Will Sinners beat One Battle After Another to the big prize? Will Timothée Chalamet get pelted with tutus? Can host Conan O’Brien wrap in under four hours? Join us to find out

• In pictures: the best looks from the red carpet
• The winners: the full list - updating live

Felcity Jones has arrived in lemon-coloured Prada proving old Hollywood – sleeveless, a sprinkle of crystals, a little tulle train, hair in a soft side wave – is bomb-proof if you stick to the formula

One of the most miraculous aspects of the night is that Conan O’Brien will once again host. His turn last year saved what had the potential to be a very dull evening, and it is very exciting to think about what he’ll do this year, with films that people have actually heard of. And, for that matter, what he’ll do about Train Dreams, a film so lacking in comedic potential that O’Brien tore into it during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel last week.

What makes this even more miraculous is that it’s been reported that O’Brien will earn $15,000 for tonight’s duties, a figure that simultaneously seems quite high and extremely low. This isn’t just a one-night deal for O’Brien; he’s been writing jokes for the show with his staff since the end of last year, and has been on an exhausting weeks-long press tour for the ceremony. And, to put it into perspective, in 2010 – when he became host of the Tonight Show, then lost the Tonight Show, then received a settlement from NBC – it’s estimated that he made close to $40 million.

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the UK. But screening is not universal, and charities are divided over whether it should be extended. What do those living with the disease think?

Almost seven years into his retirement, David Bulteel should be enjoying the fruits of his 40-year career in the City. On paper, he has the lot: a tidy pension, delightful grandkids, a big house in the Buckinghamshire commuter belt. He’s naturally upbeat and driven, which he says was in part a reaction to the trauma of losing his right arm in a motorbike crash at 21. He was so energetic and enthusiastic in the office that his nickname was “Tigger”.

“My philosophy has always been that there’s no such thing as a problem that you can’t solve,” Bulteel, 70, tells me from his home, where he’s wearing two jumpers on one of the coldest days of the winter. “The reality now is that I’ve been living under a shadow for 13 years, which has had a huge impact not just on me but on my whole family.”

SNL is a US comedy institution – can a British version rise to the challenge of finding the funny in our comparatively beige politicians every week? We speak to the team hand-picked to do just that

It is the calm before the storm. The storm being the impending debut of Saturday Night Live UK, our very own version of the US’s headline-grabbing, agenda-setting, impossibly influential TV comedy institution. The calm is a group of performers and writers sitting round a table in a bare-walled boardroom in west London’s Television Centre, seemingly unperturbed by the gargantuan task of staging a live sketch show – most of which will be written in the week of broadcast – or the prospect of a scathing reaction to it. Can SNL UK breathe new life into our ailing comedy industry? Or will the format fail spectacularly on these shores? I come away convinced I’m more nervous about finding out than the cast and crew are about actually making it.

Perhaps they’re just having too much fun. For the past four weeks, 11 performers and 20 writers have been spending every weekday together in this very building, hashing out premises for skits, workshopping each other’s material and “finding the alchemy”, as cast member and standup Ayoade Bamgboye puts it. For another, actor and TikToker Jack Shep, it’s been like “comedy boarding school”.

Hedgehogs’ habitat is shrinking, they’re vulnerable to cars, and pesticides are affecting their food supply. Here’s how we can help them pull through

With stumpy, speedy legs, questing snouts and a fierce quiver of needles, hedgehogs are enchantingly strange, like fantasy creatures from a medieval bestiary. “It’s the nation’s favourite wild animal – every time there’s a vote or a poll, the hedgehog wins,” says ecologist Hugh Warwick, AKA “Hedgehog Hugh”, author of the Cull of the Wild and hedgehog champion.

Talk about your fears, normalise difficult emotions, get up and move: experts share their strategies for managing anxiety at different stages of life

We are living in an age of anxiety. A 2023 survey by the Mental Health Foundation found that one in five people in the UK experience anxiety all or most of the time. In 2024, 500 children a day were being referred for NHS anxiety treatment in England.

It is one of the epidemics of our time, says Owen O’Kane, a psychotherapist and the author of Addicted to Anxiety: How to Break the Habit. “When we look at what is happening in the world at the moment, the one thing we have an abundance of is uncertainty. If you look at a textbook definition of anxiety, it is an intolerance of uncertainty.”

Humiliating failure now looms, as symbolically damaging to US global standing and national self-esteem as Afghanistan or Iraq

Donald Trump menaces the world. He’s global public enemy number one. He’s steadily losing the illegal war with Iran he started but cannot stop. His violence-addicted Israeli sidekick, Benjamin Netanyahu, is terrorising Lebanon. And ordinary people everywhere, their security threatened, face a huge economic bill for his reckless folly.

Add Trump’s war-making to his daily debasing of democracy, appeasing of Russia, punitive tariffs, climate crisis denial and flouting of international law, and it’s clear this White House travesty has gone on long enough. Americans must put their house in order and act decisively to restrain someone who endangers us all.

Tehran wants ceasefire but terms ‘not good enough yet’, US president claims, as both sides launch new waves of strikes

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Donald Trump has warned he is not ready to seek a deal to end the US-Israeli offensive against Iran, saying that though he thought Tehran was keen to negotiate a ceasefire, the US would fight on for better terms.

Trump’s comments came as Iran launched fresh missile and drone attacks on countries in the Gulf and on Israel, and Israeli and US warplanes launched new waves of strikes on Iran.

Government reluctant to dispatch ships amid concerns complying with Trump’s demands could escalate Iran crisis

Ministers are drawing up plans to send minesweeping drones to the strait of Hormuz amid concerns in Whitehall that complying with Donald Trump’s demand to send ships could escalate the crisis.

The government is considering dispatching aerial minesweepers to help clear the vital waterway of mines in an attempt to allow the flow of oil exports to resume. However, officials said that sending ships, as requested over the weekend by the US president, could worsen the situation given the volatile nature of the war.

Another weekend of violence compounded global market concerns over war in the Middle East, following US strikes on the vital oil hub

Oil prices have climbed again amid mounting supply fears after the US struck Iran’s vital Kharg Island oil hub and Donald Trump demanded allies help reopen the strait of Hormuz.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, rose 1.8% to $104.98 per barrel during early trading on Monday. Another weekend of violence across the Middle East compounded concerns over the conflict, and its ramifications for global energy markets.

Defence analyst says torpedo strike is a ‘humiliation’ for Modi’s government that disregarded a US defence partner

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The distress call came in to Sri Lanka’s maritime rescue coordination centre just after 5am. The ship in trouble, they determined, was well within Sri Lanka’s obligation for rescue, being just over 19 nautical miles off the coast of the southern city of Galle.

The navy swiftly mobilised and, by 6am, the first search and rescue boat was on its way, another soon close behind. It was hard to see through the thick morning mist but officers onboard kept their eyes peeled for a ship in the distance.

Senator Ron Johnson pushes back, saying he’s not in favor of government meddling in freedom of speech

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair, Brendan Carr, is facing pushback from a Republican lawmaker after warning on Saturday that broadcasters could lose their licenses if they run what the federal agency deems “fake news” over the Iran conflict.

Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said in an interview on the Sunday Briefing on Fox News that he was not in favor of the government control of private enterprise or efforts to meddle with freedom of speech protected under the constitution.

Coogler, who also directed the film, becomes only the second black writer to win this award, after Jordan Peele

Ryan Coogler has won the best original screenplay Oscar for Sinners, at the 98th Academy awards now under way in Los Angeles.

Coogler’s victory makes him only the second black writer to win the award, following Jordan Peele who won in 2018 for Get Out.

The director has won the Oscar for his critically-acclaimed film based loosely on Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland

• Oscars 2026 – follow the action live!

• The winners: the full list – updating live

Paul Thomas Anderson has won his first Oscar, for best adapted screenplay for One Battle After Another.

Also directed by Anderson, One Battle After Another is a loose adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland; it stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a former revolutionary living under a new name with his teenage daughter, played by Chase Infiniti.

With his third Oscar, Penn joins an elite band of triple winners, including Daniel Day-Lewis and Jack Nicholson

• Oscars 2026 – follow the action live!

• The winners: the full list – updating live

Sean Penn has won the Oscar for best supporting actor for One Battle After Another, at the 98th Academy Awards now under way in Los Angeles.

With this win, Penn has joined an elite company of male actors to win three acting Oscars, joining Daniel Day-Lewis, Jack Nicholson and Walter Brennan. Penn previously won best actor Oscars for Mystic River in 2004 and Milk in 2009.

The best looks from the red carpet at the 98th Academy Awards in Los Angeles

• Oscars 2026 liveblog – follow the action

Nottinghamshire and Met police made arrests in past year, despite MPs voting to decriminalise in England and Wales

Vulnerable women in England are still being arrested and facing police investigations over suspected illegal pregnancy terminations, despite parliament backing changes to the law to decriminalise abortion.

Responding to a freedom of information request, Nottinghamshire police and the Metropolitan police confirmed they had arrested women suspected of illegal terminations between June last year and this January.

Prime minister expected to set out tens of millions of pounds in help for heating oil users as conflict with Iran drives up costs

Keir Starmer will on Monday announce tens of millions of pounds’ worth of support for Britons hit by a spike in energy prices as a result of the Iran war.

The prime minister will lay out the plans during a press conference in Downing Street on Monday, during which he will also take aim at some suppliers of heating oil for price gouging.

National Audit Office highlights benefits of state rescue for jobs and orders but warns of continuing high cost

The cost of keeping the UK’s last remaining blast furnaces going at British Steel’s Scunthorpe plant could exceed £1.5bn by 2028 if it continues at its current rate, according to the government’s spending watchdog.

Ministers took the plant into public control in April last year, after its Chinese owner – industrial firm Jingye – threatened to shut down the loss-making site.

Borrowers coming off fixed deals hit hard as Savills says big spike in interest payments made up half the overall rise

UK households spent a record £226bn to keep a roof over their heads last year, figures showed on Monday, with mortgage borrowers finishing fixed-rate deals particularly hard hit by rising payments.

Overall housing costs have gone up by £66bn over the past five years, a rise of 41%, the property group Savills said.

Share of 16- to 24-year-old Neets who report a work-limiting condition up 70% in a decade, says thinktank

There has been a sharp rise in the number of jobless young people in the UK citing health problems as the reason they are not working, according to analysis.

The share of 16- to 24-year-olds not in education, employment or training – known as Neets – who reported a work-limiting condition has surged by 70% in a decade, a charity thinktank found.

Zahira Byjaouane, 43, arrested on Saturday after reports baby fell from property on Horseferry Road in Westminster

A mother has been charged with murdering her 18-day-old baby girl, who fell from a height at a property in central London.

Zahira Byjaouane, 43, was arrested on Saturday morning after reports that a baby had fallen from a property on Horseferry Road in Westminster.

Students in Canterbury given antibiotics for fast-acting and invasive meningococcal disease, says UKHSA

Two people have died and 11 are reportedly seriously ill in hospital after an outbreak of a rare form of invasive meningitis at the University of Kent.

The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said it had provided antibiotics to students in the Canterbury area after it detected 13 cases of invasive meningococcal disease, a combination of meningitis and septicaemia.

Far-right and radical left parties likely to increase their local presence in advance of next year’s presidential race

The first-round of the French municipal elections have seen a strong showing for Marine Le Pen’s far-right the National Rally (RN), as well as for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical left, with both parties likely to increase their local presence ahead of next year’s French presidential race.

The French local elections, which now go to a final round runoff on 22 March, are seen as a crucial test of the political temperature before next year’s presidential election. Emmanuel Macron’s two terms in office come to an end in spring 2027 and there is uncertainty about who will next lead the EU’s second-largest economy.

Pretending not to hear parents or hiding toys are among children’s early ploys, while by age of three they may be telling lies such as ‘a ghost ate the chocolate’, research finds

They may be yet to take their first step or say their first word, but some babies have already grasped the basics of deception before their first birthday, according to research.

The study, based on interviews with 750 parents, suggested that by 10 months about a quarter of children were practising some rudimentary form of deceit such as pretending not to hear their parents, hiding toys or eating forbidden foods out of view. By the age of three, children were more proficient, creative and frequent fabricators, according to the parents’ responses.

Daily Mail owner could take long-term hit after being gazumped at the 11th hour by Germany’s Axel Springer

The day after Lord Rothermere was gazumped in his pursuit of the Telegraph by Axel Springer’s £575m knockout offer, the Daily Mail owner was pictured beaming at Rupert Murdoch’s 95th birthday party in New York.

As guests at the star-studded black tie celebration at The Grill in Manhattan listened to Hollywood actor Hugh Jackman sing numbers such as Fly Me to the Moon, the 58-year-old media mogul may have been wondering how his almost three-decade dream to unite the titles within one right-leaning stable had fallen at the final hurdle.

From Gaza to Iran, the pattern is the same: precision weapons, chosen blindness, and dead children. The cost of failing to regulate AI warfare is already too high

There is an Israeli military strategy called the “fog procedure”. First used during the second intifada, it’s an unofficial rule that requires soldiers guarding military posts in conditions of low visibility to shoot bursts of gunfire into the darkness, on the theory that an invisible threat might be lurking.

It’s violence licensed by blindness. Shoot into the darkness and call it deterrence. With the dawn of AI warfare, that same logic of chosen blindness has been refined, systematized, and handed off to a machine.

Ella Bruccoleri’s performance as Mary is absolutely lovely. It’s a shame this overly slight drama labours the jokes about her marriage prospects, though

Lydia Bennet – the kickable youngest Bennet daughter from Jane Austen’s famous family unit, with an endless penchant for drama – has been the subject of many retellings. Not to mention unofficial sequels to Pride and Prejudice (unofficial in the sense that Austen has been slightly too dead for slightly too long to write one herself). Elizabeth, obviously, was the subject of the original and it is generally felt that Jane got enough of a look in, too. (Though, in firstborn solidarity, I would like the record to show that if anyone wants to do a full-blown rewrite or sequel from Jane’s point of view, I and a kabillion other dutiful oldest daughters would welcome the chance to escape from our life of responsibility and the burdens of innate superiority in all things for 300 pages or so, thank you.) Kitty is popular as a subject of fan fiction – the lure of bringing her out of Lydia’s shadow is pretty irresistible – and stars in a few more substantial works, such as Carrie Kablean’s fun and perfectly titled What Kitty Did Next.

Now it is Mary’s turn. She has had a few already – including Coleen “The ThornBirds” McCullough’s The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet, and Perception by Terri Fleming, another neat titling. But the most popular by far has been Janice Hadlow’s 2020 bestseller The Other Bennet Sister, now adapted into a 10-part series for television by Sarah Quintrell with additional writing by Maddie Dai.

The broadcaster, writer and former television judge on being useless at school, how ‘great parents’ instilled her self-confidence, and dealing with sexism

Born in Cape Town in 1940, Prue Leith is a restaurateur, chef, broadcaster and writer. She made her name with her Michelin-starred restaurant Leiths and founded Leiths School of Food and Wine in 1975, which she sold in 1995. Her career spans more than 16 cookery books, eight novels and a memoir published in 2013. After first appearing on television in the 1970s, she later served as a judge on Great British Menu for 11 years and judged The Great British Bake Off for nine years. Her new book, Being Old and Learning to Love It, is out now.

This was taken when I won businesswoman of the year. The chairman of British Rail, Sir Peter Parker, had been nominating me for 10 years. The board didn’t think I was the right candidate, even though my business was growing all the time. The two previous winners both went bust and they didn’t want the award to be seen as a kiss of death. They gave it to me because I didn’t have any debt. I never spent money – my chefs would get furious with me. They’d ask for a new fridge or fancy oven and I would always reply: “When we can afford it, we will!”

Two Oxfordshire inhabitants disagreed over the role of the royals, but would they see eye to eye over benefits and immigration?

Matilda, 19, Oxfordshire

Occupation Starts a history degree in September

People love to declare the death of the women’s movement, pointing to the ‘failure’ of #MeToo or the Epstein files, but don’t give up the fight just yet, writes Rebecca Solnit

Feminism is far from dead, but people love to write its obituary. I’ve lived through dozens of them over the decades, and there’s been a fresh flurry over the past few years. These death announcements are mostly based on two dubious assumptions. One is that we’re at the end of the story, the point at which a verdict can be rendered and a moral extracted. In this version, 60 years on from the great 1960s surge of feminism, the process should be over, and if feminism has not won, surely it has lost. In reality, it’s naively defeatist to assume millennia of patriarchy entrenched in law, culture, social arrangements and economics could be or should have been fully disassembled in one lifetime.

The other assumption is that one event can be a weathervane, a measuring stick, for the failure of feminism. Three popular recent candidates are the overturning of Roe v Wade in June 2022, #MeToo, and the Epstein files. Let’s first remember that the US is not the whole world. There have, for example, been countless obituary writers proclaiming that #MeToo is over or failed, and I’m not sure what that is based on – the assumption that all sexual abuse should have ended and, if not, feminism of the #MeToo subcategory did not succeed? Is any other human rights movement measured by such criteria? Did anyone think the civil rights movement should be judged by whether it terminated all racism for ever? The perfect is the enemy of the good, and it’s often both an impossible standard and a cudgel used to bash in what good has been achieved.

When they lived in different countries, sex was spontaneous for Rupert and Eva, but now they cohabit they experiment more

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

We’ve been trying the ‘sex first’ rule when you go out on a date, because you don’t really feel like sex after dinner and a glass of wine

Even if he was on a night shift, I’d sneak into his workplace and we’d have sex there

Self-described UK patriots have spotted an opportunity for advancement and enrichment. That’s why so many outsource their identity to Trump

An underappreciated element of how the “special relationship” between Britain and US emerged in the aftermath of the second world war is that early on, both parties saw themselves as the senior partner. The US’s clear military and economic dominance of the postwar world gave it an obvious claim to seniority; however, there was also a strong strain within English conservatism at the time that saw itself as “Greeks in this American empire”, in the words of former Tory prime minister Harold Macmillan.

In other words, even if the Americans were to be the new Romans, extending their dominion over every corner of the globe, without the intellectual, cultural and political guidance of their wise old mother country they would quickly fall into ruin. As Christopher Hitchens would later describe, the post-imperial UK positioned itself as tutor to its young progeny and, in doing so, assumed the prefix of “Anglo” in “Anglo-American” reflected a subtle primacy of standing.

Dr Kojo Koram is professor of law and political economy at Loughborough University, and writes on issues of law, race and empire. He is the author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire

Timely end of two-child limit plus a healthy uptick in universal credit signals ‘life-changing’ boost to Britons most exposed to Trumpflation

It doesn’t involve warships, drones or strategic oil stocks, but one of Labour’s most potent weapons for containing the economic aftershocks from the Iran war for the UK is about to be unleashed: the scrapping of the two-child limit.

If the cost of essential goods spikes as a result of high oil prices it is the poorest households who will be the most exposed.

I’m inspired by Barbara from Stroud, who went viral for her way with a kind word. What we don’t need is the corporate nonsense from the likes of M&S and ‘chief compliments officer’ Gillian Anderson

I hope you don’t mind me saying that you are looking very nice today. Ugh, no, sorry, start again.

I have been thinking a lot about compliments – why, how, good and bad ones – because of Barbara from Stroud, whose vox pop went viral when she was asked how to make someone’s day better. “If I see someone and I like their shoes, dress, hat, I say so,” she said. That this quite ordinary comment, albeit from a clearly delightful woman, got millions of views and compliments in return (including from former England goalie Mary Earps) suggests an understandable longing for nano acts of niceness.

It’s hard to be transported by the glitz and glamour when it’s constantly overshadowed by some white-hot new horror

It’s been a full decade now since I attended the Academy Awards ceremony for this very same publication, and chat, I am feeling, like, totally cooked. I’m so unc’d, it’s cringe, fam.

The article was titled “My first Oscars”, which is a terribly presumptuous statement, because it assumes there will be a second or a third. Despite my best efforts, it remains my only Oscars. I reread the piece to prepare to once again write about the Academy Awards for the Guardian, and I was shocked by how mundane the whole experience came across on the page. As befitting the much younger, more crass version of myself, there was a lot of eyerolling and snark about how soulless the event was. Also, I wouldn’t stop talking about seeing Gary Busey.

Dave Schilling is a Los Angeles-based writer and humorist

No species is a ‘villain’ – and even humans’ least favourite creatures are part of a web that makes all life possible

A wasp has just flown into your kitchen. Do you: a) scream and run away; b) roll up a magazine and try to bash it; or c) open a window and usher it outside? Now imagine it’s a bee – do you respond in the same way?

Our emotional responses towards the other animals on this planet are diverse, complicated and often irrational, and our contrasting perceptions of wasps and bees is a fantastic example. Bees are positively associated with honey, flowers and pollination, while wasps are negatively associated with stings, pain and annoyance – all this despite the fact that bees obviously can sting, while wasps are important pollinators, too. It’s the same for other animal pairs: sharks are mindless killers, while dolphins are paragons of benevolence; vultures are ugly and sinister, while eagles are majestic. I’m here to say that we’ve got them all wrong.

Jo Wimpenny is the author of Beauty of the Beasts: Rethinking Nature’s Least Loved Animals

The country’s 900 billionaires have far too much influence over our government and economy. Here’s how we can reduce the power of the ultra-rich

Not a day goes by without some news about billionaires throwing their weight around to bend the system in their favor or about politicians giving them tax cuts, government contracts or pardons. In today’s new Gilded Age, the 900-plus billionaires in the US have far too much influence over our elections, our economy, our government policies and our news media, and it’s urgent for Americans to create a movement to curb their power in order to preserve what’s left of our democracy and assure we have an economy with some basic fairness.

It’s deeply troubling that billionaires have far more power in shaping our nation’s politics and policies than do average Americans, whether they’re auto workers, teachers, nurses, carpenters or supermarket cashiers. What’s more, it’s deeply disturbing that so many billionaires support the most authoritarian president in US history, whether by donating to his campaign or his gilded ballroom.

Steven Greenhouse is a journalist and author, focusing on labour and the workplace, as well as economic and legal issues

Friends said ‘most people will never get in the ring’ as if it was comforting instead of a reminder I’m extremely stupid

I’ve spent most of my life being devoured by heart-exploding anxiety. “Doing scary things” has meant stuff like being out after dark and calling someone on the phone. It has never, for one minute, meant fist fighting in front of a crowd of people.

But a while ago I decided to try countering the anxiety by doing new stuff. With that in mind, I went to a boxing class. At worst, I figured, I could write a column about being a middle-aged mother in a young man’s world.

Anna Spargo-Ryan is the author of A Kind of Magic, The Gulf and The Paper House, and a winner of the Horne prize

Pausing the scrapping of existing qualifications was the right decision. But the wider battle over further education continues

The government’s granting of a stay of execution to popular courses including health and business studies BTecs, while alternatives are developed, is a victory for common sense. It should not have taken a years‑long campaign by the college sector to prevent the over‑hasty defunding of qualifications that are taken by more than 200,000 students each year in England and Wales. Belatedly, the government has admitted as much. Jacqui Smith, the skills minister, said that the previous timetable was “too aggressive”.

Welcome though this admission is, the problems with this package of reforms to 16-19 education go beyond the timetable. Other questionable decisions remain to be either justified or unpicked. The most important of these is the replacement of numerous existing diplomas with brand-new V-levels, which are being designed as A-level-size equivalents, with a view to enabling students to mix and match (for example, studying an education V-level alongside sociology and drama A-levels). Education is one of the first three V-levels due to be launched, along with finance and digital, next year.

Evidence is piling up that GLP-1 drugs can treat addiction. We must learn from the way that obesity has been stigmatised

In the years since so-called weight-loss jabs entered widespread use, there have been reports that these drugs may not just reduce food cravings, but in fact cravings and desires full-stop. Earlier this month, a study using large-scale data from US veterans undergoing diabetes treatment suggested that those on the jabs were less likely to develop addictions to a wide range of drugs. Patients already using substances appeared about half as likely to suffer overdose or drug-related death if they were taking the jab as well.

This is an exciting avenue for future research. These medicines work partly on satiation and reward centres in the brain. It is likely that problematic food and drug cravings share a similar biological basis, and next-generation medicines may be more powerful or more targeted to one or the other. But, in the meantime, we should expect that existing weight-loss drugs will end up recommended (or prescribed off-label) for addiction treatment. This should make us rethink our approach to these remarkable medicines.

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

Universal phone coverage is yet to arrive in Britain, making a mockery of the government’s planned scheme, writes Teresa Rodrigues. Plus a letter from Sarah Davidson

What needs to be spelled out to the politicians looking to consult people about digital ID is that you cannot have a universal digital anything until you have universal phone coverage (UK digital ID scheme to have limited use before next general election, minister says, 10 March). When the old copper phone lines are switched off, we will be cut off because no provider will invest in our area, and this is not untypical of large areas of Devon.

That means that any digital ID accessed by phone will not be available to us unless we go and park in a layby every day where we can get signal. Does Darren Jones, the prime minister’s chief secretary, even understand this point? We are not refuseniks. We just live near a hill, and so we won’t be able to do our car tax, get our medical records or anything else as things stand.

Instead of romanticising a pre-AI past, universities should use this moment to rethink what they actually want students to demonstrate, says Dr Nafisa Baba-Ahmed

The frustration many academics are expressing about artificial intelligence and critical thinking is understandable (‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI, 10 March). But from my experience working with students on academic writing, blaming AI risks masking a problem that universities have lived with for years.

In my work with students, I have long seen the ways in which thinking can be outsourced when assessment allows it: essay mills, shared past papers, model essays passed between cohorts, or heavy reliance on tutors and friends to structure assignments. Artificial intelligence did not invent this behaviour. It has simply industrialised a shortcut that already existed.

Readers recall advice from their mothers – and fathers – on navigating the world

I so enjoyed Tim Dowling’s article on advice from his mother (My mother’s best advice: learn to raise one eyebrow at the world, 11 March). My own mother died in October and, while she never gave me any advice about facial expressions, she certainly taught me the importance of seeing the absurd in the world around us and to take pleasure in that, but without mocking, criticising or belittling. A metaphorical raise of the eyebrow, if you will, and something that I still reflect on.
David Nancarrow
Marlborough, Wiltshire

• Regarding words of wisdom from mothers, a friend’s mum taught her to recite the mantra “Bus pass, dinner money, homework, handkerchief” whenever she left the house to go to school. It still applies in principle. The first two have been replaced by a phone and credit card, the third by reading specs. But the necessity of a simple handkerchief has stood the test of time. Thank you, Mrs Moss.
Caroline Alexander
Sevenoaks, Kent

The random selection of jurors from local communities ensures that they are far more likely to reflect the cultural heritage of people appearing in court, says Nic Madge

The prime minister’s spokesperson is right that “only by using a combination of reform, investment and efficiency, can we hope to turn the tide on the backlog and deliver the faster and fairer justice the victims deserve” in the criminal courts (Labour lawyers ‘blocked’ from briefing MPs on jury trials overhaul before vote, 9 March). But curtailing the right to jury trial will have a minimal effect on the backlog.

Jury trials are not the cause of the backlog. Furthermore, the government’s proposals will disproportionately impact Black complainants, witnesses and defendants.

Russia’s involvement meant politics could not be avoided at a Paralympics more competitive than ever

The theme of the closing ceremony of the Winter Paralympics, held at the Olympic curling arena in Cortina D’Ampezzo, was “Italian Souvenir”. It followed, through dance and music, the ambitions of a young girl, played by Sofia Tansella who has spinal muscular atrophy, to see her dreams represented in the world. It was of course a metaphor for the Paralympic movement more broadly, a movement that has been boosted by a successful two weeks in Milano Cortina.

The International Paralympic Committee has been able to boast a number of striking milestones at these Games, on the 50th anniversary of the first. Milano Cortina has had the most countries in competition, 55, and the most to win medals, 27. The number of countries winning gold medals, 18, is the joint-highest in history. Although gender imbalance remains a genuine problem, there were more female competitors than ever before, 160, an 18% increase on four years ago and 26% of the total athlete count of 611, another record.

• Neil Simpson’s skiing silver the only podium finish

• ParalympicsGB failed to reach two-five medal target

UK Sport is set to raise performance targets for the next Winter Paralympics after Great Britain returned from Milano Cortina with only a single silver medal.

ParalympicsGB failed to hit a reduced target of two to five medals in Italy, with only Neil Simpson making the podium following a second-placed finish in the men’s visually impaired alpine combination skiing. On Sunday Simpson did not finish either of his runs in the VI slalom, putting a final end to hopes of further success.

• Americans win Para ice hockey final 6-2

• US get better of their neighbors once again

Three weeks after the United States beat Canada in the Olympic hockey finals, the Americans overcame their neighbors again to win Paralympic gold and complete the three-peat at Milan Cortina.

Jack Wallace scored a hat-trick to help the US beat Canada 6-2 in Sunday’s Para ice hockey final and become the first nation to sweep the hockey tournaments at the Olympics and Paralympics. There is currently no women’s division at the Paralympics as it is classified as an open-gender sport.

We take a look at the best images from the Games, including skiing success and ice hockey despair

• Richarlison’s late goal earns head coach first point

• ‘It’s a long way to our goal but today was important’

Igor Tudor described Tottenham’s first point of his tenure as the start of “something big” after drawing at Liverpool. The Croat had overseen four straight defeats since taking over and was heading for a fifth until Richarlison’s last-minute equaliser.

Dominik Szoboszlai fired Liverpool into a first-half lead from a free-kick but they were denied a victory that would move them into fourth by a visiting side who had only had 12 senior outfield players available, unable to fill their bench. Tudor handed Premier League debuts to two teenagers but his side were still able to hold the defending champions.

Despite a huge upswing in performance against France, the head coach still has a case to answer for what went wrong in the Six Nations

Did England play like that because of Steve Borthwick or in spite of him? For all that the Rugby Football Union will deep dive, look under the bonnet, get into the weeds – pick your own favourite bit of corporate speak – it is the fundamental question that Bill Sweeney and his review panel must ask in the coming weeks. Did Borthwick liberate his players against France, or did they take matters into their own hands?

As usual, the panel will include input from Sweeney and Conor O’Shea as well as those from outside the building who insist on anonymity. It is said that despite the huge upswing in performance in defeat against France, the RFU is still determined to establish what went wrong during this Six Nations. That is a positive sign because when the dust settles, this still goes down as their worst-ever championship. The noises coming from the RFU suggest that they will not be blinded by the razzle-dazzle in Paris, that Borthwick still has a case to answer.

• Italian world No 2 clinches 7-6 (6), 7-6 (4) win in Californian desert

• Women’s No 1 Aryna Sabalenka snaps her losing streak in final

Jannik Sinner claimed his first title of the year with victory over Daniil Medvedev in Indian Wells, while Aryna Sabalenka snapped her losing streak against Elena Rybakina in a thrilling women’s final.

Four-time grand slam champion Sinner had had a slightly underwhelming start to the season by his stratospheric standards but he was peerless in the Californian desert, not dropping a set through the fortnight.

• Hamilton ends long wait for top-three finish with Ferrari

• Max Verstappen says new rules make F1 like ‘Mario Kart’

Lewis Hamilton said he is “back to his best” after he finished third at the Chinese Grand Prix to claim his first podium at Ferrari.

The 41-year-old Briton beat his Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc after a thrilling duel and praised Formula One for delivering what he claimed was the best racing he had ever experienced.

On 71 minutes a classic Manchester United riposte, via Matheus Cunha, to Ross Barkley’s equaliser moments before. From around halfway, the peerless Bruno Fernandes glanced up and steered the ball through an inside left channel for Cunha. United’s No 10 galloped forward and as Emiliano Martínez loomed large the Brazilian’s curled finish was a peach that kissed the far right of the net, Cunha stepping forward before the Stretford End to soak up the ecstatic adoration.

Fernandes’ assist was his 100th in all competitions for United, the contest’s second, and 16th in the Premier League. The last statistic is a club record, this term’s competition high, and a latest argument for winning the player of the season awards.

⚾ Winners will play either Italy or Venezuela in final

⚾ Email david.lengel@theguardian.com with your thoughts

USA 0-0 DR, top 1st

Severino’s sinker is hitting 99 MPH and now his cutter is whipped past the swinging bat of Bryce Harper. Bang! Two up, two down, two strikeouts.

• American pars 18th for victory after birdie on 17

• Fitzpatrick had led at Sawgrass before late slip

The PGA Tour might have lost out in the court of public opinion over whether the Players Championship could be a major. However, the level of drama as shadows lengthened on this Sawgrass Sunday set the tournament aside from most others.

It came down to Cameron Young versus Matt Fitzpatrick. As Fitzpatrick agonisingly missed for par on the 72nd hole, Young had secured the biggest win of his career. He had emerged triumphant from a sporting thriller.

• Chelsea 2-0 Man Utd (James 19, Beever-Jones 76)

• Blues retain Women’s League Cup with victory

Death, taxes and Chelsea women winning trophies. Regardless of their form this season, regardless of an all-but relinquished Women’s Super League title, with Manchester City nine points clear at the top of the table, you can never bet against the Blues in a cup final – or Lauren James making an impact.

If there was a time for Manchester United to get the better of Sonia Bompastor’s side, having twice lost to them in the FA Cup final, it was now. Marc Skinner’s side sit one point ahead of Chelsea in the league, and they have looked in better form.

• Former left-back signs until June with option to stay on

• Cole has been coach at Chelsea, Everton and Derby

Ashley Cole has been appointed as the head coach of the Serie B side Cesena. It is a first management role for the former Arsenal, Chelsea and England full-back, who has been developing as a coach since retiring from playing in 2019.

Cole’s positions have included working with Frank Lampard at Derby, Chelsea and Everton, with Wayne Rooney at Birmingham, and with England and the Football Association.

British negotiators ‘blindsided’ by Brussels’ demand for a reduction that could cost universities £140m a year

Britain is in a standoff with Brussels over a demand to cut university tuition fees for European students, in a row that threatens to scupper Keir Starmer’s planned EU reset.

EU officials say European students should pay “home” fees of about £9,500 a year in England and Wales as part of the negotiations over a youth mobility scheme, rather than the higher international rate, which can rise above £60,000. European students would also pay the domestic rate in Scotland, which is set at £1,820 a year, although most Scottish students qualify for free tuition. Fees for Irish students In Northern Ireland are generally capped at £4,855.

Metropolitan police say they are also investigating chants led by Bobby Vylan at pro-Palestine protest next to Thames

Twelve people were arrested as hundreds joined a pro-Palestinian al-Quds Day demonstration on one side of the Thames, while hundreds more gathered on the opposite bank to back Israeli and American attacks on Iran.

Al-Quds Day is an international demonstration of support for Palestinian rights. The event takes its name from the Arabic for Jerusalem and was established by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini after Iran’s 1979 revolution.

Patients experiencing raised bedside rails, doors and pathways blocked by furniture and physical interventions

People with dementia are being subjected to restraints and non-consensual sedation while in hospitals in England, according to the first study of its kind.

These restrictive practices were found to be an “embedded aspect of routine ward care”, according to the analysis, with such examples including dementia patients having their bedside rails raised, doors and pathways blocked by furniture, experiencing verbal commands to sit down or go back to bed, and physical interventions such as non-consensual sedation.

Unofficial body co-chaired by ex-Labour leader says Britain failed to meet its duty to seek to prevent a genocide

The Labour government has been complicit in crimes committed by Israel in Gaza and in the desecration of international law, according to an unoffical tribunal on Gaza chaired by the former party leader Jeremy Corbyn and two specialists in international law.

The tribunal’s findings to be published on Monday are likely to be cited in May’s local elections, in which Labour faces a rearguard action to beat off challenges from the Greens and Your Party, in part driven by anger that the government has not done enough to back the Palestinian cause.

‘I did it for the people,’ says Farbod Mehr, of song drawing lyrics from the work of revolutionary 20th-century poet Aref Qazvini

A stirring song – sung, apparently, by a young woman, with lyrics expressing the hope that sacrifice will lead to a better future – has become a soundtrack for Iranians in the first part of 2026, as the country experienced the brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests and then the US-Israeli air assault, now in its third week.

However, the singer, called Nava, is a product of artificial intelligence, created by a London-based artist of Iranian origin, Farbod Mehr.

The Quapaw Nation is the only US Native community to carry out a cleanup of one of the country’s worst sites of environmental contamination

They call this land the Laue. In the late 1800s, part of these 200 acres of grassland inside the Quapaw Nation were allotted to tribal citizen Charley Quapaw Blackhawk. After forcing dozens of tribes into Indian territory before the civil war, the US government then parceled out reservations and property to individual members. It was part of the government’s attempt to “civilize” Native Americans by turning them into private, not communal, landholders and yeoman farmers in the model of Thomas Jefferson’s ideal citizen.

Yet, for the last century, little grew on the Laue. Half of it was buried beneath towering mounds of toxic rock known as chat piles. The waste rock, laced with chemicals, was left after miners extracted millions of tons of lead and zinc from the Tri-State Mining District, where the valuable ores stretched across Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma between 1891 and the 1970s. By 1983, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had designated 40 sq miles that include nearly all the Quapaw Nation as the Tar Creek Superfund site, joining the EPA’s list of the most contaminated places in the country. Informally called a “megasite”, Tar Creek remains one of the largest and most complex environmental disasters in the country.

Mohammed Ahmed Sayed Mohammed is among those redeploying his skills for a local recycling company that is cleaning up the Nile

At 6am, Mohammed Ahmed Sayed Mohammed steers his boat from al-Qarsaya island through Cairo’s Nile waters towards the capital’s riverside clubs. Fifteen years ago, he searched for fish. Now he hunts plastic bottles.

“The fish fled from the plastic chokehold,” said Sayed, who has lived on the Giza island since arriving from Assiut, further south on the Nile, as a 14-year-old fishing apprentice. He never returned to his village, marrying locally and raising three children who now live alongside him with their 12 grandchildren on the island housing 200 families.

Colossal Biosciences’ CEO says its work follows a ‘moral obligation’ while critics say it’s ‘tech bro’ hype that could undermine conservation

Can and should we resurrect animal species that have been extinct for thousands of years? Such weighty, existential questions were once the preserve of science fiction but are now being played out within an unassuming brick building in a Dallas business park.

Colossal Biosciences, valued at $10.2bn after raising hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from investors including celebrities spanning from Tiger Woods to Paris Hilton, has provoked a stampede of acclaim as well as denunciation after announcing last year it had made the dire wolf, a species lost from the world for more than 10,000 years, “de-extinct” via the birth of three new pups.

More than 20,000 sq km of coast has succumbed to Australia’s first bloom of toxic Karenia cristata algae – and scientists worry it could explode again

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

The largest and most destructive algal bloom in Australia’s history is persisting along parts of the South Australian coastline, a year on from when it was first detected.

From a distance, it can be hard to grasp just how unusual and devastating the crisis has been.

National Secular Society to launch court action after failure to investigate alleged breaches of academic freedom laws

A university regulator in England has failed to investigate potential breaches of laws protecting academic freedom at a dozen theological colleges and is now facing legal action, the Guardian has learned.

The National Secular Society says it is preparing to pursue the Office for Students (OfS) through the courts to act on complaints first made five years ago, arguing that the colleges are ineligible for public funding or government-backed student loans because of their commitment to theological doctrine.

Advisers say to ‘assume the cameras are always rolling’ as exchanges can be decoded in seconds and posted online

Royals and celebrities are being warned by their representatives and advisers to watch what they say when they are out of the house – or palace – as a lip-reading phenomenon means videos can be posted online and translated in seconds.

Prince William was recently embroiled after a video of him speaking to Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was translated by an expert lip-reader who was working as part of a forthcoming Channel 5 documentary, Lip-Reading the Royals.

Alford, who also appeared in Grange Hill, was jailed for eight and a half years in January for sexually assaulting two girls

An investigation has been launched into the death of the actor John Alford after he died in prison two months into a sentence for sexually assaulting two teenage girls.

Alford, 54, was jailed for eight and a half years in January after he was found guilty of the assaults, which occurred during a party at a friend’s home.

Royal couple criticise Tom Bower’s ‘fixation’ on them and describe released extracts as ‘conspiracy and melodrama’

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have launched a scathing attack on a “deranged” author whose new book claims Queen Camilla once told a friend: “Meghan’s brainwashed ‌Harry.”

The royal couple hit out at Tom Bower, the author of Betrayal: Power, Deceit and the Fight for the Future of the Royal Family, criticising his “fixation” on the pair.

Mother, father and brothers aged five and seven shot in the head as they returned from Ramadan shopping trip

Israeli police have killed two young Palestinian brothers and their parents in the occupied West Bank, shooting all four in the head and face as the family returned from a Ramadan shopping trip.

Mohammed, five, Othman, seven, who was blind and had special needs, their mother, Waad Bani Odeh, 35, and father, Ali Bani Odeh, 37, were driving through their home town of Tamoun late on Saturday when Israeli forces opened fire.

Afghan government reports zero casualties and accuses neighbouring country of wanting to ‘fuel the fire of war’

Pakistan has targeted militant hideouts in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province overnight, as the fighting that erupted between the two neighbours late last month showed no signs of abating.

The cross-border attacks, which have included Pakistani airstrikes in Kabul, are the deadliest yet between the countries. Islamabad has referred to the conflict as an “open war”, adding to concerns about regional stability as the US-Israeli conflict with Iran engulfs the Middle East and beyond.

Tommy Thompson refused to give up the location of 500 missing coins found in 1988 in a historic shipwreck

A US treasure hunter who was imprisoned for 10 years after refusing to reveal the location of missing gold coins has been released from prison, without officials apparently ever learning where that gold is.

Tommy Thompson – a renowned salvager who in 1988 found the long-lost, so-called Ship of Gold near South Carolina – was freed from federal prison on 4 March, records and reports recently indicated.

Author says he doesn’t ‘feel symbolic’ and hopes to steer narrative to his books after surviving assassination attempt

Salman Rushdie said he’s tired of being everyone’s “free speech Barbie” four years after the author survived an assassination attempt that left him blinded in his right eye.

“It’s a subject I’m anxious to change,” Rushdie said Friday during a talk with the Atlantic’s George Packer at Tulane University’s New Orleans book festival. “I don’t feel symbolic.

If costs stay high for the next three months, US owner Peter Huntsman says he will close the site on Teesside

The American owner of one of Britain’s last major chemicals plants has said he will close the site if energy prices remain at their current levels for the next three months.

Peter Huntsman, whose family built Huntsman Corporation into a global chemicals empire, said the recent jump in gas prices fuelled by the Iran conflict was “another nail in the coffin” for European heavy industry.

Brand enlists JW Anderson to help brew up 17-piece range of luxury fashionwear, from ‘beer towel’ shorts to branded trousers and tops

You too can look like a pub carpet – and for the bargain price of £1,295. Such sartorial elegance – perhaps an option for anyone stepping out to celebrate St Patrick’s Day this week – is the aesthetic love-child of a partnership between Guinness and the luxury clothing brand JW Anderson.

The tie-up, launched earlier this month, allows fashionistas to get their hands on a range of Guinness wear that exploits the continuing metamorphosis of the “black stuff” from unfashionable pub staple to social media status symbol.

Treasury minister Spencer Livermore trails new strategy as chancellor pins hopes on benefits of AI amid global uncertainty

The NHS and Ministry of Defence will be urged to buy British tech, as the government pins its hopes on the benefits of artificial intelligence to kickstart growth in the face of the Iran crisis, Treasury minister Spencer Livermore has said.

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will restate her economic strategy in a high profile lecture on Tuesday, just as rocketing oil prices have raised fears of higher inflation and weaker growth.

Austrian officials took action after airline ignored court order to pay €890 to unnamed women

Bailiffs have boarded a Ryanair aircraft after the airline refused to pay compensation to a passenger whose flight was delayed.

Austrian officials took action after the budget carrier ignored a court order to pay the unnamed woman €890 (£742) in legal costs and compensation for a delayed flight two years ago.

The Austrian tenor is making his Royal Opera debut as Siegfried in the third instalment of of the Ring Cycle. He explains why operetta prepared him for the opera’s epic demands, and why Wagner’s loutish adolescent is more hero than zero

Andreas Schager bursts through the door, crosses the room in a single stride and engulfs my hand in a firm clasp. “Sorry I’m sweaty,” he grins. “I’ve been forging Nothung!” It’s a midweek lunchtime in a cluttered back office at London’s Royal Opera House, but hammering out a magical sword is all in a morning’s work for the world’s most in-demand Wagnerian leading man. Currently in rehearsals for Siegfried – the third panel of Covent Garden’s new staging of the Ring Cycle – Schager plans to spend the afternoon slaying a dragon and rescuing his beloved from an enchanted fire (after a spot of lunch, that is). But for now the tenor has a moment to catch his breath.

At 54, Schager is an anomaly in the opera world. Most careers – particularly ones singing Wagner, whose scores are longer and whose roles are bigger and more demanding than any other – are built over decades. As veteran agent Boris Orlob puts it: “You see Wagner singers coming from miles away, it’s a gradual process. You take the stairs, not the elevator.”

As her banned 1989 novella, Women Without Men, is published for the first time in the UK, the Iranian author looks back on a life of resistance and repression

As I write this, Iranians around the world are holding their breath for the end of the murderous Islamic Republic. More than three years after the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement began, amid renewed demonstrations, brutal state crackdowns and now US bombing raids, Shahrnush Parsipur’s banned novella Women Without Men arrives in the UK, where last month it was longlisted for the 2026 International Booker prize.

At 80 years old, Parsipur is one of Iran’s most celebrated living writers, and one of our boldest, most original feminists. In the 1980s, her stories were the talk of Iran’s literary circles and she was imprisoned for nearly five years, without ever being formally charged.

Bob Mortimer returns to defend his crown, as comedians make screamingly funny TV in an attempt to make each other laugh for a prize

I was once shouted at for smiling during a breakup. I had to switch careers when I realised my favourite thing about being an actor was making other actors corpse on stage. Situations in which humour is forbidden are hilarious to me. It’s the pressure-cooker analogy, I suppose. “I’m the kinda guy who laughs at a funeral,’” sang Barenaked Ladies, and I’ve never related more to a lyric. Which makes the return of Last One Laughing UK (Thursday, Prime Video) very relevant to my interests.

The show is an elimination competition in which 10 comedians are locked in a softly furnished room for six hours, trying to make each other laugh while keeping a straight face themselves. Laughter and smiling are punishable by yellow cards, then red cards, leading to dismissal. It’s hosted by Jimmy Carr – who has such an odd laugh, it’s possible the entire format was crowdfunded by offended gulls who didn’t want to hear it any more.

It’s only the first episode, but alongside Jeff Goldblum’s non-anecdotes about pencils the guests are reduced to discussing the colour of the sofa

Now look. Let’s make a few things clear before we begin.

We love Claudia Winkleman, absolutely, yes.

Films about prison abuse, ovarian cancer, women’s rights in Iran and more have impressed the Academy, but what real-world impact have they had?

• Oscars 2026: how to watch, nominations, what to read and predictions

The year 2025 was a banner one for nonfiction film, with several extraordinary documentaries that provided windows to unfathomable acts of courage, heart and vulnerability. Less so, unfortunately, for nonfiction cinema, it’s a difficult time for the production of politically challenging documentaries, whether in and about the US or abroad, and many projects struggled to find distribution after torturous paths to completion. (Cutting Through Rocks, the first Iranian documentary ever nominated for an Oscar, still has no streaming distribution and is only available in select theaters.)

Nevertheless, five incredible films make up the Oscars documentary slate this year – films that demonstrate how individual actions can challenge immense systems of oppression; how national agendas trickle into the idiosyncratic, marginal every day; and how one can find transcendence in the smallest of daily miracles. The very existence of these films feels improbable: one is composed almost entirely of police footage acquired through legal action. Another was filmed on contraband cell phones within Alabama state prisons. There’s a remarkably candid approach to processing terminal illness; an unprecedented record of Vladimir Putin’s propaganda efforts, filmed by a schoolteacher in rural Russia and smuggled out of the country; and an extremely rare glimpse into small-scale women’s rights efforts in north-west Iran.

This yawnsome homespun six-parter from the creator of Yellowstone aims to teach the womenfolk a lesson by dropping them into untamed, plain-talkin’ Montana. It’s full of terrible jokes and cloying aphorisms

Preston Clyburn (Kurt Russell) is laughing at trout. “Hah-hah,” says the rugged retiree, up to his buttocks in river as a Yellowstone cutthroat sploshes obligingly into his net. “I’m keepin’ it, and you’re cookin’ it,” he barks at his younger brother, Paul, who would rather Preston release the hapless vertebrate back into the wild but nevertheless respects his sibling’s need to connect with his inner Cro-Magnon (“the love of fishin’ goes back to early man …”).

Paul is played by Matthew Fox, who was once in Lost but is now marooned in a drama that requires him to say things like: “I make a memory a day, brother … sometimes more.” Despite this, Paul, too, is laughing. “Heh,” he says, as he and Preston splash and frolic in their matching utility slacks. “Heheheh.”

The singer and actor, formerly of Savages, was shaken up by Le Tigre and gets emotional when hearing Fontaines DC, but which rapper can she no longer bear to listen to?

The first song I fell in love with
I had an incredible piano teacher, who would play me a lot of jazz records that I would learn and sing along to. Chet Baker was charismatic, good looking and stylish. Even though I had a really soft, small voice, I’d give My Funny Valentine my best shot.

The song I inexplicably know every lyric to
Dollar Days by David Bowie, because I had to perform it recently at the British Library for the 10-year anniversary of his final album, Blackstar.

Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff
Joan Tower’s concerto for alto saxophone was brilliantly delivered by Steven Banks, part of a lively concert

The BBC National Orchestra of Wales is marking the 250th anniversary of the US Declaration of Independence in a series of concerts, and the UK premiere of Love Returns, by the 87-year-old American composer Joan Tower, was at the centre of this programme with Finnish conductor Tomas Djupsjöbacka.

Tower is best known for her Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman and, in this work, a concerto for alto saxophone, she has realised an uncommonly appealing piece. Its title relates to Tower’s use of a melody from her piano piece, Love Letter, written in memory of her late husband, as the basis for a theme and variations structure, as different from conventional concerto form as can be, evolving and gradually accelerating in tempo over its whole span of six sections. The only departure from this is in the fifth of the six: a solo saxophone cadenza, brilliantly delivered by soloist Steven Banks. His sometimes edgy, sometimes honeyed tone was wonderfully expressive throughout, whirling virtuoso passagework countered by aching lyricism, with Djupsjöbacka ensuring that Tower’s orchestral textures offered the optimal balance to the solo lines.

Wigmore Hall, London
In her recital programme of Beethoven, Schoenberg, Chopin, Webern and Schubert, the Austrian pianist brought new insights and expressive playing

Eighty-year-old piano legend Elisabeth Leonskaja throws herself on to the piano stool and into the two tumultuous descending chromatic scales that open Beethoven’s Op 77 Fantasia in G minor in a single gesture. We have a long way to go in a recital programme that reads like an Mittel-European lucky dip – Beethoven, Schoenberg, Chopin, Webern, Schubert – and Leonskaja isn’t messing around.

Of course, there was nothing chance about the programming. The Austrian pianist’s expressive, emotional playing may grab the headlines, but it’s the unerring sense of underlying architecture that’s the thread through her long career. We heard that here, not just within each of the works, but in the shared foundations, and sometimes secret connecting passages, she revealed between them.

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Receiving its UK premiere in a programme with Britten and Walton, Nico Muhly’s trumpet concerto is inspired by the instrument’s biblical – sometimes apocalyptic – associations

Audiences can be fickle. The Hallé’s latest programme featured one of the world’s most celebrated trumpeters, a UK premiere from one of the world’s most high-profile living composers, and one of this country’s most successful young conductors – yet the Bridgewater Hall yawned with empty seats. Whatever the reasons, those who decided against booking missed an exhilarating evening.

It started politely enough, with the rollicking baroquery of Britten’s Courtly Dances from Gloriana. A set of Tudorbethan pastiches, these dances encourage orchestral good behaviour. But conductor Alpesh Chauhan also allowed glimpses of a harsher, modernist world outside in the viciously chirrupping winds and off-kilter repetitions of the central Morris Dance and the gleeful snaps and rattles of the closing Lavolta.

A Tokyo high-flyer tries to befriend her favourite blogger in a novel that wears its aura of black comedy lightly, and its political statements more heavily

Asako Yuzuki’s international bestseller Butter was a taste sensation based on the true story of a Japanese female serial killer and gourmet chef who scammed and poisoned male victims with her culinary offerings. Attempting to get a scoop, a journalist bonds with the convicted prisoner by asking her for recipe tips, and gradually reassesses her own life and values as a result of this peculiar relationship. One review described the book as “the Martha Stewart Show meets The Silence of the Lambs”, but as well as the crime thriller/foodie mashup, a critique of capitalist society and deep-seated misogyny also emerged from the narrative. Yuzuki’s prose style, a mix of the banal and the profound, proved to be catnip for sales.

Hooked is the follow-up for English-language readers, though it was written earlier, in 2015, and like the previous novel is translated with crackling verve by Polly Barton. While a more introspective work, its high-wire plot and uneven trajectory make for a relentlessly dizzying experience. Fans of Butter might even view it as a trial run.

The Library of Traumatic Memory by Neil Jordan; The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan; Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison; Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman; Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran

The Library of Traumatic Memory by Neil Jordan (Head of Zeus, £20)
Better known as a film-maker, Jordan has never stopped writing novels. His latest opens in 2084 in rural Ireland, where Christian Cartwright works for the Huxley Institute in the titular library, secretly misusing its memory storage technology to talk with his dead lover Isolde, restoring her to a semblance of digital life. The story moves between Christian’s experiences and similar events two centuries earlier in the life of his ancestor, Montagu Cartwright, the architect responsible for the Huxley Mansion and local church, who owned an ancient obsidian mirror, believed to have been the famous scrying glass of John Dee. Lyrically written, brimming with ideas, sometimes sinister and often humorous, it’s an enchanting read.

The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan (Tor, £22)
This debut novel is based on the historic Beast of Gévaudan, a wolf-like creature that terrorised a region of France between 1764 and 1767. But it is much more than another werewolf fantasy. The narrator, Sebastian Grave, seems immortal, writing a memoir in the 21st century about his adventures in the 1700s. Even then he was old, and shared his mind and body with a demon called Sarmodel, whose occult powers helped him to destroy a terrible beast. Twenty years later, the same area is once again ravaged by a bloodthirsty creature: since Sebastian is sent for by the man who had been his boon companion on the first hunt, and his lover, he hopes this means an end to their long estrangement. A wonderfully original, engrossing novel, combining history and fantasy, with a unique narrative voice and fascinating characters.

The Booker-shortlisted author on a momentous teenage encounter with The Bone People, getting a buzz from Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla, and trying to avoid The Lorax

My earliest reading memory
Memories from my childhood are opening up as I read to my own young children at the moment. Something in the pictures of Helen Cooper’s The Bear Under the Stairs or Lane Smith’s The Big Pets takes me back to being four years old and being read to.

My favourite book growing up
I love the Sabriel series by Garth Nix and first read it alongside my father and, later, my younger brother. It was truly a shared joy to be immersed in that world, for a book to give us a new connection to one another.

These essays from the Nobel literature winner open up her novels and offer beautiful imagery

When Korean novelist Han Kang won the Nobel prize in literature in 2024, the committee praised her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”. In other words, Han’s work looks both out at the world – towards the 1980 Gwangju massacre fictionalised in her novel Human Acts –  and inward to the human experience, as with The Vegetarian’s portrait of one woman’s claustrophobic struggle.

Much of the appeal of Han’s work is in its mystery, the gaps she leaves for the reader to close. So it is tantalising to have this collection of prose, “a book of reflections” that might illuminate the darker corners of her work.

From war zones and socially virtuous farming to ever-changing boards and role-playing with 167 dice, here’s our pick of the most absorbing table-based entertainment

Video games have long been heavily inspired by physical games, from chess and Scrabble to Dungeons & Dragons. The deck-building collectible card game, for example, has become immensely popular in digital form, thanks to hits such as Slay the Spire, Marvel Snap and Balatro. Now, an increasing number of games are going in the opposite direction, trading pixels for pieces and screens for spinners. Here are six of our favourites.

Company of Heroes 2nd Edition (Bad Crow Games, £119.70)

Josh Wardle hopes his digital take on the cryptic crossword can be a gradual on-ramp crossing the cultural divide between Britain and the US

In 2021, Josh Wardle became a household name almost overnight. His digital game, Wordle, turned a simple guessing game into a global morning ritual: six guesses, one word, and a grid of coloured squares shared across social media feeds.

It became a cultural phenomenon; bought within months by the New York Times for a seven-figure sum.

Last year’s celebrated French hit Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is nominated in 12 categories this year, with Ghost of Yōtei, Dispatch, Death Stranding 2 and Indiana Jones also making strong showings

The 22nd Bafta games awards are coming up in April, and the 2026 nominations list is dominated by the impeccably stylish French breakout hit Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 which has 12 nominations, and has already won game of the year prizes at the UK’s Golden Joysticks last November, December’s Game awards in the US and February’s Dice awards in Las Vegas.

Dispatch, a game about a benched superhero roped into running a team of superpowered misfits at a call centre, has nine nominations. Among them is a best performer in a leading role nod for its star Aaron Paul, and one for Jeffrey Wright in a supporting role. Sony’s samurai epic Ghost of Yōtei came out with eight nominations, including best game and best performer in a leading role for Erika Ishii, who plays Atsu.

A lot is riding on the success of the latest multiplayer online shooter from Halo creator Bungie, a DayGlo spectacular that whisks players to a far-off planet mired in an endless battle for resources

In rare quiet moments playing Marathon, you may find yourself overcome by the iridiscently pretty planet Tau Ceti IV. This fictional world seems to radiate a chemical glow: powdery pink skies and lurid green vegetation fill the screen alongside supermassive architecture emblazoned with ultra-stylish, neon graphic design. Yet enjoy the scenery for a split second too long and you might catch a bullet, causing your character to bleed an icky blue substance. In such moments, the camera locks – meaning you must stare down at their unceremonious expiry. Marathon’s considerable beauty is matched only by its clinical brutality.

The road to Marathon’s release has been long and contentious. This extraction shooter – so-called because you must do as much shooting and looting as you can in a given level before making an escape – was first shown off in 2022 with a ravishing trailer (below). Among many startling images, it showed tiny robotic bugs, a little like silkworms, weaving a synthetic body into existence. The game, made by Halo and Destiny creator Bungie, looked weird in a way that blockbuster shooters rarely do, causing excitable stirrings among both shooter stalwarts and art-game aficionados.

Barbican, London
Judith Weir’s salute to the Indian monsoon kicked off a concert on nature and folk themes, Korean pianist Yeol Eum Son brought poetic flourishes to works by Bartók and Finzi, while the magical Firebird made a rousing finale

The environment took centre stage in a BBC Symphony Orchestra programme that journeyed from Judith Weir and the arid plains of India to Gerald Finzi and the rolling contours of the North Hampshire Downs. Bartók just about ticked the box thanks to the nocturnal sounds of the Hungarian steppe conjured up in his final piano concerto, while Stravinsky’s Firebird struts its stuff around the villainous King Koschei’s enchanted garden.

With Weir’s The Welcome Arrival of Rain, it was the notes on the page that came first. Only latterly did she associate the music with the arrival of the monsoon bringing much-needed water to the parched earth. Glittering fanfares swooped heavenwards answered by shimmering strings before tom-toms and timpani turbocharged an extended series of variations. Sakari Oramo ensured the orchestra shone, even if the promised deluge never quite materialised.

Alexis Ralaivao’s provocative paintings, Hiroshige and Hokusai in perspective and a grand survey of flowers in fine art – all in your weekly dispatch

In Bloom: How Plants Changed Our World
Lovely flower paintings to herald the spring, but all is not what it seems in this survey of how science, trade and tulip crazes helped shape the modern world.
• Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, from 19 March to 16 August

(Knekelhuis)
Music boxes, miaows and strange melodies pepper the whimsical and charmingly lo-fi post-punk of Laurène Exposito and Théo Delaunay

The lyrics for Diagonale des Yeux’s debut album were written in the style of an exquisite corpse game, with members Laurène Exposito and Théo Delaunay taking it in turns to patch together ephemeral thoughts and themes in a mix of French, German, English and Spanish. The bizarre, multilingual stories that emerged match the French duo’s ramshackle, home-recorded sound, which features everything from toybox percussion to farmyard sound effects.

Their whimsical approach is anchored in the outsider pop and post-punk of 1980s Europe, which embraced discordant instrumentation and disaffected vocals. These 12 tracks are charmingly lo-fi, built around rudimentary synth and guitar melodies that often careen into strange directions. Acolytes jumps from frenetic punk jam into swooning breakdown and back again within just 90 seconds; Le Rayon Orchidée stumbles groggily to a halt like a malfunctioning music box. Both sing, adding to the theatrics: playing around with effects, they range from pitch-shifted, kitten-like miaows to macho groans.

Sadler’s Wells East, London
Russell Maliphant Dance Company’s arresting evening of three solos includes a spiritual offering performed by the choreographer himself

Watching Daniel Proietto dance Afterlight must be one of the best ways you could spend 15 minutes. This beautifully arresting piece of dance is the antidote to stimulation overload: one single smooth thread of movement finely spun across the spare piano chords of Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes. As Proietto circles into deep backbends bathed in a pool of light, it’s like a 21st-century Dying Swan.

This evening of work by choreographer Russell Maliphant comprises only three solos. With Maliphant, nothing is in excess, everything is deliberate: every motion, every pause, every flicker of light; never more than is needed. Maliphant is a Royal Ballet-trained dancer who also studied martial arts and creates meditative, mesmeric works of dance and light in synthesis (lighting designers Michael Hulls and Panagiotis Tomaras are key parts of the creative process).

For fans, this programme comes with a wave of nostalgia. Afterlight was made for a Diaghilev-inspired evening at Sadler’s Wells in 2009. Another solo dates further back, Two, created in 1997 originally for Maliphant’s wife, Dana Fouras, here performed by Alina Cojocaru.

‘It’s so impressive that you can’t imagine,’ wrote a 16-year-old Rego to her mother after seeing a Munch exhibition in London in 1951

He is the towering modern artist of the Nordics; she the most influential figurative painter of the Iberian peninsula. But for decades, no one realised there was a line of influence between Edvard Munch and Paula Rego.

Now, the discovery of an early painting and a previously overlooked letter by the late Rego has revealed the formative role the Norwegian painter played in shaping the Portuguese artist’s work and career.

Alexandre Dumas was wowed by it and Burt Lancaster starred there. Now the Cirque d’Hiver has a new spectacle

For more than 170 years the Cirque d’Hiver, the world’s oldest circus, has been the scene of many a breathtaking act.

In 1859, gymnast Jules Léotard – whose name would become synonymous with the one-piece – captivated audiences by launching himself from one swinging trapeze to another without a safety net for the first time in public.

Streaming platform Hulu decides ‘not to move forward’ with reboot of hit 90s series, according to actress

Buffy The Vampire Slayer will not return, its star Sarah Michelle Gellar has announced, saying a reboot of the 90s supernatural fantasy series had been cancelled.

Hulu, the Disney-owned streaming platform, has decided not to pick up the planned sequel, according to the actor.

Dragged along by my dad to see Pentangle, I heard something ancient that kickstarted my obsession with this country’s folklore – an enchanted, subversive and strange version of a Britain where I could truly belong

I was 15 years old; at that fumbling, awkward age on the precipice of adulthood, desperately trying to figure out who I was, who I wanted to be, and where I belonged in the world. I grew up feeling perpetually “in-between”: half-white, half-black; half-British, half-Caribbean, and on the faultline between what sometimes felt like two worlds at war.

One night in 2008 my dad took me to see Pentangle play at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank. The band had risen to fame in the late 60s, known for fusing British folk melodies with blues and jazz syncopation. I must have stood out in the crowd – among the bearded men in sandals and socks – with my big hoop earrings and scraped-back hair. And although I dragged my feet on the way in, when I stepped out of the concert later that auspicious summer’s evening, I was changed for ever.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions interrogates the truth of proverbs, adages, aphorisms and bons mots

• This week’s replies: which are more like life, novels or films?

From what I can see, travelling in many cases has zero effect on a person’s outlook and prejudices. If that were not so, then high-flying politicians of all stripes would be among the most broad-minded people on the planet as they constantly jet from city to city. I can think of several proverbs that are extremely true, or at least seem so, such as “A stitch in time saves nine”, or “Many a mickle makes a muckle”, which it patently does – or especially the universally true, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”. But what other proverbs or quotes or apparently clever soundbites are untrue, for at least some of the time? “Fine words butter no parsnips”? And how do questionable assertions become sayings in the first place? Neil Ashby, Powys

Post your answers (and new questions) below or send them to nq@theguardian.com by Thursday after publication. A selection will be published next Sunday.

This classic dish needs no deviation from its time-honoured traditions – but mastering it does require some skill

The first time I dared to write a recipe for Irish stew, I was invited on to the national broadcaster, RTÉ, to discuss my choices live on air. And, to my considerable relief, it was eventually decided that I had not dishonoured the memory of my ancestors. It’s tempting for modern cooks to meddle with such resolutely plain classics. Do not! It’s delicious just as it is.

Prep 20 min
Cook 2 hr
Serves 6

Our writer picks her favourite, tried-and-tested products for better sleep – from a bargain eye mask to a sustainable duvet

• The best mattresses – tested
• Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Just as spring emerges from its long, soggy lie-in, we’re going back to bed.

It may not seem the most obvious time of year for World Sleep Day (which was 13 March), but light evenings, early sunrises and the last cries of the fox mating season mean some of us need all the sleep help we can get.

Which supermarket Spanish omelette seems as if it’s served plump from the pan, and which is a soggy flop?

• The best supermarket free-range eggs

My second ever chef job was at Glastonbury in 1997, which is now famous as the “Year of the Mud”. We sliced hundreds of kilos of potatoes, peeled onions until we cried, and cracked and whisked untold dozens of eggs. Back then, you couldn’t buy tortilla in a shop, only from a tapas restaurant, but these days there’s an incredible selection in many supermarkets. I normally eat shop-bought tortilla straight from the packet, but during this taste test, I discovered just how nice it is when reheated in a pan. I tried all these tortillas hot and cold, and even the lower-scoring ones were quite enjoyable when eaten warm.

I judged them on taste and texture, which varied from a dense, firmly set egg to the soft and squidgy centre I love. All were relatively minimally processed, but all lacked transparency regarding the origin of their ingredients – though, thankfully, many were made with free-range eggs, which scored them an extra star. Some were made in the UK and others in Spain, but that didn’t always equate to a better product. While supermarket tortilla can’t quite replicate the fresh-from-the-pan experience, the best come surprisingly close.

The sport is booming, but which racket will boost your game? Our expert enlisted the help of a padel coach to round up the aces

• The best fitness tech and gadgets

There are ludicrously fast-growing sports – and then there’s padel. According to the Lawn Tennis Association, only 15,000 British players picked up a padel racket in 2019 … but by the end of 2024, that figure was more than 400,000. Of those, about 399,000 are probably mispronouncing it: think pah-dell rather than paddle. But get used to strange looks if you insist on saying it like that.

People love padel because it’s so easy to play. If you can hit a ball with a racket, you can play – and there’s something joyous about whacking any ball over any net. You don’t need to be incredibly fit either: while better players will be constantly on the move, casual players can get away with something akin to walking pace.

Best padel racket overall:
Babolat Counter Origin

From luxury Simba and Otty mattresses to brilliant budget buys, here’s what we recommend – and how to know if you’ve found a good deal

• The best mattresses for back pain
• The best mattress toppers, tested

A good mattress improves your sleep, say mattress makers – and they would, wouldn’t they? But they’re right. The older I get, the more I know it. When I was 20, I could sleep anywhere: a friend’s floor, a filthy sofa – even a phone box one night. These days, I won’t get a single one of 40 winks if I’m not lying on a decent mattress. Comfy but firm, cosy but breathable, and with loads of cool spots for my feet.

Today’s best mattresses promise all this and more. Gone are the days when your biggest decision was between a sprung double and a sprung king-size. Pocket springs are still around, but they face stiff – well, medium-firm – competition from hybrid mattresses that combine springs and memory foam to provide that all-important balance of comfort and support.

Best mattress overall:
Otty Original Hybrid

The trouble with open kitchens is that the chaos is fully visible to everyone

DakaDaka, a rowdy paean to Georgian cuisine, has arrived on Heddon Street in the West End of London. Heddon Street has always been synonymous with rowdiness, regardless of the fact that the mature, semi-elegant likes of Sabor, Piccolino and Heddon Street Kitchen are quite the opposite. But anyone who ever found themselves staggering out of Strawberry Moons in the 1990s having lost a shoe and with a love bite or from the basement club at Momo will know that this little nook tucked away behind Regent Street is where a good time is meant to be had.

And now there’s DakaDaka, which certainly does not market itself as a nightclub, because, well, virtually nowhere does any more. What DakaDaka does do, though, is play Georgian dance music very loudly and with endless enthusiasm right through your badrijani (grilled aubergines), imeruli (cheese-filled flatbread) and kababi (lamb skewers). Helpfully, the brick walls have been painted pitch-black to give these dark, candle-lit, metal-clad premises a real sense that you’ve somehow stumbled into a 2am lock-in on a back street in Tbilisi, complete with pottery, folklore and blackboards on the walls, though this place also happens to serve grape salads and nakhvatsa (corn crisps). Some potential customers will no doubt read that and think: “Yippee! I love a restaurant where talking to my friends is no longer part of the arduous invisible labour of leaving the house.” Well, those people will adore DakaDaka, and should take up one of the tables in the heart of the melee. Otherwise, there’s also a sit-up counter behind which the open kitchen is in full swing, and where you can sit shoulder to shoulder with a total stranger. If you do, however, please dress in removable layers, because you will be directly next to the open fire used for “live fire cooking”, that hospitality phrase du jour that has caused me so much merriment in recent years because it proves that if you put enough male chefs in one room for long enough, they will literally believe they invented fire.

A margarita, but made with smoky mezcal and the nutty backnotes of manzanilla

The impulse behind this was people’s enduring love of a margarita. We generally look to sherries or vermouths as key ingredients in our cocktails, but for this we wanted something that our guests would feel at ease with, while also being a little intrigued. Mezcal’s smoky notes work really well with the citrus notes in a classic margarita, so we opted for that as the base spirit, rather than tequila, while the addition of manzanilla lends the drink a lovely, complementary nuttiness.

Elinor Blair, bar manager, Bar Flor at Wildflowers, London SW1

Something for every mother: a posh bloody mary prawn brioche, crumbly lime and passion fruit curd sandwich biscuits, and an elegant elderflower lemon drizzle cake

Few things say “I love you” more than an unbidden cup of tea, but if you want to show true appreciation to the maternal figure in your life this Mother’s Day, there’s nothing better than a few indulgent snacks to go with it. I love the British tradition of afternoon tea, but I find finger sandwiches in hotel lobbies a little too fussy. I would much rather a fortifying savoury sandwich, a slab of good, old-fashioned cake and buttery biscuits that crumble into a million sweet crumbs.

Blonds really do have more fun – a special-occasion sweet treat that’s perfect for Mother’s Day

It’s often my own impatience that forces me to make no-bake cheesecakes over baked ones. They’re not at all as faffy, though it’s pretty hard to beat the lighter, silkier texture you get with a baked version plus the extra effort is worth it on a special occasion such as Mother’s Day. I’ve sweetened the filling for this one with caramelised white chocolate – it brings a beautiful, creamy, dulce de leche-type caramel flavour that even the biggest white chocolate haters should enjoy. If making your own caramelised white chocolate feels a step too far, however, just buy bars of blond chocolate instead. Top with gently poached rhubarb for a pop of colour and to cut through the richness.

It was dark and I was travelling on my own. As panic began to wash over me, I saw a young man walking down the aisle

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

It was already dark when I boarded the train home. I was 19 and making the half-hour journey back from drama school one evening, travelling on my own.

At first, I was completely alone in the carriage – until an older man hopped on. He could have had any seat on the train but chose the one next to me. I was in the window seat and he slumped uncomfortably close to me in the aisle seat, blocking my exit. Completely focused on me, he told me he loved my hair, admired my clothes, asked me where I was from and then started to rub his hand up and down my thigh. Scared, I tried to stand up, but he pushed his hand down hard on my leg to stop me, his other hand moving to my shoulder. As absolute panic began to wash over me, I saw a young man walking down the aisle.

It’s OK to be angry at your husband – the shame isn’t yours to carry

I have been married for 30 years. Until recently, we were the best of friends. Then he began being distant, though he remained kind. I thought this was a passing phase, a midlife crisis of some sort. But one day I found out by chance that he had been engaged in a year-long affair with another woman. Life as I knew it collapsed.

It was not so much that my world was turned upside down, as it lost its cohesion. I was instantly reduced to pieces. No matter how much I try to make sense of it all, I cannot. I am (was?) a super-active person with many interests, and this betrayal has splintered me and narrowed everything down to this single event.

She treated me and my sister as her friends, and said it meant she rarely felt lonely. I see now that she wasn’t telling me what to do with my life – but expressing how much she loved us

It was summer, and I was sitting on the washing machine in the kitchen, listening to my mother tell me the best thing about having children. It wasn’t intended as advice per se – as she saw it, it was simply an outcome of motherhood – but I took it as such. Recently single and aged 30, becoming a mum couldn’t have been further from my mind, but I remember clearly what she said.

Having children, she told me, meant she’d always had a little friend. Or, in the case of me and my sister, two friends. As a result, she rarely felt lonely. From a young age, she would take us to galleries, to the supermarket, sometimes to work. Normal parenting stuff. Except she was divorced and largely on her own, so it would just be us, and she would talk to us like we were old friends. Big stuff or small, she didn’t discriminate. She talked, we listened – given we were preschool, I imagine us as Tom Hanks’ inanimate volleyball Wilson in Cast Away – but we remained incredibly close until she died in August 2020.

In primary school, Larry Garner knew little about the classmate behind a mesmerising artwork of a ship. He often wondered about ‘galleon girl’

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In 1961 I was at primary school in north London when our teacher asked everyone in the class to paint a galleon. Without thinking much about it I made a 10-year-old’s attempt, with uninspiring results. When I arrived at school the next day I was surprised to see it hanging on the wall – but not nearly as surprised as I was by what was hanging next to it.

Beside my shoddy rendering was a Spanish galleon – in brilliant detail – sailing into a sunset. Its masts were perfect and its sails hung limp in the air on the calm sea. It was incredible and I couldn’t believe one of my classmates had done it. I asked the boy standing beside me who had painted it. “Little Brownie”, he told me and pointed at a blond girl.

Criminals exploiting Middle East crisis by targeting customers seeking help or refunds from affected carriers

Your flight has been delayed as a result of the Middle East crisis and you want to find out what’s happening, so you go online for an answer. You find a social media account run by the airline you are booked with and post a question, and get a reply offering help.

You’re asked to send a direct message with details, which seems reasonable. A conversation starts and you are told to give your phone number as you may be due compensation. This is where it all starts going wrong: instead of being given money, you have it taken. Although it looked official, the account that replied was a scam.

Woodall services near Sheffield is now one of the UK’s most expensive pit stops, with petrol at 172.9p a litre

• Middle East crisis – live updates

Opened in 1968, Woodall services on the M1 near Sheffield is Yorkshire’s oldest roadside service station. This weekend, it was also one of the country’s most expensive pit stops, with diesel priced at 185.9p a litre and petrol at 172.9p.

“Do you really want to know what I think? You probably couldn’t print it,” said biker Alan Harrison, who had stopped for a coffee break in the sunshine while heading from Leeds to Bournemouth.

Criminals using artificial intelligence tools to take over mobile, bank and online shopping accounts, says Cifas

Criminals are increasingly exploiting AI technology to take over people’s mobile, banking and online shopping accounts, the UK’s leading anti-fraud body has warned.

Last year, a record number of scams were reported to the national fraud database, fuelled by AI, which allows for large-scale deception on “industrialised” levels, according to Cifas, the fraud prevention organisation.

From railcards to route tweaks, here’s how to stop your daily train or car journey breaking the bank

• Revealed: new affordable commuter hotspots in Great Britain

• Homes for sale in new commuter hotspots in England – in pictures

For regular rail travellers, season tickets remain one of the biggest cost savers. A weekly, monthly or annual season ticket will work out much cheaper than paying daily fares, especially if you commute most days.

Cpap machines were once used only for severe sleep apnoea but sleep medicine physicians say there has been a rise in prescribing for milder cases

• Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email

When Nick went camping in the summer with friends, he would set up his tent 100 metres away from the group.

“It became a bit that I did,” says Nick. As early as his teenage years, he learned to use humour to cope with what was immediately a social problem: the “cacophony” of his snoring.

Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning

After living with chronic pain, Darcey Steinke wanted to know how it affected others. Her memoir, This Is the Door, explores both isolation and freedom

Chronic pain has a way of upending a life.

In her memoir This Is the Door, writer Darcey Steinke writes that “pain, like failure, breaks into our everyday lives and upsets who we thought we were and what we thought we could do”.

A psychiatric unit in Norway has been testing its built-in lighting on conditions such as psychosis and depression

At first glance, the psychiatric ward in Trondheim looks much like any other unit caring for patients in acute mental distress. But as evening falls, filters descend over the windows, and the lights shift to a soft amber glow. By removing blue wavelengths that interfere with the body’s internal clock, doctors here are testing an unusual idea: that the design of the ward itself could become a form of treatment.

Light is the main signal regulating the body’s circadian rhythm – the roughly 24-hour biological clock that governs sleep and many other bodily processes. Mounting evidence links circadian disruption to conditions including depression, cardiovascular disease and dementia, and disturbed sleep-wake cycles are a long-recognised feature of mental illness, particularly bipolar disorder.

That first cigarette can lead to a lifetime of dependency, as well as cancer, strokes, heart attacks … Here’s why smokers crave their nicotine hit – and how they can fight back

Smoking is bad for you and you shouldn’t do it. You know both of these things, of course: you’ve been told them in school, on TV and the radio, by doctors, and via the Cronenbergian body-horror of cigarette packets themselves. It’s worth reiterating, though, for two reasons: first, because the effects of having a quick puff outside the pub aren’t just a long-term gamble on your health but an immediate way of making your life worse; and second, because cigarettes remain wildly, impossibly addictive. Some research suggests that as many as two-thirds of people who try one cigarette become, at least temporarily, daily smokers, while a recent survey found that less than a fifth of UK smokers trying to quit actually managed it. Estimates for the average number of times people try to quit before actually managing it range from half a dozen to well over a hundred. So what confluence of factors actually makes cigarettes so difficult to give up – and what does that mean for a wannabe quitter?

“The first thing that happens when you smoke a cigarette is that you inhale a noxious mix of nicotine, various irritants and carcinogens into your lungs, ‘stunning’ your cilia – the tiny, hair-like projections that line your airways – and making them do their job less effectively,” says Lion Shahab, professor of health psychology at University College London. “The other thing that happens very, very quickly is that nicotine gets absorbed through the lungs into the alveoli, into the bloodstream, and then gets transferred into the brain. This is when you start to feel good, and also a key thing that keeps you addicted.”

The first proper show since Valentino’s death is about the late designer, about beauty – and about Michele’s mother

Valentino Garavani wanted to make beautiful clothes for the women who could afford them. The perpetually tanned designer, whose vision of jet set glamour was matched only by his own yacht-and-pug lifestyle, died in January. So there was an obvious logic in taking the first proper catwalk show since his death off the fashion week schedule and back to Rome, where he lived, worked, and died. Milan and Paris may be the capitals of European style, but Rome looks better.

Garavani left his own brand almost 20 years ago. But his singular approach to beauty has not been without its obstacles for his most recent successor, Alessandro Michele, who took over the fashion house in 2024. “It’s a complicated DNA because beauty is always changing,” he said after the show, which took place in the 17th-century Palazzo Barberini. “This collection is about Valentino. It’s about beauty. But it’s [also] about the tension between me and the brand, a beauty I’m trying to translate.”

Online fashion commentator Lyas’s catwalk watch parties have gone from hastily assembled get-togethers to large-scale spectacles. But how easy is it to walk the line between outsider and insider?

It was the latest Paris fashion week, moments before the Tom Ford show was due to start, when fashion commentator Lyas slipped through the backstage entrance of the Théâtre du Châtelet and went upstairs to get mic’d up.

Having failed to get a ticket to the actual show, 27-year-old Lyas – whose real name is Elias Medini and who has almost 500,000 followers on Instagram – was preparing to livestream it on a big screen to 2,000 of his fellow rejects currently sitting in the auditorium. The night before he had shown Saint Laurent. In a few days he would do the same for Chanel. His aim, he says, is to democratise a famously closed-off industry, and open up the spectacle of fashion week to people who have no chance of ever going themselves.

Is the secret to a decent night’s kip a good sleep kit? Silky pyjamas, cosy socks and a dressing gown you won’t mind being seen in when putting the bins out will certainly help

Experts share tips on dressing as the most authentic version of yourself and avoiding the draw of the latest microtrends

How would you define your personal style? Is it cottagecore? Tomato girl? Whimsigoth? Quiet luxury? Maybe you don’t know what these terms mean (congratulations) and maybe you do (my condolences).

Like unwelcome nose hairs, new microtrends seem to sprout from the depths of social media every other week. In some ways, their pervasiveness has made style seem more accessible than ever. They reduce aesthetics to mathematical equations that you can solve by buying up a bunch of fast fashion. By the time these cheap, mass-produced items dissolve into microplastics – which they will, quickly – other aesthetic trends will have replaced them.

Book an overnight stay in the cosy smuggler’s cottage on Looe Island and you get to enjoy this marine nature reserve after the day trippers have gone home

It is just after dawn and from a viewpoint on Looe Island, Cornwall, I watch two seals on the beach below. The pair entwine in the surf, her freckled, creamy belly against his, flippers wrapped around each other, eyes closed in blissful bonding. I feel like a peeping Tom, watching from behind a bush. It feels too intimate a moment to be spying upon, but the emerald-eyed cormorants guarding the beach seem unbothered.

I had arrived on Looe Island, also known as St George’s Island, off the south coast of Cornwall, the previous morning via the romantically named Night Riviera sleeper train from London, changing early in the morning in Liskeard, then 15 minutes across the waves in a small fishing boat. The island is managed by the Cornwall Wildlife Trust and can only be accessed on organised visits, and while most people come on day trips, I’m staying for a little longer. I have come loaded down with all the food and bedding I will need for my three-night visit, but also with the mental baggage of workaday life. Now, that weight lifts as I watch the male seal court his lady in the shallows.

In addition to near-20% of the beachside suburb’s population claiming Irish ancestry, it also boasts an astounding array of Irish entities, from themed bars to two fully fledged rugby teams

“I remember having my mind blown seeing boys walking down the beach in Irish football jerseys,” says Luke McCaul, a Dublin-born hairdresser and drag queen who moved to the beachside Sydney suburb of Coogee to work 15 years ago.

“Like, ‘what the fuck are they doing?’ Gaelic football jerseys – in Australia!”

From the rugged north of Scotland to the glittering Aegean, our tipsters recommend islands for slowing down, lazing around and taking in nature
• Tell us about a spring activity or day out – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

A short ferry ride from Vigo (daily and overnight visitor numbers are capped) took us to the tiny archipelago of the Cíes Islands, a protected cluster of islands where seabirds rule and tiny beaches remain unspoilt. There are no cars on the island and only a few small restaurants dotted about. There is one campsite, with little else but the waves of the Atlantic to lull you to sleep. I felt as if I had won the lottery when we visited and knew this would be an experience not easily matched.
Helen E

Over the past 21 years, Village Ways has been leading low-impact tours of remote communities in the foothills of the Himalayas, supporting traditional ways of life and offering a rare glimpse of pristine landscapes and wildlife

Kathdhara village is a riot of colour as the early evening light turns the clouds the rosy hue of Himalayan salt. Bright red chillies lie drying in front of cornflower blue doorways. The pink of a sari and the orange of marigolds pop against a backdrop of verdant terraced fields, where cabbages grow in perfect rows like a picture from a Peter Rabbit book.

Just 22 families live in this remote hamlet in Binsar Wildlife Sanctuary, in the Kumaon region of Uttarakhand, north-east India. As we stroll with our guide, Deepak, taking in views of the layered hills and soaring, snow-capped Panchachuli peaks beyond, we are welcomed by villagers tending homes and gardens, strings of Diwali fairy lights adding extra sparkle to the scene.

I’m here to explore the foothills of the Himalayas and sample village life on a walking holiday with Village Ways, a pioneer of responsible, community-based tourism in India, which is celebrating its 21st anniversary this year. Dreamed up by Manisha and Himanshu Pande, the couple who run the Khali Estate, a small hotel in the reserve, the goal is to help address urban migration and support traditional rural life through low-impact tourism. Village Ways launched in 2005 with just five villages in the reserve, which guests hike between, and now more than 30 villages are involved in different parts of the country, from Madhya Pradesh to Kerala.

The author on failing at atheism, why she lost her place at Cambridge, and bringing back Hilary Mantel

Born in Essex, Sarah Perry, 46, studied English at Anglia Polytechnic University and worked as a civil servant before taking a PhD in creative writing and the gothic at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her first novel, After Me Comes the Flood, was published in 2014. Her second, The Essex Serpent, was Waterstones Book of the Year in 2016, a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and adapted for television. Her other works include Melmoth and Enlightenment, the latter of which was longlisted for the Booker prize, and Death of an Ordinary Man, which won the 2025 Nero Non-Fiction Book award. She is married and lives in Norfolk.

What is your greatest fear?
Not being loved.

Ruabon grouse moor, Wrexham: Mating season is upon us. Will I be lucky enough to spot a courtship lek?

I’m shooting grouse on the moor today. There are two kinds here: red grouse, a gamebird reared and shot in its thousands; and its larger, rarer cousin, the black grouse. The latter is supposedly spared by a ban that remains voluntary despite catastrophic declines in recent decades. As it’s not shooting season, which runs from August to mid-December, I shoulder a camera, not a shotgun, hoping to snap one of these increasingly rare birds.

Springtime is when black grouse start to breed, so I arrive before dawn, which is when they lek – a courtship dance where they fan their tails, peck and scuffle with their rivals.

Every night I wake up to find the dog staring at me, but tonight a terrifying noise disturbs us all …

In the middle of the night I feel the warm breath of a creature stirring my hair. It’s too dark to see anything, but I know from experience that the dog is standing by the bed, chin resting on the mattress next to my head, gently exhaling into my face.

The point is this: to wake me up without waking my wife.

From Glengarry Glen Ross and Lawrence of Arabia to Liz Truss and Lord Salisbury, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which dictator spent his last days in power playing Candy Crush?
2 What children’s TV production company was founded by Anne Wood?
3 Rome’s Ludus Magnus was a training school for whom?
4 Where were Liz Truss and Lord Salisbury both appointed prime minister?
5 Referring to 17 metals, what does REE stand for?
6 In the title of an 1886 novel, what is David Balfour’s predicament?
7 Which fish has the scientific name Electrophorus electricus?
8 What sport is the subject of the documentary Love Means Zero?
What links:
9 Booker T & the MG’s; Manfred Mann; Ben Folds Five?
10 Genoese; Lepers; Millionaires; Rat Stabbers; Red Devils?
11 Moonfleet; Three Men in a Boat; The Wonderful Wizard of Oz; Consider Phlebas?
12 Glengarry Glen Ross; Lawrence of Arabia; The Great Escape; 12 Angry Men?
13 Arbuthnot Latham; Coutts; C Hoare; Weatherbys?
14 Horn; Agulhas; Leeuwin; South East; Whiore?
15 Nicholas Breakspear and Robert Prevost?

In 2023, what were thought to be Nazar Daletskyi’s remains were buried in his home village and his mother, Nataliia, visited the grave every week. Three years later, he spoke to her on the phone

Nazar Daletskyi was declared dead in May 2023. The DNA match left no room for doubt, officials told his mother, Nataliia. A Ukrainian soldier who volunteered for the front in the early weeks of the war, Nazar had become one more casualty of Russia’s invasion.

Nazar’s remains were laid to rest in the cemetery of his home village. In the months after the funeral, Nataliia visited the grave at least once a week, at first to cry and later to stand in quiet contemplation, remembering her only son.

The war is deeply unpopular, and the spike in oil prices will mean long-term high prices across the board for Americans

Donald Trump is still high on the capture of Nicolás Maduro. The easy abduction of the Venezuelan president didn’t just grant Trump control of the nation’s oil and critical minerals resources. It allowed him to throttle the government of Cuba by denying it access to energy, raising the tantalizing prospect that he might bring down a communist regime that has annoyed Washington since 1959.

Trump is confident that his joint venture with Israel in Iran will do just as well. The barrage of Iranian missiles and drones aimed at Israel and Iran’s Arab neighbors has done nothing to change Trump’s mind that he can win, regardless of how he defines “winning”.

With membership soaring, the Green party is grappling with logistics, culture shifts and a flood of new activists

It is, as one Green activist put it, a never-ending series of “constantly good problems to have”. But how does a party adapt to the sudden trebling of its membership? And when a majority of people in an organisation are new, is it even the same thing anymore?

The basic facts alone are startling. Before Zack Polanski took over as leader last September, the Greens in England and Wales had around 66,000 members. They are now at 215,000, and still rising at speed.

We’d like to hear from people in the UK who have seen the cost of goods or services increase or experienced delays, cancellations or other disruptions

The conflict in the Middle East, disruption to global shipping routes and rising oil prices are beginning to have knock-on effects on supply chains and energy markets around the world.

Petrol prices have begun to rise, while turbulence in financial markets has pushed up mortgage rates. Higher transport and supply costs can also feed through into the price of goods and services.

If you’re living or working in the region and have been impacted by the US-Israel conflict with Iran, we would like to hear from you

As the conflict in the Middle East continues to escalate, we would like to hear how people living, working or travelling in the region have been affected.

Whether you are in the region or impacted in other ways, please get in touch.

We would like to hear your experiences as a practitioner or someone who has tried this procedure

At the end of February, a report by the Women and Equalities Committee recommend that “high harm” procedures such as the liquid Brazilian butt lift (BBL) should be banned.

The government is “not moving quickly enough”, MPs said, stressing the need for a licensing system for non-surgical cosmetic procedures, noting that a “lack of timely action is fostering complacency in self-regulation” within the industry.

The report warned of a wild west in which procedures have reportedly taken place in Airbnbs, hotel rooms, garden sheds and public toilets. Individuals without any formal training can carry out potentially harmful interventions, placing the public at risk, MPs concluded.

Share your experiences as a practitioner or someone who has tried this procedure.

With shipping routes disrupted and tensions rising across the region we want to hear from maritime workers, sailors and port workers and others working at sea who are affected

The conflict in the Middle East is disrupting shipping across the region, including in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest maritime routes.

Maritime traffic through the strait, the narrow channel linking the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman, has effectively been closed since strikes on Iran began. Some vessels have been diverted or delayed and ports and shipping companies are dealing with heightened security concerns and uncertainty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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