The Adolescence actor and the psychologist Orly Klein asked fathers to write to their sons. The results – from famous dads to the wisdom of strangers – were moving and motivating. Here’s a selection

What can I say? From the moment you and your sister were born my heart has been full of a love I never thought was humanly possible. As a baby you were filled with wonder and so much energy. You had a beautiful, mischievous and inquisitive nature, which has always made me smile. You were climbing, running and jumping everywhere. You’d walk into a room wearing shoes that were four times, five times, 10 times too big for you … Sometimes they were ye mother’s.

From the blissful threat of ‘death by chocolate’, to a book made of sponge and the lemon drizzle to end them all, these are the bakes that left the biggest impressions

The Sorting Hat sponge I made for my son’s Harry Potter party is not the best cake I’ve ever tasted. That would be anything baked by my granny, or the coffee religieuse (a choux pastry puff) I ate in Boulogne-sur-Mer with my mum. But it’s the most surprisingly edible cake I’ve ever made – a vaguely Jamie-Oliver recipe with buttercream filling and tinned mandarin slices. It didn’t only work; it tasted great, and wasn’t quite as teeth-screechingly sweet as expected. My one regret is that I over-pimped the decoration: it looked so sinister in the fridge with its cold, Sorting Hat stare that the next day I stuck on googly eyes and further sparkles. This perhaps explains why everyone assumed it was a poo emoji cake, despite it being a Harry Potter party with heavy-touch theming. That people thought I actually wanted children to eat shit is a shame, but it still remains my greatest culinary success. Catherine Shoard

The Irishman seems a dead cert for his performance as Ian Charleson in Elsinore. And his ability to avoid being pigeonholed while embracing queer stories, from Pride to All of Us Strangers, is a remarkable achievement

This Sunday, the curtain falls on the Toronto film festival, the last of the three big autumn showcases – alongside Venice and Telluride – that are launchpads for award campaigns. And as the dust settles on the red carpets, one name rises above the others as destined for sure-fire glory: Andrew Scott.

The Irish actor, 50 next month, is now not only considered a lock for a leading actor Oscar nomination but almost certain to take the prize next spring. Should he win, he will become the first out gay actor to do so in the Academy’s almost 100-year history.

Sensors that monitor vehicle volume are said to be ‘electronic assault weapons’ by the ‘Blade Runners’ group

At the top of an extendable ladder on a quiet street of Ilfracombe, in Devon, an older woman dressed smartly in cropped trousers, a red rain jacket and matching red socks is chopping at some wires at the top of a set of traffic lights with a small pair of pliers.

A grey-haired man holding a takeaway coffee supports the ladder, while others, filming their activities, give encouragement from behind the camera. “Yeah, that’s how you do it,” says one man. “Just cut the wires.”

Jobs and programme budgets in firing line at BBC, Channel 4 and ITV as they are outgunned by YouTube and Netflix

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the BBC or Channel 4 disappeared,” says one of the thousands of TV staff at risk of redundancy, as British broadcasters face what has rapidly become a fight for survival against US digital rivals.

“My generation grew up with Netflix and YouTube … Honestly, I feel like it is a losing battle.”

Moment of reckoning for ‘Mr Nice Guy’ of music, who embraced Macklemore’s political cred only for pro-Palestine rapper to be dropped under pressure from billionaire

Ed Sheeran has long been known as the “Mr Nice Guy” of music. His is an unthreatening kind of pop stardom; he looks and talks like the bloke who might be standing behind you in a pub, rather than someone selling out stadiums. He champions other artists, he celebrates different cultures. His songs are about love, heartbreak and friendship. People get engaged at his concerts.

But this week, one of the most successful musicians in the world faced the biggest controversy of his career, and found himself dragged into exactly the kind of political row he has spent his career avoiding.

Exclusive: A total £179m has been donated by wealthy individuals since 2019, research reveals

British politics is increasingly being funded by individual billionaires with a wave of mega-donations having flooded into UK political parties over the past two parliaments.

A total £179m has been donated by wealthy individuals since 2019, research reveals.

The fact that some migrants pay people smugglers thousands of pounds makes them well off, MP claims

Asylum seekers who arrive on small boats across the Channel are “wealthy men” who do not deserve the help of the British state, according to the Reform UK MP Danny Kruger.

The former Conservative, who defected last year, said the fact that some migrants were paying people smugglers thousands of pounds – often using their life savings or borrowed money – made them well off. The claim was immediately dismissed by charities who support refugees.

British Museum chair tells Big Brue festival he thought no one would find out about the private viewing

George Osborne has said he thought no one would find out about a private viewing of the Bayeux tapestry he organised for the tech billionaire Peter Thiel at the British Museum.

The former chancellor, who is chair of the museum, told the Big Brue festival in Somerset that he had been on holiday when the Thiel was shown the medieval artwork.

Statement sought to clarify Trump’s announcement that US will have ‘permanent control’ over Greenland’s security

Denmark and Greenland have said any agreement with the US to develop a significant military presence in the strategic Arctic territory will not compromise Greenland’s sovereignty.

In a statement on Saturday clarifying an announcement by Donald Trump that an agreement had been reached to give Washington “permanent control” ⁠over Greenland’s security, Denmark and the semiautonomous territory ⁠expressed hope that a deal would end friction with the US over the issue.

Authorities also issued warnings for Jeddah and Yanbu, a major industrial port and home to vital oil facilities

Flames and a large plume of black smoke were seen rising above Riyadh airport in Saudi Arabia on Saturday after the government sent air raid alerts to citizens by phone overnight warning of aerial attacks.

Explosions were heard in the capital as firefighters battled to extinguish the flames of a burning fuel tank emblazoned with the logo of the Saudi oil company Aramco near the city’s King Khalid international airport.

Patrick Clancy and wife Rachel Danis to speak publicly on 60 Minutes on Sunday about Massachusetts murder trial

Patrick Clancy and his wife Rachel Danis are set to describe their experiences of the Massachusetts triple-murder trial of his former wife Lindsay Clancy, with Clancy telling 60 Minutes: “I live with it every day, but I think I did the best I could.”

The couple will on Sunday night make their first public comments on the case. CBS has been trailing excerpts of the broadcast.

Steven Kolb of the Council of Fashion Designers of America was filmed during an altercation at New York fashion week

The chief executive of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, Steven Kolb, has resigned after he was filmed physically restraining two animal rights activists during an altercation at New York fashion week.

“After 20 years leading the CFDA, I have made the difficult decision to step down as CEO and president,” Kolb said in a statement. “I am enormously proud of what we have built together and believe this is the right moment for both me and the organisation to begin a new chapter.”

Co-owner of Manchester United says Britain is in decline because of high taxes and immigration

Manchester United’s Muslim supporters’ club (MUMSC) has called for the Premier League side’s co-owner to step down in response to his “completely unacceptable” comments during a BBC interview.

Sir Jim Ratcliffe described the UK as being a country “on the slide” from the days when it had “the greatest empire in the world”.

So much for the new Invincibles. Arsenal were brought back down to earth with a shuddering bump by a scintillating display from Brighton as Fabian Hurzeler’s vibrant side celebrated the club’s 125th anniversary in style.

The special edition shirts they wore to mark the occasion will end up being collector’s items after the Premier League champions were ripped apart. Arsenal were attempting to record an eighth successive victory in all competitions to start the new campaign for the first time since 1903 when they were still known as Woolwich Arsenal.

The president has threatened to block renovations and suggested the landmark could be demolished after courts ruled against his bid to rename it

It was born with the world premiere of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. “Young people will come here and they will see this cultural centre,” Rose Kennedy, the mother of slain US president John F Kennedy, said at that opening night gala. “They will carry some of these ideas back to their different communities.”

More than half a century later, the potential death knell came just after 4.30pm on Tuesday with a perfunctory announcement on the public address system: “The centre is now closed to the public. Please exit the centre by way of the Hall of States.” Soon barricades had been erected and security guards were blocking access.

Images of two actors on front of Vogue and GQ land at a time when masculinity is increasingly dominating headlines

Tom Cruise and Michael B Jordan share many similarities as box-office powerhouses known for their death-defying action hero stunts. But this week the two stars went head-to-head, or more accurately chest-to-chest, on magazine stands.

In one corner there’s 64-year-old Cruise on the cover of GQ, his first for the magazine in 20 years. Posing in an unbuttoned shirt, one hand running through his tousled hair, the other gripping his belt buckle, this is Cruise playing the role of sexy Cruise.

Which supermarket syrups ooze with potential? We put 10 of the finest, grade-A bottles to the test

• The best supermarket runny honey

Though today’s maple syrups vary dramatically in intensity, complexity and taste, they’re all of decent quality and have that classic and unmistakable flavour. I avoided blended or maple-flavoured syrups for this test, and instead tried only 100% pure, grade-A maple syrups, using Agriculture Canada’s flavour wheel and four-step tasting process as a guide. I poured a small shot into a glass to observe the colour. Then I followed the tasting process: I smelled the syrup with three quick sniffs, took a small sip and swirled it around my mouth before contemplating the flavours. Step four is to assess the flavour intensity. Alongside appearance, aroma, texture and taste, I awarded extra points for specific provenance and organic certifications, as well as for value.

Prices vary greatly, and although the dearest bottles taste divine, so do the cheapest. Each pure maple syrup is unique in flavour, with nuanced notes from mild clove tones to intense, woody and almost menthol-like piney flavours. Like wine, maple syrup has the tang of its terroir: it’s an artisanal product that tastes of the land.

Thousands of knock-off records worth a fortune are being seized in the UK by anti-counterfeit police stings

From 2017 onwards, Rehan Ahmed styled himself as a savvy business owner. But behind the facade of a successful entrepreneur lurked one stark fact: his empire was built on fakery.

On Friday, the man behind the biggest-ever UK case of producing fraudulent vinyl, who sold counterfeit copies of records by some of the world’s biggest artists including Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Kendrick Lamar, was jailed.

Byre theatre, St Andrews
Warm-up routines lead into a reverie about life on the stage in Company Chordelia’s funny, carefully calibrated show

The inevitable aches and sprains of an ageing body take on heightened significance for a seasoned dancer turning up to work each day. Revel by Company Chordelia is a whimsical rumination on these changes, and a personal riposte to the fear that you might “make a spectacle of yourself” if you don’t stop at the “right” moment.

It is conceived and staged by the artistic director Kally Lloyd-Jones, who performs with the co-creator Steinvör Palsson, a well-known teacher and choreographer in the Scottish dance community.

Mystery surrounds the origin of Peter Baines, the trailblazing black footballer who played for the Welsh club, among others, during the 1940s

Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article may contain the image and name of an Indigenous Australian who has died.

The story has the ingredients of a Hollywood blockbuster, including Marvel star Ryan Reynolds, with a confounding ending more befitting an indie production. Its protagonist is Peter Baines, a trailblazer as a black footballer and the first Indigenous Australian to play football overseas. Or was he?

Crowds gather as the 191st edition of the world’s biggest beer festival kicks off in Munich, Germany

The singer-songwriter’s new album sprinkles her 90s alt-fuzz with sweet melodies, while Asif Kapadia wraps up the seminal series. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

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

The Guardian’s weekend wrap of essential reads from the past seven days, selected by Jacqui Housden and Miles Herbert

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Hello and welcome to the weekend.

At the moment, it’s easy to feel as if things have taken a turn towards the apocalyptic.

Aardman’s woolly hero reckons with a mysterious beast and Abi Morgan’s lawyers-in-love TV drama gets a Manchester-set reboot

Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom
Out now
The beloved Wallace and Gromit spin-off character returns to topline another film, with a Halloween-themed adventure involving the destruction of a pumpkin patch and a mysterious beast on the loose. Naturally, our hero turns to weird science to address matters.

⚽️ WSL updates from the 5.30pm (BST) kick-off
⚽️ Man City scramble to WSL win over Liverpool | Mail Will

2 min Dominique Janssen, the former Arsenal defender, slides in on Olivia Smith and catches her on the ankle with a follow-through. Arsenal use the free-kick to work the ball forward, but their attack fizzles out.

With North London Forever still reverberating around the stands, United get things under way at the Emirates.

After the trials and tribulations of the transfer window Everton can be content to reach the international break unbeaten and up to fifth courtesy of victory over Ipswich. David Moyes, and Pro Ref, will also be relieved that another controversial call from a video assistant referee did not determine the outcome.

Thierno Barry decided a close-fought contest that turned decisively in Everton’s favour when Abdul Fatawu was sent off for simulation, his second bookable offence, in the 67th minute. Barry had earlier had a second goal ruled out after an offside Brennan Johnson was deemed to have interfered with Ipswich goalkeeper Christian Walton’s ability to save a ball he made no attempt to save and was nowhere near saving. Unlike the Manchester derby, however, referee Stuart Attwell’s decision would not prove decisive.

Hull always knew that, sooner or later, they would lose a Premier League game but no one can say that Sergej Jakirovic’s team did not do everything in their power to try and delay that inaugural top tier defeat.

After conceding two goals in the opening seven minutes Hull could easily have folded but Jakirovic’s promoted players are made of sterner stuff than that. Tellingly, they also sensed the fragility of a gifted but injury hit and extremely youthful Newcastle.

Spurs have a remarkable ability to find new ways of inflicting pain on their fanbase and they did it again here, petering out from a strong start into humiliating defeat to confirm their worst ever start to a Premier League campaign. On the upside, they did get two goals. They were both late consolations, but beggars can’t be choosers.

Aston Villa were meanwhile ruthless in claiming their first victory of the season. They capitalised in first-half added time to take the lead while Spurs were temporarily down to 10 men. In the second, Unai Emery’s side were robust in defence and clinical on the counter, and supreme strikes from both Nicolas Jackson and Emi Buendía decided the contest. With Johan Manzambi the other goalscorer, there were pleasing signs for the Spaniard’s turbo-charged refit of his team.

Cricket updates from 2.30pm (BST) start
Carse will not face charges | Read the Spin | Mail Jim

A top edged skier and Buttler just about clings on with the gloves! Baker has England’s first.

2nd over: Sri Lanka 22-0 (Nissanka 11, Udara 10) Archer’s first two balls are cut away on the off side by Udara! Too much width from Jofra and it gets worse for him as a top edged hook from Nissanka does indeed sail away on the breeze for SIX! Decent start from Sri Lanka as the tv camera zooms in on Fleming, McCullum and Southee on the England boundary. What’s the collective noun for Kiwis?

• Toby Samuel beats Andrés Andrade 4-6, 6-4, 6-1

• Wimbledon semi-finalist wins for 2-0 day one lead

Arthur Fery’s return to competition on home soil for the first time since his glorious summer at Wimbledon took place on a different surface, in a completely different format and on the opposite side of London, but the emotions it generated were all the same as the British No 1 led his team to a 2-0 lead over Ecuador by defeating Álvaro Guillén Meza 7-5, 6-0 in Great Britain’s Davis Cup qualifier tie in the Copper Box Arena.

The victory for Fery, a Wimbledon semi-finalist, had been preceded by a solid debut for the British No 5, Toby Samuel, a late injury replacement for Cameron Norrie, who opened the tie by overcoming a nervous start to set the tone with a 4-6, 6-4, 6-1 win over Ecuador’s No 1, Andrés Andrade.

• Briton destroys 800m field in hooded black bodysuit

• Mill Hill event more like a rave than an athletics meeting

Athlos arrived in London promising that its all-female spin on athletics would provide a radical departure from the status quo. Long before Keely Hodgkinson stepped on to the track dressed in a hooded black bodysuit – part ninja assassin, part Catwoman – it had emphatically made its point.

Throughout the two-hour event, the bassline from the aptly named DJ Trauma carried enough force to make eardrums bleed. The stadium PA’s dial appeared to be permanently stuck on Spinal Tap’s 11. And those who successfully scanned a barcode were then shown dancing and waving on a giant screen.

Welcome back, then, the Dockers Derby. We really must do this again. On a lovely soft September afternoon on the Bermondsey peninsula, watched by an outrage-ready media multiverse, something unexpected happened at the Den. A really good football match broke out.

Not wild or violent. No shameful scenes that nobody (trans: everybody) wants to see. Not in the stands or the streets at least: the only really sour note was an allegation of spitting against West Ham’s Taty Castellanos, which will now presumably be investigated.

Recruitment is under scrutiny after £155m was spent on three midfielders while other positions were neglected

There was a mix of boos and apathy as Manchester United slumped out of the Carabao Cup on Wednesday in their latest depressing act in domestic cup competitions. A solemn Michael Carrick and his players were the target for the jeers. The director of football, Jason Wilcox, looked unamused on his way out of the directors’ box but he and the hierarchy need to accept responsibility for their actions.

This is the natural course of football, where supporters know what is good or bad and give a rapid opinion to those whose wages they deem they pay. Carrick and his charges are the face of the club, the ones put up to speak with journalists and sent to promote the wares of sponsors.

Sometimes, you can remember what ordinary life was like before Russia’s invasion. Then reality comes screaming back

Sometimes, where I live in Kyiv, I hear people say: “This feels pre-war.” It refers to situations that remind us of what life was like before. You could call it a “sense of normalcy”.

For example, it refers to being able to walk around at night, travel abroad or plan your life at least six months in advance. Simple, everyday things have become a lost luxury.

Officials lack data on miscarriages after October 2025. Detained women aren’t getting the prenatal healthcare they need

Maga men have babies on the brain. They may not all be interested in changing diapers or hands-on parenting, but they’re very keen on population growth. “[W]e want more babies, to put it very nicely,” Donald Trump said last year.

Trump, who has called himself the “father of IVF” and joked that he will be known as the “fertilization president”, surrounds himself with people who profess a similar fondness for children. Only a few days after being sworn in as vice-president, JD Vance declared he wanted “more babies in the United States of America” and went on to make pronatalist policies a theme of his time in office.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

A wave of tourists and visitors has changed the character of the Seoul neighbourhood I live in and helped create a place that no longer feels like home

In 2021, I was asked by Time Out to nominate a Seoul neighbourhood for its annual list of the world’s coolest. I didn’t think much of it and put forward the one I live in, Jongno 3-ga, in the old centre of the city. Somehow, it got ranked third.

This week, the same area was named the coolest neighbourhood in the world. I should be pleased, but instead, I’m devastated.

This week’s government announcement on school food standards is huge. It’s based on common sense and science. Beautiful!

More than 20 years ago, when I started the campaign and TV series School Dinners, I couldn’t believe that we had standards for dog food but no standards for the food we fed our children at school. I have never, and will never, stop banging that drum – even after this week’s momentous announcement on school food standards in England. Because it is so important we remember where we started from.

Children in the state sector are at school for 190 days a year. And if they’re eating breakfast and lunch there, the majority of what they consume each day is in the hands of their school. When we know that children are consuming less than half the recommended fruit and vegetables, but twice the recommended sugar, school food is a massive opportunity to directly improve diets at scale.

Twenty years ago, even Madonna faced radio blacklisting for being overtly political. But in our age of streaming, there’s less excuse for not speaking out

It must have come as a surprise to Ed Sheeran when all of his support acts withdrew from the remainder of the US leg of his tour. The American rapper Macklemore had triggered the walkout when he gave an impassioned speech calling for a “free Palestine” on stage and was dropped for doing so. The decision by the remaining acts to drop out in solidarity exposed a deep divide in the modern music industry. Some artists still insist on keeping politics out of music, while others expect music to speak to our perilous times.

After he was dropped, Macklemore wrote that Sheeran’s “typical apolitical stance was being challenged in a way it never had been before”, to which Sheeran responded: “I am not complicit” and “those who come to my shows do not expect a political forum”.

Jason Okundaye is an assistant Opinion editor at the Guardian

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Spend time on the ground and you see how high the stakes are for next month’s contest – for Israelis and Palestinians alike

Candidates always say it, but this time it’s true. When Israel goes to the polls on 27 October, it really will be the most important election in the country’s history – and not just for Israelis. I saw that for myself this last week, in a visit that served as a sharp reminder of both what is at stake – and the role of those watching from afar.

More than one voter I spoke to voiced the fear that, if the coalition headed by Benjamin Netanyahu is returned to power next month, 27 October will not merely be Israel’s most important election: it will be its last. They were not referring to the absence of democracy in the occupied territory of the West Bank – which we’ll come to – but rather to Israel’s internationally recognised, pre-1967 borders: what you might call Israel-proper. There, the last four years have seen a sustained assault on the machinery of liberal democracy by the most rightwing government since Israel’s establishment in 1948 – a committed, focused attempt to remove the checks and restraints on its own power, installing instead a kind of elective dictatorship.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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Instead, constrain it legally and fight it politically. The world is watching

Far-right nationalist populist parties are making the running everywhere from Washington to Warsaw. So why be so alarmed about a little regional electoral victory for one such party, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), in one federal state, Saxony-Anhalt? “Because it’s Germany!” is the almost instinctive answer in many heads around the world.

But that “because it’s Germany” needs to be taken apart, like the segments of an orange. Yes, because of Adolf Hitler, two dictatorships (Nazi Germany until 1945, communist-ruled East Germany until 1989) and two world wars. And yes, some of the language used by the AfD will give anyone familiar with Nazi rhetoric a cold shudder down the spine.

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist. His new book, Europe in 7 1/2 Chapters, is published in October

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The country has one of the highest femicide rates in the world, and women are yet again being asked to remove themselves from public life to counter it

When I heard the authorities advising women in and around Kempton Park, the site of a recent spate of femicides, not to walk or run alone, to avoid isolated places and to “remain vigilant”, my immediate response was anger. Remain vigilant. How groundbreaking.

Women are already vigilant. We photograph number plates before entering vehicles. We share Uber details with friends. We phone one another while walking. We watch the driver’s route and notice every unexpected turn. We avoid certain roads, certain times and certain conversations. We scan parking areas before getting out of our cars. We check the back seat. We listen for footsteps. We carry pepper spray where we can. We hold our keys in a way that makes us feel slightly less defenceless.

Politicians who threaten filmmakers rather than investigate alleged military crimes expose not strength but a leadership frightened of the evidence

Across Israel, politicians, military leaders and much of the media are trying to discredit a documentary that almost none of them have seen. Produced by the Guardian, NAZA examines the AI-powered targeting systems used by the Israel Defense Forces to bombard Gaza after Hamas’s brutal 7 October 2023 attacks. Named after the Israeli military acronym euphemistically used for “collateral damage”, NAZA features interviews with 24 anonymous insiders who reflect on their role in the death-dealing. Israeli leaders have branded the film a “blood libel” and “fiction”. Its Oscar-winning directors, Rachel Szor and Yuval Abraham, face being stripped of their citizenship for treason.

This is absurd. NAZA shows how bureaucratic distance and routine can turn extreme violence into ordinary work. More than 73,000 Palestinians, including more than 20,000 children, have been killed in the campaign by Israel’s military. A democracy that values life would at least investigate the film’s claims. Instead Israel’s government, which says it is committed to democratic accountability, is attacking journalists.

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Young people in Britain’s poorer towns have far fewer opportunities. Changing this will require targeted support – and industrial strategy

The ideas that Neets (young people not in education, employment or training) simply aren’t trying hard enough to find a job, or don’t want one, are “myths,” Alan Milburn wrote in his interim report on the subject earlier this year – “sometimes cruel ones”. Although 84% of Neets say they want to work, their prospects are unfairly limited by where they live. Rotherham has one suitable vacancy for every 22 young adults. The Cotswolds has one for every four. For too many young people, particularly those in deprived parts of Britain, there simply aren’t enough jobs.

This is the finding from an index published last week by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which ranked British towns according to the availability of jobs for young people. Like so many features of Britain’s Neet crisis, from poor mental health to school drop-out rates, the index is a map of disadvantage. At the top are affluent towns in southern England that account for nine in 10 of the areas with the highest numbers of vacancies. At the bottom are places such as Inverclyde and East Renfrewshire, where young people might once have followed their parents into manufacturing and industry. Deindustrialisation destroyed those jobs, and such places never recovered.

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Aubrey Foard and Nina Plummer respond to Zoe Williams’s interview with Camilla Cavendish about the reasons behind plummeting birthrates worldwide

I appreciate Zoe Williams’s excellent interview with Camilla Cavendish (Spermageddon, ‘greedy jobs’ and abject fear: why birthrates are plummeting – and why it matters, 17 September), but I have to take issue with one of her statements: “Of course, the climate crisis is playing a big part in that, but it still doesn’t wholly stack up – in the 80s, there was the wraparound threat of nuclear annihilation and it didn’t seem to dent anyone’s joie de vivre.”

Yes, the buildup of nuclear arms and the terror surrounding it reached its peak in the 20th century, but it was kept in check by policies of Mutually Assured Destruction: a singular launch of a nuclear arsenal would have instantly ended humanity.

Readers respond to the bill’s narrow defeat in the Commons earlier this month

For many, the failure of the assisted dying bill (MPs vote against legalising assisted dying in England and Wales, 11 September) has brought relief that a manifestly unsafe law will not be entering the statute book. But it should also prompt reflection about how it got this far.

Two hundred and seventy MPs voted for the bill despite multiple warnings from the medical royal colleges and other professional groups responsible for implementing it that it was unsafe and unworkable. Supportive MPs appeared to be voting on an abstract principle rather than engaging with the concerns raised.

Alvin Engström and Jean Fridh respond to an article by Martin Gelin in which he argues that the country has entered a new era of cruelty

I am writing in response to Martin Gelin’s article (How Sweden lost its soul – and stopped being Sweden, 11 September). Gelin is right to lament how far Swedish politics has moved from the liberal internationalism of the Fredrik Reinfeldt era. Having grown up in Malmö, I have seen how border controls with Denmark affect an Öresund region whose everyday life has long depended on easy movement across the strait. Gelin is right to see this retreat from openness as consequential.

But to say that Sweden has therefore “lost its soul” goes too far. Its political shift is neither uniquely Swedish nor evidence that the country has somehow ceased to be itself. Reinfeldt’s “open your hearts” Sweden faded in much the same European political moment as Angela Merkel’s “Wir schaffen das” Germany. Across the European mainland, mainstream parties have adopted more restrictive positions on migration.

Penelope Mavor suggests that listening is not a passive act, so you could interrupt the flow

These conversational hoggers … don’t they know we were born with two ears and one mouth for a reason? Thank you, Anita Chaudhuri, for a fun, well observed and useful article (‘But enough about you …’ How to survive in a world of monologuists, interrupters and trauma dumpers, 13 September).

It is an interesting reflection to see which of the five hoggers more frequently turn up in our own lives. As a people pleaser and introvert, I have a track record of meeting many monologuists. I pretend to listen, but secretly resent them and their audacity. I just want them to ask about me.

As villagers take stock following symbolic vote, some fear far-right weaponisation of asylum dispute and influx of ‘masked people like in Dover’

The first significant event in the newly independent principality of Piddington was a decision to select the newt as the national animal, reflecting optimism that the amphibian’s endangered status might help block plans to open a centre for 1,250 asylum seekers on neighbouring land.

The choice was announced on Thursday morning, the day after Piddington announced that villagers had voted overwhelmingly to leave the UK. Parish councillors were also thinking about asking local children to design a flag and considering whether the new principality’s national sport should be cricket or football.

About 280 people taken to safety from the Grand Burstin in Folkestone after blaze thought to have started in basement

Hundreds of people have been evacuated from a hotel in Folkestone after a large fire broke out overnight.

Emergency services were called just after 1am on Saturday to the Grand Burstin hotel in Folkestone, where a fire is believed to have started in the basement, Kent fire and rescue service said.

Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum holds 16th-century paintings stolen by the Nazis during the second world war

Jewish heirs of Holocaust victims and their representatives have filed two lawsuits in California staking their claims to Nazi-looted paintings that still hang on the walls of prominent museums in Los Angeles and Auschwitz.

This pair of lawsuits are the first to be filed after the recent passage of laws by California and the US Congress, which strengthen US-based claims to artwork that were forcibly taken from Jewish families during the second world war.

Case highlights severe financial strain on sector across UK as string of university housing schemes fail

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Nearly 70 students in Dundee have been left scrambling to find accommodation for this academic year after the latest in a string of university housing schemes went bust amid severe financial strain on the sector.

Students in the city have been forced to find alternative housing and rapidly move their possessions as term begins this month after the collapse of the owner of Marketgait Apartments, a city centre block.

Michael Marra supports development of the North Sea sites, calling for a ‘more rational’ approach to energy policy

Scottish Labour’s new leader Michael Marra has backed the development of the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gasfields in the North Sea in one of his first acts after being elected, calling for a “more rational” approach to energy policy.

On Saturday, the MSP for North East Scotland won a near two-thirds majority to lead the party in Holyrood, becoming Scottish Labour’s 11th leader. He replaces Anas Sarwar after his shock decision to resign in July to join Andy Burnham’s new government as a trade minister.

While the country’s ambition is to be the ‘Saudi Arabia of green energy’, communities in the north-east are bearing the cost in diminished health and livelihoods

Beneath the power lines cutting across Antonio de Souza’s property in Serra do Mel, in north-east Brazil’s Rio Grande do Norte state, rows of cashew trees once stood – until the clean energy company ordered them to be cut down.

De Souza cannot plant crops in the affected area and the tractor cannot be driven through it in bad weather, as the driver risks an electric shock. Cattle, another source of local income, are forbidden from grazing near the cables.

Much of the UK is still officially in drought after its hottest summer on record, but grasslands are slowly recovering their colour

The landscapes of southern England and Wales are slowly regaining their colour after this summer’s extreme heat.

The UK’s hottest summer on record left the south of the country dried out and brown, making the impact of the drought particularly visual.

Amid record-shattering heatwaves and popular demand for climate action, why are politicians often timid or in denial?

It was, according to the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, the “summer of truth”. Climate chaos ripped through Europe and the northern hemisphere, sending heat records tumbling, scorching crops in the fields, burning forests, emptying rivers and reservoirs, warping train tracks, melting roads and killing about 35,000 people in Europe alone.

The EU has estimated the damage at about €180bn, and the full bill is yet to arrive: harvests have been depleted, which will probably raise food price inflation, and expensive repairs to infrastructure have only just begun.

After summer’s heatwaves, prepare for winter of storms and heavy rain, with millions of UK homes at risk of flooding

The accelerating climate crisis and this year’s record-breaking El Niño mean that, although the summer’s heatwaves are still fresh in the memory, households in the UK are already being told to prepare for a potentially destructive winter of storms and heavy rain – leaving millions of homes at risk of flooding.

Government action is needed to improve flood defences and build reliance on a national and regional level. But with the UK’s flood season just weeks away, the Guardian spoke to experts to find out what action communities and individuals can take to make their neighbourhoods and homes more resilient, from self-closing airbricks to deflated children’s footballs.

Exclusive: Lib Dem leader bullish ahead of party conference despite static poll ratings and MPs’ frustrations

The Liberal Democrats have begun work on a new manifesto in case of a possible snap election, as Ed Davey said he understood the frustrations of some of his MPs who fear that the party’s message is currently at risk of being lost.

