As Americans tire of Donald Trump, a Democratic midterm ‘tsunami’ could sweep the GOP out of power

It was a wake-up call for America. In January, Donald Trump took the oath of office, declared himself “saved by God to make America great again” and issued a barrage of executive orders. In the ensuing months the US president and his allies moved at breakneck speed and seemed indomitable.

But as 2025 draws to a close with Trump struggling to stay awake at meetings, the prevailing image is of a driver asleep at the wheel. Opinion polls suggest that Americans are turning against him. Republicans are heading for the exit ahead of congressional contests next November that look bleak for the president’s party.

Did the 21st century begin on 1 January 2000? Or was it that blue sky day in September 2001 when the planes hit the twin towers? These images from the last 25 years chronicle modern history in the making

At the turn of the century there was a modest debate, mainly conducted on the letters pages of the newspapers – back then, still the prime forum for public discussion – as to when, exactly, the new millennium and the 21st century began. Most assumed the start date was 1 January 2000, but dissenters, swiftly branded pedants, insisted the correct date came a year later. As it turned out, both were wrong.

The 21st century began in earnest, at least in the western mind, on a day that no one had circled in their diaries. Out of a clear blue sky, two passenger jets flew into the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001 and so inaugurated a new age of anxiety – a period in which we have lived ever since.

With the snow line edging higher, 186 French ski resorts have shut, while global heating threatens dozens more

When Céüze 2000 ski resort closed at the end of the season in 2018, the workers assumed they would be back the following winter. Maps of the pistes were left stacked beside a stapler; the staff rota pinned to the wall.

Six years on, a yellowing newspaper dated 8 March 2018 sits folded on its side, as if someone has just flicked through it during a quiet spell. A half-drunk bottle of water remains on the table.

Our cartoonists look back at a year of covering tragedy, farce and everything in between – and having to draw far too many Donald Trumps

In a year in which I’ve drawn too many cartoons about powerful people acting with impunity, the fall of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor stood out to me as a rare win for justice and accountability. Dark humour feels vital to make light of everything that’s going wrong, but I’ve also been trying to draw cartoons that highlight reasons for hope, such as the fragile ceasefire in Gaza or Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York.

As part of the Guardian’s Against the tide series, readers aged 18 to 30 share what they love about living in their coastal town, the challenges and why they often choose to leave

Megan, a 24-year-old from the Isle of Wight, is very familiar with saying goodbye. She decided university wasn’t for her and remembers how, one by one, she waved off her friends who left the island to study. Many never came back.

From shock Strictly news to shock flatulence, plus a roundup of the most hilarious news fails, here are the year’s wildest bits of television

One of the most critically acclaimed and most watched shows of the year was Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s staggering Adolescence. At the heart of the plot: why did an innocent-looking kid called Jamie (Owen Cooper) commit such a brutal murder? The third episode lifted the lid. As Jamie is interviewed by psychologist Briony (Erin Doherty), we see him slowly reveal that he’s not an innocent kid, but warped by misogyny and a twisted sense of entitlement. The episode was captivating in its acting, but it stayed with you: from Jamie’s sudden switch from vulnerability to manipulation, to the moment the camera zooms in on Briony’s face as she registers who Jamie really is. Horrifying.

In an exclusive interview, the head of the TUC says a customs union with the EU could boost the UK’s economy

Keir Starmer should seek out a far closer relationship with Europe, including a possible customs union, the head of the TUC has said.

Paul Nowak, TUC general secretary, said the British public recognised the need for a vastly improved trading arrangement and said it had become more urgent than ever because of the fickle nature of the relationship with Donald Trump’s United States.

Exclusive: UK an ‘unwelcoming, racist’ country for overseas health workers, according to medical colleges leader

• ‘The NHS would collapse within hours’: BME staff say Britain fails to appreciate their roles

Foreign doctors and nurses are increasingly shunning the NHS because anti-migrant rhetoric and rising racism have created “a hostile environment”, the leader of Britain’s medics has warned.

The health service is being put at risk because overseas health professionals increasingly see the UK as an “unwelcoming, racist” country, in part because of the government’s tough approach to immigration, Jeanette Dickson said.

• England chase down 175-run target for four-wicket win

• Over-by-over updates from Melbourne Cricket Ground

Travis Head walks out to bat with his opening partner Scott Boland. Imagine if you had predicted, on the first morning at Perth, that Australia would use four openers in the first four Tests – and that Usman Khawaja would not be among them.

“Dear Rob,” writes Robert Wilson. “I’ve got skin in the game as I am trying to arrange an all-night viewing sesh for day (night) three in an unexpectedly swish Aussie backpacker hostel near Stalingrad (in Paris). Logistically, it’s quite a lot of ducks to get in a row and punters fagging all the way in from below-zero Versailles or somesuch only to catch four overs while nursing a lukewarm Newky Brown might have views.

Christian Aid annual report’s top 10 disasters amounted to more than $120bn in insured losses

Cyclones and floods in south-east Asia this autumn killed more than 1,750 people and caused more than $25bn (£19bn) in damage, while the death toll from California wildfires topped 400 people, with $60bn in damage, according to research on the costliest climate-related disasters of the year.

China’s devastating floods, in which thousands of people were displaced, were the third most expensive, causing about $12bn in damage, with at least 30 lives lost.

Royals are expected to make separate trips after Donald Trump paused implementation of agreement

King Charles III and the Prince of Wales are expected to make separate trips to the US in 2026 as part of a campaign to revitalise a trade deal with Donald Trump, it has been reported.

Advanced talks on a visit by the king are said to be under way, the Times reported. The paper suggested that Charles’s visit to the US was likely to take place in April.

Knight Frank says shopping centres and food stores lead revival as retail outperforms other commercial property

• Shoppers shun UK high streets despite lure of Boxing Day sales

UK retailers are investing more in bricks and mortar, with shopping centres and food stores leading a revival, according to research.

Retailers and property investors are reallocating capital back into physical stores, according to the property group Knight Frank.

Attack on Kyiv injures five, says mayor, amid flurry of weekend diplomacy that will see Ukrainian president meet Trump in Florida

European leaders are to take part in a call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump on Saturday as part of a growing push for a peace deal that will see the Ukrainian president head to Florida on Sunday.

The European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, is to join a call on Saturday, a commission spokesperson told Reuters, ahead of the Ukrainian president’s trip to Florida for a Sunday meeting with Trump that Zelenskyy said would focus on some of the most sensitive parts of the peace talks. Key sticking points include Ukrainian security guarantees and reconstruction, plus territorial discussions regarding the Donbas region and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.

Starting as a roadie and guitar tech, Bamonte joined the band in 1990 after its breakthrough album Disintegration

Perry Bamonte, longtime guitarist and keyboard player for the Cure, has died aged 65.

The musician, known affectionately as Teddy, passed away after a short illness over Christmas, the band announced on their website.

Consumer group Which? finds one in five people are unsure what to do with dud gifts after the festive period

Marmite-scented deodorant and already-worn pyjamas have topped the list of the most disappointing Christmas presents, according to research that found one in five Britons have received an unwanted gift in their festive haul.

More than 2,000 members of the public were polled by the consumer group Which? in January about the gifts they received last Christmas, with 21% of those surveyed saying they had been given an unwanted or unsuitable present.

Long-serving workers say they faced racism as they helped build health service – but it ‘seems things have got worse’

• Foreign medics are shunning the NHS because of anti-migrant rhetoric, says top doctor

“I am fed up of being called names. I know I am Black. I was born Black. And I love being Black. So tell me something I don’t know.”

Those words, uttered 50 years ago as a young nurse facing regular racial abuse from patients on a London hospital ward, were a turning point in Allyson Williams’s life and career.

The president’s professed satisfaction with his cabinet may reflect how hard it would be to get a replacement confirmed

For more than a decade he built his brand on two words: “You’re fired!” And in his first term in the White House, Donald Trump did not hesitate to show his staff the door, often via an abrasive tweet.

But since resuming the US presidency in January, Trump, the former host of the reality TV show The Apprentice, appears to have become an uncharacteristically bashful boss, more disposed to hiring than firing.

Dan, 40, a sock designer and writer, meets Emmie, 39, an art consultant

What were you hoping for?
To snog the love of my life. Failing that, I’d heard good things about the broccoli.

From the books I’ve read (and forgotten) this year to the number of times my jokes bombed on stage

As the end of the year looms up like the handle of a rake I’ve just stepped on, I recall the preceding 12 months as a period characterised by a steep erosion of trust and a sinking feeling that nothing is to be taken at face value. We subsist on a steady diet of lies, distortion and AI slop. Everything is getting stupider, including me.

That’s why, when it comes to examining the year, I choose to reckon with nothing but cold, hard numbers. Here, then, is how things stand for me, statistically, at the close of 2025.

Need something brilliant to read over the holidays? Here are six of our best pieces from 2025. Look out for part two next Saturday

Brittany Snow and Malin Akerman star in a tantalisingly trashy series. Plus: Judi Dench digs deep into a family mystery. Here’s what to watch this evening

9.30pm, ITV1

Ethan Hawke is a triumph in a poignant new comedy-drama, and Guillermo del Toro’s breakout horror flick gets a rerelease. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

Can we learn anything from the experiences of these Guardian readers?

Exchanging gifts is delightful. It can also be fraught. How do you choose something the receiver will enjoy or find meaningful? And must you act pleased if you receive a tub of anti-cellulite cream?

Eleven Guardian readers shared the best and worst gifts they have ever received. Can we learn anything from their experiences? Perhaps not: “Don’t just give something that appeals to you,” writes one, and “Always gift something you want,” writes another.

You don’t have to wake at 5am or commit to hardcore exercise. But by working out a handful of habits that suit you, and introducing them slowly, you can change your life

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The first thing to say about the ideal morning routine is that it probably doesn’t exist. Yes, endless influencers promise that they have tweaked, tested and fine-tuned the process of revving up for the day, but how history’s most productive people actually get things done is so varied that it’s hard to draw definitive conclusions. Beethoven, reportedly, used to count out exactly 60 beans for his morning cup of coffee, while Victor Hugo downed two raw eggs after reading a daily missive from his mistress. Mark Wahlberg, on the other hand, wakes at 3am for pre-workout prayer, chasing up his gym time with a few holes of golf and a jolt in the cryo chamber before he even thinks about doing any work.

It is clear, though, that having some sort of routine is key: a set of automatic actions that you do every day, to ease you into your responsibilities with a bit of momentum and a fresh frame of mind. And there is some stuff that seems beneficial enough that everyone should be doing a version of it, even if individual methods differ: one person’s meditative bean arithmetic, after all, is another’s mindfulness. But if you want to finesse your routine, the key is to add one change at a time. “When you focus on a single behaviour,” says the behaviour change specialist Dr Heather McKee, “you build confidence through quick wins, and give your brain the clarity and dopamine hit it needs to automate that action. Once that habit feels natural, you free up mental space to layer in the next change.” But what habits should you be building?

Scholar of Charles Dickens who wrote a definitive biography and shone a light on the writer’s more neglected works

Michael Slater, who has died aged 88, was an expert on the life and writings of Charles Dickens. He sought to engage the widest possible readership in Dickens’s work, and to bring into the public domain all those writings that still lay in the shadows cast by the canonical novels and popular Christmas books.

His biography Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing (2009) gives a detailed account of Dickens’s life and the full range of his work, bringing out the web of connections between the two. He produced a four-volume edition of Dickens’ Journalism (1994-2000, with volume four co-edited with John Drew), and from 1993 was series editor of the multi-volume Everyman Dickens: all the novels, most of the minor works, the travel books, the writings for children, and the mass of hitherto neglected short stories culled from Dickens’s journals. Michael was excited by the range, richness and diversity of Dickens’s writings, and wanted them to excite others. His work significantly advanced Dickens’s reputation and opened new fields for research.

Boxing Day’s sole Premier League fixture tingled the senses and was graced by Patrick Dorgu’s finish that moved Manchester United up to a season-high fifth.

They could – and maybe should – have been limited to a draw because Newcastle United dominated the second period. The visitors’ problem was a lack of cutting edge. Towards the end Joelinton pulled the trigger with the goal begging but drilled only into Senne Lammens’ gloves. Joe Willock did the same with a cross. Then, Anthony Gordon spurned one more clear chance.

• Former football manager’s horse wins Kempton thriller

• Cheltenham Gold Cup up next for the gutsy winner

“Today, we’ve gone into the Champions League,” Harry Redknapp, the owner of The Jukebox Man, said after his horse had fought back to win an extraordinary three-way photo-finish in the King George VI Chase here on Friday. “We got into the Premier League, which was fantastic, but today we were taking on the Real Madrids and Barcelonas and he proved he can compete with them and win against them, which was an amazing feeling.”

It was, in truth, simply an amazing race from start to finish, with one of the most enthralling passages of action from the home turn to the line that anyone here could recall in a Grade One steeplechase. Kempton is unloved by the Jockey Club, its owners, which has signed over an option to developers that would see it bulldozed for housing, but its speed-favouring, right-handed track is something special and unique in British jumping and here it produced an all-time classic for a sell-out crowd of 17,000 spectators.

• Sale 43-17 Harlequins

• Flanker scores two tries to help hosts romp to victory

Of all the indignities heaped on Harlequins this season, and goodness knows there have been a few, this Christmas stuffing was perhaps the most humiliating.

Leading 17-12 at the interval against a Sale side who had lost their last four in the Prem, they succumbed so meekly that Jason Gilmore, their senior coach, was forced to question their collective desire. This abject surrender came just six days after Quins were thumped 40-14 by Bristol at Twickenham.

Kim Hellberg’s determination to succeed as Middlesbrough manager runs deep. So deep that he decided it would be best if his wife and two small children spent Christmas in their native Sweden while he continued to put in long days on Teesside.

Given that the Hellberg family will soon be reunited in a new home in North Yorkshire and Blackburn’s visit represented the first of four games in nine days it seemed a sensible sacrifice – even if such pragmatism failed to pay the desired Boxing Day dividends. The former Hammarby head coach had hoped to celebrate the completion of his first month in charge at the Riverside Stadium after succeeding the Wolves-bound Rob Edwards with three points but Blackburn, and their irrepressible midfielder Todd Cantwell in particular, had different ideas.

Jannik Sinner dominated for three hours and 43 minutes, but the Spaniard somehow prevailed in an adrenaline-filled fifth set and all-time classic

It was not until what appeared to be the dying moments of the French Open final between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz that I realised it could be worth taking a photo of such a monumental occasion. This was, after all, the first grand slam final between the two players who seemed set to lead men’s tennis for many years to come.

For three hours and 43 minutes Sinner had dominated Alcaraz and he earned three championship points while leading 5-3 in set four. Just before the Italian’s second championship point, I thrust up my phone and took a quick photo before my hand returned to my laptop, ready to file immediately an article that hailed his third consecutive major title and first triumph in Paris.

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

• Salah penalty puts Egypt into last 16

• Hosts Morocco held by Mali in 1-1 draw

Mohamed Salah scored a first-half penalty as 10-man Egypt defeated South Africa 1-0 in their Africa Cup of Nations Group B clash in Agadir to become the first team into the knockout stages of the competition.

Egypt have six points from their opening two games and cannot finish outside of the top two in the group. South Africa have three points from their two games.

Spaniard, who at 30 has been coaching for half his life, discusses Arteta, tactics and how to win players’ trust

Carlos Cuesta, towards the end of his first major interview, briefly lets himself wonder how far his journey will take him. “Maybe one day it brings the Maldives,” he says with a laugh, the joke being football managers can quickly be banished from view, twiddling their thumbs on the beach, once their star has faded. Still, would that be so bad? “It could be better or worse, it depends when or why. If it’s because you want it, or if it’s because somebody told you to go.”

If soaking up rays sounds like anathema to Cuesta it is because, in a remarkable ascent, he has barely wasted a minute. In June, shortly before turning 30, he took the reins at Parma and became the youngest head coach in Serie A since 1939. Half of his short life had been spent building up to that moment, the realisation crystallising in his late teens that no other calling would do. “I felt that I needed to coach,” he says. “It was like an inner necessity that I had inside of me.”

Week 17 delivers a decisive at Soldier Field as Chicago and San Francisco battle for positioning in a crowded NFC race for the No 1 seed and a precious first-round bye

Chicago Bears (11-4) v San Francisco 49ers (11-4)

Despite doing twice as much work daily, I still have no free time at all. How? Plus, canal breaches and multiplying octopuses

A canal in Shropshire has disappeared into a sinkhole. I paraphrase, but not by much.

A ceasefire was announced on 10 October. But despite ‘peace’ being on the lips of world leaders ever since, we Palestinians are still under siege and afraid

Here in Gaza we hear the word “peace” constantly – even more often than we hear the roar of warplanes or the thuds of shelling. It appears on television screens, in the statements of world leaders, in promises repeated again and again. Every country claims to want peace for Palestinians. Yet have we ever lived it for a single day? The truth is that we have not.

We are now living under a ceasefire, or at least that is what the US and the rest of the world have been telling us. But in Gaza, we haven’t felt it at all. It was announced on 10 October, amid great celebrations in Sharm el-Sheikh. Since then, Israeli forces have killed more than 360 Palestinians, including about 70 children, in Gaza. Because of the explosions I keep hearing, I am still afraid to leave the house. We are trapped in an endless maze of waiting: for the suffering to stop, for our lives to begin again and above all, for the death to end.

Since the Enlightenment, we’ve been making our own decisions. But now AI may be about to change that

This summer, I found myself battling through traffic in the sweltering streets of Marseille. At a crossing, my friend in the passenger seat told me to turn right toward a spot known for its fish soup. But the navigation app Waze instructed us to go straight. Tired, and with the Renault feeling like a sauna on wheels, I followed Waze’s advice. Moments later, we were stuck at a construction site.

A trivial moment, maybe. But one that captures perhaps the defining question of our era, in which technology touches nearly every aspect of our lives: who do we trust more – other human beings and our own instincts, or the machine?

Joseph de Weck is a fellow with the Foreign Policy Research Institute

These unhygienic, offensive lumps of plastic do everything the sink does, and less. It’s time to get rid

When I was a kid, our TV was in a television cabinet. For those unfamiliar with this preposterous abomination, it was a box on legs into which the TV was placed to hide it. It was some sort of furniture hangover from the era of covering a piano’s ankles lest they cause lustful sweats to break out under the starched collars of young gentlemen.

The trouble is, a two-doored, TV-shaped-and-sized box in the corner of the room where the TV would usually be, cables trailing from its rear and armchairs angled towards it, was about as good a disguise as when a child lacking object permanence puts its hand up to its eyes and assumes the rest of the world can’t see it.

Jason Hazeley is a comedy writer who is partly responsible for TV untellectual Philomena Cunk

After a debilitating illness, they’ve given me a reason to get out of bed – and I now have TikTokers who love me back

After spending a large proportion of this year in hospital and coming out with a feeding tube, life felt completely upside down. I’d gone from running a busy home, juggling work, family and the everyday chaos that comes with it, to suddenly being ripped out of normality and forced to slow down in ways I never expected. When I finally returned home, I felt fragile – physically and emotionally. Getting dressed felt like climbing a mountain some days, never mind feeling remotely like myself.

So I decided to try something small but surprisingly powerful: I started sharing my “fits of the day” on TikTok, which basically means I started sharing my outfits. My most-liked video is a simple one of me in an unremarkable cord skirt, oversized collar blouse and knee-high boots.

Jen Walshaw is founder of muminthemadhouse.com

Forest great was loved in Nottingham but underappreciated in Scotland before going on to thrive as a coach

On the eve of a Celtic European tie 25 years ago, Stiliyan Petrov cut an increasingly agitated figure. The young midfielder, soon to shoot to prominence under Martin O’Neill, was finding it impossible to snatch the ball from a rotund, wizened coach during a possession drill. Petrov’s teammates were cackling with laughter. John Robertson’s brilliance was understated enough in Scotland. Word of his talent in the game was never likely to reach Petrov as he grew up in Bulgaria.

Petrov is part of a recent generation who owe a debt of gratitude to Robertson the coach. More of them later. When news of Robertson’s death filtered through on Christmas Day, the prevailing sense was that his country had lost one of a kind. He was also an individual who, for reasons associated with his own modesty, really never received the kudos he deserved in the land of his birth.

Over the holiday period, the Guardian leader column is looking ahead at the themes of 2026. Today we look at how the struggle to adapt to a dangerously warming world has become a test of global justice

The record-breaking 252mph winds of Hurricane Melissa that devastated Caribbean islands at the end of October were made five times more likely by the climate crisis. Scorching wildfire weather in Spain and Portugal during the summer was made 40 times more likely, while June’s heatwave in England was made 100 times more likely.

Attribution science has made one thing clear: global heating is behind today’s extreme weather. That greenhouse gas emissions warmed the planet was understood. What can now be shown is that this warming produces record heatwaves and more violent storms with increasing frequency.

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.

Over the holiday period, the Guardian leader column is looking ahead at the themes of 2026. Today we look at the impact of devolution on growing volatility of party political allegiance

Next year will be pivotal in British politics, and 7 May will be the point around which things pivot. Elections to local councils, the Scottish parliament and the Welsh Senedd will give millions of voters across the UK a chance to express party preferences. Their verdicts could imperil Labour and Conservative leaders. In Wales, Labour might be sent into opposition for the first time since devolution. Plaid Cymru and Reform UK are set to make substantial gains. At Holyrood, the Scottish National party (SNP) is on course for a majority. That would be an extraordinary defiance of political gravity for a party weighed down by nearly two decades of incumbency.

In England, both Labour and the Tories risk losing scores of councillors as their vote shares are gobbled up by the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK and the Greens. Those results will be taken as evidence that Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch are failing as leaders. But it would be a mistake to filter the results only through that lens. The fragmentation of national allegiances began much longer ago.

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 respond to the government’s plans to improve the lot of animals

The government’s strategy for animal welfare offers substantial improvements in the lot of kept animals but, in keeping with precedent, free-living wildlife is sold short (Editorial, 23 December). The law protecting wildlife is outdated and, as recommended by the Law Society, is ripe for review. Why, for example, have comprehensive protection for four of our native mustelids and almost nothing for the remaining two? Further, the recent Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act requires the government to consider sentience when framing policy. Against this background, one would have thought a review of outdated wildlife legislation would be a priority.

Instead, the edges are tinkered with yet again. The government’s strategy includes a proposal for a close season for hares. It is claimed that fewer young hares will be left vulnerable to starvation and predation. All well and good, unless you happen to be a stoat, a weasel, a carrion crow or a mole – native species which enjoy almost no protection, meaning that thousands of their offspring will continue to die when their parents are killed during the breeding season.
Alick Simmons
UK deputy chief veterinary officer, 2007-15

Readers share a range of responses to one of the commonest greetings in the English language

My late father-in-law, who lived to be 104 and was a veteran of the Dunkirk evacuation and the north Africa war, would inevitably respond to the question “How are you?” (Letters, 23 December) with an enigmatic “Surviving. That’s the name of the game.” The dialogue is now used regularly by members of the family in fond memory of his fortitude.
Ray Woodhams
Cawthorne, South Yorkshire

• Re the unwanted health inquiry, as someone in my ninth decade, I’ve taken to asking “How long have you got?”
Roger Wilkinson
Leasgill, Cumbria

Danyah Miller responds to a pass notes column about companies that are hiring people to ‘own the narrative’

Your article on the rise of storytelling as a corporate skill (Pass notes, 17 December) highlights something that storytellers have always known – that people crave meaningful human connection. This is intensifying as we encounter a world awash with data and distraction. Professional communications teams may now package storytelling as strategy, but the craft of storytelling is far older, and far deeper, than any job description. It is a human art, not a corporate invention.

For over 30 years, the Society for Storytelling has championed oral storytelling in all its forms. Through our extensive online directory, audiences can find storytellers working wherever there are people – across schools, theatres, workplaces and care settings.

Louis Provis says there needs to be systemic change in how schools think about boys’ reading. Jacqueline Robson recalls a reading initiative that left students searching for more

Lee Child is right that too many children are being put off reading by how literature is taught (Thrillers should be on the UK school curriculum to boost reading, 19 December). Anything that helps young people develop a reading habit is welcome. But framing the solution as thrillers versus so-called “masterpieces” risks missing the deeper issue. There needs to be more systemic change in how schools think about boys’ reading rather than simply swapping one set of books for another.

In my experience as an English teacher, despite having access to more books than ever before, schools often see books with glorified violence at the centre as “boy books”, and so fill the curriculum with this content. This does nothing to combat toxic masculinity – rather, it fosters it.

Exclusive: Imran Ahmed says US companies are ‘corrupting the system’ of politics by seeking to avoid accountability

A British anti-disinformation campaigner told by the Trump administration that he faces possible removal from the US has said he is being targeted by arrogant and “sociopathic” tech companies for trying to hold them to account.

Imran Ahmed, the chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), is among five European nationals barred from the US by the state department after being accused of seeking to push tech firms to censor or suppress American viewpoints.

Pete Hegseth says ‘more to come’ as Nigerian minister confirms his country provided intelligence for first wave

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has warned of new strikes against Islamic State targets in north-western Nigeria, hours after the US military took action against militant camps in what Donald Trump has characterised as efforts to stop the killing of Christians.

Hegseth wrote on X: “The president was clear last month: the killing of innocent Christians in Nigeria (and elsewhere) must end. The [Pentagon] is always ready, so ISIS found out tonight – on Christmas. More to come … Grateful for Nigerian government support & cooperation. Merry Christmas!”

Coastguard calls off search for Matthew Upham and second man who went missing off Budleigh Salterton in Devon

Tributes have been paid to one of two men who went missing during a Christmas Day swim.

The family of Matthew Upham issued a tribute to him on the Instagram account of his antiques business, saying he was “deeply loved and forever missed”.

Two countries pledge in joint statement to halt all forms of attacks and further troop deployments in long-running dispute over contested territory

Thailand and Cambodia have agreed to an “immediate” ceasefire, pledging to end weeks of deadly border clashes that have killed more than 100 people and displaced more than half a million on both sides.

In a joint statement, the two south-east Asian neighbours said the ceasefire would take effect on Saturday at noon local time and involve “all types of weapons, including attacks on civilians, civilian objects and infrastructures, and military objectives of either side, in all cases and all areas”.

Emergency services were called to property in Brimscombe Hill in Gloucestershire at about 3am

Three people are missing after a house fire in the early hours of the morning on Boxing Day, police have said.

Emergency services were called to a report of a fire at a property on Brimscombe Hill, near Stroud, Gloucestershire at about 3am on 26 December.

The Marches, Shropshire: Boxing Day has its own more violent customs between humans and animals. That’s not the world I choose to live in

The sparrows are a shuffling, chirruping shadow in the bushes, a static of anticipation. They are waiting for food, calling for it. They have not forgotten what the poet Emily Dickinson describes, in her poem Victory Comes Late, as “God keeps his oath to sparrows, / Who of little love / Know how to starve!” However, sparrows do seem to live in a much more vivid and emotional society than as mere victims of an indifferent nature that is economical at the expense of compassion.

To say they come to the feeding station sounds a bit grand for a small bird table, a few hanging fat balls and a scattering of seed and mealworms in a back yard in Oswestry. The first adventurers edge in, not just to explore the food source but to play in a space of subtle changes that have happened in their place. When the whole host, quarrel or ubiquity move in, there must be over 30 birds. The energy of their performance is contagious.

In this week’s newsletter: as we head into 2026, we’ll be testing products to help you cut waste and lighten your load on the planet

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Christmas Day is almost a relief when it arrives, isn’t it? The season of consumption – from overindulging to buying far too many presents – can leave you, your wallet and your conscience feeling rather bloated. Most of us accept that the run-up to Christmas is what it is – a joyful time of excess – and atone for our extravagance by reining in our spending and eating from Boxing Day onwards.

But what if there was another way? A way to consume more consciously, not just at Christmas, but throughout the year?

‘Unashamedly capitalist’ rewilders claim ‘Moneyball’ approach could make millions – but experts sceptical

Crayfish, weevils and fungi released in UK to tackle invasive species such as Japanese knotweed

‘The anxiety never disappears’: Monmouth businesses recover from severe flooding

‘I’ve used it every day for 48 years’: 42 forever gifts that last – and won’t end up in landfill

305 best Christmas gifts for 2025: truly brilliant presents tried, tested and handpicked by us

The Christmas gifts you love the most, from cosy hand warmers to personalised chocolate

At least three people killed across state since atmospheric river storms began earlier this week

Mudslides buried cars and homes up to their windows in a California mountain town as a powerful storm system brought the wettest Christmas in decades to the southern part of the state.

As much as 12in of rain fell across the area on Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service, triggering flooding and washing out roads.

Mersey Valley Way takes in Manchester and Stockport on its 13-mile route with other walks to be identified in 2026

A new river walk has been announced by the government as ministers try to improve access to nature in England.

The 13-mile (21km) walk will go through Greater Manchester and the north-west of England. There will be a river walk in each region of the country by the end of parliament, the government has pledged.

Family say campaigner, who has a son in Brighton, will be able to travel freely between UK and Cairo months after his release from Egyptian jail

The British-Egyptian dissident Alaa Abd el-Fattah has arrived in London after the Egyptian government lifted a travel ban that it had imposed on him despite releasing him from jail in September.

Abd el-Fattah had been held in jail nearly continuously for 10 years, mainly due to expressing his opposition to the treatment of dissidents by the Egyptian government. He had been detained in jail two years beyond his five-year sentence as the Cairo authorities refused to recognise the period he held in pre-trial detention as part of his time served.

Many victims and families advising inquiry’s legacy project are highly suspicious of idea of Postal Museum exhibition

Victims of the Post Office Horizon scandal have dismissed a planned exhibition on the affair at the Postal Museum as a PR stunt that they are refusing to endorse.

The inquiry into the wrongful convictions of hundreds of post office operators announced in September that it was working with the Postal Museum as part of a legacy project to commemorate the devastating impact of the scandal.

Special rapporteurs say handling of prisoners raises questions over UK’s obligations under human rights laws

UN experts have expressed “grave concern” for the wellbeing of Palestine Action-affiliated hunger strikers and warned their treatment raises questions about the UK’s compliance with international human rights laws.

Eight prisoners have been on hunger strike while awaiting trial for alleged offences relating to Palestine Action before the group was banned under terrorism legislation. Qesser Zuhrah, 20, and Amu Gib, 30, who are being held at HMP Bronzefield in Surrey, were on hunger strike from 2 November to 23 December. Heba Muraisi, 31, who is at HMP New Hall, joined the pair on 3 November. The group also includes Teuta Hoxha, 29, Kamran Ahmed, 28, and Lewie Chiaramello, 22, who is refusing food every other day because he has diabetes.

Boxing Day hunts take place in England as poll suggests 65% of people think government neglects rural areas

Traditional Boxing Day hunts have gathered across England, as opponents of a planned ban on trail hunting claimed Keir Starmer’s government had “alienated rural people”.

The warning came from the pressure group Countryside Alliance, which said tens of thousands of supporters had joined gatherings in the morning, as it released a poll suggesting 65% of people think the Labour administration unfairly neglects country communities.

Diplomatic breakthrough criticised by African Union, which said it could have ‘far-reaching implications for peace and stability across the continent’

Israel has become the first country to recognise Somaliland as a sovereign state, a breakthrough in its quest for international recognition since it declared independence from Somalia 34 years ago.

The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, announced on Friday that Israel and Somaliland had signed an agreement establishing full diplomatic relations, which would include the opening of embassies and the appointment of ambassadors.

Defence minister instructs military to respond with force in West Bank, where he said attacker was from

A Palestinian motorist ran over a man and stabbed a woman in northern Israel, killing both, Israeli emergency services say.

The assailant, from the occupied West Bank, was shot and wounded by a civilian at the scene on Friday and taken to hospital, Israeli police said.

Feted birth of bambina Lara in Pagliara dei Marsi highlights sticky national debate over country’s ‘demographic winter’

In Pagliara dei Marsi, an ancient rural village on the slopes of Mount Girifalco in Italy’s Abruzzo region, cats vastly outnumber people.

They weave through the narrow streets, wander in and out of homes, and stretch out on walls overlooking the mountains. Their purrs are a consistent hum in the quiet that has come with decades of population decline.

Alleged strikes close to UAE-backed forces follow Riyadh’s call for STC to withdraw from newly seized provinces

A separatist group in southern Yemen that this month seized two oil-rich provinces has claimed that Saudi Arabia has fired warning airstrikes directed at its forces.

Videos issued on Friday by media linked to the United Arab Emirates-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) showed airstrikes that it said were close to its positions in Wadi Nahab, Hadramaut province.

If appeal fails, every person in UK who made App Store purchases between 2015 and 2024 could be entitled to compensation

Apple is seeking to overturn a landmark £1.5bn court ruling on behalf of millions of UK customers, which found the company overcharged them for years in its App Store.

The iPhone maker has applied to the court of appeal to challenge a verdict that campaigners heralded as the start of a “tidal shift against big tech”.

Sector reinvests in high-end experiences, from front-row beds to premier pods and business class-style seats with built-in wine coolers

From champagne coolers to front row VIP beds, cinema owners are investing heavily in premium experiences as the industry gets its box office mojo back.

As the third instalment in James Cameron’s blockbuster Avatar series pulls in the Christmas holiday crowds, the UK box office is expected to surpass £1bn in 2025 for the first time since before the global Covid pandemic.

Provisional figures in government mandate’s first year show 20% shortfall in levels of SAF supplied for UK flights

The take-up of sustainable aviation fuels is on course to fall short of the UK government’s first annual mandate, official figures suggest.

Production data published by the Department for Transport (DfT) covering most of 2025 shows that sustainable fuels (SAF) only accounted for 1.6% of fuel supplied for UK flights – 20% less fuel in volume than the 2% needed to fulfil the requirement.

Fears for transparency and governance after closure of public log meant to curb ‘abuses and excess’ in boardrooms

UK-listed companies will be able to bury controversies over executive pay for the first time in eight years, a thinktank has warned, after the Labour government shut down a public tracker meant to curb “abuses and excess in the boardroom”.

The public register was launched under the Tory prime minister Theresa May in 2017 to name and shame companies hit by shareholder revolts at their annual general meetings (AGMs). That included rebellions over issues such as excessive bonuses or salary increases for top earning bosses.

Timothée Chalamet sexes up table tennis in Josh Safdie’s Oscar contender, and the unstoppable reality format returns

Marty Supreme
Out now
Josh Safdie’s new sports comedy takes loose inspiration from the career of New York ping-pong icon Marty “the Needle” Reisman, with Gwyneth Paltrow, Abel Ferrara and Fran Drescher in supporting roles, and Timothée Chalamet in the lead as the vibrantly eccentric sportsman.

The star has hit the big time as a total grump in her new Apple TV drama – no mean feat, given how delightful she is. She talks Lego therapy, freaking out her Better Call Saul co-star and her frustration with the Guardian crossword

Rhea Seehorn has had a hell of a year. For years she had garnered a reputation as a great underappreciated talent, but that has all changed now thanks to Pluribus. A series about one of the only people on Earth not to have their minds taken over by an alien virus, Pluribus is not only critically adored, but recently became Apple TV’s most-watched show. And Seehorn is front and centre through it all. However, today she has bigger things on her mind.

“You gotta tell me how to crack the code,” she pleads before we’ve even said hello. “I’m an avid crossword puzzler, but I cannot beat the Guardian crossword. I cannot crack it, and I need to figure out what the problem is.”

Whether it was pop stars, athletes and Hollywood A-listers baring all or real-life heroes and fearless campaigners, Guardian photographers captured the people behind this year’s biggest stories and most revealing profiles

A transcendent new take on King Lear, a thrilling Evita and a show at Glasgow’s revamped Citizens that reduced one viewer to a ‘blubbering wreck’ are among your highlights
• More on the best culture of 2025

Hull New theatre

From Sinners to F1 to Highest 2 Lowest, Guardian writers pick the scenes that stuck with them the most this year

Spoilers ahead

Disclosure: I covered auto racing for years and still follow Formula One skeptically. I definitely went into F1: The Movie knowing what I was in for, an answer to the hypothetical: what if the bougiest sport on God’s green earth was turned into a western? But you can’t help going along for the ride once Brad Pitt starts filling the frame with his blue-eyed winks, wry smiles and Butch Cassidy swagger. I should’ve been more indignant about this martinet sport making a literal hero out of the biggest rogue on the grid. But I left disbelief in parc fermé as Pitt’s Sonny Hayes bumped and nicked his way to the season finale at Abu Dhabi to much consternation before his wingman (Damson Idris) takes up the ticky tactics at Yas Marina circuit and winds up sacrificing himself and producer Lewis Hamilton (not again!) to help Sonny win his first race and thwart a hostile takeover of their fragile team. And when the lights went up at my desolate midday screening, it was just me still on the edge of my seat and my disbelief still firmly off track. Andrew Lawrence

An exceptional cast, astonishing directing and the talent discovery of the decade – not to mention a plot so of-the-moment it was discussed in parliament. This may actually have been perfect TV

• The 50 best TV shows of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

How could it be anything else? Adolescence is the Guardian’s best television series of 2025. And you’d have to assume that we’re not the only ones who think so. In any available metric – story, theme, casting, performances, execution, impact – Adolescence has stood head and shoulders over everything else.

So ubiquitous was Adolescence upon release that it would be easy to assume that everyone in the world has watched it. But just in case, a recap. Adolescence is the story of a terrible crime, and how its shock waves ripple out across a community. In episode one, 13-year-old Jamie Miller is arrested on suspicion of murdering a female classmate. In episode two, we follow a pair of police officers through a school, and learn that Jamie was radicalised online. The third is a two-hander between Jamie and his psychologist, in which Jamie’s anger rushes to the surface. The fourth returns to Jamie’s parents, as they question what more they could have done to stop this from happening.

Is This Thing On? is Cooper’s third film as writer/director – and his third to wonder whether performing saves or destroys your love life. He and stars Will Arnett, Laura Dern and Andra Day talk gags, growth and relationship goals

Last Christmas, the audience at an open-mic night in New York welcomed to the stage a new standup. Alex Novak, he said his name was. Mildly funny, bit depressed. Mostly told jokes about getting divorced. Weirdest thing though: he looked exactly like that guy from Arrested Development.

“I was so naively unaware of what to expect,” says Will Arnett, almost a year later. “I’ve been comedy-adjacent for a lot of my life, but not a comedian. I had no idea what I was in for.”

The actor plays a ‘truthstorian’ trying to uncover how a powerful man’s death came about. Brace yourself for a hugely funny, all-American wild goose chase!

Lee Raybon (Ethan Hawke) is a “truthstorian”. How to explain that proudly self-applied title? A historian, but also an investigative journalist with an inherent distrust of mainstream narratives? A maker of trouble for trouble’s sake? Or one of those fantasists whose home contains a huge mood board (current mood? Paranoid!) covered with photos of suspects and newspaper clippings and various strands of a conspiracy connected by pieces of string? Raybon actually has one of those. “I’m a very visual thinker,” he says. His scathing former business partner Wendell (Peter Dinklage) sees it differently: “It’s like you read one Oklahoma history book and then made a junior high collage out of it.”

This exchange is typical of the alacrity with which The Lowdown cheerfully undercuts itself. Sterlin Harjo’s Tulsa noir is brilliantly elusive in tone. It allows Raybon, its nominal hero, precious little dignity. Raybon is, in many ways, a ridiculous man. His marriage is in ruins. He puts his sweet, resourceful daughter Francis in danger by mixing business and parenting. He’s one of the least physically imposing renegades you’ll ever meet (“How does an adult with a gun get put in the trunk of a car?” wonders his associate Cyrus at one point). He isn’t Woodward or Bernstein, he’s Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski with a sympathetic editor and a political agenda.

Yes, the kids are now 90% Adam’s apple. Yes, Winona Ryder has been unforgivably sidelined. And yes, some characters are trapped in a room filling with yoghurt. But despite our misgivings, this show still absolutely slaps

Listen, this isn’t the place for newcomers. Stranger Things has been around for almost a decade, and it has spent almost all this time building a mythology that has grown so unwieldy that trying to explain it would cost me my wordcount and my will to live.

However, in fairness, this new penultimate batch of episodes gives it a good try. The content of these new episodes can neatly be split into three categories. There’s action, which is high-octane and fun, and probably why you’re watching. Then there’s dialogue, which is less successful because it causes characters to stop moving and emote at each other, even though they should probably be concentrating on the imminent end of the world.

Valentina Magaletti drummed for her life, Sarz got hips swinging and Daniel Avery got slinky and serpentine: our writers pick their favourite unsung LPs from 2025
• The 50 best albums of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

Towards the end of Tether, there is a song called Silk and Velvet; its sound is characteristic of Annahstasia’s debut album. Fingerpicked acoustic guitar and her extraordinary vocals – husky, expressive, elegant – are front and centre. The arrangement is subtle but not drearily tasteful: arching noise that could be feedback or a distorted pedal steel guitar, which gradually swells into something climactic before dying away. The lyrics, meanwhile, concern themselves with selling out: “Maybe I’m an analyst, an antisocial bitch,” she sings. “Who sells her dreams for money.”

Heartbreak and humour combine in the Danish duo’s appealing blend of balladry, shoegaze and miminalist pop

From Copenhagen, Denmark
Recommended if you like Alex G, Dido, Astrid Sonne
Up next Playing Primavera and Roskilde in summer 2026

In the hands of Andrea Thuesen and Vilhelm Strange, the band name Snuggle feels more than a little ironic. The Danish duo’s debut album Goodbyehouse, released on the cultishly adored label Escho, derives from a period when the pair’s lives were in a state of major upheaval, and comfort was in short supply. “We had fun – you can hear humour a bit on the album – and we went through some tough times, existential crisis, and you can hear that too,” says Theusen over a video call from her home in Copenhagen.

Jakob Bro’s Bill Frisell collaboration finally saw the light, Cécile McLorin Salvant drew on her teenage pop memories and Anthony Braxton looked back to 1985
• The 50 best albums of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

UK saxophonist, composer and bandleader Tom Smith was dropping clues to his distinctively contemporary take on jazz traditions as a BBC Young Jazz Musician of the Year finalist in 2014 and 2016, and later as a leader of groups including the sax trio Gecko and the LGBTQI+ ensemble Queertet. But his powerful big band’s 2025 release, A Year in the Life, unveiled how exultantly Smith’s writing mingles orchestral influences from Maria Schneider and Carla Bley with slamming groovers from the big-band swing era, and a deep grasp of bebop chordal acrobatics, with raw and metallic guitar interventions thrown in.

(Decca, six CDs)
This six-disc collection to mark the late pianist’s 80th birthday is full of treats and includes rare ventures into Chopin and Copland, along with Lupu’s legendary rendition of Bartók at Leeds in 1969

First, a personal declaration. Of the many hundreds of pianists I must have heard in more than 50 years of recital going, a multitude that has included many of the greatest names of the 20th century, none gave me more consistent pleasure or a greater sense of wonder than Radu Lupu. If ever a pianist’s appearance, especially in his later years, belied the character of his playing it was Lupu: that the intensely serious, heavily bearded figure who hunched over the keyboard in a way more appropriate to a seance than a recital could produce playing of such velvety tonal beauty was extraordinary enough; that such a beguiling sound world was allied to a mind of such penetrating musical intelligence sometimes seemed miraculous.

Lupu died in 2022, at the age of 76. He had retired from the concert platform three years before, and had ceased to make studio recordings some years before that. Decca, for whom he recorded exclusively for over two decades, released his complete recordings in 2015, and with that comprehensive box, one thought, the legacy would be complete. But now, to mark what would have been the pianist’s 80th birthday, the company has produced this wonderful surprise: six discs made up of unreleased studio sessions and BBC, Dutch and SWR radio tapes, dating between 1970 and 2002, of works that Lupu otherwise did not record.

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy; Darkrooms by Rebecca Hannigan; The Nancys and the Case of the Missing Necklace by RWR McDonald; Best Offer Wins by Marisa Kashino; Your Every Move by Sam Blake

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Canongate, £9.99)
The award-winning Australian writer’s third adult novel begins with a lone woman, Rowan, washed up on a remote island between Tasmania and Antarctica. Shearwater is a research outpost, home to the global seed vault created as a bulwark against climate catastrophe and to colonies of seals, penguins and birds. For eight years, Dominic Salt and his children have lived there, but dangerously rising sea levels mean that they, and the vault, will shortly be evacuated. Dominic cannot understand why Rowan has ended up on Shearwater, and Rowan is mystified by the absence of the scientists and researchers, about whom the family are tight-lipped – and the island’s communication centre has been mysteriously sabotaged, isolating them still further. McConaghy writes beautifully about the natural world and expertly ratchets up the tension, as mutual suspicion increases and secrets are gradually revealed. This is a powerful read that encompasses not only grief, sacrifice and perseverance in the face of disaster, but also survival strategies and their concomitant moral dilemmas.

Darkrooms by Rebecca Hannigan (Sphere, £20)
When chaotic kleptomaniac Caitlin returns to her small Irish home town after the death of Kathleen, the mother from whom she has been estranged for many years, she’s pleased to be welcomed by the Branaghs, friendly neighbours she remembers from childhood. Less pleasant is being forced to confront past traumas, including the disappearance of her nine-year-old friend Roisin from a local wood 20 years earlier. Caitlin feels guilty about this, as does Roisin’s older sister Deedee, who is sure that Caitlin is still hiding something. Having joined the garda to find answers that never materialised, Deedee is drinking heavily, making poor decisions and jeopardising both her job and her relationship, and both women desperately need closure … This impressive, if bleak, debut is a slow-burning but well paced story of shame, guilt, misplaced loyalty and generational trauma, the conclusion of which, once one is in possession of all the facts, has a heartbreaking inevitability.

A Pulitzer finalist is among the first-time novelists, in tales of love, a surreal prison, teen murder and a tradwife

Belgrave Road
Manish Chauhan (Faber, January)
An affecting tale of loneliness and love in Chauhan’s home town of Leicester, Belgrave Road tells the story of Mira, newly arrived in the UK from India following an arranged marriage, and Tahliil, a Somali cleaner who becomes her lunch partner, and her escape. By day, Chauhan is a finance lawyer; his debut novel follows his shortlisting in last year’s BBC short story competition.

This Is Where the Serpent Lives
Daniyal Mueenuddin (Bloomsbury, January)
The Pakistani-American writer’s 2009 story collection, In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, was a Pulitzer finalist. Like his debut, hHis first novel is set in Pakistan, moving between bustling cities and agricultural estates, interrogating the country’s class dynamics through an epic portrait spanning six decades.

Memoirs from Liza Minnelli and Lena Dunham, essays by David Sedaris and Alan Bennett’s diaries are among the highlights of the year ahead

Over the past year we’ve been spoiled for memoirs from high-wattage stars – Cher, Patti Smith and Anthony Hopkins among them. But 2026 begins with a very different true story, from someone who never chose the spotlight, but now wants some good to come of her appalling experiences. After the trial that resulted in her husband and 50 others being convicted of rape or sexual assault, Gisèle Pelicot’s aim is to nurture “strength and courage” in other survivors. In A Hymn to Life (Bodley Head, February) she insists that “shame has to change sides”. Another trial – of the men accused of carrying out the Bataclan massacre – was the subject of Emmanuel Carrère’s most recent book, V13. For his next, Kolkhoze (Fern, September), the French master of autofiction turns his unsparing lens back on himself, focusing on his relationship with his mother Hélène, and using it to weave a complex personal history of France, Russia and Ukraine. Family also comes under the microscope in Ghost Stories (Sceptre, May) by Siri Hustvedt, a memoir of her final years with husband Paul Auster, who died of cancer in 2024.

Hollywood isn’t totally out of the picture, though: The Steps (Seven Dials, May), Sylvester Stallone’s first autobiography, follows the star from homelessness in early 70s New York to Rocky’s triumph at the Oscars later that decade. Does achieving your creative dreams come at a price, though? Lena Dunham suggests as much in Famesick (4th Estate, April), billed as a typically frank memoir of how how her dramatic early success gave way to debilitating chronic illness. Frankness of a different kind is promised in More (Bloomsbury, September), actor Gillian Anderson’s follow-up to her bestselling 2024 anthology of women’s sexual fantasies, Want.

The ‘religious atheist’ author held a reputation as CS Lewis’s opposite. But his two trilogies – which came to a close this year – were a celebration of humanity and imagination

Twenty years ago, I visited the Botanic Garden in Oxford for the first time. Among the winding pathways lined with flowers, about halfway back, stood a bench under a tree, largely identical to the others throughout the park. Was this the one? I wondered.

I didn’t have to question it for long. A closer look revealed words and images etched along its wooden slats, all along similar lines: “Lyra + Will”, they said. Or: “Pantalaimon” and “Kirjava”. Tucked between the bench’s arm and seat was a folded-up scrap of paper with a handwritten message of thanks.

There was no shortage of fun and video games in the Diamond household in the last 12 months. Which ones did we play so much our thumbs hurt? And which one saved my soul? Let the ceremony begin …
• The 20 best video games of 2025

So, how was 2025 for your household? Was it really all as good as you pretended it was on Facebook? Full of A-grades for the kids and riotous themed fancy dress birthday parties for the grownups? Or was it a sea of disappointment with only occasional fun flotsam? And was any of it actually real, or are we all now seven-fingered AI slop beings with Sydney Sweeney’s teeth?

I have gathered my thoughts (and the Diamond household) together, whether they wanted to or not, to reflect on the most important thing in any given year: which video games we enjoyed the most. Without further ado:

Date a vending machine, watch intergalactic television and make the most out of your short existence as a fly. Here are the best games you weren’t playing this year
• The 20 best video games of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC
Have you ever wanted to romance your record player? Date Everything! offers players the chance to develop relationships with everyday objects around your house, in a fully voiced sandbox romp featuring over 100 anthropomorphised characters. Wonderfully meta; you can put the moves on the textbox, or even “Michael Transaction” (microtransaction – get it?) himself. Meghan Ellis

Gaming was once compared to drugs, gambling and alcohol in South Korea. Now its gaming academies offer a chance to earn a six-figure salary – if you make the grade

Son Si-woo remembers the moment his mother turned off his computer. He was midway through an interview to become a professional gamer.

“She said when I played computer games, my personality got worse, that I was addicted to games,” the 27-year-old recalls.

In this week’s newsletter: Pushing Buttons readers on their favourite games of the year, from Death Stranding 2 and Arc Raiders to Ghost of Yōtei and more

Happy holidays, Pushing Buttons readers! Once again, we are approaching the cherished time of year between Christmas and New Year when we might actually have the time to play some video games. I hope Santa brought you something new to play, instead of taking one look at all the unplayed games in your Steam library and putting you straight on the naughty list.

Over the past few weeks you have been sending in your favourite games of the year. I maintain that you readers have excellent taste: there’s crossover with our own Guardian games of the year list, but also plenty here that I haven’t played myself. Thank you to everyone who sent in a recommendation, and I hope you find yet another game to add to your pile of shame among the following suggestions. I’ll be back next week with a year-in-review issue – in the meantime, go enjoy yourselves!

Omnibus theatre, London
Sweet and funny show is based on rumoured vampire sightings in north London in the 1960s and 70s – though it could do with producing a few more goosebumps

For a time in the late 1960s and early 70s, the area around Highgate cemetery in north London was believed to be terrorised by a vampire. There were sightings, exorcisms, illicit grave excavations and even some desecrations. At the frenzied height of the speculation, the local police force got involved.

In real-life events that sound like the stuff of Hammer horror (indeed, the Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing Hammer horror film Dracula AD 1972 was apparently inspired by the incident), two men, David Farrant and Sean Manchester, got involved in hopes of solving the case. But rather than becoming a Holmes and Watson of the supernatural dimension, they embarked on a bitterly fought contest to be the first to vanquish the vampire, each undermining the other man’s authority along the way.

Wigmore Hall, London
Cutting’s programme of songs and music were all connected to the theme of night, in an evening that felt more cabaret than concert

Hugh Cutting is still sometimes described as a rising countertenor. That should surely now be unconditional. Cutting has risen, almost to the top, and 2025 has been a stellar year. This enthusiastically performed and received recital, a world away from the general run of pre-Christmas concerts or countertenor recitals, and accompanied by the eclectically matched eight-strong Refound Ensemble, showed why.

Themed recitals are common, but Cutting’s programme of songs and music, all connected to the theme of night, was built on levels of thought and performative imagination that few such programmes would even attempt, much less bring off. The pieces ranged from the baroque to the brand new, via Schubert, folk song and Don McLean. Few familiar pieces on the programme were played as written, with Cutting preferring arrangements mostly by members of the ensemble. It was compelling from first to last, more cabaret than concert.

Chadderton Town Hall, Oldham
Set over the course of local village hall fundraiser, Jim Cartwright’s play is charmingly performed and has a built-in sense of community

Yesterday it was the salsa class. Coming up is the panto. On other days, it may be anything from language lessons to arts and crafts. Today in this multipurpose venue, it is the turn of the annual Christmas fair, with its bric-a-brac stalls, grotto and tree. Sitting on four sides of the elegant ballroom in Chadderton town hall, a refuge for Oldham Coliseum during renovations, we require no leap of the imagination to picture ourselves at a genuine local fundraiser.

That gives Jim Cartwright’s 2012 play a built-in sense of community. Director Jimmy Fairhurst keeps the house lights up, save for the most poignant speeches, and expects us to clap along to the Christmas hits and cheer the young carol singers as if they were children of our own. Blurring the fact/fiction divide, the interval is less a break in the action than a chance to buy the scented candles and prints by Oldham artists that are otherwise part of the set.

Chichester Festival theatre
A musical adaptation of Matt Haig’s children’s book is visually delightful and heroically performed by Chichester Festival Youth Theatre but the songs are humdrum

This origin story, about how Saint Nicholas came to be an arctic-dwelling gift-giver with an army of elves, began as a children’s book by Matt Haig that was turned into a star-studded fantasy film with appearances by Maggie Smith and Jim Broadbent. Now we have the stage adaptation, which puts to music the tale of young Nikolas.

Aged 11, he is marooned in grief and loneliness after his mother is killed by a bear and his father takes off on an expedition to the North Pole to find the fabled villages of the elves. Nikolas (Devon Sandell, performing on press night and full of energy) follows his father northwards with his pet mouse Miika (Olivia Dickens), to meet a reindeer called Blitzen (Alexander Solly), the Truth Pixie (Daisy Chapman), the elves, and a bevy of other fantastical creatures.

After 20 years playing around the world, the group had two UK gigs cancelled this year after protests from activists. It’s made them feel targeted for who they are, the band say

Josh Breslaw was looking forward to a homecoming gig with his band of two decades’ standing. Oi Va Voi, a predominantly Jewish collective mixing traditional eastern European folk tunes with drum’n’bass and dance, were due to conclude a spring tour of Turkey with a gig in May at Bristol’s Strange Brew club, plus one in Brighton where Breslaw lives. But then, after protests from local activists about both the band’s past performances in Israel, and with Israeli singer Zohara, Strange Brew abruptly cancelled, citing “the ongoing situation in Gaza”.

To be told they hadn’t met the venue’s “ethical standards” was devastating, says Breslaw, the band’s 52-year-old drummer: “It felt so unjust.” But worse came when his home-town venue cancelled in solidarity. “It changed how I felt about the city, how I felt about parts of the music industry. And it changed how I felt about the political home I always felt I lived in.” Although the Brighton promoter swiftly apologised, only in November did Strange Brew issue a statement saying it had “made a mistake”, adding that the band likely only attracted scrutiny because they are “a Jewish band performing with an Israeli singer”.

Interest in Wet Ink by Abigail Avis is part of a trend for works by female authors among streamers and production companies

A much-hyped novel about a housewife who uses Tupperware parties to secretly smuggle erotic stories to her friends and neighbours is causing a stir in the television world, igniting a fierce bidding contest over the right to adapt it for the small screen.

Wet Ink, a novel by the 33-year-old London-based author Abigail Avis, is not scheduled to be published until the spring 2027, but industry insiders said a fierce auction between six major production companies had already taken place for the TV rights.

René Groebli took portraits of Charlie Chaplin and Walt Disney and pioneered new modes of photography. But it was his tender, erotic pictures taken in a Paris hotel room in the 50s that really caused a stir

In 1952, two young honeymooners checked into a small hotel in Montparnasse. An everyday story in the City of Light, perhaps. But the Swiss photographer René Groebli and his wife, Rita Dürmüller, spent their time in Paris cocooned in their room producing a series of photographs – sensual, intimate, enigmatic – that would first shock then beguile viewers, works that can now be seen in a new exhibition in Zurich.

In the honeymoon pictures, Groebli’s camera traces Dürmüller’s movements – as a shirt drops from her shoulders, the turn of her neck – which, he explains, was a deliberate “artistic approach not only to intensify the depiction of reality but to make visible the emotional involvement of my wife and of me.” Dürmüller is often nude, but not solely, and never explicitly posed. It is clear that she is playing with her husband, that this is fun. And we explore their shared space: the bed curved like a cello, the windows with their opaque lace curtains. There is one graceful snap of Dürmüller hanging up her laundry like a ballerina at a barre.

We look back over the year’s wildlife photographs, and hand out some much-deserved gongs to brilliant and beautiful creatures around the world

If you’re aiming to heat the human, not the home – or just love snuggling under something cosy – these are our best buys from our test of 20

• The best heated clothes airers to save time and money when drying your laundry

Aside from hugging a fluffy hot-water bottle, sipping the Christmas whisky and ramping up the thermostat, an electric blanket or heated throw is the best way to ward off the winter chill. When you consider that more than half of a typical household’s fuel bills goes on heating and hot water, finding alternative ways to keep warm – and heating the person, rather than the whole home – seems like a good idea.

Many of the best electric blankets and heated throws cost about 2p to 4p an hour to run, so it’s hard to ignore their potential energy- and money-saving benefits.

Best electric blanket overall:
Carmen C81190 fitted electric blanket (double)

Best budget electric blanket:
Slumberdown Sleepy Nights (super king)

Looking for a new iPhone or a good deal on a refurbished one? Samuel Gibbs has tested and rated Apple’s smartphones, including the new iPhone 17

• How to make your smartphone last longer

The best iPhone may be the one you already own. There’s generally no need to buy a fresh phone just because new models have been released, as hardware updates are broadly iterative, adding small bits to an already accomplished package. But if you do want a replacement handset, whether new or refurbished, here are the best devices of the current crop of Apple smartphones.

Many other smartphones are available besides the iPhone, but if you’re an Apple user and don’t fancy switching to Android, there are still a few choices to make. Whether your priority is the longest battery life, the best camera, the biggest screen or simply the optimal balance of features and price, there’s more to choose from in the Apple ecosystem than you may expect, especially after the release of the cheaper iPhone 16e and super-thin iPhone Air.

Best iPhone for most people:
iPhone 17

From pub chic to sofa-ready, we’ve got looks for every kind of NYE celebration, including the New Year’s Day walk

• The best party dresses

Whether you’re curled up at home watching Jools Holland’s Annual Hootenanny, braving the cold to catch a fireworks display or escaping to the countryside with your nearest and dearest, New Year’s Eve offers the perfect excuse to get dressed up.

No matter your plans, there are simple ways to add sartorial sparkle to your night, even if your preferred party look is a pair of pyjamas. Here are the best New Year’s Eve outfits to welcome in 2026, however you’re celebrating.

Skip the Christmas scramble with our last-minute decor and gifting hacks; Jo Malone spills her shopping secrets; and the best tequila for festive tipples with a twist

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Ten years ago and newly married, I was invited to spend Christmas with my husband’s extended family. “We’re not doing gifts this year, there are too many of us,” my husband told me in early December when I queried who to buy for.

So, I showed up with a roll of novelty Christmas pudding bin bags and wine for the hosts. Imagine my embarrassment later that day when his aunt, uncle and cousins all handed me gifts so beautiful and thoughtful I still use them today. I resolved then to never enter the festive period without an arsenal of last-minute gift ideas in my back pocket – and also not to take everything my husband says as read.

The best LED face masks, tested: 10 light therapy devices that are worth the hype

How I Shop with Jo Malone: ‘I like my bed steamed every day’

The best flower delivery for every budget: seven favourites, freshly picked

‘Firm, snappy texture’: the best supermarket crackers for cheese, tasted and rated

Whether you’re trying to stay warm at home or smarten up for guests, we’ve found the perfect slippers and bed socks for everyone – even if you don’t normally like them

• The best women’s pyjamas
• The best men’s pyjamas

If it’s true that you can judge a person by their shoes, then it’s perhaps even more so when it comes to their slippers. What you choose to put on your feet in your own home is a window into what you value most. As such, buying the perfect pair for yourself is an act of self-nurture.

If that all feels too hyperbolic, it feels safe to say that they’re at least a reflection of your favourite mode of relaxation and how high you like to turn up the heating.

When my family emigrated to Malmö, I wanted to stick to our traditions, but my husband was keen to embrace the local customs. Why were we butting heads?

It was 3pm on Christmas Eve and already getting dark. As I stripped off on a wooden pier over the Baltic Sea in Malmö, Sweden, my husband and five-year-old boy, bundled up against the harsh wind, chanted: “Go Mummy, go Mummy, go Mummy!” Just as I was about to heroically slither out of my final layer, a bearded, completely naked man, who can only be described as Viking-esque, ascended the wooden ladder from the sea, looked at me with horror and possibly hypothermia in his eyes and shook his head. I put my five layers of clothing back on and, feeling deflated, suggested we crack open the Thermos. I knew I had failed at Swedish Christmas.

My family and I emigrated to Sweden from the UK last winter, and while the days seemed impossibly short and dark, we were buoyed up by optimism, glögg (Swedish mulled wine) studded with almonds and raisins, and our new city, scattered with fairy lights. However, as the advent countdown began, a cold front harsher than the Baltic Sea swept through our cosy new home. My husband wanted to be “more Swedish than the Swedes”; I wanted some familiar traditions to pass on to my son. And so, December became a period of friendly but fierce negotiations.

I had gone out with friends to mark the end of university, and one by one they disappeared. With the music throbbing, I learned I could be comfortable in my own company

Between the ages of 16 and 21, the big night out wasn’t just a hobby, it was a calling. Getting together with friends, getting drunk, being blasted by music, meeting new friends in the smoking area, getting more drunk, somehow making it home eight hours later – these were things I excelled at, the precious moments where I could try to lose myself and avoid the anxiety that inevitably came with daybreak.

The escapism wasn’t just selfish fun. It felt like a necessary avoidance of reality, which for me consisted of having a mother with a terminal illness who would die when I was 19, leaving me at university to cope with my grief. Going out, dancing and chatting rubbish to friends was one way to survive.

A decadent, cheesy centrepiece to steal the attention at any party, and built for comfort and joy

As 2025 closes, I wanted to leave you with one of my favourite recipes: the pumpkin fondue. This started life as a Lyonnaise dish that I saw Anthony Bourdain enjoy on his TV series Parts Unknown at Daniel Boulud’s parents’ farmhouse. My adapted version could be a centrepiece of your New Year’s Eve party, where the molten cheese mixture can be spread on bruschetta and topped with pickles. Equally, however, it could be a main meal shared with friends alongside a salad, pickles and bread. Either way, it’s built for comfort and for joy. Happy New Year to you.

An old fashioned with a batty backstory

Legend has it that in 1920 Bhupinder Singh, the maharaja of Patiala, was determined that his cricket team would triumph over a visiting English team. To gain the upper hand, he hosted a grand party the night before the match at which he served his guests Patiala pegs, famously generous four-finger whisky pours traditionally measured from pinky to index finger. Unsurprisingly, the English players overindulged, leaving them very hungover and, inevitably, defeated the next day, and the legend of the Patiala peg was born. This Punjabi kind-of old fashioned is inspired by Singh’s drink. At the restaurant, we serve it from a bespoke five-litre bottle, but we’ve adapted the recipe to make it more suitable for a domestic environment.

James Stevenson, beverage director, Ambassadors Clubhouse, London W1

From cheeseboard pies to spiced-up veg and one last sweet flourish, this is how to eat, waste less and savour the lull between Christmas and New Year

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

At this time of year, I like to stay home, shut off from the world and do as little as possible for as long as possible. Eat all the food, embrace all the leftovers and be creative with whatever’s in the kitchen. After the big day, I like to turn leftovers into some sort of pie: they’re forgiving and malleable and work with whatever you have hanging about. This leftovers pie from Tom Hunt and this turkey and ham pie from Felicity Cloake are great places to start. You could absolutely make your own pastry, as Tom does, or use shop-bought if you want to keep things as simple as possible (I always store a few rolls of pastry in the fridge over Christmas for precisely this reason). If it’s cheese that you have in abundance, meanwhile, then Rosie Birkett’s decadent-sounding lazy cheeseboard tart is a perfect way of using up the odds and ends of any remaining festive fromage.

As well as comfort food, I also find I need a change of pace after the 25th; I start craving spice and less hearty meals, too. Yotam Ottolenghi’s Boxing Day fried rice with garlic and spring onion sauce is the perfect way to be resourceful with leftover roast veg, as is Meera Sodha’s Christmas veg penang curry, a real treat of a dish that I enjoy year-round, and especially after the indulgence of December. Nigel Slater’s roast parsnip and stilton soup with beetroot crisps is another great addition to your leftovers repertoire, not least because it is a recipe that needs very few ingredients, very little work and is immensely adaptable. If I don’t have beetroot kicking around, I just leave it out. And if I have leftover comté instead of stilton, I’ll chop and stir that in instead.

A selection of meringues, boozy cherries, coffee mascarpone and whisky caramel to mix and match until Big Ben strikes and beyond

Your favourite cocktail is now a DIY pavlova party! Pile crisp coffee meringues high with espresso cream, boozy cherries, a drizzle of whisky caramel and a flicker of edible gold leaf, then shake, spoon and sparkle your way into the New Year. A few tips: arrange the toppings in glass bowls or on tiered trays for a beautiful display, add labels for fun and, if it’s sitting out for a while, keep the whipped cream chilled on ice.

On that brilliant night at Ally Pally 21 years ago, Laura and I decided to go to Detroit on holiday. Since then there have been countless adventures: road trips, dive bars, rock camps …

Kicking-out time, January 2004, and Laura and I are sitting on the kerb waiting for a bus outside Alexandra Palace in north London. Not that we’re in a hurry to be anywhere else. We’re having the best time on our kerb, cheeks flushed from hard liquor and the exhilaration of the White Stripes show we’ve just seen. We’re busy communing with a fellow nocturnal creature, a woodlouse. It is one of those rare moments in my 20s when just about everything feels right.

Laura and I had quietly become office allies over a few years, a bond initially forming around our mutual shy diligence in the face of not fully fitting in. We would conspiratorially skip downstairs to the canteen together most lunchtimes and temper any work worries by chatting shit, laughing hysterically and plotting small acts of rebellion. (Like the time we childishly made a “FUCK CHESS” sign and left it on the office chess club’s shelf, which for some reason felt necessary and hilarious. If you’re reading this, chess club, we’re very sorry.)

Peter is waging war on the water company but Winnie feels his policing of usage is overbearing. You decide whose argument gets flushed away

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

Peter nags me not to flush the toilet after a wee, which is gross. I’m not up for being monitored

Everyone lets these water firms do what they like. It’s time to fight back. So we need to cut our usage

Ally and Jason met when she was 25 and he was 47. After more than a decade apart, they’re back together and their sexual connection is stronger than ever

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

Ally notices the occasional looks people give us, and her response is to ask me to give her a kiss in front of them

These types of relationships can be challenging – you need to have an honest conversation about what you both want

My partner and I are professionals in our early 30s. We’ve been together for five years, and long-distance for the last three, but have just moved back in together.

While we were long-distance, we both had difficulties in our work. She had important exams, and it’s taken a long time for me to get into my career. Over the last year, our relationship has become strained, and it feels as if we’ve grown apart. Now it feels as if we aren’t friends, let alone partners. This is complicated by our work shifts. Despite now living together, we still barely see each other.

Scheme has not replied to complaints and Pensions Ombudsman says it needs evidence of that

I retired from the civil service five months ago and I’ve still not received my pension. I’ve complained to the Civil Service Pension Scheme (MyCSP) repeatedly, but it doesn’t reply.

The Pensions Ombudsman says they need evidence that MyCSP has not responded to my complaint. How can I provide evidence of a failure to reply?

Airports say they were not responsible for incidents that led to passengers being out of pocket or ending trip

In September we arrived at Stansted airport to find that a fire within a departure lounge had closed the terminal.

We had to wait outside in the chilly small hours for nearly two hours. It was another hour before security opened in the terminal, by which time our flight had departed empty to maintain the airline’s schedules. We were rebooked for the following day.

While many use our phones predominantly to doomscroll, smartphones have a range of little-known functions that could make life better and easier – from heart monitoring to even developing camera film

Our smartphones are magical things – far more than dopamine drip providers and a way to keep in touch with friends and family. Using the built-in features and easily available additional apps, there are plenty of clever things you can do with your smartphone.

Steps to help combat fraud in which criminals use AI-generated replica of a person’s voice to deceive victims

The voicemail from your son is alarming. He has just been in a car accident and is highly stressed. He needs money urgently, although it is not clear why, and he gives you some bank details for a transfer.

You consider yourself wise to other scams, and have ignored texts claiming to be from him and asking for cash. But you can hear his voice and he is clearly in trouble.

Disturbed sleep is very common as you adapt to a new environment but, with good sleep hygiene and some practical adjustments, you can quickly settle in

• Read more summer essentials

• Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email

As the working year draws to a close, many of us only have one hope for the season, and that’s a decent night’s sleep. While not every family visit or post-Christmas getaway is going to be a trip to Rancho Relaxo, a few things can help us catch holiday kip. Pre-departure apps can be useful, so can pillow mists and thermoregulation, but when it comes to maximising rest on the road, some say less is more.

It’s the liver – not the skin – that rids the body of the toxins in alcohol, but exercise can help manage the symptoms

Here’s a useful fact to quote to any smug relatives who say they went for a run the morning after their Christmas party: you can’t get rid of toxins by sweating. “Toxins” is a broad term, says Adam Taylor, professor of anatomy at Lancaster Medical School, covering anything that can damage the body – from heavy metals to chemicals found in plastics, as well as the normal byproducts of our own metabolism. The liver is designed to process the toxins in alcohol and either break them down into usable units or get rid of them. The waste products are then filtered from the blood and excreted in urine or stools.

Sweat, on the other hand, has a very different job. Although it can contain extremely small amounts of some metabolic byproducts, its purpose is temperature regulation (and, in some situations, to signal stress or fear). “Sweating is not the means to remove toxins,” says Taylor. “Going for a run or sitting in a sauna after a night of drinking won’t reduce the toxins produced by metabolising alcohol, and it won’t lower your blood alcohol level.”

Emulating the bike-friendly highways enjoyed by our continental neighbours will take a lot more money and political will

Ever since Team GB’s velodrome successes at the 2008 Olympics, campaigners and government ministers have confidently predicted that Britain is about to become a nation of cyclists. There is just one problem: for the most part, it has not happened.

Apart from a very concentrated spike in bike use during Covid, the level of cycle trips in England has stayed broadly static for years, and things do not appear to be changing.

A study finds that as pressure increases, UK parents are more likely to put on a brave face – risking family wellbeing

Advent calendars, check. Tree and decorations, check. Teachers’ presents, nativity costumes and a whole new ticketing system for the PTA’s Santa’s grotto, check. But the Christmas cards remain unwritten, the to-do list keeps growing, and that Labubu doll your child desperately wants appears to have vanished from the face of the earth.

If you’re feeling frayed in the final days before Christmas, you’re not alone. But research suggests this festive overload doesn’t just leave parents tired and irritable – it may also make it harder to be emotionally honest with their children.

No Santas, no reindeer and zero tolerance of gingerbread men – go for a sweater that is cosy and special but not overtly Christmassy

Don’t know about you, but I find that Christmas is a bit like drinking martinis. It is really fun, and then it is a bit too much fun, and by the time I realise I’ve stepped over that line, whoops, it’s too late. I’ve overdone it, and all I want to do is lie down in a dark room.

Christmas is an intense and immersive experience. It is not just the alcohol, not just the food, although there have definitely been way too much of both of those things round my way. It is the whole sensory world. The new perfume your auntie got for Christmas going head-to-head with the cinnamon-scented tea lights. The nostalgia-soaked playlists and soppy romcoms. The kids on laps, the dogs on sofas, the fridge that barely closes. No doubt there was a point back there when I could have said: “You know what, I’ve had an elegant sufficiency of cheer, just a water and a quiet night with my journal tonight thanks,” but I was too busy singing along to Mariah Carey to notice and the moment passed. No matter. Better to err on the side of too much jolliness than too little, after all.

Sweet PJs, soft sweatpants and cosy accessories will make a sofa day feel even more indulgent

Head-to-toe can be too much, but a lace trim on a skirt, a camisole under a blazer, lace tights? Now you’re talking

Sometimes a little goes a long way. This is true for Tabasco on eggs, for fragrance in an elevator, for confidence in the karaoke booth, and it is also, I have belatedly realised, the secret of how to wear lace.

All these years, I’ve been getting lace wrong by wearing too much of it. Killing it with overenthusiasm. Lace is beautiful stuff: delicate and romantic. Look closely at it and you will see tiny motifs and patterns, flowers and symbols, crafted in miniature like secret messages. Lace has drama: it is the fabric of marriages, funerals and christenings, after all. And it can switch vibes: white is chaste, red is raunchy, black is sophisticated. Lace has it all going on.

These gentle, hydrating toners impart the glassy look popularised by Korean skincare – and I can’t do without them

I wouldn’t say it was rare that the beauty industry invents a whole new product category, but my own willingness to adopt another step certainly is. Ten years ago, I’d have told you not to bother with toner unless you particularly enjoyed using it, which is as good a reason as any in a world on fire. And yet over the past couple of years, the new “milky toners” have, to me at least, become so functional as to be indispensable.

These are cloudy fluids, thicker than a toner but thinner than a moisturiser, usually containing gentle, universally skin-pleasing ingredients like glycerine, ceramides and peptides.

Readers revel in winter light, wildlife spectacles and cosy pubs from Norfolk to Northumberland
• Tell us about your favourite European beach – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Who needs the Swiss Alps when you have Macclesfield Forest on your doorstep? Walking from Trentabank car park, the 506-metre peak of Shutlingsloe is the gift that keeps on giving. The panoramic views from its summit, dubbed Cheshire’s mini Matterhorn, are breathtaking at any time of year. But it’s on the crispest of winter days you get the best views: the Staffordshire Roaches, Manchester’s skyline, the Cheshire Plain, the wonder that is Jodrell Bank, and even as far as the Great Orme in Llandudno. Head back to Trentabank where there is a food truck selling local specialities, including Staffordshire oatcakes.
Jeremy Barnett

As pubs nationwide buckle under soaring costs, one Argyll village spent three years buying and restoring theirs – and has ambitious plans for the future

It’s opening night at Scotland’s newest community pub, Oakbank Inn, which sits on the Holy Loch in the village of Sandbank, Argyll. It’s a clear, cold night, and the inn couldn’t look more welcoming: a cosy glow from within the historic building, the Cowal hills beyond. The Christmas lights are twinkling, the glasses are charged and there’s a palpable sense of goodwill, cheer, and plenty of pride in the air. By 6pm, it’s buzzing. Locals are already propping up the bar as a stylish woman sweeps in and bags the last table. She is Debbie Rycroft, a local haberdasher. “A pint in my own local,” she smiles happily, relishing a toast with her husband and equally dapper 19-year-old son.

First-night hiccups are limited to a wonky nozzle and a brief worry about a small radiator leak. “How many people to fix a heater?” quips someone as a line of concerned faces survey the scene. Almost immediately, a punter walks in with a radiator key. All sorted. Someone orders a Guinness; the bartender pulls it off. A two-part pour, pitchblack perfection with a balanced, creamy top. Good things come to those who wait? Well, this one’s been three years in the making.

This hidden gem has country inns, canalside walks, a stunning viaduct, the historic town of Market Harborough – and not a tour bus in sight

It was a chilly Sunday in November 2000 when the gods chose to smile on Ken Wallace. The retired teacher was sweeping his metal detector across a hillside in Leicestershire’s Welland valley when a series of beeps brought him up short. Digging down, he found a cache of buried coins almost two millennia old. He had chanced upon one of the UK’s most important iron age hoards, totalling about 5,000 silver and gold coins.

More than 25 years on, I’m staring at Ken’s find at the civic museum in the nearby town of Market Harborough. The now gleaming coins are decorated with wreaths and horses. They’re about the size of 5p pieces, but speak of a wild-eyed age of tribal lands and windswept hill forts.

There’s no shortage of stunning scenery and daytime activities in the Lakes. Now, an observatory is offering stellar nocturnal events too

A tawny owl screeches nearby in the dark and her mate replies, hooting eerily from the forest below. A white dome floats in the gloaming above a plain black doorway outlined with red light, like a portal to another dimension. I’m in Grizedale Forest, far from any light-polluting cities, to visit the Lake District’s first public observatory and planetarium, which opened in May.

Grizedale Observatory offers immersive films in the planetarium and three-hour stargazing events that go on late into the night. There are sessions on astrophotography and, on moonless nights, dark sky astronomy with the chance to see “a glittering tapestry of stars, galaxies, nebulae and star clusters”. Its director, Gary Fildes, is a veteran in the field, having founded and led three UK observatories over two decades. The goal at Grizedale, he says, is to create “an immersive, year-round astronomy and science destination that brings the beauty of the Lake District skies to visitors”.

How our two-bedroom terrace become something of a cat rescue centre is illustration of nationwide crisis

How many cats is too many cats? I can’t tell you exactly, but a couple of weeks ago, I had 11 cats living in my terrace house. And I can say with confidence this is absolutely, definitely too many.

At time of writing, I still have seven.

With no plans, I set off from John O’Groats to travel down south to Dover. Friends and family didn’t think I’d last a mile

Since coming to England from Ethiopia eight years ago, I’ve lost parts of my cultural identity. I was stuck in a monotonous, isolated routine studying for a biochemistry degree at Imperial College London, without the family-centred lifestyle I was used to. Back in Ethiopia, I’d be surrounded by my aunt, grandparents, friends.

So this year, I took 12 months out and moved to my uncle’s house in Leeds. The change helped me try new things, like cycling: as a child, I had never ridden a bike. I bought one in a charity shop. My friends told me that it was made for a 10-year-old and donated an adult-sized bike to me.

Melani Sanders was frazzled and sleep-deprived, and wondered whether other menopausal women were going through the same thing. So she put her feelings on camera. The answer was immediate ...

If you’re a woman of a certain age with a phone, you’ve probably seen one of Melani Sanders’ We Do Not Care Club posts. In a fleecy dressing gown with reading glasses hanging off her like Christmas tree baubles, a sleep mask wonkily on her forehead, Sanders stares deadpan at the camera. “We are putting the world on notice that we simply do not care much any more,” she says. She uncaps a highlighter with her teeth, spitting the lid out of shot, then starts flatly listing stuff members of the We Do Not Care Club, her virtual community of menopausal women, don’t care about. “We do not care we have to go to therapy weekly; you are probably the reason we are there.” “We do not care if we asked you the question 13 times. We do not remember the answer; say it again.” “We do not care if you realise we are not wearing a bra: this, my friend, is freedom.”

Sanders laughs when I show her over Zoom (she’s in West Palm Beach, Florida) the highlighter tucked into my bra strap in her honour. Since she first suggested starting a “we do not care club” on 13 May 2025, it has become more than a series of brilliantly funny videos about how the midlife hormonal rollercoaster leaves women bereft of fucks to give. It is a worldwide sisterhood of 2.2 million followers on Instagram and 1.5 million on TikTok. But when Sanders, 45, sat frazzled and sleep-deprived in her car, fetching the supplements that kept her (somewhat) sane since entering surgically induced perimenopause, she was wondering if she was alone. Pre-hysterectomy, she was a perfectionist, running her home, family and life with military precision; no more. Her sports bra was skew-whiff; her hair dishevelled. “I said: ‘Melani, you really just don’t care any more … Is it just a me thing? I just hit record.’”

Dying is a process and in a person’s final hours and days, Nickie and her Threshold Choir are there to accompany people on their way and bring comfort. Through specially composed songs, akin to lullabies, the choir cultivates an environment of love and safety around those on their deathbed.  For the volunteer choir members, it is also an opportunity to channel their own experiences of grief and together open up conversations about death.

Full interview with Nickie Aven, available here

Armed groups have moved in to the space left by the Farc after the civil war, cutting down rainforest to control land and build thousands of kilometres of smuggling routes

High above the Colombian Amazon, Rodrigo Botero peers out of a small aircraft as the rainforest canopy unfolds below – an endless sea of green interrupted by stark, widening patches of brown. As director of the Foundation for Conservation and Sustainable Development (FCDS), he has spent years mapping the transformation of this fragile landscape from the air.

His team has logged more than 150 overflights, covering 30,000 miles (50,000km) to track deforestation advancing along the roads, illicit crops and the shifting frontiers of human settlement. “We now have the highest road density in the entire Amazon,” says Botero.

Wintering Well boxes to counter effects of low light on mental health are ‘super popular’, says island librarian

“Boxes of light” are being used to help people who struggle with low winter mood while living in one of Scotland’s darkest communities as part of a wider research initiative to support the million-plus sufferers of seasonal affective disorder across Britain.

Residents of the Orkney Islands have been able to borrow a Wintering Well Box from their library since the clocks went back in October, with the kits already proving “super popular” according to Sue House, an assistant librarian at Orkney Library – the oldest public library in Scotland and coincidentally an online sensation, thanks to its goofy social media presence.

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

Perhaps you have been living with friends for many years, or live in a commune

Do you have what could be described as unusual living arrangements?

Perhaps you live in communal housing, or a commune or with extended family.

We’d like to hear from independent retailers about how changes to online searches has affected them. We’d also like to find out from customers about how easy it is to track down independent retailers

We’d like to find out more about how your business has been affected by changes to online searches amid the rise of AI.

Independent businesses have traditionally relied on online advertising for increased visibility and sales, even if they are based on the high street. However, with the introduction of AI mode and AI Overview summaries on Google, and the proliferation of LLMs such as ChatGPT or Google Gemini, people are altering their search habits, which may affect the online visibility of small businesses.

We want to hear from UK parents with experience in temporary accommodation about the impact on their lives, family and schooling

More than 172,000 children were living in temporary accommodation in England at the end of June, according to the latest quarterly official figures from October.

That represented an 8.2% rise on the same period last year. There are now more than 130,000 households households living in temporary accommodation in England, the figures showed.

We would like to hear from centenarians, their family and friends

The number of centenarians (aged 100 years and over) in the UK has doubled from 8,300 in 2004 to 16,600 in 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Between 2004 and 2024, the number of male centenarians has tripled from 910 to 3,100. During the same period, the number of female centenarians almost doubled from 7,400 to 13,600.

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Christmas in Kyiv, destruction in the West Bank, the funeral of Mani and the winter solstice at Stonehenge: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists