Fandom memes, influencers and TikTok deal helped secure industry’s holy grail: gen Z loyalty

There are not many plaudits left for The Celebrity Traitors, which has delivered tension, crowd-pleasing ineptitude and the most famous fart in television history.

Yet for all the show’s achievements, one in particular – a feat that TV executives across the globe have been desperate to deliver – may stand out as the most impressive: it has got gen Z watching live TV.

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

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

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

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

Ruth was 14 years old and being treated for an eating disorder when she died after being detained under the Mental Health Act. She wasn’t allowed to see her family for more than a few hours a week. How did the system we trusted – and I worked for as a GP – fail us so tragically?

I remember so clearly the moment it dawned on me that the mental health ward where my teenage daughter was being treated felt like little more than a prison. Ruth had been so trusting. So had we. That all changed the day she was moved from our local hospital to Thames Ward at Huntercombe hospital in Berkshire. When we left, she walked so easily down to the hospital transport with me and the play therapist – who hugged her tight and waved goodbye. When the van door opened at the other end, the stark building loomed over us. We were met and escorted up a flight of stairs and through the double, air-locked, doors, one slamming closed behind us, the person with the keys waiting for the first lock to click before opening the next. This was a sealed unit, devoid of natural light, my eyes aching already from the harsh glare overhead. We were taken to an inner room, lined with windows. The goldfish bowl, they called it.

Ruth’s hand slipped into mine, head down as they told me it was time for me to go. “But I haven’t settled her into her room or met any of the staff yet,” was met with: “Parents aren’t allowed on the ward.” I asked again, and they conceded I could see her room, just once, but then I had to leave immediately. It was hospital policy.

The budget could involve a range of rises – here’s how they would stack up for different levels of income

In a gloomy state of the nation speech this week Rachel Reeves signalled that a rise in income tax could be on the cards in this month’s budget.

Labour had promised in its election manifesto not to increase the levy (or the other two “big three” taxes – national insurance and VAT), but the chancellor appears to be preparing the ground for an almighty U-turn to fill a bigger-than-expected £30bn hole in the public finances.

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

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

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

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

The Tesla CEO once hinted he was done with politics – but he’s been leaning further into the international far right

When the far-right activist Tommy Robinson emerged from a London courtroom this week after a judge cleared him of a terrorism charge, he gave thanks to the man he said had bankrolled his defense.

“Elon Musk, I’m forever grateful. If you didn’t step in and fund my legal fight I’d probably be in jail,” Robinson said. “Thank you, Elon.”

Special report: Uniserve was paid £1.4bn for Covid contracts that included supply of £178.5m in never-used equipment

When Mrs Justice Cockerill handed down her judgment in the high court against PPE Medpro, the company linked to the Conservative peer Michelle Mone, for supplying unsafe personal protective equipment during the pandemic, her findings were a landmark in a five-year saga that cast the opaque world of government deal making into stark light.

PPE Medpro was ordered to refund the full £122m that the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) paid for unusable gowns in the summer of 2020, as Boris Johnson’s government scrambled to refill the UK’s depleted stocks.

Endocrinologists warn taking testosterone unnecessarily can suppress natural hormone production

Social media misinformation is driving men to NHS clinics in search of testosterone therapy they don’t need, adding pressure to already stretched waiting lists, doctors have said.

Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) is a prescription-only treatment recommended under national guidelines for men with a clinically proven deficiency, confirmed by symptoms and repeated blood tests.

Southern Water is being investigated amid concerns the spill could have dire impact on rare sea life

Southern Water is investigating after millions of contaminated plastic beads washed up on Camber Sands beach, risking an “environmental catastrophe”.

The biobeads could have a dire impact on marine life, the local MP has said, with fears rare sea life, including seabirds, porpoises and seals, could ingest them and die.

Shabana Mahmood’s proposals draw scorn from some Labour MPs, while others want government to go further

• Why does the UK want to copy Denmark?

Shabana Mahmood is to announce changes to the UK’s immigration rules modelled on the Danish system, largely seen as among the most stringent in Europe, the Guardian understands.

Last month, the home secretary dispatched officials to Denmark to study its border control and asylum policies. Denmark’s tighter rules on family reunions and restricting some refugees to a temporary stay are among the policies being looked at.

Comments by Karoline Leavitt follow allegations that Panorama documentary misled viewers with its editing of a Trump speech

Donald Trump’s press secretary has described the BBC as “100% fake news” and a “propaganda machine” in an outspoken interview that comes after allegations of bias at the broadcaster.

Karoline Leavitt, a senior White House official in the Trump administration, said watching BBC bulletins while on trips to the UK “ruins” her day, saying taxpayers were being “forced to foot the bill for a leftist propaganda machine”.

Exclusive: Detainees at Rakefet include nurse deprived of natural light since January, and teenager held for nine months

Israel is holding dozens of Palestinians from Gaza isolated in an underground jail where they never see daylight, are deprived of adequate food and barred from receiving news of their families or the outside world.

The detainees have included at least two civilians held for months without charge or trial: a nurse detained in his scrubs, and a young food seller, according to lawyers from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) who represent both men.

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Sunderland get the ball rolling. What an atmosphere!

… but before kick-off, there’s a moment of silence in honour and respect of the fallen. A wreath of poppies laid by the centre circle. Immaculately observed. Pin-drop perfect. Then the Last Post. And finally a Roker-style roar of gratitude to break the silence. Here we go, then.

Presenter says she is ‘in a much more positive place’ after having lumpectomy and catching cancer early

Davina McCall has revealed she has undergone surgery for breast cancer and urged others to “get checked”.

In a video posted to Instagram, the presenter said she was “very angry” when she found out about the cancer, but felt in a “much more positive place” after a lumpectomy.

Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and Queen are on the soundtrack this week. But whose moves will be a kind of magic – and who will bite the dust?

Which of these grinning couples will be falling at the halfway hurdle?

Roll the industry standard scene-setting VT. Split or shaft? Sorry, wrong show.

Many women are afraid to go out, particularly on their own, after religiously aggravated rapes and assaults

Sikh women in the Midlands have told how a spate of religiously motivated attacks have caused fear in their community, forcing some to “change everything” about their daily routines.

Two rapes of Sikh women, both in their 20s, in Walsall and Oldbury, have been reported in recent weeks. John Ashby, 32, has been charged in connection with a religiously aggravated rape in relation to the alleged Walsall attack.

Brazil’s president welcomes world leaders while navigating divided government, promising action on deforestation and emissions

• How could the Tropical Forest Forever Facility tackle deforestation?

Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has welcomed world leaders to Belém for the first climate summit in the Amazon, where conservationists hope he can be a champion for the rainforest and its people.

But with a divided administration, a hostile Congress and 20th-century developmentalist instincts, this global figurehead of the centre left has a balancing act to perform in advocating protection of nature and a reduction of emissions.

Diana Shams wrote a book because ‘no one explains how to carry your baby through fire, hunger and fear – and still sing to her at bedtime’

She used to worry about screen time. She used to fret over sugar. She used to dwell on what cartoon character might be the right one to put on her son’s next birthday cake.

“I thought being a mother meant sleepless nights, picky eaters, school runs, messy rooms and too much laundry,” writes the author Diana Shams. “I used to think motherhood was hard.”

From Port Arthur to Hoddle Street, Paul E Mullen has had a front-row seat to the men behind some of the worst public massacres. He says it’s possible to ‘disrupt the script’ for future violence

Dr Paul E Mullen and his family were living near Dunedin, New Zealand when, one evening in November 1990, they heard gunfire. The shots continued into the night, followed by the distant sound of police and ambulances. At 9pm, a hospital colleague told him that a few kilometres away, in Aramoana, someone with a gun had started shooting.

As it turned out, Mullen had heard of the perpetrator before; one of his long-term patients was the man’s nextdoor neighbour, and soon Mullen would learn that many other people he knew had been injured or killed.

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Using an all-terrain vehicle that’s essentially the Jeep of wheelchairs, a New York tour group helps disabled people get on the trail

Former firefighter Gina Kothe’s right foot was crushed in an aerial-ladder accident during a 2010 blaze in Kingston, New York.

After months of false hope and a failed surgery, doctors decided her foot would have to be amputated. She fell into depression. “I had a slight addiction to painkillers,” she recalled. “I would shower every three or four days, and wear the same barbecue-stained T-shirt for two or three days in a row.”

Fishers from the Brittany coast are sending horse-hair nets to catch weapons and shield civilians and soldiers

In the fishing ports along France’s Brittany coast, the discarded fishing nets pile up along the coastal quaysides.

The lifespan of a deep-sea net is between 12 and 24 months, after which they become worn and beyond repair. Until now, the estimated 800 tonnes of nets scrapped every year have been a problem.

Lola Petticrew and Tom Cullen’s chemistry in this tale of secret passion during the Troubles will floor you. But it is Anderson as a sour, ragey alcoholic who truly mesmerises

It’s cliché to compare a love story to Romeo and Juliet. It’s like saying a detective reminds you of Sherlock Holmes. Yet it’s hard to avoid, watching Channel 4’s drama set in 1970s Northern Ireland. Trespasses follows Cushla Laverty, a 24-year-old Catholic teacher who falls for a swashbuckling Protestant, Michael Agnew. They begin seeing each other secretly, around Michael’s high profile establishment job: he’s an outspoken barrister, who campaigns for justice on behalf of young Catholic boys caught up in police bullying. This puts him, and those close to him, at risk of violent reprisal from both sides. Puts your commute into perspective, eh?

There’s much to admire. The show’s vintage palette for one, dripping with melancholy browns and orange. Was it perpetually autumn in the 70s? Michael and Cushla, played by Tom Cullen and Lola Petticrew from Say Nothing, have chemistry. And then there’s Gillian Anderson, who plays Cushla’s widowed mother, Gina. She steals so many scenes I wonder if she’s been hanging around the Louvre.

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

Lynne Ramsay’s latest is a portrait of a relationship in decline, while the Spanish nu-flamenco star enlists a plethora of talent for her latest album

Die My Love
Out now
Lynne Ramsay’s remarkable portrait of a couple spiralling emotionally in the wake of the birth of their child sees Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson go hell for leather in a pair of no-holds barred performances that chart the journey from passion to … well, it would be too simple to call it hatred. J-Law in particular seems likely to bag herself an Oscar nom for this one.

