The American British author on pet peeves, the perils of fantasy dinner parties, and revisiting The Short History of Everything two decades later

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You did a whole book on Australia, and have travelled here a bit since – what’s the number one tip or recommendation you’d give someone coming for the first time?

Get out and walk! I mean, maybe not through the outback, but if you’re in any of the cities, walk. I do that wherever I go. And I love to just go off and explore without knowing where I’m going, without a map or any preconceived ideas. I think it’s the best way to discover a place, and it has the great virtue that if you turn a corner – say in Sydney – and there’s suddenly the Harbour Bridge, you feel as if you’ve discovered it. There’s a real feeling of exhilaration, I think, in that. But also, you discover little cafes and hidden corners and odds and ends.

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A Short History of Nearly Everything 2.0 by Bill Bryson is out now through Penguin. The author is touring Australia and New Zealand in February 2026 with the live show The Best of Bill Bryson

Cherrie-Ann Austin-Saddington was working in a men’s prison when she began a relationship with an inmate that would turn her, too, into a criminal. How do some of the most dangerous men in Britain get what they want – even behind bars?

There was a moment in the summer of 2022 when 26-year-old Cherrie-Ann Austin-Saddington, a female prison officer in a men’s jail, had to make a choice. She was on her wing at HMP The Verne in Dorset, in the day room where inmates go to read books and newspapers, when a prisoner called Bradley Trengrove handed her a magazine. Concealed within its pages was a slip of paper with a number written on it – the number of his secret, illicit mobile phone. Under the watchful eye of the prison’s security cameras, Austin-Saddington had to decide what to do next.

“I was thinking, do I report it? Do I not report it?” she says. “I wasn’t thinking, I’ll text him – that wasn’t in my head.” But she did not throw the piece of paper away. She kept it, and in the end decided not to report anything.

Official Trump social media accounts have been using The Life of a Showgirl snippets to promote his agenda. Why has Swift, who once wanted ‘to be on the right side of history’, said nothing?

In the last two weeks, the Trump administration has used music from Taylor Swift’s latest album, The Life of a Showgirl, in three posts on social media. The first, shared by the official White House account on TikTok, was a patriotic slide show of images set to lead single The Fate of Ophelia. As Swift sings “pledge allegiance to your hands, your team, your vibes”, the video cuts to pictures of the US flag, President Trump, the vice-president, JD Vance, and the first and second ladies. The second and third were posted by Team Trump, the official account for the Trump Campaign. One, set to Father Figure, riffs on the lyric “this empire belongs to me” with the caption “this empire belongs to @President Donald J Trump”, while the other, celebrating Melania Trump winning something called the Patriot of the year award, is soundtracked by Opalite.

The Trump administration has found itself in dicey waters for using popular music in the past. The White Stripes and the estate of Isaac Hayes have both attempted to sue the administration for using their music without permission, while artists including Celine Dion, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Abba and Foo Fighters have released statements demanding Trump stop using their songs at campaign rallies and public appearances. Most recently, Olivia Rodrigo condemned the administration after the official Department of Homeland Security and White House Instagram account used her song All-American Bitch on a video promoting its controversial deportation efforts (the song was later removed by Instagram).

We’ve tasted, sniffed and inspected more than 300 presents to bring you our ultimate Christmas gift guide – from must-have Lego and smoky mezcal to Meera Sodha’s favourite knife

Don’t you just love Christmas shopping? There’s a massive thrill in finding a present you know they’ll love and won’t have thought to ask for, but the pressure is enough to drive any sane person to hibernation.

We’ve gone the extra (2,000) miles to help you find the perfect gifts: we’ve tested out the latest products to see which ones are worth the hype (and which aren’t); trawled shops in person; enlisted babies (OK, their parents), tweens and teens to test out toys and give us their must-haves; tasted the good, bad and the did-I-really-put-this-in-my-mouth; and rounded up some of the products that were tried and tested by us this year.

Retreat from plans to increase income tax means Labour is unlikely to make system fairer and more coherent

For decades now, whenever the British public has faced the prospect of tax rises, large sections of the electorate – so large they sway most politicians – have made it quite clear, let those increases be by stealth.

It is a message every chancellor since Nigel Lawson has heeded, with just a few honourable exceptions in the intervening decades.

After Tim Davie’s resignation, the next director general will face internal strife, external noise and looming talks over the corporation’s existence and purpose

As BBC senior editors arrived at its New Broadcasting House headquarters in central London on Monday, the most pressing question was what had convinced Tim Davie, the corporation’s director general, to quit suddenly. Like any good BBC drama, it was a plot twist no one had seen coming.

As they assessed the brutal pressures that had finally proved too much for Davie, a second question soon arose. Was running the BBC now simply an impossible job?

Exclusive: David Blunkett warns Keir Starmer Britain’s youth are in danger of becoming ‘lost generation’ on his watch

‘It’s so demoralising’: UK graduates exasperated by high unemployment

Keir Starmer has been warned that Britain’s youth are in danger of becoming a “lost generation” on his watch as it emerged almost half of all jobs shed since Labour came to power are among the under-25s.

With the government under fire before the autumn budget, Guardian analysis shows the dramatic leap in UK unemployment to the highest levels since the Covid pandemic is being fuelled by a youth jobs crisis.

Major incident declared in Wales, with rescues and evacuations in Monmouth after river bursts its banks

Snow could be on the way for parts of the UK with a cold snap set to arrive in the coming days in the wake of Storm Claudia, the Met Office said on Saturday.

The storm had a significant impact in Wales where a major incident was declared, with dozens of people rescued from their homes or evacuated in the town of Monmouth following severe flooding when the River Monnow burst its banks.

LNER’s Samir Zitouni, known as Sam, was seriously injured in mass stabbing and is credited with saving multiple lives

A train crew member who was seriously injured while protecting passengers during a mass stabbing onboard a train in Cambridgeshire has been discharged from hospital, police have said.

Samir Zitouni, known as Sam, was working onboard the London North Eastern Railway (LNER) high-speed train from Doncaster to London when the attack happened on 1 November.

LNER said the 48-year-old, who has worked for the company for more than 20 years, has been credited with helping to save multiple lives after passengers came under threat in Huntingdon.

British Transport police said Zitouni was now able to continue his recovery at home.

The force said on Saturday: “Samir Zitouni had been in a critical condition having suffered multiple injuries, and thanks to the efforts of NHS medical staff he’s been able to be discharged from hospital today.”

His family said: “We are so grateful for the outpouring of support from the public, and very touched by all the kind words about Sam’s brave actions on the night of the attack.

“While we are really happy to have him home, he still has a significant recovery ahead and we would now like to be left in privacy to care for him as a family.”

Zitouni’s job is customer experience host, which largely involves providing onboard catering.

He was among 11 patients treated in hospital for injuries sustained during the attack, which is understood to have started shortly after the train left Peterborough station.

Among the injured was Jonathan Gjoshe, 22, a Scunthorpe United footballer who was treated for non-life-threatening injuries, and Stephen Crean, 61, who sustained stab injuries.

Anthony Williams, 32, was remanded into custody at Peterborough magistrates court on 3 November charged with 10 counts of attempted murder, two counts of possession of a bladed article and one count of actual bodily harm. One of the attempted murder counts relates to a separate incident at a London station.

Nervous reporter is chased across English countryside by baying bloodhounds, in what could soon be only legal way to hunt with dogs

Would you like to be chased by a pack of hounds? It’s a question often put to highlight the cruelty of hunting, because the answer would seem to be no. Or so you would think.

Yet increasing numbers of people are volunteering to be chased across the countryside by baying bloodhounds in what could soon be the only legal way to hunt with dogs in England and Wales, rather than pursuing animals or their scents.

Police believe device was deliberately planted near frontbench to disrupt proceedings, prompting heightened security in parliament

Police have arrested two men in connection with a mobile phone hidden in the House of Commons that was reportedly planted there to play sex noises during prime minister’s questions.

The phone was found near the frontbench during a routine sweep of the chamber. It is believed to have been intended to interrupt the keynote weekly showdown between Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch in September.

• England 33-19 New Zealand

• Borthwick’s side clinch a perfect 10 of successive wins

A perfect 10 wins in a row is a reliable indicator of a team on the rise. What England really craved, though, was a statement victory to underline just how far they have come in the past 18 months or so. And on a dull grey November afternoon they finally secured it, beating a disappointed New Zealand for the first time in south-west London for 13 long years.

They deserved it, too, storming back from 12-0 down to claim the kind of result that rewards all the painstaking hard work of both the players and the management. There were four English tries in all, including two in the final half hour from Fraser Dingwall and Tom Roebuck, as Steve Borthwick’s team become only the ninth England side to cut the All Blacks down to size.

Funeral for fossil fuels held as part of ‘Great People’s March’ calling on governments to step up climate efforts

The streets of Belém echoed with indigenous chants, classical Brazilian songs and calls for environmental justice on Saturday as tens of thousands of people marched to demand urgent action on the climate and nature crisis.

Activists from around the world converged on the Amazonian host city of COP30, urging negotiators to ramp up ambition.

Influential musician who created Americana hits had recently been hospitalized with pneumonia

Todd Snider, the influential alt-country singer-songwriter who created Americana hits such as Alright Guy, has died at 59.

His passing was shared through announcements on his official social media accounts. Although no cause of death was provided, his family shared on Friday that he had recently been hospitalized with pneumonia.

With the annual trip to Blackpool in sight, Amber Davies delivered a deadly paso doble, while La Voix jazzed it up for her show-stopping Couple’s Choice. But who’s Tower Ballroom-bound and who’ll miss out on the seaside special?

Which of these smiling pairs will be starved of fish and chips on Blackpool beach?

Roll ye olde scene-setting VT. Blackpool-themed, obv. Drink!

As party’s rise fuels fears over future visa rules, people share how the lives they have built are in jeopardy

As Reform UK soars in the polls, Britain’s migrant communities are facing an uncertain future.

The party has announced a swathe of hardline immigration policies, including its plans to abolish indefinite leave to remain – the right to settle permanently in the UK after five years of residence.

From Texas and Iowa to Arkansas, faith leaders are wading into politics to counter the rise of Christian nationalism

He grew up on a farm in Indiana, the son of a factory worker and eldest of five children. He studied at Liberty, a Christian university founded by the conservative pastor and televangelist Jerry Falwell, and recalls wearing a T-shirt expressing opposition to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

Two decades later, Justin Douglas is running for the US Congress – as a Democrat.

One possible alteration was thought to be tax-free cash drawdowns, but the chancellor may have turned to salary sacrifice schemes

Rumours about what Rachel Reeves may, or may not, do to pensions in the budget continue to swirl.

One much-debated possible change – cutting the amount of tax-free cash that people can take from their pensions – is said by some to be off the table, but reports have emerged that the chancellor has “salary sacrifice” pension schemes in her sights.

After spying Tom Box at a punk gig, Kate Logan made a Dalek poster to capture his attention

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

Long before we’d met, I had heard a lot about a guy called Tom Box. I knew he was an Australian living in the South Island of New Zealand. I was in Wellington, and there’d been a few occasions when I’d travelled to the South Island for raves or anarchist conferences where some of the folks had gone to Tom’s place – but I splintered off somewhere else.

Then one day, in 2007, I was at a punk gig when a mutual friend said, “Oh, do you know Tom Box? He’s over there. He’s just moved up to Wellington.” There in a sea of black-clad punks, jumping up and down at the front of the mosh pit, was this guy in a pale blue Star Trek uniform. To me, as a person unfamiliar with Star Trek, he looked like he was wearing pyjamas. This was my first vision of him, but we didn’t talk at all that night.

Bonhams is selling over 400 items from the estate of the late Oscar-winning actor, from a draft script of The Silence of the Lambs to his own unique artwork

He was Lex Luthor to Christopher Reeve’s Superman. But could he have been Hannibal Lecter to Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling?

The intriguing prospect is raised by an unlikely 33-page draft script for The Silence of the Lambs lurking in a collection of the late actor Gene Hackman’s possessions that goes up for auction later this month.

She’s Hollywood’s biggest character actor who terrified a generation of men with her ‘bunny boiling’ turn in Fatal Attraction. Now, Close alternates the glamour of the red carpet with living in a red state. She talks about the joy of her ‘undefined’ life

Most of us don’t live our lives in accordance with a governing metaphor, but Glenn Close does. The 78-year-old was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, a town in the north‑east of the US that, to the actor’s enduring irritation, telegraphs “smug affluence” to other Americans. In fact, Close’s background is more complicated than that, rooted in a childhood that was wild and free but also traumatic, and in an area of New England in which her family goes back generations. “I grew up on those great stone walls of New England,” says the actor, chin out, gimlet-eyed – Queen Christina at the prow of a ship. “Some of them were 6ft tall and 250 years old! I have a book called Sermons in Stone and it says at one point that more energy and hours ran into building the New England stone walls than the pyramids.”

If the walls are an image Close draws on for strength, they might also serve as shorthand for the journalist encountering her at interview. Close appears in a London hotel suite today in a military-style black suit, trim, compact, and with a small white dog propped up on a chair beside her. For the span of our conversation, the actor’s warmth and friendliness combine with a reserve so practised and precise that the presence of the dog in the room feels, unfairly perhaps, like a handy way for Close to burn through a few minutes of the interview with some harmless guff about dog breeds. (The dog is called Pip, which is short for “Sir Pippin of Beanfield”. He is a purebred Havanese and “they’re incredibly intelligent”. Most dog owners in the US have the emotional support paperwork necessary to get them on a plane but, says Close, laughing, “That’s really what he is!”)

Alex, 31, an academic, meets Rachel, 28, a university caseworker

What were you hoping for?
A good plotline, a fun evening and the chance of a connection.

Tales of dwindling savings, frozen retirement pots and stringent frugality to put something aside for the future

Andrew, a writer in his mid-30s from Essex, would be considered middle class by most, but his financial setup is precarious.

“I have £4k in my savings account, and around £4k in stocks and shares. With a mortgage, childcare fees and other living expenses to cover, our monthly outgoings are always at least £2,800. Our savings would quickly vanish if our household income ceased,” he said.

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

Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys star in a taut psychological two-hander, and the Nobel prize winner delivers another miracle. 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

Stephen King’s dystopian novel gets an Edgar Wright reboot with Glen Powell, while the prolific British master is back with new paintings

The Running Man
Out now
Edgar Wright directs this reimagining of the 1987 sci-fi cult classic based on Stephen King’s 1982 novel, which envisioned a fictional America of 2025 sliding into totalitarianism. Glen Powell stars as the contestant attempting to survive a deadly televised game.

⚽ Updates from the Group C qualifier (7.45pm GMT)
⚽ Get in touch! Email Scott with your thoughts

Greece get the ball rolling. It’s far from a full house at the Stadio Georgios Karaiskakis in Piraeus, home of Olympiacos. But it’s still noisy.

The teams are out! Greece in white with blue stripes, Scotland in blue with white stripes. Everyone looking real fine. We’ll be off once a Hymn to Liberty and a paean to a Flower have been sung.

• Updates as Wallabies visit Aviva Stadium (8.10pm GMT)

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8 mins. A clumsy breakdown effort from Ireland on the restart allows the Wallabies to win the ball back. However, their attack on the 22 is in about three minds and none of them have a discernible plan, which leads to O’Connor spilling the ball after a big hit from Prendergast. Yes, Prendergast, you read that right.

6 mins. Ireland work back into the 22 and the pressure coming from the pace of the recycling forces Williams to drift offside. The ball is tapped by Gibson-Park and some quick hands find Hansen free under the posts to walk in.

• Sinner beats Alex de Minaur 7-5, 6-2 to reach final for third year in row

• Alcaraz reaches first final after victory over Felix Auger-Aliassime

The 2025 ATP season will conclude with a final showdown between the two best male tennis players in the world after Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz reached the final of the ATP Finals on Saturday.

Sinner continued his total dominance of the indoor season as he held off an admirable early challenge from Alex de Minaur before bulldozing his path into the ATP Finals for a third consecutive year with a supreme 7-5, 6-2 win, a victory that extended his winning record against the Australian to 13-0.

Wales laboured to a 1-0 win over international minnows Liechtenstein to keep alive their hopes of World Cup qualification.

Jordan James claimed his first Wales goal from close range after Liechtenstein’s assorted collection of full-time players, office workers and students had held out for over an hour. James wheeled away in delight with his obvious relief shared by 3,000 Wales fans filling three sides of the Rheinpark Stadion in Vaduz.

Sport’s famous rivalry began in 1877 and since then 853 men have featured in Australia v England Tests. But who are the very best of the best?

• Barney Ronay on the No 1 | Video: review the top 10

• Check how all the judges voted | Our methodology

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• Wales 24-23 Japan

• Replacement wins game with final kick

A Wales men’s crowd came away with the pride of a win at home for the first time in more than two years as the hosts beat Japan but the overriding feeling was of relief. The Welsh performance was miles off of what is expected on these shores. Sloppy attack, squandered opportunities and a 20-minute red card for Josh Adams almost gifted the win to Eddie Jones’ team but that won’t be remembered in years to come, what will be is Jarrod Evans’ name.

It was his last-play-of-the-game penalty which won the game for Wales, the first in the head coach Steve Tandy’s reign. The roar that followed has to be up there with one of the loudest this stadium has heard. It was the replacement’s only kick at goal of the game and he had nerves of steel to seal the victory.

• Nine-year-old mare is 6-1 success for new yard

• Vicenzo, the favourite, beaten by four lengths

If Dan Skelton’s time to scale jump racing’s summit has finally arrived, horses like Panic Attack, a nine-year-old mare and the trainer’s first winner of the Paddy Power Gold Cup, will feel as significant as Grade One victories when it comes to the final reckoning.

All but three or four of the dozen runners in Saturday’s race, the first big handicap chase of the season, were still in with a chance as they ran down the hill for the final time, but it was Panic Attack, at 6-1, who found the better turn of foot from the last after jumping it half-a-length behind Vicenzo, the favourite.

Just as Storm Claudia tore through the north-west the previous evening, Manchester City blew Manchester United away at the Etihad. It was a statement 3-0 victory for Andrée Jeglertz’s side thanks to goals from Rebecca Knaak, Bunny Shaw and Lauren Hemp. It was one that truly announced their title credentials as they consolidated their place at the top.

In contrast, it was a result that signalled back-to-back WSL defeats for Marc Skinner’s side for the first time since May 2024, leaving them seven points off the league leaders. Their ability to juggle domestic and European football with a thin squad has been hotly discussed and it always felt like this was the week that would truly test this capability. Unfortunately for the visitors, they looked fatigued, the historic win against PSG clearly having taken a toll.

A tactically and technically adept Three Lions squad can take the handbrake off and prosper in North America next summer

Watching Micky van de Ven surge through the pretty much the entire FC Copenhagen team in the Champions League last week, two sensations occurred. The first was awe, that somebody so powerful and so quick would still have the composure to finish as he did. And the second was that this didn’t feel entirely fair. It was as though Gulliver had landed himself a deal in the Lilliput Premier League.

The same evening, Liverpool, who have at times struggled physically in the Premier League this season, bullied Real Madrid, their threat at set plays so marked that eventually it was the 5ft 7in Alexis Mac Allister who headed the vital goal. The following day, Newcastle swatted Athletic Bilbao aside, largely by being bigger than them: for the opening goal, the Spanish side’s defence appears to have looked at Dan Burn and decided there was no point even trying to mark him.

The US government was shut down for weeks – and then Democrats shrugged their shoulders and gave up

Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, has a pair of very sweet imaginary friends. They’re a middle-class couple called Joe and Eileen Bailey and they live on Long Island. At one point the imaginary couple, who feature in Schumer’s 2007 book, Positively American, were called the O’Reillys. According to the Hill, one Schumer aide said the name then was changed because the publisher thought O’Reilly was “too ethnic” for mass consumption. Another aide said that claim was false, and Schumer just wanted a name that “sounded more national”. Naming strategy aside, the key point here is that Schumer has said he runs all his policy decisions by this completely fictional couple. He’s referred to them hundreds of times throughout his political career.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

Sydney Sweeney has become the poster child of a predicted rightwing cultural domination. So why is no one watching her films?

I was on a walk around my local area in London when I was stopped in my tracks by a young man sauntering past me, wearing stone-wash jeans, a pair of shades and a “Reagan-Bush ’84” T-shirt. He gave off an incredibly smug air but, to be fair, he did look good. It’s a nice T-shirt, not like those garish Reform-branded football kits, so I could see why it might be appealing. A quick search informed me that for gen-Z rightwingers in the US, it has become the “conservative take on a band shirt or the once-ubiquitous Che Guevara tee”.

That casual display of conservative aesthetics reminded me of something else too: a much discussed cover of New York magazine from earlier this year, after Trump 2.0’s inauguration, which showed young rightwingers celebrating as they “contemplate cultural domination”.

Deals between media conglomerates and tech companies serve both sets of interests, while leaving artists by the wayside

The world’s biggest music company is now in the AI business. Last year, Universal Music Group (UMG), alongside labels including Warner Records and Sony Music Entertainment sued two AI music startups for allegedly using their recordings to train text-to-music models without permission.

But last month, UMG announced a deal with one of the defendants, Udio, to create an AI music platform. Their joint press release offered assurances that the label will commit to “do what’s right by [UMG’s] artists”. However, one advocacy group, the Music Artists Coalition, responded with the statement: “We’ve seen this before – everyone talks about ‘partnership’, but artists end up on the sidelines with scraps.”

Alexander Avila is a video essayist, writer and researcher

In attacking a vital broadcaster, the US president is once again holding others to standards he flouts. But the Maga faithful might not let his links to the disgraced financier go

To confront Donald Trump is to engage in asymmetric warfare. It is to enter a battlefield that is not level, where he enjoys an immediate and in-built advantage over those who would oppose him or merely hold him to account. That fact has cost Democrats dearly over the past decade – exacting a toll again this very week – but it has now upended an institution central to Britain’s national life: namely, the BBC.

The key asymmetry can be spelled out simply. Trump pays little or no regard to the conventional bounds of truth or honesty. His documented tally of false or misleading statements runs into the tens of thousands: the Washington Post registered 30,573 such statements during Trump’s first term in the White House, an average of 21 a day. In a single interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes earlier this month, Trump spoke falsely 18 times, according to CNN.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Guardian newsroom: Year One of Trumpism: Is Britain Emulating the US?
On Wednesday 21 January 2026, join Jonathan Freedland, Tania Branigan and Nick Lowles as they reflect on the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency – and to ask if Britain could be set on the same path.
Book tickets here or at guardian.live

I thought hard work equalled success. I had to realise that’s not always how it works, in science or in life

If the words “force equals mass times acceleration” are mildly triggering, I apologise. Newton’s second law of motion will be familiar to anyone who’s ever studied physics. For some who struggled with that course, it may bring back painful memories. But for me, as an awkward teenager, it was oddly comforting – proof of an ordered, structured universe where cause always led to predictable effect. I carried that belief into university, where I studied physics, and even into my career. If I just worked hard enough, success would be mine.

But nine months into my first job, I got made redundant. It turns out that life doesn’t always obey Newton’s laws.

Zahaan Bharmal is the author of The Art of Physics and a senior director at Google, writing in a personal capacity

Chaos and ineptitude dog our poor PM. Perhaps the explanation lies (very) close to home

At this rate the only businesses who will want to invest in Britain after the budget are heroin dealers. No 10 used to have a news grid, now it has an apology grid. Even so, why did Keir Starmer apologise for a sensationally self-destructive round of briefing against Wes Streeting if he didn’t do it? This is like me apologising for accidentally releasing sex offenders from prison. I suppose there is the occasional previous example in public life. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor apologised for his association with Jeffrey Epstein and gave a woman he’d never met a reported £12m. Perhaps that provides the prime minister with the warming cover of precedent.

If you’re just joining us, this is a week in which the government finally achieved the chaos spiral of several recent Conservative administrations. We can now officially say: same car, different clowns. We are less than two weeks out from the budget, with Friday morning’s Downfall meme being yet another U-turn, with the chancellor reportedly not going ahead with her all-but-confirmed plans to raise basic- and higher-rate income tax. The gilt markets reacted accordingly, if by accordingly we mean “made emergency calls for Andrex” – but then new Treasury briefings insisted it was all actually good news and based on better forecasts. Tell you what Rachel Reeves won’t raise: fuel duty on circus vehicles.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar
On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back at another extraordinary year, with special guests, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here or at guardian.live

The fossil-fuel era is drawing to a close, but at a pace far too slow for the planet’s good or a fair transition to a clean energy future

The weather in Belém, wrote the Guardian’s environment editor, offers a convenient metaphor for the UN climate talks being held in the Brazilian city. Sunny mornings begin in blazing optimism before the Amazon’s clouds gather and the deluge begins. Cop30 has followed the same pattern. It opened with sunshine – an agenda agreed on day one. The storms were deferred for later “consultations” on climate finance, carbon border tariffs and the question of how to close the yawning gap between national climate pledges and the Paris agreement’s safe pathway. These await Cop30’s second week.

They are likely to be more than mere squalls. The International Energy Agency confirmed last week that the fossil-fuel era is ending. Its annual report said the world will hit peak coal, oil and gas this decade and see declines thereafter. The economist Fadhel Kaboub, who advises developing nations on climate, argues this is not “because of political will, but because the economics of renewables is winning”. Africa, he says, can generate about 1,000 times the electricity it will need in 2040 – which could be exported. Globally, however, hydrocarbon use is easing far too slowly. The fight over money and a just transition matters at Cop30.

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.

David Szalay’s Flesh breaks from a decade of female-centred interiors and reopens a genre many thought closed to men

Novels of female interiority have dominated literary fiction for nearly a decade. Writers such as Sally Rooney and Ottessa Moshfegh captured the inner lives of young women in a way that felt almost shockingly fresh and real, and chimed with the #MeToo moment. Similar stories about young men have become hard to find.

This week an unapologetic portrait of masculinity won the Booker prize. Flesh, by the British-Hungarian novelist David Szalay, follows the rise and fall of a working-class Hungarian immigrant called István from the late 1980s to the present day. We mainly see István in acts of casual sex or violence. He eats, he smokes. He says “Okay” and “yeah” over and over again. The novel is an exercise in radical exteriority: we do not know what István looks like, thinks or feels, and often he doesn’t either. This is the realist novel pared down to the bone.

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

Readers respond to an article by Rachel Clarke on how people are dying without the support they need

Rachel Clarke is right to highlight the pressures on palliative care, but wrong to suggest that assisted dying debates have sidelined these concerns (As a palliative care specialist, I’ve witnessed the human tragedy of our end-of-life care crisis, 10 November). In fact, the opposite is true. The CEO of Hospice UK, Toby Porter, has stated that the government’s £100m investment in hospices, announced last December, would probably not have materialised without the terminally ill adults bill. He recently told a special Lords select committee that the bill has sparked more conversation about end-of-life care than at any point in his long career.

The health minister, Stephen Kinnock, similarly acknowledged that the bill has been a catalyst for long-overdue improvements in palliative care, rolling the pitch for another announcement in the coming weeks. We know this has been the case around the world, as experts from the UK and Australia highlighted recently (Letters, 5 November).

A parent replies to an article by Kate Szymankiewicz about her 14-year-old daughter Ruth, who died after being detained under the Mental Health Act

I read with deep sadness the article by Kate Szymankiewicz about the death of her 14-year-old daughter Ruth (‘The ward felt like a prison. What had I let them do?’: how my daughter was crushed by a health service meant to help her, 8 November).

As a parent of a child who has also suffered with an eating disorder, I recall the same feelings of horror at the loss of control while we saw our daughter sectioned three times under the Mental Health Act.

Readers aren’t convinced by the wholesome family message peddled by John Lewis in its latest Christmas ad

The issues you highlighted in your editorial are real, but please don’t think that advertisers care about them (The Guardian view on the John Lewis Christmas ad: a modern story of fathers and sons, 7 November).

This ad is a shameless attempt to make consumers think they are doing something worthwhile in buying overpriced gifts in a failing store that used to share its profits with staff but hasn’t paid them any bonus in the past few years.

Judith Flanders describes the glass cliff phenomenon in struggling organisations, while Alan Pearson doubts the BBC has done much to dent Donald Trump’s reputation

Sadly, Matthew Ryder’s “silver lining” in the BBC debacle, that all the candidates to replace Tim Davie are women (Letters, 11 November), is in reality a well-known psychological phenomenon known as the glass cliff. It was first described more than 20 years ago by two psychologists in a study that examined a series of FTSE 100 companies, finding that those that had performed especially badly in the previous half year tended to follow that performance by more frequently hiring women in senior roles, thus setting them up to fail.
Judith Flanders
Montreal, Canada

• If Donald Trump sues the BBC for reputational damage, I’m prepared to give up my winter fuel payment, which should more than cover it.
Alan Pearson
Broadbottom, Greater Manchester

Exclusive: thinktank report finds health secretary has failed to improve productivity and the health service is unlikely to meet its targets

Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS, which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG).

The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes

One-time Maga loyalist diverges with Trump on issues including Epstein, so US president has withdrawn support

Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime Republican ally who previously fiercely defended Donald Trump and his Maga movement, said on Saturday she had been contacted by private security firms “with warnings for my safety” after Trump announced on Friday he was withdrawing his support for and endorsement of the Georgia representative.

In a post on X, Greene said that “a hot bed of threats against me are being fueled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world”, without referring to Trump by name, adding it was “the man I supported and helped get elected”.

Africa CDC says at least nine cases have been detected of Ebola-like illness, which kills up to 80% of those infected

Ethiopia has confirmed an outbreak of the deadly Marburg virus in the south of the country, the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) has said.

The Marburg virus is one of the deadliest known pathogens. Like Ebola, it causes severe bleeding, fever, vomiting and diarrhoea and has a 21-day incubation period.

Cooke, who worked for the Observer for 25 years and was described as its ‘backbone’, was diagnosed with cancer earlier this year

Tributes have been paid to the journalist and critic Rachel Cooke after her death from cancer.

Cooke, 56, was diagnosed with the illness earlier this year and died on Friday. She worked for the Observer for 25 years, where she was described as “the backbone of the paper”.

Natalie Boucly says supplies are ready but only about half of what is needed is getting into territory

Israel is breaching international law by continuing to impose restrictions on aid flows into Gaza, where the population remains critically short of food and life-saving goods as winter sets in, a senior official at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees has said.

In an interview during a recent visit to Brussels, Natalie Boucly, an Unrwa deputy commissioner general, said the whole world – including the EU and US – needed to increase the pressure on Israel’s government to ensure the unrestricted flow of aid into Gaza.

Once escapees from the pet trade, Los Angeles’s feral parrots have become a vibrant part of city life, and could even aid conservation in their native homelands

A morning mist hung over the palm trees as birds chattered and cars roared by on the streets of Pasadena. It was a scene that evoked a tropical island rather than a bustling city in north-east Los Angeles county.

“It feels parrot-y,” says Diego Blanco, a research assistant at Occidental College’s Moore Laboratory of Zoology, nodding to the verdant flora that surrounds us: tall trees and ornamental bushes with berries.

A huge cleanup effort has seen volunteers working to remove beads by hand and machine. They can only wait and see the extent of damage to wildlife and dune habitat

Just past a scrum of dog walkers, about 40 people are urgently combing through the sand on hands and knees. Their task is to try to remove millions of peppercorn-sized black plastic biobeads from where they have settled in the sand. Beyond them, a seal carcass grins menacingly, teeth protruding from its rotting skull.

Last week, an environmental disaster took place on Camber Sands beach, on what could turn out to be an unprecedented scale. Eastbourne Wastewater Treatment Works, owned by Southern Water, experienced a mechanical failure and spewed out millions of biobeads on to the Sussex coastline. Southern Water has since taken responsibility for the spill. Ironically, biobeads are used to clean wastewater – bacteria attach to their rough, crinkly surface and clean the water of contaminants.

Camber Sands is one of England’s most popular beaches, with rare dune habitat

Destruction in Jamaica shows why climate justice cannot be separated from reparatory justice, campaigners say

Perched on the edge of a hill in the idyllic village of Cold Spring in Hanover, Jamaica, the Gurney’s Mount Baptist church has stood for centuries as a symbol of resistance and endurance. The church and its congregation have endured through uprisings – in particular the famous 1831 slave revolt led by the Black Baptist deacon Samuel Sharpe – and earthquakes.

But when Hurricane Melissa descended on Jamaica, it ripped off the church roof and shredded the rows of sturdy pews, leaving an unrecognisable mangle of wood and debris in its wake. Outside, parts of the structure had survived the onslaught of the category 5 storm. The church is one of Jamaica’s 146,000 buildings – just 15% of those assessed so far – that has suffered major to severe damage, according to Alvin Gayle, director general of Jamaica’s emergency management office. The death toll on Thursday was 45, with 13 people missing; an estimated 90,000 households and 360,000 people have been affected by the damage.

In January the island’s beaches were inundated with waves of plastic pollution, a phenomenon that has been getting worse by the year. Photographer and film-maker Sean Gallagher travelled to Bali to document the increasing tide of rubbish washing up on beaches and riverbanks, and the people facing the monumental challenge of cleaning up. His portraits are on show now as part of the 2025 Head On photo festival at Bondi Beach promenade until 30 November

US president says he will sue the corporation for ‘anywhere between a billion and $5bn’

Donald Trump has said he still plans to sue the BBC despite receiving the apology he demanded over a misleading edit of one of his speeches.

The row, over an episode of Panorama from last year about the Capitol riot in 2021, led to accusations of bias at the broadcaster and the resignation of two of the most senior executives at the BBC: the director general, Tim Davie; and Deborah Turness, the chief executive of news.

Area’s MP says it would cost more than local council’s annual budget to remove the 10-metre high pile of waste

Fly-tippers have dumped a “mountain of illegal waste” in Oxfordshire so large that removing it could cost more than the local council’s annual budget, the area’s MP has said.

Hundreds of tonnes of waste, stacked 10 metres high, appeared in a field between the River Cherwell and the A34 near Kidlington. One charity called the huge dump of rubbish “an environmental catastrophe unfolding in plain sight”.

Business secretary Peter Kyle says appeal of far-right parties like Reform due to ‘their dogma of disruption, division and despair’

Nigel Farage is “today’s incarnation of the politics of Enoch Powell”, the business secretary, Peter Kyle, said at the Co-operative party conference.

Kyle described Reform UK as “far right”, while stressing that boosting economic growth was needed to “build an economy and a politics that people can trust to deliver for themselves, their families and their communities”.

Jonathan Carley, 64, charged with unlawfully wearing uniform of armed forces

A man has been charged over allegedly dressing up as an admiral during a Remembrance Sunday event.

North Wales police said they made an arrest after a man was spotted wearing “the uniform and medals of a high-ranking navy officer” during a wreath-laying service in Llandudno, Conwy, on Sunday 9 November.

Bangkok had earlier said it was suspending ceasefire, accusing Cambodia of laying landmines along the border

The US has put pressure on Thailand to recommit to a ceasefire with Cambodia, warning trade talks could be halted as Washington seeks to keep a Donald Trump-brokered truce agreement from falling apart.

Earlier this week, Thailand said that it was suspending the ceasefire deal, accusing Cambodia of laying fresh landmines along the border, including one it said wounded a Thai soldier on patrol, who lost a foot in the explosion.

PM makes opposition to support for Ukraine central to Fidesz campaign as it loses ground over cost of living crisis

Hungary’s prime minister has kicked off a weeks-long “anti-war roadshow”, turning criticism of European support for Ukraine into an early campaign message before next year’s elections.

Viktor Orbán’ is scheduled to stage an event in five cities before the end of the year, and started with an assembly on Saturday in the north-western city of Győr.

President turns on ‘Wacky Marjorie’ after representative criticizes effort to block release of key Epstein documents

Donald Trump announced Friday that he is withdrawing his support for and endorsement of Republican lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene, a longtime ally and previously fierce defender of the president and the Maga movement.

Trump’s move away from Greene came just hours after she said in an interview she thought the president’s attempts to stop the release of the files related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein is “insanely the wrong direction to go”.

Katrín Jakobsdóttir and her co-author want the 350,000 people who speak the language to fight for its future

Iceland’s former prime minister, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, has said that the Icelandic language could be wiped out in as little as a generation due to the sweeping rise of AI and encroaching English language dominance.

Katrín, who stood down as prime minister last year to run for president after seven years in office, said Iceland was undergoing “radical” change when it came to language use. More people are reading and speaking English, and fewer are reading in Icelandic, a trend she says is being exacerbated by the way language models are trained.

Ford denies having created ‘defeat devices’ in legal action on behalf of 1.6 million owners against five carmakers

About a million Ford diesel cars were sold in the UK with serious defects in components supposed to curb toxic exhaust emissions, the high court has been told.

The highly polluting vehicles were produced and sold between 2016 and 2018 after Ford’s engineers became aware of the issues, and many were never formally recalled or fixed, lawyers said.

Developers are turning to health-related activities as traditional stores hit by online retail continue to close

There was a time when the most active thing to do at a shopping centre was jostle to the front of the queue at Primark. These days, however, developers are bringing in sport and health-related activities from zip wires to cricket, football, rock climbing and even wild swimming to draw in consumers and use space no longer wanted by retailers.

While the trend for competitive socialising, such as crazy golf, darts or bowling is well established and gyms are commonplace in shopping centres, landlords are getting more creative and adventurous in the type of activity they are offering as they battle lacklustre interest in physical shopping.

Exclusive: Charlie Maynard accuses the utility of ‘retaliation’ over his push for government to gain control of company

Thames Water argued that an MP should be forced to pay its hefty legal costs after he represented the interests of the British public in court, a move he described as “retaliation” for pushing for government control of the crisis-hit utility, the Guardian can reveal.

The UK’s highest court this week rejected Thames Water’s arguments that the Liberal Democrat MP Charlie Maynard should pay legal fees as high as £1,400 per hour.

Order exempting coffee, beef, bananas and other items comes as White House fights off concerns about rising costs

• People in the US: how are your holiday shopping plans being affected by Trump’s tariffs and the cost of living?

Donald Trump moved to lower tariffs on food imports, including beef, tomatoes, coffee and bananas, in an executive order on Friday as the White House fights off growing concerns about rising costs.

The new exemptions take effect retroactively at midnight on Thursday and mark a sharp reversal for Trump, who has long insisted that his import duties are not fueling inflation. They come after a string of victories for Democrats in state and local elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City, where affordability was a key topic.

A chance viewing of the comic’s World Tour of Scotland made me swap Australia for the Highlands, although things didn’t quite go to plan …

I was 23 and thought I had found my path in life. I’d always wanted to work with animals, and I had just landed a job as a vet nurse in Melbourne. I was still learning the ropes, but I imagined I would stay there for years, building a life around the work. Then, five months in, the vet called me into his office and told me it wasn’t working out. “It’s not you,” he said, “I just really hate training people.” His previous nurse had been with him for decades; she knew his every move. I didn’t. And just like that, I was out of a job.

I drove home crying, feeling utterly adrift. I wasn’t sure whether to try again at another vet clinic or rip up the plan entirely and do something else. After spending a few days floating around aimlessly, trying to recalibrate my life, I turned on the TV, needing something to take my mind off things. And there he was: Billy Connolly, striding across a windswept Scottish landscape in his World Tour of Scotland documentary.

Theatre503, London
A young woman loses her grip on reality in writer-performer Tanya-Loretta Dee’s unsettling monologue

At what point does infatuation tip over into something darker and more destructive? There’s actually a term for it – limerence – and this is the unsettling undercurrent of Tanya-Loretta Dee’s promising debut monologue, in which she also stars. There are very interesting ideas at play here, particularly to do with the fine line between sexual desire and something much wilder, more animalistic and untameable. But the production needs more fire and intensity. It unfolds at a slight distance and never quite pulls us deep inside this young woman’s fevered breakdown.

The story revolves around Bex, who works in a Peckham party shop by day and has an awful lot of sexual fantasies by night. Into Bex’s life walks James. With his middle-class wardrobe and middle-of-the-road job, James is from a different world. At first, he is Bex’s fantasy prince. But as their relationship fractures and warps, Bex’s fantasies turn in on her, separating her from real life and the people who care about her.

At Theatre503, London, until 29 November

The Bafta-winning writer takes down the filthy rich in the Gossip Girl-esque Wild Cherry. Plus: Alan Carr brightens up our screens once more. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC One

After a decade, the Netflix hit is bowing out. Ahead of its last episodes, the show’s creators and cast talk about big 80s hair, recruiting a Terminator killer – and the birds Kate Bush sent them

How do you finish one of the biggest and most popular TV series of the last decade? Three years after season four came out, the fifth and final season of Stranger Things is about to make its way into the world. Millions of viewers are getting ready to find out what happens to the Upside Down and whether the plucky teens of Hawkins, Indiana can fight off Vecna for good, but it is early November 2025, and its creators Matt and Ross Duffer are finding it difficult to talk about. It’s not just because they’re feeling the pressure, or because the risk of spoilers and leaks is so dangerously high. It’s because the identical twin brothers from North Carolina are just not ready. “It makes me sad,” says Ross. “Because it’s easier to not think about the show actually ending.”

A decade ago, hardly anyone knew what the Upside Down was. Few had heard of Vecna, Mind Flayers or Demogorgons. In 2015, the brothers – self-professed nerds and movie obsessives – were about to begin shooting their first ever TV series. Stranger Things was to be a supernatural adventure steeped in 80s nostalgia, paying tribute to Steven Spielberg and Stephen King. Part of their pitch to Netflix was that it would be “John Carpenter mashed up with ET”. Winona Ryder and Matthew Modine were in it, so it wasn’t exactly low-key, but it was by no means a dead-cert for success, not least because it was led by a cast of young unknowns. The first season came out in the summer of 2016, smashed Netflix viewing records, and almost immediately established itself as a bona fide TV phenomenon.

The X-Files star is at his charismatic best as a ruthless multimillionaire who hires Jack Whitehall as a sinister nanny. It’s like The White Lotus meets The Talented Mr Ripley

I can’t say I had “Jack Whitehall stars with David ‘The X Files/ Californication’ Duchovny in glossy TV thriller” on my 2025 bingo card, but here we are, and a good time with it can be had by all. Alongside, perhaps, a smidge of national pride to see the daft lad from Fresh Meat, Bad Education and Travels With My Father all grown up and holding his own.

The glossy thriller in question is Malice, in which Whitehall plays Adam, a tutor promoted to manny (male nanny, for those not au fait with rich people’s terms), who is bent – for reasons as yet unknown – on ruining high-rolling businessman Jamie Tanner (Duchovny). Whether he has it in for the rest of the Tanner family and friends, or they are just doomed to be collateral damage, is not clear, but that doesn’t spoil the machiavellian fun.

Such is his grumpiness, it isn’t clear why the 85-year-old wanted to make the film – though ‘I need the money’ is a running gag

The long and fabled history of Monty Python has now reached its footnotes and afterthoughts era. After years of interpersonal disputes, multiple forays into the culture war and one very expensive divorce, 85-year-old John Cleese goes solo with a thin 80-minute travelogue, undertaking a European mini-tour while enduring a roll call of ailments (partial deafness, bone spurs, vertigo) which appears at least as substantive as his onstage material. Explaining his motivation, Cleese is not untypically blunt: a wheezy “I need the money” is the closest this film locates to a running gag.

What are we offered in return? Near-relentless gripes and grievances that mesh with Cleese’s recent media profile, ranging from the endless repacking to being filmed at all hours. (Perhaps understandable, given director Andy Curd’s often unflattering angles.) Also lambasted: audiences who refuse to titter at such routines as the one in which Cleese spends a small eternity hacking up phlegm. We get oddly little of the show itself, instead there’s much B-roll filler in fish markets and cheese shops, and an unlovely photomontage of the comic’s battered big toe. (In fairness, he warns us: “If you’ve just had a mouthful of popcorn, look away now.”)

With his murder conviction overturned, the Jamaican star is back performing. He talks about his illness, regrets, and how he felt about dancehall going global while he was behind bars

There’s a moment when I’m interviewing Vybz Kartel in the courtyard of the Four Seasons hotel in Tower Bridge, London, and the UK government emergency alert test rings on my phone. He is panicked by it and jumps up. “Me ready fi run you know!” he says, which has us both laughing.

It is a funny moment, but also a jolting one considering that it arrives in the middle of him discussing the lasting psychological effects of prison. Kartel, 49, real name Adidja Palmer, had been incarcerated across different institutions in Jamaica following his conviction for the 2011 murder of his associate Clive “Lizard” Williams. Following a lengthy appeal process, he was released in July last year after the ruling was overturned by the UK privy council (which is the final court of appeal for Jamaica due to the nation being a former British colony).

Overpowering, explosive and intense, the trio’s contemporary form of psychedelia is rebooted for the troubled, disturbing climate of 2025

From Brighton
Recommended if you like Osees, Ty Segall, the noisier bits of King Gizzard
Up next Currently working on a debut album for release next year.

A city with its own psych festival, and indeed a gig promotion company called Acid Box, Brighton has no shortage of lysergic left-field rock bands. But while most of their local contemporaries tend to the more recumbent end of the psychedelic spectrum, Oral Habit deal in what they call “the ear-rattling psychic dream of choked-up acid punks”, a sound that feels overpowering, explosive and intense: you could say it’s more closely aligned to the disoriented racket of mid-60s freakbeat than the pie-eyed beatitudes of the Summer of Love; equally you could suggest it’s a very contemporary form of psychedelia, rebooted for the troubled, disturbing climate of 2025.

(Young)
After 2018’s mellow Honey, the beloved Swede’s heady comeback pairs production worthy of Daft Punk and Moroder with deep romantic realism

At the end of last year, during her triumphant gig at the O2, Charli xcx brought Robyn out onstage. In a sense, it was just the latest in a series of guest appearances on the Brat tour: a string of collaborators from the album and its ensuing remixes – Lorde, Billie Eilish, Troye Sivan and Addison Rae among them – had turned up at different shows to perform their parts live. But as well as contributing her verse to their remix of 360, Robyn also took centre stage, performing her peerless 2010 single Dancing on My Own. Released when at least some of Charli xcx’s audience were still in nappies, it didn’t sound remotely like a throwback even in the context of a gig based around one of 2024’s most acclaimed and agenda-setting pop albums: the star of the show’s willingness to cede the spotlight to her felt like evidence of Robyn’s influence over contemporary pop.

You can see why the Swedish singer-songwriter carries so much clout among pop stars of the mid-2020s. When she opened an album with a track called Don’t Fucking Tell Me What to Do, she wasn’t joking: after launching as a 90s teen-pop star produced by Max Martin, she rejected the usual strictures placed on female pop – walking away from not one but two major label deals due to lack of artistic control – and seemed intent on following a more idiosyncratic, complex, messy path. She never saw being in the centre of mainstream pop as antithetical to making music with depth, or that touched on contentious issues. Despite the worldwide success of her debut, Robyn Is Here, her second album, My Truth, went unreleased outside Sweden because her US-based label baulked at Giving You Back, a song about an abortion she’d had in 1998: when asked to remove the song, Robyn refused.

(Shelter Press)
The New York poet and multi-instrumentalist uses granular synthesis alongside their ‘dysfluency’ to craft a moving meditation on listening, identity and freedom

In JJJJJerome Ellis’s magical compositions, their stutter is a guiding light. Pauses and repetitions spark new life, new ideas, new possibilities, as Vesper Sparrow explores their “dysfluency” in the context of Black musical traditions. The Grenadian-Jamaican-American artist and former Yale lecturer is heady, intellectual company: in the manner of Alvin Lucier, they gently talk the listener through the sonic and political reverberations of their work. “The stutter … (cc)can be a musical instrument,” Ellis announces, before an exhilarating rush of tiny noises – made from hammered dulcimer, flute, piano, voices – fizz into being.

The Murder at World’s End by Ross Montgomery; The Confessions by Paul Bradley Carr; The Good Nazi by Samir Machado de Machado; Bluff by Francine Toon; The Token by Sharon Bolton

The Murder at World’s End by Ross Montgomery (Viking, £16.99)
The first novel for adults by award-winning children’s author Montgomery is a locked-room mystery set in 1910 on a remote tidal island off the Cornish coast. At Tithe Hall, Lord Conrad Stockingham-Welt is busy instructing his servants to prepare for the apocalyptic disaster he believes will be triggered by the imminent passage of Halley’s comet. The labyrinthine house is a nest of secrets and grudges, harboured by both staff and family members, who include an irascible and splendidly foul-mouthed maiden aunt, Decima. When Lord Conrad is discovered in his sealed study, killed by a crossbow bolt to the eye, she co-opts a new footman to help her find the culprit. With plenty of twists, red herrings and a blundering police officer, this is a terrific start to a series that promises to be a lot of fun.

The world of 1970s Italian cinema is the glossy backdrop for an elegantly wrought but shallow novel

“Ugliness,” noted Pier Paolo Pasolini, “is never completely depressing or repulsive. It contains within it an allegory of hunger and pain, its history is our history, the history of Fascism … It is tragic, but immediate, and for this reason, full of life.” For Pasolini, ugliness was its own kind of truth, such that Rome could lay no claim to being the most beautiful city in the world “if it were not, at the same time, the ugliest”. For some, though, that truth risked becoming “unseeable”. The gaze of the touristic voyeur, said Pasolini, skimmed over slums for the poor “filled with illness, violence, crime, and prostitution”, “convinced of the extraneousness and untimeliness of this sub-proletarian, underdeveloped world”.

Olivia Laing’s second novel, The Silver Book, is a work preoccupied with beauty. Set in the world of Italian cinema in 1974, the book overflows with extravagant film sets, feasts, dazzling costumes. Even Pasolini himself, cruising around in his Alfa Romeo, oozes charisma and allure. But as Pasolini made clear, beauty without its opposite can only ever be incomplete.

A new book, Brothers of the Gun, explores the unlikely friendship between a complicated lawman and a cursed gambler

There’s a famous line from a John Ford western, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Mark Lee Gardner is a leading historian of the old west whose new book, Brothers of the Gun: Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and a Reckoning in Tombstone, concerns two major figures in such history. He doesn’t like Ford’s line.

“Every historian uses it, they just beat it to death,” Gardner says cheerfully, by video from Bozeman, Montana.

This sprawling tale of college kids who summon evil with lifelong consequences is a fantastic read

Six oddball but doughty kids fall into the path of a vast and terrible supernatural evil which has come into our world from the outer limits of darkness. They must spend their lifetimes battling it, facing horror after horror in the process.

This is the plot, roughly, of Stephen King’s novel It (his best; no arguments). It is also the plot, roughly, of King’s son Joe Hill’s new horror doorstopper, in which six friends summon the ancient, infinitely malicious dragon King Sorrow from the Long Dark to help them defeat some baddies. Needless to say, their supernatural ritual backfires.

Activision; PlayStation 4/5, Xbox, PC
With a deafening onslaught of massive shootout set-pieces in exotic locations, an evolving campaign mode and excellent multiplayer offerings, this maximalist instalment of crazed carnage is a hoot

It seems like an anachronism now, in this age of live service “forever games”, that the annual release of a new Call of Duty title is still considered a major event. But here is Black Ops 7, a year after its direct predecessor, and another breathless bombard of military shooting action. This time it is set in a dystopian 2035 where a global arms manufacturer named the Guild claims to be the only answer to an apocalyptic new terrorist threat – but are things as clearcut as they seem?

The answer, of course, is a loudly yelled “noooo!” Black Ops is the paranoid, conspiracy-obsessed cousin to the Modern Warfare strand of Call of Duty games, a series inspired by 70s thrillers such as The Parallax View and The China Syndrome, and infused with ’Nam era concerns about rogue CIA agents and bizarre psy-ops. The campaign mode, which represents just a quarter of the offering this year, is a hallucinogenic romp through socio-political talking points such as psychopathic corporations, hybrid warfare, robotics and tech oligarchies. The result is a deafening onslaught of massive shootout set-pieces in exotic locations, as the four lead characters – members of a supercharged spec-ops outfit – are exposed to a psychotropic drug that makes them relive their worst nightmares. Luckily, they do so with advanced weaponry, cool gadgets and enough buddy banter to destabilise a medium-sized rogue nation. It is chaotic, relentless and stupidly pleasurable, especially if you play in co-operative mode with three equally irresponsible pals.

From Demon Souls to Baby Steps, challenging games keep a certain type of player coming back for more. I wonder why we are such suckers for punishment

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Most people who really love video games have the capacity to be obsessive. Losing weeks of your life to Civilization, World of Warcraft or Football Manager is something so many of us have experienced. Sometimes, it’s the numbers-go-up dopamine hit that hooks people: playing something such as Diablo or Destiny and gradually improving your character while picking up shiny loot at perfectly timed intervals can send some people into an obsessional trance. Notoriously compulsive games such as Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, meanwhile, suck up hours with peaceful, comforting repetition of rewarding tasks.

What triggers obsession in me, though, is a challenge. If a game tells me I can’t do something, I become determined to do it, sometimes to my own detriment. Grinding repetition bores me, but challenges hijack my brain.

Guitar Hero’s controllers let anyone become a star in their own living room – and made the bands featured in the game household names again

It is 20 years since Guitar Hero was launched in North America, and with it, the tools for the everyday gamer to become a rock star. Not literally of course, but try telling that to someone who has nailed Free Bird’s four-minute guitar solo in front of a packed living-room audience.

Developed by Harmonix, published by RedOctane and inspired by Konami’s GuitarFreaks, Guitar Hero gave players a guitar-shaped controller with which to match coloured notes scrolling down the screen in time with a song. Each riff or sequence corresponded to specific notes, creating the feel of a genuine performance.

The hugely anticipated sequel was due to arrive in May of next year but has been pushed back to November 2026

Rockstar Games’s Grand Theft Auto VI, which was due to release on 26 May next year, has been delayed again – this time to the end of 2026. It has now been nearly two years since the game was announced, and more than 12 years since the release of Grand Theft Auto V.

“Grand Theft Auto VI will now release on Thursday, November 19, 2026,” reads Rockstar Games’s statement on X. “We are sorry for adding additional time to what we realize has been a long wait, but these extra months will allow us to finish the game with the level of polish you have come to expect and deserve.”

What is the effervescent new boss at Pitlochry theatre planning for his first season? Huge names, undersung stars – and a King Lear played by ‘the woman who changed my life’

‘Holy shit!” This was the instant response of one venerable theatre critic when Pitlochry Festival theatre sent round embargoed copies of the plan for Alan Cumming’s inaugural season. The man himself sits back in the cavernous workshop behind the theatre building, dapper in a grey plaid suit. “I loved that,” he says gleefully.

When the Hollywood star was announced as the new artistic director of Scotland’s only major rural theatre last September, there was widespread shock – not least that Cumming answered an open recruitment call – followed by feverish speculation over which A-list pals he might charm away from London or New York to perform in Highland Perthshire.

Hambling and Lucas join forces, Roger Fry gets a rare show and an aerial daredevil captures stormy Scotland – all in your weekly dispatch

Maggi Hambling and Sarah Lucas
These two very different artists became friends after meeting at the Colony Room (where else?) and now show together in an encounter of British art generations.
• Sadie Coles HQ, London, 20 November to 24 January

Royal Court theatre, London
Sophia Chetin-Leuner’s drama toggles between digital and physical worlds as it traces a scholar’s grim compulsion

‘It’s not that deep,” Ani’s friend assures her. Who cares if she watches a lot of extreme pornography? But after the light is switched off, Ani can’t get through their impromptu sleepover without masturbating to porn on her phone. The friend wakes up next to her and exits in disgust.

The same scenario has already led Ani, a 30-year-old academic, to break up with her partner. Like Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, she was using porn next to her boyfriend in bed. Fleabag darkly regaled us with her voracious YouPorn habit but Ani, despite her robust reasoning in their argument, is deeply troubled by her behaviour. So, too, is her father when Ani hides away in her old childhood bedroom with her laptop.

Borough Theatre, Abergavenny
Mid Wales Opera continue to survive against the odds, and this small-scale but lively evening is full of wit and strong singing

Leonard Bernstein began composing his satire on a dysfunctional marriage when on honeymoon and, by his own admission, the one-act opera was based on the bickering nature of his parents’ relationship. Sam and Jennie Bernstein were very much alive in 1951 and can’t have been thrilled to know they’d spawned such an unhappy pair. Names were barely disguised: Sam was still named Sam and Jennie only became Dinah because it worked better musically. In Mid Wales Opera’s new staging, it’s the true-to-life element that gives the work its disquietingly contemporary feel, along with Bernstein’s particular combination of punchy word-setting and jazz-inflected score.

MWO’s continued survival against the odds is ample testimony to their gutsy approach and, while this SmallStages touring production is necessarily done on a minimal budget, it manages to realise an authentic 50s vibe as well as the claustrophobia of Sam and Dinah’s marital treadmill. Bernstein’s device of a sassy trio – here sung by Kirsty McLean, Sam Marston and John Ieuan Jones – with lively Greek chorus-style eulogising of the suburban American dream heightens the contrast between the couple’s consumerist aspirations and their all-too-evident personal despair. Director Richard Studer reinforced this by having the trio interact closely with Sam and Dinah, sometimes setting up further tensions, but also bringing a lighter, wittier touch to the dark irony of the narrative.

As she prepares to release No Lube So Rude, her first album in a decade, the Canadian dance-punk icon will answer your questions

Whether crowdsurfing inside a giant condom or singing alongside a vulva-headed dancer, Peaches has left us with some indelible on-stage images over the years – and there are set to be a few new ones as she goes on tour and releases her first album in a decade. As she does so, she’ll join us to answer your questions.

Peaches, AKA Merrill Nisker, emerged from Toronto’s underground scene in the late 1990s – her peers included Feist, her flatmate above a sex shop – but really came to fame in the early 00s after she moved to Berlin. Her debut EP, Lovertits, was a cherished item on the era’s electroclash scene but it was the a joyous, profane dance-punk track Fuck the Pain Away, from her debut album The Teaches of Peaches, that really took her into the mainstream.

Initially drawn by the distinctive architecture, the Brazilian photographer struck lucky on a morning run in Cuba

As a marathon runner and amateur photographer, Demétrio Jereissati has taken to the streets of his home town of Fortaleza, Brazil almost daily for the past two decades. “Each morning I head out early for a run – observing and storing the city in my memory,” Jereissati says. “Every day reveals new angles and unexpected scenes. For me, these early hours are an exercise in truly seeing.”

When he took this image, in 2019, he was visiting Havana, Cuba, with friends. He headed out alone at 6am to run and as he approached the waterfront Malecón promenade, the rising sun cast a glow on the city below, and this building caught his eye. “I was drawn by the distinctive architectural lines and windows, and its condition,” he notes. “All these old, majestic buildings framed people beginning to fill the streets, and classic cars cruising back and forth.”

In this week’s newsletter: From the drama of the Paris break-in to Josh O’Connor’s mud-splattered turn in Kelly Reichardt’s latest, escapades – messy and cinematic – always seem to pull us in

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It was like something out of a movie. On the morning of 19 October, news broke of a heist at the Louvre in Paris: four thieves, disguised as construction workers, had made off with eight “priceless” pieces of French crown jewels from the 19th century. They also took a crown that once belonged to Empress Eugénie, wife of Napoleon III, but for some reason dropped it outside the museum. The haul has since been valued by a prosecutor at around €88m.

The details of the case are astonishing, from the robbery itself – the thieves arrived in broad daylight, using a truck with a mechanical ladder to access the targeted gallery’s window, which they cut through with power tools – to subsequent revelations about the museum’s security measures. Reportedly, the password for its CCTV servers was “Louvre”, the source of much mirth since.

The best of this week’s wildlife photographs from around the world

Whether you go for affordable luxury buys or true indulgence, you can’t go wrong with these presents for pampering

• The best 90s Christmas gifts: 15 nostalgic picks

By the time Christmas rolls around, most of us are ready to drop. There are the parties, the runaround to get everything ready for the big day, and the toll that the cold weather takes on our health and wellness.

So, if you’re planning to treat your loved ones, a gift that will help them feel well and pampered is always a win, especially if you have a beauty junkie on your gift list. From affordable luxuries to truly indulgent gifts, these are my favourite self-care buys.

We asked teens what’s on their festive wishlist, from Jellycats to water bottles, skincare to guitars – so you don’t have to guess

• The best 90s Christmas gifts: 15 nostalgic picks

It can be tricky getting much out of your 13-year-old at the best of times, let alone when it comes to finding out what they might like for a present.

Thankfully, we’ve quizzed a bunch of teens for the best gift ideas so that you don’t have to. So, if there’s a big event approaching, and your child is sticking to “money” when asked what they want, take inspiration from the wishlists of these 13-year-olds.

Want a Christmas tree that stands out? This year’s decorations are wonderfully wacky (and entirely glitter-free)

• The best artificial Christmas trees, tested

Whether it’s outlandish Advent calendars or unexpected food creations (Sainsbury’s mince pie wrap … we’re looking at you), it feels like Christmas gets more and more bonkers every year. Baubles are no exception, with everything from the quirky to the mundane being turned into a trinket to hang on the tree.

So to help you cut through the noise, we’ve rounded up some of the silliest, funnest and most original decorations to deck the halls with, from a paddle-boarding Santa to a tin of Quality Street (and don’t worry – they’re all glitter-free).

Trains and buses were good, but video games were best for a pillow test. Plus, gift guides galore; cosy knitwear; and the 90s are back, back, back!

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Testing a travel pillow’s comfort and fit is easy. Hop on a train. Wear the pillow. Sink snugly into the cushioning and make notes between naps.

The tricky part is testing the supportiveness of a pillow in bumpy motion. You never know when you’re going to encounter rickety transport or a driver who woke up on the wrong side of bed. I needed a reliable way to simulate these occasional challenges.

Ho ho … no tat! 15 sustainable Christmas gifts for young children

The best home gifts: 28 inspiring ideas for Christmas and beyond

The best Christmas gifts for runners: 36 treats to buy the running enthusiast in your life

The best Christmas gifts for pets: 17 pawfect presents for cats, dogs and furry friends

The best umbrellas for staying dry in the wind and rain – tested on a 517m hilltop

‘Made us squeal like excited children’: the best artificial Christmas trees, tested

‘Genuinely authentic’: supermarket curry kits, tasted and rated

We tested various curry kits and found they offer astoundingly good value compared with takeaways. Did somebody say just heat?

• The fair price for 14 everyday items, from cleaning spray to olive oil

Takeaways are so eye-wateringly expensive these days, they’re often even more costly than eating out. Delivery companies charge restaurants obscenely high rates, destroying profit margins, and add even more charges and cost to the consumer. Yes, they’re convenient (itself part of the problem), but I’d rather cook dinner myself and save my cash to eat out once in a while.

One way I stopped ordering so many takeaways – post-pandemic, during which I ordered far too many – was to tell myself that it’s quicker and cheaper to cook something simple, rather than order in. Sometimes, however, we all want something we haven’t cooked ourselves, right? And that’s where curry kits come in. They’re very quick to make up with the simple addition of a few veggies, a can of beans and/or some prawns or chicken from the freezer. OK, there’s still a little washing-up, but that’s a small price to pay.

The table is laid by 12.30pm and we’ve even ironed the napkins. At 1pm the meat is resting. At 1.30pm it’s time to make a phone call …

My wife and I are having people to lunch – another couple; old friends. It’s supposed to be an informal affair, but it’s necessarily been a long time in the planning because, unlike us, our guests are busy people, and hard to nail down.

Besides, if you have weeks to plan a lunch it can’t be that informal – you don’t want to make it seem as if you woke up that morning still having no idea what you were going to cook, even if that is the case.

The past lives again at an unusual immersive hotel housed in the cave dwellings of Italy’s oldest city, once ruled by ancient Greece

Diners fall silent as the haunting sound of the aulos – a double-piped wind instrument from ancient Greece – echoes through the vaulted breakfast room. The musician, Davide, wears a chiton (tunic), as do the guests; the mosaic floor, decorated vases and flicker of flames from the sconces add to the sense that we’ve stepped back in time.

This is Moyseion, a one-of-a-kind hotel-museum in the famous troglodyte city of Matera, in Basilicata, known for its sassi – cave dwellings carved into the limestone mountainside. Every detail has been carefully designed to transport visitors to Magna Graecia, as this area of southern Italy was known when it was ruled by the ancient Greeks from the 8th-6th century BC.

It’s basically a mushroom omelette, but cooked Chinese-style and served on buttered rice

• Share your questions for Meera Sodha, Tim Dowling and Stuart Heritage for a special Guardian Live event on Wednesday 26 November.
  

Egg foo yung is a type of omelette that perhaps began life as a type of egg dish in Guangdong province, but has since the early 1900s been a staple on American and British Chinese takeaway menus. I like to order it at Yau’s in Broughton near Scunthorpe or Chi’s in Kenton in Devon, where it arrives as a small, fluffy, delicate omelette, barely able to hold itself together for the amount of vegetables woven into it. Over rice, it is a form of heaven on a Saturday night. I haven’t tried to replicate that specific joy here, but this is a homespun version, for those Saturdays when neither Chi’s nor Yau’s are within range.

Join Meera Sodha at a special event celebrating the best of Guardian culture on Wednesday 26 November, hosted by Nish Kumar and alongside writers Stuart Heritage and Tim Dowling, with Georgina Lawton hosting You be the judge live. Live in London or via livestream, book tickets here.

Cranbrook, Kent: We have no culture of consuming acorns in Britain, but they have a place in my kitchen, especially in a boom year such as this

I tire of hearing the term “abundance” in relation to autumn, and yet the word unavoidably reverberates as the season unfolds, until even I am tempted to use it. Wild food is everywhere, as is a frenzy of gathering and preservation, a ritualised nod to that which was once essential.

Not every year is the same, though. Several species don’t fruit every autumn, but instead coordinate with others of their kind on so called mast years to produce a bumper crop: a highly evolved tactic that serves to overwhelm the frenzied gatherers, both human and animal, so enough seed will survive to germination.

They have strong Christmas connotations, but these nuts are so versatile, whether you’re eating them hot out of the shell, or with pasta or pheasant. Plus: a burger that lives up to the hype

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

If I’d ever spared a thought for how chestnuts – the sweet, edible kind, not the combative horsey sort – were harvested, I would probably have conjured rosy-cheeked peasants bent low in ancient forests and filling rough-hewn hessian sacks by hand. Back-breaking labour, sure, but so picturesque!

I was delighted, therefore, while on a writing retreat in Umbria last month, to get the opportunity to watch an elderly couple manoeuvre a giant vacuum around their haphazard orchard, followed by their furious sheepdog. The fallen crop was sucked into a giant fan that spat their bristly jackets back out on to the ground, and the nuts then went to be sorted by other family members on a conveyor belt in the barn – the good ones to be sold in the shell, the less perfect specimens swiftly dropped into a bucket for processing.

A wholesome, versatile cake that’s perfect for the colder months – for breakfast or for pudding

I adore a good loaf cake. There’s something about them that’s just inherently cosy and wholesome, and this one in particular is perfect for the colder months, not least because it’s simple and sturdy in the very best way. It’d be right at home with a coffee for breakfast, as well as gently warmed in a pan with butter and served with hot custard on a rainy evening. A real all-rounder.

It’s the ultimate ick: trying to form a deep, lasting connection with a person who outsources original thought

It was a setting fit for a Nancy Meyers film. We were in Oregon wine country, in a rustic-chic barn that reeked of stealth wealth, for a friend’s rehearsal dinner. “This venue is perfect,” I told the groom-to-be. He leaned in as if to tell me a secret: “I found it on ChatGPT.”

I smiled tightly as this man described using generative AI for the initial stages of planning the wedding. (They also hired a human wedding planner.) I responded politely. Inside, however, I resolved: if my future spouse came to me with wedding input courtesy of ChatGPT, there would be no wedding.

Claudine and John both found a new lease of life on dating apps – and now put time aside to do things properly

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

With John there’s never any pressure, unlike in my old relationship

Lynne Besant met Paul as a teenager. After 40 years apart, she discovered she still had feelings for him

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In the mid-60s, my family followed my father’s work to a caravan park in Gladstone, central Queensland. He worked in construction and the sprawling transient accommodation for the hundreds of families who’d relocated to build an aluminium plant became our home. I was going on 16 and sulking about having to change schools, again. Then I met Paul.

Back in those days people made their own fun. We often had huge parties at the caravan park, and Paul, an apprentice electrician, would volunteer to rig up the lighting.

It starts with singing, banter or enthusiastic goal celebrations – and leads to so much more. Six groups of fan friends share how they met

Like so many football fans, I have my own routines and rituals with which I tie together the home games of a league season. Last year, one such routine involved the older gentleman in the seat to my right. I’d nod hello and, above the strains of pre-match music, ask him what he thought of Norwich’s chances – 23 times I asked, and 23 times he replied along the lines of: “We’ll probably get thumped” or “I don’t see where our goals are coming from.” A shred of contempt would be spared for the referee. Always, the referee was known to him and, always, I’d be forewarned that this or that referee was an “arsehole”, a “wanker”, or – once – “an arsehole and a wanker”.

This neighbour of mine was a retired engineer, a Norfolk boy, and a follower of both first team and academy, home and away. He was just one of thousands with a season ticket at the back of Carrow Road’s lower Barclay stand: a Saturday afternoon companion, a stranger at the start of the last season who became a little less strange as the matches went by. I was able to glean, for example, that after decades of loyal (if pessimistic) fandom, he would soon be moving to Yorkshire with his partner, unable to ignore his dreams of the Dales. He had already decided that he wouldn’t be renewing his season ticket. My first year in this part of the ground was his last.

In a buyer’s market, sellers are being more realistic on prices – we look at how to get your strategy right

When Alan Murphy* and his wife spotted their semi-detached house in Brighton, they immediately saw it as a candidate to become their “forever home”. The three-bedroom property, with a garage, a garden and space to extend, had an asking price of £575,000. But much of that, they felt, was based on its potential rather than its present condition.

“Every room in the house needed to be ripped apart and redone,” says Murphy, a public relations executive. “The garden was borderline unusable.”

Campaigners claim AI algorithms are behind hefty increases in renewal quotes for home and car cover

Shortly after her husband died, Kay Lawley* received renewal quotes from the couple’s home and car insurance provider, Ageas. She told the company of his death and was stunned that the quotes then increased by up to 15%.

Her car insurance quote went from £301 to £348, while her home and contents policy rose by almost 12% – from £1,039 to £1,161.

You don’t need acting experience and rarely have to say anything … but being flexible can result in a lucrative side hustle

If you have ever dreamed of seeing yourself on screen – or just want a fun way to earn additional cash – working as an extra (or “supporting artist”) can be a lucrative side hustle.

Last year, romance fraud rose 52% for over-55s in the UK. Victims often feel they’ve made a terrible mistake and are at fault – but really, they’ve been expertly groomed by criminals

In total, over two and a half years, Elizabeth gave £100,000 to “Sam”, the “man” she met online, who she thought she loved and loved her back. She emptied her savings account, pawned her late mother’s jewellery and took out bank loans. She became so overdrawn that she could barely afford food and lived mainly on soup.

She had sent this money, for all sorts of reasons, to a man she’d never met. The first was a $500 Amazon voucher because Sam, a consultant, was out on an oil rig and needed to buy a manual. Later, the rig required a new part; then the tanker transporting the oil ran into problems, too. She gave money to Sam’s daughter who was trapped in an abusive marriage. Finally, when Sam became ill, Elizabeth was contacted by his doctor and began paying Sam’s medical bills. “When this doctor messaged to tell me that Sam was in a coma, I remember thinking he had such a strange, unprofessional turn of phrase,” says Elizabeth. “He said, ‘I’m sorry to spill the beans.’” She breaks into laughter. “A doctor! How could I have been so gullible?”

While they can be seen as a luxury, massages are often part of healthcare – here’s how they affect physical and mental health

Massages can feel great. But are they actually good for you?

In one study, researchers observed that 8.5% of Americans reported using massage for “overall health” in the 2022 National Health Interview Survey. However, definitions of health tend to vary widely, explains the study’s first author, Jeff Levin, an epidemiologist and distinguished professor at Baylor University. For instance, does it refer to physical health, mental health or both? That makes it tough to study, but may explain why it has such broad appeal, Levin explains.

Influencers tend to give hair care advice based on vibes. We asked medical professionals

Trying to grow your hair? If so, here’s what social media suggests: shampoo daily; don’t shampoo daily; avoid sulfates; embrace sulfates; use protein treatments; absolutely don’t use protein treatments; trim your hair regularly, but not too regularly.

Is that helpful?

After a bereavement and world events left me struggling to cope, I tried meditation, yoga and therapy. But it was my local sauna that helped me find peace and purpose

Earlier this year, I was approaching burnout. I felt as though my career as a freelance journalist was on permanent life-support, I was juggling a hectic family life, and I was consumed with worry about a world seemingly hellbent on self-destruction. I was struggling, too, with the death of a close family member and an old school friend. Grieving had become a default status. Despite support from family and loved ones, I needed to find a way to cope with this nearly overwhelming sense of loss.

I tried meditation, yoga and therapy, which all helped. Then I heard of Community Sauna Baths, a not-for-profit project in London designed to make saunas accessible and affordable for everyone. From my very first visit, I felt something change. A sense of peace came over me. It immediately felt like a sanctuary, a pocket of calm in the chaotic city that also allowed me to soothe this churning sadness and release some of the bottled-up angst.

Sweat levels can be misleading, and factors such as age, sex, humidity and even your clothes all make a difference

It seems like common sense: if you leave a fitness class looking as though you’ve just ridden a log flume, you’ve probably worked harder than if you’re barely glistening. But that’s not always the case, says Adam Collins, a researcher from the Centre for Nutrition, Exercise and Metabolism at the University of Bath.

Sweating, he says, is part of the thermoregulation process. When your body temperature rises, it signals to your brain to sweat in order to cool you down. As the sweat evaporates, it helps regulate your core temperature.

A look at the editor-in-chief’s Vogue covers from her first radical combination in 1988 to her final ‘weird’ shoot

During her 37-year tenure as editor-in-chief of American Vogue, Anna Wintour has presided over more than 400 covers. December 2025’s, on newsstands this week, will prove her last before she steps away to focus on roles as Vogue’s global editorial director and chief content officer at Condé Nast.

The cover is certainly memorable: an image of the actor Timothée Chalamet photographed by Wintour’s long-term collaborator Annie Leibovitz in a Celine white polo neck, long cream coat and embroidered jeans, standing on a “planet” with a backdrop of a star-filled nebula provided by Nasa.

Closeup of studded stilettos in trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2 causes fashion debate on social media

Posting the first trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2 on Instagram on her birthday this week, the film’s star Anne Hathaway captioned the video with “it’s everybody’s birthday”, prompting copious comments featuring emojis of flames, hearts and – of course – the red shoe now associated with the film’s poster.

But with the trailer circulating on social media, it’s the shoes that have become the focus of fashion debate – and not in a good way.

Anchoring your look around a pair of statement boots is a winning winter formula. These styling tips will make getting dressed a doddle

For Black adolescents, a recent study found negative experiences around race in online spaces outweighed the good

People of color have long critiqued social media filters for perpetuating Eurocentric beauty standards. In one TikTok video, a young Black woman who used the app’s glow filter was vexed that her brown eyes transformed to blue. In another video, a user wrote that she liked a face-altering filter until she realized that it generated the appearance of a smaller nose. Now, new research shows that such filters, along with a collection of other race-related online experiences, can negatively affect Black adolescents’ sleep and ability to concentrate on schoolwork the following day.

A new study published in the Jama Network that looked at Black adolescents’ exposure to online racism – including traumatic videos of police violence, online racial discrimination and racial bias perpetuated by AI – can cause increased anxiety and depression. On average, Black adolescents experienced six race-related online experiences everyday – 3.2 of which were online racism, and 2.8 of which were positive.

Travel back in time at a folly in Scotland, a parador in Spain and a German castle
• Tell us about your favourite church in Europe – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

My husband and I stayed in a beautiful 500-year-old Venetian palazzo for just €100 for a double room. The exterior of Palazzo Abadessa, tucked away in the sleepy backstreets of the Cannaregio district, is low key enough, but the grandeur and opulence begin to hit your senses as you explore. First we strolled through the lush ornamental garden, then the huge entrance hall decorated with frescoes and Renaissance paintings going back to the golden age of Venice, lit by glittering Murano chandeliers. The reception area is furnished with an antique velvet armchair, perfect for sipping a prosecco or Venetian spritz. Back in the 16th century, the original owners provided Venice with two of its doges, and today the stone corridors and high-ceilinged rooms have a classy, noble air, as if the ghosts of Caravaggio or Tintoretto might appear any moment and begin painting. Breakfast of cappuccino and croissants in the courtyard served by the friendly owners was a delightful way to start the day.
April

With affordable rooms, the Hide hotel makes a great base to explore one of England’s most famous stately homes, as well as the glorious Peak District national park

Nothing quite prepares you for your first glimpse of Chatsworth. As we turn into the drive, the house reveals itself, a handsome limestone edifice framed by a steep ridge of wooded hills, ablaze with autumn colours, and fronted by rolling parkland where sheep graze on the riverbanks. Despite its bucolic aspect, this is a landscape that has been carefully honed and crafted over centuries by successive generations of the Cavendish family, who have lived in this beautiful corner of Derbyshire for more than 450 years.

Some of the most significant alterations were made in the 19th century by the 6th Duke of Devonshire (also known as “the Bachelor Duke”), an extravagant character who had the estate village demolished and rebuilt over the brow of a hill because he felt it was spoiling the view from the house. His perfectionism paid off; as the long queue of cars snaking up to the ticket office on a beautiful October morning attests, Chatsworth is one of the most popular stately homes in the UK today, welcoming more than 600,000 visitors a year.

Visiting the city hosting the Cop30 conference brings with it questions about farming, tourism and sustainability

In an open-air market in the Brazilian city of Belém, I had a problem. It was breakfast time and I wanted a drink, but the long menu of fruit juices was baffling. Apart from pineapple (abacaxi) and mango (manga), I’d never heard of any of the drinks. What are bacuri, buriti and muruci? And what about mangaba, tucumã and uxi? Even my phone was confused. Uxi, it informed me, is a Zulu word meaning “you are”.

But then I started to recognise names that I’d heard on my six-week voyage from the Andes to the mouth of the Amazon. There was cupuaçu. I’d picked one of those cacao-like pods in a Colombian village about 1,900 miles (3,000km) back upriver. And even further away, in Peru, there was açaí: a purple berry growing high up on a wild palm. The Amazon, it seems, is vast and varied, but also remarkably similar along its astonishing length.

It’s on every prix fixe menu in France, but which restaurant serves up the best incarnation in the capital? I stomped and chomped my way across the city to find out

I once ate seven bowls of ragù bolognese over the course of a single weekend. I was in Bologna, to be fair, and on a mission – to get to the bottom of spag bol (yes, I know it should be served with tagliatelle). A few years earlier, I did something similar with a Polish stew called bigos (a sort of hunter’s stew). I wanted to learn about its variations, its nuances, and I wondered what you could find out about a place if you dived into one dish in particular. In the case of bigos, I gleaned that the Polish are prepared to wait a long time for things to be done.

My friend Tom suffers from a similar obsession (just last month he dropped a dozen scotch eggs on a bank holiday Monday) and so when he said he was heading to Paris to eat multiple steak frites, I wasn’t exactly surprised. He wasn’t just going for a laugh, mind you: Tom runs a pub in London called the Carlton Tavern, and had come to the opinion that his steak and chips could do with a bit of zhooshing up. Hence the recce in Paris. But a man travelling all that way to examine meat and potatoes cannot do so alone, so I volunteered my services.

From Brick, Chancery and Hangar to Flat Holm, Lundy and the Wolves, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which country music legend was almost killed by an ostrich in 1981?
2 Sarah Mullally has been named as the 106th what?
3 What first met at Thingvellir in Iceland in 930?
4 In the power industry, what is EfW?
5 Lacryma Christi wine comes from vineyards on which mountain?
6 What BBC sitcom has been running for 19 years?
7 Whose report led to the adoption of all-seater stadiums in the UK?
8 Which chess piece was originally known as the vizier?
What links:
9 Brick; Chancery; Hangar; Leather; Park; Pudding?
10 Sierra de Urbión; Tordesillas; Zamora; Porto?
11 Son of Cush; ninth musical variation; maritime patrol aircraft; Iranian embassy siege?
12 Caldey; Denny; Flat Holm; Lundy; Stert; The Wolves?
13 Boxing; chariot racing; discus; javelin; long jump; pankration; wrestling?
14 James Bond; Alec Leamas; Alden Pyle; Adolf Verloc?
15 Cate Blanchett; Penélope Cruz; Diane Keaton; Mira Sorvino; Dianne Wiest?

This back yard creature must be kept under constant chemical constraint, or it risks becoming more liability than asset

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I’ll call him Bruce. He’s any of the 3.1 million Australians living in a house with a pool or spa. Over my long career in hardware, listening to the woes of so many Bruces, I’ve discovered that owning a pool is not all fun and bubbles at cocktail hour.

In the beginning, it wasn’t so bad. On first viewing his bayside property, Bruce already believed the agent’s claim that by far the most desirable addition to any home is a pool. It did look nice, glistening blue in the back yard. And weren’t the kids rapt. But now, years later, Bruce isn’t.

Quizmasters are banning smart devices, using dedicated apps and finding plain old honesty can combat trivial offences

Who is older, Gary Numan or Gary Oldman? If you know the answer to this question (see below), you are probably one of hundreds of thousands of Brits who attend a pub quiz every week.

As a nation of committed trivia buffs, it was unsurprising that news of a quizmaster in Manchester outing a team for cheating was leapt on. Just where, we asked, is the special place in hell reserved for those quizzers who take a sneaky look at their phones under the table?

Alan, 87, has devoted his life to trying to defy death, and has promised his wife, Sylvia, that they will be cryogenically preserved upon death to be reunited in the future. However, when Sylvia dies all too soon, Alan unexpectedly falls in love with another woman and is forced to reconsider his future plans. An extraordinary love story, told with humour and tenderness about how we deal with loss, our own mortality and the prospect of eternal life.

Botched briefing operation was proof to many that PM is leading an ineffectual No 10. How did it go so wrong?

If there’s one thing the Labour party can agree on this week, it is that efforts by Keir Starmer’s allies to shore up his position backfired spectacularly.

By briefing journalists that he would face down any challenge and accusing Wes Streeting of leading an advanced plot to overthrow him, figures around the prime minister managed only to expose the weakness of his position.

Suspension of intelligence cooperation in Caribbean is unusual move and there is potential for political fallout

• Explainer: is US preparing to attack Venezuela?

It is an intelligence relationship that predates even the Five Eyes: the UKUSA alliance that began, naturally enough, in secret in 1946. But this week the strain of trying to be the closest security ally to a freewheeling White House has begun to show.

Britain, it emerged, had quietly suspended intelligence cooperation with the US in the Caribbean because London does not consider the deadly US military campaign against ships accused of drug trafficking to be in line with international law.

Based on the largest poll of supporters yet, these charts and maps show five distinct groups that could hand Reform a majority

• The real Reform voters have been revealed – it’s a slapdash coalition Farage will struggle to hold together

Research based on a poll of 11,000 Reform UK supporters, the biggest survey of its kind, tells us more about who is intending to vote for the party than has been previously known.

The in-depth polling analysis from Hope Not Hate reveals a voter coalition that stretches from struggling workers and frustrated graduates to wealthy retirees, in places from Hitchin to Runcorn.

We want to hear people’s experiences of getting money advice from generative AI chatbot tools

Tech companies are pumping billions into the growth of artificial intelligence, with OpenAI this month signing a $38bn (£29bn) cloud computing deal with Amazon as part of a $3tn datacentre spending spree.

But as people increasingly use AI chatbots – such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot, Meta AI and Perplexity – for advice and task completion, some observers have concerns about misinformation, hullicinations and irresponsible advice.

We want to hear from Brits living overseas on their views on UK politics today

The last decade in British politics has been marked by instability and fragmentation, with six prime ministers in ten years, and Nigel Farage’s Reform party now leading in the polls.

A study this month from King’s College London and Ipsos found that 84 percent of people now say the UK feels divided, up from 74 percent in 2020.

What prompted this change, and how has it affected you?

Are you bored of AI slop dominating news feeds? Fed up of “enshittification”? Tired out by “advice pollution”? Done with polarising content? Giving up social media and rediscovering the joy of boredom?

One study shows that time spent on social media peaked in 2022 and has gone into decline since then, according to an analysis conducted for the Financial Times by digital audience insights company GWI.

Ahead of a special Guardian Live event on 26 November, you can share your questions for Tim Dowling, Stuart Heritage and Meera Sodha

It has been a year of small pleasures and big opinions. Is Kim Kardashian’s legal drama All’s Fair really the worst TV show of all time? What are the best (and worst) vegan cheeses? And 20 years after they first hit the shelves, five-toed shoes are apparently having a big fashion moment. But what is it like to wear them in public?

As the year draws to a close, Guardian Live invites you to a special event with columnist Tim Dowling, film and TV writer Stuart Heritage, and cook and author Meera Sodha. They will join comedian, broadcaster, and occasional Guardian contributor Nish Kumar for an evening of sharp observations, seasonal reflections and behind-the-scenes stories from the Guardian.

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The Cop30 climate summit, blackouts in Kyiv, immigration raids in Chicago and super-typhoon Fung-wong: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists