The president has opened fissures in his base by starting a war he couldn’t finish with Iran, stoking inflation and offending Christians. Barred from running again, he may feel he has nothing to lose

Lance Johnson voted for Donald Trump three times. Now he is feeling buyer’s remorse. “I haven’t been too happy with the third time around,” said the 47-year-old contractor, sitting at a bar in Crescent Springs, Kentucky. “We’re supposed to not start any new wars. Prices were supposed to come down. We were promised a lot of things and we’re not getting them.”

Johnson is not the only Trump voter having doubts about a US president who, after defying political gravity for a decade, finally seems to be crashing back to earth. The past two weeks have arguably been the most bruising of Trump’s two terms in office, suggesting that his tried and trusted playbook could finally be falling apart.

It seems that even the Traitors host can’t save the ailing chatshow format. As her series ends, it’s hard not to feel that she never quite got out of Graham Norton’s shadow

Six weeks ago, before Claudia Winkleman launched her BBC One Friday night chatshow, media profiles regularly referenced her “Midas touch” with TV formats. She had left one golden programme, sashaying away from Strictly Come Dancing, but her portfolio still included three other winners: the mega hit The Traitors, its celebrity spin-off for the BBC, and Channel 4’s The Piano.

Half a dozen sofa chats later, Winkleman hasn’t exactly suffered the fate of the mythic King Midas, but The Claudia Winkleman Show can fairly be seen as her least glittering work for several years.

I have a lot of sympathy for Meghan but, at times, I do think that the Duchess of Sussex could do with putting her trials and tribulations in perspective

Iran may have reopened the strait of Hormuz, but a global energy crisis has not yet been averted. The war has already damaged as much as $58bn worth of power infrastructure. Even under the best-case circumstances, these could take years to repair.

Luckily, I think I’ve got a way to get us out of this mess. First we invent some sort of large suction device (technical details to be worked out later). Then we turn it on and hoover up all the rage directed at the Duchess of Sussex. Boom, energy crisis solved.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist

The comedian and broadcaster on moaning about his eyebags, being stabbed by muggers, and his publicity-shy pet

Born in County Dublin, Graham Norton, 63, studied at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London. In the 1990s, he was a standup and appeared in the sitcom Father Ted. Since 2007, he has presented The Graham Norton Show for the BBC. He hosts Eurovision, is a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, and is presenting new reality show The Neighbourhood, which starts on 24 April on ITV. He has won nine Baftas and written three memoirs and five novels. He is married and lives in London and West Cork.

When were you happiest?
Our wedding weekend in Ireland.

It starts with a ‘back in my day’ nostalgic meme – then suddenly your elders are sharing AI-generated ‘boomerslop’ and repeating conspiracy theories …

Graham doesn’t remember his mother ever sharing her political views. He’s not certain she even voted until she met his father, who was a big Labour supporter. She went along with that, only once voting Tory as an act of spite towards the end of their relationship. She later married a farmer who was more conservative, and leaned towards leave in the Brexit referendum. “But, honestly, beyond that, she would never even speak of politics. She just wasn’t interested.”

Graham, who works in the transport industry in the Midlands, noticed a big change in his mother during the Covid pandemic. “I remember walking home from work one day and I got this phone call and all of a sudden she was listing off these conspiracy theories at me.” He now realises how much time she was spending online, on her phone and iPad, cut off from friends, family and the church life that had always been so important to her.

Some of today’s far right is openly violent and undemocratic – and even in its less extreme forms, far-right populism is a profound threat. But that doesn’t mean it is just a re-run of history

Politics, before it is about anything else, is about emotion. We all base our judgments about the world – the state of the country we live in, for instance, and what we’d like to do about it – on a mix of rational calculation and instinct. But for these judgments to be shaped into a political programme whose ideals are shared by millions of people, and for us to place our trust in leaders who promise to realise those goals, we really have to feel it. What, then, might be the particular set of feelings evoked by the following?

“The Britain that I love is being ripped apart by diversity, equality and inclusion.”
Suella Braverman, former home secretary, February 2026

As revelations mount and accusations fly, prime minister prepares for MPs’ anger and Olly Robbins’ testimony early next week

• UK politics live: latest news updates

Keir Starmer’s claim he was “staggered” not to have been told of Peter Mandelson’s vetting failure has provoked incredulity across Westminster and accusations that he sacked a senior civil servant to save his premiership.

Senior government figures said the prime minister faced “judgment day” next week when Olly Robbins, who is understood to be furious at being forced to quit the Foreign Office, is expected to appear before a powerful committee of MPs.

Simon McDonald says Olly Robbins was ‘thrown under a bus’ by the prime minister and the decision feels wrong

• UK politics live – latest updates

The Peter Mandelson security vetting scandal is the biggest crisis for the diplomatic service in decades, a former Foreign Office chief has said.

Simon McDonald, who was the permanent under-secretary of the government department until 2020, has spoken out in defence of Oliver Robbins, saying the civil servant was “thrown under a bus” by the prime minister, Keir Starmer, when he was dismissed from his role on Thursday.

Inquiries into who knew what, and when, will be pored over in coming weeks and could ultimately decide Starmer’s fate

When the Guardian revealed that Peter Mandelson had failed his vetting checks before being appointed as British ambassador to Washington, members of Keir Starmer’s cabinet, who were scattered around the world on government business, were caught by the same element of surprise.

In Washington for the spring meeting of the International Monetary Fund, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, had just come out of a meeting with the Ukrainian finance minister when she was told the breaking news.

In a statement carried by Iranian media, the Iranian military’s operational command said the strait had ‘reverted to its previous state’

Separate to the Pakistani army chief’s trip to Iran (see post at 07:53), the Pakistani prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, and foreign minister Ishaq Dar also concluded a trip to the Middle East after visiting Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey for talks.

“We have just concluded the last leg of our engagements following productive and fruitful visits … where we held meaningful bilateral discussions aimed at strengthening cooperation across key areas,” Dar said on X.

Hannah Spencer says minister ‘continuously offends people by saying working-class people don’t care about dogs’

Labour is “offensively caricaturing” working-class people by saying they do not want a greyhound racing ban in England, the Green party MP Hannah Spencer has said.

The sport has traditionally been associated with working-class culture and has historically been popular in so-called red wall areas, which Labour insiders suggest is part of the reason why there are no plans for England to follow bans announced last month in Scotland and Wales.

Disgraced financier’s links to politicians and civil servants as far back as 30 years ago to be examined

The Epstein files have shaken Norway’s faith in democracy, the head of the Norwegian parliament’s oversight committee has said, as a sprawling investigation into the connections between its foreign office and the late sex offender gets under way.

An independent commission to look into information brought to light by the Jeffrey Epstein documents released by the US Department of Justice was launched on Wednesday after the Norwegian parliament voted unanimously last month for it to be set up.

Met police say business in Hendon, north-west London, was targeted on Friday

Counter-terrorism police are leading an investigation into an arson attack on a business in Hendon, north-west London, on Friday, the Metropolitan police have said.

More details soon …

Victoria Bonya says authorities too scared to raise issues with Vladimir Putin, whose approval ratings are declining

The Kremlin is grappling with the fallout from the viral spread of a celebrity blogger’s criticism of Russian authorities, as Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings register their sixth consecutive weekly decline.

Victoria Bonya, a household name in Russia who rose to fame in 2006 on Dom-2, the country’s answer to the reality TV show Big Brother, posted a video on Monday warning the Russian president that a string of mounting problems risked spiralling out of control.

Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV polarizing the diverse community as faith and politics come to a head

Maryellen Lewicki meets once a week for Bible study with a group of Catholic women in Decatur, Georgia, in a space they try to keep clear of politics. But Donald Trump’s name arises nonetheless.

“We have one person that we pray for during the course of the week,” she said. “What my friend said is that she prays for the president every day, that God will remove that hard heart of his and replace it with a softer one that has love.”

Finance chiefs to join exercise in Washington designed to assess how they would handle collapse of significant bank

The bosses of the central banks and treasuries of the UK, US and EU are to take part in a war game in Washington on Saturday to test how they would handle the collapse of a globally significant bank.

Amid growing unease over the risks to global financial stability, the most senior officials from the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England – including its governor, Andrew Bailey – are expected to take part.

Arrest by Dubai police comes as Irish authorities issue warrant related to alleged organised crime offences

Daniel Kinahan, alleged to be the leader of the Kinahan organised crime group, has been arrested in the United Arab Emirates.

Irish police said they were aware of the arrest of a man in his late 40s, on foot of an arrest warrant issued by the Irish courts in relation to alleged serious organised crime offences.

The Plaza Prizes offered 10 awards in 2025 but some judges say they were not paid, while a number of winners hit back over AI accusations

A competition for new writers that promised a £20,000 prize fund appears to have shut down, leaving winners and judges, including a Booker prize-winning novelist, out of pocket.

Established in 2022, the Plaza Prizes last year offered 10 awards that were judged by the “finest poets and writers in the world”.

Passengers face risk of cancellations due to fuel shortages – and long airport queues due to EU entry-exit system

• What are your rights if your holiday flight is cancelled?

Holidaymakers have faced numerous stresses in recent years when planning and budgeting for the sacred summer holiday. Holiday flights to Europe have kept growing despite a pandemic, a cost of living crisis and long airport queues, but summer 2026 threatens to bring fresh anxieties.

Legacies of Brexit mean longer border checks for Britons and most non-EU nationals to get into much of Europe, and the US-Israel war on Iran has prompted fears that airlines may not have enough fuel for every scheduled flight.

A former horticultural nursery in Regent’s Park has been transformed into a diverse mix of habitats, with a wide range of species already spotted ahead of its opening to the public on April 27

When the Queen Elizabeth II garden opens in Regent’s Park this month, the first people to visit the Royal Parks’ £5m biodiversity project will quickly discover they are not, in fact, the first visitors.

That honour belongs to a hairy-footed flower bee, a breeding pair of geese, some dragonfly nymphs, a flock of grey wagtails, a prickle of hedgehogs, an armada of newts, a flutter of spring butterflies and a “very cheeky” fox.

Silvia Salis, the leftwing mayor of Genoa and former Olympian, is described as ‘a breath of fresh air’ and potential unifier

It has been a turbulent month in Italian politics.

A failed referendum on a judicial overhaul pierced prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s aura of invincibility, triggering government resignations and leaving her scrambling to restore credibility. At the same time, her once special relationship with Donald Trump has frayed after the US president publicly scolded her this week for criticising his broadside against Pope Leo and for not supporting the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Rebecca (left), 26, a stage manager, meets Sophie, 28, a standup comedian

What were you hoping for?
Great conversation, since I’ve had way too many dates where I’ve borne the weight of the chat.

In life, the singer’s image was shaken by abuse allegations. In death, he is a billion-dollar business

In December 1993, Michael Jackson’s genitals were photographed by the Santa Barbara county sheriff’s department and the Los Angeles police department (LAPD). The pop music titan had been accused of sexually abusing Jordan Chandler, a 13-year-old boy who had accompanied Jackson on his Dangerous world tour and regularly shared a bed with the singer. Chandler had made a drawing of distinctive markings and blotches on Jackson’s crotch which matched the photos, law enforcement said. “Not just the genitalia,” said deputy district attorney, Lauren Weis, in comments echoed by LAPD colleagues. “But a particular mark on the underside of his penis which the victim described.”

The incident is a well-known part of Jackson lore; in a live satellite feed broadcast shortly after, the singer branded the strip-search “the most humiliating ordeal of my life”. The following month, Jackson paid a reported $25m to settle the case out of court. Jackson and his estate have always maintained his innocence in Chandler’s claims and nearly a dozen other allegations of child molestation. “All these lies and all these people coming forward to get paid … ,” he told Diane Sawyer in a 1995 interview. “Just lies. Lies, lies, lies.”

Ten years after his debut novel, the poet and musician has written a follow-up exploring self-discovery and a life lived on the edge. He talks about sexuality, pronouns and drawing strength from the literature he loves

Kae Tempest sidles into a pub near his house on a weekday afternoon and orders a pint of mineral water. At his side is Murphy, an enormous, 14-year-old alaskan malamute dog with startling blue eyes who settles down on the floor next to his master and goes to sleep. “He’s all right,” Tempest says. “He’s very friendly. He won’t even put his nose up.” The rapper, performance poet, playwright and novelist has a ginger beard and is wearing Timberland boots, baggy jeans and a black hoodie over a blue-and-white striped collared shirt. His hair is hidden by a cap. Years ago, his dramatic russet hair was long, but he cropped it when he dropped the “T” from his first name and came out as nonbinary, a watershed moment in his gender transition. Now testosterone has deepened his voice and his journey has reached its final stage – from they/them to he/him.

As Tempest has been famous since his late 20s, showered with accolades ranging from Mercury nominations for two of his albums (including his debut, Let Them Eat Chaos) to becoming the youngest poet ever to receive the Ted Hughes award for the epic performance poem Brand New Ancients, this odyssey has taken place in public. On his song I Stand on the Line, from his last album Self Titled, Tempest vividly describes the anxiety of having to deal with the hostility of some people’s reactions to his “second puberty” (“Out in the limelight like, please, nobody look at me / I’m looking for myself, all I’m seeing is the bitterness / Coming my way when I’m using the facilities”). So is it a heavy burden to be such a visible trans person? “It’s just my life,” Tempest replies, his voice a soft south London growl, much quieter than the thrilling, declamatory style of his performances. “I’m just glad to be alive. How beautiful,” he adds. “Because you felt like you might not be at some point.”

Gadd and Jamie Bell are so frank they’re almost feral in a show so violent you’ll think you can taste blood in your mouth. This man can hit a nerve like no other

Part of the thrill of Baby Reindeer was the feeling of watching the birth of a monster. Comedians starring in their first scripted drama tend to base their characters gently on themselves, prodding at their own foibles without doing proper damage – but Richard Gadd set fire to that safety net by dramatising his own experience of being stalked, along with other, even darker moments of victimhood, with an honesty that was transgressive.

On screen and in his old real life, the helpless Gadd’s unhinged admirer Martha (Jessica Gunning) pursued him unstoppably, like the fiend in a horror movie; once Baby Reindeer’s word-of-mouth popularity exploded and Gadd won major awards for playing himself at his most vulnerable, though, his success made him one of the most powerful creators in television. That queasy disconnect was fascinating. The prospect of watching a new Richard Gadd show is exciting, of course. It’s also a bit frightening.

Transplanted from YouTube, this nostalgic, low-budget revival offers some welcome musical performances – but the chat is superficial

The biggest chatshow news of 2026 so far has been Claudia Winkleman’s foray into celebrity chin-wagging, not least because there was something slightly hubristic about the beloved Traitors host taking on the genre. Not because of any shortcomings on Winkleman’s part, but because chatshows seem almost impossible to get right (especially for female hosts; the UK TV landscape is littered with single-series attempts by Nigella, Davina and Lily Allen).

As the country was watching Winkleman, however, another veteran broadcaster was debuting their own new(ish) chatshow to far less fanfare – and far less pressure. In February, Chris Evans began putting out episodes of TFI: Unplugged on YouTube. Produced by Virgin Radio – where Evans has hosted the breakfast show for the past seven years – this was a lo-fi endeavour that saw the presenter joined by a handful of guests in a poky studio lined by dressed-down staff members professionally obliged to laugh and whoop. Still, the guests were good (Danny Dyer, Chris Hemsworth, Bono, Noah Wyle) and the show quickly built a decent audience – so much so that Channel 4 considered it worth its while to acquire a run of six episodes that have just begun airing at 11pm on Fridays. Will this revival of the 1990s juggernaut turn out to be the real chatshow story of the year?

The horror maestro delivers a fresh take on the classic monster schlocker, and the former 1D man is back with a new album of slinky, loved-up R’n’B

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy
Out now
You probably know what The Mummy is, but do you know what a Lee Cronin is? Allow us to assist: he’s the Irish director responsible for effective indie horror The Hole in the Ground and the highest grossing entry in the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Rises. His version of this classic horror sees a journalist (Jack Reynor) and his wife (Laia Costa) reunited with their child who went missing in the desert eight years ago, with nightmarish consequences.

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

The artist and national treasure explores the terrifying onset of AI, and Christian Petzold and Paula Beer team up again for a mysterious drama. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

The three-time Olympic champion is brilliant, charismatic, relatable, basically the best British athlete of all-time. But he’s also a victim of the decline of minority sports

The Austrian philosopher and novelist Robert Musil once wrote a lengthy meditation on human capacity based around seeing the phrase “a racehorse of genius” in a newspaper sports section. Musil was disturbed by this idea. His basic question was: can a horse really be a genius?

If we are to ascribe the label of genius to a horse, based on its ability to run fast and successfully eat oats, where does this leave the unmapped capacities of the actual human genius? What is consciousness? What is a human? Should the question in fact be: will there ever be a human of sufficient genius they are able to actually perceive the genius of a horse?

⚽ Today’s games | Latest tables | Premier League top scorers
⚽ Follow us on Bluesky | And you can get in touch via email

The Guardian has kicked off a new chapter in puzzles with the launch of its first daily football game, On the ball. It is now live in the app for both iOS and Android … so what are you waiting for?

Not something you see everyday, it’s like something from a Hitchcock film:

Supporters and club insiders look back at the Sky Blues’ journey, from the depths of text-a-sub ridicule and fan mutinies to promotion

To understand the extraordinarily wild ride that Coventry have been on, culminating in the promotion achieved at Blackburn on Friday night, you need only look at the text-a-substitute idea that has become part of football folklore.

In less than a decade, the club were relegated from the top flight for the first time after 34 years, lost their stadium and came within half an hour of extinction before being bought by a Mayfair-based hedge fund in 2007. The story goes that, as a way to generate extra revenue, fans would be able to text substitution suggestions to a premium-rate number during a match. It is frequently recalled in local and national newspapers. Fans are still asked about it today.

• World Championship venue has a minute’s applause

• Voice of snooker died in February aged 79

A minute’s applause was paid in tribute to John Virgo, who died in February aged 79, as the World Snooker Championship got under way at the Crucible in Sheffield.

Virgo, who won the UK Championship in 1979, enjoyed a successful playing career but was best known for his broadcasting.

Manchester City v Arsenal is a rare late-season title decider and comes with a set of surprising plotlines

OK, so it was all building to this, then. The slow‑burn plotlines. The room‑temperature action sequences. The winter afternoons on the sofa watching men wrestle unhappily, staring out of the window as the frigid wind tousles the clouds, wondering about the death of all things, and also why referees not only have to speak now but speak in the same awkward Yorkshire bingo‑caller voice.

All of this. It’s all actually fine. Because it turns out this was just delayed resolution, cinematic build, the sporting equivalent of a really long closeup of a man in a wide-brimmed Mexican hat narrowing his eyes and chewing a cigar. And now we get the payoff. The Etihad on Sunday afternoon. The clink of spurs. The tick of the clocktower. Townsfolk huddled at the saloon-bar shutters. Get ready for an old-school shootout.

Updates from the second day’s play in the latest round
Sign up for The Spin | Mail Tanya or comment BTL

At Southampton, Kyle Abbott is hustling with admirable vigour. Baker still running in from the other end, elbows horizontally churning. Rew (85) and Abell (41) have now put on a hundred for the fourth wicket. Somerset 175-3, 63 behind.

And three for Jimmy Anderson, two in an over, old teammate Will Williams lbw and Henry Brookes caught. Gloucestershire all out 136, and I predict a couple of days of toil in the field.

Upwardly-mobile hosts are raising expectations heading into the first showdown against Liverpool at Hill Dickinson Stadium

David Moyes extended sympathy and support for Arne Slot – which may not be what any Liverpool manager wishes to hear from an Everton counterpart before a Merseyside derby – yet could not resist the temptation to stir up some local rivalry in the same breath. There was a gleam in the eye and a barely suppressed grin on Moyes’s face as he ridiculed one of the reasons Slot has presented for the champions’ decline this season.

“Absolutely,” said the Everton manager when asked whether he sympathised with Slot’s predicament, just 12 months after he was on the verge of winning the Premier League title in his debut season. “Arne Slot has done a brilliant job and, I have got to say, he is really good coach. That is from a neutral point of view.

The Blues’ star talks candidly about treatment-room frustrations, transfer talk and how he’s learned to love living down south

There are two sides to Cole Palmer. There is the shy character who can fool you into thinking he has nothing much to say for himself. On the other hand there’s the artist with the ball at his feet. The player with the “Ice Cold” celebration copied by kids in playgrounds everywhere. The improviser who makes the price of a ticket worthwhile.

“I know what you’re saying,” Palmer replies as, on a sunny afternoon at Chelsea’s training ground, we talk about the contrast between his shy conversational style and his ability to make an impact on people when he steps on the pitch. “I don’t really say too much in general but when I’m on a pitch I try to. I feel like it’s two different personalities. Off the pitch it’s quiet. I find it hard to speak to new people. But when I’m on the pitch I feel it just comes freely.”

• Barcelona increasingly unlikely to make loan permanent

• United keen to sell forward but few can afford wages

Marcus Rashford could have a summer of transfer limbo in store despite Michael Carrick admitting the door is not completely closed on the forward playing for Manchester United again. Rashford is currently on loan at Barcelona but it is becoming increasingly unlikely the move will be made permanent, which will obligate a return to Old Trafford where he would receive a wage rise if the club qualify for the Champions League.

The 28-year-old has not played for United since December 2024, spending the past 16 months out on loan at Aston Villa and Barcelona, who have the option to purchase Rashford for €30m (£26m). United sit comfortably in third, seven points above Saturday’s opponents, sixth-placed Chelsea, but will not want to see the gap close come full time at Stamford Bridge.

If only the PM had been the process-obsessed technocrat he was once painted as, this disaster wouldn’t have happened – and he wouldn’t be on the brink

Keir Starmer is dull and managerial, they said. He’s a process-obsessed technocrat, they said. He is, his opponents argued long before Starmer won a landslide election victory nearly two years ago, a bad choice for prime minister – indeed, unsuited to politics itself – because he is not so much a leader as a lawyer, animated less by ideology than by official documents and boring details.

If only.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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

The revival of the hit 2000s sitcom has none of the political subversiveness of the original. But should we be surprised?

One day in the near future, millennials like myself will be shuffling off into care homes. Once inside, what will we do to pass the time? Narrative podcasts from the 2010s will probably be piped into our bedrooms as the evenings approach, with early albums by Arctic Monkeys and the Strokes available on request. Paperback thrillers about the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami and the disappearance of flight MH370 will line the bookshelves. In the TV room, the fight for the remote will be over whether to rewatch The Simpsons, The Office or Girls; but a small minority of us, particularly those born in the early 1990s, will lobby for Malcolm in the Middle.

In fact, reading the news in 2024 that the acclaimed US sitcom from the 2000s was being revived for a four-part miniseries on Disney+ was the first time I felt directly targeted by the nostalgia industry. (This must be what it feels like to pay hundreds of pounds to see Paul Simon in 2026, I thought.) At once I was transported back to the suburban Sunday evenings of my childhood – the melancholic advance of school the next day momentarily abated by Sky One (channel 106), where I’d find a new episode about this combustive, melodramatic family.

The US attack on Iran has made the need for renewable energy inarguable. Environmentalists are now being seen for the pragmatists that they are

Donald Trump has done more to accelerate the energy transition than anyone else alive. Fossil fuel companies bankrolled his presidential campaign to stop the transition in its tracks. But when you back a volatile narcissist, unable to concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time, you shouldn’t expect to control the outcome.

It’s not that the fossils are suffering yet. As prices have soared since Trump and Netanyahu attacked Iran, oil executives have been selling shares at gobsmacking prices: the CEO of Chevron, for example, has cashed $104m so far this year. Vladimir Putin has also received a massive boost to his Ukraine invasion budget. As promised, Trump has gutted clean energy rules and programmes, green alternatives and environmental science. A fortnight ago, he stated, with the usual quantum of evidence (zero): “The environmentalists, I mean, they are terrorists … I call them environmental terrorists.”

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

When it comes to theology, Donald Trump’s vice-president clearly knows best. Are we about to see an American break with Rome?

The battle to be the absolute worst Trump henchman can feel so closely fought. But in the end, it’s always JD Vance, isn’t it? You would say Stephen Miller, but Miller’s too hidden to qualify as a front-of-house henchman among the US president’s court of grotesques. Stephen’s clearly been judged so wantonly horrifying that the administration must keep him out of public view. If you enter the store, Miller is the only-for-the-initiated entity alluded to in a whisper by the oleaginous sales assistant. “We do have something in the back – off-the-books, as it were – if sir is after something a little more … specialist.”

But Vance? Vance besets us like the 11th plague – the plague of media appearances. For the next South Park season, I hope the creators give their brilliantly ghastly little vice-president avatar a papal mitre to wear. After all, here we have a man whose pick-me book on his journey to Catholicism has yet to even be published. That tome currently lies in the rectum of HarperCollins, ready to be excreted in June – yet inevitably, Vance is already giving menacing doctrinal advice to the pope as part of the multi-theatre fallout of Operation Epic Facepalm.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

He is no progressive but unlike the old opposition, the Tisza leader listened to Orbán’s rural base

The international audience observing the Hungarian election result is likely to settle on a view that feels familiar. That this election was about east v west or that it was a “youthquake”, a win secured by the unprecedented participation of young voters. These narratives have some truth to them, of course, but, especially for those interested in fighting back against regimes such as Viktor Orbán’s, it’s worth taking a closer look at this campaign. Understanding Péter Magyar’s success will require progressives to rethink their strategies in similar political scenarios.

Orbán’s defeat was against all odds. The Hungarian electoral system was designed by his government after 2010 with only one thing in mind: the interests of his party, Fidesz. His cronies control vast sections of Hungarian society and economy, including most offline media. Orbán had been effective in perpetuating the myth that he could not be removed from power democratically, which limited the political imagination of many Hungarians.

Nóra Schultz is a Hungarian political theorist and podcaster

Nothing about No 10’s version of the Mandelson debacle makes sense as the excuses factory works overtime

On days like these you reckon the prime minister would have more chance of being believed if he had said the dog ate his homework. After all, it’s quite possible that Keir Starmer has not yet realised he doesn’t have a dog. His amnesia and lack of curiosity are a piece of performance art. Almost up there with Boris Johnson. Keir would probably take that as a compliment.

As it is we are left with a dilemma. Occam’s razor. Either No 10 thinks we were born yesterday. Or everyone in No 10 was born yesterday. The excuses factory has been working overtime. But most people have already made up their minds.

The experience of a Kenyan politician who dared to have her babies abroad is far from unique, laws are not enough to make digital spaces safe for women

In March last year, soon after giving birth to her twins, Susan Kihika was subjected to a campaign of online abuse. Kihika, who is governor of Nakuru county in Kenya’s rift valley, was accused of abandoning her country because she took her maternity leave in the US after being treated there for a high-risk pregnancy.

The criticism quickly escalatedto attacks and sexist smears. Soon social media commenters were accusing her of sleeping her way into politics. Her location was shared.

Dazzling new additions like V&A East are a source of national pride, but so are much-loved regional institutions

The V&A East Museum, which opens its doors for the first time in Stratford, London, on Saturday, is the latest addition to the buzzing East Bank cultural quarter on the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. This £135m architect-designed V&A outpost is a short walk from the V&A East Storehouse (on Time Magazine’s list of The World’s Greatest Places to Visit 2026) and Sadler’s Wells East, both of which arrived last year. The London College of Fashion has been there since 2024 and BBC Music Studios are due to open in 2027. Art, design, dance, fashion and music – welcome to London’s 21st-century culturopolis.

This once-neglected area of London – “a place where fridges went to die” as Gus Casely-Hayford, the director of V&A East, put it – has been transformed into a creative mecca. But in many parts of the UK the story is one of falling visitor numbers, job losses and the closure of much-loved music venues and art spaces. These architectural palaces are a far cry from many of the crumbling theatres and museums outside the capital (and their well-maintained European equivalents).

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

The prime minister’s explanation has shifted between being misled and admitting error, raising questions about vetting, accountability and what he knew

In February, the prime minister apologised to victims of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, saying he had “believed (Peter) Mandelson’s lies” before making him Britain’s ambassador to the US. By March, that account had shifted. Faced with evidence that he was warned the appointment posed a “reputational risk”, but gave the peer the job anyway, Sir Keir Starmer accepted on a trip to Belfast that he “made a mistake”.

On Thursday responsibility appears to have moved again – this time on to officials. Sir Olly Robbins, the top civil servant in the Foreign Office, was forced out after the Guardian reported that Lord Mandelson had been denied security clearance for the role. No 10 said it was not told. These are not complementary explanations. They are competing ones. Either Sir Keir was misled, ignored warnings, or was failed by the system.

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

Readers on the purpose of Nato and the merits of increasing military spending in straitened times

I was pleased to see your editorial challenging the rightwing narrative from George Robertson, who is demanding less welfare and more warfare (The Guardian view on defence spending: should the UK’s security rest with Donald Trump?, 14 April).

Why not extend the argument about the purpose of UK defence strategy to Nato more generally? The role of Nato is tied to the declining power of the US, as we can see when Donald Trump resents paying for it, but then expects support when he lashes out at other nations such as Iran.

It is not Keir Starmer’s resignation that is needed, but a shake-up of Whitehall and our constitution, writes Labour peer David Blunkett

The enormous controversy about the vetting process leading up to, and following, the appointment of Peter Mandelson as UK ambassador in Washington reveals a labyrinth within Whitehall and our constitution – which is a revelation even to those of us who have been in public life for over half a century (Revealed: Mandelson failed vetting but Foreign Office overruled decision, 16 April).

Three quite separate elements can appear contradictory, but can all be true at the same time. So, Keir Starmer could have been entirely telling the truth at the dispatch box last September when he said that all processes had been followed.

Paul Foxall responds to a review of the restaurant by Grace Dent and recalls dining with Max Wall and Michael Pointon

I was in harmony with Grace Dent’s review of Simpson’s-in-the-Strand (Simpson’s-in-the-Strand, London WC2: ‘A rollicking list of cosy British joys’ – restaurant review, 12 April). In past years such great clowns as Charlie Chaplin and Grock were celebrated visitors. It was later the haunt of clown Max Wall, who loved the menu of old English fare. As close friends, the writer Michael Pointon and I spent leisurely lunches while Max entertained us with his memories of variety. He always ordered roast leg of lamb followed by treacle pudding, washed down with a bottle of Beaujolais Villages.

On one spring day in 1990 after our meal and his usual byplay with the admiring staff, Max had a fall on the steep stairs and remained unconscious until an ambulance arrived to take him to Westminster hospital, where he died that evening.
Paul Foxall
Collingbourne Ducis, Wiltshire

Vincent Straub advises on rethinking sexual pleasure – in response to an article about straight male authors avoiding the subject

Luke Kennard’s thoughtful piece on straight male authors avoiding writing about sex is well taken (Too hot to handle? Why it’s time for straight male authors to rediscover sex, 12 April). We should welcome more literary courage. But the more urgent conversation isn’t in the pages of fiction – it’s happening (or failing to happen) on dating apps, in classrooms and at parties.

Research shows that we need to rethink sexual pleasure in research, healthcare and society. There is growing evidence on the bidirectional links between sexual function and mental health. Yet many young people are not equipped by their teachers or parents with honest, embodied knowledge about sex and pleasure, let alone that of their partners.

Exiled leader to revive push for change amid US backing of Delcy Rodríguez and delays to democratic transition

Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, will seek to revive her push for political change with a rally in Madrid on Saturday, having found herself sidelined by Donald Trump after the abduction of the president Nicolás Maduro.

“Venezuela will be free,” the Nobel peace prize winner insisted in an interview on the eve of this weekend’s demonstration in the Puerta del Sol square, which is expected to draw tens of thousands of protesters.

Museum says The Music is Black is part of a push to reposition scene as central to UK’s cultural history

Jacqueline Springer is standing in the middle of the V&A’s new exhibition space looking wistfully at a pair of drainpipe trousers, a tailored suit jacket and a porkpie hat, which create the unmistakable silhouette of Pauline Black, lead singer of the 2 Tone group the Selector.

Springer is the curator of the V&A East’s inaugural exhibition, The Music is Black, a landmark survey of Black British music, which opens this weekend. It starts with the early drumbeats in Africa and takes us right up to the latest innovations in pop and drill via jungle, grime, garage and two-tone.

Homelessness charity distances itself after Osbourne says she plans to attend far-right ‘unite the kingdom’ march

The homelessness charity Centrepoint has said it will cut ties with its celebrity ambassador Sharon Osbourne after she expressed support for a far-right rally being organised by Tommy Robinson.

The charity, of which the Prince of Wales is patron, has been moved to distance itself from comments made by Osbourne. The TV personality indicated this week that she would be attending an event organised in London by Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon.

Experts say Labour’s ‘halfway house’ approach risks losing support from progressives and ‘red wall’ voters

Support for rejoining the EU rather than simply rejoining the single market is growing among British voters, with more than 80% of Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green party supporters favouring this option, according to research mapping voter attitudes 10 years after the Brexit referendum.

Labour’s “muted” approach to the issue means it risks losing support among progressive voters and in “red wall” constituencies, experts have said as part of research by Best for Britain.

Bottlenecks in the system and parents’ suspicions mean doctors expect another serious outbreak soon

By 10am on a spring day, the corridor of the clinic in the Transylvanian town of Săcele was already crowded with parents and children. They were all waiting to see Dr Mirela Csabai, one of just seven general practitioners serving a population of more than 30,000.

Most of the cases that morning were routine: colds, checkups, chronic conditions. The calm, however, is recent. In 2024, a measles epidemic tore through this community and left one unvaccinated toddler dead.

Even as we empathise with these intelligent animals, our relentless push for resources kills them in their thousands, just as whalers once hunted them to the brink of extinction

For weeks now, a humpback whale has been trying to die. Entangled in ropes, it had wandered into the shallow Baltic Sea. Unable to feed, it is now subject to extreme dehydration, since whales satisfy their thirst through the fish they eat.

In such a parlous situation, the whale’s last resort was to strand itself on Poel Island, in the Bay of Wismar. Sadly, it has been a slow death. Beached whales die because they are crushed by their own weight. The German humpback’s agony may have been prolonged because it lay in shallow water and was thus only partly submerged.

Langness, Isle of Man: With their epic migrations, they are special birds, but especially so here, the place that coined the name

A swallow recorded at the start of March, sand martins mid-month. This year, many harbingers of spring have come early due to the warming climate, so here on the island, the question was: would our Manx shearwaters return early too?

Few places have birds named after them, but the Isle of Man is one (Sardinia another, for Sardinian warblers), the name granted in 1835 thanks to a large shearwater colony on the Calf of Man, an island off our south-west corner. That population was devastated by rats from a shipwreck, but after a rodent eradication programme by the Manx Wildlife Trust, numbers have rebounded to more than 1,500 breeding pairs.

Seven deaths and 15 injuries have been recorded in the past year as crocodiles move their habitats closer to human settlements

• Warning: contains graphic descriptions of crocodile attacks

Ng’ikalei Loito was walking out of the warm waters of Lake Turkana on a sunny afternoon, having just finished swimming with her two sisters-in-law, when she suddenly felt the crushing force of a crocodile’s bite on her legs.

In excruciating pain, she instinctively clung to a partially submerged tree that was within reach and screamed for help, as the crocodile tried to drag her under the water.

Ng’ikalei Loito sits on her tricycle outside her house in Kalokol town in Turkana

Exclusive: Experts say scheme will help repair damaged marine ecosystems while sequestering large amounts of carbon

More than 15m juvenile oysters are to be released into the North Sea in one of the biggest rewilding projects in UK waters.

The scheme, which will use a unique rearing process, hopes to re-establish a huge oyster bed around Orkney that experts say will create a “trophic cascade” of climate and ecological benefits.

Paul Quinn convicted in light of DNA evidence from 2003 attack that led to notorious miscarriage of justice

• The rape case that became one of Britain’s greatest miscarriages of justice

A man who evaded justice for more than two decades has been found guilty of the “horrific” 2003 rape for which Andrew Malkinson was wrongfully jailed for 17 years.

Paul Quinn, 52, was convicted by a jury on Friday after a fresh forensic analysis found traces of his DNA on the victim.

Reports of alleged crime led to protests in the Surrey town this week, after claims woman in her 20s attacked

Police investigating a rape incident in Epsom have said they have “not found any evidence” of the offence as reported. The reports prompted protests in the Surrey town this week.

Sarah Grahame, assistant chief constable at Surrey police, said the force was continuing to investigate a report that a woman in her 20s had been raped by a group of men on 11 April in Epsom after she left the Labyrinth Epsom nightclub. The alleged attack is said to have happened between 2am and 4am outside a Methodist church.

Boy, 16, among those charged in connection with attempted firebombing at Volant Media offices in Wembley

Three people, including a 16-year-old boy, have appeared in court charged in connection with the attempted firebombing of a Persian media company in north-west London.

Oisin McGuinness, 21, Nathan Dunn, 19, and a 16-year-old boy appeared together in the dock at Westminster magistrates court on Friday charged with arson with intent to endanger life.

DJ spent almost three decades working for corporation and was best known for Radio 1 show from 1985 to 2000

• Andy Kershaw – obituary

The broadcaster Andy Kershaw, best known for the BBC Radio 1 show he hosted for 15 years, has died aged 66, his family told the corporation.

His long career working for the BBC began in 1984 as host of the rock music show The Old Grey Whistle Test. He co-presented the corporation’s television coverage of Live Aid.

Voters broadly split along generational lines as pro-Russian former president leads in polls

Anna Bodakova’s days tend to be rather hectic at the moment. Hopping between meeting voters on the street, political debates and recording videos for social media, the 23-year-old is standing to become an MP in Bulgaria’s general election.

Last year she was among the many young Bulgarians who participated in countrywide mass protests over the government’s economic policies and perceived failure to tackle corruption. Those protests ultimately resulted in the resignation of the prime minister, Rosen Zhelyazkov, and his cabinet in December.

The school’s $100m project to examine its slave ownership in Antigua is mired with controversy as academics allege obstruction

Christopher Newman remembers seeing campus police officers as he walked into a human resources office at Harvard University, but he didn’t imagine that they were there for him.

It was July 2024, and Newman had just turned in the results of a two-month-long internship with the Harvard University Archives: an annotated bibliography for the landmark 2022 Harvard and the Legacy of Slavery Initiative report, which detailed the university’s ties to slavery across three centuries. He completed his project on Friday, 26 July, and on Monday, he said he received an email that HR wanted to meet with him.

As Orbán is rejected, there is cautious optimism new leader can restore ties – but issues such as EU accession loom large

Like many Ukrainians, Oleh Kupchak was delighted when Péter Magyar won Hungary’s election last weekend, ending Viktor Orbán’s 16-year grip on power. “We were euphoric. Everyone was following the results closely. There were toasts,” said Kupchak, who has visited Budapest several times. “We didn’t love Orbán,” he added.

Ukraine celebrated Orbán’s landslide defeat in a series of jokes and memes. Several likened him to the Star Wars character Jabba the Hut, and shared an image of Orbán fleeing from a drone. Others portrayed him sitting on a bench in Russia, alongside Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin former president Viktor Yanukovych, and his exiled Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad.

Eight-line poem found on the back of a manuscript sheds light on Spanish poet’s preoccupation with time

A previously unknown verse attributed to Federico García Lorca has been discovered 93 years after the celebrated Spanish poet and playwright is believed to have jotted it on the back of one of his manuscripts.

Lorca is thought to have written the eight-line poem in 1933 while working on the collection Diván del Tamarit, a homage to the Arab poets of his native Granada.

Gina Rinehart, who’s been called Australia’s ‘female Donald Trump’, has long fought claims from the family of her father’s business partner – as well as her own children

• Full Story podcast: How Gina Rinehart lost hundreds of millions of dollars in court

Australia’s richest person is reeling after a landmark court decision found her company must pay royalties worth hundreds of millions of dollars to a rival mining dynasty.

Gina Rinehart, a multibillionaire with political connections in both the White House and the Australian parliament, has been described by members of the US conservative movement as “a female Donald Trump”. The 72-year-old, who inherited her father’s iron ore empire in Australia’s Pilbara region, has fought multiple claims against the family company Hancock Prospecting that were first launched in 2010.

Exclusive: The club, owned by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac, received the grant without a contract or final state aid assessment in place

Wrexham AFC, the football club part-owned by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac, was given a £3.8m government grant without a contract or a finished state aid assessment in place, raising questions over whether the award was lawful.

The club has received £18m in taxpayer-funded grants – far more than any other in the UK – to help to redevelop its stadium, the Racecourse Ground (Y Cae Ras in Welsh).

Release of new Claude model, so far limited to US firms, will expand to British institutions in coming days

British banks will be given access in the next week to a powerful AI tool that was deemed too dangerous to be released to the public, as a series of senior finance figures warned over its impact.

Anthropic, which has so far limited the release of the new model to a small clutch of primarily US businesses, including Amazon, Apple and Microsoft, said it would expand that to UK financial institutions.

Exclusive: A trove of previously redacted documents was filed as part of the tech giant’s anti-trust battle with the state of California. Amazon denies it engages in price-fixing

Hundreds of previously redacted records reveal how Amazon has put pressure on independent sellers using its platform into raising their prices on the sites of competitors such as Walmart and Target, so that Amazon can appear to have lower prices, California authorities allege.

The global conglomerate became concerned even if a competitor was selling an item for as little as a penny less, according to one segment of the newly unredacted evidence.

I initially dismissed the Wind Waker’s cartoonish visuals as juvenile. But now I try to carry the game’s sense of joy into all aspects of my life

I had a complicated relationship with video games when I was a teenager. I had straightforwardly, wholeheartedly loved the Nintendo games that I’d grown up with, tumbling around primary-coloured dreamscapes in Super Mario 64 and having the time of my life. But as I grew into a pretentious young adult in the early 00s, I started to want more from games, and I wasn’t finding it. So many of them were mindless, or juvenile, or needlessly violent. So few seemed to have anything to say. I started to wonder whether games might really be a waste of time, like the judgy adults in my life kept telling me.

My response to this was to relentlessly intellectualise the games I played, in order to justify the time and attention I was expending on them. I mainlined highbrow gaming magazines and wrote grandiose blogs about serious adult themes in Deus Ex and Metal Gear Solid and the ancient Fallout computer games. My childhood love of Nintendo, with its bright hues and unselfconscious approach to play, felt embarrassing. Then I switched on The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, and had a realisation about the nature and importance of play that would shape my life.

In this week’s newsletter: A year after its US debut, the buzzy hospital thriller finally lands in ​the UK and traces the long, messy evolution of a genre that reflect​s the state of our healthcare systems

• Don’t get The Guide delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

After a wait more interminable than most spells in an A&E reception area, medical-drama-of-the-moment The Pitt finally made it on to UK screens last month, via the arrival of streaming service HBO Max, and just about everyone I know has spent the following weeks hoovering it up. Some, in fact, are already up to speed with its second season (the finale aired last night on US TV) and so are trying very, very hard not to blurt out major plot points at the office tea point/on public transport/in an actual hospital waiting room – we’re in a post-spoiler age, remember.

I’ve been a little bit slower off the mark – mainly because it took so long to figure out if I actually had access to HBO Max as part of my bafflingly arcane Sky TV package – but I’m racing through it now, and so am ready to share the same observations that everyone else made weeks, or in the case of the US, a full year ago. The main one being: how did not one TV producer have the idea to mash together ER and 24 before? It was right there, staring you all in the face! (Jed Mercurio, whose forgotten 2015 medical drama, Critical, also had a real-time element, might have a finger raised in objection at this point.)

It’s all gun toting and great hair in The Murder Line. Plus: World’s Most Secret Hotels returns. Here’s what to watch this evening

10pm, ITV1

The last season of this once hugely funny comedy absolutely tears out of the blocks in its best outing in years. But it’s still not the show it once was – despite the brilliant performances

For a while there, Hacks represented the height of comedy. Actual funny comedy, as opposed to trauma-ridden half-hour dramas like The Bear. When it won an Emmy for best comedy in 2024, it felt like Hacks and Hacks alone was at the vanguard of proper comedy.

That seems like a while ago now. Since then, The Studio came along: another entertainment business satire, only one with bigger stars, better production values and sharper barbs. At last year’s Emmys, The Studio won everything in sight, while all Hacks could muster were a pair of trophies for Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder, playing a rich but disconnected comedian and her put-upon writer respectively. So the question is this: can Hacks rally in its final season?

It has long been soured by scandal, but MasterChef is back with new judges – and they don’t want anyone to have a bad time. Grace Dent and Anna Haugh talk about eating like T rexes and why they don’t think about the show’s past

Grace Dent grew up with MasterChef. She and her dad would watch it together at home in Carlisle. “We used to laugh our heads off at the critics,” she says. “Just utterly ridiculous people, with their overblown egos, thinking their opinions on food matter. Who are these people? And then lo and behold …” She smiles. Dent, who is also the Guardian’s restaurant critic, is the show’s new co-host with the Irish chef Anna Haugh; both have been guest judges across various MasterChef series for several years. Watching the programme as a child did alter the course of Dent’s life. “There was also a little thing in my head, thinking that looks like an amazing job. You get to go to restaurants and talk about it?”

The two hosts knew of each other, says Dent, sitting next to Haugh, “because the restaurant and hospitality world, especially in London, is minuscule”. But in working alongside each other, “our relationship definitely took a much closer turn because we were together,” Haugh steps in, “all the time. Finishing each other’s sentences.” Dent hadn’t reviewed Haugh’s London restaurant Myrtle. “And I wouldn’t review it now. For a start, it would be quite difficult to sneak in. I might arrive in a wig and glasses.” Haugh laughs. “I would love that. If you come, you have to wear a wig and glasses.”

Late-night hosts reacted to Trump’s plans for a triumphal arch, high gas prices and RFK Jr’s odd interest in roadkill

On Thursday night, late-night hosts weighed in on Donald Trump’s tense back and forth with the pope over the war in Iran, high gas prices and outlandish details from a new biography of Robert F Kennedy Jr.

The storied actor has spent years campaigning to protect green spaces. She invites us into her Surrey sanctuary, where each tree represents a lost loved one

A visit to Dame Judi Dench’s garden in Surrey is bittersweet. The 2.4-hectare (six-acre) plot contains enough trees – about 100 – to count as an arboretum. Among them is a carpet of wild garlic and a wildlife pond from which rabbits like to sip. But each of these trees represents someone she knew who has died. As her eyesight has nearly gone, Dench, who features in the latest episode of the Royal Horticulture Society’s new podcast, Roots, navigates her way around the garden via memories and smell. Here, she shares her stories of the garden and discusses the items that mean the most to her.

From lurid pranks and late-night drives, to why playing in the Revolution was like joining the marines – Prince’s friends and collaborators recount their memories of one of the music world’s most majestic and mercurial performers

George Clinton, singer and leader of Parliament-Funkadelic

(Geffen)
On this giddy first taste of the US pop star’s third album, she sets aside her rock bona fides to revel in the opulent flush of a crush-come-true. But why does it seem so doomed?

Is there anything better than an ink-fresh pop lyric so nailed-on that you can’t believe 60 years of songwriters didn’t get there first? Or like, at least 20, ever since Googling crushes became an entirely normal component of modern romance: “One night I was bored in bed / And stalked you on the internet,” Olivia Rodrigo sings on her comeback single, a casual admission with its own innate melody destined in turn to stalk listeners’ brains all summer. Her perfect couplet heralds an ecstatic chorus about the giddy terror of getting exactly what you wanted, exactly how you wanted it, and barely being able to breathe or stifle puking: “The most alive I’ve ever been / But kiss me and I might drop dead!”

Acute, obsessive, unsparing songs about romance, always with a self-aware handle on their intensity – or a wink at how lovestruck girls get labelled “crazy” – have become Rodrigo’s trademark. (She calls her benign form of online stalking “feminine intuition”.) Now 23, she broke out as a pop star in 2021, after a lifetime as a Disney Channel fixture, and pulled off one of the quickest, most effective and indelible acts of redefinition of any musician to emerge from that entertainment monolith. (Even her pop peer and fellow Disney alum Sabrina Carpenter took five albums to find success on her terms.) Rodrigo’s debut single proper, Drivers License, was an epic heartbreak ballad, though the sticking points of her debut album, Sour, were the pop-punk ragers. She convincingly translated that into her second album, 2023’s Guts, which drew on the influence of her mum’s riot grrrl records; she scored mentorship from St Vincent, brought the Breeders to support her on tour and got the Cure’s Robert Smith to duet with her when she headlined Glastonbury in 2025.

(Pentatone)
This thoughtfully curated programme of work by three British composers explores the guitar’s expressive potential, and new arrangements of Harrison Birtwistle’s piano originals are a revelation

On his new album, Sean Shibe surveys the guitar’s expressive potential through the lens of three British composers. There are interlocking themes here – Spain, 20th-century painters, antique musical forms – but this thoughtfully curated programme can be equally enjoyed piece by piece as a series of mind-expanding flights of fancy.

Thomas Adès’s Forgotten Dances pays homage to the baroque dance suite, the composer’s quirky titles imbuing traditional forms with an additional imaginative layer. Overture, Queen of the Spiders, for example, combines stately harmonics with sneaking slides and the occasional pounce (“fatal for the fly!” in the composer’s words). Barcarolle – The Maiden Voyage is a nostalgic lapping gymnopedie; Carillon de Ville a pealing tribute to the guitar-playing Hector Berlioz. In Vesper (for Henry Purcell), Adès reimagines the consolation of the older composer’s Evening Hymn. Shibe’s playing throughout is acutely articulate and technically impeccable.

The Keeper by Tana French; The Kindness of Strangers by Emma Garman; Mrs Shim Is a Killer by Kang Jiyoung; A Killer in the Family by Amin Ahmad; The Drowning Place by Sarah Hilary

The Keeper by Tana French (Viking, £16.99)
The final book in French’s Cal Hooper trilogy sees the retired Chicago detective drawn into a power struggle for the future of the small Irish town he has made his home. Ardnakelty is a place where everyone is interconnected, with grudges and loyalties lasting for generations, and Hooper, now engaged to local widow Lena and mentor to 16-year-old Trey, is becoming a part of its fabric. When the body of Rachel Holohan, girlfriend of the son of local bigshot Tommy Moynihan, is recovered from the river, the consensus is suicide, but Trey convinces Hooper to investigate. Tommy doesn’t like people interfering in his business, especially when it emerges that Rachel was concerned about his plans for the town. An immersive, slow-burn of a book, as much about the march of time and the inevitably changing nature of Irish rural life as it is about solving a crime, The Keeper is dense, compelling and superbly atmospheric.

The Kindness of Strangers by Emma Garman (Virago, £20)
Set in a Chelsea boarding house in 1953, Garman’s debut novel opens with Jimmy Sullivan – who “wore spiv’s shoes and spoke in unmistakable Cockney tones” – bleeding to death under the dispassionate gaze of the landlady and her lodgers. The big Victorian house, presided over by bohemian literary widow Honor Wilson, is home to a debutante fallen on hard times, a wannabe writer, a young cinema usher with social aspirations, and a Jewish poet who managed to escape Hitler but lost his wife and child in the process. All have secrets, but none more than Honor herself, and the arrival of Jimmy, who claims to be the son of an old family retainer, threatens them all. This is not only an excellent mystery, but an evocative portrayal of a group of people displaced socially and geographically by war and its aftermath, with the moral and topographical landscape of 1950s London superbly rendered.

A clever and beautiful survey of dogs in painting, with a brilliant interpretation of their role at its heart

Thirty-five thousand years ago, in the Ardèche region of France, Paleolithic artists drew a spectacular bestiary on the walls of the Chauvet cave. Their focus was apex predators, so there were lots of lions, as well as mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses. Dogs were nowhere to be seen, and yet in the soft sediment on the limestone floor of the cave, there are traces of canid pawprints next to human footprints. Two fellow creatures, most likely a boy and a dog, stood together, about 10,000 years after the art was made, looking up at the walls in wonder. Here was a moment of shared contemplation, followed perhaps by a glance to see the other’s reaction.

In this luminous book, the American cultural historian Thomas Laqueur explores what he calls “the dog’s gaze”. The dog was the first animal to live companionably with humans, and Laqueur argues that this marks the boundary between nature and culture. It is this threshold status that has, in turn, qualified the dog to play a rich, symbolic part in western art. Just having dogs in a picture – snuffling for picnic crumbs in Seurat’s La Grande Jatte or trooping home in Bruegel the Elder’s Hunters in the Snow – becomes a way for an artist to pack an image with extra resonance and second-order meaning.

The premise – Instagram influencer is confronted by pioneer reality – is genius. But does this high-concept debut live up to the hype?

Could Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear be the first great tradwife novel? This was my hope: finally, a literary response to the unhinged social trend of women cosplaying “traditional Christian values” – pronatalism and obeying one’s husband – to large social media followings. I am not immune to hype, and Yesteryear has been hyped to high heaven, prompting massive auctions for the rights, and landing a film deal with Anne Hathaway.

You have to admit that the premise – Instagram tradwife wakes up in what appear to be the actual pioneer days, and finds that traditional wifedom is not as much of a hoot as her whitewashed social media re-enactment had implied – is genius. As one of the “Angry Women” our heroine Natalie so disparages, I was looking forward to some sweet schadenfreude.

The horrifying story of the Catholic-run institutions that incarcerated thousands of women and girls

Many readers, and surely most Irish readers, will finish this book in a state of white-knuckled rage, mingled with sorrow and at least a pang of guilt. It is a detailed, thoroughgoing and appalling account of the Magdalene laundries, the most famous, and most infamous, among Ireland’s extended and varied landscape of penal or correctional institutions, which operated for most of the 20th century (the last of the laundries was closed in 1996).

As the academic Louise Brangan points out in The Fallen, it is easy to become confused by the number and variety of prisons, mental asylums, orphanages, workhouses and homes for unmarried mothers that proliferated in Ireland between the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the late 1990s. However, the Magdalene laundries were unique. Dr Brangan writes: “In a regime distinguished by its excessive inhumanity, the Magdalene laundries were its deep end. In 1951, when the laundries were at their height, for every 100,000 males, 27 were in prison … [while] for every 100,000 females, 70 were in a laundry. These were not peripheral: they were Ireland’s main carceral institution.”

Role-playing adventure and superhero comedy among big winners on a varied night in London

With 12 nominations, acclaimed role-playing adventure Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was expected to be the runaway success at the 2026 Bafta games awards, held in London on Friday evening.

And while it couldn’t quite match its nine wins at the Game Awards back in December, it was still the joint biggest winner on the night, taking best game and debut game as well as the performer in a leading role award for Jennifer English.

PC, Xbox; Sad Cat Studios
This pulpy sci-fi thriller is a beautiful, if deferential, homage to the genre greats, with a poignant real-world echo

For all of cyberpunk’s cautionary tales of shady corporations and transhumanist folly, it is the genre’s arresting imagery that looms largest in the pop culture imagination. Petroleum flares light up the perpetually rainy Los Angeles of Blade Runner; in the novel Neuromancer, the sky is the “colour of television, tuned to a dead channel”.

Replaced, a new 2D action-platformer from Belarus-based outfit Sad Cat Studios, leans into the steel and sprawl that the genre is famed for. The game also offers a wrinkle to cyberpunk’s longstanding, somewhat overfamiliar visual palette: it floods the screen with softly diffusing sepia and warm primary colours, particularly in the densely populated residential areas you’re able to explore. The mood is comforting rather than ominous, cosy rather than clinical, as if this dystopian sci-fi has been touched by an unlikely hand – that of cottagecore godfather Thomas Kinkade.

Replaced is out now; £16.99/$19.99

PlayStation 5 (version tested), Xbox, PC, Switch 2; Capcom
Engineer Hugh is sent from Earth to investigate a malfunctioning research station and meets a young android who helps him fend off murderous mechs

When Pragmata was announced alongside the PlayStation 5 in 2020, its shiny trailer promised slick sci-fi action in outer space. While it certainly delivers those futuristic thrills in spades, what I didn’t expect was a tender tale of paternal love. This is Capcom’s belated, surprisingly soulful first entry into gaming’s sad dad genre.

In this near-future fiction, a corporation named Delphi has established a research station on the moon’s surface to experiment with advanced 3D printing tech, using “Lunafilament” to easily recreate everything from tools to entire buildings. Predictably, things soon go very wrong. As the station suddenly goes dark, engineer Hugh is sent from Earth to investigate.

Pragmata is out April 17; £49.99

In a post-apocalyptic landscape of cutthroat scavengers, surprisingly peaceful players are opting to team up and open up – a phenomenon that’s intriguing game developers and psychologists alike

The video game Arc Raiders is set in a lethal imagining of an apocalyptic future for humanity. Survivors have been forced to live deep underground in colonies while mysterious, murderous AI machines patrol the surface. Only the desolate ruins of former cities survive, and reckless human “raiders” take trips topside to conduct dangerous scavenging missions.

For all the menace of these armed robots, called Arcs, the deadly droids are not the biggest threat in this hugely popular game, which was released late last year and has sold more than 14m copies. Raiders operate with the constant anxiety that another person will shoot them on sight and steal their loot. Mercilessness is rewarded in this kind of competitive, high-stakes world.

Bush theatre, London
Secrets are exposed during a pub singalong as Franky returns home to find her parents divided in Kit Withington’s drama

You can hear this play before you enter the auditorium. Inside, a karaoke session is in full force with audience members blasting out Friday night pub bangers on stage. The singing resumes when Kit Withington’s family drama begins, with karaoke as the glue that binds together characters at emotional odds with each other.

Several of them are at odds with themselves too, including Franky (Rowan Robinson), who drops into her parental home in a north-west town in the opening scene. Her life is in London now, with a boyfriend and job that prove she is moving on. This town hasn’t done the same and neither have her parents since a tragedy more than two decades ago. Her father, Dez (Deka Walmsley), is behaving oddly, still seemingly overwhelmed by grief and guilt, while her mother, Linda (Sophie Stanton), is seeking happiness elsewhere.

Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
Jack Furness’s unconventional staging for Welsh National Opera sees the orchestra play up a storm under Tomáš Hanus in Wagner’s legend of the man condemned to sail the oceans for eternity

In 1839 the 26-year-old Richard Wagner almost drowned during a perilous voyage across the Baltic from Riga. It was this experience that he claimed inspired The Flying Dutchman, the legend of the man condemned for eternity to sail the oceans in his ghost ship gave him the narrative for his first mature opera. Wagner thought of his libretto as a poem, and it certainly grapples with some of the epic questions: birth, life, love and death.

Welsh National Opera’s new staging, directed by Jack Furness, begins with a woman in childbirth, the wild and stormy surges of the overture coinciding with her contractions. So Senta is born, destined, as a small child, to see her mother die, whisked away on her hospital bed into the great abyss. Senta will be a damaged soul, obsessed to the point of derangement by the story of the Dutchman, whose single hope of redemption, the love of a true woman, becomes possible only on touching land once every seven years. Backstories seem to have become a necessary accompaniment to any opera’s overture, which anyway spells out the whole trajectory in its leitmotifs. The strength of this intervention is visual, in the widely sweeping circles run first by Senta the young girl, then as a young woman, a parallel to the Dutchman’s septennial cycles, their dresses symbolic of the blood-red sails of his ship, all metaphors which later return.

Chisenhale Gallery, London
The Irish artist scrambles your brain by cleverly combining calming pastel pinks with austere military health units and suffocating smells

The Chisenhale Gallery smells weirdly sweet. Somewhere between butter and Parma Violets, but more acrid, intensely chemical. It’s an olfactory assault, half soothing and familiar, half violent and unnatural.

That’s the strange, unsettling middle ground that young London-based artist Racheal Crowther likes to inhabit. Just look at what she has done here in her first institutional exhibition, in which baby pink gentleness and terrifying hard-edged military aesthetics collide.

Shaftesbury theatre, London
Twenty years since its West End debut, the sweetly subversive musical returns with a few tweaks and a lot of heart

The trigger warning “puppet nudity” does not begin to cover it. You will also see puppets having sex, singing about being “a little bit racist” and gleefully owning up to their predilections for porn.

Avenue Q’s cute subversiveness is back, 20 years after these fuzzy-felt Sesame Street wannabes took the West End by storm. Robert Lopez and Jeff Marx’s Tony award-winning musical is not exactly shocking now but it’s very amusing as these creatures (plus some humans) fall in love, have existential crises and create merry havoc.

The Australian photographer climbed inside a hollowed-out rock overlooking the ocean to get this striking, disorienting image

Around 10,000 years ago, Kangaroo Island separated from mainland Australia. As a result, species evolved independently – and now the island is home to wildlife found nowhere else, including a soot-coloured dunnart, as well as, of course, kangaroos. The human population here is so low that there are 14 kangaroos for every one person.

On the far southern edge of the island sit Remarkable Rocks: granite forms carved over time by wind, rain and salt. Jon McCormack took this photograph inside one of the boulders overlooking the Southern Ocean, facing towards Antarctica.

As the president’s second term has wrought new horrors, comedians reflect on whether humor can still ‘deflate the strongman’s image’

During Donald Trump’s first term, as his lies distorted reality and gaslighted Americans, Stephen Colbert said his goal was to remind his audience: “Hey, you’re not crazy.”

But watching political comedy during Trump’s second term – be it a deranged Saturday Night Live impression of a cabinet member, or a rapid-fire late-night monologue full of ICE jokes – it’s hard not to wonder: are we placating ourselves from the enormity of Trump-induced horror?

With Imax more popular than ever, a new way to watch movies – HDR by Barco – has been quietly rolling out but what difference does it really make?

At this year’s CinemaCon, an annual gathering where film studios show off their upcoming wares to excite the exhibitors they hope to showcase them, Disney announced a new way to see a movie, sort of: InfinityVision. Despite the cutesy Marvelized name, it’s not a superhero-specific experience; it’s a certification for premium large-format (PLF) auditoriums. The idea is that any InfinityVision-certified screen will adhere to or exceed standards – vaguely described so far – in size, sound quality, and picture brightness/clarity. There are supposedly 300 such screens already certified around the globe, though there doesn’t seem to be an actual list explaining which ones they are yet.

The practical reason for this additional layer of branding is that Disney’s Avengers: Doomsday is premiering in December on the same weekend as the third Dune movie, which has a deal to occupy coveted (and limited) Imax screens for several weeks. This essentially locks Earth’s mightiest heroes out of one of the marquee names in exhibition; InfinityVision seems intended to reassure viewers that their other options, presumably the various Dolby, RPX, and other branded PLF auditoriums that already exist, are as impressive as possible. Call it screenmaxxing.

The Sony world photography awards announce the four overall winners of the 2026 competitions: professional, open, student and youth. Citlali Fabián receives the prestigious photographer of the year title, and 10 category winners for the professional competition are announced, whilst Joel Meyerowitz is honoured as 2026 outstanding contribution to photography recipient

• Exhibition at Somerset House, London from 17 April - 4 May 2026

The machair is nature’s dazzling display on these remote islands, but this rare habitat also plays a vital role for wildlife and the resurgent crofting community

Some 8,000 years ago, behind the retreating glaciers, a remarkable environment was born on the western fringes of Scotland’s Outer Hebridean islands, forged by the wind and waves. It began with rising sea levels and sweeping Atlantic gales depositing crushed shell-sand inland; this settled over glacial sediment to form a coastal belt of lime-rich soil. Buffered from the sea by mounting sand dunes, this winter-wet and summer-sunned substrate produced one of Europe’s rarest habitats: the “machair”, Gaelic for “fertile grassy plain”. Abounding in diverse, colourful wildflowers and an array of associated wildlife, coastal machair is a precious, globally important outpost of biodiversity, supporting everything from purple orchids and nodding blue campanulas to endangered birdlife, otters and rare bumblebees.

As a wildflower fanatic, visiting the Outer Hebrides in peak machair bloom has long been an aspiration. Over the years, I’d read accounts of its arresting, vibrant seasonality – its shifting blankets of red and white clover, yellow trefoil and creamy eyebright, bold against the sky. Although remnant machair is also found in north-west Ireland, its greatest extent lies on this Scottish archipelago, notably the islands of Barra, Uist and Harris.

Rum is having a Renaissance. Whether you want spiced, fruity or flavoured, here are the best bottles from our taste test of 30 small-scale and indie labels

• The best gins for G&Ts, martinis and negronis

Shaking off its whitewashed island vibes and kitschy pirate associations, rum – like gin and tequila before it – is having a revival. With UK rum sales reaching £1.1bn at the end of 2023, and the category expected to rise by 3% annually by 2027, rum is among the few spirits bucking the global downward trend. It’s also experiencing the same appetite for “premiumisation” as the rest of the spirits industry: less of the poor-quality punch spirit and more high-quality artisanal or luxury-branded rum.

What is rum? Basically, it’s a spirit made from sugar cane, either in the form of cane molasses or fresh sugar cane juice, which is then fermented and distilled. The liquid can then be aged in oak barrels, matured in ex-liquor casks – such as sherry or bourbon – or infused with flavourings (the best rums use natural botanicals rather than synthetic extracts). White rum is made by taking the virgin distillate and bottling without ageing, while golden or aged rums will take on colour and flavour from time in barrels or casks; dark rums may also have extra molasses added at a later stage. Spiced or otherwise flavoured rums are usually white rums that have been flavoured after distillation.

Our gardening expert puts 19 bypass secateurs to the test to find the best for comfort, sharpness and tackling tough stems

• The best pressure washers, tested

Secateurs are the single most valued tool in the gardener’s trug, an implement as personally prized as the bricklayer’s trowel. With time, their weight and shape wear familiarly into the hand, becoming a companionable tool for all garden tasks, from pruning woody shrubs and cutting back perennials to slicing twine and preparing cut flowers.

There are two main types of secateurs, bypass and anvil (see below for their differences explained), and I’ve focused on the former here. If well looked after (we’ve included care instructions at the end of this article), a quality pair can last decades; as a result, gardeners declare staunch loyalties to particular models.

Best secateurs overall:
Burgon & Ball bypass secateurs

Best secateurs for tough stems:
Felco Model 2

Transporting little ones by bike is fun, practical and good for the planet – here’s how to get started

• The best bike panniers and handlebar bags

In the least weird way possible, strapping children to bicycles is a longstanding tradition in my family. My grandparents used to haul their three kids around in a rickety wooden trailer hitched to the back of their tandem (see picture below), and some of my earliest memories involve being wedged into a bright red child seat with a gargantuan foam mushroom of a helmet obstructing my upper peripheral vision. Now that my son is old enough, it’s our turn to pick up the baton.

Turns out, there are a lot of ways to strap a kid to a bike, and I’ve spent the past six months researching all the options to figure out what’s best. I’ve also spent lots of time using trailers and rear-mounted seats, as they were most appropriate for my son’s age and my bike setup.

Squeeze the day with our expert’s pick of the best juicers, from cold press to anti-clog to budget

• In the US? Read the best juicers in the US
• The best blenders, tested

Long before we became a nation of smoothie lovers, with blenders gracing our worktops, the health-conscious kitchen was always home to a juicer. Those early models could be tricky to keep clean, or require herculean effort to produce a mere dribble – but modern juicers are more efficient, easier to maintain, and can often produce more than just fruit juice.

There are some solid reasons to buy. Homemade juice is the original health drink: squeezed straight from fruit and vegetables, it has none of the preservatives sometimes found in shop-bought blends, nor is it treated to make it last longer or stay the right colour. Juicers can, however, leave behind some of the important fibre found in fruits’ skin and flesh.

Best juicer overall and best on a budget:
Nutribullet juicer

Best compact centrifugal juicer:
Philips Viva Collection juicer

An intriguing, punchy fusion of Taiwanese and Italian noodle dishes

Last year, the comedian Nish Kumar accused me of being in the pocket of “big cabbage”, because I was waxing lyrical about it. But look here, Nish, everyone is cabbage obsessed. It’s not just the Guardian; the internet is awash with “best cabbage” recipes and there’s a lot to love: it’s cheap, generous and genuinely delicious cooked and wilted down with onions (or shallots), as in this spaghetti. The inspiration behind the dish was a jar of Taiwanese Bullshead shallot sauce, a sweet, smoky and savoury sauce that I love to dollop into and on to all things eggs, noodles, vegetables and rice, but that I ran out of recently, prompting me to make a simple, store-cupboard alternative.

Though welcomed by chefs and campaigners, many schools say the government’s plan to remove ‘grab and go’ options from the menu is a step too far

It is lunchtime at Richard Challoner school, a Catholic comprehensive for boys in New Malden, south-west London. The familiar smell of school lunch is beginning to waft around the corridors.

In the canteen, there is a moment of calm as the kitchen team make final preparations before year 7 descend – a mass of chatting, laughing boys, with backpacks swinging and empty tummies grumbling.

A knickerbocker-style punch with notes of berry compote and scones

Named after a community-focused cafe in Dublin, this drink has a flavour profile that brings to mind berry compote and scones. It’s delicious as a single serving, or make a big batch and serve as a punch to share with friends. At Homeboy, we garnish it with a little raspberry dust, but at home a little lime flag perched on the side of the glass also works well.

Lizzie Wharton, head bartender, Homeboy, London N1

Chewy in the middle and crisp at the edges, like a classic, but sandwiched together with a luxurious ganache

Anzac biscuits are closely associated with Anzac Day on 25 April, which commemorates the members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who served in the first world war. Made with oats, coconut and golden syrup, the biscuits are said to have been popular because they travelled well and kept for long periods, making them suitable for sending to forces overseas. My version here, a slightly less austere take on the classic, sandwiches two small biscuits with a lightly salted, olive oil-enriched dark chocolate ganache. The result is crisp at the edges, soft within and not too sweet.

People down the rabbit hole don’t always realise their experience isn’t universal, advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes. You might have more luck trying a new tactic

• Read more Leading questions

My friend of 30 years keeps sending me social media posts and videos that I either don’t find funny or are disturbing. We live far away and rarely see each other, so we communicate through a messaging app. I’ve told her many times that I prefer positive or cute things, and I don’t follow American politics.

Her life is difficult and I understand why she spends so much time on social media. Last week she sent me multiple videos each day that were not of interest to me at all, including one with women slapping each other. She often buys into conspiracy theories until I disprove them. All of it upsets me. It’s like she doesn’t know who I am. I’m not replying to any of these messages but she keeps sending them.

Dougie and Teresa don’t see eye to eye when it comes to supermarket packing. You decide whose argument checks out

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

She says if you’re bagging stuff at the checkout, you’re holding up the people behind you

He just doesn’t understand the system. The packing shelves at the back are there to help customers

A university researcher and a property manager may have found (some) common ground on leaving the EU – but what about affordable homes?

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

Graham, 76, Pangbourne

Occupation Property manager

Studying on different continents is a challenge for Veronika and Fabio … Can their young love go the distance?

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

There have been days when we’ve been on the phone for 10 hours at a stretch

When I’ve flown back to see her, we’ve tried to make up for lost time

With prices at the vets soaring by more than 60% since 2016, tests such as MRI scans for dogs can exceed £3,500

Why does my vet charge more than a private hospital for humans? I’ve been quoted £1,500 for an MRI scan for my dog. When I looked at how much it would cost for a person to have the same type of scan privately, it was about £700.

As technology improves, the treatments and diagnostics available for pets are getting closer to what is on offer for human patients. While we used to rely on a vet to assess what was going on inside an animal, they can now recommend hi-tech scans to see exactly what’s happening. But progress costs money.

From running through open countryside in historic beauty spots to pounding the streets of London

Now I’m being threatened with debt collectors because I don’t have a tenancy agreement or a mortgage

British Gas opened an account in my name for an address that I have never occupied, and sent me a £571 bill. It declined to open a complaint because I “refused” to provide a tenancy agreement or mortgage statement which, since I’ve long since paid off my mortgage, I don’t have. It is now threatening me with a debt collection agency.

IW, Northampton

There are many options, from cards to buy now, pay later. We find out the best – and the effect on your credit score

Until recently, if you wanted to buy something you couldn’t afford upfront, you reached for a credit card or took out a loan. Now, when you get to the checkout, you are likely to be faced with other options, including buy now, pay later (BNPL).

With so many ways to borrow, the true costs and complexities aren’t always clear. Which option will actually save you the most money in the long run? And how might each option affect your credit score? We spoke to financial experts to get some answers.

Researcher Valentina Bianchi says holding in information can take a mental toll. Here’s how to manage it

• Tell us: do you use AI for fitness?

Usually nothing makes me happier than receiving a message that starts with “don’t share this, but …”. Yet as I played the voice note on my phone, my gleeful anticipation turned to dismay.

It was a juicy bit of gossip, but one I ultimately would have preferred not to know. Now I also had to conceal it from others.

I’m an adult. Why do I regress under my parents’ roof?

I like my own company. But do I spend too much time alone?

People say you’ll know – but will I regret not having children?

From next-day delivery to kids’ TV shows on demand, have we forgotten how to wait for … anything? The good news is that patience is a skill that can be cultivated – by parents and children alike. Here’s how

Your kids want to know why their new book (ordered 18 hours ago) is “taking so long” and need you “NOW” because Netflix “isn’t loading” (it “tu-dums” milliseconds later). For parents who had dial-up internet, endless TV adverts and long car journeys soundtracked by Dad’s AM Test cricket, modern kids’ inability to be patient can feel galling. Except, with our Deliveroo habit and boiling-water taps (who has time for a kettle?), we can be just as bad.

“Our environment and culture has trained our nervous systems to expect immediacy,” says Anna Mathur, psychotherapist and author of How to Stop Snapping at the People You Love (As Well As the Ones You Don’t). “The issue is our brains are plastic; they adapt to the level of easy dopamine we’ve got at our fingertips.” Our brains are changing, confirms child psychologist Dr Michele McDowell: “A recent study indicated the brain instantly responds to notifications and takes seven seconds to refocus. Consequently, the brain is becoming overstimulated and is increasingly more responsive. Over time, this erodes the brain’s capacity to tolerate waiting and to be patient. So each time your phone pings, it’s reshaping your mind’s ability to wait.”

Informal migration, plus climate change and rising numbers of cases globally, are complicating the tireless efforts of landlocked Eswatini to eradicate the killer disease

The freezer is filled with blue-lidded tubes of cows’ blood, ready to be defrosted and used to feed the colony of mosquitoes. “Also, you can use your arm,” says Nombuso Princess Bhembe, who tends the mosquitoes at Eswatini’s national insectary, an unremarkable building in the town of Siphofaneni, part of the southern African country’s push to eliminate malaria.

But the landlocked nation of 1.2 million people, formerly known as Swaziland, is facing headwinds from not only the climate crisis, aid cuts and insecticide resistance but also economic migration from countries with higher case numbers.

You might think of breathing as automatic, but dysfunctional breathing can arise even if you’re healthy

We’re often taught that breathing is automatic. We barely think about it, as with blinking or the quiet, constant work of the heart. But many otherwise healthy adults have dysfunctional breathing.

“Dysfunctional breathing, also known as breathing pattern disorder, is when breathlessness and/or difficulty in breathing is felt,” said Dr Stephen Fowler, a professor of respiratory medicine at the University of Manchester. It can occur outside the context of any disease. If a related condition is present, like asthma, the breathlessness might feel disproportionate to that condition, he said.

Resurgence of 90s minimalism has caused an explosion in the popularity of denim, but can a pair ever be worth £800?

Denim mania is surging across the fashion spectrum. At one end is the luxury brand Alaia with an Aegean blue, comfortable yet flattering £800 pair. At the other is JW Anderson’s collaboration with the high street brand Uniqlo and a £34.90 price tag. Both are proving wildly popular.

Alaia’s line has only just launched, so there are no sales figures yet, but demand for its Japanese denim is such that customers are advised to reserve certain styles in store or call ahead before visiting. At Uniqlo, the straight cut are said to be the most popular, on the front row of the most recent fashion weeks, and routinely sell out online. Blame the resurgence of 90s minimalism.

Once the preserve of childhood underwear, the patterned knit is now bringing nostalgia and comfort to adults in a fast-changing, unpredictable world

In this very on-brand April, where sun and showers jostle for supremacy and a chill wind is making 16C feel like 9C, you might have spotted pointelle popping up everywhere. On her recent world tour, Rosalía appeared on stage in Paris wearing a pointelle bodysuit. Then Sabrina Carpenter appeared on the cover of Perfect magazine hanging backwards off a bed wearing cyan eyeshadow and a pointelle underwear set. It’s peeping out from underneath shirts and jumpers in air-conditioned offices and on buses. For spring, the heritage knitwear brand Herd is offering “featherlight yet warm” jumpers in its signature pointelle. John Lewis, which said yesterday that online searches for pointelle were up 60% week on week, is selling bandana-scarves and pyjamas made of the same material.

The fabric, more associated with girls’ vests, thermal-wear and underwear, is, according to Merriam-Webster, “an openwork design (as in knitted fabric) typically in the shape of chevrons”. Sometimes peppered with hearts, florals, diamonds or zigzags instead, you probably had a pair of pointelle ankle socks, possibly with a little cotton ruffle. Or maybe you remember that era in the 00s when Whistles churned out lacey pointelle camisoles that grazed bellybuttons inches above Juicy Couture track bottoms.

Got denim overwhelm? Go back to basics with a simple pair of straight leg jeans

Whether you want to tackle hyperpigmentation or brighten mature skin, these are our expert’s favourite formulas for a glowy complexion

• The best LED face masks, tested

Vitamin C is having a moment in skincare because of its ability to gently brighten, reduce pigmentation and support collagen production. It also helps to neutralise free radicals – those unstable molecules generated by UV light and pollution that can lead to premature ageing – making it an essential part of your morning skincare routine (alongside an SPF).

But is a vitamin C serum suitable for everyone? And if so, how do you know which one is right for you? “Individuals with sensitive, reactive or rosacea-prone skin should approach L-ascorbic acid – the most commonly used active form of vitamin C in skincare – carefully, as it can trigger inflammation in compromised skin barriers,” says pharmacist and skincare expert Dr Sonal Chavda-Sitaram.

Best vitamin C serum overall:
CeraVe skin renewing vitamin C serum

Best budget vitamin C serum:
Elf Skin Brighten + Glow vitamin C + E + ferulic serum

From the epic landscapes of the Highlands and Islands to intimate local community events, our readers share their best finds in Scotland
• Tell us about a cool neighbourhood in a European city – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

After trekking in from near Oykel Bridge, our group stayed the night at Choire Mhoir and Magoo’s bothies (conjoined Mountain Bothies Association and non-MBA bothies, both free) in the northern Highlands. Emerging from the bothies come morning, a fog hovered between the mountains leading up to the summit of Seana Bhràigh, peaking out above, and Loch a’ Choire Mhóir below. As the sun rose, the fog steadily lifted, but not before creating a magical fogbow above the loch and bothies.
Rory

The Lincolnshire village, the height of fashion a century ago, offers fascinating history, a woodland cinema, excellent cycle routes and a deeply restorative feel

It was 6.30am, the cockcrow slot at Jubilee Park lido, and still not quite light. I hadn’t wanted to come this early – it was the only time I’d been able to book. But as I slid into the pool – heated to a delicious 29C – I realised it was a gift. Vapours rose dreamily into cool air laced with owl hoots and the whiff of dewy blooms, and I swam into a sunrise that became more vivid with every stroke. A man in the next lane paused to admire the reddening dawn too; he was hungover, he said, but had come to do his morning lengths nonetheless. A cure of sorts.

Bath, Harrogate, Buxton – Woodhall? This Lincolnshire village isn’t one of Britain’s headline spa towns. Most probably don’t know where it is – 18 miles (29km east of Lincoln, for the record. But at the turn of the 20th century, Woodhall Spa was among the most fashionable places to be seen, to be healed.

The vertiginous Valais canton offers adventures aplenty, from abseiling down gorges to wild swims in glacial pools – and nights swapping hiking tales in mountain huts

Thick grey-green mud squidges through my toes as I step into the icy, irresistible water. I’m on the descent from the Britannia Hut at the foot of the Allalinhorn in the Valais canton of the Swiss Alps, and this turquoise pool of glacial meltwater has been on the horizon tempting me for an hour. I peel off all five layers of clothing and plunge into the murky water. After a night in a shared dorm without showers it’s bliss.

In winter, the jagged ridges of the Valais are the domain of expert skiers and ice climbers, but in summer the lower slopes become accessible to hikers, with the added bonus of the ski lift infrastructure. You can be surrounded by dramatic peaks with the security of well-marked trails ranging from gentle strolls to serious alpine routes. I’m here to hike to mountain huts, test my nerves on via ferrata routes, and fill my city-dweller lungs with clean Alpine air.

Taking a leaf out of Kenneth Grahame’s book, our writer spends a few days getting lost among the woods and riverside villages of Oxfordshire and Berkshire

Strolling through a deep tangle of beech trees to get some fresh air after a long drive, I think of the scene in Kenneth Grahame’s wistful story The Wind in the Willows, where Mole gets lost in the Wild Wood. “There seemed to be no end to this wood, and no beginning, and no difference in it, and, worst of all, no way out.”

I’ve come to South Oxfordshire to explore what was once Grahame’s old stomping ground. Although I don’t share his character’s fear of the woods, I do share his own wonder for this part of the country, close to suburbia yet wrinkled with pockets of wildness. It’s one of those spring days when the light feels elastic and daffodils brighten the verges of muddy lanes. The moon is rising, however, and smoke drifts from the chimney of a cottage just beyond the woods. Nocturnal creatures may be rousing but I’m feeling the pull of a cosy burrow. I leave the trees and head back to my accommodation, Bonni B&B, in Hill Bottom.

At my age, I never thought I’d need another qualification. But here I am, grappling with knots and a man overboard in 35 mph winds

I’m at the helm of a 15-foot rigid inflatable boat (Rib) in terrible weather: there are storm clouds approaching from the south-west and the wind is already gusting at 35 mph. Waves are breaking over the bow, dropping a bucketful of water into my lap each time. As I bear off to port, the boat lurches in the heavy swell, and someone at the starboard bow shouts, “Man overboard!”

I should also probably mention that I’m in a reservoir, between the M3 and Heathrow airport, less than 12 miles from my house. And also: the man that’s gone overboard is a buoy with a face drawn on it in permanent marker. I’m not here to save anybody; I’m here in pursuit of a Level 2 Powerboat Handling certificate.

From early English and perpendicular to Deal or No Deal Nigeria, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which world-famous ancient site was the capital of the Nabataean people?
2 What is a shark’s skeleton made of?
3 On 15 February 1971, what went from 240 to 100?
4 Which England footballer presented Deal or No Deal Nigeria?
5 Ju Ae is the daughter and possible heir of which leader?
6 United Downs in Cornwall is the UK’s first of what type of power plant?
7 Which US magazine was founded in 1925 by Harold Ross and Jane Grant?
8 Who was the first British entrant to win Eurovision?
What links:
9 Dead Man Walking; Monster’s Ball; The Green Mile; True Crime?
10 Early English; decorated; perpendicular?
11 Flute-playing rapper; tears in Turin; Paranoid singer?
12 Gretna, Scotland and Marshall Meadows Bay, Northumberland (c2,700 miles)?
13 Solon; Hammurabi; Moses; Justinian; Napoleon?
14 Christie’s rostrum; Comic Relief nose; Coronation emblem; Linn turntable?
15 1949 Orwell novel (35); 1982 Prince song (17); 2014 Taylor Swift album (25)?

Five multiple-choice questions – set by children – to test your knowledge, and a chance to submit your own junior brainteasers for future quizzes

• ​Submit a question

Molly Oldfield hosts Everything Under the Sun, a podcast answering children’s questions. Do check out her books, Everything Under the Sun and Everything Under the Sun: Quiz Book, as well as her new title, Everything Under the Sun: All Around the World.

How much is Meghan making from this? Why is she appearing as a guest judge on MasterChef? Why has she joined an AI fashion discovery platform? Maybe a better question is, why the hell not?

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

I am standing across the street from a five-star hotel in Sydney’s eastern suburbs wearing sunglasses and a large hat like a low-budget private detective.

My noble aim is to spot Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, or at the very least scope out the exclusive women’s wellness retreat – shrouded in mystery – where she is slated to appear on the final day of her and Harry’s whirlwind four-day trip down under.

Paul Quinn’s conviction, 23 years after the attack, exposes how a victim was repeatedly failed and an innocent man wrongly jailed

• Paul Quinn found guilty of rape

One of Britain’s most shocking miscarriages of justice began before dawn on a summer day in Salford more than 20 years ago.

A young woman had walked the darkened streets alone for about five miles when she was honked at, wolf-whistled and was so frightened she hid for a while in undergrowth.

Trump administration has riled head of Catholic church over use of theology to justify conflict in Iran

The contrast in experience between the two men disagreeing over war and theology was striking.

On the one side was Pope Leo XIV, the first North American to head the Catholic church and the first cleric from the Augustinian order, who this week visited the modern Algerian city where Saint Augustine once lived. For Leo, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Augustine’s ideas, it was the culmination of a lifelong intellectual interest.

Starmer says ministers were in the dark, but friends of former top civil servant suggest it was a case of them looking the other way

• UK politics live: latest news updates

Fiddling with his reading glasses, the then cabinet secretary, Sir Chris Wormald – sitting alongside the most senior civil servant in the Foreign Office, Sir Olly Robbins – suddenly appeared a little tense.

The bonhomie evident in earlier answers had quite disappeared.

We would like to hear from people who have been so concerned about the behaviour or actions of a child they know that they have considered contacting the authorities

Has a child you know displayed behaviour or done things that have made you consider going to the authorities?

We would like to speak to people who have faced this very difficult dilemma.

How long did you have to wait? Perhaps you are in a queue now. Tell us your experience

The new EU entry-exit system (EES) has caused huge delays at border checks, with some people waiting for up to three hours, airports say.

Passengers in airports in countries such as France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Greece are waiting several hours, the Airports Council International (ACI) body has said.

Is AI helping with your workouts? We want to hear about it

According to reports, people are incorporating AI into their fitness routines in a variety of ways; they have it write up training plans, design meal plans and workout playlists, and provide feedback on form.

We want to hear from you: how are you using AI in your workouts?

We would like to hear your experience of job interviews that were conducted partially or wholly by AI

Companies are increasingly using AI in their hiring processes – including conducting job interviews themselves. With this in mind, we would like to hear your experience of job interviews that were conducted partially or wholly by AI.

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

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.

Crisis in the Middle East, Russian strikes in Kyiv, Orthodox Easter and Karol G at Coachella – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists