Nigel Farage’s constituency takes in genteel resorts and one of England’s poorest villages. With a snap byelection approaching, what do the residents want from the Reform UK leader – or the bin who’s challenging him?

‘If it’s the Tin Man, then I suppose I’ll vote for Nigel,” says a Clacton resident, a retiree on a slow stroll towards the seafront, when I ask whom she will vote for in the forthcoming byelection. “I would sooner have Farage than the Tin Man!” As political slogans go, it is as good as any.

The sun is beating down, but the sky is hazy, which accurately describes the mood of this constituency since the Reform UK leader quit as MP for Clacton on 7 July, forcing a byelection that sent shock waves through Westminster and confusion through Clacton. I am spending a couple of days here with the photographer Andy Hall, traversing the coast between Jaywick to the west and Walton-on-the-Naze to the east. An incessant wind is blowing from the North Sea, sending waves crashing on to Clacton beach. Nicky Friday, who at 11am is already handing out 99s from her aptly named kiosk, Seabreeze, isn’t exactly exercised by the Reform UK leader’s latest gambit. “This is going to sound terrible, but I’m so busy running this business and working here,” she says. “I don’t really do politics.”

Nicky Friday, who owns and runs the Seabreeze kiosk in Clacton

Handful of ticketholders will be selected at random for up-close visits to ancient site throughout August

Trips to Stonehenge can be a little hectic. Tens of thousands of people turn up to celebrate summer and winter solstices and most other days the site is a place of bustle, excited conversation and selfie action.

But throughout August, English Heritage is offering visitors the chance to win some guaranteed solitude within the hulking stones.

The Tories and Reform had it easy when Keir Starmer was self-destructing – but a new PM with ideas exposes how vacant the opposition has become

Andy Burnham’s recollections of Britain in the 1970s must be pretty hazy. He was nine when the decade ended. Kemi Badenoch, born in 1980, can remember nothing. Lacking first-hand experience, the Conservative leader evokes the turmoil of a bygone era with cautionary zeal borrowed from an older generation. In a speech last week, she accused the new prime minister of pining for “endless strikes, rubbish not being collected, bodies not being buried, inflation at 25% and a chancellor going cap-in-hand to the IMF”.

This is more incantation than argument, a ritual fondling of beads on the Tory rosary. It is a symptom of a leader under stress, affirming her faith in Our Lady Margaret Thatcher and warding off socialist devils. Burnham has done nothing to support the claim that his government is a 70s tribute act, unless you count the appointment of a man named Healey as chancellor and the imposition of price controls on buses.

Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist

As extreme heat claims the lives of workers in India’s poorest areas, many fear the true mortality rate is being dangerously undercounted

The morning air was already hot and cloying when Palli Mahalaxmi rose at about 5am. It was May, and in the summer heatwave that had engulfed this corner of southern India, even night-time did not give the villagers respite.

A single ceiling fan hung above Mahalaxmi, her husband and her son as they slept in a small windowless room made of thick concrete. Mahalaxmi set about preparing breakfast, and the family ate together from steel plates, just as they did every morning. Sweat dripped from their foreheads as the sun rose higher.

If you thought he was just a shady rule-dodging reprobate, the Fifa boss’s latest 15-page Instagram rant might make you think again

I hope you have found time to enjoy Fifa president Gianni Infantino’s 15-page Instagram meltdown about his World Cup. The last time I saw this many defiant words, they were inked on someone sitting cross-legged on the floor of a Salvadoran supermax prison.

Infantino has been clapping back at his haters – putting them on blast, in the parlance of our times – and on this evidence seems mesmerisingly close to picking out a Chicano script font and getting STILL I RISE needled across his corporate clavicles. Right next to the ones reading THROUGH THE FIRE, UNBREAKABLE and BUILT DIFFERENT.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Ukrainian and Israeli leaders converge on Washington with criss-crossing fortunes, but knowing they can count on little from US counterpart

The converging visits of Benjamin Netanyahu and Volodymyr Zelenskyy to Washington offer an unusually eloquent snapshot of a world in turmoil, unmoored from decades-old certainties.

Some things remain the same. The US is still an almighty military and economic power and for both foreign visitors, a White House encounter with Donald Trump is critical to their governments and the wars they are fighting.

‘There’s only one group really to blame, and that’s my generation of politicians,’ the prime minister says, as he reveals final recommendations will be out by summer 2027

Andy Burnham is speaking now.

In a reference to how he started campaing for social care reform almost two decades ago, he says it is good to see faces in the room “who’ve been on this journey with me for a long, a long time”.

When someone in your family is receiving care, you look at everything through new eyes, don’t you? You notice things that maybe you didn’t notice before because you watch it so closely and so carefully.

And I’ve just been really overwhelmed by their care, the skill in what they do, the professionalism.

Can I just remind everybody that nobody thought we could get everybody in off the streets?

So we can do difficult in this country and we can do it well.

Oil price spikes after flare-up of fighting and claimed Iranian attacks on three tankers in strait of Hormuz

The US military said it knocked down an Iranian missile barrage and worked with Saudi Arabia forces to strike sites in Iraq that Tehran-backed militias have used to launch attacks in recent days. The strikes on Wednesday killed at least 20 members of a former paramilitary alliance that includes pro-Iran groups.

In what Washington cast ⁠as “an attempted surprise ⁠attack” by Tehran, Iran had launched multiple ballistic missiles at US forces in the Middle East, shattering a brief pause in fighting. Iran’s target was a US base in Jordan, Axios cited a US official as saying.

Emergency workers are continuing their search for survivors in southern Japan after yesterday’s powerful earthquake

• ‘Race against time’: Japan earthquake death toll rises as rescue teams search for missing

Here is a video showing local media reports of the devastation left behind in Japan after yesterday’s earthquake, as the search for survivors continues:

The Japanese ministry of defence has shared drone footage showing the devastation inside the Aeon shopping centre.

Authorities fear progress in containing the fires in the Gironde and Madrid regions may be set back by temperatures expected to hit the low 40s

While the situation near Madrid is gradually improving, the Spanish media are reporting that a separate fire near The Vall d’Uixó in the Castellón province is still spreading uncontrollably.

RTVE reported that it remains out of control after burning nearly 10,000 hectares across 81 kilometers, forcing authorities to evacuate some 10,000 people.

‘Racist bias’ overestimating ages in Home Office’s facial-recognition software will lead to solo children being housed with adults, says Human Rights Network

Flawed and racialised models that underpin the AI-powered age-detection systems to be introduced by the British government will endanger children, rights groups and children’s charities have warned.

Urging ministers to reverse plans to introduce facial age-estimation technology to screen migrants, critics have warned that black children arriving from conflict zones are at risk of being of thrust into the adult system.

Adopting organic free-range model in UK could lead to greenhouse emissions equivalent to 2,316,000 tonnes of CO2, study suggests

Organic eggs are twice as bad for the climate as eggs from chickens living in cages, research suggests.

According to the study, switching the UK’s entire egg production to an organic free-range model would lead to greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 2,316,000 tonnes of CO2 (tCO2e), while production through a fully caged system would emit 1,184,000 tCO2e.

Green party leader says post was ‘inadvertent mistake’ after Reform UK accuses him of ‘inciting murder’

The Green party leader, Zack Polanski, has said he made an “inadvertent mistake” by sharing an Instagram post of a man wearing a T-shirt featuring an image of a guillotine and the phrase “we’re only making plans for Nigel”, but he repeatedly said he would not apologise to Nigel Farage.

Polanski told the BBC’s Newsnight programme he had accepted a request to collaborate with a photographer on Instagram, with the first photo in a set of 20 showing himself, and the fifth showing the T-shirt.

Energy regulator’s plan would mean upfront fees or financial security via letters of credit, bonds or cash deposits

Datacentre projects in Britain will be forced to put down significant upfront fees to secure an energy connection under proposals to ease an electricity grid logjam.

Ofgem, the sector watchdog, said there were 315 datacentres currently queueing to connect up, representing 73GW of demand. This is almost 30GW above the entire country’s peak energy demand of 45GW.

Amid slowing streaming market, Netflix still produces hits that help make it default service for quarter of Britons

Netflix is neck-and-neck with the BBC as the default service Britons turn to when they switch on their TV, according to research.

The home of Adolescence and KPop Demon Hunters is now the first port of call for 26% of viewers, Ofcom found. The national broadcaster is narrowly behind, as the go-to for 25% of audiences..

Experts say lower-severity charges for American service personnel are deepening traumatic impact on survivors

American service personnel accused of rape on British soil are being charged with lesser offences by their military courts, a discrepancy that experts say is deepening the traumatic impact on survivors long after verdicts are passed.

There are more than 12,000 personnel stationed in US military bases across the UK, most of them in England. Although UK law enforcement has primary jurisdiction over crimes that occur when personnel are off duty, local police often choose to cede authority to the American military.

Rescuers pulling people from the wreckage in southern Japan in a haunting repeat of disaster that struck 10 years ago

• Japan earthquake – latest updates

• ‘Race against time’: Japan earthquake death toll rises as rescue teams search for missing

“There was a voice coming from the collapsed house, and I could see a hand,” Tomohide Nagata, a volunteer firefighter, told the Kumamoto Nichinichi Shimbun. “One of our senior members crawled in and pulled him out. He was bleeding from the head, but I’m so glad he survived.”

Nagata had heard a noise coming from one completely flattened home in the rural town of Hikawa, close to the epicentre of Tuesday’s 6.8-magnitude earthquake in southern Japan. The town was one of the areas hardest hit, with numerous older houses collapsing. Terrified of the ongoing aftershocks, many residents spent Tuesday night in their cars outside Hikawa’s town hall, where staff distributed food and drinks.

At least 135 medics in Lebanon have been killed by Israel’s bombardment since March

• From Ukraine and Sudan to Gaza: why have hospitals become a target of war?

Moustapha Hamze can see his house from the hospital where he works; from a distance, he tries to make out if it has been damaged. The surgeon heads to the balcony every third explosion to make sure his home was not the one targeted.

His house, on the hillside village of Kfar Roummane, is about a five-minute drive from the hospital where he works in the southern Lebanon town of Nabatieh. But despite a ceasefire in the Israel-Lebanon war, he cannot return. The last time he tried, he was met by an Israeli drone that first dropped a stun grenade, and then launched a bomb about 10 metres away. He was lucky to escape with his life.

As Labour enjoy a ‘Burnham bounce’, post by Green leader that appeared to welcome violence against Nigel Farage has left some supporters bemused

It is just coincidence that a very public mishap by Zack Polanski arrived at the same time as new polls showed Labour in the lead. But it did neatly illustrate the point that while Andy Burnham is enjoying a political honeymoon, the Green leader’s now seems over.

This is not to say the Green party in England and Wales is too worried about the arrival of a new prime minister, or that there is necessarily much evidence yet that they should be.

Ibrahim al-Dabba continues to care for his colonies despite losing his home and most of his hives and equipment

Each morning, Ibrahim Naji al-Dabba climbs to the roof of a damaged residential tower in Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighbourhood, where rows of beehives sit surrounded by shattered concrete and the scars of war. The rooftop is far from an ideal place for beekeeping, but for the 49-year-old father of seven, it is the only place where he can continue the profession that has sustained his family for decades.

Before the war, al-Dabba owned more than 400 beehives spread across eastern Gaza. His apiaries, equipment, storage facilities, and four-wheel-drive vehicle allowed him to manage a thriving beekeeping business that supported his family. Today, almost everything he built over years of work has disappeared.

Ibrahim Naji al-Dabba, 49, (in green) working with his sons. He was displaced from the Shuja’iyya area, east of Gaza City to Tel al- to the south

How do you choose what makes the front page? How hard is genAI making the job of the picture editor? Fiona Shields is the Guardian’s global head of photography, overseeing all the images across our websites and print publications. She’ll be taking your questions at 3pm on Wednesday BST

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Join us as 3pm on Wednesday 29 July, as the Guardian’s Fiona Shields answers your questions about the art, sciences (and logistics) of covering the world through images.

Over the last few years Fiona has worked closely with photographers covering the wars in Ukraine, the Middle East and beyond; the seismic political shifts in the US and UK as well as thousands of daily events (captured brilliantly in our daily news photo galleries).

Please post your questions for Fiona now.

How did an album that began life in 1984 – fusing disco, folk, synth-pop and Chinese opera – end up as ‘one of 2026’s most thrilling releases’? And why does its creator call himself Nirosta Steel?

‘It’s kind of mind-bending,” says 69-year old Steven Hall. For the last three years, the Scottish musician has been living with his lawyer husband a few hours south of Chicago, driving an Uber for some additional income. Now, suddenly, he is being lauded by critics for his double LP My Skyscraper, released last month under the name Nirosta Steel. Compiling material recorded between 1984 and 2025, it charts a sonic landscape through disco, folk and synth-pop with detours into Chinese opera and ecclesiastical a cappella. Pitchfork called it “an archival triumph and one of the year’s most thrilling new releases”.

It all came about when a label head, impressed with Nirosta Steel’s 2014 album Cool Fire, asked Hall if he had any more music. “He didn’t know what he was in for,” says Hall. The couple of dozen unreleased songs he shared spanned four decades of eclectic musicianship, and revealed a globe-trotting life and career that intersects with experimental icons such as Arthur Russell and Allen Ginsberg. Now My Skyscraper seems poised to admit Hall into that rarified pantheon of historically salvaged artists whose time has belatedly arrived.

Breakin’ the Cycle had celeb performers who hoped it would go to Cannes. Until they realised its creators were still running a drug gang while filming – and it all went very wrong

The story of the making of the 2005 British film Breakin’ the Cycle is surely more compelling than the film itself. Nobody can say for sure, because a rough cut was confiscated by the Met police and the raw footage was considered lost. But the film’s origins and subsequent unravelling is extraordinary. Two of Hackney’s most notorious drug dealers try to go straight and become movie producers. It’s a strange combination of comedic chaos, an accidental stabbing, drug money and shootouts, big dreams of making a different life through art, and, ultimately, tragedy. The film-makers had to navigate real-life gang warfare, and an elitist, perhaps racist, film industry.

The cast included the rapper Lethal Bizzle, and Bradley McIntosh from the pop group S Club 7. If McIntosh was desperately trying to escape his clean tween pop image, he wasn’t the only one trying to escape something, though the stakes were far higher for others. Colin Browne, the leader of the Hackney gang Love of Money, wrote the film while serving a prison sentence for cocaine smuggling, and directed it; he had plans to take it to the Cannes film festival. Browne would be killed shortly after filming had finished.

Forget soggy sandwiches! From pocket-size burners to charcoal cookers for a wonderfully smoky flavour, these stoves came top in our tests

• The best camping mattresses and sleeping mats

A reliable camping stove makes all the difference to food alfresco, allowing you to cook a stew in the evening and then warm up in the morning with a hot cup of coffee. The great thing about these stoves is that they’re essentially portable hobs, meaning anything you can cook on the stove at home can be whipped up in the great outdoors by sticking a pot or frying pan on top.

There’s a dizzying variety on offer, ranging from dinky ultralight burners that fit into your pocket to big stove-tops with multiple hobs, grills, wind protectors and a lid – the latter are like bringing along your cooker from home. Most run on gas, such as propane and butane, although I’ve also included charcoal options for traditional types. I’ve tested 20 of the best portable stoves, for everyone from ultralight wild campers to families who need to cook dinners for the masses.

Underground clinic’s fate hangs in the balance after government withdrew state funding

For most people, spending hours deep underground in darkness would seem an odd prescription for better health.

Yet every morning, a handful of Armenians descend 250 metres beneath the earth into an active salt mine where they spend six hours in cavernous chambers carved from rock salt, hoping the air below ground will help them breathe more easily.

Five years ago, I wrote an open letter asking climate scientists to speak out against fossil fuels. Now governments are in retreat, it is surely time to act

• France and Spain race to contain huge wildfires before fresh heatwave begins

Such is the astonishing scale of the wildfires burning at the gates of Bordeaux and Madrid, that if they had happened 20 – even 10 – years back, they may well have shocked the world into taking action on the climate crisis. But like the proverbial frog in a pot of slowly heating water, we have become inured; not only to the ever more devastating impacts of climate breakdown, but increasingly to the actions needed to bring global heating to heel.

Even as more than 35,000 wildfires rage across the surface of our world, and as we continue to rewind our planet’s climate so it resembles hotter episodes from its distant past, governments and trading blocs are very deliberately turning away from climate action.

Bill McGuire is professor emeritus of geophysical and climate hazards at University College London and author of The Fate of the World: a History and Future of the Climate Crisis

The queer community has lost resources and protection due to decisions made by the people now mouthing solidarity in public

It feels like a well-rehearsed script. First come the flowers, then the pious statements. One after another, mainstream German politicians have lined up to claim that the attack on Berlin Pride last weekend was an attack on “all of us”, “our values” and “our society”.

Except it was not. This atrocity in which a van was rammed into the crowd was, first and foremost, an attack on queer people. A vulnerable community that has been fighting for its rights for many decades; that, in recent years and all over the world, has increasingly been targeted by conservative forces.

Modern weddings seem to have become all about the spectacle – although, if you do take the opulent route, I still want to come

Am I allowed to start a column about weddings by saying I don’t know exactly what I think about weddings and marriage in general? Well let’s see.

One thing I do know: I really like attending weddings. I love to go as a valued guest, to see close friends in love and watch dads I have known for many years gruffly and fearfully breach the dancefloor. But I also love to go as a totally minor guest (the better for people-watching) and collect anecdotes about who, from the various overlapping families, hates who. People will just tell you these things, especially if your presence is quite random. I like to see the freshly single sporting their revenge dresses and haircuts and physiques. I like to witness and partake in the abundance of flirting. I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad time at a wedding.

Rachel Connolly is a writer and the author of the novel Lazy City

The task now is to stop mourning the old order and build the foundations of the new multipolar world

America is in decline. And so is Pax America: the American-led world order. While there are many genuine dangers of American decline, there has never been a better chance to say clearly how much the unipolar order always left to be desired, and to imagine a multipolar world that might secure peace better than the old order ever did.

Idealizing the American peace since 1945 and its “rules-based international order” – a phrase that came into common use only decades later, but never mind – is a misguided response to our current situation.

The US vice-president is facing a barrage of allegations and complaints from inside and outside the Republican ranks. Good news for Marco Rubio – but not for the rest of the world

There’s something a bit off about JD Vance. And I mean that literally: the vice-president has been snacking on sauerkraut and other fermented foods as part of a weight-loss regime. Health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr got a number of Trump officials, including Vance, on to the diet, and is thrilled with the results. “Within 20 days I lost 20 pounds,” Kennedy said at an event in Michigan last month. “JD Vance is also on the diet and you can see how different he looks.” Dunno about that: still looks like a naked opportunist to me.

If you want to get into Donald Trump’s good books, improving your looks is a surefire way to do so. According to MS Now, the president is loving Vance’s svelte new figure; it’s helped propel him back into Trump’s good graces. Which is lucky for him because he doesn’t have many other fans. They may be full of beneficial bacteria, but everyone around Vance seems to hate his guts.

Shots fired in the Channel are all in a day’s work for the intrepid shadow home secretary

C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre. Captain Chris “Hunter-Killer” Philp had been on patrol since first light in the Channel. While the rest of the country was still asleep, the Philpster was scanning the horizon for rubber dinghies full of illegal immigrants. Something he had never done in his previous life as immigration minister. Back then he had sought to rehouse new arrivals in hotels. Now he wanted to send them to a watery grave.

It had been a quiet morning. Too quiet. Just the one sighting of a child with a rubber ring paddling off the beach in Boulogne. But Hunter-Killer was taking no chances. All it takes is one child and before long there will be hundreds of thousands making the crossing with swimming aids bought from the local Carrefour. So the Philpster had called in the RAF. Minutes later, a Typhoon FGR4 had blasted the kid out of the water. Job done. Pour encourager les autres.

A youth movement born from exam leaks and online mockery has pierced Narendra Modi’s aura of invincibility and may yet reshape Indian politics

“What if all cockroaches come together?” was the question that humbled India’s strongman prime minister, Narendra Modi. It was posted on X by Abhijeet Dipke, an Indian student in the US with a master’s in public relations. Enraged that India’s top judge likened unemployed youths to insects and “parasites”, and that millions saw medical exams compromised by leaks, Mr Dipke lit a fuse. For India’s nearly 400 million gen Z, public exams are often the only ladder to a secure future. When papers leak or tests are cancelled, that ladder is kicked away. By June, young people were protesting peacefully in Delhi as the Cockroach Janta party (CJP), a parody of Mr Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP). They demanded the resignation of the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan.

This weekend, Mr Pradhan became the first senior minister in Mr Modi’s 12 years in power to be forced from office by a mass-protest movement. It came after credible reports suggested police officers attacked protesters marching to parliament. Security sources say it was they who were attacked. This may be just the beginning. The concession has taught the Cockroach movement’s leadership that pressure works. They could have declared victory and gone home. Instead they have accused the government of breaching the terms of the settlement offered by Mr Modi’s government. The CJP claims at least 100 people have been arrested, many on non-bailable charges. Its leaders are now demanding the release of detainees and threatening to remobilise nationally.

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.

New research linking the issue to Parkinson’s disease adds to the evidence of serious health repercussions from traffic volume and other sources

The roar of late-night traffic is not just annoying for those trying to sleep. It can also have profound effects on their health. A pioneering new study, published this month, has found a clear link between road noise and Parkinson’s disease. The research, which followed more than 3 million Danish participants, found a modest but consistent effect: for every 11.5dB rise in noise level, the risk of the degenerative disorder rose by 3% over the 18-year study.

The study adds to the growing body of evidence that auditory nuisance is associated with serious physical consequences. The European Environment Agency reported last year that more than 110 million people across the continent suffer high levels of health-damaging noise pollution, with physiological stress and sleep disturbance leading to 66,000 early deaths annually as well as heart disease, diabetes and depression. It found that the harm caused was greater than from secondhand tobacco smoke exposure.

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.

Mark Bergfeld and Derrick Joad on Zoe Williams’ interview of the political theorist Anton Jäger

Zoe Williams’ article on Anton Jäger (Meet the man whose groundbreaking book is being devoured by the left, 23 July) reminded me of something that I encounter in trade union meetings: people no longer come to them. But neither do they go to church or the synagogue, nor do they volunteer as the youth football coach. They work intolerable hours or are logged in, like me, writing this from my beach vacation in Greece.

In that sense, I agree with Jäger’s premise that we are in an era of hyperpolitics. Yet, as a trade unionist who dedicates his life to rebuilding the power of working people, I confront a problem that has led me to cave in to hyperpolitics. I co-produced a podcast on cleaners’ work and lives, and have been running an influencer campaign with hairdressers because that is how we get the union message out. People might not attend a meeting, but they will watch something on TikTok or Instagram, or listen to a podcast on Spotify.

Richard Griffiths and Will Raw respond to an article by George Monbiot in which he argues that industrial poultry farming is killing our rivers

George Monbiot is wrong in his belief that chicken farms harm rivers (Besieged by lobbyists, will UK ministers protect our ecosystems? No, they’ll chicken out, 23 July). Our farms have no direct contact with the soil and operate under permits issued and regulated by the Environment Agency, giving transparency on how manure is managed on site and where it goes when it leaves.

The chicken manure produced in the UK is used either for energy generation or as a fertiliser by other farming sectors. Each destination has full traceability, and manure will often be transported across the country to be used where it is most needed.

Dr Sally Cheseldine reflects on the experience of people who cannot articulate their pain and the significance of cravings

During my clinical career, I noticed that migraine was rarely diagnosed in individuals with severe intellectual disabilities or autism who were non-verbal and therefore unable to say that they had a sore head (Letters, 24 July). Instead, there was a high level of damaging head-banging, something that others say they feel tempted to do if they don’t have access to rapid pain relief for their migraine.

I was interested in the suggestion that cravings for cheese might be caused by migraine (The truth about migraines: what causes them – and how to find relief, 19 July). Cheese contains tryptophan, and it was shown in the 1990s (McDougle et al) that people with severe autism who had very low levels of tryptophan showed dramatic increases of several stereotypic behaviours, including banging.

Dog’s dinner | Short illnesses | Andy Burnham’s smart move | Missing brunch | Making a meal of it

The humorous tale of Morris the staffie (The pet I’ll never forget, 27 July) reminded me of when I returned from work one evening wondering why my husband hadn’t roasted the joint of beef I’d taken out from the freezer that morning for the evening meal. There was no trace of it anywhere, nor the plate it was on. Next day, evidence of the butcher’s string tied round the meat appeared during our dog walk, but we never found the plate.
Jeanette Hamilton
Buxton, Derbyshire

• Dr Terry Scragg (Letters, 27 July) would like to know what the “short illness” is that features so often in the obituaries so that he can avoid it. Death notices also frequently refer to people dying in “the excellent care” of a particular medical facility. I note the names of these institutions with a view to avoiding them, their reputation for excellence being somewhat belied by their mortality rates.
Eoin Dillon
Dublin, Ireland

• Updates from Wednesday’s live action in Glasgow

• Medal table | Hunt wins silver in storm | Mail Tom

Men’s 200m freestyle James Guy qualifies for the final with the quickest time but Scott hasn’t done enough with Tom Dean making it through depsite finishing fourth in his heat.

Men’s 200m freestyle Scott looks like he’ll miss out with heat six seeing three men, including Matt Richards of Wales and Northern Ireland’s Jack McMillan, go faster.

• New Zealand’s Zoe Hobbs wins with 10.93sec

• Emmanuel Eseme surges to men’s 100m victory

On a filthy summer’s night in Glasgow, Amy Hunt defied almost everything the elements dared to throw at her. The track was so wet that her fingernails were submerged underwater as she lined up. Her start was so horrendous it could have carried an X-certificate. And she spent most of the women’s 100m final sloshing through puddles. It was nearly enough.

But while she hit top speed late in the race, it was too late to catch the New Zealander Zoe Hobbs, who ran the race of her life to take Commonwealth Games gold in a personal best of 10.93sec.

• Teenager dominates men’s 200m breaststroke final

• Win makes him island’s most successful Games athlete

Filip Nowacki secured his status as Jersey’s most successful Commonwealth Games athlete by storming to a historic gold medal in the men’s 200m breaststroke.

The 18-year-old led from start to finish in a commanding display, touching the wall in 2min 07.87sec before erupting in celebration as he climbed on to the lane dividers and slapped the water in delight while soaking up the enthusiastic applause as Jersey flags waved. Canada’s Oliver Dawson won silver, with Australia’s Olympic champion, Zac Stubblety-Cook, taking bronze.

• FA in talks with European associations, whose options to kill plans include boycott and potential breakaway

• Members given 19 September deadline to opt in

The Football Association has joined Uefa in condemning Fifa’s plan to sell off stakes in the World Cup to private investors.

In a statement released on Wednesday morning the FA said they have yet to see any details of the controversial proposals, and expressed grave concerns over Fifa’a governance.

Manchester United and Arsenal need midfielders, Liverpool should sign a winger and Chelsea require a goalkeeper

By Opta Analyst

Declan Rice was worked to the bone by Arsenal last season, playing 4,456 minutes in all competitions. This showed at points during the World Cup, when the midfielder’s body looked on the verge of breaking down. Arsenal need high-quality reinforcements in the centre of the pitch so Rice can occasionally have a rest. Christian Nørgaard struggled to get on to the park last season, with Mikel Arteta seemingly not trusting in the former Brentford captain. An extra midfield option could prove crucial to Arsenal retaining their crown.

• Two big franchise deals power 10.3% increase

• IPL second only to NFL in per-match brand value

The Indian Premier League’s value has surged to an estimated $20.6bn (£15.5bn), boosted by ownership deals involving two of its biggest franchises, according to a report by the investment bank Houlihan Lokey.

The T20 competition’s value rose 10.3% over the past year, underlining its position as one of the world’s most valuable sports brands, it said. “On a per-match basis, only the NFL ranks ahead of the IPL globally,” it added.

Plus: UK prime ministers’ football allegiances, top-flight W teams in England and united Uniteds

• Mail us with your all of your questions and answers

“Kazuyoshi Miura recently scored in the Emperor’s Cup at the tender age of 59 – is he the oldest goalscorer in football history?” asks Terry Winter.

If we were picking an all-time Knowledge XI, ‘King Kazu’ would be in the mix for a place. He’s appeared in various age-related queries over the years, and tales of his exploits always give us hope as we wheeze through middle-age. On Saturday, Miura scored his first competitive goal ⁠in nearly four years as ⁠Fukushima ​United thrashed Iwaki Furukawa 7-0 in the Emperor’s Cup.

Oscar Onley’s pre-race injury presaged three bleak weeks and new director of racing knows he has his work cut out

Crashes, punctures and injuries ensured that the 2026 Tour de France campaign was one of the worst for the beleaguered Netcompany Ineos team. From the first stage, when Dave Brailsford’s team came close to winning the team time trial in Montjuic, the 2026 Tour was, in the words of their director of racing, Geraint Thomas, “tough going”.

Thomas, who has taken Brailsford’s place as the team’s frontman, said: “I’m happy to not be racing any more, because I suffered way too much. But it’s good to still be involved in the nitty‑gritty of it.”

US president makes positive posts as Ukraine seeks more firepower and Israeli PM seeks to repair relationship

Donald Trump hosted back-to-back White House meetings with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday, as Ukraine seeks more firepower for its air defenses and the Israeli prime minister tries to repair his strained relationship with the US president.

Trump described both meetings in positive terms on social media Tuesday evening, remaining vague about what was discussed.

France had also intervened after Trump administration had opposed the reappointment of UN human rights chief

US diplomats walked out of a United Nations meeting after France criticized the country’s human rights record under Donald Trump.

The staged walkout, which occurred on Monday during a UN security council meeting on the Ukraine-Russia war, came days after the Trump administration cited “forced labor” allegations as it imposed sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries.

Kremlin and state bank VTB may be forced to prop up online retailer amid crippling Ukrainian attacks; Kyiv prosecutors may target Lukashenko. What we know on day 1,617

• Reported incidents of all discrimination reach new high

• Reports of abuse in grassroots football rose for fifth year

Abusive chanting against immigrants has become a feature of football matches in England, according to new data from Kick It Out.

Last season 39 reports of anti-immigrant chanting were made to the anti-discrimination charity, more than the previous two seasons combined. Phrases such as “stop the boats” and “send them back” were reported as being heard “at all levels of the game”, Kick It Out said.

• World governing body set to raise millions from venture

• Uefa hits out at proposal and could take legal action

• Explainer: what Fifa’s plans mean and what happens next

Fifa has announced plans to sell the commercial rights to its tournaments, including the World Cup, to private investors in a controversial move that triggered an immediate backlash from Uefa, leading European clubs and politicians.

Uefa released a strongly worded statement accusing Fifa of “attempting to sell the soul of football” and is believed to be considering its legal position, while sources at numerous elite clubs were highly critical of the proposal in private. Andy Burnham, the UK’s new prime minister, condemned the move.

More than 900 fires are burning as experts warn Canada lacks a body to coordinate a growing climate threat

As more than 900 wildfires burn across Canada, prompting evacuation orders and pushing Ontario into its worst wildfire season on record, officials are renewing calls for the country to develop a national wildfire strategy through the creation of a federal agency.

Canada is the only G7 country that does not have a national emergency agency that is mandated to respond to wildfires.

Biologists say cargo ships stranded in Gulf may carry highly potent invasive species around the world as trade resumes

The closure of the strait of Hormuz has created conditions for an extreme global biodiversity threat, with scientists warning that thousands of stranded ships could spread invasive marine species across the world’s oceans once they begin sailing again.

More than 1,500 commercial vessels have been stuck in the Gulf since the strategic waterway closed on 28 February after the outbreak of the US-Israel war on Iran. An international team of marine biologists said that with the stranded ships remaining motionless, their hulls were becoming encrusted with marine life – from microbes and algae to barnacles and other invertebrates – that could hitchhike to ports around the world when trade resumed.

The Earth keeps getting hotter and experts fear this year's El Niño, nicknamed 'Godzilla' because of its predicted intensity, could raise global temperatures by up to 3.6C. Environment correspondent Damien Gayle spoke to climate scientists to understand how the weather phenomenon and the climate crisis pose a huge threat to the planet

• ‘Super’ El Niño could cause global food price shock lasting into 2028, analysts say

• El Niño is back with a vengeance – and fears of ‘Godzilla’ strength may be the least of our worries

PM’s vocational model also takes inspiration from former education secretary Kenneth Baker’s vision

Andy Burnham’s plans to put academic and technical education routes on an equal footing in England have been welcomed by many, but none were more enthusiastic than the former Conservative minister Kenneth Baker.

“I’m very impressed with what he has said,” the 91-year-old former education secretary, home secretary and Conservative party chair told the Guardian. “It’s a very significant announcement. I’m going to try to persuade the Conservative party to support this.”

The pop star is curating the 2026 festival, which also features Patti Smith, Mustafa and Ta-Nehisi Coates, as part of the Southbank Centre’s anniversary year

Zadie Smith, Patti Smith and Mustafa are among the star names lined up to be interviewed by Dua Lipa, as the pop star reveals her curation of this year’s London Literature festival at the Southbank Centre.

The festival, now in its 19th year, will run from 21 October to 1 November, with the Brit award-winning singer shaping a programme of events in collaboration with her Service95 book club.

CAA says airport can recoup £320m through higher airline charges, which are usually passed on to travellers

Heathrow passengers face decades of higher fares after the airport was given permission to recover early costs from developing its expansion plan.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) announced it had permitted Heathrow Airport Limited (HAL) to recoup £320m spent on its proposal to build a third runway since the start of last year.

Man already serving life for killing his cellmate while awaiting trial also murdered and dismembered his friends Claudio Aquilino and Daniel Coleman

On a spring day last year, James Desborough marched up to Cornwall’s county hall in Truro and began bombarding the offices with dozens of eggs stolen from a supermarket.

It was a drug- and drink-addled protest at his plight – homeless, jobless and generally angry at the world. He expected to be arrested and messaged a friend: “If I’m going to get nicked, might as well round the charges up.”

Potential toxic substance detected in several of 15 elephants found dead in Kenya’s Amboseli national park

Officials are investigating the deaths of 15 elephants over the past month in Kenya’s Amboseli national park.

The Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) said 10 of the elephants showed signs of partial paralysis before dying within two days.

Ruby Rippey writes in Vanity Fair of relationship with then San Francisco mayor and appears to contradict his account

A former aide to Gavin Newsom has publicly shared for the first time her full account of their affair, which took place more than two decades ago when Newsom was mayor of San Francisco.

In a new essay published in Vanity Fair on Tuesday, Ruby Rippey writes about her struggles with alcoholism, substance abuse and her relationship with Newsom while she worked as his appointments secretary and was married to his deputy chief of staff and later the manager of the mayor’s re-election campaign.

Footage shows North Island skies lighting up followed by a ‘huge boom’ days after a separate fireball in South Island

Two large suspected meteors have flashed and boomed across New Zealand’s skies in recent days, delighting those who glimpsed the celestial events and sending some animals into a frenzy.

A fireball was seen over parts of the North Island just after 10.20pm on Tuesday night, after a separate one streaked across South Island’s skies on Sunday evening.

In recordings made in 2016 and 2017 former president also appears to describe possessing classified information

Former US president Joe Biden appeared to discuss sensitive information and describe possessing classified documents in audio recordings released on Monday by the Oversight Project, a conservative activist group.

The heavily redacted transcripts and recordings were made in 2016 and 2017, while Biden was working with a ghostwriter on his 2017 memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose. No classified material was ever alleged to have appeared in the book.

Drop comes after South Korean company SK Hynix’s results undershoot investors’ expectations

• Business live – latest updates

Shares in companies linked to AI have plunged further after disappointing results from the South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix, which sent the country’s stock market tumbling for a second day in a row.

Seoul’s Kospi index, which is dominated by semiconductor manufacturers, slid by as much as 12.6% at one point on Wednesday, following on from a near 11% slump the previous day, reaching its lowest level since early April.

Exclusive: Work and pensions secretary echoes Andy Burnham as he announces funds to stop families in England losing benefits

Young people will be expected to engage with new support to find work, Pat McFadden has said, as he announced parents receiving benefits could get £4,500 a year if their child starts an apprenticeship.

Speaking to the Guardian, the work and pensions secretary echoed the comments of Andy Burnham when he suggested that access to support would be conditional on young people properly participating in the support that would be provided. To help with that, the new funds announced would stop families losing benefits when teenagers take up apprenticeships.

Share price rally driven by strong product demand as well as decision to sit out AI spending race, amid wider tech sell-off

Apple has become only the second company to pass the $5tn valuation mark, as it benefited from investors fleeing AI and semiconductor stocks amid a wider tech sell-off.

The iPhone maker’s shares hit a session high ⁠of $342.89 on Tuesday, giving it a market ⁠capitalisation of $5.04tn (£3.78tn), then eased back down to $340.08 – around the $5tn mark.

Bloggers David and Ina Steiner were stalked by eBay executives over their critical coverage of the company

Ebay and three former top executives have agreed to pay $55.7m to resolve a lawsuit by a Massachusetts couple who fell victim ⁠to a bizarre stalking and ⁠harassment campaign carried out ​by several of its employees in retaliation for their coverage of the e-commerce company in a newsletter they publish.

David and Ina Steiner announced the settlement late on Monday, bringing an end to a ⁠case they filed in 2021 in Boston federal court after several former eBay employees were prosecuted for targeting them in a cyberstalking campaign that involved sending the couple cockroaches, fly larvae and a bloody Halloween pig mask.

Ella Langley’s country single has spent 15 weeks as US number one thanks to its retro-modern sound, a viral misheard lyric – and a boost from the Ella Fellas

This week, Ella Langley beat a chart record held by Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey. The country singer’s Choosin’ Texas has now spent 15 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, making it the longest-running US No 1 by a female solo artist for a non-holiday single. The previous record holders, Houston’s I Will Always Love You and Carey’s We Belong Together, were bombastic pop events, the sort of unassailable hits that make sense as Hot 100 chartbusters. Choosin’ Texas, meanwhile, is a midtempo two-step with a relaxed vocal delivery and decidedly retro sound.

For Victoria Banks, a Nashville-based songwriter and instructor at Belmont University, the song’s breeziness is key to its success. “It’s a sleeper hit – it’s understated and unassuming,” she says. “Everything about the song throws back to a simpler time in country music that people are really craving.”

The Grammy-winning band had an acrimonious rift with Hinds – then he died in a motorbike crash. They explain how they’re paying tribute on their new album, and why their love for each other never ended

Mastodon are near the end of a tour where they’re playing 22 shows in 14 different European countries during a record-breaking heatwave, when they video-call me outside a Bordeaux venue. Bassist and co-lead singer Troy Sanders says the experience has been “31 days of musical bliss”. He’s not being sarcastic, either.

“Things are super energetic, even at day 31,” he insists. “We’re contemplating even staying in Europe for a few days when this tour is over, because we’re enjoying ourselves so much.” It’s pleasantly surprising to see Sanders and drummer/co-vocalist Brann Dailor, sat to his left, in such high spirits, given the anguish and unrest they’ve endured over the last 18 months.

Velvet jackets and opera glasses are out, tight trousers and a hoofing glitter stomp are in. Interview With the Vampire’s taken quite the turn

It starts with drums, heavily reverbed: da-doom-ba-CHA, da-doom-ba-CHA, da-doom-ba-CHA, da-doom-ba-CHA-CHA. Cheap, chugging electric guitars kick in. A song plays, and although it’s an original composition it is at least 60% Blockbuster by Sweet. What in the Tony Visconti is happening? This is meant to be season three of Interview with the Vampire! Has it turned into a glam-rock musical?

Yes. Yes, it has. The show based on Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles books – a text it is serially unfaithful to while remaining loyal to the source material’s essence, a camp melange of the sinister, sordid and the deeply, sincerely emotional – was previously set in a lush vision of the past, starting in New Orleans in 1910. There romanced the vampires Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid), a sensitive pupil and wild, brittle master whose tumultuous relationship was remembered in a second timeline set in 2022 during an interview with Louis conducted by the journalist Daniel Molloy (Eric Bogosian). At the close of season two, Molloy published the titular book.

Great Gatsby glamour and a sailing theme guide two house-proud couples. Plus: Katie Price’s kids talk about their turbulent lives. Here’s what to watch this evening

8pm, Channel 4
Tinie Tempah is back with his surprisingly popular series about house extensions. The first wealthy couple are “unleashing Great Gatsby glamour on to their Edwardian terrace”; the second are transforming their chocolate-box cottage in Norfolk with an eco-build inspired by their love of sailing. Just one concern is that they will finish the job, then wish they had never bothered. Hollie Richardson

Courtenay gives a beautiful performance as the undertaker’s clerk who nurses preposterous ambitions. But the film is too quick to surrender them

This is John Schlesinger’s much-loved British comedy from 1963, based on the 1959 novel by Keith Waterhouse, itself part of the now almost forgotten Angry Young Man movement of which John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger and Kingsley Amis’s Lucky Jim were the other two classic texts – though perhaps it is really only Osborne’s hero who is actually angry.

Tom Courtenay plays Billy, a cheeky, naughty young man who is as daft as a brush and lives semi-permanently inside his own Walter Mitty-ish fantasy world. (Amis’s Jim Dixon had his own propensity to indulge in micro-imagined situations to get him out of whatever mortifying little class-based humiliations he found himself in.) Billy lives at home in Yorkshire with his mum and dad and works as an undertaker’s clerk, of all the banal things; he takes refuge in his reveries, chiefly the fiction that he is the ruler of a bizarre Ruritanian land called Ambrosia (perhaps named after the brand of rice pudding). Billy wants to be a comedy writer, and he is, after all, the experienced comedy writer of preposterous situations that are happening inside his own head.

TikToker Shabaz Ali uses his uber-dry wit to make the mega-rich look ridiculous in this very silly satire

BBC Three’s latest documentary opens with a man floating down a London street in a smart black turtleneck and grey suit jacket, increasingly alarmist string music swelling around him. “In a world of ever-widening economic divides,” he begins, gesticulating wildly to the camera as he walks through lavish Knightsbridge, “the BBC have asked me, Shabaz Ali, to answer one burning question: are billionaires bad?” You would be forgiven for thinking that this was another documentary of the kind the channel is known for: well-intentioned and well-made programmes, fronted by presenters such as Stacey Dooley and Zara McDermott.

Then the camera zooms out to reveal another camera pointed in Ali’s face, and the music stops: “Er, yeah,” he says. “They are!” He strides off, mock end credits playing at triple speed. As it turns out, Shabaz Asks: Are Billionaires Bad? isn’t one of those BBC Three documentaries that boils down important societal goings-on for gen Z, but rather a parody of the genre. It’s a bit of a risk to send up one of the things your channel is best known for, as if ITV started broadcasting spoof versions of those dark psychological thrillers where a heavy-drinking police detective is haunted by an unsolved case from 20 years ago.

Author Alexander McCall Smith’s new series is an attempt to use short fiction to make listeners feel better about the world. Plus, what happened when two London gangsters decided to make a film?

While he is best known for his No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels, Alexander McCall Smith has something of a soft spot for short stories, which can “cover a whole sweep of history in a couple of paragraphs”. His new series features a selection of short original works that he hopes will make listeners feel better about the state of the world, beginning with a pleasingly twee tale inspired by a friend’s miniature helicopter landing pad. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly

The country-pop superstar loves Abba and secretly listens to Lloyd Webber, but which British heartthrob’s single gets her out of bed in the morning?

The song that changed my life
There’s many critical songs on The Mission soundtrack, but Gabriel’s Oboe [by Ennio Morricone] hit me hard. I had to pull off the road, I cried like a baby. I didn’t realise how powerful music could be until that moment. I was 22.

The first single I bought
At Seventeen by Janis Ian. I reference it in my album Little Miss Twain and it says so much about the emotions of a teenage misfit. I felt like her, I related – but I was also thinking: “Wow, I have to some day write this well.” It gave me a goal; I was so in awe. I made very little money, babysitting, taking care of my neighbour’s horse, singing in bars. I would get like 20 bucks, that I would mostly give to my family, but I got that record for myself.

The singer-songwriter and Water from Your Eyes guitarist was unstoppably prolific, despite a growing dependence on substances. Now sober, he reflects on his new album and the songs that helped him turn his life round

For most of his life, Nate Amos made music just to get through the day. There was plenty of it: dozens of self-produced albums and EPs uploaded – since his This Is Lorelei project launched in 2012 – to what was then a plucky, independent platform called Bandcamp. Now 35, he is perhaps the quintessential Bandcamp artist: part bedroom-pop whiz, part alt-country troubadour, part indie rock rascal with a big, heavy heart. His peers treat him like a lost folk hero from a bygone era.

Amos is sitting in the basement of a cafe in Camden Town, north London, cradling an iced matcha; coffee makes him “feel like shit”, he says, and he no longer indulges such foibles. The title of one of those Bandcamp albums, OK N8, is tattooed on his knuckles. A friend inked it a few years ago, soon after Amos got sober. “Exactly when you’re not supposed to be making decisions like getting a tattoo on your hand,” he jokes. His active blue eyes dance around behind a golden-brown fringe and an unruly, woodchip beard. In a tough spot he will swing back in his chair and search for answers that always seem to be hiding beneath the table. But each time he stumbles upon the truth, he looks up with a hungry smile.

(Atlantic)
How do you follow up the album that made you a star – and a caricature? In classic Charli style: with a pivot to guitar and a meta masterpiece about the instability of identity

After a decade spent trailblazing a unique kind of pop freedom from the genre’s fringes, A-list success seemed like the thing that might finally trap Charli xcx. Her 2024 club-rat opus Brat spawned memes, embarrassing political bandwagoning, Collins’ word of the year and possibly terminal damage to the bra industry. Its ludicrous cultural impact looked set to pickle her as a caricature of a Parliament-toting bad girl; the question of whether “Brat summer” could last – whether Charli could sustain the interest – was so rife she turned it into a mockumentary, The Moment. It made success look miserable: your creation turned cringe by execs wanting to milk their prize cow dry of every last acid-green drop.

Even for a pop star renowned for reinvention, it put a higher price on her next move. Pivot and risk losing new fans and looking wilfully contrarian. When Charli released the sub-two-minute single Rock Music, many heard it as a middle finger. “I think the dancefloor is dead,” she drawls over guitars that buzzed like speakers weathering interference from a Nokia 5110, “so now we’re making rock music.” There were boring thinkpieces about the dancefloor being very much alive, actually (as if Charli had ever ridden culture for clout then binned it off), and about whether she was trying to eject fair-weather new fans. But the key to this cheeky song is surprisingly earnest: “Jump off the stage / I hope they catch you today / But if they don’t it’s OK,” she sings naively, an affirmation to take creative leaps, and to come with Charli – or not, as you like – as she takes this one.

This journey of discovery from the US to Sicily tackles urgent themes, but is increasingly inward-looking

In Grace Paley’s short story A Conversation With My Father, a request is made of the Paley-like narrator. “I would like you to write a simple story just once more,” her father says, “the kind Maupassant wrote, or Chekhov … Just recognisable people and then write down what happened to them next.” Her attempt, and its failure to impress him, is the action that powers the story. Valeria Luiselli’s fourth novel is propelled by a similar request, the daughter of the Luiselli-like narrator asking: “Will you finally write a novel with a beginning, a middle, and an end?” It’s a problem Luiselli has addressed before. In her 2017 book-length essay about undocumented migrant children, Tell Me How It Ends, she writes that the difficulty in telling their story “is that it has no beginning, no middle and no end”.

Beginning Middle End charts the narrator’s efforts to corral life into a narrative. The father in Paley’s story would be similarly unimpressed. After a “slow, entangled” divorce, the narrator, a Mexican living in the United States, embarks on a European book tour with her 12-year-old daughter. She has a coil removed in Munich; her daughter loses a tooth in Prague; near Amsterdam they watch children learning to swim with their shoes on in case of floods. When summer comes, the pair fly to Catania in Sicily. The narrator’s grandmother grew up nearby. They stay in the apartment of a pianist who’s away on tour, with whom the narrator had a “brief and feverish encounter” the previous year.

In this disorienting book, a poet argues we have been looking at nature – and ourselves – the wrong way

The eastern breakwater of Granton harbour is almost 1km long, and swimmers can follow its crooked finger, heading straight out into the Firth of Forth, while benefiting from its reassuring presence. One Thursday lunchtime, I thought: why not, let’s give it a go, and headed for its tip. I felt cold, but, as I progressed, I seemed to grow strangely warmer. I did not notice the complaints from my body: the creeping numbness which proceeded from my fingers to my elbow, nor the coldness of my pee. Only by the time I exited the water, club footed and claw handed, did it hit me that I was hypothermic.

The irony of this reckless exercise was that in my swim bag there was a book by Melanie Challenger called Alive: The Hidden Intelligence of the Living World. It’s an ambitious examination of the wisdom of bodies, a rhizomatic guide not just to our own, but also all the living forms around us: from bacteria to chimps. Her case is that we have ignored or misread the agency and purpose of bodies to our detriment; in a way it is a plea to listen to them. I wish I had read it before my ill-advised swim.

Trinidad-born author and poet whose novel The Humming-Bird Tree is a classic of Caribbean literature

Ian McDonald, who has died aged 93, wrote only one novel, but it is considered a classic of Caribbean literature. The Humming-Bird Tree (1969), set in Trinidad in the late 1940s, tells the story of Alan, a young white boy, as he falls into friendship with his family’s yard-boy, Kaiser, who is of Indian extraction, and in love with Kaiser’s younger sister, Jaillin, who is also employed by Alan’s wealthy parents.

While Alan and Jaillin skirt around each other, trying to come to terms with the confusing feelings of their mutual attraction and the disapproval of Alan’s mother and father, wider emotional turmoil is at play in Trinidad, where the masses are beginning to throw off the yoke of British rule.

A bereaved father and son bond over greyhound racing in an east Durham town in terminal decline

The adjoining villages of Easington and Easington Colliery in the coalfields of east Durham make the perfect case study of the shift from England’s industrial boomtime to terminal decline. Twenty miles from a major town or city, they’ve been left to languish ever since Thatcher went to war with the industry that made them. If you want to understand why the white working class feel abandoned today, go to Easington Colliery and its surrounding villages.

It’s this community that Middlesbrough-born writer Louise Powell brings to life in a powerful debut set in the world of greyhound racing, or “flapping”. Underdogs is an utterly authentic depiction of an England that’s overlooked, but still very much alive. Pigeon lofts and flat caps, meat raffles and social clubs – all still exist, just very rarely in 21st-century novels.

An amnesiac loner arrives in a remote town for who knows what reason … this may sound familiar but this time we’re on a remote Scottish island and surprises lie in wait

A man washes up at the harbour of a small coastal village, his memories vague, an eerie sea fog rolling in all around him. As beginnings go, this couldn’t be more Silent Hill – an amnesiac loner drawn to a remote town for who knows what reason. But this time, we’re not in the Pacific Northwest of the original games or the Japan of last year’s excellent Silent Hill f. We’re on an island off the northern coast of Scotland, and it’s 1996. Lead character Simon Ordell knows this place, but isn’t sure how – and why does he have an IV cannula stuck in his hand?

Announced back in 2022, Townfall is the work of Glasgow-based studio Screen Burn, previously responsible for tense horror adventure titles Stories Untold and Observation. Like Silent Hill f, it moves the setting far out of Silent Hill itself: St Amelia is a fishing town, inspired by St Monans and dozens of other seafront towns the team visited and extensively photographed.

Gamers are angry that Sony will be deleting TV shows and films from their libraries as well as getting rid of physical games. Will a boycott make a difference?

Name: PlayStation blackout.

Age: Forthcoming.

PC, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2, PS5; SFB Games
Detective Grimoire is at it again in the long-awaited new entry to this stylish series of comedy whodunnits

In a boom time for mystery games, the Detective Grimoire series stands out for its style and sense of humour. The Mermaid Mask continues to build upon the formula laid down in Secret of the Swamp and polished in Tangle Tower, and while there is still room for further improvements this sequel is worth the seven years’ wait.

This time, the casually competent Grimoire and his smart if sarcastic sidekick Sally have been summoned to a submarine to solve the locked-room murder of its captain, Magnus Mortuga. You click around the cluttered rooms of the vessel to hear the detectives’ comedic commentary and look for clues and – closer up – click and drag to move objects around for further examination or to solve a puzzle. (For those playing on Nintendo Switch 2, the mouse controls are actually useful here, if not comfortable in the long run.)

The debut from Scandinavian outfit Dead Astronauts promises shooting, survival, and, in a shake-up to the genre, seeds that terraform its pristine world right before your eyes

The wilds of the sub-Arctic north: towering pine trees, flashes of psychedelic-yellow lichen, and a sun that never wholly sets during the summer months. This land is gorgeous, yes, but also unforgiving, yet in Haex (pronounced “hex”) you have an unusual tool at your disposal to make it a little more hospitable: a cube that fits snugly in the palm of your hand out of which grows a plant. You plant this so-called Seed in the earth and – voilà – the world around you transforms: new vegetation and topography but also narrative threads to follow, and, naturally, enemies. Wield these small-but-mighty kernels of change at your own peril.

“Your adventure and your world is player-shaped,” says Haex’s creative director Tobias Nyman. He explains that everyone starts a campaign with a unique, procedurally generated world. Each Seed then contains further procedural data that causes it to terraform before your eyes. “You change the world as you go,” he says. “It becomes even more unique.”

Royal Albert Hall, London
From Kristine Tjøgersen’s tranquil woodland reverie to Canteloube’s Auvergne and Strauss’s thunderous mountainscape, the London Philharmonic – with Louise Alder – conjured colours and brought drama to this vivid programme

What do you get if you blow into a tuba full of water? With a little imagination it’s the sound of a squirrel eating, the opening salvo of Between Trees by Kristine Tjøgersen. The Norwegian composer’s ingenious nature poem drew on extended techniques and novel effects, such as prepared harp and strings, as it led us beneath the forest floor to explore the mysterious fungal threads that connect the roots of trees and plants like some vast natural internet.

Leaving the Scandinavian forests behind, the London Philharmonic’s whistlestop travelogue paused for breath in sun-drenched central France to savour a selection of Canteloube’s Songs of the Auvergne. Louise Alder was the soloist, the languid radiance of her creamy soprano complementing the composer’s rose-tinted orchestrations. Edward Gardner kept the orchestra on a low light while pointing up the music’s more pungent elements. For her part, Alder brought colour and the gift of storytelling to these tales of lovelorn shepherdesses, opportunistic country lads and conceited quails.

Riverside Studios, London
Joe Haddad’s solo show tilts between family comedy and football fandom as well as the horrors of the Gaza war but never quite finds its focus

Joe Haddad’s solo show is a kind of self-referential standup set which tells us about his journey into comedy. It encompasses the negotiation of his dual identity as a Palestinian south Londoner and becomes a coming-of-age story.

Born in Croydon, with Arab Christian parents from Jerusalem, he faced prejudice at his Catholic school, including taunts of “Jew-boy” because there was so little understanding of Palestine and its history of occupation. It follows him to adulthood, and an assumed, Anglicised, stage name of Joe Adams, for fear of being cancelled (even his mother tells him not to mention Palestine during gigs).

Soho theatre, London
She has penned jokes for Jimmy Kimmel, Conan O’Brien and the Academy. Now she’s seizing the limelight with scattergun routines about everything from penises to free-bleeding

Laurie Kilmartin is not afraid of vulgarity. The Peabody award-winner flits between penis jokes, free-bleeding chaos and a taste for vengeance in this scattergun hour that marks her London debut. Having made her career as a staff writer for Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O’Brien, Kilmartin’s own voice is crude, acute and pretty mean, delivering each dark joke with a furrowed-brow intensity, followed by a flash of a wide, are-you-gonna-take-it smile.

Jumping through the decades, the US comedian cycles through school bullies, the need for better assassins, and the limited dating pool of men over 50. There’s a pitch-black quality to some of these tales, with a particular knife-edge to her story of an abusive swim coach. Other anecdotes feel drier, like they’ve just had the dust blown off them; she settles too long on lockdowns, which I thought we’d all agreed we were done talking about long ago. Even a moment on Charlie Kirk feels like it missed the moment, though other elements of her US political commentary are easy winners.

Neston Park, Wiltshire
​In a new home after a year off, there’s a thread of fierce political anger running alongside the spirited musical performances – including standout sets from Barrington Levy and Daniela Mercury

At Womad, opening at new home Neston Park after a year off in 2025, the boundary between spectator and performer dissolves entirely: you bump into headliners in the loo queue, spot them wandering the site with their kids, or sit in on an intimate panel discussion with them hours after their main-stage set. Phone signal is practically nonexistent at the new site, forcing a crowd reliant on group chats into analogue meet-ups; the new arboretum layout holds a cosier, village-like setup than before, complete with a mercifully shorter trek from all camping areas. You can start the morning at your own speed: pounding through a west African djembe workshop, joining “laughing yoga”, or relaxing in a wood-fired tub while distant basslines echo through the trees.

Musical highlights often happen when artists go off-script. Reggae legend Barrington Levy provides Friday’s standout moment by rejecting strict act times, turning to the side of the stage to deliver a blunt ultimatum: “Mr Promoter, don’t invite me to your festival and tell me to get off the stage. I’m fucking playing as long as I like.” The crowd back him and he stays, launching back into Black Roses and Here I Come, his star power locking in a crowd of nodding, fist-pumping seniors, families, and kids getting a proper musical education.

Film-maker’s drama Tender Loving Care ‘likely’ his final one as he manages myositis, a disease affecting immune system

Film-maker Mike Leigh has said his next film is likely to be his last.

According to Indiewire, the Oscar-nominated writer-director was speaking at a recent Golden Globes-hosted roundtable in London about his next film Tender Loving Care, a drama set to premiere during this fall festival season.

The bestselling crime writer and Scotland’s first female Geographer Royal had long kept their work separate, until a chance discovery about a doomed 17th-century expedition forced them to collaborate

The airy, modern house on the outskirts of Edinburgh shared by Val McDermid and Jo Sharp is surrounded by greenery and feels as though it was designed to provide enough space for two minds to think.

Both women are high achievers in their fields, a Scottish power couple made up of the Queen of Crime and the Scottish Geographer Royal. Happily for them, there is normally no overlap in their work.

Sonya Walger and Henry Ian Cusick created a love so magical that they’re responsible for what’s widely regarded as the greatest TV episode of all time – not to mention inspiring a fan to get a full leg tattoo of their faces

• More from our series Making Love: ‘We met and two minutes later we were kissing’ – how Gavin and Stacey became Britain’s most bang tidy TV couple

Lost is one of television’s most romantic dramas. Forget smoke monsters, time travel and that infamous ending – this was a show fuelled by swoony stories. Sun and Jin; Rose and Bernard; Sawyer/Jack/Kate/Juliet; Charlie and Claire; Sayid and Nadia (not Shannon). Love was the reason behind so many of the islanders’ need to survive, or to sacrifice themselves.

But it was Penny’s and Desmond’s relationship that defined the series.

After seven days in charge, how is the new UK PM doing? You asked our political columnist about electoral reform, social care and more.

SonOfTheDesert asks: Given that nothing in this world ever turns out quite as intended, and that good intentions in politics are always hit by unforeseen misfortune, which of the commitments that Burnham has made so far do you think is most likely to fall by the wayside between now and 2029?

Polly says:

I think I will answer your question the other way round, if you don’t mind. Which of his good intentions will he keep? There may be a lot of wishful thinking involved in my answer, because I am making the most of this no doubt brief time of hope and optimism.

By the time of the next election he will have devolved power and created more mayors to cover every area to make sure it reaches everywhere. Unfortunately this does not much engage the public, who are pretty clueless on who does what anyway. It won’t always have good results, as Reform run many councils: governments lose local power the longer they are in office. But there may be a magic in his Manchesterism that ignites a new enthusiasm for the local: people might actually bother voting for their councils when they see it makes a real difference who wins.

It’s not the communications that changed, it’s the great communicator. It’s not the words, it’s the sentiment and determination behind them. Keir Starmer’s dull delivery didn’t matter: the lack of underlying passion and purpose did.

Briefing? It will go on, forever. Because you never know who that mystery “senior source” is, it can never be challenged or chased down. The PM can storm about it, but the 24-hour hungry media will flam up what the door man said, for lack of anything else. Or plain make it up sometimes ( Never the Guardian, only the hostile media).

This overlooked quarter swaps the grandeur of tourist-saturated central Rome for murals, graffiti, cheap eateries and a working-class rhythm

One of Europe’s hotspots, central Rome has increasingly come to resemble a tube station during rush hour: stifling, overpacked and claustrophobia-inducing. Last year, the Eternal City welcomed a record number of tourists, driven in part by the 2025 Vatican Jubilee - 22.9 million arrivals stayed in the city, almost 10 times the number of residents.

Avoid espresso martinis and wear the right pyjamas: experts give tips on how to sleep when it’s hot outside

• Tell us: what impact have GLP-1s had on your relationships?

Getting a good night’s sleep when it’s hot out can feel impossible. Unfortunately, worrying about not being well-rested doesn’t help.

Experts say worrying about sleep in warm weather will inevitably make you feel worse. “When people cannot sleep because they are too hot, it often becomes both a physical and a mental challenge,” says Dr Shelby Harris, founder and director of NY Sleep and Psychology, and author of The Women’s Guide to Overcoming Insomnia. “They may start watching the clock, worrying about how tired they will be the next day, or trying harder to force themselves to fall asleep.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food, and the basic they scrimp on? The writer and comedian talks grownup crockery, posh hand soap and Abba Voyage with the Filter

Rosie Jones is an actor, writer and award-winning standup comedian, and a familiar face on UK television – she’s fronted her own Comedy Central series Out of Order, starred in Channel 4’s hard-hitting documentary Am I a R*tard?, and led two travel series, Mission: Accessible and the Bafta-nominated Trip Hazard.

She is the creator and star of the Channel 4 comedy-drama Pushers, a six-part series nominated for a Bafta in 2026. Her acting credits span primetime dramas such as Silent Witness, Casualty and Call the Midwife, and she has also appeared as herself on Taskmaster, Live at the Apollo, QI, 8 Out of 10 Cats, the Last Leg and many more. She set up the Rosie Jones Foundation in 2025, which focuses on mental health support for individuals living with cerebral palsy and peer support through events and workshops. She brings her standup show I Can’t Tell What She’s Saying to the Edinburgh fringe from 5 to 30 August.

Shark’s cordless vacuum is a whiz at cleaning hard floors and pet hair, but a disarmingly short battery life caught our reviewer off guard

• The best cordless vacuum cleaners – tested

Vacuuming rarely starts with vacuuming. First you have to clear the floor of stray socks and abandoned toys left behind by children, pets or messy partners. Then there’s the irritation of finding the vacuum’s dustbin still full of dirt, or the battery flat because someone forgot to charge it.

The (take a deep breath – long name coming up) Shark PowerDetect Speed Clean and Empty Pet Pro cordless vacuum Ultramarine IA3241UKT certainly won’t pick up the scattered toys for you, but it has been designed to make the job of vacuuming as frictionless as possible.

Too many outfits and not enough suitcase space? Whether it’s sightseeing or sundowners, our fashion writer shares her secrets for packing smarter

• The travel essentials that made your holiday better
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When you hear the words capsule wardrobe, you probably picture beige knits and minimalist tailoring. A capsule isn’t just about dressing neutrally, though: it’s about choosing a handful of pieces that work together in countless combinations.

There is no time that skill is more important than when you’re packing for a holiday. I have streamlined my approach by sticking to a simple rule of thumb: instead of packing for every possible scenario, I focus on versatile staples that can be dressed up or down and worn more than once.

Who makes the smoothest, creamiest, chocolatiest tub? We have the inside scoop for you

• The best supermarket dark chocolate

There’s been a marked shift towards less-processed ice-cream since I tested vanilla ice-cream for this column last summer. Most ice-cream on the market used to be a cocktail of gums and emulsifiers, but now they’re of much higher quality and with fewer additives.

All today’s chocolate ice-creams are sophisticated, rich and complex, with deep, dark flavours, and I scored them on taste and texture first (I favour denser, French-style, custard-based ice-creams). I also prioritised smoothness and mouthfeel.

These new spins on nostalgic desserts will elevate your summer barbecues, while their prep-ahead nature will keep the day stress free

When it comes to barbecued desserts, a few squares of chocolate melted inside a banana will no longer cut it. Get ahead with some easy-to-prep elements, then add a final flourish of smoke-licked fruit to bring new energy to classic desserts, such as banana splits and layered fruit sundaes. They need not be complex, and will interest your guests far more than the same old stale ideas. I’ve had some fun with these nostalgic favourites, and hope you will, too.

From olive oil to matcha, soy sauce to sage and onion stuffing, there’s a frozen designer dessert out there to tickle even the most jaded palate. Here’s the best – and worst – of what’s on offer in Britain this summer

What’s with all the weird ice-cream flavours this year? It feels as if supermarkets and independent companies are vying to make the most novel alternatives to a good old scoop of vanilla. But which are actually worth having? I tried 99 varieties of ice-cream tubs and ranked them from sickeningly sweet to dinner party-worthy.

99. Paxo sage and onion stuffing, Anya Hindmarch
(One scoop £4.50 or 500ml tub £16, The Ice Cream Project, London)
Anya Hindmarch’s Ice Cream Project has become a yearly summer fixture, in which the fashion designer collaborates with well-known brands to create nostalgic novelty flavours (at designer prices) for which customers queue round the block. This year the flavours skew toward roast dinners, and include Oxo (which I couldn’t try, being vegetarian) and Paxo. It tastes exactly like the stuffing … which isn’t really what I want from an ice-cream. Taste 1/10, Value 1/10, Originality 7/10

Nostalgic foods like toad-in-the-hole also in demand at Waitrose as people pivot towards familiarity amid climatic and political upheaval

Forget a crisp salad and glass of chilled rosé. Enervated Britons are seemingly more likely to crave a rich cottage pie and a robust red in heatwaves.

In a trend termed “reverse comfort eating”, Waitrose’s cottage pie sales have soared 110% in the last month and South African red wine is up 68% compared with the same period last year. The surprise spike in demand for winter comfort foods also includes retro chicken, bacon and leek pie (up 41%), chicken korma (up 67%) and chicken and ham gratin (68%).

Tearing is a common problem with pasta dough say our experts. Culprits include the wrong type of flour, cold dough – or it could even boil down to the size of your egg

When making fresh pasta, why does the dough sometimes tear when rolling, and other times not?
Thomas, by email
“I’m sorry to hear your pasta is rippy,” sympathises Jacob Kenedy, chef-patron of Bocca di Lupo in London, who is teaming up with fellow chef Merlin Labron-Johnson to celebrate the Italian midsummer holiday ferragosto with two feasts in Somerset next month. Assuming Thomas is rolling an egg pasta dough in a pasta machine, there are a number of possible explanations. First, Kenedy says, he might be using the wrong type of flour (“use 00 flour”), the dough might be too cold (“use it at room temperature”) or too dry (“it should be supple, like Play-Doh”). Naz Hassan, head chef of Ornella and Lupa, both in London, adds that the latter might be down to the size of the egg(s) Thomas is using: “One egg to 100g of 00 flour is the basic pasta dough recipe, but that will vary depending on the size of your egg,” he says. Of course, some people prefer to use just the yolk, and if that applies to Thomas, Hassan suggests thinking about maybe adding the egg white, too: “It has the structure that allows pasta to have the stretchiness it deserves.”

But, in true Goldilocks style, a dough that is too wet might also spell trouble, Kenedy says: “I like my pasta dough wet enough to roll by hand – it gives a more elastic mouthfeel – which means, if I roll it in a machine, it sticks slightly to the roller and may rip.” The fix? Laminate the dough thoroughly and perhaps use “the finest dusting” of flour until the dough passes smoothly through the pasta machine. “Then make sure to roll that flour in, so the outside of the pasta isn’t dusty,” Kenedy adds.

It used be called playing the field, but now young people are claiming dating multiple people at once is intentional and growth-enhancing

Name: Roster dating.

Age: The term seems to be about a decade old; the practice is much older.

I was just 10 at the time but my siblings and I will never forget the sense of safety, comfort and warmth they offered

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

We were doing the groceries when a blood vessel burst in my mother’s brain. I was 10 years old and on a family holiday to France that very suddenly changed its tenor. In the following weeks Mum went through brain surgery, suffered a stroke and was placed in intensive care.

We had been staying in a gîte but moved to a small hotel closer to the hospital. It was a terrifying and stressful time, even as a young kid who knew things were serious – but didn’t understand quite how serious.

Will’s lack of self-worth is creating a barrier between him and Fi, but talking more could help them adjust to their mismatched libidos

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

I worry that Will sees me more as a mother figure than a sexual being

You are stepping into a family system with its own history and loyalties; try to consider how you might set boundaries without rejecting his mum

I’m in my 30s and have been living in Spain for a decade. My partner is Spanish and we have lived together for a year.

The bond he has with his mum sometimes makes me feel angry, jealous and helpless. I’m aware that, culturally, Spanish people often have closer bonds with their families and I try to accept that. He is an only child and his father left his family when he was a teenager and started another. I feel my partner has developed an unhealthy and codependent relationship with his mum.

Whether it is SpaceX or a bank, getting the right facts about a firm can offer vital insights before you invest in it

When Elon Musk’s SpaceX launched on to the stock market, tens of thousands of Britons clamoured to buy a stake, putting the spotlight on DIY investing.

Going it alone and buying shares in individual companies can be rewarding, but also risky. Unless you have a huge amount of cash, you are likely to end up investing in far fewer companies than if you invested in a fund. This means you are more exposed to the ups and downs of those companies’ fortunes.

We told it of our 11pm arrival time but when we got there our room was no longer available as it had ‘overbooked’

I booked and paid for a room in the Travelodge London King’s Cross Royal Scot hotel six weeks in advance. It was for myself and my husband, who has heart disease and dementia.

I had called the hotel on the day of arrival to advise that we would be checking in at 11pm and was told that was fine.

I’m a self-employed driving instructor and I’m running out of cash to hire a replacement dual-control vehicle

My livelihood as a self-employed driving instructor is under threat owing to Nissan’s failure to repair my leased dual-control car.

It has been off the road awaiting a spare part for three months, and I’ve now been told it will take at least a further month to arrive.

Criminals send victims to a cloned site that collects login, personal and payment details

You have had a Spotify account for years and your credit card is linked for the monthly payments. When an email arrives telling you that your payment couldn’t be processed you are not surprised as the expiry date on the card is soon.

“We encountered an issue while processing your recent payment,” it says. “To keep your access active and avoid interruption, please review and update your information.”

Women and men exhibit different heart attack symptoms. Knowing these lesser-known factors can help save your life

A few months ago at work, when I rose from my seat and walked a few steps, something felt off. There was a strange pressure in my chest and rib cage, but I ignored it, took my water bottle from the kitchen and returned to my desk.

The next day it happened again. There was no pain and my breathing was fine. But whenever I stood up and took a few steps, the odd squeezing would return. I work at a hospital as a neurosurgery coordinator, and the wall was lined with posters about stroke and heart distress signs. I barely glanced at the pictures, having memorized them years ago.

The classic gym routine doesn’t isolate your stomach muscles as much as you might think, but here are five that will

If someone in a film or TV show wants a six-pack, chances are they’ll drop to the floor and start doing sit-ups. According to Dr Lee Brown, senior lecturer in strength and conditioning at the University of East London, that’s more Hollywood than science.

“It’s embedded in the archaic practices of boxing coaches and therefore everyone seems to follow it,” he says. “But they’re far from the best exercise for training your core.”

Stress, the cost of living, long working hours and even excessive exercise have all been touted as reasons the illness is rising among women in their 30s and 40s. What can be done to help them?

The “lightning strike” pain was like nothing Francine Jones had experienced before. “That is the only way I can describe it,” she says, of the stabbing in her torso that would occur every 10 minutes or so. “It was a really sharp, intense pain, as if someone was giving me an electric shock … it took my breath away.”

It had started in May with a strange pricking sensation under her bra. Then 10 large blisters, plus a host of smaller ones, formed in a band from her stomach to her back. They burned, “like someone was putting an iron on me. I don’t think I wore underwear for five or six weeks.” Showering, or even a cold flannel, would make her skin burn. Then came “the itch”, which lasted for five weeks and was so intense that she was lucky if she slept for four hours a night. “It was like something was crawling all over me all the time.” I can hear her wincing.

Feel lethargic even after a full night’s sleep? From not enough fibre to too much sitting, experts explain why your get up and go has got up and gone

The very air you breathe could be an issue. “Close the door, shut the window, add a partner and a heater, and by 3am a typical bedroom sits at 1,500 to 2,500 parts per million of carbon dioxide,” says Dr Jemma King, author of Sleep First: Sleep Smarter, Think Sharper, Feel Better. “Research shows that above 1,000 ppm sleep efficiency drops, deep sleep reduces and salivary cortisol rises on waking. You’re sleeping, but your nervous system is mildly activated all night.” Luckily, it’s an easy fix: open a window – even 2cm will do the job, according to King.

Fragrances with superior tones are cutting through the sugary, cheaper efforts that have been pervasive recently

After a lengthy sabbatical, I’m ready to let fig fragrances back into my life. There were years when I couldn’t get enough of lush, green Philosykos by Diptyque – a bona fide masterpiece and the greatest of all fig scents. Then a million sugary, inferior dupes sullied the whole category, cynically transporting it from the fruit groves of Turkey to the air freshener aisle at Halfords. With familiarity, grew contempt. But a new crop of figs is emerging to restore reputation and none are attempting to pass off as Diptyque.

Tom Ford’s recent Figue Erotique (£188 for 30ml), takes fig at various stages of its life cycle (sharp, nutty, green and unripe; rich, juicy, warm and sun-drenched; and finally sugary, creamy and ready to burst) and isolates each in its own accord. Bigger and bolder than most figs, with a sultry, musky sexiness that reads almost as humid, it may not be your most worn in a heatwave (reach for Chloé’s vivid, sparkling fig, Plage du Figuier (£115 for 50ml) then) but do give it a sniff when next you’re next at the shops – it’s a glorious scent for all seasons.

Are you stuck in a makeup rut? Or maybe just beginning to wear cosmetics? Here, experts reveal how to to find the right products for you

Makeup trends change over time – and so does our skin. How can you enhance what you have and refresh your look? Here, makeup artists share the fundamentals of applying cosmetics, at every age.

Around town, on the pitch and even in the pool, the New York mayor keeps his suit on – what do his sartorial choices tell us?

Playing football. Playing in the sand. Dancing on a stage with Alicia Keys and the entire New York Knicks roster. Swimming in a swimming pool. Swimming in the ocean.

Traditionally, a suit and tie would be considered inappropriate attire for each of these activities. Yet over the past year Zohran Mamdani has seemingly been on a one-man crusade to prove otherwise: to convince people that a formal suit is, actually, suitable for all activities.

Latest edition of one of world’s most influential fashion photography publications is also shot entirely in India

Against the ancient, weathered walls of Jaigarh fort, high on the hills above Jaipur, Bhavitha Mandava stood barefoot and draped in gold.

Just a few months earlier, the Indian model had been catapulted from a life of obscurity as a student at New York University to become one of the most recognisable and celebrated new faces of fashion. This year, she became the first Indian woman to open the Chanel catwalk at their Métiers d’Art show and her divisive Chanel outfit for the Met Gala, fashion’s most exclusive event, became an international talking point.

Ebikes with child seats – plus idyllic campsites and pit stops en route – turn a five-day ride on the car-free Véloscénic into a wonderful family holiday

“Are you mad?” says a fellow guest over dinner at our campsite. “I heard you’re here on a long-distance cycle ride with your toddlers.”

I am in Orne, a region in Normandy, with my sister Issy and our three-year-old sons, Sid and Ralph. The landscape folds around us in green-over-green – hedgerow, oak, mossy manor wall – then opens into meadows where Percheron horses graze, knee-deep in wildflowers. Deer leap from the bocage. Cidre and poiré have been pressed here since the middle ages. The villages are sandy stone, blue- and green-shuttered; roses against the boulangerie.

Horchata, the revered creamy drink made from tiger nuts, is still served in grand Valencian parlours – always accompanied by sugar-glazed pastries

It was a glimpse of an old couple sharing a tender moment in the bustling horchatería that drew me into one of Valencia’s most storied culinary traditions. As he sipped his milky horchata de chufa and a white crescent moon appeared on his coiffed moustache, they shared a soft laugh and she dabbed it away from his upper lip.

“There’s no fixed time to drink horchata,” the lady said. “As long we have at least one every day.”

Sagre – the historic local events that pop up in villages across the country in summer – are the perfect way to get a taste of regional cuisine and culture

I cannot remember a summer when at least one evening hasn’t been spent following signs to a local sagra. Not quite a food market and not quite a village fete, a sagra is like a village moving its kitchen outdoors for a few nights.

When I think back to those nights from childhood, the first image that comes to mind is of a woman’s hand closed into a fist above a pan of hot oil. Through a tight circle formed between her thumb and forefinger, she would squeeze soft lumps of batter, one small ball at a time, into the oil. In a few seconds, each soft mass would become a pittula, a small Salento fritter: swollen, uneven, golden, too hot to eat straight away but too good to wait for.

On a coastline brimming with seafood shacks, crab sandwiches and hyperlocal flavour, our food writer is happy to be distracted from the stunning scenery

If we take it as read that the better the view, the worse the cooking, then by rights south Wales’s Gower peninsula should be a culinary desert. The first time I visited almost 15 years ago, I was unprepared for its loveliness – back in 1956, Gower (never the Gower, as locals were quick to correct me) was the first place in the UK to be designated an area of outstanding natural beauty, and though the peninsula abuts the country’s second city, Swansea, it still feels profoundly rural. Crisscrossed by narrow lanes flanked by towering hedges and ancient churches, it’s a great place to cycle, to drive, and above all to walk up an appetite.

Indeed, it’s been a long-held ambition of mine to hike the 43 miles of the Welsh Coast Path from Mumbles to Loughor. Sadly, it remains just that because on this latest trip I spent considerably more time chomping than yomping … though in fairness I was on a research mission for a walking trip with a friend here later in the summer, because as a food writer and semi-professional glutton, I never like to head anywhere unprepared.

Skincare-inspired regimes feel unnecessary – but giving your plants more attention is always a good thing

The problem
Plant care has had a glow-up. There is now an entire regime that’s been lifted straight from the bathroom cabinet: cleanse, hydrate, serum, tone. These beautifully boxed kits promise lush plants, make lovely gifts and look wonderful on a shelf, but the question is: does your monstera actually need a four-step routine?

The hack
The promise is that plants, like skin, thrive on a structured routine, and that investing in a multi-product care kit will reward you with glowing foliage.

The work was simple: deliver letters, notices of assessment and other important legal documents, by bicycle. The locations, I came to realise, were varied and inconvenient

• Read more in this series here

A gopher is a small, solitary rodent with large front teeth native to North and Central America. It’s also the name of the job some workplaces give to errand runners (though it’s more usually spelled gofer).

When I was a 21-year-old law student in Canberra, I was in desperate need of casual work. I came across an ad pinned to one of the corkboards outside the library. Bleary-eyed after another all-nighter to finish an assignment, I took down the number of the law firm.

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Stephen Walsh was such a workaholic that none of his colleagues would believe he’d ever leave. But then he learned to dance and he’s now part of a dazzling tap troupe

When he was 57, Stephen Walsh found himself in hospital with a stomach bleed from an ulcer. As he lay in bed recovering, he thought about his future. “‘You always had this vague idea that you’d retire early,’” he told himself at the time. “‘Well, I’m going to do it.’”

Discharged from hospital, he gave his business partners three years’ notice. They had worked together at the General Electric Company, and after it was broken up in 1999, they launched their own training and consultancy business specialising in how to improve companies’ efficiency and outcomes.

Super-premium Android has top performance, long battery life and good cameras, but is let down by software

Honor’s svelte Android phone-tablet has been given a glow-up for its sixth version, offering a great alternative to Samsung for a fancy foldable with a red suede-like back framed in gold.

The Magic V6 continues the Chinese challenger brand’s strategy of taking a razor-thin device and slapping a giant circular lump on the back to fit in top-class cameras, something others often forgo. It costs a not inconsiderable £1,500 (€1,700/A$2,999) but only until August when the price jumps to a cool £2,000 (€2,300) – a solid £300 more than last year’s model as the cost of RAMageddon continues to bite, even at the very top end of the market.

Main screen: 7.95in (403ppi) 120Hz OLED flexible display

Cover screen: 6.52in (406ppi) 120Hz OLED

Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5

RAM: 16GB

Storage: 512GB

Operating system: MagicOS 10 (Android 16)

Camera: 50MP + 50MP ultrawide + 64MP 3x tele; 2x 20MP selfie

Connectivity: 5G, dual sim + esim, USB-C, wifi 7, NFC, Bluetooth 6, GNSS

Water resistance: IP68/69 (1.5 metres for 30 minutes)

Dimensions folded: 156.7 x 74.5 x 8.75-9mm

Dimensions unfolded: 156.7 x 145.6 x 4.0-4.1mm

Weight: 219-224g

Conservationists are thrilled at the arrival of three juvenile birds at Willington Wetlands, hoping more will follow

A long orange beak poked curiously out from its wooden crate, followed by a sleek head and slender body. Then the first white stork of the morning flapped its wings and took to the air. Moments later a second emerged tentatively to stalk through the long grass, followed closely by a final sibling who stretched its wings and explored the length of the enclosure.

The trio of juvenile white storks have just arrived at their new home in Willington Wetlands in Derbyshire and conservationists are hopeful that their presence will kickstart the return of the birds to the Midlands after an absence of more than 600 years.

The new breed of camera-equipped streetlights has the potential to fight crime and track down missing persons. Or will it just take Britain one step closer to a surveillance state?

How would you feel if your neighbourhood lamp-posts could recognise your number plate, and also your face? Maybe you wouldn’t mind, given how long we’ve had automatic number plate recognition and CCTV. What about if that lamp-post could power itself through its own solar panels, and perhaps find another use for any extra power generated – that would be good, right? This is what Conflow Power Group (CPG) in Warwickshire claims for its iLamps, the first of their kind in the UK.

What if lamp-posts had the potential to incorporate new AI capability – gait analysis, suspicious behaviours – that you haven’t even heard of? This is what the organisation Big Brother Watch worries about. And what if the home secretary had explicitly said she believed in a “panopticon state” – that is, a state that could watch you at all times (as Shabana Mahmood already has) – and what if she still had a job when the lamp-post eyes got their updates? Or what if the next home secretary was even keener on hyper-surveillance (hard to imagine), and the street apparatus was already in place? What about all the data this would harvest – who would own it?

Suffolk police ceded investigation into James Loubeau to the US military, leading to court martial acquittal

A US airman accused of a “spree” of rapes and sexual assaults in England, drugging some women and breaking into the homes of others, was able to avoid British justice after local police handed over part of the case to the American military.

Two British women went to Suffolk police in August 2019 to allege that James Loubeau and another US airman had drugged and raped them after they met in a nightclub in Bury St Edmunds, a local market town.

We would like to hear your experiences of accessing, providing or relying on adult social care in England

Andy Burnham has said he is prepared to use his “political capital” to reform England’s adult social care system, with the new prime minister arguing that fixing social care is essential to easing pressure on the NHS.

Whether you receive care yourself, support a loved one, work in social care or are an unpaid carer, we want to understand what adult social care in England is really like for the people who rely on it every day.

We want to hear how people are dealing with the very hot weather.

UK forecasters have predicted a fourth heatwave of the year, with temperatures forecast to reach as high as 35C by Wednesday, triggering heat health alerts.

Fire chiefs have also appealed to people to take care in parched parks and rural areas.

We would like to hear from people living near AI datacentres about their experiences and any concerns they might have

There are around 450 large data centres across the UK. These warehouses contain computing infrastructure that power cloud services and, increasingly, AI.

There is much debate about how datacentres affect their local areas, with concerns raised by nearby residents about land use, pollution, noise, and the “heat island effect”.

We would like to hear from people for whom GLP-1 drugs, such as Wegovy and Mounjaro, have not worked

We would like to hear from people for whom GLP-1 drugs, such as Wegovy and Mounjaro, have not worked.

About 5-10% of people who try GLP-1 drugs are in this category. We’d like to know your story. Was it that the drugs were unbearable, or that despite using them for an extended period you found no benefit? Did you encounter stigma as a result? Are you using other approaches to gain the benefits you hoped to see from GLP-1s?

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