But Davey also urged his party not to panic at static polling numbers, arguing that with tactical voting and fragmented political loyalties, he fully expects the party to do even better at the next election than in 2024, when it won 72 seats, the highest total for a century.

Exclusive: Survivors say luxury store’s attempt to recoup money is at odds with its public acceptance of responsibility

Harrods is seeking to recover the cost of the compensation paid to hundreds of women allegedly sexually abused by Mohamed Al Fayed from his estate, the Guardian understands.

The luxury department store is seeking full indemnity from the late billionaire’s estate for any settlements it is required to pay, according to evidence seen by the Guardian.

Crypto billionaires’ £72m will be used to hire campaign managers and professional staff in target constituencies

For Nigel Farage, the £72m lavished last week on his party by the crypto billionaire donors Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne finally places Reform UK on a level playing field with its political rivals.

The donations are the largest received by a UK political party since declarations became required in 2001 and led to warnings Farage was aiming to “buy” his way to power, with a row still raging over whether they are legal.

Jake Richards says changes would be part of ‘carrot-and-stick’ approach to try to turn around young offenders

Parents whose children commit crimes could lose their benefits, face fines and even be jailed, a minister has said.

Jake Richards said the youth justice system “should hold parents to account in a proportionate way for ensuring that they play their role in keeping communities safe”.

Exclusive: In her first media interview since fleeing Russia, Rita Flores describes her three years of being run by the FSB

First came the blackmail and death threats to secure cooperation, then came a series of tasks, each more sinister than the last: to inform on fellow activists, to elicit personal information from protest-minded artists and – eventually – to help with a plot to kidnap and murder a Kremlin enemy.

That is how Rita Flores, a 29-year-old Russian artist, activist and former member of the Pussy Riot collective, described her recruitment and three-year handling by officers from Russia’s FSB security service, a cooperation she only broke when she fled the country last month.

As Gaza documentary wins cinematic acclaim, its directors face vitriol in Israel amid a febrile election campaign

First there was a moment of stunned silence. Then, in the Sala Grande, the main screening hall of the Venice film festival within the Palazzo del Cinema, the audience stood almost as one and turned to applaud the film-makers for 25 minutes.

The film the audience had watched for 80 harrowing minutes was the Gaza documentary NAZA, which has been produced by the Guardian.

Canada’s citizens are finding unity again in the story of the man who ran cross-country on one leg to raise awareness for children’s cancer research

Rob Stickle was six years old and waiting to see The Empire Strikes Back when a ripple passed through the crowd. His mother hoisted him on to her shoulders to see a man loping down one of Toronto’s busiest streets.

“I was a Star Wars fanatic, and I remember saying to mom: ‘He has a robot leg.’”

An on-air helicopter crash killed journalist Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw, shaking LA’s news tradition

The whir of news helicopters flying overhead has long been a familiar soundtrack to life in Los Angeles – and the footage they gather of high-speed chases, wildfires and celebrity sightings a fixture of local television.

For nearly 70 years, Angelenos have gotten their news from “the eye in the sky” – from scenes of OJ Simpson’s fleeing white Bronco, the 1992 LA riots and even Madonna’s wedding to Sean Penn.

Disclosure comes after OpenAI and Anthropic hacks amid fears that tech firms unable to control powerful AI models

In a first for Google, the company confirmed that its AI model, Gemini, breached the security of three other companies in May. The hacks occurred during a cybersecurity evaluation by AI-security firm Irregular.

Irregular, an Israel-based startup that scrutinizes the security of advanced AI systems, was also at the center of some of the recent OpenAI and Anthropic hacks of third-party entities, including OpenAI’s breach of AI software company, Hugging Face.

Though Europe has measures that address how consumers might encounter AI, technology will impact them if the worst scenarios bear

Europe’s dilemma over AI was rendered in stark terms this week. The head of the continent’s central bank, Christine Lagarde, said Europeans have two options: shun the technology and lose out on growth; or embrace it and become dependent on tools developed by the US and China.

The great debate over AI safety that has erupted in recent days threatens to make the choice moot. If the worst scenarios come to bear – and experts have differing views on this – then the technology will impact the continent regardless.

Silicon Valley China hawks, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei among them, fear the country surpassing US’s AI lead as much as superintelligence destroying humanity

When reporters asked Donald Trump this week if he supported calls to slow down the development of artificial intelligence out of growing fears for cybersecurity, public safety and the fate of humanity, he said no. His argument: China.

“We’re leading China in AI,” Trump said. “We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to ⁠keep it that way, because whoever wins AI, wins.”

Thinktank calls on chancellor to end housing allowance freeze with typical two-bedroom household facing £158 week shortfall amid rent rises

More than 1.1 million low-income families in rented homes face a “cost of housing” crunch without action from John Healey in next month’s budget, the Resolution Foundation thinktank has warned.

Local housing allowance (LHA) has been frozen in cash terms since autumn 2024.

The author of The Corrections talks about a new TV adaptation, the future of reading and why creating new work is ‘horrible’

When HBO dropped its plan to adapt Jonathan Franzen’s bestselling novel The Corrections in 2012, the author was so relieved he says he performed his first and last cartwheel on the lawn of his home in Santa Cruz, California. There had been an attempted film adaptation before that, but he had been unsurprised by its failure, having warned that it was impossible to condense his densely plotted doorstopper of a novel into a feature-length film. This time, Franzen had signed up as co-writer, with filmmaker Noah Baumbach. He says that HBO was “excluded from the development process. Mistake, because we didn’t know how to do TV.” Franzen himself hadn’t even owned a telly until a few years earlier and certainly didn’t have cable, so as he was wrestling with the script, he began renting box sets. Around three episodes into one drama series, he realised “we have no idea what we’re doing. This is not how you do TV. This is bad,” he recalls. The result, he says, was “one of the worst pilots anyone has ever made”.

Franzen used to think TV was the “enemy” of the serious novelist. In a well-known 1996 essay for Harper’s Magazine about the decline of high literature he had complained bitterly about the “banal ascendancy of television”. But after the HBO series failed, he watched Breaking Bad, Nurse Jackie and Silicon Valley and loved them. In the age of social media, AI and the endless scroll, TV has started to look like a “friend”, he says now. And The Corrections is finally being adapted into an eight-part Netflix series, with Meryl Streep playing Enid Lambert, the matriarch clinging to dreams of hosting a perfect last family Christmas, even as her husband Alfred is in terminal decline with Parkinson’s and dementia and their grownup children’s lives are falling apart in terrible, comical ways. Once Streep announced she was in, Franzen felt the “chances of making this show have gone up above 50%”. He says he’s a month away from finishing the script.

In this week’s newsletter: From HBO’s incredible divorce drama War to the hilarious return of The Paper, there’s too much TV to choose from even for a confirmed addict like me

For those of us who like to stay indoors, it has been a bad summer. The World Cup ate up all traditional television scheduling, and the streamers apparently declined to counterprogramme. The Bear came and went before anybody noticed, and House of the Dragon conclusively disappeared up its own bottom.

If you’re anything like me then you clung to the good stuff (basically Disney’s Furious and nothing else) like a life raft, eking out new episodes like someone in a desert sucking condensation off the underside of a tarpaulin. But forget summer. It is now autumn, and television is back. In fact, I can’t remember a time when television has come roaring back with quite the same ferocity as it has this month.

The perils of ageing and the horrors of finding post-divorce romance are laid bare in the new show from the creator of Motherland. It’s humungously funny, and so acutely observed it’s painful

Ageing has changed, hasn’t it? There’s a generation of middle-aged and perimenopausal elder millennials and xennials who refuse to do it. We’re young enough to be part of an online world that puts a premium on appearance, too old for such narcissistic self-branding to be achieved without unsustainable effort. Dating apps and social media connect people across generations, so it’s easy to become confused about how old we actually are. Here’s a tip: ask your knees.

This brings us to Youth (from Monday 21 September, HBO Max), Sharon Horgan’s dramedy about being 50. That perky title is a quip about the decade being known as “the youth of old age”. Horgan is Alex, a divorcee in her sandwich years, caring for teenage son Ruarí and ageing parents. There’s a lot going on in her life, and some doom. She’s falling forwards in a semi-successful career as a literary agent, getting back into dating under pressure. She needs someone to fall in love with her immediately, as she points out to her best friend. Not for romantic myth-making, but “so there’s a bit of time with the present version of me, before the ‘old me’ is here”.

Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe take over hosting duties in the hoofing extravaganza. Plus: John Bishop’s new gameshow asks a lot of its audience. Here’s what to watch this evening

7.25pm, BBC One
It’s time for the new Strictly era to begin, with Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe ebulliently taking over (sparkling) hosting duties. EastEnders stalwart Lacey Turner, footballer Shaun Wright-Phillips, Aussie singer Delta Goodrem, Gavin and Stacey’s Melanie Walters and previous dropout Dani Dyer are some of the 15 celebrities meeting their dance partners in this curtain-raiser. Alongside them, as is now customary in celebrity-based reality TV competitions, there’ll be some “media personalities” you’ll probably need to Google. But it’s not all change: the usual four judges are back with their scoring paddles. All that’s left to do is get ready to rumba! Hollie Richardson

The creator of How To with John Wilson has returned with his first film, a documentary about how to sell a documentary about concrete

As mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani has frequently demonstrated impressive media savvy, but arguably nothing has proved his genius for in-the-know promo more than a video, released in April, with the documentarian John Wilson.

The spot, in support of the mayor’s plan to reduce the presence of the city’s ubiquitous sidewalk sheds, suggested that either he or someone on his team was a fan of How To With John Wilson, the film-maker’s cult-beloved HBO series that remains a taste signifier for alt-humorous New Yorkers. And for good reason: over three near-perfect seasons, Wilson, armed with his ever-present camera and diffident, memoiristic narration, explored the city’s disintegrating streets with a singular eye for the weird and unintentionally hilarious, turning the most mundane of NYC preoccupations – public restrooms, parking spots, scaffolding – into profound meditations on the glories, indignities and absurdities of modern life.

Kings Place, London
Works by the not-quite-minimalist composer’s included her Realm Variations and quartet Stringsongs in a compelling concert

There’s no one quite like Meredith Monk. So often grouped with her lionised contemporaries Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley and La Monte Young, she is 83 to their 90-odd years and sports long plaited hair as reliably as Reich wears a baseball cap. Yet she refuses the label “minimalism” for her music, and composition is just one element of a creative life that also takes in singing, choreography, film-making and drawing.

Monk was not present at this performance marking the launch of Phaedra Ensemble’s new album of her music, though she did loom briefly over the audience on video, professing “it’s a dream of mine for this music to be recorded and played”. (Compare that to the fortunes of Glass’s works.) But she had been closely involved, having invited the group to record some of her music after hearing them play.

Omar and Jamal Ikram, 21-year-old brothers, are making lo-fi glitchy dance-pop with the melodic sensibilities of Bollywood music

From Aldershot, Hampshire
Recommended if you like 2hollis, the Hellp, Jai Paul
Up next New single Wish U out now

You, like me, may be growing tired of the 2020s’ so-called “indie sleaze” revival, which has so far yielded a few good parties and not that much good music. But the music of the Twins – Aldershot-born brothers Omar and Jamal Ikram – is made of sturdier stuff. The 21-year-olds are progenitors of a sound they call “Bollywood electronic” – a strain of loud, lo-fi, ultra-glitchy dance-pop that sounds like 2hollis if his songs were heavy with screwy samples of south Asian pop. Their debut album, last year’s Turmeric, captures the still-potent appeal of Jai Paul’s classic Str8 Outta Mumbai – which fused the lackadaisical sheen of 2010s electronic pop with the shining rhythmic and melodic sensibilities of Bollywood music – and, as is de rigueur for the contemporary era, makes it bolshie and frenetic, taking in the euphoric aggression of early Skrillex and unnerving noise of Aphex Twin.

Turmeric was a minor hit, thanks in part to Fuckersby, a collaboration with on-the-rise British rapper Fakemink, as well as the Twins’ monthly NTS show, also called Turmeric, which turns one this month. (Its combination of classic British pop stars such as Lily Allen, Punjabi artists such as Sukshinder Shinda, and contemporary electronic acts the Hellp and Sophia Stel gives it the feeling of a late-night pirate radio station totally out of time and place.) The duo’s follow-up EP There&Back, released in May, polishes up the Twins’ sound a little, but not that much – if anything, their collaborations with Rada and Varg2TM on There&Back are even louder and wilder than anything on Turmeric. The duo’s future plans aren’t clear, but their mission is: “We don’t want brown kids to feel like they have to fit into anything,” Jamal said in an interview. “People are always gonna try to label what you’re doing, but you don’t have to move like that.” Shaad D’Souza

(March Hare Music)
This fusion of western folk and the traditional music of the Baka people creates an uneven patchwork of sound – but it astonishes when their vocals are placed front and centre

Over the past 30 years, British folk musicians Su Hart and Martin Cradick have been developing a distinct fusion of traditional Cameroonian vocal music with western instrumentation. Their 1993 debut record Spirits of the Forest, released on Joe Boyd’s Hannibal Records, focused on the female singers of the Baka people, who use a polyphonic style of yodelling to evoke dawn spirits. Hart and Cradick have maintained the relationship over the decades, splitting royalties equally and supporting the community through their Global Music Exchange charity. Sing the World Awake, their first album in 12 years, centres field recordings made with a new Baka generation and deepens their exploration into an ancient oral tradition.

Cradick’s instrumental arrangements are expansive and wide-ranging. Topé Malangui Kpode features sprightly, Ghanaian highlife-inspired guitar melodies and percussive polyrhythms. Fair Molly (Mál Bhán Ní Chuilleanáin) features Gaelic vocals from guest singer Irene O’Meara, and The Swift harnesses the intricate folk sound of Ben Moneypenny’s violin playing. Each song alights on snatches of Baka vocals, although the overall effect of splicing these unique melodies into different genres creates an uneven patchwork of sound.

(Major Arcana/Giant Music)
Lorely Rodriguez contemplates the meaning of home – both physical and emotional – on a gorgeously humid, hopeful album that makes a virtue of her searching nature

Since the early 2010s Lorely Rodriguez has cut a restless, inventive figure. She’s slipped from raucous pop to silkier sounds, explored her Honduran-American heritage and, on her last album, flipped the staple awards season phrase “for your consideration” into a full-frontal club-pop meditation on uneven relationships. Her gorgeous fifth album makes a feature of this searching nature. Written after her family home burned down in the 2025 California wildfires, Dream House is about the rebuilding of that home – birdsong-dappled field recordings of its construction keep popping up – but also contemplates what it means to feel at home in yourself and with others.

For all the violent loss behind the record, it sounds amazingly airy, free and open-hearted. The directness of For Your Consideration softens to a humid atmosphere that’s bright with hope, Rodriguez’s undulating synth lines bubbling with impatience and ecstasy as they cushion her soaring arrow of a voice. The bangers leap above the fray: SYW, featuring Cecile Believe, elegantly twists EDM to evoke an uncontainable desire; the equally yearning HandsOn sparks with glassy chimes and battering percussion. I Pray 4 U evokes the frisky joy of Jayda G, and Machete, dwelling on defiant post-breakup rebirth, slices like a laser through the night sky.

Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some great new paperbacks, from an epic multigenerational saga by a Booker winner to a biography of an iconic Victorian poet

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A government scheme is giving citizens cash for spending time with a good book. We ask behavioural scientists, along with The Anxious Generation author and psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whether it’ll help make the habit stick

Could the solution to the reading crisis lie in paying people to put down their phones and pick up a book? That’s what one government, at least, is resorting to: this month, Singapore launched a scheme promising actual cash to citizens as a reward for logging reading time on a government website.

It’s unlikely to make you megabucks – you have to rack up 50 reading sessions of at least 15 minutes to earn one Singapore dollar (£0.59), with only one logged session allowed per day. But behavioural scientists and psychologists told the Guardian such a scheme could still help boost a habit in precipitous decline.

Celebrated thriller writer Michel Bussi explains why the plot of his new novel Code Yesterday isn’t so far fetched, saying ‘I wanted to give women revenge’

Relations between France and England have rarely looked brighter. The recent loan of the Bayeux tapestry has become a symbol of a renewed friendship between the two countries, evidenced further by the numerous smiles exchanged on the occasion between prime minister Andy Burnham and French president Emmanuel Macron. A new book released in France at the start of this month, however, could soon darken the sunny skies of a revitalised entente cordiale.

In Code Yesterday, author Michel Bussi proposes that every single song credited to the Beatles was in fact written by a woman … of French descent.

A tiger’s tale; the young Henry VIII; a fantasy follow‑up from Katherine Rundell; small-town secrets; ghosts galore and more

Once Upon a Tiger by Sarah Massini, S&S, £14.99
Tiger is irate to find three cheeky human cubs climbing on his back – but when they refuse to be scared off, he becomes increasingly attached to them. A sweet, classic-feeling picture book fable, heightened by tender, expressive illustrations.

Mama’s Wedding by Circle Yuen, Lantana, £12.99
Mama is getting married, but Ruby has mixed emotions – how will Daddy Albert feel on the day? A gorgeous, nuanced picture book about blended families and new milestones.

The first console I ever bought, it was hyped as a threat to the PlayStation, then mocked as a flop. But now, as it marks its 25th anniversary, it’s looked back on with misty-eyed reverence

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Nintendo GameCube, the first console I ever bought with my own money. I vividly remember getting on the bus after school with a year’s worth of savings safely zipped into the pocket of my bag and going to a branch of Currys, where I dumped a bunch of notes, coins and vouchers on the counter to collect my pre-order. (It turned out that some of the vouchers from the previous Christmas had expired, but the guy at the checkout clearly felt so sorry for me that he redeemed them anyway. If you’re out there, Currys guy: thank you for taking pity on a desperate 13-year-old.)

If it hadn’t been for the ill-fated Wii U console, whose failure to take off in 2012 resulted in the first unprofitable periods in Nintendo’s game-making history, the GameCube would be remembered as the company’s biggest flop aside from the infamous Virtual Boy, from 1995. Released in Japan this week in 2001 (and in May 2002 in Europe), this surprisingly powerful purple cube sold much less than the Xbox and the PlayStation 2. With its squat, colourful form and unusual controller, arranged around a big traffic-light-green A button and small analogue sticks designed for small hands, it had a hint of Fisher-Price about it.

The distinctively British RPG is returning courtesy of the makers of Forza Horizon – with comedy talent such as Richard Ayoade and Natasia Demetriou voicing sweary characters. We had our first play and spoke to its developer

When Playground Games was founded in 2010, its objective was straightforward: to make the best cars in video games. Operating out of an unassuming white building in Leamington Spa, the studio sought to challenge Gran Turismo with its critically acclaimed British racing alternative: the acclaimed free-roaming Forza Horizon series. Yet as the team grew, so did their ambitions. Now they are making the most intriguing British fantasy game we have seen in many years.

For those who have never ventured into Albion, Fable is a quintessentially British role playing game. Created by Lionhead Studios for the original Xbox in 2004, it boasted cheeky charm alongside world-altering player choices, and its droll writing was brought to life in later iterations by national treasures such as Stephen Fry and Simon Pegg. Thanks to its unique blend of farce and fantasy, Fable grew into a globally beloved franchise – before Microsoft unceremoniously shuttered Lionhead in 2016, after mandating that the studio turn its star series into a multiplayer game. The result, Fable Legends, was never released.

We have a first play of the forthcoming Tomb Raider remake and speak with its developers. Can they improve on the gameplay without losing what made the 1996 original such a classic?

We join Lara Croft in St Francis’ Folly – inspired by the Unesco-listed monasteries of Meteora in Greece – as the light shines through the cracked ceiling and a flock of bats glide across the vast ruins below. When Lara leaps down to the monastery’s crumbling pillared courtyard, it becomes clear that these screeching, leathery creatures aren’t just set dressing. As they lurch towards her with unpredictable movements, she dispatches the swarm with a flurry of gun fire and panicked punches.

It’s a suitably cinematic reintroduction to our heroine and her very first adventure. Co-developed by longtime Lara custodians Crystal Dynamics and Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, Legacy of Atlantis is a reimagining of the classic 1996 game Tomb Raider, and this familiar cliffside location is now brimming with new life and believable detail. Yet while our reunion gets off to an auspicious start, I have my concerns. It feels like reconnecting with an old friend at the pub, only for them to begin spouting conspiracy theories two pints in.

PlayStation 5; Insomniac Games
Logan is well realised by Liam McIntyre and some exquisite character art, but there are lapses in narrative and emotional arcs and some of the combat feels like a chore

It was always going to be difficult to follow Spider-Man. Insomniac’s three games based around the web-slinger are masterpieces of superhero wish fulfilment, allowing you to swoop above a depiction of Manhattan alive with graffiti artists, roving journalists and gun-toting gangsters. If anyone should be up to the task, it’s Wolverine. A beloved Marvel stalwart, his life much darker and bloodier than Peter Parker’s, he seems the ideal protagonist for a moody action adventure. Yet somehow this well-made game falls short of its potential.

Set years before the founding of the X-Men, Marvel’s Wolverine sees a disenfranchised Logan falling back in with Sabretooth and Mystique when their mentor Nathaniel Essex is kidnapped by mutant-hating billionaire Bolivar Trask. This archetypal tech bro has a disturbing plan for world domination and the X Team are out to stop him – but there is a secret buried in Wolverine’s past that’s about to cause an eruption. It’s a decent setup, filled with the sort of intrigue, violence and Freudian tension we expect from the X-Men.

Southwark Playhouse Borough, London
The sequence of richly atmospheric novels about lonely souls in the capital is condensed into an engrossing play that could be more unsettling

Patrick Hamilton’s 1929 novel The Midnight Bell unfolds over a series of weeks but has the air of one winding night on the tiles in London. The waiter Bob starts out flush, with £80 to his name, as he opens up the eponymous Euston Road pub for business alongside barmaid Ella. At the end of the novel, he wakes with a brutal hangover and loose change, thoroughly undone by his obsession with a sex worker, Jenny. In two later novels, Hamilton reframed each of these women’s stories in turn. His trilogy, Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky, gains great power through separating out their lives, giving each a concentrated interior monologue.

Simon Reade’s adaptation instead interweaves them throughout and opens in medias res, diluting the elements of surprise and downward spiral yet drawing out parallels between the relationships. When Ella muddles into a union with a better-off older suitor, Ernest, it raises not dissimilar issues of class, shame and control to Jenny and Bob’s own stumbling, equally imbalanced affair. Each couple is formed by the lonely seeking out the lonely.

Theatre Royal Bath
This heady mix of circus mayhem, cabaret sexiness, comedy antics and medieval tragedy is utterly irresistible

Kneehigh’s take on this medieval legend was first staged in 2003, in the Cornish setting from which the story of knights, love potions and infidelity arose. It earned cult status and a breathless following of balloon-blowing audience participants, returning to just as much acclaim for a 10th anniversary outing.

Adapted and directed by Emma Rice, here it is again, in all its giddy, fourth-wall trampling glory, with its army of anorak-clad unloved, and its circus-tricked mayhem. We are once again invited to blow up balloons for the wedding between King Mark (Edward Rowe) and Yseult (Nandi Bhebhe) while her lover, Tristan (John Leader), simmers with secret passion in the wings.

Royal Court, Liverpool
Ellie Clayton and Angela Simms are superb in a funny, tender adaptation that hugs close to the 1985 film

By some quirk of marketing, Letter to Brezhnev is always associated with Margi Clarke. In the 1985 movie, she was the actor who played Teresa, the sharp-talking chicken-factory worker out for a good time in post-industrial Liverpool. The film, though, rightly belongs to Alexandra Pigg as Elaine, Teresa’s best friend, who trades a dead-end life of unemployment for a fantasy fling with a Russian sailor.

A few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union – and a year before Willy Russell’s similarly themed Shirley Valentine – Elaine dared to believe in escape and in border-defying love. On stage, she is played just as winningly by Ellie Clayton and with much the same combination of wit and wonder. She is the Kirkby girl who has a night on the town with a wallet of stolen cash and finds the world unexpectedly opening up to her. Elaine can be naive, petulant and cynical, but she never lets you stop rooting for her.

Perth Concert Hall
Faux truculent and palpably adorable, the standup is in her element exposing her supposed flaws and the unseen idiocies of her TV career

Tall Tales is Susan Calman’s first new standup set for 10 years, designed to show us the real Susan behind the cuddly personality we see on TV. Given that was the premise of her 2016 touring show too, it’s clear that a decade away has done little to develop – but also nothing to diminish – the Glaswegian’s onstage shtick. This is a compelling return, stuffed with experiences and insights gleaned from that standup downtime, and which undergirds familiar tales of cat fancying, being small and entering menopause with a heartfelt reckoning with recent bereavement and rocky mental health.

That last material feels raw, as she tells us she only returned to standup (the thing she feared the most, she says) to shock herself out of a bad depression. That would be hard to credit based on her show alone, which finds Calman in her element: faux truculent but palpably adorable, fulminating at the indignities of short, lesbian, middle-aged womanhood, revealing to us the unseen idiocies of her gilded TV career. Her supposed flaws are arrayed for our pleasure: her catastrophising (cue a fun anecdote about being trapped on a hotel balcony), her addictive personality, and – in the peachy set-piece that closes act one – her hormonal lust for righteous revenge.

Touring until 20 November

On holiday in Greece the photographer came across two elderly people bathed in the beautiful evening light

Amit Lennon describes his approach to portrait photography as “always respectful and collaborative”. Originally from Israel but now living in London, Lennon was holidaying in Greece in 2023 when he took this image of an elderly couple.

“I’d been for a swim in the sea, then ambled through the outskirts of Poros town, looking for a restaurant for dinner that evening,” Lennon says. It was late afternoon when he happened upon the couple. He tried to strike up a conversation, but they only spoke Greek. As Lennon did not, “the interaction became entirely nonverbal”, he says. “I play-acted that I wanted to take their photo and whether that would be OK. I’m not interested in taking a photo without someone noticing. I prefer to make a connection, however fleeting,” he says.

Cole, described as an ‘extraordinary talent’, also appeared in Waiting for God, Tenko and had an extensive theatre career

The actor Stephanie Cole, best known for roles in Coronation Street, Waiting for God and Open All Hours, has died aged 84.

She also appeared in the prisoner-of-war drama Tenko, A Bit of a Do and Doc Martin.

After a battle to get his autistic children properly assessed, the London MC has co-founded a specialist centre in Kent to help neurodivergent kids realise their potential

It has been a busy few weeks for the London rapper Giggs. Two weeks ago, he was in New Jersey with his fiancee Valerie as she gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Noa. The next day, he flew home and went straight to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium to guest on stage with Jay-Z. “Yeah, it’s been crazy,” he smiles.

Remarkably, as soon as Noa was delivered, he also found time to livestream from the US hospital to the launch event for his latest project: not an album, but a specialist school and assessment centre for neurodivergent children.

Stage and screen director behind landmark productions of Samuel Beckett, John Osborne and Edward Albee

Anthony Page, who has died aged 90, was one of a group of talented and individual – sometimes wilful – directors who helped establish the English Stage Company at the Royal Court in London at the end of the 1950s and the early 60s.

The company, led by George Devine and Tony Richardson, became the seedbed of modern playwriting, notably John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger (1956) in a repertoire that embraced Beckett, Brecht, Ionesco, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams, as well as the native voices of Arnold Wesker, Ann Jellicoe, John Arden and NF Simpson.

His on-pitch triumphs (and off-pitch scandals), her turn as Wagatha Christie … for years, the football power couple have made headlines, despite efforts to keep their lives private. So why are they now about to reveal all on screen?

“If you’d said to me 10 years ago, ‘You’re going to be doing a TV show about the family’, I would have said, ‘No chance’,” Wayne Rooney says. Few would have disagreed. After all, he and his wife Coleen had spent their adult lifetime running away from the public gaze. And not very successfully, at that.

Wayne, a wonderful footballer with the strength of a bull and agility of an acrobat, was often back-page news. He scored 253 goals for Manchester United (overtaking Bobby Charlton’s record), 53 for England (the record until Harry Kane surpassed him in 2023), is still England’s youngest goal scorer (17 years and 317 days), won five Premier League titles, was twice young player of the year and was voted player of the year by both his peers and football journalists in 2009/10.

The actor on a terrible accident as a toddler, her bossy nature, and feeling too old to play a Shakespearean heroine

Born in Brighton, Amanda Redman, 69, studied at Bristol Old Vic theatre school. She starred in the TV comedy drama El C.I.D. in the 1990s, and in At Home With the Braithwaites from 2000 to 2003, a role that earned her a Bafta nomination. She played the lead in the BBC series New Tricks for a decade until 2013, and her later work includes The Trials of Jimmy Rose and The Good Karma Hospital. On 28 September, her 2000 film Sexy Beast will be rereleased in a limited-edition box set. She has a daughter and lives in London with her second husband.

When were you happiest?
I am happiest when I have my daughter and granddaughter with me.

Is an Oxford shirt the ultimate wardrobe staple? Are skin-tight fits ever a good idea? And what’s the perfect fabric for autumn and winter? Our menswear expert has all the answers

• The best white T-shirts for men

The photo above stopped me mid-scroll: Harry Styles, before his 30-show residency at Madison Square Garden, dressed in a big white shirt and smart tailored trousers. After a summer spent parked in front of three fans with ice packs on rotation, when wearing actual clothes felt like punishment, here was proof that normal service had resumed.

So, now the rain’s back and autumn’s creeping in, it’s time to follow Harry’s lead and reintroduce some structure to your wardrobe: coats, knitwear, tailoring, all the pieces that make you look forward to getting dressed in the morning. One staple that’s long overdue a comeback? Shirts.

Loop and tube bands are cheaper than a gym membership and take up less space than weights – our exercise buff put 18 to the test

• The best treadmills for your home

Movement breeds motivation, not vice versa. If you want a fast ticket to a regular training habit, you need to remove the friction between you and that first rep. When the sofa looks more appealing than getting a sweat on, it pays to have a simple, quick, convenient way to kick into workout mode. That’s where resistance bands come in.

Portable, lightweight, compact and convenient, the right set of bands could be the path of least, er, resistance to easy home workouts and reaching your fitness goals.

From sweaty kit to grubby trainers, here’s how to wash, repair and care for activewear more sustainably

• The best moisture-wicking underwear, socks and base layers

As a running and cycling journalist, I spend a lot of time in sportswear. Lycra is my leg coverage of choice, polyester or merino wool my base layer, and I reach for technical materials like Gore-Tex if the weather isn’t playing ball.

A near-daily workout schedule means my washing machine’s sportswear setting takes a hammering to avoid having a laundry basket overflowing with sweaty, salty, sour-scented clothes. But even then, tops can develop hard-to-shift smells in sweat-prone areas, synthetic materials can start to bobble and lose shape, and my sportswear occasionally gets a foamy detergent residue that hasn’t been properly rinsed out, particularly during wet or intensive training sessions.

Craving cosiness, but too warm for blankets and baths? Try our autumn cheat sheet

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After a record-breaking summer of heat, temperatures aren’t set to drop enough for hot baths, warm tights and roast dinners just yet. But if the darker evenings and falling leaves have got you craving cosiness, here’s our recipe for achieving that comforting autumnal vibe while it’s still unseasonably warm out.

***

Sumptuous, late-summer tomatoes cooked with cream and served on toast? Supper is served in 10 … OK, maybe 15 minutes

Forty years ago, an antiquarian bookseller recommended to me Edouard de Pomiane’s La cuisine en dix minutes, a selection of recipes that could be cooked at home in less than 10 minutes. A scientist and food lover, de Pomiane stripped back what was then viewed as a very complicated craft, and also gave the time-poor an opportunity to cook and enjoy a good meal made from good ingredients. This was the first recipe I cooked from that book, and it is still a great favourite that has punctuated my menus ever since.

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

A velvety, Guinness-based, punch-style pick-me-up

Punch isn’t just for summer parties, and this Caribbean-inflected one, featuring rum, brandy, stout, lemon and nutmeg, will warm the cockles of a crowd on any autumn evening. It’s named after Prince Buster, the Jamaican ska legend and inspiration for our bar’s name.

Will Hawes, co-founder, The Prince Bar, London EC1

Everyone loves an iced finger bun, but these light and moist bakes with a blackcurrant fondant topping might be your new favourite afternoon treat

Soft, feather-light and topped with a thick strip of icing: few things are as irresistible to me as an iced finger bun. Here, I’ve flavoured the fondant with blackcurrant jam, which lends a gentle tartness to balance the sweetness, though almost any good-quality jam will work. A simple tanzhong (a cooked flour-and-milk paste) gives the buns their wonderfully fluffy crumb and keeps them soft for longer. For a more indulgent version, split the buns along the top and fill with whipped cream and a spoonful of jam instead. They’re best assembled just before serving, and make a particularly lovely afternoon treat.

After the long hot summer, I’m enjoying September’s back-to-school vibes – and the excuse to create delicious lunches to take to work

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

After an August spent mostly on the road, I’ve found myself unexpectedly enjoying the back-to-school feeling that arrives with September. Usually, I greet it with the sort of enthusiasm reserved for a tax return, but, having been away for so long, it’s actually been rather nice coming home. Of course, there are all the usual inevitable resolutions and to-do lists: go to bed earlier, eat better, take lunch to work. Admirable stuff, although I suspect a summer of one too many honeycomb ice-creams and an irresponsible amount of Irish brown bread and salty butter may also have something to do with it. Taking a packed lunch is, in any case, an all-round win, because eating out is increasingly expensive, and food bought in cafes and restaurants tends to be richer and saltier than a homemade equivalent. Depressingly, school and college canteens don’t fare much better, either.

But a packed lunch needn’t mean a sad sandwich or last night’s tubbed-up leftovers. Nena Foster’s courgette, olive and halloumi muffins are a very good argument for taking your lunch with you: nutrient-dense without being remotely worthy, they work just as well in an adult’s lunchbox as in a child’s, and they freeze brilliantly, too. Add a flask of pumpkin soup or Tom Hunt’s sweetcorn chowder for an excellent autumn lunch.

David (left), 34, a children’s doctor, meets Dec, 31, a culture and sex writer

What were you hoping for?
A sweet-hearted madman who would make me belly laugh.

With growing support networks online and in person, these moms say they’re changing the narrative around Black single motherhood

When Chamise Alston was ready to have a child, she connected her computer to her TV and scrolled through profiles with her best friend, dismissing people who seemed like the wrong fit. Unlike the average millennial on a dating app, Alston was scanning a sperm bank catalogue for potential donors. The Maryland-based therapist hoped to conceive a child through the assisted reproductive technology in vitro-fertilization (IVF).

That winter day in 2023, Alston and her friend chose a donor who would help her become pregnant with her now 16-month-old daughter. As a Black woman, she felt empowered taking control of her reproductive destiny.

Are you someone who thinks they have all the answers? Is your experience relevant here? Experts on the questions to ask yourself before giving advice

“Often, when people approach you for advice, they just want to talk about how they feel,” says Annalisa Barbieri, advice columnist for the Guardian for almost 20 years. For example, you might vent to a friend about your awful boss, and if they’re shocked it could confirm you’re being treated badly. “I also think people can have a lot of shame when things aren’t working out, and we like to share shame because it’s a hot potato of a feeling.” In other words, not every situation warrants advice. Sometimes, the person just wants to gauge a reaction or to share.

The manosphere says this type of suffering is targeted neglect, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. But your suffering gives you the ability to make your part of the world better.

• Read more Leading questions

I’m approaching 30 and I’m still a kissless virgin.

I’ve suffered with depression and anxiety since childhood and my family isn’t the most functional or supportive. I don’t really have friends either, as I find it hard to connect with others due to being bullied and feeling that I’m not worthwhile or wanted. I was also homeschooled from 14 and moved to a different part of the country at 15 and a few more times since then, so I feel quite rootless and alienated.

Energy bills are scheduled to rise next month but there are innovative ways to heat your home and save money

When Giles Gibson turns on the hot tap in his home, the water that comes out of it is not heated by gas but by the tiny datacentre strapped to the tank.

Attached to the hot water cylinder in his London home is a compact computer server that generates heat and then transfers it as it operates.

An app and a register of trusted traders may give greater protection to consumers but it is too late for some

In hindsight, Sheri Ingram, 35, can see the red flags. Lee Slocombe, a builder hired to renovate her ex-boyfriend’s home in the south Wales valleys, offered to do the work cheaply because he had materials left over from another job, then asked for money upfront to buy additional supplies.

“At the time, we believed him,” says Sheri, who was in her early 20s when it happened, and had just left university. The couple budgeted about £8,000 for work that included removing a supporting wall and building an extension with a balcony.

From a blue-grey converted iron chapel in Cheshire to a shiny black infill townhouse in London

Candidates describe feelings of rejection after submitting hundreds of applications but getting a handful of interviews

Hundreds of job applications, exhausting searches and relentless rejection – the experience of attempting to get back into the workforce after losing their jobs in their 50s and 60s has proved an ordeal for some Britons.

For some, those efforts prove fruitless and lead jobseekers to reluctantly take early retirement. Others may have to rely on benefits to pay the bills while they continue to job hunt.

Since the ancient Olympics, athletes like Hyrox competitor Joanna Wietrzyk have experienced runner’s diarrhoea. What does the science say about extreme exercise’s ‘mechanical jostling of the intestines’?

Soiling yourself in public sounds like a bad dream. But the Australian athlete Joanna Wietrzyk has now apologised for doing just that at the Hyrox games in Beijing on Saturday.

Wietrzyk won the fitness race but not before using communal equipment with faecal matter visibly running down her legs – and muddying Hyrox’s reputation.

Natalie Greenwood says surgery is no ‘magic fix’ for chronic pelvic pain – a view backed up by a new study

“It’s really frustrating to be in this cycle of continuous surgery. It makes you feel helpless,” says Natalie Greenwood, of a condition that affects her so badly she is “non-functioning most of the time because of the constant fatigue”.

Greenwood, 36, needs to have an operation every few years to limit the impact of the endometriosis that gives her chronic pelvic pain, as well as extreme tiredness and brain fog.

Collagen powders, gummies and pills have boomed in popularity in recent years boosted by claims that they smooth wrinkles, promote glossy hair and help with joint pain. Amid the noise it can be hard to figure out whether there’s any actual science behind the promise of looking younger for longer. Luckily Dr Xand van Tulleken has spent the past three years writing Make me well: a quest to understand the confusing world of wellness, and his chapter on collagen dives deep into the evidence. He tells Madeleine Finlay what collagen does in the body, how we can get it without splashing out on expensive supplements, and why getting to the truth behind wellness claims can be so hard

Handstands display a mastery of one’s physical form that I have never quite felt – and they look cool. Experts share their advice for building up strength and practicing

My aspirations in life are modest: I want to write, spend time with my loved ones, and someday find a lipstick that flatters my skintone. But perhaps my greatest ambition is this: I want to be able to do a handstand.

Why? It turns the world upside down. It seems fun. It displays a mastery of one’s physical form that I have never quite felt. And it looks cool! Maybe it has to do with that one time in third grade when all my friends could do a handstand and I couldn’t, but that’s for me and my therapist to sort out later.

Innovative journalist who as fashion editor of the Daily Mirror brought the latest 1960s looks to millions of readers

Felicity Green made a career on tabloid newspapers in their most masculine era when, after secretaries and tea-trolley ladies went home, whole buildings could be as all-male as a foundry or a battleship. By 1961 she was an associate editor across Mirror Group newspapers; in 1973, as the group’s publicity director, she was the first woman on the main board of a publisher. When she found out in 1978 that a new – less experienced, male – director was paid £30,000 a year, more than twice her salary, she resigned, insulted.

Green, who has died aged 100, knew how extraordinary her value had been to the group. The Daily Mirror, at its peak of five million-plus readers, besides being a household’s source of news and sport, offered families access to what we would now call pop culture – showbiz, celebrity and especially style. Newspapers were a main advertising medium through the 1950s, 60s and 70s, and agencies yearned for content to attract women, who controlled household purchases, and young people, a new market for discretionary spending.

Steven Kolb tried to stop activists demonstrating against the use of wool – but he can’t curb consumers’ growing concern about where their clothes come from

On Sunday afternoon, Mason Melito took a front row seat at the Cos show at New York fashion week. A campaigner at Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), Melito wasn’t on the guest list – instead, he and four other activists had planned to briefly disrupt the catwalk show with the aim of drawing attention to the use of wool by the Swedish brand.

Protests on the catwalk have a long, rich history. Since the 90s, Peta have regularly stormed shows in an attempt to draw attention to the industry’s use of fur and leather. It’s a typically peaceful practice that happens regularly – during some shows, the catwalk is so long and security so swift that show-goers don’t even notice. (Sometimes, Peta take a different approach: in 1996, during a lunch, a protester famously dropped a dead raccoon on to Anna Wintour’s plate.)

Seeing a pallid, washed-out face in the mirror? Prepare to be diagnosed …

Name: Ferritin face.

Age: The name is new, but the symptoms are old.

Let your legs enjoy the last of the summer’s breeze while a thick top or jacket keeps away the autumn chill

This is the most enjoyable time of the year to get dressed because clothes can just be clothes. They don’t have to function as a personal air-conditioning and sweat-disguising system, as they did for the summer, nor do they need to double as a portable central heating unit yet. Your outfit does not need to “take you from day to night” until party season starts, and it doesn’t have to jigsaw itself into a hand-luggage-sized capsule wardrobe until next summer. There is little in the way of functional heavy lifting, so you get to just wear nice clothes.

And this benign early part of autumn is more fun to dress for than the equivalent weather in spring, because we still have a bit of summer swagger. The summer habit of wearing shorts and halter tops and even swimwear has gotten us a little loose, a little more laid-back about flashing a bit of skin here or there. It is about more than bare flesh, though. There is something about summer that flexes the flashy dresser in everyone – whether that’s fancy dress for a festival, or just the way that putting on a pair of sunglasses brings out your inner movie star.

From the foothills of the Pyrenees to the peaks of the Dolomites, you share your top views, meals and adventures at altitude

• Tell us about a trip to Germany – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

No doubt your first thought on hearing the words “double-decker” is of a bus. But in the Swiss village of Stans, an old wooden funicular carriage ascends to the station, where a double-decker cable car awaits. Inside, a spiral staircase leads you to an open upper viewing deck. At the summit, the views back to Lucerne are superb, and there are alpine marmots to spot too. There was a wedding ceremony going on at the summit on our trip!
Martin

Perched above the clouds in northern Italy, Santnerpass refuge doesn’t just look stunning. It’s a marvel of eco-building – and vegetarian cuisine

‘I think my boots are falling apart!” shouts Nigel just as we hit the pinnacles, a whole range of them jutting up and out from the mountainside, all thrillingly tall, spiky and knobbled. Through them we painstakingly step, fingers aching in gloves, heads sweating in helmets – squashing up narrow chimneys, squeezing through mighty boulders and inching along slender ledges on a twisting path that’s only just discernible through swathes of sharp white scree.

I know how Nigel’s boots are feeling: the going is far harder than I was expecting. This is only the first day of our annual trip to the Dolomites, a vast range of breathtaking sawtooth peaks in northern Italy, but my head’s already full of the thought I have every year as we start out: “If only you’d got fitter.”

Weekenders from Zagreb head to the rolling green Samobor Hills for nature, vineyards, delicious local food and Habsburg-era architecture

‘You’re going to Samobor? You must try kremšnita,” my Dubrovnik friends told me before I set off on my trip north. “But I’ve already had kremšnita in Zagreb,” I told them. They do it better in Samobor, they insisted. I wasn’t about to get embroiled in a battle of the cream cakes in a region where Croatians, Slovenes and Austrians all like to celebrate their own versions of this decadently thick, fat custard slice topped with puff pastry and icing sugar. But I was more than willing – happy, even – to follow everyone’s suggestions to try kremšnita in Hotel Livadić’s Kavana Livadić, in Samobor’s main King Tomislav Square, a mere half-hour drive west of Zagreb.

It lived up to the hype – delicately rich, creamy and with a light touch. After spending a few weeks in sun-bleached Venetian Dalmatia, amid the scrubby, limestone Dinaric Alps, I had swapped empires and was firmly in Habsburg Croatia. Here, in Zagreb County’s prettiest town, handsome baroque houses in pastel shades of buttery yellow, apricot and pistachio, festooned with stucco, line narrow King Tomislav Square, whose umbrella-shaded cafe terraces were filled with Croatians getting their morning fix of coffee and chatter.

Hiking alone in the countryside can be joyous, but for women it can sometimes feel unnerving. Here’s how to enjoy it safely, plus four stunning routes to walk solo

I did my first solo hike during a sunny September, seven years ago. After a summer of feeding and ferrying four noisy teenagers (and their friends) around, I was exhausted. But despite being bone tired, I had barely moved. I yearned, above all, for time on my own, for the chance to walk without interruption (and at the pace I chose), and for the silence of some empty wilderness.

But I was nervous. Not of being on my own, but of what might happen to me with no one around to help (breaking a bone, encountering a psychopath, being chased by a bull, getting fatally lost). I could have found a companion or joined a group, but my need for silence and solitude outweighed my fears.

Stanhope, Weardale: I’ve realised in that time that beauty and fascination can lie in the most mundane of plants – in this case, broad-leaved dock

After another exceptionally dry summer, there’s a nagging question lurking at the back of naturalists’ minds: which species will be the winners and losers in our evolving climate?

Throughout summer’s heatwaves and drought, I watched a dense stand of broad-leaved docks, Rumex obtusifolius, thrive while surrounding fields turned the colour of bleached straw. They have promising credentials as drought survivors, thanks to a deep taproot, fast, early spring growth and a long-lasting dormant seed bank in the soil.

Two women I meet on our walk are way more interested in Jean than me – and insist she’ll clean up if we enter her in the local dog show

It’s a Saturday morning and I’m walking the dog on a vast bit of scrubland. The path in front of me is parched and deserted. Up ahead, the dog turns the corner at a patch of brambles, and I hear the excited voices of two women. My immediate reaction is one of alarm; I whistle, but the dog doesn’t reappear. The voices rise.

Only when I turn the corner myself do I see that everything is fine: the dog is dashing from one woman to the other, tail wagging, and the women are both delighted. Meanwhile, their own dogs stand to one side, staring balefully at the ground, leads trailing.

From Alpine Rams and Rhein Fire to Giandujot and SuperCrema, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 10,935 metres is the answer to which question, posed by an Irving Berlin song?
2 Which empire had its capital at Cusco?
3 Who released her bestselling Workout fitness video in 1982?
4 In which sport does Rhein Fire play the Alpine Rams?
5 Greater mouse-eared is the UK’s largest and rarest species of which mammal?
6 The David Bowie Centre is part of which museum?
7 Giandujot and SuperCrema are the predecessors of which spread?
8 Richard Moth was appointed to which religious post last year?
What links:
9 Cricket; crow; cuckoo; dik-dik; gecko; owl?
10 Richmond and Charleston (Tudor); Raleigh and Columbia (Stuart); Atlanta (Hanover)?
11 Chan; kun; sama; san; senpai; sensei; shi?
12 Ninoy Aquino assassination; Brink’s-Mat robbery; Entebbe raid; Rudolf Nureyev defection?
13 Tu Youyou, 2015; Alphonse Laveran, 1907; Ronald Ross, 1902?
14 Benjamin Franklin Z Grill; Inverted Jenny; Treskilling Yellow; Tyrian Plum?
15 Australian and US TV; Jackson 5; Martin Fry; Poirot case?

Equal Earth projection, adopted by the UN last week, provides an alternative to 16th-century Mercator display

Three cartographers have spoken of their astonishment at the UN’s near-universal adoption of a map they created to more accurately show the sizes of Africa and Europe, even though they have received a few complaints from some disgruntled diplomats.

The creators of the Equal Earth projection aimed to provide an alternative to the dominant 16th-century Mercator display, which critics have long faulted for giving the impression that northern hemisphere nations are larger than they are – and therefore subtly reinforcing perceptions of where global strength lies.

Exclusive: Prof Jim Al-Khalili says he will offer solution to ‘arrow of time’ problem in Royal Institution lectures

Tech billionaires attempting to live for ever are, quite literally, wasting their time, a leading physicist has said.

While some normal people are turning to unregulated peptide injections, cold plunges and supplements in an effort to defy ageing, the ultra-rich are aiming for immortality with even more drastic interventions: the tech chief executive Bryan Johnson has even tried injecting plasma from his 17-year-old son – although he later said he saw no benefit from it.

The author of Generation Maybe, Camilla Cavendish, explains the many reasons people are having fewer children, from dating apps to unaffordable housing and the climate crisis

Generation Maybe is the most tactful possible title for Camilla Cavendish’s bracing new book – because the trend she’s describing is anything but a “maybe”. “The wave of childlessness that is sweeping the globe is extraordinary,” she writes. It’s in the UK, where the fertility rate hit 1.39 children per woman in 2025, the lowest on record. It’s across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, visible in so many measures – nearly half of Canadian women surveyed in their 40s said they’d had fewer children than they would have liked. But it’s also a global story. “The UAE, Chile and Tamil Nadu in India have even lower birthrates than Germany,” Cavendish writes. “China is growing old before it gets rich, and Russia has maintained its population size purely by annexing Crimea and parts of Ukraine.” In fact, when it comes to falling populations, “only the Black Death in the 14th century is comparable to what is happening now”.

When I meet her in central London, Cavendish is tailored, self-possessed, you might even say poised, but very open – she never gives an opinion without asking yours, she talks very freely about her family and she is upfront about what she sees as her faults. Now 58, she started her career at McKinsey, the mega-management consultancy, having done PPE at Oxford at the same time as David Cameron, for whom she worked as policy director when he was in government and to whom she remains intensely loyal (every time his name comes up, we have a fight).

We would like to hear about your favourite moments and storylines from the documentary series

As the 7 Up documentary series airs its final episodes with 70 Up, we would like to hear your highlights from over the years.

The ITV series started following the lives of 10 boys and four girls in England, beginning in 1964, when they were seven years old, and has returned every seven years since.

We would like to hear your experience of seeing the Bayeux tapestry exhibit at the British Museum

The British Museum’s Bayeux tapestry exhibit opened on Thursday 10 September, and has already broken the British Museum’s record for the number of tickets sold in one day.

Have you seen the Bayeux tapestry at the British Museum? How far did you travel to see it? Tell us all about your experience below.

From renting and troublesome landlords to buying or selling a home, send us your UK housing questions

Are you dealing with a problem with your landlord or tenancy, wondering about buying or selling a home, or facing another housing issue?

We’re planning to launch a new column answering readers’ questions about housing in the UK and helping them understand their options.

The Guardian is looking for single men of all ages to talk honestly about the experience of being unattached

The Guardian is looking for single men of all ages to talk honestly about the experience of being unattached. Whether you are 16 or 100, we want to hear the unvarnished truth about what it’s like to live as a single man today.

Are you trying to find love? Or are you happy living life as a bachelor? Do you find the experience of modern dating – with all its red flags and height requirements – to be a minefield? Or are you attracting more attention than ever before?

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Russian strikes in Kyiv, a female militia march in Tehran, protests in Pristina and Alfie Hewett at the US Open – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists