alejandro G Iñárritu’s critically panned satire grossed a paltry $8m at the North American box office. Cruise is typically a big draw overseas, but international sales – $12m from 74 markets – were also weak.

The classic pre-dinner drink and snack combo varies depending where you are in Italy. In this fair city, it’s an institution that can even be enjoyed first thing

I arrived in Verona, I admit, without a particularly clear idea of what aperitivo meant. In Italy, the ritual – broadly, a drink and something small to eat before a meal – speaks a different dialect in every city.

Milan has turned it into a polished after-work institution. In Venice, it is more itinerant: an ombra (a small glass of wine) along with a cicchetto (a bite-size snack) and then on to the next bacaro (one of the city’s traditional wine bars). Verona follows another logic.

Did a Tory voter who opposes all censorship offend a leftwinger concerned about how people treat one another?

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

Ted, 24, London

Occupation Works for a thinktank

Which salty condiment nails that deep flavour profile, and which is saltier than the sea? Our resident taster tries 10 soy sauces straight from the bottle

• The best supermarket kimchi

Soy sauce was created in China about 2,200 years ago, as a means to preserve food and to zhoosh up the humble vegetarian Buddhist diet. It’s a demonstration in kokumi – literally “rich taste” – a flavour sensation that’s often called the sixth taste.

I tested all of today’s soy sauces straight from the bottle, in all their intensity. I first identified distinctive aromas such as cooked potato, sulphur and broth (all typical in soy sauce and not as off-putting as they sound), alongside caramel and malty notes. The best ones are more nuanced, with fruity high notes and vinous tones.

Steam through the laundry pile with our expert’s top picks for smoothing creases on cotton, linen, silk and more

• How to look after your knitwear

I grew up in a household where everything was ironed. And I mean everything: tea towels, pyjamas, bath mats. Perhaps as a result of watching my mother (and yes, it was always my mother) spend hours every week standing at an ironing board, I revolted. My heart sinks every time I have to go into battle with an iron. But how do we banish irons while still getting linen trousers to look crisp? I present the clothes steamer.

Clothes steamers use heat and moisture rather than pressure to smooth fabric. A small onboard tank heats water into a steady flow of steam, which you run over garments while they hang. Instead of pressing fibres flat like an iron, the steam causes them to swell and relax, releasing creases without the need for an ironing board.

From bullets to rabbits to wand vibrators, our sexual wellbeing expert demystifies what’s available and rates her top 17 models (she tested 67)

• 26 easy ways to spice up your sex life

I could write here about how almost a fifth of women surveyed by Durex said using a sex toy was the most dependable way for them to climax. Or I could point out how Kinsey Institute research suggests regular masturbation can help relieve and prevent symptoms of menopause, such as vaginal atrophy. I could even tell you that studies demonstrate a significant correlation between intimate toy ownership and greater satisfaction – not only with sex but also with life itself.

But the potted version is that orgasms and erotic pleasure are glorious, and top-class toys can help you savour more of both. So here are the best vibrators available. Scroll to the bottom to find out how I selected these vibrators from the 67 I tested for this piece.

Trekking poles can improve balance on uneven terrain and reduce stress on joints. Our seasoned adventurer put 10 to the test to find the best

• ‘I’d never head out without one’: 10 hiking essentials

Oh, I would walk 500 miles – with the help of a trusty pole. A walking pole – or two – makes a surprisingly handy addition to your hiking kit, helping with balance on uneven terrain, taking strain away from your legs and knees, and making going up and down hills much easier. I first tried walking poles when I went trekking in the Himalayas – now, I wouldn’t be without one on rugged terrain, but they can be just as helpful on a casual stroll.

Hiking poles are typically used as a pair, and the idea is to swing each pole in time with the opposite foot as you move forwards: right foot and left pole, then left foot and right pole, in a rhythm. You can also use poles singly to keep a hand free or to take the weight off one side of your body.

A spice-rich twist on a classic soup, and poached eggs with garlic yoghurt and green chutney

While purists might scoff and find the combination of spices in my French onion soup a little blasphemous, do give it a shot. Nigella seeds are the best flavour-enhancer for onions, while using ghee instead of butter adds a warm, nutty, caramel flavour. Then, my Indian-inspired twist on çılbır, the classic Turkish breakfast of poached eggs with yoghurt. It features my go-to poached egg method, which I learned from Nigella Lawson.

A tomatoey, southern Italian alternative to moules marinière – but who makes the definitive version?

Abundant, good value and ready in minutes, mussels are one of my favourite seafoods, but when it comes to preparing them, I rarely look farther than northern France. Italians, of course, also eat mussels, and this tomato-rich recipe is a particular favourite in the south – Neapolitans traditionally tuck into zuppa di cozze on Maundy Thursday but it’s found on menus all year round. With its bold flavours and oily, garlicky sauce, it’s a great alternative to creamy moules marinières, and similarly needs no accompaniment but a hunk of bread to make a meal, though chips, of course, are rarely unwelcome.

The whole point of going to Claridge’s in the first place is to sweep in through the grand main hotel entrance

Dante Mayfair, inside Claridge’s on Brook Street in London, has been created, the hotel’s management says, to become “the living room of Mayfair”. It’s a charming idea: pop in, have a cuppa or a bowl of pappardelle bolognese, or lie about on the fancy sofas wearing elasticated tracksuit bottoms and slurping soft-serve with s’mores. No, sorry, I’ve gone too far: it’s nowhere near that informal.

Still, like many well-used living rooms, this one has been rearranged, redecorated and repurposed many times over the years. I’ve eaten fancy-schmancy Simon Rogan dinners here when it was Fera, as well as his table experience at Aulis during which venture capitalist “foodies” bored the pants off me over a 12-course meal in the kitchen itself. I’ve stared unmoved at Daniel Humm’s New York-style pomp at the short-lived Davies and Brook, and have visited several times since Claridge’s took matters in-house in the shape of a rather anonymous ye olde British brasserie.

A worthy, meat-free version of the best comfort dish ever, this French classic is best served with a chilled red and a crisp salad

This is the best comfort dish on planet Earth. Cauliflower cheese held that title when I was a child, but I still remember the first time I ate this gratin, made by Simon Hopkinson at his restaurant Hilaire in London, and wanting to take it away and eat it in a quiet corner. Endive when braised well retains a gentle bitterness that contrasts beautifully with a cheese-heavy bechamel. This dish is traditionally made with comté and with each endive wrapped in a slice of cooked ham, but some dark, crisp-fried mushrooms and emmental serve very well as good, savoury vegetarian alternatives.

Henry Harris is chef/co-owner of Bouchon Racine, London EC1. His book, The Racine Effect, is published by Quadrille at £40. To order a copy for £36, go to guardianbookshop.com

LD is the submissive to Lady Alice’s dominatrix – and it has been a revelation for them both

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

I have cerebral palsy and live with my parents. Lady Alice is a delicious secret

You can be curious about others’ beliefs without compromising your own

Recently, I had a conversation with a friend who explained that her ill health was down to reasons I would describe as dubious. Taking certain supplements and changing her diet have significantly improved her health. Good for her. However, she was disappointed and a little annoyed that I didn’t share her outrage and wasn’t going to follow her views.

I’ve got another friend who thinks cholesterol is a lie and that we should live largely on meat (and supplements). Another went through a sugar causes cancer phase. And another is sceptical of vaccines. Each of them may be right. They might not. We are learning more about the human body every day. But I was raised by scientists and I want to see a large-scale trial before I get outraged and change the way I live. Equally, I’m not convinced that a lightly regulated for-profit industry (supplements) is automatically more trustworthy than a highly regulated for-profit one (pharma).

Conor Curran’s first date with Chris lasted nine hours but their relationship remained casual. Then, when Conor was at his most vulnerable, Chris was there for him

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

At 29 I had lost my career in hospitality because of Covid and decided to throw my hat in the ring as a contestant on MasterChef Australia. By the time I was eliminated in 2021, restaurants still weren’t open and I didn’t know what to do with my life. My lease was coming to an end in Melbourne and I wasn’t doing well with the lockdowns and people recognising me from TV. So I decided to retreat to my father’s place in Adelaide for a while.

By early 2022 I was dating a guy but, after a few months, he ghosted me suddenly.

Instead of asking her to step away from her distress, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith, could you suggest she channel it into action?

• Read more Leading questions

My wife is obsessed with everything that’s happening in the US. She literally spends all day sitting on the couch, watching videos and reading opinion pieces. She’s originally from America and has been living abroad for 25 years and she has family in the US, so I get that she needs to feel connected to what’s happening. But it’s constant. Whether we’re eating, watching a TV show or movie, when we’re talking about something completely unrelated – everything, every topic, either starts or ends with outrage.

I’ve told her she needs to take at least one day off all social media, but she won’t do that even for an hour. It stresses her out more and more every day, but she just keeps going back to it – and it has been really affecting me, more lately than ever. On weekends I stay up late playing games (my way of winding down after a week of work) and she’ll go to bed early. And during those times sometimes I just sit and cry. Everything that’s happening is so stressful, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I just wish I could rip away her phone and let her breathe! I don’t know what to say or do. Is there anything that could help?

Sykes Holiday Cottages showed no empathy and insisted on paperwork we didn’t have so soon after my husband’s death

We booked a break with Sykes Holiday Cottages for 11 of us to celebrate my mum’s 80th birthday last February. The cost was £2,400, paid for by my 87-year-old dad, but it was my husband who made the booking.

In January, my husband was diagnosed with aggressive lymphoma, and he died 10 days before the trip. My parents and some other members of the party still planned to take the holiday, and my dad informed Sykes of the death, since my husband was their point of contact.

Scammers reuse personal details harvested from fake Esta websites – and texts and calls can keep arriving for months

When the British actor Lisa Riley was preparing to travel to the US last year, she applied online for an Esta so she would not need a visa. After finding the site through a Google search she filled in her passport, bank and personal details and waited for the confirmation, which normally takes just under an hour.

When it failed to arrive, she emailed an address from the site where she had paid and got back a message unlike any she had seen before, with a link to a website that displayed a jumble of words and letters.

The Naylors’ four-bedroom home in Milton Keynes acts like a mini-power station after retrofitting solar panels, a battery and a heat pump

Clare Naylor paid close attention to how much energy she and her family were using last winter, filling hot-water bottles and bringing out extra blankets to ensure they didn’t go over budget. This year, she won’t have to worry as she is guaranteed not to receive a bill.

While millions of British households face the highest energy charges in three years from this week after a 4% rise in the price cap, and predictions of a 16% increase in January, upgrades to Naylor’s home mean she will not have to pay a thing.

From a neo-baronial country house with turrets in acres of grounds in Scotland to a modernist tower block in a bustling part of London

For years, eating was something to control, fear or regret. After I hunted my first deer, I started to see fat, hunger and my own body in a different light

I muffled my sobs with a pillow so my family couldn’t hear me from the adjacent room. I was 19 years old and we were in Paris, staying on the top floor of an old six-story walkup where every step echoed through the thin walls. I was trying, and failing, to hide the emotional war I had decided to wage on my body. Who does that on a family vacation? In Europe, no less?

Pulling tear-soaked strands of hair off my cheeks, I stood in front of a full-length mirror and grabbed the fat of my thighs. If only I could just – I pictured ripping off fistfuls of my body and flinging them out the windows, where they would land on some unknowing French person six stories below. I had this vision often: pulling bits of myself off and casting them somewhere far away from me.

Formerly a favourite of the A-list, the chain has abruptly ceased trading, leaving teachers and customers blindsided

Kate Comer is a single mother with two children, so she is used to living on a financial knife-edge. But when the yoga studio at which she taught closed without warning in September, leaving her with two months’ worth of unpaid wages, it sent her anxiety skyrocketing.

“I’m just reeling right now,” she said, estimating her loss at about £1,500. “I’m very concerned about the future.”

Experts say that if you’re eating any berry – strawberries, blackberries, currants, raspberries, blueberries – you are benefiting

Sprinkled on top of yoghurt, blended into smoothies or baked into crumbles, berries are among Americans’ favorite fruits.

Luckily, berries are as healthy as they are delicious and versatile: low in calories, full of vitamins and antioxidants, and a good source of fiber. Research shows that, depending on the type, berries support cardiovascular health, may boost gut health and fight inflammation and show promise as part of a “healthy dietary strategy for diabetes prevention and management”, to quote researchers. Meta-analyses also link compounds in berries with improved cognitive health.

The internet is full of warnings about our ‘dysregulated’ nervous systems. But, experts say, you don’t need to reset yours – you might just need to make it more flexible. Here’s how (and no, you don’t need an acupressure mat)

Whether it’s tapping the side of your hand or standing on a vibrating plate, suggestions on how to “reset” your nervous system are saturating the internet. Cold water plunges, humming, gargling, yawning and spiky acupressure mats are all being touted as ways to help us “regulate” and return to calm. If you’re still talking about feeling “stressed”, you’re behind the times; now, says the internet, you are “dysregulated”.

The nervous system is an integral part of being human. “It’s essentially the body’s communication and control network,” says Dr Serena Lai, consultant psychiatrist and associate medical director at London Psychiatry Clinic. “Made up of the brain and spinal cord, it communicates with the entire body through nerves, helping us to sense what is happening around and inside us. When we have that information, we can process it and coordinate a response.”

Brand’s signature desire to subvert the ordinary brings blazers with track pants and crop tops under blazers to Paris fashion week

Speaking backstage at Miu Miu’s show on Sunday at Paris fashion week, Miuccia Prada said she had been thinking about “real clothes”. The clothes people wear on the street for running errands rather than posing on social media. Her findings? Succinct. “The reality of clothing today is this mix – sportswear, casual, normal,” she said. Her challenge? To make them “more interesting, more rich”. To achieve this, she outlined how she had decided to focus on mixing “elements of sports with sophistication”.

The collection opened with a series of five neatly pleated checked skirts. The first was worn with an equally neat checked blazer but rather than a smart shoe, such as a pump or loafers, there were brightly coloured trainers. The second featured a crop top under the blazer, the trainers swapped for spiky high heels. The other looks ditched the blazer and clipped the tops so they sat just under the bust line.

Olivia Colman and Lisa Bonet are among the stars going silver – but workplace ageism means many women still fear ditching the dye

To dye, or not to dye. That is the decision many people, particularly women, face when their hair starts to grey.

This week Olivia Colman joined the growing ranks of women embracing grey hair and ditching the dye. Appearing at Zurich film festival, Colman had swapped her dark signature pixie cut for a grey, curly mane swept to one side.

From pillboxes and boaters to bicornes and buckets, characterful hats are making their way from the catwalk to the high street

“Here goes – an order for a million hats,” wrote Jackie Kennedy to Bergdorf Goodman before moving into the White House in the early 1960s. It’s a line that could have been uttered by any number of people working in fashion today, because the hat – and not just the ubiquitous baseball cap – has been enjoying a very characterful resurgence.

This season at the turbo-high-end brand Loro Piana, whose clothes are beloved by tech bros and Kendall Roy, almost every model was wearing a hat. At Thom Browne, straw boaters came shrouded in colourful mesh. At Chloé there were see-through hats to match see-through trenchcoats and white sailor hats atop all-white outfits. Courrège’s hats were space-age, Burberry had big buckets, Bottega Veneta had hats brimming with charisma.

American in Paris showcases new simplicity with stretch cocktail frocks, but there’s still plenty of gold-foiled nipples and peekaboo fabrics to wow the frow

In a world of mega brands, the house of Schiaparelli is small but perfectly formed. There are only 10 points of sale worldwide where Schiaparelli clothes can be bought. The size of the business has risen from $6m in 2020 to around $100m today, but Schiaparelli is still small fry compared with other names on the Paris catwalks.

However, the Schiaparelli name punches above its weight. An exhibition at London’s V&A museum this year made a strong case for its founder, Elsa Schiaparelli, who collaborated with Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau, as a creative force in the surrealism movement of the 1930s.

A world away from the tourist hotspots of the coast, Extremadura and Castile and León offer unpolluted skies, lower prices – and hope for the future of vulnerable wildlife

As photographed at night from a satellite, or the International Space Station (ISS), the Iberian peninsula looks encrusted with lights along its coastal edges. Madrid forms a big pulsing cluster near the centre, while surrounding hinterlands appear as something of a void. Ever fewer people live out in Castile and León and Extremadura, adjoining regions that cover much of what is known as La España Vacía, or “Empty Spain”.

Not many visit either, or at least not compared with Barcelona and other glowing nodes of the tourist circuit. So, while the big ports and resorts struggle to manage surplus holidaymakers, there is room for plenty more out west, toward the Portuguese border. Some have been following the stars that way lately, under the auspices of an astrotourism initiative called Extremadura Buenas Noches.

As Michael Sheen prepares to bring Owain Glyndŵr to life on stage, our writer walks the peaceful national trail named after the last Welsh Prince of Wales

Between the treetops, I can see the towers of a distant mist-shrouded castle. Is it possible I could make contact with the spirit of the great Welsh hero Owain Glyndŵr so soon, at the very start of our hike? We are not even on the actual trail of Glyndŵr’s Way. I’ve had to make a detour to find accommodation that takes dogs, as Stevie the terrier is with me. The Castle Inn at Knucklas is a mile off the route, and two miles or so from the pretty border town of Knighton – where the 135-mile (217km) Glyndŵr’s Way officially begins.

The towers slide away behind trees and a railway viaduct emerges. The medieval castle ruins, it turns out, are believed to have been plundered to build the viaduct in the 1860s, and the builders dropped in a couple of crenelated towers to honour the origins of the stone. I fear this may be an early omen: the spirit of Glyndŵr will be as elusive as the man himself was in his lifetime.

From cycling in Berlin and the Black Forest to world-class cocktail bars in Cologne and magical North Sea beaches, readers share their travel tips

• Tell us about a sunny autumn break – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

In an often overlooked corner of Germany, near the Dutch border, Münster is an absolute gem. Covered porticos will convince you you’re in northern Italy, gothic churches will remind you you’re in Mitteleuropa and the buns from Zeit für Brot will insist you’re in heaven. Nature-lovers can take in the Botanical Gardens and relax by the Münstersche Aa river. Those of a historical bent can peek into the room where the Treaty of Westphalia was signed in 1648 and mull the report card of nation states in the nearly 400 years since. But really, it’s a great place just to drop-anchor and lose a few days.
Jeremy

A ride in a water taxi transforms a stunning hike from Lyme Regis to West Bay into a perfect circular route

Many favour a circular walk, but you can give a linear one new shape with the addition of a novel form of transport. My wife Helen, our friend Tom Cox and I take the water taxi – a rigid inflatable boat (Rib) – from West Bay on Dorset’s coast to Lyme Regis, with a plan to walk back to our starting point.

The rain stops as the boat leaves the harbour, the views open along Chesil Beach to low-lying Portland to the east, and west to Lyme Regis; on the far horizon, we can see Start Point on the Devon coast. Our skipper, Nick, is highly knowledgable and takes time to stop and point out the history of the shoreline and the treacherous waters of Lyme Bay. The seabed is studded with wrecks – fishing boats and smugglers’ ships, but some are from the two world wars.

If you want to seriously oxygenate your rooms with greenery, you’re going to need a lot of space

‘Plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen when they photosynthesise,” says John Tregoning, a professor at Imperial College London and author of Live Forever? A Curious Scientist’s Guide to Wellness, Ageing and Death. “If you’ve got enough of them, they should produce more oxygen than there was initially.”

It’s tempting to think of plants as a kind of natural air filter, cleaning the air in stuffy, poorly ventilated spaces. But the reality is different.

It’s a powerful analogy that captured the popular imagination, but the biological reality is quite different

Humans have a cognitive quirk for the number three. Think of the many stories that use it, from The Three Little Pigs to Goldilocks and the Three Bears and The Three Musketeers. Public information and political campaigns use it for impact and ease of recall (“Stop, look and listen”; “See it. Say it. Sorted”; “Reduce, reuse, recycle”). And then there are psychological or philosophical frameworks: Freud with his id, ego and superego; Plato’s three parts of the human soul; the Holy Trinity.

Well, it turns out neuroscience isn’t immune from tri-mania. In 1959 Paul D MacLean set out a new way of thinking about the evolution and function of the brain, which he christened the “triune” – three-in-one – model. It quickly became one of best known and most enduring concepts in human biology. His idea was that a trio of distinct brains are layered inside our skulls, one on top of the other, all fighting to generate our feelings and thoughts.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on various subjects considers a numerological conundrum

This week’s question: Why are national anthems almost always orchestral?

I tried recently to buy sticky vinyl numbers for a new wheelie bin. At two stores, I could find every number from 0 to 9 except the number 3, which I wanted. Is it possible that 3 could be more common in UK street addresses than other numbers?
John Gorrill at No 31, Oxford

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

A teenager struggling with climate anxiety searches for hope in an unexpected place – writing letters to imprisoned activists. Max, 14, is on a quest to understand the human stories behind direct action and why so many climate protesters are in prison​. As replies begin to arrive, a dialogue bridging generations unfolds and connection transforms despair into purpose. ​When Max writes to the judge presiding over a high-profile trial​, he is surprised to hear the letter referred to in the judge's closing remarks

After Turkish police found drugs on board the Phoenician M, the ship’s chief mate, Ali Albokhari, was sentenced to 30 years in prison. His wife is still fighting to free him

In the early hours of 6 October 2023, Elena Albokhari was woken by a text message from her husband. Ali Albokhari, 42, a Finnish-Syrian with dark hair and cherubic features, was chief mate on a cargo ship named the Phoenician M and had been at sea since June. The 180-metre bulk carrier had docked at Ereğli in the Turkish Black Sea a few days earlier and Ali was due to return home to Helsinki soon, but instead of feeling excitement, Elena was growing increasingly worried about his welfare.

She’d had a similar feeling of unease a month earlier, when the ship had arrived at Barranquilla, Colombia. Ali had called in a panic to report that drugs had been found; Armada Nacional officers had marched onboard and uncovered holdalls stuffed with 137kg cocaine. Labels on the packages – the crest of Turkish football club Kayserispor – hinted at their destination: Turkey was the next port of call. “I never want to work as a seaman again,” Ali told Elena. “We are having big problems.”

A Ukrainian publishing boom sparked by the 2022 invasion is now under threat from the force and frequency of Russian attacks

On a Saturday morning in August, Viktor Kruglov, the co-founder and chief executive of the publisher Ranok, was at his headquarters in Kharkiv – the eastern Ukrainian city that, along with Kyiv, is the centre of the country’s publishing and printing industry. Built 15 years ago on the site of a former bread factory, the footprint of the premises is about 10,000 sq metres (107,640ft). Books were stacked 12 metres high on rank after rank of shelves.

Kruglov, along with five senior colleagues, were on the warehouse floor to discuss the approaching school year. The warehouse was holding 628,000 new schoolbooks. “It was the high season of distribution,” he said, “so we were checking all our processes: how to do it more successfully, how to do it in time.”

By over-committing to the bit, I’m in danger of becoming the very thing that I mock

There was a kid in my year in high school named Jimmy Tremarelli. We were in a couple of the same classes, and also had occasion to pass each other in the hall between bells about three times a day. Whenever we did Jimmy would nod and say, “Dr Dowling”, and I would say, “Dr Tremarelli”. And then we’d carry on in opposite directions.

Over the years the pretence became gradually more elaborate. Sometimes Jim would steal up alongside me at the end of class, cupping my elbow in the palm of his hand.

Much is made of the decision to try to preserve fertility but less explored are the choices that come afterwards. We want to hear from people about what happened next

Oocyte cryopreservation, more commonly known as egg freezing, has been around for decades but the procedure stopped being considered experimental in 2012. Since then, elective egg freezing has boomed. Often represented as an insurance policy against age- or illness-related fertility decline, the process can be costly and complex.

While figures vary, research suggests most people who undergo egg freezing never access their eggs and results are mixed for those who do. Long-term storage poses its own costs and questions.

Are you making cutbacks in light of the price increases?

The average price of diesel in the UK climbed to a record £2 a litre on 2 October.

The price of a litre at UK forecourts has risen 40.5% since late February, when the US-Israel war on Iran began disrupting supplies of crude and refined oil products from the Gulf, leading to cost increases across the economy.

Perhaps you lost your home or possessions in a wildfire, or your mountain business has been affected by glacial retreat and snow scarcity

Has direct experience of a global climate event where you live changed how you now view the climate crisis?

Perhaps you were sceptical or even denied the climate crisis before the impact of recent global climactic events.

How has loneliness affected you? Please share your experience

We live in an age where we have better tools for communication and connection than ever before, and yet we are in the midst of a loneliness epidemic.

In 2025, a World Health Organization report identified that 1 in 6 people globally are lonely. The report defined loneliness as “the painful feeling that arises from a gap between desired and actual social connections.” Perhaps, most strikingly, the age bracket that had the highest levels of loneliness was 13–29-year-olds.

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