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

A truly satisfying climax to the celeb reality show, and the sharp and engaging thoughts of the Handmaid’s Tale author. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

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6 mins. Fiji exit with little fuss, but Muntz’s kick to touch simply invites another attack from and English lineout. A nice pattern is run in midfield that nearly puts Freeman into space, and a few phases later Cowan-Dickie powers over from short.

Smith converts.

• Shock as Verstappen is knocked out in Q1

• F1’s three-way title fight echoes battles of yesteryear

Liam Lawson has been given a five-second penalty and one penalty point on his super licence for causing a collision with Ollie Bearman during the sprint race earlier. Lawson is now on eight penalty points for the 12-month period. Earlier, Bearman was also handed a five-second time penalty for the sprint race and one penalty point on his licence for “driving in manner deemed potentially dangerous” for his contact with Lawson

There is a delay to qualifying due to repairs required to barrier damage at turns 10 and 11. No confirmation of how long yet …

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Referee: Andrew Kitchen

Referee’s assistants: Adrian Holmes and Wade Smith

Fourth official: Anthony Taylor

VAR: Darren England

Assistant VAR: Craig Taylor

• Former Wimbledon champion wins 6-3, 7-6 (0)

• Unbeaten Rybakina takes home £3.98m

Elena Rybakina re-established herself as one of the significant players in women’s tennis as she closed out a week of devastating performances against the best in the world by completely overpowering Aryna Sabalenka to capture one of the biggest titles of her career at the WTA Finals in Riyadh with a 6-3, 7-6 (0) win.

Having finished the season-ending tournament unbeaten in her five matches, Rybakina is now $5.235m (£3.98m) richer, earning the greatest prize money haul in the history of women’s sports. The victory marks the 26-year-old’s fourth big title after wins at Wimbledon in 2022, and Indian Wells and the Italian Open a year later. This is her third title of the season and her 11th title on the WTA Tour overall.

This match was as dismal as last season’s Europa League final and in a routine league game nerves are no excuse

Never underestimate the haplessness of this Manchester United. Never underestimate the haplessness of this Tottenham Hotspur. Never underestimate the capacity of the Premier League to uncover drama in the least plausible situation. The embers of a game of little quality seemed cold and dead but somehow burst into glorious flame in the final six minutes plus stoppage time.

What it means is anybody’s guess, other than that these are two sides who remain deeply flawed. The shadow of Bilbao and last May’s Europa League final was unavoidable; in purely technical terms, that game was just as bad as the first 84 minutes of this one, but it at least had a sense of edge. Nervousness is permissible if there is something to be nervous about. Such scrappiness in a routine league meeting is far less explicable.

• Leicester condemn Norwich to eighth straight home loss

• Club: ‘We have no choice other than to make a change’

Liam Manning has been sacked by Norwich in the wake of a 2-1 home defeat by Leicester, which left them 23rd in the Championship, with nine points from 15 games and without a win at Carrow Road since May.

The Canaries have lost all seven of their home matches in the Championship this season, with another defeat coming in the Carabao Cup, and are now four points adrift of safety. After going ahead on 62 minutes through Mathias Kvistgaarden’s second goal in successive games, Norwich were pegged back by substitute Bobby Cordova-Reid 10 minutes later and then suffered a nightmare ending when Jordan James headed home a dramatic second for the visitors.

When it eventually arrived, it was well worth the wait. It was fitting that Ephron Mason-Clark was the provider of the decisive moment of quality, perhaps the most important goal of his career to date, to stretch Coventry’s lead at the Championship summit to five points.

With full-time four minutes away, Mason-Clark left the floor acrobatically to meet Ellis Simms’ flick-on and send 3,300 Coventry fans into a wild dance. In a match played at a ferocious pace, he had provided the missing ace.

• Scotland 17-25 New Zealand

• All Blacks squander 17-point lead before late try

A 33rd attempt, a 31st defeat and crucially still no win for Scotland against the All Blacks. And so the search will go on. Let us not resort to that familiar lament, if Scotland could not win it here, will they ever. It is true, they had as gilt-edged a chance as they ever had, New Zealand forced to play a total of half an hour a man down, having been shown three yellow cards. It is true, Scotland showed remarkable spirit to recover from 17-0 down at the break to level on the hour. But the All Blacks remain deadly, deadlier than Scotland.

This Scotland team is deadly too, but it is a question of deadliness when it matters. That is where they continue to come up short. New Zealand wrote the manual – and did that a long time ago.

Despair and rancour stalk the concrete corridors of the place that still feels nothing like home for West Ham. Though hope is not yet extinguished. A second home win in succession for Nuno Espírito Santo’s team, with old faithful Tomas Soucek key in defeating a fellow relegation contender in Burnley.

Three points wrested from a contest low on proficiency may prove vital in the fight against the London Stadium staging Championship football next season. “It means everything,” said Nuno.

Once Soucek had scored the Hammers’ second, before his shot was spilled into fellow sub Kyle Walker-Peters’ path for the third, home fans were singing lustily. They had already made it known once again, and in no uncertain terms, what they think of those running the club. Following protests against Crystal Palace, the boycotting of the Brentford game, a sit-in against Newcastle, a pre-match march had been staged.

Money talks – and his essay denouncing ‘near-term emissions goals’ at Cop30 mostly argues the case for letting the ultra-rich off the hook

Let’s begin with the fundamental problem: Bill Gates is a politics denier. Though he came to it late, he now accepts the realities of climate science. But he lives in flat, embarrassing denial about political realities. His latest essay on climate, published last week, treats the issue as if it existed in a political vacuum. He writes as if there were no such thing as political power, and no such thing as billionaires.

His main contention is that funds are very limited, so the delegates at this month’s climate summit in Brazil should direct money away from “near-term emissions goals” towards climate “adaptation” and spending on poverty and disease.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

This week, Mexico’s president was groped in public. But a New York Times podcast is fretting about excessive wokeness

Lean in (to misogyny), ladies!

Are you a woman? Do you want to rapidly raise your profile and get booked on the speaking circuit? Are you good at mental gymnastics?

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

After Claudia Sheinbaum was assaulted this week, her opponents claimed she staged it. From their own experiences, the women I met know she didn’t have to

“Machismo in Mexico is so fucked up not even the president is safe,” said Caterina Camastra, a professor and feminist, when I talked to her in Morelia, a city west of the Mexican capital this week. Succinct and to the point, it is a sentiment shared by many women in Mexico after watching the now viral video of a drunk man groping the country’s first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, as she walked from the National Palace to the education ministry on Monday. Sheinbaum, who has pressed charges against the man, said much the same at her daily press briefing on Wednesday: “If they do this to the president, what happens to all the other women in the country?”

Sheinbaum’s unprecedented position has made this a teaching moment in a country where women have long complained that sexual harassment and assault on streets and public transport were too often normalised and not taken seriously. The leftist Sheinbaum’s political opponents on the right have done just that by claiming her sexual assault was staged to distract from the assassination of a local mayor, Carlos Manzo, an outspoken critic of organised crime who had called on the government to do more to protect him and others. Most women here, on the other hand, know that sexual violence does not have to be set up – half of them have experienced it at some point in their lives.

Mona Eltahawy writes the Feminist Giant newsletter. She is the author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls and Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution

Last weekend’s Cambridgeshire train attack brought up a question that we often ask ourselves. But the answer isn’t simple

• Emma Kavanagh is a psychologist who has worked for the police and the military

The devastating attack on train passengers in Cambridgeshire last weekend was shocking. There has been talk of heroes who risked their lives to help others, and of those who hid to save their lives. If you are anything like me, you will be asking yourself: what if that were me? How would I cope? And just who would I turn out to be when the worst happens?

Some of us imagine that we would vault to the rescue, fighting off attackers. Others, perhaps the more realistic among us, anticipate flight, extricating ourselves from the situation as quickly and efficiently as possible. Most of us would like to think that we would stay our urge to run, lingering long enough to offer aid to those in need.

Emma Kavanagh is a psychologist who worked for many years for the police and military. Her books include How to Be Broken and The Psychopath Effect, to be published in 2026

In the UK, the charity Mind is available on 0300 123 3393. In the US, call or text Mental Health America at 988 or chat 988lifeline.org. In Australia, support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978

Israel turns the violence up and down at will, maintaining full dominion over Gaza and the West Bank, then calls each pause a generous ‘ceasefire’

If you started attending one funeral a day beginning 1 January 2025, you would finish in the year 3887. That is how long it would take to mourn every life lost in Gaza. By then, your grandchildren’s great¹⁰ grandchildren would be dust, and still you would be burying Palestinian bodies from a “war” Israel insists was about self-defense. Even then, this number does not tell you about the thousands of ways these bodies were burned, torn, crushed and made anything but whole.

And yet here we are, watching world leaders gather in Egypt for a “peace summit” last month where the only people absent were Palestinians. The banner read “Peace 2025”, while Palestine’s representatives were barred from the room.

Ahmad Ibsais is a first generation Palestinian American, law student and poet who writes the newsletter State of Siege

The Maga machine is clicking into gear to ensure that defeat is all but impossible in next year’s midterm elections

After the joy, the trepidation. Or at least the preparation. Democrats, along with many others around the world, cheered this week’s wins in a clutch of off-year elections that saw Donald Trump’s Republicans defeated from sea to shining sea. But now they need to brace themselves for the reaction. Because Donald Trump does not like losing. And he will do everything he can to ensure it does not happen again – by means fair and, more often, foul. Indeed, that effort is already under way.

For now, the Democrats are still clinking glasses, enjoying a success that tastes all the sweeter for coming exactly a year after they lost everything – the House, the Senate and the White House – to a returning and triumphant Trump. The most dramatic win was Zohran Mamdani’s history-making victory in America’s most populous city, New York, but there was success too at the other end of the continent, as voters in California backed Democrats on an apparently technical measure that could prove hugely significant. In between, Democrats won the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia by healthy, double-digit margins.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist and host of the Politics Weekly America podcast

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

The Celebrity Traitors drew to a magnificent close this week – and proved that these lying double-crossers are of a far finer calibre than our MPs

• This article contains spoilers about the final episode of The Celebrity Traitors

The Celebrity Traitors final was so good that the TV moment of the year (Nick revealing he’d written Joe’s name on his slate) only held its crown for six minutes before the actual TV moment of the year (Alan revealing he’d been a traitor all along) completely stole it. Epic congratulations to Alan, a full-spectrum entertainment booking, who from the first minutes of this season catapulted himself to the status of high-value national treasure, while Joe Marler also leapfrogged 27 stardom categories in the public imagination and should now be made Duke of York. And look, it wasn’t all bad for historian and Guardian Scott Trust board member David Olusoga. Thanks to the deputy PM and justice secretary, he was only the second most spectacularly wrong David of the week.

But why am I bringing politics into it? After all, one of the most remarkable shifts I haven’t been able to help noticing during this epic first run of The Celebrity Traitors is that no senior politician has attempted to refer to the show as a way of currying public favour. They’d certainly get short shrift if they tried. But this represents a radical break with the past 20 years, where politicians and prime ministers became transfixed by the popularity of reality TV. In the first twisted heyday of the genre, politicians really thought it was the answer and they could steal its best bits to succeed in their own trade. Now I think that even they realise a show like The Celebrity Traitors is the thing people escape to in an age when none of our leaders have any answers.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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

New York’s mayor-elect has taken on powerful institutions. With the World Cup taking place in his city, he should challenge Fifa next

After winning the election for mayor of New York City, an exuberant Zohran Mamdani took to the stage at his victory speech and said, “If there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power.” He was alluding to Donald Trump, but the sentiment also applies to Fifa, the world’s governing body for soccer.

In September, Mamdani’s team kicked off a “Game Over Greed” campaign targeting Fifa’s use of dynamic pricing for 2026 men’s World Cup tickets, calling it an “affront to the game.” His petition demanded that Fifa cease its rapacious dynamic pricing scheme, place a price cap on tickets that are resold on Fifa’s ticketing platform, and reserve a tranche of tickets for local residents. Mamdani, a longtime Arsenal fan, told the Guardian’s Football Weekly podcast, “I have long been quite troubled by how the supposed stewards of the game have opted for profit time and time again at the expense of the people that love this game.”

The increasing ferocity and frequency of tropical storms imposes an unbearable burden on countries including Jamaica

The geographically uneven risks from increasingly extreme and dangerous weather grow ever starker. As Jamaica and other Caribbean countries clear up after Hurricane Melissa, and Typhoon Kalmaegi heads west after killing nearly 200 people in the Philippines and Vietnam, the case for more international support to countries facing the most destructive impacts from global heating has never been stronger.

Last week’s five-day rainfall in Jamaica was made twice as likely by higher temperatures, according to initial findings from climate attribution studies. The current death toll across the Caribbean is at least 75. The economic and social costs are hard to quantify in a region that is still recovering from 2024’s Hurricane Beryl. Crucial infrastructure has been destroyed before the loans used to build it have even been paid off. Andrew Holness, Jamaica’s prime minister, estimates that the damage there is roughly equivalent to one-third of the country’s gross domestic product.

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.

It might be darker than usual, but this year’s festive offering reflects our fears for boys growing up today

We need look no further than this year’s John Lewis Christmas ad to see that one of the most urgent national conversations is the crisis of boyhood. Fears around the rise of the manosphere, spiralling mental health problems and loneliness among young men have made headlines, from Sir Gareth Southgate’s Richard Dimbleby lecture, in which he expressed fears that “toxic influencers” are replacing traditional father figures, to the phenomenal success of the hit Netflix series Adolescence. Now these anxieties have even crept into the UK’s reliable cultural barometer, the department store’s annual ad.

As this festive institution itself turns 18, it is fitting perhaps that it tells the story of a middle‑aged father and his silent, headphone-wearing teenage son. The gift of a vinyl record of Alison Limerick’s 1990 dance anthem Where Love Lives transports the dad back to his 90s clubbing days, until the pace changes and father and son see each other over the chasm of years. The boy, in true adland style, becomes a toddler and then a baby. We return to their immaculately stylish living room for a hug and a few tears in homes across the country – if Saatchi & Saatchi has done its job.

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.

Siobhan Lyons says ignore the static that is social media and turn disillusionment into art, Dr Michael J Richardson thinks money, meaning and manhood should be topics of public conversation, not private ones. Plus a letter from Vicky Dunn

It’s great to see that there are young men who are actively looking for alternatives to the kinds of masculinities displayed online (I’m a teenager who was lured into the manosphere. Here’s how to reach young men like me, 2 November). But to me, Josh Sargent’s article is about more than just the manosphere. It’s about the platforms that facilitate it, and how social media diverts attention away from things like reading and toward things that largely don’t matter. Josh says it himself: “in fairness, short-form content is slightly more engaging than Macbeth quotation flashcards”. That’s truly worrying.

It’s true that the education system can and should do better, but I also think we need reminding that young people have always felt alienated from the education system. They have always been disillusioned, with feelings of being ignored and misunderstood, and I think many young men today forget that. It isn’t just them. John Hughes made an entire career of writing about disillusioned youth and the pressures to conform to expectations around masculinity and femininity (women have long endured the pressures of not being “feminine” enough, of “failing” as mothers, as women etc). It’s taken a long time for alternatives to emerge, and we’re still not there yet. So what frustrates me most about the idea of toxic masculinity is that (some) men think that their trials are somehow unique, so they lash out at women.

Readers respond to an article by Jonathan Liew on rightwing condemnation of the capital

Regarding Jonathan Liew’s article (Say what you like about ‘Sadiq Khan’s no-go hellscape’ – Britain’s cities prove the rightwing agitators wrong, 3 November), my experience of London has been one of welcome and joy in its people and cultural venues. I am 80 and have chosen to retire to north-east London to live in this very multicultural, vibrant environment in my final years.

I have in the past enjoyed the peace of Devon and Hampshire, but in both I missed a certain heartbeat – the joy of art and music – and now these and more are on hand in London. I find the people friendly, the young polite and, because I walk with a stick, just about everybody makes space for me to get along the pavements. On the tube, young men, particularly those of Asian descent, immediately offer a seat, and bus passengers do the same.

Barbara Esstman shares a memory of chatting like friends with the author in front of an audience at the Smithsonian Institution, while Jane Crossen is intrigued by Atwood’s Norfolk connection

A line from your recent Margaret Atwood interview (‘It is the scariest of times’: Margaret Atwood on defying Trump, banned books – and her score-settling memoir, 1 November) – “She has a reputation for ‘eviscerating interviewers’” – prompts me to write a thank you to her that I’ve been thinking about since September 2000.

Ms Atwood was scheduled to be interviewed at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC. The person who usually did the literary interviews had heard of this reputation, chickened out, and asked me to replace her. I agreed, though I had never interviewed anyone and was moving house that week. At the time, I didn’t even know in which box my decent clothes and shoes were packed, and had no business agreeing to anything but unpacking.

Ian Flintoff champions live performances and Val Mainwood argues that great art should challenge us. Plus a letter from Ross Speirs on snap-happy gallery visitors

The case that you brilliantly make for seeing actual paintings rather than reproductions (Editorial, 2 November) also goes wholeheartedly with seeing real and actual performances by live human beings rather than the two-dimensional screen reproductions which are now accepted as the norm.

Humans benefit enormously from seeing live performances, and they benefit even more from taking part in them. We have the greatest theatre legacy and culture since ancient Athens. Let all witness this, but also take part. The buoyancy and creativity of our country, and therefore its true economy, will bounce like never before.
Ian Flintoff
Oxford

Commerce department expected to add about 700 more items with steel content to levy list at request of US firms

Businesses around the world are steeling themselves for another round of Donald Trump’s tariffs, this time on goods ranging from bicycles to baking trays, as US industry embraces a call for more products to tax on import.

Small, medium and large American companies have asked the US Department of Commerce to add about 700 more items to an August list of 407 products already facing extra tariffs because of their steel content, which hit items such as Ikea tables with metal nuts and bolts and German combine harvesters.

Eleanor Gittens, 107, and Lyle Gittens, 108, of Miami met at a basketball game in 1941 and have been married for 83 years

A Miami husband and wife who recently attained the title of world’s longest-married couple say they managed that feat just by loving one another.

“We love each other,” Eleanor Gittens, 107, said to LongeviQuest when the website specializing on people who are in their second century of life asked what was the secret to her 83 years of marriage to her husband, Lyle.

Volodymr Zelenskyy calls for more sanctions on Moscow after 45 missiles and 450 drones launched at Ukraine

Russia launched a barrage of drones and missiles at Ukraine overnight, killing at least four people and damaging energy infrastructure in three separate regions, according to Ukrainian officials.

Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Russia had launched more than 450 drones and 45 missiles, most of which were shot down.

• Trump wants name on Commanders home, per ESPN

• White House source says move ‘will probably happen’

• $3.7bn, 65,000-seat stadium expected to open in 2030

Donald Trump is pressing the NFL’s Washington Commanders to name their planned $3.7bn stadium after him, a bid he is pursuing through back-channel conversations with ownership and by leaning on the government bodies that must approve the project, according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

A senior White House official said Trump has conveyed his wishes directly to a member of Josh Harris’s ownership group. “It’s what the president wants, and it will probably happen,” the official told ESPN. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt added in an email: “That would be a beautiful name, as it was President Trump who made the rebuilding of the new stadium possible.”

Iran’s police say Omid Sarlak, 22, shot himself, but fellow activists suspect he may have been killed for his views

The death of a young Iranian man who had filmed himself burning a photograph of the country’s supreme leader has sparked a war of words between state media and activists over how he died.

Government-sanctioned news websites reported that Omid Sarlak, who was in his 20s, had been found in his car on Saturday in western Iran with a gunshot wound to his head and traces of gunpowder on his hands. Iranian police said Sarlak had “died by suicide”.

Exclusive: Just Stop Oil activist was banned from attending gatherings, including meeting a friend in a cafe, without permission

Environmental protesters are being given licence conditions on release from jail that are supposed to be limited to extremism cases.

Ella Ward, 22, was banned from going to any meetings or gatherings, except for worship, without permission from her probation officer, although the Ministry of Justice dropped the condition after she brought a legal challenge.

Host uses Indigenous concepts and changes agenda to help delegates agree on ways to meet existing climate goals

Shipping containers, cruise ships, river boats, schools and even army barracks have been pressed into service as accommodation for the 50,000 plus people descending on the Amazon: this year’s Cop30 climate summit is going to be, in many ways, an unconventional one.

Located in Belém, a small city at the mouth of the Amazon river, the Brazilian hosts have been criticised for the exorbitant cost of scarce hotel rooms and hastily vacated apartments. Many delegations have slimmed down their presence, while business leaders have decamped to hold their own events in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

With more secondhand cars available and salary sacrifice schemes offering extra savings, the lease option is taking off

When Anthony Santos was looking for a car to replace his Audi Q3, a diesel SUV, he felt reluctant about making the switch to an electric car.

“I was considering it, but I probably wouldn’t have,” says Santos, a sales manager at RWinvest, a property investment company in Liverpool. But when he started looking at his options the ability to lease a used electric vehicle (EV) caught his eye.

Exclusive: Research shows oil, gas and coal firms’ unprecedented access to Cop26-29, blocking urgent climate action

More than 5,000 fossil fuel lobbyists were given access to the UN climate summits over the past four years, a period marked by a rise in catastrophic extreme weather, inadequate climate action and record oil and gas expansion, new research reveals.

Lobbyists representing the interests of the oil, gas and coal industries – which are mostly responsible for climate breakdown – have been allowed to participate in the annual climate negotiations where states are meant to come in good faith and commit to ambitious policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Energy firms and charities urge chancellor to avoid short-term fix that could also harm low-income households

Rachel Reeves has been told that cutting funding for home insulation at the budget would risk the UK’s climate goals and hurt low-income households in a joint intervention by energy firms, fuel poverty charities and environmental groups.

In a letter to the chancellor, more than 60 groups and companies urged Reeves not to take such a damaging “short-term fix” to slash funding for more energy-efficient homes to pay for a reduction in energy bills.

Government and water companies are devising emergency plans for worst water shortage in decades

Water companies and the government are drawing up emergency plans for a drought next year more extreme than we have seen in decades.

Executives at one major water company told the Guardian they were extremely concerned about the prospect of a winter with lower than average rainfall, which the Met Office’s long-term forecast says is likely. They said if this happened, the water shortfall would mean taking drastic water use curtailment measures “going beyond hosepipe bans”.

UK expected to reduce contribution to Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria by 20%

A group of seven Labour MPs who served as ministers under Keir Starmer have written to the prime minister warning that an expected cut to UK funding for aid to combat preventable diseases would be both a “moral failure” and a strategic disaster.

With ministers and officials expected to decide the UK’s contribution to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria within days, the letter renews pressure on Starmer to pull back from an expected 20% cut.

Exclusive: Imran Patel, who resigned last year after reports about his conduct, is being investigated by the IOPC

A former Metropolitan police officer allegedly used sex workers while on duty in the midst of a major investigation into behavioural standards, the Guardian can reveal.

Britain’s largest police force has been described as “institutionally misogynistic” after widespread claims that a “toxic” sexist culture has been allowed to thrive for decades.

TikTok video shows woman speaking into camera and reacting to a loud thud before she says ‘I just hit somebody’

Authorities are investigating a newly surfaced video that suggests a woman who hit and killed a man while driving in the Chicago suburb of Zion, Illinois, on Monday night was livestreaming on TikTok at the time of the crash.

The video in question was reportedly taken by a user in Zion, and it shows a woman behind the wheel of a car reacting to a loud thud by saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck … I just hit somebody.”

Azruddin Mohamed had emerged as a surprise contender in the presidential election and claims political persecution

Guyana has been thrown into political turmoil following the arrest and possible extradition to the United States of the country’s main opposition leader just two months after he emerged as the surprise contender in the presidential election that kept incumbent Irfaan Ali in power.

Azruddin Mohamed, 38, and his father, Nazar Mohamed, 73, two of Guyana’s wealthiest figures thanks to their gold mining empire, were arrested on 31 October in the capital, Georgetown, in response to a formal extradition request from the US government.

Chadema party says deputy secretary general arrested and calls election of incumbent president fraudulent

Tanzanian authorities have detained a senior official from the main opposition party, Chadema, amid a spate of arrests in connection to deadly protests during elections last week.

More than 1,000 people were killed by security forces during the demonstrations, according to Chadema and human rights bodies. The Tanzanian government has said these figures were exaggerated but did not give its own figures.

Minority government benefitted from opposition members voting across the aisle, paving way for billions in spending

Canada’s prime minister Mark Carney’s minority government has survived two confidence votes on its budget, quashing fears – for now – of a winter federal election.

The Liberals managed to pass the second of three votes on the plan on Friday, paving the way for tens of billions in new spending.

Traders report long waits at Sevington inspection post and claim trees and shrubs are repeatedly being damaged

Importers of plants say long delays and damage to shipments at a Kent border control post risk driving up prices and could lead to transport companies stopping deliveries across the Channel.

Traders have reported long waits in recent weeks at the government’s Sevington facility off the M20 near Ashford, which was built to check goods of plant and animal origin arriving from the EU. One importer said delays were adding £200 of costs to each load.

North Sea oil and gas rig staff need to be under 124.7kg so they can be safely winched on to helicopter in emergency

Thousands of North Sea oil and gas workers risk losing their jobs on offshore rigs unless they lose weight within the next year.

Workers who weigh more than 124.7kg (19.5 st) fully clothed will need to shed some pounds by next November or risk being barred from working offshore, according to the industry’s trade body.

Almost one in five school-leavers in West Midlands town are not in education, employment or training and chancellor is under pressure to deliver promised ‘youth guarantee’

It is a rainy day in Dudley and Alex Jones and his friends are taking shelter under some trees in the car park of the college of technology. Clad in blue overalls on a mid-morning break, the students are hopeful their automotive qualifications will stand them in good stead for finding work.

Here in the heart of the Black Country, however, that is not always guaranteed. “Trying to find a part-time job is like trying to find a needle in a haystack,” says the 17-year-old trainee mechanic.

Making Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire appears to fit a US investment culture of backing high-flying innovators

For all the headlines about an on-off relationship with Donald Trump, baiting liberals and erratic behaviour, Tesla shareholders are loath to part with Elon Musk.

Investors in the electric vehicle maker voted on Thursday to put the world’s richest person on the path to become the world’s first trillionaire, despite the controversy that is now seemingly intrinsic to his public profile.

This extraordinarily tight child kidnap drama knits all its threads together brilliantly – and the mighty Snook of Succession fame shines as a mother whose son is missing

Look, I am a mother, a neurotic and – if one of my HRT patches sloughs off without me noticing – very quickly a clinical paranoiac. But even if that were not true, this latest tale of a playdate gone unthinkably wrong would have me firmly in its grip. All Her Fault, an adaptation of bestselling thriller writer Andrea Mara’s 2021 book of the same name, braids a number of popular TV trends together, interrogating White Lotus-style the phenomenon of middle-class US affluence and the protections it offers and corruptions it encourages, a missing child narrative and an examination of the penalty women pay for motherhood. It is rare that all these things are held in balance, without at least one element becoming preachy or the thriller part becoming baggy or preposterous, but All Her Fault manages it brilliantly.

We are plunged straight into the thick of things as wealthy wealth manager Marissa Irvine (Succession’s mighty Sarah Snook) arrives to pick up her five-year-old son Milo from a playdate at the home of another school mum, Jenny (Dakota Fanning). But when she reaches the supposed address, the woman who answers the door is not Jenny, has never heard of her, or Jenny’s nanny Carrie (Sophia Lillis) who was in charge of the playdate, or Milo. It soon becomes clear that no one has seen Milo since Carrie picked him up from school. He’s gone, his online tracker found smashed to bits in the school car park, and he stays gone even after the time a ransom demand would usually have been received.

A newspaper report about a missing girl, the memory of a midwinter emergency … Susan Choi, Andrew Miller, David Szalay and others on what inspired their shortlisted books

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

The Dude’s relaxed attitude towards the pressures of life helped me realise it was better to be jobless than stuck in one I hated

Quitting your job in your 30s with no solid plan is generally considered poor decision-making. Doing it because you watched The Big Lebowski is probably even worse. But as I faced up to what would be my eighth year in an IT role, I watched Jeff Bridges meandering his way through the chaos of life in a dressing gown. And I found myself thinking: maybe the Dude had it figured out.

For most of my working life, my identity has been strongly bolstered by work: doing well career-wise felt like evidence of my utility and respectability (despite the fact no one ever really understood what my job was anyway). And, like most millennials, I’d felt exceptionally lucky to eventually get a grad job out of university at all, especially one that paid more than a “living wage”. On top of that, as a second generation immigrant, I’d been repeatedly told from a young age that being jobless is a terrible state of affairs.

A special extravaganza with new songs and behind-the-scenes exclusives. Plus: Jade Thirlwall wows at the Proms. Here’s what to watch this evening

8pm, Sky Max

In this week’s newsletter: Last night’s superb finale (no spoilers here!) was a fitting conclusion to a show that’s had everyone talking. Can it avoid the fate of other once-mighty reality juggernauts?

That’s it then. The curiously pristine SUVs are back in the garage, the cloaks are off to the dry cleaners and your favourite hits of the 80s and 90s are safe, for a few months at least, from those absurdly melodramatic cover treatments. Yes, The Celebrity Traitors is over, having served up a finale that had just the right amount of intrigue, double-crossing and slack-jawed looks to camera from the terminally outwitted. We won’t ruin things here for anyone who hasn’t watched it yet, but for a full spoiler-filled debrief you can read Lucy Mangan’s review of last night’s drama here.

It was a fitting capstone to a remarkably successful first Celebrity Traitors outing. Fears that its big names might be too media-trained or overly deferential to one another – or just lacking the ruthlessness and desperation of their civilian equivalents, who actually need the win a fair bit more than the celebs do – proved unfounded. The show’s core appeal was still there, but in a supersized state. The casting managed to be preposterously starry – featuring at least half a dozen people who wouldn’t usually go within a 10-mile radius of a reality TV show – but also carefully consistent with the civvy edition’s usual mix of personality types. More broadly, the Traitors franchise is now in its imperial phase; a ratings hit in a post-ratings era, a format that it feels like everyone is watching and talking about, even if they’re not.

After 16 years, Cave’s scandalous book The Death of Bunny Munro about a sex addict on the run with his son finally lands on our screens. He and star Smith talk Kylie regrets, bad dads … and how to do a strip club scene with a nine-year-old

Nick Cave claims that at least four different production companies have tried to turn his frequently hilarious, always disturbing, sex-filled novel The Death of Bunny Munro into a film or TV show in the 16 years since its release. The problem? “No one would play the character!” he says, sitting, impeccably suited as always, in a room at London’s Corinthia Hotel. As it turns out, the material was just waiting for the right actor. Step up Matt Smith to play the titular sex-addicted travelling makeup salesman.

It’s not surprising that it ended up being Smith. Since his Doctor Who days, he has tended to pick roles that trend slightly twisted – and the role of Bunny, who in Cave’s book is depicted as a borderline animalistic misogynist who sweats pure ethanol, fits the bill entirely. “I think it’s important to tell stories that feel challenging and difficult and polarising, and I thought this would be all of those things,” Smith says animatedly, clad in head-to-toe black in contrast with Bunny’s rakish suit. “But actually, at its heart, it’s about a father and son, and it’s really beautiful.”

Rapper receives nominations in all top categories while Lady Gaga, Bad Bunny, Sabrina Carpenter and Leon Thomas are also major nominees

• Grammys 2026: the nominations in all the major categories

The Grammys’ love continues for Kendrick Lamar. The rapper, who took home the most trophies at the 2025 music awards with five, leads the nominees for the 2026 awards.

Lamar is up for nine awards, including album of the year (for his most recent, GNX), best rap album, record of the year and song of the year. He faces competition for the night’s top award – album of the year – from Bad Bunny, Justin Bieber, Sabrina Carpenter, Lady Gaga, Leon Thomas, Tyler, the Creator and Clipse, Pusha T & Malice.

With a towering new album about female saints in 13 languages, she’s pop’s boldest star – and one of its most controversial. She revisits her spiritual breakthroughs, and explains why we need forgiveness instead of cancel culture

Rosalía Vila Tobella is just as bored as you are of pop music functioning as gossip column fodder, with lyrics full of hints of rivalries and betrayal. “I’m tiring of seeing people referencing celebrities, and celebrities referencing other celebrities,” she says. “I’m really much more excited about saints.”

The 33-year-old Catalan musician and producer’s monumental fourth album, Lux, draws on the lives of dozens of female saints, inspired by “feminine mysticism, spirituality” and how lives of murder, materialism and rebellion could light the way to canonisation. Rosalía reels them off. Her gothic, operatic new single Berghain borrows from the 12th-century German abbess Hildegard of Bingen (cited like Madonna these days by experimental female musicians). “She had these visions that would pierce her brain. There’s also Vimala, who wrote poetry but was a prostitute, and she ended up becoming a saint because she was one of the first women who wrote in the Therīgāthā,” an ancient Buddhist poem collection written by nuns.

Perich’s work, performed with McVinnie at Royal Festival Hall, is the latest addition to today’s canon of boundary-pushing pipe organ music

From New York and London
Recommended if you like Kali Malone, Éliane Radigue, Caterina Barbieri, Burial’s Comafields
Up next Infinity Gradient album out 21 November

There’s something about the pipe organ that keeps experimental musicians going back for more. No other acoustic instrument pierces and shakes the air in quite the same way.

Whately/Phan/Tilbrook
(Signum Classics)
A superb survey of Clarke’s lyrical, long-overlooked songs reveals a composer of depth and drama

Rebecca Clarke’s songs have been edging on to the radar recently, but this recording, led by the mezzo-soprano Kitty Whately, tenor Nicholas Phan and pianist Anna Tilbrook, is the first time they have all been assembled together.

It’s quite a body of work – nearly 60 songs, dating from the early 1910s to the 1940s, after which Clarke largely stopped composing. Around a third of them are recorded for the first time, several are settings of German poetry that Clarke wrote as a student in London; some show her feeling her way towards her own sound, but the best – for example, the quietly imaginative Aufblick – are already distinctive.

Three of Australia’s most acclaimed writers have teamed up to write The Mushroom Tapes, about the weeks they spent at the triple-murder trial, picking apart lies, media ethics and evil

“None of us wants to write about this. And none of us wants to not write about it.”

The profound inner conflict of the three narrators begins on page two of The Mushroom Tapes and never quite resolves, lingering as an ethical tension that colours almost every page.

There Is no Antimemetics Division by qntm; The Merge by Grace Walker; Lightbreakers by Aja Gabel; Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin; The Strength of the Few by James Islington

There Is no Antimemetics Division by qntm (Del Rey, £18.99)
There have been stories before about mysterious alien entities existing, hidden, within our world, and secret government departments tasked with protecting humanity. This debut novel by software engineer Sam Hughes writing under the pen name qntm pushes the idea to the most terrifying extreme: the antimeme. Memes are ideas that easily spread; antimemes are literally unthinkable, “self-keeping secrets”, impossible to record or to remember. Some feed on memories and pose an existential threat. But how is it possible to win a war when there’s no identifiable enemy, and every attack is immediately forgotten? Against these odds, the Antimemetics Division somehow exists, part of a secret organisation with bases deep underground in the English countryside, as related in this unforgettable, mind-bendingly brilliant novel.

The Merge by Grace Walker (Magpie, £12.99)
In a near-future, dystopian Britain, population pressures on scarce resources have resulted in a new technology that promises to cut the problem in half. Any two people who agree to “merge” by having the consciousness of one transported into the other’s body will be rewarded with lower taxes and a better standard of living. The promise is that the two minds will gradually meld into one new person, preserving the best of both. When Laurie is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s, her daughter Amelia signs them up to join a trial group, hoping the merge will preserve Laurie’s mind. They have three months to learn how the process will work, and if they are still doubtful they can call it off – but it seems no one ever does. Moving between the viewpoints of the two women, this is a compelling and disturbing story of love and sacrifice, control and resistance.

From Pride and Prejudice to Fifty Shades, a writer’s paean to the literature of desire

Eva Ibbotson, a doyenne of 1980s romantic fiction, once said self-deprecatingly that her books were aimed at “old ladies and people with flu”. To which Ella Risbridger, who is in her early 30s, sniffle-free and a devotee of Ibbotson’s “sexy and sweet” novels, has this cracking comeback: “If love is the most important thing, and to me it was and is, I want books that think that too.”

From here Risbridger plunges into what she charmingly calls “a field guide to delight”. Jane Eyre rubs shoulders with Ice Planet Barbarians (the bright blue aliens who inhabit the ice planet turn out to be sexy in a Mr Rochester kind of way). Pride and Prejudice makes its inevitable appearance, flanked by its many modern iterations, including the ones with dragons. Mills & Boon novels of every stripe are accorded the kind of sustained attention more usually given to Proust, while Judith Butler’s theories of gender are buttressed by a deft analysis of Rupert Campbell-Black, caddish hero of the Rutshire chronicles by the late, great Jilly Cooper.

The former England coach could’ve written a great book – instead he’s produced an AI-style word-sludge of generic leadership chat

This is an oddly dull, oddly irresistible football book. Even its title is confusing. Dear England is already the name of a hit Gareth Southgate play, a forthcoming Gareth Southgate TV show and an open letter to the nation authored by Southgate himself in 2021.

This Dear England isn’t formally related to any of those. It is instead an anomaly in the Dear England Multiverse, a book about leadership: a classically dull elite football manager trope that Southgate sticks to doggedly, using the words “leader”, “leading” or “leadership” at least 500 times in 336 pages. “What are leaders? What do leaders do? And what do leaders know?” he asks early on, setting out his stall, but stopping short of Why are leaders, How are leaders, or When are leaders?, questions he will presumably touch on in volume two.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crammed with cameos, this recreation of Springfield in Fortnite’s evolving virtual playground is a delight for long-time fans of the show. Shame it’s not here for long

After years of collaborations with Disney on Marvel and Star Wars, it’s finally happened: The Simpsons have arrived in Fortnite. Whereas most of these crossovers comprise themed skins and emotes, this is a complete takeover, with an entire stylised map based on Springfield to explore. It’s a smart way of introducing American TV’s longest-running sitcom to a younger audience – especially with news of a second movie on the way – but for millennials, this is the culmination of a year-long campaign to catch our attention, if previous collabs with Power Rangers, Scream and Mortal Kombat are anything to go by.

Though this could have been a quick ploy for those who grew up on a diet of afterschool BBC Two repeats to open their wallets, it’s no lazy cash-in. The familiar sights of Springfield you’d expect are here: there’s the Simpsons home on Evergreen Terrace, the sloping lawns of Burns Manor, and a town square with Moe’s Tavern and a statue of Jebediah Springfield, detachable head and all. Towards the edge of the map is the nuclear power plant, pumping cartoon steam into the sky, featuring meltdowns that you can avert by tapping a control console to the tune of “eeny, meeny, miny, moe”. Cletus’s farm and a Slurp factory (the game’s spin on Duff – no beer on tap here) sit on the corners of the island, and every match starts with a charming recreation of the show’s intro, complete with parting clouds, title card and iconic theme song, before you thank Otto as you leave the battle bus and descend on to the map.

Sports Interactive; PC (version tested), PS5, Switch, Xbox
After a two-year wait, Football Manager 26 upgrades every aspect of the football sim, but it may take some getting used to

You can imagine what the home fans are singing in the Stadium of Light: “Top of the league, you’re having a laugh!” Your Liverpool team, who until this afternoon were five points clear at the top of the table, trail by two goals in the 82nd minute. You wonder where Mo Salah left his shooting boots, or why Virgil van Dijk seems to have forgotten the whole concept of tackling. But this isn’t on the players, it’s on you – or so you’ll tell the press – as you stare at the tactics screen trying to figure out which of the dozens of potential tweaks will change the tide of this depressing spectacle.

Football Manager was always the data-driven alternative to the visually opulent Fifa series (now EA Sports FC), but the latest instalment starts to bridge the graphical gap. The 3D-rendered match highlights have been given an upgrade via the new Unity engine, and the results are impressive. Premier League derbies, Champions League finals, and even away matches in the north-east have visual gravitas now, even if the replays and so-called important moments often overstay their welcome. There are no Fifa-style authentic chants ringing around the stadia, but the atmosphere is palpable and your imagination fills in the blanks.

David Zwirner Gallery, London
From cruel pictures of elderly widows to a shocking image of motherhood, the American photographer’s genius is on full display in a show that finds ugliness all around her

In 1971, at the age of 48, the American photographer Diane Arbus killed herself. Someone should have seen the clues, for her photography is not so much tragic as utterly alienated from the human species. Here is a woman nursing her baby, a modern Madonna – except the woman’s limbs are as thin as an addict’s, her face wizened and the infant resting in her arms, dressed in baby clothes, is a monkey. Just to make clear that this is an absurd, miserable travesty of Madonnas and motherhood Arbus captioned it: “A woman with her baby monkey, NJ, 1971.” It is an utterly pitiable image of desperation, of someone trying to make sense of a life that can’t be made sense of. And the despair mirrors that of Arbus herself.

You might want to see her many images of gender-blurring positively. There’s a photograph called Transvestite at Her Birthday Party, NYC 1969: she lies on her bed laughing, double chinned and gap-toothed in a blond wig, in a shabby hotel room with balloons. But Arbus actually said how macabre and pathetic she found the occasion: “She called me up and said it was her birthday party and would I come and I said, ‘How terrific.’ It was a hotel on Broadway and 100th Street … I’ve been in some pretty awful places but the lobby was really like hades.” The elevator was broken so Arbus walked up to the fourth floor. “You had to step over about three or four people every flight. And then I came into her room. The birthday party was me and her, a whore friend of hers and her pimp, and the cake.”

Theatr Clwyd, Mold
This could have been a powerful play about rebellion but a busy plot and flatly drawn central character make it a missed opportunity

John Jones’s life is ripe for dramatisation, full of renegade spirit and derring-do that borders on the fantastical. An outlaw from north Wales with an aptitude for escaping the authorities, he had risen to criminal heights by the time of his death in 1913, variously hailed as the Welsh Houdini, Little Turpin and Coch Bach y Bala (the Little Redhead of Bala).

So it is a shame that this debut by theatre critic turned playwright Chris Ashworth-Bennion feels like a missed opportunity in its enactment of Jones’s myth and its failure to penetrate it. The play begins in a pub where Jones (Simon Holland Roberts) is hiding out after escaping from prison. He is holding drinkers rapt with stories of his “heroic” past and it is clear that he knows how to self-mythologise. But is he speaking the truth? And is he a common criminal or an incendiary force of rebellion?

Sadler’s Wells East, London
Akeim Toussaint Buck’s bass-heavy production invites the audience to get up and lose themselves in the music

A must for reggae lovers, and anyone in the market for an hour of low-key skanking, Free belongs to the category of shows that try to blur the boundary between dancing yourself and watching dancing. It’s something that is hard to pull off, melting the fourth wall and fusing those two experiences. Not just giving people permission to dance, unselfconsciously, but to tap into what the performers are expressing – in this case, the hopeful freedom and defiant joy of reggae culture.

There are five main dancers but these Sadler’s Wells East shows also have a supporting cast of students and elders. It’s a splendidly diverse setup, making the point that everyone is invited. They get us on our feet (there are seats for people who need them), but also arguably form a kind of curtain between audience and the main performers. Still, they’ve got a good vibe.

Joseph Wright of Derby’s shining innovation, Diane Arbus’s haunting portraits and an Uzbek angle on the end of the USSR – all in your weekly dispatch

Wright of Derby: From the Shadows
Two of the greatest paintings ever done about science – in which audiences are transfixed by lectures on an Orrery and Air-Pump – are brought together in this small but luminous show.
• National Gallery, London, until 10 May

On a street in Tenerife, an architect spotted a graphic composition - and evidence of drivers resisting change

Rafael Escobedo de la Riva was heading home from his office in Santa Cruz de Tenerife when he took this image. New bike lanes had recently been installed and it seemed to be taking drivers time to adjust. “There was some resistance and a lack of understanding by local people of this new way of moving around the city,” Escobedo de la Riva says.

He took this image in the aftermath of one particular incident and knew instantly that he’d captured something special. Many people get the impression of a red and white lighthouse against a blue sea, but his interpretation is far more grandiose: “I was actually more reminded of the work of Russian constructivism from the early 20th century,” Escobedo de la Riva, an architect, says “the strong geometrical architecture and composition” drew him to the scene in the first place, adding that he would “love for people to be inspired to use their imagination and find these kinds of geometrical compositions in their cities. We are surrounded by them.”

The keyboard player on his heroin overdose, how Kurt Cobain wanted to be gay and why his memoir will ruin his Christian relatives’ Thanksgiving dinner

When Roddy Bottum began work on his remarkable autobiography The Royal We, the Faith No More keyboard-player knew exactly the book he didn’t want to write. “The kind that has pictures in the middle,” he says, via video-call from Oxnard, California, where he’s completing a new album by his group Imperial Teen. “I’m not a big fan of rock memoirs – they’re the most predictable, name-droppy, sub-literature experiences.”

The Royal We certainly isn’t name-droppy – Bottum doesn’t even use the surnames of his bandmates. And while he outlines the group’s origins and early development, this takes a back seat to his “youth escapades” in San Francisco, “before the internet, before that city got ruined”. Much of the focus is on his sexual awakening, and how the related secrecy and shame have affected his life. “I was having sex with men when I was very young, 13 or 14,” he says. “It was such a taboo, and that set the tone of my life.” In the memoir, episodes involving his cruising public toilets and parks as a teenager are recounted unflinchingly and unapologetically. “I had sex with older men in bushes,” he writes. “Shamefully at first, proudly later. Fuck off.”

New Zealand film-maker became a Hollywood fixture in the 90s and 00s, including making Pierce Brosnan’s last 007 movie, before returning to his home country

Lee Tamahori, the New Zealand director of Once Were Warriors and Die Another Day, has died aged 75.

In a statement to Radio New Zealand, Tamahori’s family said he had Parkinson’s and died “peacefully at home”.

The film for which the actor, who has died aged 85, is best-remembered is also that in which she was afforded most airtime. If only more film-makers had managed to channel her warm, sharp charm

Pauline Collins was the smart, funny, cherubically sexy female actor in the 1970s who became a recognisable star on both sides of the Atlantic in the smash hit British TV show Upstairs, Downstairs, the Downton Abbey of its day.

She played Sarah, the pert-yet-vulnerable parlour maid with a dodgy past, who has a relationship with the handsome chauffeur Thomas, played by Collins’s real-life husband, John Alderton. It was a TV marriage that the public loved and which carried on into spinoff shows Thomas and Sarah and No, Honestly.

Pay homage to the best of the 1990s with our favourite throwback treats – no dial-up needed

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

Nostalgia never goes out of style and, right now, the 90s are having their most powerful revival yet – from the return of the side parting to disposable cameras to the John Lewis 90s-soundtracked Christmas ad. This isn’t entirely surprising given our information overload and increased burnout rates. When the present feels overwhelming, we tend to look back to eras that feel simpler, more familiar, even comforting.

The 90s are a kind of cultural palate cleanser: pared-back style, analogue pleasures and a reminder of life before never-ending notifications and algorithmic scrolling. Beauty was playful – think Pamela Anderson’s frosted lips or Gwen Stefani’s hot pink hair; fashion swung between supermodel glam and DIY-infused rebellion started by the grunge music scene; and technology was charmingly clunky but endlessly fun, from Tamagotchi pets to digital watches.

Pick wisely, and your fake fir could be reused for decades of Decembers. From pre-lit to frosted to space-saving, here are our festive favourites

• The best home gifts: 28 inspiring ideas for Christmas

In the 70s and 80s Essex of my youth, no one had a real Christmas tree unless they lived in the country, or perhaps Loughton. Our family’s skinny artificial tree is now 54 years old and still comes out every year at my sister’s. It’s shed a few plastic “needles” down the years, but it’s still standing proud – which is more than you can say for a real Christmas tree bought in 1971, or even 2024.

Therein lies the surprising environmental efficiency of artificial Christmas trees. The Carbon Trust says using a fake tree over seven to 20 years (depending on its weight and materials) can create fewer emissions than buying a new, commercially grown tree every year. The key is to buy an artificial tree you’ll love enough to roll out for decades.

Best Christmas tree overall:
Habitat mixed-tip upswept

Best budget Christmas tree:
Robert Dyas Alaskan pine with LEDs

Our menswear expert reveals the knits, from responsible cashmere to cool-guy cuts, that are worth your money. Plus, how to wear and care for them

• How to look after your knitwear: expert tips

Knitwear is a lifelong investment. Choose well, and you’ll be wearing it for years. But how do you make sure you’re buying something that’s built for longevity and won’t fall apart after just a few wears?

As a menswear writer and stylist with years of experience, I’m clued up on the brands that know what they’re doing when it comes to knitwear (from high-street hitters and independents to family-run Scottish mills and luxury labels) – and I’m well versed in how to make it look good, too.

Our reviewer braved Peak District downpours to see which brollies – from budget to mini to windproof – stayed standing

• 10 stylish and practical ways to look good in wet weather

I noticed something while testing umbrellas over pavement and muddy hilltop: people are more likely to smile at you. Or perhaps I was more likely to smile at them, while feeling content and dry-headed under the canopy.

We Britons have loved brollies – previously an aristocratic luxury – since about the turn of the 19th century. Today, they’re a broad tent covering tight budgets and expensive tastes alike. You’ll see them sprout like mushrooms whenever rain hits the high street.

Best umbrella overall:
London Undercover Classic

Best budget umbrella:
Doppler Zero 99

Our tech expert is back with an updated guide to the top-tier Android phones, from budget buys to the best for battery life

Need an Android phone, but not sure which to go for, or whether to buy new or refurbished? With lots to consider, let me be your guide as you trek through the process of picking the best handset for you.

The latest flagship Android phones come in various sizes, at different prices, and with varying hardware and software features, all powered by the fastest chips. Whether your priority is battery life, camera, screen size, software support or value for money, there is more to choose from than ever. And if you’re thinking of buying Apple instead, we have a guide for iPhones, too.

Best Android for most people:
Google Pixel 10

Best Android for camera:
Google Pixel 10 Pro

Whether you want memory foam, inflatable or a full-on cuddle loop, these travel pillows passed the (very bumpy) test

• 13 travel packing hacks to save you space and money

There are many reasons why we struggle to sleep while travelling. Gentle motion can be lulling, but jarring movements such as sharp cornering, braking and acceleration can interrupt sleep. And then there are the seats. In many trains, buses, coaches and planes, they are simply not accommodating to sleeping passengers.

Travel pillows can reduce these obstacles to sleep – so much so that you might catch a few winks on the go. Nowadays, you can choose from myriad designs to suit your preferences, including rectangular pillows, wraparound models and even whole-head designs, as well as classic, U-shaped neck pillows. Depending on which pillow you choose, you’ll gain support from the back, sides or front, and there’s various fill options including memory foam, polyester, microbeads and air-filled plastic, all of which have their own feel.

Best travel pillow overall:
Infinity Pillow

Best budget travel pillow:
Boots Travel Deluxe pillow

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

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

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

The BBC radio presenter on her raucous parties, living in New York during 9/11, and her love of hurkle-durkling

Born in Ireland, Nuala McGovern, 54, joined the BBC in 2009. In 2012, she went to the BBC World Service where she presented, Newsday, its breakfast programme, and then Outside Source from 2014 to 2022. In May 2024, she took over as lead host of Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour and she fronts The Woman’s Hour Guide to Life podcast. She is married and lives in London.

When were you happiest?
I’m at my happiest in the ocean, and even better if my husband is there throwing me around.

Cut corners, but not flavour, with this updated take on a hearty, vegan-friendly curry

A confession: I have already written a recipe for massaman curry. But since that was published in 2018, I have had a baby, a breakdown, travelled back to Thailand and eaten more massaman curries, all events that have contributed to this new recipe. The old dish is delicious, but in 2025 I didn’t want to make a paste from scratch. Instead, I wanted the funk and soul that a ready-made curry paste could give me and to use that as a springboard to fly into dinner time. A shortcut on time and ingredients, yes, but not on fun and flavour.

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

Sweet pears sink into and cut through this rich, fudgy, nutty treat

Unlike lighter, flour-based cakes, tortes are traditionally rich and dense. Often made with ground nuts instead of flour, this gives them a fudgy, moist texture. Here, ripe pears sink gently into a dark chocolate and hazelnut batter, with the flavours of vanilla, almond and cardamom subtly enhancing the depth of the chocolate and teasing out the fruit’s perfume.

Autumn may be the most social season of all, and these elevated but not exhausting ideas make every get-together a small celebration

The golden light lingers a little longer now, and somehow the evenings are full again. Autumn feels like the true social season of the year: the guest bedroom (for which we have an informal booking system) is full through to the end of the year, and suddenly every weekend and many weekday evenings are wrapped around company. Even if it’s just dinner at home for house guests, the rhythm has changed.

When it’s just us for dinner, anything goes – it is very relaxed and informal, and the emphasis is on ease of execution and speed of service. For a dinner party, meanwhile, we go all out: trips to the butcher and speciality deli, and as much time in the kitchen as is needed. But cooking for, and indeed with, house guests falls somewhere delightfully in between: cosy and welcoming, elevated but not exhausting. The kind of food that says: you’re here, you matter, let’s linger.

When it comes to mouthwatering baked eggs, you don’t really need the oven. Just reach for a lid and let the steam do its work

So, hear me out: the best baked eggs don’t ever hit the oven … When testing these recipes, I found that simply adding a lid creates a steamy environment to cook the top of the eggs, delivering a gently cooked, perfectly poached egg with a tender white and a warm, runny yolk. The intense, dry heat of the oven is much more aggressive than steam, and has a tendency to dry everything out and overcook the yolk. I’ve given you two sauces as a jumping-off point, but get creative. One is a super-simple turmeric coconut curry, while the merguez ragu is a riff on eggs in purgatory, or, to the likes of you and me, eggs baked in spicy tomato sauce.

Will, 33, a government officer (left), meets Fred, 29, a business analyst

What were you hoping for?
To have a fun Saturday night with someone kind and easygoing.

Sometimes we feel threatened by bids for closeness, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. It can help to consider if you’re being true to yourself

• Read more Leading questions

When I was 17, I was quiet, an observer on the fringes. That was often mistaken for being wise. Now 70 (and, by the way, gay), I am chatty and opinionated with a tendency to talk over others in conversation. I have come by the changes honestly, so I don’t whip myself over it because I am enjoying expressing myself. But I do wonder if this is a normal progression, the loss of filters with ageing, or if I am simply losing my sociability – going off the rails in some way.

While I like being friendly to all and enjoy the company of women especially, I recognise how easily they can be hurt. I seem to put out a strong “new-best-friend” vibe but then sometimes, when they step close, I feel crowded and back off. The flip-flop clearly offends, and I don’t want to be doing that, but I frame it as being true to myself. Is this a destructive habit and, if so, should I dial down the friendliness?

Eleanor says: How responsible are we for the ways other people see us?

Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning

Priscilla knows that when Chioma calls her ‘Pris’ she means no harm – but finds it very annoying. You get to name the offending party
• Take part in the Guardian’s You be the judge live event
• Get a disagreement settled or become a YBTJ juror

I hate being called Prissy – my cousins used to call me that when I was a kid and I’d get upset

Her nickname was born out of love. I feel hurt she’s framing it as if I’ve been disrespecting her

They locked horns on people crossing the Channel in small boats and cyclists using roads – did they find anything to agree on?

Philip, 51, Milton Keynes

Occupation Unemployed

From a Northumberland flat on ‘Coast and Castles’ route to London a studio on Cycleway 40

In this new series, our money and consumer editor considers the often perplexing reasons items cost what they do. As a new report suggests booze-free booze can cost 25% more than the alcoholic equivalent, what could possibly explain this?

Why do some 0% alcohol drinks cost as much as booze? Some of the fake spirits in my local supermarket cost more than £25 a bottle!

It doesn’t seem to make any sense, does it? Alcohol attracts tax and soft drinks do not, so why do some of the options on the no/low shelf have such big price tags? When browsing the drinks menu at a London venue recently, I saw a sparkling non-alcoholic wine costing £85 – enough to make me wonder if there’s a fake-champagne bubble.

From decorative plants to herbs and salad greens, choose the right variety to thrive in your indoor space

The easiest houseplants to keep alive are the ones suited to your home. “The biggest way to waste money is buying plants that aren’t right for your environment. They’ll struggle or die,” says the horticulturist Ellen Mary Webster.

When account was suspended my brother-in-law was caught in debt as 200 penalty charge notices piled up

My brother-in-law has received 200 penalty charge notices (PCNs) for unpaid ultra-low emission zone (Ulez) charges in London.

He set up an auto pay account for his non-Ulez-compliant van, but because of a series of blunders has paid £11,445 in fines, owes another £1,400, and is facing bills for 70 more fines after losing his appeals.

My job and my disordered eating have long fed each other. Talking publicly about my experience helps lift the veil of secrecy surrounding it

Nothing in my life sparks greater joy and deeper shame than food. Publicly, I live and love to eat. As a food writer my livelihood depends on it. But privately, I live with a binge-eating disorder, and it can feel like what I’m devouring is actually devouring me.

My family is Italian, and their love language is food, so food is also the portal to all my memories, good and bad. Nonna’s lasagne at Easter, her zeppole at Christmas, were the best of times. The worst: foil trays piled with fried food at funerals, the liquorice allsorts I ate – and now hate – after my infant brother choked and paramedics rushed him to hospital. Emotional eating has always been so normal for me.

Levels of fatigue among women in Britain are soaring, and this isn’t the kind that can be cured by a nap. What lies behind the exhaustion epidemic?

Look around you and it isn’t hard to find an exhausted woman. There she is, standing behind you in the queue at the post office or delivering your Amazon package. Here she is at the school gates, puffing after running from the car, coffee in hand, apologising for forgetting to pack a PE kit. Or trying to stop a yawn escaping during a long work meeting. Or eyes closed on a noisy commuter train, about to miss her stop.

Maybe this seems normal to you because, honestly, in today’s fast-paced culture, who isn’t exhausted? But take a closer look and you’ll see that this level of fatigue is often much more than something a simple nap could remedy. You’ll find these bone-tired women asking friends in WhatsApp groups why their hair is falling out, or complaining to their beautician that their nails are always breaking, or manically Googling symptoms, trying to work out why their brains are so foggy or why, despite having youth on their side, they sometimes forget how to form a sentence. Friends ask each other online whether everyone else is so overwhelmed with anxiety that they can’t sleep. Perhaps they’re taking antidepressants and wondering why their racing thoughts are not relenting. They may have asked their GP why day-to-day life leaves them feeling so drained and been told it’s “inevitable” with small children, or asked if they are getting enough exercise.

Researchers tracking large cohorts are discovering the effects of sleep, light and therapy on people impacted by winter’s arrival

For some, the darkening days of autumn bring more than the annual ritual of reviving woolly jumpers and turning on the central heating. As the evenings close in and the mornings grow murky, energy ebbs and a heavy sadness settles in.

Although seasonal affective disorder (Sad) was only formally recognised by psychiatrists in the 1980s, the link between the seasons, mood and vitality has long been observed.

It was only years later, when I heard the word workaholic being used seriously for the first time, that I wondered whether I had a problem

Have you ever heard a word that jolts you to attention? That word, for me, was “workaholism” – and when I heard it through my headphones earlier this year, listening to an audiobook on the tube, I felt a pang of something between recognition and panic. It transported me back to the worst time in my life.

In May 2016, when I was nearly five months pregnant, I travelled to rural Norway to make a short documentary for the Guardian. The Norwegian government was making asylum seekers – from mostly Muslim countries – take cultural education classes about women’s rights. I’d been invited to a class in Moi, a town by a lake framed with pine trees, 100km south of Stavanger.

Cashmere and wool tees will keep you warm, cool and stylish during the festive season

When it comes to dressing for a party, a T-shirt is usually something you change out of rather than put on.

But this party season, the casual tee is experiencing a metamorphosis. Enter: the cocktail T-shirt.

In their new book The House of Beauty, beauty writer Arabelle Sicardi examines the good, the bad and the ugly of the lucrative industry

The very first sentence of Arabelle Sicardi’s book, The House of Beauty, reads: “When I tell you that beauty is a monster, I need you to know it is my favorite kind.”

Sicardi, who splits their time between New York City and Los Angeles, has a love/hate relationship with the beauty industry. A writer and consultant working in beauty and tech, their projects include a beauty newsletter, a creative collective called Perfumed Pages and a non-profit arts project called the Museum of Nails Foundation. In their new book, they examine the impact of the $450bn beauty industry – the pretty and the very ugly.

Stylist who helped to upend fashion in the early 1990s, rejecting glitz and glamour for more everyday, informal outfits

Not much challenged the orthodoxy of glamour in fashion and decor through the 1980s. Proliferating glossy magazines celebrated revived couture, promoted luxury goods and displayed them on perfect human specimens in ideal settings. They did not care for, or cater to, the young, poor or inventive. Youthful street daywear was not their business.

But there was another magazine world – notably the Face and i-D – which had come out of music and pop culture. By the late 80s, freelancers for these, especially the stylist Melanie Ward, just out of college, were experimenting with emphatically different clothes and the ways to wear them, to create photographs that were more than an alternative to perfection. They proposed a realism that dominated the future presentation of fashion.

The traditional artform of henna – applying intricate and floral designs to the hands and body in natural inks – is seeing vivid new life as a means of progressive social and political expression, led by a wave of young designers and artists

The night before Eid, plastic chairs line the pavements of busy British high streets from London to Bradford. Women sit elbow-to-elbow beneath shopfronts, hands outstretched as artists swirl cones of henna into intricate curls. For £5, you can walk away with both palms blooming. Once confined to weddings and living rooms, this centuries-old ritual has spilled out into public spaces – and today, it’s being reimagined entirely.

In recent years, henna has travelled from family homes to the red carpet – from actor Michaela Coel’s Sudanese motifs at the Toronto film festival to Katseye singer Lara Raj’s henna decor at the 2025 Video Music awards. Younger generations are using it as art, political expression and cultural affirmation. Online, the appetite is increasing – UK searches for henna reportedly rose by nearly 5,000% last year; and, on social media, creators share everything from faux freckles made with henna to five-minute floral design tutorials, showing how the dye has adapted to modern beauty culture.

Forget sightseeing, secondhand shopping is now a major draw for tourists. A seasoned bargain-hunter shares her tips on picking up the best vintage finds when travelling abroad

Marburg, Germany. It’s a fairytale city, not only because of the hilltop castle that overlooks its cobbled streets and half-timbered houses, but also because this is where the Grimm brothers once lived and studied, starting the collection of folklore stories that would eventually become their famous anthology of fairytales. Throughout the city, sculptures – some perched in improbable places – pay homage to this past, forming a mile-long route known as the Grimm Path. It’s very much like a treasure hunt.

But on my visit to Marburg, I had a different type of treasure hunt in mind and, once done with enchanted mirrors and kissy-lipped frogs, headed straight for the SecondHand by DRK (Deutsches Rotes Kreuz – the German Red Cross) to scout for pre-owned items.

Our tipsters rummage through thrift stores and markets from Budapest to Bologna

• Tell us about a lesser known corner of Italy or a winter stay in the UK – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

W Armstrong in Edinburgh is a true institution. There are several locations, but the Grassmarket spot is a treasure trove. Frequented by locals, students and tourists alike, there is a price point for all. Whether I’ve been on the hunt for vintage cashmere, denim, fabulous 1950s dresses, garb for a fancy dress party or even a kilt, this store has sorted me out. It is always a favourite for when friends visit the city, and whether you are looking to buy or not, it is worth a visit just to see its eclectic collection.
Amy

The small communes of Lago and Conflenti are putting themselves back on the map with a series of community-run music and food festivals

On the lamp-lit steps of a sombre gothic church, a young woman stands before a microphone. Beside her, a man plucks a slow melody from his guitar. Arrayed on chairs and cobblestones in front of them, a large crowd sits in an expectant silence. From a nearby balcony, laundry sways in the sultry Calabrian breeze.

The guitar quickens, and the woman issues a string of tremulous notes with all the solemnity of a muezzin. She clutches a hand drum, beating out a rhythm that draws the crowd to its feet. As people surge forward, stamping and whirling around the square, the singing intensifies and the drum’s relentless thud deepens. The festival of Sustarìa has begun.

Despite its world heritage site status and plethora of tourist attractions, Évora, the capital of the Alentejo region, retains a laidback charm and boasts wonderful food and drink

The 16th-century monks of Évora knew life was short. As if to ram home the point, they decorated an entire chapel with bones dug up from the town’s overflowing cemeteries. The sign outside the Chapel of Bones roughly translates as “We bones in here wait for yours to join us”. Cheerful lot, those monks. Columns, walls, arches – all are covered in skulls, tibias, fibulas, clavicles. Rapt, I can’t stop staring, then start to chuckle when I see skulls curving round frilly frescoes of cherubim on vaulted ceilings, a whimsical touch of chintz among the ghoulishness.

Évora has me in its grip even before I come to the Chapel of Bones. This former royal city of Portuguese kings and capital of the Alentejo region has so many architectural and cultural treasures wedged within its historical centre that it’s often referred to as a living museum. But in a museum, you generally have to keep your voice down: here in Évora, there’s the buzz you get with 11,000 university students roaming round a Unesco world heritage site old town that’s encased within medieval walls.

On tour with the band there were no snapping tortoises, no dog kerfuffles and certainly no peeping scaffolders

It is early morning, the low sun is glinting off wet tarmac. I’m in a coffee shop next to a petrol station, across the car park from the Travelodge where I spent the night, somewhere just north of Brighton. The middle leg of the band’s autumn tour is complete, and I’m on my way home. But first I want coffee.

“Can I take a name?” says the woman behind the counter.

From a Celtic shield and a horned helmet to baloney, magenta and tarantula, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Who travelled in search of “the hooly blisful martir”?
2 In what combat sport are competitors divided into east and west?
3 Which force is based in Aubagne, Bouches-du-Rhône?
4 In hospitals, the Bristol scale is used to classify what?
5 Which English rugby player has been immortalised as a Barbie doll?
6 What begins at Theresienwiese on the first Saturday after 15 September?
7 The River Irwell separates which two cities?
8 Which band played with red flowerpots on their heads?
What links:
9 Arctic; Blanford’s; corsac; fennec; red; Rüppell’s; Tibetan sand?
10 I (-); II (Caroline); III (Charlotte); IV (Caroline); V (Mary); VI (Elizabeth)?
11 Baloney; jeans; magenta; sardine; tarantula?
12 ABC; Associated-Rediffusion; ATV; Granada?
13 Aphrodite (doves); Freya (cats); Hera (peacocks); Thor (goats)?
14 Celtic shield and horned helmet; bust of Hadrian; Saxon sword; Zulu spearhead?
15 WEB Du Bois; Langston Hughes; Zora Neale Hurston; Augusta Savage?

Bridport, Dorset: The appropriately named Dorset Horns are perfectly content to have lambs in cooler months, thanks to an obscure genetic quirk

Chubby lambs gambolling over green grass – surely that’s a scene which belongs to spring? But here they are, leaping and bouncing on a sunny hilltop in November.

Autumn lambs have been a familiar part of country life in these parts for hundreds of years. As far back as the 17th century, sheep from west Dorset and south Somerset were renowned for their ability to lamb out of season, due to a genetic quirk which somehow arose in the region. With careful planning, healthy ewes could have three pregnancies in 24 months.

Tina Frundt is one of Washington DC’s most experienced specialists in protecting children from sex trafficking. Many of the youths she supports are targeted and exploited on social media platforms, which give traffickers unprecedented levels of access to their victims. Fighting to break this cycle, Tina works closely with law enforcement, social workers and parents to create an environment where some of America’s most vulnerable children can feel safe again

Iraq 2003-2004

Popularity of Britain’s top mouser – ‘the guy to meet in No 10’ – to feature in documentary series

He’s on his sixth prime minister, has watched presidents and princes walk through the black door of No 10, and will soon become the longest continuous resident of Downing Street since Pitt the Younger.

The landscape of British politics has changed a lot in the past 15 years, but Larry the cat has remained a reassuring constant. Now his enduring popularity – the like of which some of his temporary owners would kill for – is to feature in a new Channel 4 documentary series exploring Britain’s love of cats. For his fans, the spotlight has been a long time coming.

The Guardian has only ever published 18 zero-star reviews. Now’s the chance to share yours …

A zero-star review is very rare. The Guardian has only published 18, which we listed following Lucy Mangan’s zero-star review of Kim Kardashian’s new Disney+ divorce drama All’s Fair.

There’s lots of great culture out there, but sometimes you can be left bitterly disappointed, so we’d like to hear about your worst ever cultural experiences. What’s the most unforgivable TV show, film, play or gig that you have ever seen and would award zero stars to? Now’s your chance to spill.

This year marks 100 years since the birth of the photo booth. We would like to see your favourite pictures

This year marks 100 years since the birth of the photo booth. Guardian writers have shared their favourite photo booth pictures – now we’d like to see yours. You can share your photos, old and new, and the stories behind them, below.

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Living rooms are becoming less common, especially within rental properties

Living rooms – once central to the majority of households – are becoming less common, especially within rental properties. According to new research, nearly a third of the homes recently advertised on flat-sharing website SpareRoom now have no living room – with many landlords turning communal space into an additional bedroom.

Some homeowners, too, are choosing to forgo a lounge and socialising in the kitchen instead, for example. With this in mind, we want to hear from those who have experienced living without a living room. How does this alter the household dynamic? Is it a good way to save money and make the most of limited space – or do you miss out on having shared experiences in the home? Tell us about it below.

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

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

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

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Typhoon Kalmaegi, hunger in Gaza, displacement in Sudan, and Zohran Mamdani in New York: the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists