It’s not clear that financial interests are driving White House policy, but they run parallel even as resistance mounts

Donald Trump’s sons, through a series of AI-linked defense and technology ventures, have picked up a $620m Pentagon loan, a Marine Corps robotics contract and an undisclosed air force drone deal in the past year. His longtime friend Michael Dell won a Pentagon contract worth nearly $9bn. And this week, as public support for artificial intelligence sinks to some of the lowest levels ever recorded, the president went to bat for the industry. .

“The only control or ‘guardrails’ that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades,” he posted on Truth Social Monday. “There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers.” It was the first of many aggressively pro-AI posts he would make this week.

Nigel Farage’s tactics are to play up the anxiety and resentment that people feel. Labour’s job is simple: to offer hope and change

Despite the energised start Andy Burnham has made as prime minister, plenty of his party’s MPs and hardcore activists are still haunted by a familiar sense of insecurity. Underpinned by a political version of impostor syndrome, it runs deep – and, bar the odd spell of Labour optimism, it always has. So it is with the battle between Labour and Reform UK that will define an election that could arrive much sooner than some people think, and a widely held ambivalence on the left about the possibility of Nigel Farage’s party taking power. Reform is apparently in deep trouble, yet also still in with a serious chance. How come?

Investigations into the party and its leadership’s finances by both the Metropolitan police and parliament’s standards commissioner may worsen Reform’s woes. Those investigations predate the two recently announced £36m donations from the crypto tycoons Christopher Harborne and Ben Delo, which themselves risk being backdatedly ruled illegal and are reportedly already being spent on 400 “field agents”. The two mega-donations symbolise two connected stories. One is about the possible buyout of our fragile democracy. The other centres on how, from much of the public’s perspective, all the allegations about Farage and his party might have already turned into an indecipherable blizzard. So, although Reform is down, it is still far from out.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

You don’t have to reveal the contents, but I’ve seen families torn apart by unexpected inheritance plans

My wife and I have three children and several grandchildren. Our will may contain some surprises for them. Is it better to reveal its contents while we are still alive, or let our beneficiaries discover them when we die?

We gave our children considerable financial help, enabling them to buy their first homes. We have also made sizeable contributions to our grandchildren’s education funds.

Her catchy videos have racked up billions of views, but Rachel Accurso’s statements on everything from Gaza to LGBTQ rights have caused a stir. She talks about screen time, song fatigue and speculation she might enter politics

The YouTube star Ms Rachel, toddler whisperer extraordinaire, spots me before I clock her, and even from a distance and without her trademark pink T-shirt and denim dungarees, she is instantly recognisable by her wave, which is accompanied by an enthusiastic bounce. I half expect her to say, “Hi, friends”, as she does at the start of many of her videos. Instead she bounds over, wearing a classic off-duty mum uniform – Sesame Street sweatshirt, grey leggings, baseball cap that reads “Mama” – and removes her oversized sunglasses. She’s very sorry, she says, rubbing her eyes, that she is so tired – but her manner remains unfailingly, characteristically peppy.

It is only seven years since Rachel Accurso, who used to be a preschool music teacher, uploaded her first video to YouTube, a counting song for preschoolers called Bubble, Bubble Pop!. She and her husband, Aron Accurso, who worked as a music director on Broadway, made the video because their one-year-old son had a speech delay and there seemed to be a dearth of quality videos online that could help toddlers learn to speak.

Economies thrown into renewed turmoil as AI debt, Iran war and soaring government bond yields fuel alarm

At the height of the summer, the mood was optimistic in the world’s financial capitals. Powered by the AI revolution, the US stock market had rallied to a fresh all-time high, as investors bet the multitrillion-dollar investment spree would overshadow the hit from the Iran war.

Now the warning lights are flashing red. As the fighting in the Middle East intensifies without clear sign of a resolution, financial markets have been thrown into renewed turmoil. A slowdown looms in the AI arms race, and tinderbox conditions in the market for government debt are fuelling alarm.

The presenters look terrified and some of the celebs are hard to identify, but Strictly remains a rare refuge of joy

At this point, Strictly Come Dancing cannot be allowed to fail. When we’re all living off our Wes Streeting-mandated prepper rations, it’s the only thing that will keep us going, linking us to a time when joy, sparkle and diversity brought the nation together. Enshittification stalks the show – it has long felt too repetitive, its celeb lineups seem to get feebler each year, and the departure of longstanding presenters Tess Daly and Claudia Winkleman threatened to be a lethal blow – so there’s a lot riding on this new series.

“Strictly Come Dancing – still fabulous,” said the continuity announcer introducing the launch show, not sounding entirely sure.

Exclusive: Analysis ‘lays bare’ something midwives already know from their day-to-day work

About 20,000 disclosures of domestic abuse are estimated to be made to maternity services in England every year, analysis has found.

The figures are likely to be an underestimate of the true scale of disclosures, according to experts, highlighting the role maternity professionals play in identifying abuse.

Pop star has faced boycott calls after rapper Macklemore was removed from tour after shouting ‘free Palestine’ at concert

Ed Sheeran has opened a solo concert in Philadelphia with comments about Gaza, saying what is happening is “catastrophic and unjustifiable”, in his first show since his tour was plunged into turmoil.

“My heart has been broken by the scale of devastation and loss of civilians’ lives, of children’s lives,” Sheeran said on Saturday, adding that he wanted his music and shows to be about unity and humanity, not politics.

Comments come after he accused King Charles of gaslighting him in response to claims made in new memoir

Earl Spencer has said the relationship between the press and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex “echoes” the way the media treated his sister Diana, Princess of Wales.

In an interview with the BBC to be aired on Sunday evening, Spencer described the press’s coverage of Harry and Meghan as having a “cancerous influence”, adding it would be “beholden on people to learn from Diana’s example”.

Bridget Phillipson says Burnham’s past criticisms of US president not an issue as PM prepares to meet Trump at UN

Next month’s budget will be made more difficult by Donald Trump’s war with Iran, one of Andy Burnham’s cabinet ministers has said, while adding she did not expect the prime minister’s previous disparaging comments about the US president to be an issue.

Burnham is expected to meet Trump early next week at the UN general assembly summit in New York, the pair having previously spoken twice by phone since Burnham entered No 10.

Reform leader also tells US event Europe should have ‘more sensible view’ of president’s administration

Nigel Farage has said he wants to “hijack” Donald Trump’s hardline ICE adviser and bring him to the UK “to secure our borders”.

Speaking at an event in the US, the Reform UK leader also called for Europe to take a “more sensible view” of the US president’s administration rather than seeing it as “villainous”.

Former charity worker tells Big Brue festival in Somerset of the strange comforts that helped her during imprisonment

It is a TV show about women confined to prison in the US, but Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe found watching Orange is the New Black with her fellow inmates a strange comfort after smuggling episodes into her Iranian jail cell, downloaded on to an illegal USB stick.

The British-Iranian former charity worker was detained in 2016 for more than five years and kept in the notorious Evin prison in Tehran.

Shabana Mahmood is concerned about length and £144m cost of inquiry into intrusive police surveillance

Victims of intrusive police surveillance have accused the government of seeking to cut short the spycops public inquiry that has been examining widespread misconduct committed by undercover officers.

The independent judge-led inquiry is scrutinising how officers, who spied on tens of thousands of political activists over more than four decades, carried out abuses such as deceiving women into sexual relationships and fathering children.

Operator that runs services between London Marylebone and Birmingham is sixth to be nationalised since 2025

Chiltern Railways has become the latest train operator to enter public ownership as the government closes in on its ambition to renationalise all major passenger rail services.

The operator, which runs commuter rail services on the Chiltern mainline between London Marylebone and Birmingham, on Sunday became the sixth to be nationalised under Labour, with the remaining four to follow by the end of 2027.

Exiled dissidents and an unsealed indictment suggest Kremlin may have abandoned longstanding taboo on attacks on its rival’s territory

Roman Dobrokhotov had been content enough for his appearance at a conference in Washington DC this week to be publicised, although it was not something he would normally risk in Europe. The dissident Russian journalist was named during a trial in London last year as one of the targets of a Russian spy ring that appeared to have murderous intent.

“Maybe burn him alive on the street, spray him with some super-strong acid, VX, like the North Koreans, or the ricin,” a Russian-hired operative had texted of the plans for Dobrokhotov in Britain.

Candidates have been selected for November’s midterms – have Republicans and Democrats made the right choices?

Primary season has official concluded in the United States, with Democrats leading the polls among voters amid widespread economic anxieties, a war with Iran and Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda continuing into the end of the year.

Democratic and Republican voters have selected contenders for key races in the 3 November midterms that will decide the balance of power in Congress, and the future of both parties. Democrats have been rocked by the primary victories of leftwing candidates. Republicans have doubled down on backing the president’s policies, despite his low approval ratings. And both parties are navigating the fallout from a series of scandals that have forced some candidates from the race, while others decided to press on.

Josh Babarinde wants to target big tech and crypto billionaires while giving power and cash back to the public

Standing outside Toynbee Hall in the East End of London, Josh Babarinde doesn’t exactly look like a rabble-rouser. But despite the well-cut suit and disarmingly large smile, the president of the Liberal Democrats is, apparently, up for a fight.

“There are big modern giants that are getting in the way of people’s ability to thrive, and it is the job of Liberal Democrats to address that,” says the 33-year-old. “How are we going to do that? Well, first of all, we’ve got to flip the table over and rise up.”

Our main course arrived heavy and somewhat intimidating, and left picked completely clean

Earlier this month, a kind-of Turkish ocakbaşı opened on a corner in London’s Soho. The brains behind Kid are chef Sertaç Dirik and restaurateur David Carter, and I say “kind-of” because, yes, while it has a Turkish-influenced menu – sucuk with grilled peach, pide, börek, hummus, içli köfte with aged beef – and the whiff of live fire, nothing either of them does is ever remotely straightforward, hence the buzz around their new place.

Carter founded Smokestak a decade ago in Shoreditch, a wild, Americana-tinged barbecue joint where, somehow, he made brisket in buns and peach cobbler old fashioneds London’s hottest ticket. Five years later, he opened Manteca, also in Shoreditch, a reimagining of the Italian trattoria for the 2020s, followed by Oma, his Greek-influenced Michelin-starred venture in Borough, and its little sister Agora, and all of them remain dependable places where you get serious bang for your buck. All of those influences – American smoke, Italian flair and Greek boldness – are present and correct at Kid. Dirik’s story, meanwhile, has about it elements of TV’s The Bear: a Copenhagen-trained chef cajoled home to bolster the family business and going on to create the hugely loved Mangal 2 in Dalston. What Dirik and Carter have in common, aside from reputation, is a love of setting fire to stuff, in a culinary sense rather than in a Prodigy’s Twisted Firestarter sense. Kid’s Galata mackerel is testament to this: it’s almost completely blackened and has an incredible hit of smoke in its flesh.

Rory left the monastery after feeling lonely; with Orla, herself a Catholic, he’s been making up for lost time

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

We had sex after a week. I remember thinking afterwards wow, everything has changed

Six-part drama Gènesi tells the story of Adriá’s Catalan restaurant El Bulli from the day he arrived as a kitchen hand

Revered and reviled, during the 28 years he presided over El Bulli, a small restaurant in a remote corner of Catalonia, Ferran Adrià changed cooking for ever.

Now he is the subject of Gènesi (Genesis), a six-part TV drama screening on Catalan television with a worldwide release later in the year that recounts the story of El Bulli from the day he arrived there in 1983 as a kitchen hand with no background at all in haute cuisine.

Beautifully situated refuges with superlative views offering sanctuary to intrepid hikers and climbers

A good mountain hut, I reckon, should be small and only accessible on foot after considerable effort. Throw in a bit of historical interest and I’m bound to be happy. In which case, Cabaña Verónica in the Picos de Europa is a fine start to this list. It sleeps six, and at 2,325 metres requires a two-hour trek from the nearest cable car station, never mind road. It has incredible views and a friendly custodian who keeps things in good order. Yet the real attraction is that this place was formerly a gun turret of a US navy battleship that was scrapped in Bilbao in 1960. An enterprising engineer, Conrado Senties, had it carried up on horseback and reassembled on a plug of rock in the middle of nowhere. Don’t ask why, just enjoy the eccentricity.
€15, reservarefugios.com

Scam emails are increasingly using psychological tricks, such as using near-identical URLs like miсrosoft.com

You’ve read the email carefully and it looks legitimate. The link it asks you to click on has none of the usual red flags: there are no weird numbers or extra parts to the URL. You feel safe to proceed.

But if you had looked slightly closer you may have noticed something slightly wrong with one of the characters. Just as in the headline of this piece where instead of “a” we used the Cyrillic “α”.

It just goes to show that the split-second decision you make when clicking a link is often the most vulnerable part of the whole security chain.”

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

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

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

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Hello and welcome to the weekend.

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

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

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

• News, discussion and updates before Sunday’s games

• This weekend’s fixtures | Mail us your thoughts

How things stand in the Premier League…

At Hill Dickinson Stadium, Thierno Barry fired Everton to a 1-0 win against 10-man Ipswich Town.

Family is determined to ensure her ‘legacy lives on’ three years after the Sheffield United player’s death

Olivia Cusack says her sister, the late Maddy Cusack, is on her mind every single day and she is determined to ensure her “legacy lives on” three years after the former England youth international midfielder’s death.

Olivia, together with family and friends of Maddy, walked 29 miles from Bramall Lane, Sheffield United’s home, to their family’s home in Horsley, near Derby, on Saturday to raise funds and awareness. Maddy’s loved ones are still enduring a “frustrating and confusing” wait for answers about the circumstances surrounding her death on 20 September 2023.

• Updates from Old Firm derby, midday kickoff (BST)

• Get in touch: email John about the game

Derek McInnes has picked the same starting team from last week’s win at Ibrox. Celtic look to have gone three at the back – the formation that O’Neill had success with first time around at Celtic. Auston Trusty lines up alongside Cameron Carter-Vickers and Liam Scales. Kasper Hogh, Haissem Hassan, Oliver Sorensen, and James Forrest are the four players dropped.

Celtic: Sinisalo, Trusty, Carter-Vickers, Scales, Donovan, Baur, McGregor, Tierney, McCowan, Duran, Nygren. Subs: Johnstone, Oxlade-Chamberlain, Hogh, Tounekti, Hassan, Mheuka, Murray, Forrest, Ralston.

New Zealander hopes to add ‘a bit of cricket sense in the key moments’ to Bazball template

“Flemball? That’s a medical condition.” Stephen Fleming’s first press conference as England Test coach was exactly what you would expect from a man appointed to bring calm to a team that had started to career off course.

While the Manchester rain did its worst outside, Fleming was the handsome sea captain on top of his ship, even if that ship had to float without him during the Test series against Pakistan. England won 3-0 while Fleming saw to family and commercial commitments. But the wait has given him thinking time to work out what he wants to achieve.

It is apt that the most perplexing football country will now be guided by the most enigmatic of leaders

Even in his playing days, Zinedine Zidane seemed unknowable. As a manager, the sense of distance has only grown. He won three Champions Leagues with Real Madrid without ever giving a sense of what his idea of football looked like.

France are perhaps the most perplexing football country: a squad that teems with such talent that a B team would be serious contenders at a World Cup, that reached three major finals under Didier Deschamps with a sense of unfulfilment, a team that progressed but rarely entranced, or at least didn’t until this summer’s World Cup, when they attacked with gusto and ended up overrun in midfield by Spain.

• ‘If the Dutch stay like this I’m not going,’ says teenager

• Littler hoping to win all 10 major TV events in a year

Luke Littler has threatened to boycott tournaments in the Netherlands after being booed and whistled during the World Series of Darts Finals in Amsterdam.

The back-to-back world champion faced a hostile environment during Friday’s win over home favourite Danny Noppert and it escalated on Saturday night as referee Charlie Costorphine had to intervene in the last-16 win over Nathan Aspinall.

• Arsenal’s 100% start to season comes to an end

• Manager says team put themselves in trouble from start

Mikel Arteta admitted Arsenal were taught a lesson by free-scoring Brighton as their 100% start to the season was abruptly ended on Saturday. Not since 10 May 2023 – 1,224 days ago – when the same opponents won 3-0 at the Emirates Stadium had the Premier League champions lost by three goals. But they were second-best throughout as Pascal Gross, Charalampos Kostoulas and Chema Andrés rounded off a comprehensive victory.

“They deserved to win the game and it’s a big lesson for us,” said a disappointed Arteta, who felt his players were not their usual combative selves. “From the first throw-in you could sense it, it was so clear.

• English manager responds after Paris FC’s win

• Martínez rescues Inter; Salah hits hat-trick

Paris FC extended their unbeaten start to the Ligue 1 campaign, beating Liam Rosenior’s old charges Strasbourg 2-1 in a match marred by abusive chants towards the Englishman from visiting fans.

The game was halted in the second half as Rosenior was targeted by his former supporters. There were also ugly scenes after the final whistle as Rosenior motioned to remonstrate with the away fans and had to be pulled away by his players.

The Arizona State Sun Devils cantered to victory in the first ever Union Jack Classic in front of a noisy crowd – despite thousands of empty seats

You sensed that Britain’s first US college football game in nearly 40 years was going to be a very different experience when Wembley Way began to reverberate to the sound of steel, muscle and a few whoops long before kick-off.

The noise came from the Arizona State Sun Devils’ marching band, who were so energetic their horns and trombones swished from left to right like air raid lights hunting a target as they played.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

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

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

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

Another true-crime drama about a woman accused of murder is hitting our screens, feeding into our culture’s unhelpful obsession with ‘female rage’

On 20 June 1893, in New Bedford, Massachusetts, a packed courtroom waited with bated breath for the jury to return its verdict following a gruelling double-murder trial. Against a backdrop of intense media interest, they had heard the prosecution argue that the accused had hacked to death their own parents with a hatchet, had burned their clothing to hide evidence of blood, and had done so out of hatred. The question the jury was asked to answer was simple – was Lizzie Andrew Borden guilty of murdering her father and stepmother? Jurors took just one hour to reach a decision: not guilty.

Yet, almost as soon as the trial came to an end, the mythmaking around Borden began – from fevered speculation about her motives and the infamous nursery rhyme to the many film and TV retellings of the story. The latest incarnation, Netflix’s Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story, opens with an axe-wielding Borden committing the murders, and frames the crimes around a fictionalised queer romance between her and the family’s housemaid, Bridget Sullivan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jason Okundaye is an assistant Opinion editor at the Guardian

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.

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

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

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

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Embattled Friedrich Merz faces nervous wait while far-right Alternative für Deutschland party targets further gains

Voters in two German states are going to the polls with the political future of the embattled chancellor, Friedrich Merz, hanging in the balance and an emboldened far right targeting further gains.

Coming two weeks after a seismic election in Saxony-Anhalt in which the anti-immigration, pro-Kremlin Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) scored its highest ever result in a regional poll, the nativist party is expected to drain support again from Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

Elor Azaria’s conviction in 2017 for manslaughter of man who stabbed soldier continues to divide country

Israel’s president has pardoned a combat medic who shot dead a badly wounded Palestinian attacker who had stabbed a soldier in the occupied West Bank, in a case that divided the country a decade ago.

Elor Azaria’s conviction in 2017 for manslaughter and his release after serving two-thirds of his 18-month sentence drew enormous attention in Israel, where military service is compulsory for most Jewish men.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Leaders hope UK will agree to targeted discussions around reparatory justice, but could consider legal options if Britain resists

Caribbean nations are drawing up a multi-pronged “action plan” with legal options to push the UK into negotiating a decades-long slavery reparations deal, officials at a reparations conference have said.

Leaders in the region are hoping the UK would agree to targeted and constructive negotiation talks at upcoming Commonwealth and UN summits, but they are ready to take the matter to international courts if Britain continues to resist diplomatic options.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Queen speaks of love of reading at festival for charity she founded after success of her Instagram book club

Queen Camilla has spoken of her love for books with a “life-enhancing power” after a series of allegations were made about King Charles in extracts from Earl Spencer’s memoir about the life of Diana, Princess of Wales.

Camilla was welcomed to Chatsworth House in Derbyshire for the first day of the festival for the Queen’s Reading Room, a charity she founded after the success of her Instagram book club during the pandemic.

Players in Everton v Ipswich Town match wear black armbands as supporters join in minute’s applause

Players wore black armbands during Everton’s home match against Ipswich Town on Saturday, as part of a tribute to three-year-old Noah Woods, whose body was found after he went missing in Suffolk this week.

A photograph of the boy was shown on the big screen before the Premier League game in Liverpool, and three minutes after kick-off both sets of supporters stood to applaud in memory of Noah.

Supporters’ club says billionaire should stand down after ‘completely unacceptable’ comments on the UK and empire

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

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

No injuries reported after about 280 people taken to safety from the Grand Burstin in Folkestone after blaze

A large fire that broke out overnight at a seaside hotel and forced hundreds of people to evacuate is being treated by police as suspicious.

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

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

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

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

Authorities ban anti-immigration march after fireworks and other projectiles thrown at officers in city centre park

Dutch riot police dispersed several hundred far-right protesters in The Hague on Saturday after violence erupted and local authorities banned a planned march in the city against immigration and asylum policies.

The Dutch public broadcaster NOS reported that 24 people had been arrested, after some protesters threw fireworks and other projectiles at police.

Bert Atienza and teen worker reportedly exchanged words before parents showed up and allegedly attacked shopper

A 77-year-old Walmart shopper died after he was allegedly attacked inside a Virginia store by the parents of a teenage employee he had confronted over a shopping cart incident involving his wife, according to US media reports.

Bert Atienza died from blunt head trauma on 8 June, one day after the attack at the Walmart in Norfolk, Virginia, WTKR reported on Monday. The shocking incident was captured on surveillance video.

Health authorities work to notify people who were exposed to person who traveled through at least six counties

California public health officials are warning of a possible measles exposure spanning multiple counties after an infected and unvaccinated passenger traveled through the state via Amtrak trains and thruway buses.

The warning comes as the US faces its largest measles resurgence in more than three decades, fueled largely by growing vaccine hesitancy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The 76-year-old rocker on her pre-gig routine, the one reality show she’d go on and who she’d cast as herself in a film about her life

Your new album is called Freedom and the title track interpolates The Girl Can’t Help It. You’re going to be rocking until they take you out in a box, aren’t you?

When I was 35, a journalist stupidly asked me, “When are you going to retire?” I said, “I will retire when I go on stage, turn my back on the audience, shake my ass, and there’s silence.” This followed me my whole career, so when I got to 65, I said, “I will retire when I go on stage, turn my back on the audience and my ass shakes by itself.”

Raised on punk, alt-comedy and the church, Cregger’s Lynchian approach to horror is anything but typical. After two wildly original hits, his pivot to a 30-year-old video game has caused a storm among protective fans

When Barbarian, Zach Cregger’s debut film as a solo writer-director, came out in 2022, it was a big success, creating a buzz among horror connoisseurs, garnering good reviews, and grossing $46m. Then his second film, Weapons, came out in 2025 and did even better. Mounting industry buzz around the project crystallised into a fierce bidding war; Jordan Peele was reportedly desperate to produce and, incensed by his failure to secure the rights, allegedly fired his managers. The rumours went viral, resulting in a wave of incredible PR that saw the film wildly outperform box office expectations and win an Academy Award (for Amy Madigan’s blunt-fringed, bonsai-pruning best supporting actress turn as instantly classic villain Aunt Gladys).

Even if Cregger had not had a box-office smash that crossed over into awards contention, there would still be an atmosphere of hushed expectation around his next move. Both Barbarian and Weapons addressed hot-button issues – sexual assault and school shootings, respectively – while resisting easy interpretation. Both, too, started out seemingly heading in one narrative direction, before thrillingly careening off elsewhere. Thus, with just two features, Cregger had established a reputation for totally terrifying, utterly unpredictable and – most importantly – genuinely original movies.

Lawyers juggle private chaos with professional brilliance in this new series. Plus: Michelle Keegan’s DI tackles a murder case and a corrupt police force. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC One
A spin-off from Abi Morgan’s The Split, this is another glossy divorce drama with the same soapy beats – and more lawyers who have a better handle on their clients’ relationships than their own. Aria is expecting to inherit her family’s Manchester firm from her bereaved father; it’s why she’s been putting off her own wedding for 10 years. But an old flame, a high-profile case with a podcasting couple and the discovery of an affair soon change her course. Hollie Richardson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Actor hails ‘proto-rock star’ as best poet, while musician argues for ‘Ireland’s Shakespeare’ WB Yeats at Somerset festival

Dominic West has said Lord Byron is his favourite poet because he was a “top shagger” and said he was not concerned the rise of AI might snuff out poetry.

The actor was taking part in a “poetry battle” at the Big Brue festival in Somerset, against rock star Bob Geldof, who said he preferred the Irish poet WB Yeats to the excesses of Byron.

The multidisciplinary artist delves into pockets of history, including within her family, for the largest ever debut of new work staged at the Guggenheim

Taryn Simon is seated in a conference room at the Guggenheim, looking dazed. Her new show, Father Country I Do Love You, opens in under three weeks. It’s a big deal, the first monographic exhibition by a photography-based artist in the iconic spiral rotunda, and the largest debut of new work ever staged at the museum. There’s still a lot of work to be done.

Downstairs, the lobby is being transformed into the Bangkok living room of Jim Thompson, a silk businessman-slash-spy who disappeared in 1967. Simon’s father, a US government worker, was living in Thailand at the time and figured that the Chinese got him, if not a tiger. When Simon was nine, the father and daughter recreated Thompson’s famous wood-panelled den back in Long Island. “And then I built it here with fake teak,” she says, voice wilting. “It’s driving me nuts. I’ve spent so much time trying to make non-teak look like teak.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• The best supermarket runny honey

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

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

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

• The best white T-shirts for men

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

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

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

• The best treadmills for your home

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

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

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

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

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

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

A ‘packed lunch revival’ is under way among office workers who want to eat more healthily. From bread salads to rice bowls, food experts offer their ideas

Nearly half of office workers are making packed lunches more regularly than they were a year ago, thanks to the rising cost of buying food on the go, according to new research. Does this mean employees will be lunching on soggy sandwiches and ultra-processed snacks? Apparently not.

The survey, by online supermarket Ocado, found the “packed lunch revival” was, in part, driven by a rise in the number of people opting for more nutritious “lunch bowl” options, often inspired by ideas shared on social media. With this in mind, we asked food writers and chefs how to make the perfect lunch bowl – something to brighten up your break, and keep you feeling satiated until you clock off.

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

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

Henry Harris is chef/co-owner of Bouchon Racine, London EC1. His book, The Racine Effect, is published by Quadrille at £40. To order a copy for £36, go to guardianbookshop.com

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

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

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

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

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

Anna Malos and Georgie bonded over their shared love of travel and horses. By their third date, an awkward encounter cemented their relationship

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

Georgie and I met at a kick-boxing club in London in 2004. We sparred together in a few beginner classes, just hitting soft pads. Although I didn’t pay her too much attention initially, I immediately recognised she was tall, elegant and very good looking.

It wasn’t until the club’s Christmas drinks that things kicked off between us. We started talking and couldn’t stop. We’d both travelled and worked in Latin America, and also loved horses – Georgie had volunteered with a horse-riding business for tourists in Ecuador. The sparks were flying all over the place.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Name: Ferritin face.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you’re a fresher, this may be the first time you’ve ever lived away from home. So how should you socialise, feed yourself and look after your health?

You don’t realise until you leave home just how idiosyncratic every family is, and how many of its customs are tacit, invisible, or maintained by someone else. Now you’re among people who emphatically aren’t related to you. How would you have any idea which of your practices were universal, and which common courtesies your upbringing had totally skipped? How do you even know how to keep your own body and soul together without the behind-the-scenes input of parents, who also have peculiarities of their own? Here’s a starter pack on how to function.

Something quick that has protein in it and is not toast. Suggestion: an omelette.

Something that is a full meal, covers protein and vegetables, and can be eaten over several days. Suggestion: bolognese or vegetarian chilli.

Something that you can scale up to feed two or four without bankrupting yourself or showing off. Suggestion: pesto pasta, but please always add broccoli right at the end – such a small price to pay to not get scurvy.

Something that you can make for others that is comforting and nobody can take against or be allergic to. Suggestion: risotto.

Something that you can just pour boiling water over, like a cup of tea, only it’s food. Suggestion: miso soup or soba noodles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you take lunch into work, is a sandwich, salad, soup or something else? We’re looking for the healthiest, best-value ideas

More people are bringing packed lunches to work as they try to save money and eat healthily.

According to a poll by Ocado, nearly half of UK professionals bring a packed lunch more frequently than they did a year ago, with 69% saying that buying lunch near their office was now too expensive.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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