‘When I couldn’t do the spitting scene, Sean took me aside and said: “Ron, if you don’t actually spit in my face, we’ll be here all day.” So I let one fly – and kept having to redo it’

I read an article about a curious book that had great reviews in Italy, a murder mystery about monks in the middle ages fighting for the fictional missing part of Aristotle’s Poetics. I said: “This is for me.” Since childhood, I had been fascinated with medieval and religious architecture, and Aristotle’s Poetics is my favourite literary work.

Accusations of classism chime with my experience 20 years ago. So all hail the Bristol graduate awarding state schools red plaques

“So, where did you go to school?” On the face of it, it doesn’t seem like a loaded question. I was mostly bemused when I first started university 20 years ago and found myself being asked it repeatedly by other students. Why were they so interested? Surely no one would have heard of the north Wales comprehensive I had attended? When they countered my baffled reaction with “Charterhouse” or “Marlborough”, how was I supposed to respond? When one student said, of another, “He went to Winchester, you know”, I stared blankly at him, not understanding why he was telling me about someone else’s day trip to a city in Hampshire (“Oh, did he have a nice time?”). It was strange, new territory.

Asking someone where they went to school is often not an innocent question. It is a way of “placing” you on a social scale. As thousands of freshers settle in to their first terms at university, a significant proportion will be battling with this dawning awareness that Britain runs on a network of private schools whose alumni often seem to know, or know of, one another. State-school students might have been dimly aware of it before, but nothing puts it into sharper focus than freshers’ week. It’s clear that little has changed since my own student days. I was saddened to read recent reports of classism at St Andrews, which led to a student’s announcement that she would not return this academic year: “Working-class students have been made to feel ashamed of their home life at university,” she said. The pervasiveness of private school culture, as I suppose you could call it, remains nationwide and deeply embedded.

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett is a Guardian columnist

Breathable bedding, slanted tweezers and an indispensable garlic press … here are the buys you wish you’d discovered sooner. Plus, the best walking poles, tested

• Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Sometimes a product changes your life – or, more likely, just makes your day 10% better.

Whether it’s something small-but-mighty (a gadget that helps you open a jar without swearing, tweezers that get every hair) or a more expensive item that has proved its worth over the years (a much-loved designer dress, a garden mulch-maker), we asked you to tell us about the buys that have made your life just a little bit better.

At conference here in Birmingham I found a small battalion of centrist remainers with a vision for the Conservative party to come

You can walk all the way from Somerset to Sussex without crossing a Tory-run constituency, if you wish. You could also travel through each of the counties of Wiltshire, Hampshire, Dorset and Surrey without setting foot in Tory lands. They are now mainly Liberal Democrat, and there’s not one Tory MP in all of Oxfordshire.

Is Kemi Badenoch bothered? Everything she does seems cleverly designed to keep those places lost to her for ever as she woos Reform voters, unsuccessfully. The more she leans right, the more she repels home counties moderates. Those Reform voters are not coming back, psephologists say. Without reclaiming the old “blue wall”, there is no hope, ever, of a Tory majority, say both Profs Tim Bale and Rob Ford and just about every political authority you care to ask.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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

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

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

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

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

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

A dozen B-1 bombers stationed at Gloucestershire base were redeployed to US on Sunday amid concerns over possible threat from Iran

Downing Street has insisted RAF Fairford is secure a day after the US air force suddenly withdrew a dozen B-1 bombers that had been stationed at the Gloucestershire base amid security concerns about a possible threat from Iran.

The prime minister’s official spokesperson, speaking during a scheduled briefing, said “yes” when asked if the military site was safe – contrasting with the concern showed by the US military during the hasty redeployment the day before.

Thousands expected to join marches of support on Tuesday across the country amid growing concerns over police response

• Europe live – latest updates

France is bracing for a national day of protests and high-school blockades as a youth protest movement gathers pace amid a growing debate over the scale of the police response.

In one incident, a 15-year-old protesting against what demonstrators said were France’s dilapidated ⁠and understaffed ​schools ‌had his hand ‌blown off outside a high school in the northern town of Lens, said François-Xavier Lauch, the prefect of Pas-de-Calais.

Progressive voters and supporters of incumbent president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva left reeling after far-right surge

Flávio Bolsonaro is in pole position to win Brazil’s presidential election, after a far-right tsunami propelled him to a shock first-round victory over the incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, leaving progressive voters reeling.

The 45-year-old rightwing candidate received 56.1m votes to Lula’s 53.8m – 47.03% to 45.16% – meaning the 80-year-old leftwinger has a mountain to climb if he is to bounce back in the second round on 25 October. Never, since the return of democracy to Brazil in 1985, has the first-round runner-up managed to turn the game around and win the second ballot.

Tit-for-tat expulsions expected after relations deteriorate as a result of UK ban on goods from illegal settlements

The UK has threatened to expel one Israeli diplomat for every British diplomat forced to leave Israel as a result of Israel’s decision to close the UK consulate in East Jerusalem later this week.

This could means as many as 27 Israeli diplomats being expelled from the UK, a step that would arguably mark the lowest point in British-Israeli diplomatic relations since the formation of the state of Israel.

Nearly 90 organisations write to PM urging him to take decisive action to end violence against women and girls

• From unwanted touching to rape: the scale of child-on-child abuse

A coalition of nearly 90 organisations has written to the prime minister calling for “decisive action” on violence against women and girls after a Guardian investigation revealed the scale of child-on-child sexual abuse in schools in England and Wales.

The groups urged Labour to redouble efforts to deliver on its manifesto promise to halve violence against women and girls (VAWG) and “end this cycle of harm once and for all”.

Appointment of experienced troubleshooter follows internal disquiet over delay in replacing Deborah Turness

The BBC has brought in one of its most trusted troubleshooters to oversee BBC News, as it battles concerns about a crisis in trust in mainstream television news coverage.

Rachel Jupp will start her new job almost immediately, after internal frustrations over the time it has taken to replace Deborah Turness, who resigned last year following the fallout from claims of BBC bias.

Researchers looked at pain around the world and across the human lifespan, finding steepest rise happens before age 55

Women report suffering more pain than men, a major new global study has found.

That was true for all types of pain the researchers measured, and comes amid continuing concern about the gender pain gap, which means women are less likely to be prescribed the pain relief they need.

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

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has said the US is closely monitoring the case of a Russian laboratory worker who died last week after a reported accident at a plague research institute in Siberia.

“We’re watching and monitoring it closely,” Rubio said on Monday before leaving for a trip to Europe. “I ⁠don’t think it’s cause for alarm, but it is cause for focus and a cause just to keep an ⁠eye on it.”

10 poets are in the running for the prestigious £25,000 prize, with collections that ‘remind us why it’s to poetry we turn to reorient ourselves’

The former poet laureate Andrew Motion and Pulitzer prize winner Jorie Graham are among the 10 poets shortlisted for this year’s £25,000 TS Eliot prize, the UK and Ireland’s most prestigious award for a single volume of poetry.

Motion has been selected for Gravity Archives, while Graham, who was previously shortlisted in 2012, is on the list for Killing Spree.

The US withdrew its bombers from RAF Fairford after an investigation into an alleged planned terrorist attack on the base. At least 10 B-1 bombers used by the US military in the Iran conflict flew out of Fairford on Sunday, suggesting US officials were taking the threat seriously. Last week, five men in three vans near the military base were arrested, followed by a sixth British-Iranian national. All were released on bail, drawing criticism from the Pentagon. Lucy Hough speaks to Dan Sabbagh, the Guardian’s defence and security editor – watch on YouTube

Demonstrations over housing rights and crumbling schools are a sign the younger generation is withdrawing political consent

• Europe live – latest updates

In Spain, tens of thousands of people in 50 cities have taken to the streets amid mounting fury over the country’s housing crisis, their feelings made plain on a banner at the burgeoning protest camp in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol plaza: “You can speculate on watches, jewels, crypto-bros and Ferraris. But not on our fucking homes.”

In France, as high school pupils clash with police in often violent protests over long hours, missing teachers, crumbling classrooms and an opaque university admissions system, the angry slogans include: “More hours in class than for sleep”, “Fund study, not repression” and “I’d like to be worrying about my maths exam, not my future”.

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

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

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

Ashmolean museum, Oxford

She’s the ultimate female nude, a Greek goddess who inspired centuries of artists. Yet despite some world-class loans, her story here is jumbled

Botticelli’s Venus has parked her shell outside your house and come to pay a night-time visit. The glowing strands of her hair glitter against blackness as she looks past you at a mystery only she can see, while your eyes follow those river-like locks down to a hand that gathers a looping cascade between her thighs. She is, unmistakably, the goddess from Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus in the Uffizi, Florence. This very similar painting from about 1490, also by Botticelli and his workshop, suggests his Uffizi masterpiece was already such an icon that someone commissioned this version without the zephyrs and green sea, just that goddess body.

So it goes. Venus, in art, is just a word for “female nude”. Botticelli started a modern appetite that has never ended. From his hypnotic paintings a host of lush sex goddesses rose up, or reclined, to rule European art through to Michelangelo Pistoletto’s ironic 1967 assemblage Venus of the Rags, also here, in which a heap of old clothes overflow from a corner around a marble nude seen from behind, the mix of beauty and chaos resembling a rubbish-strewn Naples piazza.

Dogs have long been more popular, but for the first time more households own kittens than puppies. Some believe it’s all down to economics

Name: The kitten index.

Age: The debate has probably raged since animals have been domesticated.

An international symbol for the city, the sign is also hallmark of the region’s environmental richness

Atop Mount Lee, in the heart of Los Angeles, the wind is quiet. Two red-tailed hawks sail above, barely flapping as they coast the thermal air like surfers on a wave. Standing beside the giant letters of the Hollywood sign, the city seems peaceful. On a clear day, blocks and blocks of homes unfold beneath and the skies reveal sights all the way to Catalina Island – 10 miles out, across the Pacific.

That’s the beauty seen from the Hollywood sign.

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

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

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

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

Birmingham event is like a safari park attraction where we get to see the remnants of a party in a protected habitat

At the Labour party conference in Liverpool last week, Andy Burnham floated the idea of electoral reform. This week in Birmingham, the Tories have come up with a plan of their own: voting with their feet.

How to put this nicely? Let’s just say that the Conservative party conference is extremely civilised. No queues for the food concessions. No queues to get into any of the halls. In fact, the organisers are delighted that anyone has turned up at all.

For all the howls of a ‘stitch-up’, it’s hard to see what ministers were supposed to do, as the alternatives risked worse outcomes

• BT to buy broadband supplier TalkTalk in £400m rescue deal, saving 900 jobs

“All the characteristics of a stitch-up masked as a rescue deal in the public interest,” thundered Virgin Media O2. It’s not an unreasonable view of BT’s hurried weekend acquisition of TalkTalk. Once upon a time, TalkTalk was seen as a plucky upstart performing the useful role of irritant to BT’s giant Openreach broadband operation. Now the challenger is being consumed by the dominant player via a pre-pack administration that minimises short-term political headaches.

Here’s the problem, though, with the cosy stitch-up thesis. For all the howls of outrage, it’s hard to see what the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, who gave her blessing by issuing a little-used public interest notice, was supposed to do differently. Alternative approaches, notably a chaotic collapse of TalkTalk without a rescue plan for the customers, risked worse outcomes.

The UK government urging households to prepare for unknown threats with a three-day supply of food and water doesn’t feel like an overreaction. But is there a bigger plan to go with it?

There is no national food stockpile and there hasn’t been since it was wound up in the 1990s. It feels like a metaphor for the delusions of that era: nothing bad can possibly happen again; no two countries with a McDonald’s have gone to war with each other (according to the journalist Thomas L Friedman, also in the 90s). Now, we all have a McDonald’s and wars regularly disrupt food supplies. The problem with metaphors is you can’t eat them – not even satisfying ones.

For people who remember the second world war, or feel as if they do, there is always enough muscle memory to do topical household stockpiling. My mum kept a trunk of food that was mainly filled with condensed milk in case of a nuclear war, all the way through the 80s. When the Berlin Wall came down, we should have had a ceremonial toffee-sauce-making event where we ate it all, but we didn’t; in 1990, she was stockpiling again, to mark the Gulf war.

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

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

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

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

Our relationships with pets matter to wellbeing. But concern for an animal’s welfare can also become a practical barrier to healthcare

“Doctor, do you know I have a little dog?”

My team exchanges a glance. It’s my turn today.

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

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

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

Politicians must redouble their efforts to tackle a disturbing pattern of pupils assaulting classmates

The Guardian’s findings about the extent of sexual abuse in schools require an urgent, calibrated response. Data revealing multiple rapes committed each year on school premises in England and Wales is hard to comprehend. Yet this is what freedom of information requests to police forces, covering the period from 2021 until last year, have revealed. As well as the severity of the offences, the youth of many of the victims is disturbing. More than 8,500 sexual offences at or near schools were committed against under-13s, most of them girls.

Data about perpetrators contains gaps, including their age and sex. While the overwhelming majority of such acts are carried out by boys, we don’t know the exact proportion, nor if there is an age gap between those carrying out abuse and those being targeted. Only 33 out of 43 police forces shared their data, meaning that large areas including Scotland are not represented. But whatever the exact details, and allowing for the fact that these are reports, not convictions, the findings are deeply dismaying.

The Conservatives blame their failures on abandoning their 1976 principles. But the country needs investment and resilience rather than another round of spending cuts

The Conservative party wants to go back to the future under Kemi Badenoch. In her foundational text, The Right Way, released at the weekend, the Tory party leader makes its intellectual lineage explicit, repeatedly invoking Margaret Thatcher’s 1976 policy statement The Right Approach. The 2026 economic framework is familiar: only private enterprise creates wealth; taxes, regulation and spending can obstruct growth and competition; markets make the country stronger. The speech by her shadow chancellor, Andrew Griffith, made it clear that Conservative failures over its 14-year spell in charge were the result of the party straying from Thatcherite principles.

One might argue that, on the contrary, errors were because the party slavishly followed such a creed. When Rough, a depleted North Sea gasfield that once provided around 70% of the UK’s gas-storage capacity, was judged uneconomic by its private owner, a Conservative government in 2017 accepted that international markets could provide the UK with adequate energy security. That proved to be a big mistake when Russia invaded Ukraine, sending fossil fuel prices upwards. Britain was particularly exposed as a net energy importer and highly dependent on gas. Tory ministers had to bring back Rough into operation in 2022. Mrs Badenoch puts its closure down to “false economies”. But what was wrong was putting private profitability ahead of the country’s needs.

Amanda Cole says the government needs to weigh the cost of medicines against the damage that a shortage can cause to the NHS and patients

Without decisive government action, the reported medicine shortages in hospitals will only be the tip of the iceberg (Hospitals in England hit by shortages of common drugs such as paracetamol, 29 September). Medicine supply chains are complex and global, with multiple points of potential failure that are especially sensitive to geopolitical shocks. Brexit has made us even more vulnerable, as we no longer have access to EU medicine reserves, and cross-border logistics are further complicated.

Our research shows that these shortages tend to be concentrated in (off-patent) generic and biosimilar markets. It’s true that low prices for off-patent medicines are important in driving health system savings and promoting affordability. The problem is that when prices are driven an unsustainable low, manufacturers exit, leaving markets with too few suppliers and dangerously exposed to any supply disruption or demand spike. The NHS bears the cost when a shortage does occur, in the form of higher prices, expensive substitutes and a heavy staff burden in managing emergency procurement and, sometimes, rationing. Patients pay the highest price in delayed treatment and worse outcomes.

Bill Gabbett recalls teaching media, communications and cultural studies, while Michael Fuller studied under the influence

I enjoyed Emma Brockes’ piece (Would I want my child to study for a social media influencer degree? No, but it’s the way of the world, 1 October). It reminded me of the last 30 years of my working life spent teaching media, communications and cultural studies in two great university departments peopled with superb colleagues, and spending my time with bright and inquisitive students.

I got used to them being called Mickey Mouse degrees, mostly by people who seemed unaware that Mickey Mouse was one of the global top 10 recognised images, or even that the Walt Disney Corporation was valued at billions.

Jane Whitehead believes neighbours should be heard, not seen, while Paul Burton says the capacity of neighbours to take offence is limitless. Plus a letter from Joyce Corston

Thank you to Emily Retter for exposing the curse of the prefab garden shed (‘Just look at this monstrosity!’ Inside Britain’s bilious back yard shed wars, 29 September). Perhaps these luxury sheds should come with a health warning: “Do not assemble if you value good relations with your neighbours.”

In our street, shed wars have been fought with ghosting, poo emojis and sinister, overly loud laughter in back yards. In London, it seems that the more open-plan a house is inside, the more likely it is to have a sealed, square-eyed “room” outside in the garden. After all, we all need walls and doors sometimes.

Heathrow’s third runway and aircraft emissions | Taking the hint | Editorial mischief | Girls and ladies | The bleeding obvious

George Monbiot coins the word “perceptionware” for technology trailed but never trialled, and only intended to impress the credulous (The expansion of Heathrow would be an expensive disaster for Britain and the world. Burnham needs to block it, 3 October). But the IT industry has long had a word for this: “vapourware” – which seems apt when discussing aircraft emissions.
Robin Hughes
Worrall, South Yorkshire

• In the 1960s, my friend Linda shared a room in Paddington, London, with her friend Cynthia. Two beds in the living room, a kitchen and a shared bathroom. Normal in those days. If I went there for supper, Cynthia would get undressed and into bed at 9pm on the dot. It was difficult not to get the hint, with her head on the pillow and her eyes screwed shut. I went home (Letters, 4 October).
Mary Finch
Ditteridge, Wiltshire

⚽️ Nations League updates from 7.45pm BST kick-offs
⚽️ Live scoreboard | Read Football Daily | And mail Daniel

France (4-3-3): Restes; Koundé, Yoro, Lacroix, Diouf; Akliouche, Camavinga, M.Koné; Dembélé, Lepaul, Barcola. Subs: Butez, Cherki, Doué, Kalulu, Maignan, Olise, Rabiot, Truffert, Da Cunha.

Belgium (4-3-3): Vandevoort; Castagne, Mechele, Ngoy, Seys; Vanaken, Lavia, Raskin; Moreira, Lukaku, Lukébakio. Subs: De Cuyper, De Ketelaere, Zebast, Fernandez-Pardo, Godts, Keita, Lammens, Openda, Penders, Sabbe, Theate, Trossard.

• Player struck rebounding ball into Beijing crowd

• Djokovic advances to final against De Minaur

Daniil Medvedev was disqualified from his China Open semi-final with Novak Djokovic on Monday after hitting a rebounding ball into the crowd that struck a ​spectator in the eye.

The Russian world ‌No 5 was ‌trailing 7-5, 5-3 and had lost a point ‌when, in frustration, he struck a ball that had come off the back wall. The spectator, sitting in the first row, clutched his left eye and appeared in pain as he left the gallery, assisted by the stadium’s ‌staff.

• Group of clubs wants FA president Souleiman Waberi out

• Waberi has faced mounting opposition for weeks

Attempts to oust Souleiman Waberi as the president of the Djibouti football federation (FDF) reached a dramatic climax on Monday as police occupied the federation’s headquarters after a group of club presidents called an extraordinary general assembly aimed at removing the Fifa council member and his executive committee.

The FDF said police first occupied its national technical centre at about 5.30pm on Sunday, without presenting an administrative document or court order. According to the federation, on Monday a much larger police contingent ordered Waberi, members of the executive committee, staff and other federation members to leave the premises.

The star’s rift with Jorge Jesus is an unfortunate affair. But the forward has been holding his national team back for years

• Sign up for our free newsletter here

If this is to be the end for Cristiano Ronaldo at international level, at least it can be said that he left the stage as he bestrode it: with monumental self-regard. Ronaldo has always been a preening, self-absorbed player, but for a time, when he was one of the best in the world, it could be tolerated. For the past four years, though, he has actively and obviously held Portugal back. There is a great generation of technical talent here weighed down by the monstrous albatross of his ego.

To recap the basic details of the past couple of weeks. Ronaldo played 67 minutes of Portugal’s scratchy 1-0 win over Wales. Portugal coach Jorge Jesus, who replaced Roberto Martínez after the World Cup, said he had a verbal agreement with Ronaldo that he would not start the following game against Norway but would perhaps come off the bench. Early in the second half, Ronaldo went to warm up – although whether that was on his own initiative or because Jesus had told him to is unclear. The game was tight, Portugal ultimately winning 2-1, and Jesus did not bring Ronaldo on.

Review is under way, but there will be no quick fix for misconceived regulations that resulted in cars being unable to run in the rain

Formula One has gone to no little pains this season in insisting the new format is more popular than ever, despite overwhelming disapproval from the drivers regarding engine regulations. In short, there is nothing to see here.

But the farcical scenes that accompanied the opening to the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia on Sunday were all too visible and left some drivers expressing open mockery.

Back-to-back wins is a huge achievement, but owners have more to think about than unprecedented third title

It was, as the moderator of the post-Arc press conference put it, the “difficult question everyone wants to ask”, but Princess Zahra Aga Khan, the owner of the winner, Daryz, did not seem to find it difficult at all.

“Look, we’re breeders,” she said, “and you get to the point where you’re taking a risk every time you run the horse. Would we want him to train on for another year? I’m not sure. I think he has other things to do.”

• McDermott wants those who ‘can best stick to gameplan’

• Hull KR’s Lewis in but no Wakefield players included

Brian McDermott, the England head coach, has justified his surprise decision to omit Jake Connor from England’s Rugby League World Cup squad by insisting the players selected are better suited to his plans to defeat the world’s best.

For the second consecutive year, Leeds Rhinos half-back Connor is the major talking point in a squad that has no players from the new Super League champions, Wakefield. He was left out by Shaun Wane for last autumn’s Ashes despite winning Super League’s Man of Steel award. England lost that series 3-0 after a string of limited attacking displays.

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

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

Match report: Manchester City 4-2 Arsenal

Match report: Manchester United 1-0 Liverpool

• Charlie Mulgrew admits getting carried away after game

• Angry scenes in Rangers dressing room emerge in video

The intensity of the football rivalry in Glasgow was evident on Sunday night as Celtic turned the tables on Rangers to win the Tennent’s Sixes. Celtic beat their rivals 5-4 in the final at Braehead Arena after being on the end of a 7-1 defeat by Rangers in the group stage on Saturday.

The tournament was for retired players from all 12 Premiership teams as the SPFL revived a tournament that took place between first teams from 1984 to 1993. But the reactions were similar to any major trophy final.

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

• Europe live – latest updates

Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has once again staked his political future on a snap general election called after rightwing parties torpedoed emergency legislation to tackle the housing crisis.

Sánchez, who has been in office since 2018, used a televised address to communicate his decision, which had been widely expected. The next general election had been due before the end of next summer.

Camera-enabled Meta spectacles are already restricted in UK and US because of fears about covert recording

Norway is planning a temporary ban on smart glasses in some public places, amid rising global concern at the spread of the AI-enabled recording devices.

The Oslo government is planning a bill to prevent the use of the camera-enabled spectacles in parks, beaches, museums, shopping centres, schools, daycare centres, healthcare facilities, gyms and public events, although private use would still be allowed.

Party in England and Wales ditches commitment to phase out nuclear in major shift in its energy policy

Green party members have voted to end the party’s opposition to nuclear power, dropping a commitment to phase out the technology in a major shift in its energy policy.

The motion, adopted at conference, removes a “blanket opposition to nuclear fission” and instead commits the Green party of England and Wales to assessing nuclear projects alongside other low-carbon technologies.

Operation supported by 100 fighter jets said to have secured ‘air protection’ of Bab al-Mandab strait and destroyed hundreds of targets

Leaders of a Saudi-led coalition in Yemen claimed a broad air campaign involving 100 jet aircraft was under way on Monday against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels along the Red Sea coastline and farther north in the capital, Sana’a.

The Saudi coalition spokesperson, Maj Gen Turki al-Maliki, said the 100 fighter jets participating in Operation Dawn of Yemen were providing support to forces of Yemen’s internationally recognised government.

Italian police say Maltese citizen under investigation for smuggling after animals found packed in car

A Maltese man is facing animal cruelty charges after allegedly attempting to transport 300 tortoises and 77 parrots from Sicily to Malta.

The animals were found packed into a car near the boarding area for a Malta-bound catamaran during an inspection at the Sicilian port of Pozzallo, the local unit of Italy’s financial police squad said on Monday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

How court will lean is unclear amid Suncor Energy and ExxonMobil’s attempt to stop lawsuits at state level

The US supreme court began its new nine-month term hearing arguments on Monday in a major case in which big oil companies attempted to strike a fatal blow against lawsuits that seek to hold them accountable for the climate crisis.

After the hearing, while it was not yet clear which way the justices were leaning, the high stakes were underlined.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Strong and fair’ proposal to be taken to members’ ballot after previous offer led Unison to walk out of negotiations

Glasgow city council has reached an agreement with the trade union Unison over pay and grading, averting one of the UK’s biggest ever fire-and-rehire exercises.

Talks between the council and the GMB, Unite and Unison unions previously broke down when Unison refused to ballot its members on a new pay and grading system, designed to resolve historical equal pay issues.

Public figures back commissioner’s call for government commitment to funding legal support for those affected

The singer and television personality Mel B has said she is “heartbroken” by the Windrush scandal victims’ fight for justice, as the Windrush commissioner urged ministers to commit to providing funding for legal support for those affected by the end of October.

In April, the Guardian revealed that the Home Office had refused to pay compensation in more than half the claims made by victims of the scandal, in which mainly Black Britons who came legally to postwar Britain were wrongly stripped of citizenship and settlement rights.

Stanley Chow’s cartoon was put on water bottles at party conference with the slogan ‘Bottler Burnham’

An artist is considering legal action after the Conservative party used his cartoon to mock Andy Burnham.

Stanley Chow, a Manchester-based illustrator who works for the New Yorker magazine, created a cartoon of the prime minister for campaign material in the Makerfield byelection earlier in June.

Pakistani authorities insist marchers calling for former PM to be released from jail will not reach the capital

Imran Khan’s supporters have begun a march to Islamabad to demand his release from jail after efforts by the government to halt the protest failed.

The march began in the former prime minister’s stronghold province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in north-west Pakistan on Sunday, according to leaders of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.

Modi government, election body and its head issued notices after removal of millions from lists prompts mass protests

India’s supreme court has demanded accountability from the government and the election body over a controversial exercise that has led to the deletion of tens of millions of voters from the electoral roll and prompted mass protests.

Demonstrations have erupted across the country in recent days as opposition parties, student groups and the youth-led Cockroach movement have demanded the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar, the head of the Election Commission of India (ECI).

Youngest press secretary in White House history left earlier this year after the birth of her second child

Karoline Leavitt, who stepped down as White House press secretary in August, is joining her former boss’s favorite network, Fox News, as an on-air contributor, the channel announced on Monday.

Considering that two of her predecessors from Donald Trump’s first administration, Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Kayleigh McEnany, had also joined Fox after leaving office, Leavitt was seen as a logical fit for Fox, on which she will begin providing commentary on 1 November.

Family of Virginia Giuffre criticizes Colorado’s Jeff Crank for voting to block a vote to release the Epstein files

Two relatives of Virginia Giuffre, one of the most prominent Jeffrey Epstein victims who died last year, appeared in a political attack ad targeting the Colorado Republican congressman Jeff Crank, accusing him of refusing to meet with them.

Sky Roberts, Giuffre’s brother, and his wife, Amanda Roberts, expressed disappointment that Crank had voted to block a vote to release the federal investigative files relating to Epstein.

Deal would have created a supermarket with a market share of 23.6%, still well behind Tesco’s 27.8%

Sainsbury’s held merger talks with rival Morrisons this year to discuss a multibillion-pound deal that would have been the biggest shake-up for UK supermarkets in decades, according to reports.

The two companies held exploratory negotiations, according to the Financial Times and Sky. It is believed they are no longer in live discussions.

Banks and building societies raise prices as turmoil in bond markets increases expectations of base rate rise

The average cost of a five-year fixed-rate mortgage has hit the 6% barrier for the first time in three years, as jitters in the money markets make the loans more expensive for lenders to offer.

Figures from financial information provider Moneyfacts show the average is now 6.00%, its highest point since September 2023, while the average two-year fixed rate is not far behind at 5.98%, its highest since December of the same year.

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

• Business live – latest updates

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

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

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

• Business live – latest updates

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

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

The latest in our series of writers’ favorite comfort films is a tribute to the lovably quirky 80s musical

The key to a feelgood movie, beyond the necessary rewatchability, is familiarity – the real kind that lets you look away or fall asleep without doubting your affection. Musicals are perfectly suited to this particular subgenre since the majority of them, especially the classic ones adapted for film, atrophy with second-act problems. That’s where writers suddenly remember the plot they’d introduced and drop all that singing and dancing to arrive at some type of conclusion.

The first act of Funny Girl? A near-flawless parade of showstoppers, Barbra Streisand as Fanny Brice having the time of her life falling in love. I’ve probably seen it 200 times. The second act … well, who ever cared about her husband’s gambling addiction?

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

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

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

French farce set in the tumultuous three hours prior to the opening night performance of Macbeth features comic-timing perfection from cast

One of Matt Groening’s Life In Hell comic strips from the 1980s, entitled How to Be a Clever Film Critic, sets out cinema’s greatest paradox: “The French are funny. Sex is funny. And comedies are funny. Yet no French sex comedies are funny.” Well, this film from Bertrand Usclat and Martin Darondeau proves that all commonly held certitudes must be disproved at some point, because here’s a French comedy, albeit one that’s not all that preoccupied with sex, that is a hoot.

Set entirely in the Parisian institution of the title, this frothy farce unfolds over the three hours before the opening night curtain goes up on a production of Macbeth, which is being directed by actor turned metteur en scène Nina (Pauline Clément). A series of catastrophes make it an open question as to whether the show will actually go on, starting from the moment Nina arrives at the entrance without her staff pass and has to try to get past the officious security team. Naturally, that’s just the beginning, and Nina must contend with superstitious actors, adulterous actors shagging while they rehearse (saying their lines between thrusts), a stoned grande dame (Danièle Lebrun), missing actors (Lady Macbeth is stranded in Brest while shooting a TV show on the side) and actors who understand their roles less than the usher (Sefa Yeboah), who is watching from the sidelines. Meanwhile, if there’s a technical problem, the stage manager (Christian Hecq) will tell you in tedious detail why it can’t be fixed, the wardrobe mistress (Florence Viala) discusses her colleagues’ bodily imperfections and the minister of culture is coming that evening to see the show.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Undertones are touring the UK and Ireland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coronet theatre, London
Anguished monologue based on letter to jailed playwright’s ex-lover is gripping in its illumination of a tortured artist

Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis really does belong to the depths. Written as a letter to his ex-lover after being jailed for homosexuality, it reflects soul-crushing torments.

Its adaptation into a monologue rarely gets an outing, perhaps because it is so bleak, but is staged by the Berliner Ensemble with heaps of extra angst for good measure.

At the Coronet theatre, London, until 7 October

Bridgewater Hall, Manchester
Opera Rara revive the 1860 work in which a dog is appointed Sultan. A fine cast, the Hallé and ENO chorus, and impeccable rhyming narration from Alistair McGowan, ensure things fizz

An operetta in which a dog is appointed Sultan of Lahore and, thanks to a resourceful market trader, ushers in a more enlightened despotism – what’s not to like? Plenty, to judge by the critical mauling doled out in 1860 to Offenbach’s Barkouf. Even Berlioz – a fine one to talk – accused the composer of crimes against harmonic convention. It duly sank without trace until unpublished bits and pieces resurfaced in recent decades. It’s fallen to Opera Rara to splice it back together again, fill in the odd blank and give us a chance to judge for ourselves.

Barkouf followed hot on the heels of Orpheus in the Underworld, against which it must inevitably be considered a failure. Eugène Scribe’s workaday lyrics lack the divine silliness of the composer’s finest collaborators while blunting the story’s satirical potential. Offenbach, on the other hand, was never short of an idea and his energetic score has sufficient tics and quirks to suggest he was on the trail of something a little bit different. The orchestrations are original (there’s four horns) and a string of witty ditties go off like uncorked bottles of pop. Unfortunately, at other times it runs on a lower level of inspiration.

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

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

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

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

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

Classicist and museum trustee visited the line after people complained of waiting for hours, with some turned away

Mary Beard has intervened in the row about excessively long queues for the Bayeux tapestry by visiting the line and submitting a list of improvements to the British Museum.

Beard, 71, is a trustee of the museum and inspected the queue herself after visitors to the tapestry complained that they had to wait for hours for their turn to view it, and some were turned away with no guarantee they would get another time slot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• This article contains spoilers for Digger

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

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

Italian designer plays with ‘idea of glamour in the wrong way’ in collection of see-through gauzy fabrics and mis-buttoned blazers

Alessandro Michele is the Italian designer who, during his seven year tenure as creative director at Gucci, made maximalism a meal ticket for the brand.

His challenge now is to bring the same hot sauce to Valentino. He’s been in the top creative job for just 30 months but time moves fast in fashion and he’s already rolled out 10 collections and four catwalk shows. At Paris fashion week on Sunday afternoon, he ticked off show number five.

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

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

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

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

• The best supermarket kimchi

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

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

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

• How to look after your knitwear

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

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

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

• 26 easy ways to spice up your sex life

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

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

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

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

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

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

A great way to pack in your vegetables, while adding pops of colour to your rotation of meals

I am still making large, nourishing and vibrant salads, with gado gado being one of my favourites. It is a well-loved Indonesian salad, and something I devoured almost daily when we travelled around the islands many moons ago. It is also an excellent way of eating an abundance of veg, and can be made to suit your taste. If I was going all out, I’d add tofu or tempeh, some prawn crackers and beansprouts, but feel free to make the bowl as you wish, with whatever you have to hand – have a play.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

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

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

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

• Read more Leading questions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tell us about a European ski resort that has retained its relaxed, uncrowded feel – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break

This winter thousands of holidaymakers will be packing their thermals and heading for the ski slopes. We’d love to hear about your favourite smaller ski resort, one which has managed to hang on to its local character and charm, whether it’s in the Alps, the Pyrenees, Scandinavia or eastern Europe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ted, 24, London

Occupation Works for a thinktank

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

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

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

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

Processor: Apple A20 Pro

RAM: 12GB

Storage: 256GB, 512GB or 1TB

Operating system: iOS 27

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

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

Water resistance: IP68 (6 metres for 30 mins)

Dimensions: 150 x 71.9 x 8.75mm

Weight: 211g

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those who have stepped in to keep young family members from going into care in England and Wales say the decision has brought them joy and hardship

Clive vividly remembers the day when, without warning or time to work out what he was really letting himself in for, he became a kinship carer.

“The social worker left, the door closed and Savannah was lying there in a carry cot, wrapped up in a pink blanket. She looked so calm and so comfy, absolutely oblivious about what’s just happened.

If your local fox population has caused differences of opinion among neighbours, please get in touch

Have foxes in your area caused friction between you and your neighbours? If so, we want to hear from you.

Some people like to leave food out for foxes, while others take measures to try and deter them from coming near their homes – and this can be a point of tension between those living nearby one another.

Are you making cutbacks in light of the price increases?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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