People in Thornton-Cleveleys want answers on the impact of widespread contamination around the chemical plant

“Everything I wanted was finally coming to fruition. A house, a change of job and getting married,” says Liz Hurst, looking out to sea on a hot evening in Blackpool.

“But then all of a sudden, everything was put on hold.” Fifteen years ago, Hurst was diagnosed with kidney cancer aged 32.

Jayèma on working with England stars, a new look for Raphinha and forging a friendship with Lamine Yamal’s family

Jayèma has had a World Cup like no other. Who else but the London hair stylist has worked with footballers from England, Brazil, the United States and Canada, and hung out with Lamine Yamal and his family, while having no idea who Lionel Messi is until recently?

Who else but Jayèma has been to her first game of men’s football and left before the end of a tumultuous match between Mexico and England at the Azteca Stadium because the atmosphere was too “rowdy”? Who else has made so many footballers feel especially good about their hair and themselves, but the hardest-working stylist and male groomer in elite sport?

The five of us were supposed to leave for Cornwall at 9am. But it was noon before we set off and past midnight when we arrived. No wonder two of the family left the next morning

It was a last-minute May half-term break. We knew the cottage, lent to us by a relative, would be a squeeze for my husband, three teenage daughters and me. “But hey,” I told my unconvinced gang, “it’s near the beach – we’ll hardly be inside anyway.”

One daughter had a party the night before; she promised to be home by midnight, and we agreed we would begin the six-hour drive at 9am. Said daughter arrived back as I was making my morning tea. She was still drunk, and she had lost her phone.

Six months on from the bloody crackdown on anti-regime protesters, families remembering loved ones at their graves at Behesht-e Zahra in Tehran tell their stories

Family members gather to mourn Sepehr, who was 25 when he was killed in the January protests

A woman at Behesht-e Zahra prays for those killed in January’s protests

Maxxing trends – going all in on a particular trait, habit, quality or pastime – tend to burn brightly and briefly. But how many of the following are real?

It started more than a decade ago with looksmaxxing, a disturbing manosphere-based strategy for optimising personal appearance through diet, exercise, surgery or smashing your jawbone. Back then, “maxxing” carried with it an unwholesome sense of overkill for its own sake. Even that extra X – maxing out the word in a way that served no orthographic purpose – seemed to be a symptom.

Over time the -maxxing suffix has come to mean going all in on a particular trait, habit, quality or pastime, generally in a manner that misses the point. Booksmaxxing, for example, seems to be less about reading, and more about coming across as optimally bookish in your dating profile. Sleepmaxxing is about getting as much sleep as you can, rather than as much as you need.

Are the disappearances or deaths of 11 US scientists really linked in a nefarious plot? Or just a conspiracy theory with roots in a bizarre broadcast that rocked Britain in the 1970s?

In the last few years, 11 people allegedly tied to top secret US research have died or mysteriously disappeared, sparking a conspiracy that a clandestine operation is silencing those who know too much.

As Phil Tinline explains to Nosheen Iqbal, what began as a series of unrelated tragedies has morphed into a mainstream obsession and even triggered a federal investigation.

The negative perception of the party and its leader has grown, according to a polling expert

Immigration policy (see 9.24am) is just one area where Andy Burnham faces an acute challenge when he becomes PM. Here are some of the other stories around this morning about Burnham and what he might do when he takes power.

Jim Pickard, George Parker and Jennifer Williams in the Financial Times say Burnham is considering having a deputy PM based in Manchester running his No 10 North. The deputy Labour leader, Lucy Powell, is well placed to get this job, they report.

Burnham is expected to spend several days a month in Number 10 North. Caroline Simpson, chief executive of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, has been lined up to run the new office.

But the transition team has also raised the idea that the new unit could be given political direction by the next deputy prime minister, who would be based in Manchester, according to people close to the situation.

John Bew, a former No 10 foreign policy adviser, has told the Times that Burnham could face an international crisis within weeks of taking office. Bew said:

I’d say there’s a high likelihood of a series of quite challenging contingencies happening.

One is a horizontal or vertical escalation from Putin over the course of this summer and beyond because the war [in Ukraine] is not going well for him.

Some ministers are lobbying Burnham to keep their jobs. In their London Playbook briefing for Politico, Sam Francis and Megan McElroy have a good summary.

Cabinet auditions continue across Westminster. Business Secretary Peter Kyle was at least direct about it, telling the Guardian’s Richard Partington that “I want to stay, I’ll just stay where I am.” He also declared Britain needs “Manchesterism.” In another not-very-subtle intervention, David Miliband used his foreign policy speech last night to restate his support for electoral reform (he previously backed the Alternative Vote at the 2011 referendum, while still an MP) and back a Burnham-style transfer of power out of Westminster (the Arguably substack has the full script). Just before Miliband spoke, Yvette Cooper revealed to Chatham House that she had spoken to Andy Burnham before heading to NATO — meaning she’s already giving him foreign affairs advice.

Potential candidates will … have four days, from Tuesday 14 July to Friday 17 July at 4pm, to submit their nominations.

Residents not already on the electoral register have until 28 July to apply to vote in time for the byelection, and until 5pm the following day (29 July) to apply for a postal or postal proxy vote.

At least four Britons believed to be among those who died attempting to flee blaze in heatwave-struck Almería region

At least 12 people have been killed and 23 are unaccounted for after a fast-moving wildfire broke out in south-east Spain as the country endures its second heatwave of the summer.

The regional government of Andalucía said the victims, four of whom are believed to be British, had died while trying to flee the flames near the village of Bédar in the Los Gallardos municipality of Almería.

Chloe Moffat, 26, killed herself day after meeting about anonymous complaint in which she was not allowed to bring a colleague

The mother of a young woman who took her own life after facing disciplinary proceedings at the Treasury has called on the government department to change its practices.

Chloe Moffat, 26, had worked at the Treasury as a personal assistant for almost three years. She “loved her job” and had an “exemplary employment record”, the coroner at her inquest heard this week.

Asylum seekers win ruling against home secretary’s reduction of safeguards for potential victims of trafficking

• UK politics live – latest updates

The British home secretary’s decision to reduce protections for potential trafficking victims to allow the “one in, one out” asylum returns deal to proceed was unlawful, a high court judge has ruled.

The legal challenge was brought by five small boat asylum seekers earmarked for return to France – four from Eritrea and one from Sudan. It related to a change in guidance on the one in, one out scheme, which meant that those denied trafficking protections no longer had the right to ask for it to be reconsidered.

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A 17-year-old girl fell off a truck and died while celebrating France’s World Cup quarter final win over Morocco, emergency services said Friday.

Celebrations erupted across France after the 2-0 win in the United States with hundreds dancing in the streets of Paris, watched by thousands of police on security duties.

Updates from Friday’s men’s semi-final action in SW19
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What a walk this is, through the corridor and history, down the stairs, past the trophies and by the board; there goes the fear again.

Aha, here they come…

Sian Astley doubles down on stance that people who vote for open borders should house ‘criminals and rapists’ who enter UK

• UK politics live – latest updates

The Reform UK candidate in the Greater Manchester mayoral race has been criticised by her rivals after doubling down on comments that voters for other parties should have to house criminals and rapists.

Sian Astley, a property businesswoman, initially made the comments in a Facebook post in which she shared her party’s pledge that a Reform government would prioritise placing migrant detention centres in areas where the Green party had an MP or controlled the local council.

Prominent Eurosceptic and social conservative described as ‘force of nature’ by Farage and ‘formidable’ by Badenoch

• Anne Widdecombe – obituary

The former Conservative minister Ann Widdecombe has died aged 78, her management has said.

Widdecombe, who served as an MP and an MEP during a lengthy and often controversial political career, gained notoriety as a television personality in later life. Besides the Tories, she was also a member of the Brexit party and its successor, Reform UK.

Cloak-and-dagger operation delivers 70-metre medieval artwork to British Museum, as gathered diplomats applaud

Like the man whose conquest of England almost a millennium ago it recounts, the Bayeux tapestry crossed the Channel in the dead of night, in as much secrecy as possible, landing on the country’s south coast early the following day.

The artefact’s arrival on Friday marked the first time it has returned to England in nearly 1,000 years, and British Museum staff will begin to prepare it for exhibition during its year-long loan.

Military intelligence officer admits witnessing killing of woman believed to have left explosive device outside oligarch’s home

The case of a suspected bomber accused of targeting a Ukrainian oligarch has taken another murky turn, after details of her subsequent murder were revealed in court with evidence suggesting the involvement of Kyiv’s intelligence agencies.

French police last week named Anastasia Berezovska as the person captured on CCTV leaving a rucksack outside a Monaco apartment block. It blew up, injuring the Ukrainian businessman Vadym Iermolaiev as he emerged from the building with his partner and their 13-year-old child.

His superpower has always been speaking his mind – and his majestic new BBC show aims to shatter our ideas about life itself. The presenter talks mass extinction, spiders who dream and why people get sick of him holding up rocks

It’s impossible to meet Chris Packham without getting into a good mood. This is largely down to his contagious enthusiasm for the natural world, but on this occasion may also be his canary yellow polo shirt and stand-up-as-if-electrocuted hair. His new five-parter, Evolution, tells the story of the single cell that is all living things’ first common ancestor. Known as Luca, it is the indivisible connection between you and your cat, me and an elephant. (That’s an acronym, not poetry, by the way – Last Universal Common Ancestor, the single-celled organism from 4.2bn years ago that branched into everything that now lives.) “There is still a physical connection between me and you, and a cell that existed billions of years ago,” he says. “I find that absolutely brilliant.”

The show seeks to shake up all our preconceptions: “We tend to stop at GCSE and are left with a legacy of thinking that evolution is laboriously slow, we are its be all and end all, and its story is over.” I mean, these aren’t all misconceptions – it is pretty slow, no? “There would have been billions of years when we just had cells floating in a broth in the sea,” he concedes. “We looked at it more as the turning points in evolution’s life, the periods when it moved very rapidly.” Evolution tells the story of different processes via specific animals. It explains breathing through the elephant, reproducing through the ostrich, eating through the bat, thinking through the dolphin, and running through the horse. “I don’t like to use the C word,” Packham says in the opener, watching a tree hyrax that is the improbably close genetic relative of the elephant, “but they are incredibly cute.”

The playwright has long been considered one of the country’s most famous exports, but not an ‘Irish writer’. An ambitious new season of plays explores his complex relationship with his homeland – and tickets are already on sale for 2036

In 2036, the actor Samuel West will take to the stage to perform Krapp’s Last Tape – Samuel Beckett’s pensive monologue in which an old man, hunched over a reel-to-reel recorder, listens back to the voice of his younger self. West will be 69, the age of Krapp in the play. And remarkably, the tape he plays will feature the sound of himself as a younger man, recorded in 2006, when he was 39 – the age Krapp was on the night he made the recording. Two years later another actor, Richard Dormer, will do the same, using a similar recording that’s currently locked away in a BBC vault.

These are the most improbable commissions of the Samuel Beckett Biennale, which promises to deliver experimental “performed readings” of the playwright’s works in pockets of Ireland and Britain over the next 12 years. It is organised by Seán Doran and run through his cross-border organisation Arts Over Borders. Events will unfold at locations of significance to Beckett’s life and legacy – from Enniskillen, Belfast and Dublin to Folkestone, Reading and Snodland – tracing his footsteps across Britain and Ireland.

In Iceland, people commemorated its first glacier formally declared lost to climate change. Western culture needs more of these rituals

I remember interviewing a North Atlantic right whale expert years ago. He was a practical, science-minded man. But as we discussed a female whale that had lost her calf, he became visibly emotional. She had lost the previous one, too, struck by a ship. He seemed almost embarrassed by the depth of his feeling.

I wasn’t surprised. I found his grief honorable.

Wim T Schippers asked that his 800lb sculpture be spread smoothly and without ‘educational purpose’

A museum in Rotterdam has paid tribute to the idiosyncratic character of one of the most influential figures in the Dutch arts by spreading 800lb of peanut butter across the floor of one of its galleries.

The hexagonal floor installation, called Pindakaasvloer (Peanut Butter Floor), is a recreation of a work by Wim T Schippers conceived of in 1962 and first exhibited in 1969.

As Netflix’s quietly radical coming-of-age drama wraps up with a feature-length film, its stars discuss queer escapism, awkward love scenes and letting go of the characters that made them

In a house near Maidenhead in Berkshire, a group of sweaty teenagers are throwing a party. Vodka bottles line the staircase, snogs are shared on lumpy sofas and gossip is exchanged. The windows are covered with multicoloured fabrics to ward off prying eyes. Suddenly, as the vibes start to flag, the music cuts out and a voice bellows: “You’re having the time of your lives, remember!”

The voice belongs to the director Wash Westmoreland; the very real house – situated next to the noisy A308 – stands on the grounds of Bray Studios in Berkshire. As for the partygoers, well … they’re some of the most famous young faces on the planet.

The desert rain frog, native to a narrow coastal strip of south-west Africa, has been classified as vulnerable on the IUCN red list, as its habitat is threatened by mining

The desert rain frog is one of the most unusual amphibians on the planet. With a rotund body and stumpy legs that dig rather than jump, it has evolved to survive not in wetlands or rainforests, but in the unforgiving dunes of the southern African desert.

This week the species was declared to be threatened with extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN)’s red list, which classified it as vulnerable. Without conservation efforts, its population is expected to decline by 20% in the next decade, the IUCN warns.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Imposing head coach is a details man who has got the balance of squad spirit right at the World Cup, and is even proving a hit on Mumsnet

Let’s set the world on fire. There’s a section in Bill Buford’s classic football hooligan study, Among the Thugs, where he describes being part of a phalanx of England “faces” steaming through the centre of mid-1980s Rotterdam towards some kind of meet, while their leader – the Top Boy, General or similar – runs up and down the column whispering to his men, saying the “energy is high”, “the energy is high”, “feel it”, “the energy is high”.

As it is currently for this England team, and quite clearly the players can feel it. You will probably have seen the dressing-room video, which has more than 40m views. Declan Rice and John Stones are shown playing a prank on Thomas Tuchel after the electrical storm masquerading as a football match at the Estadio Azteca on Sunday. Rice pretends Stones has injured his shoulder. Stones plays along with it, delivering a minimalist acting masterclass so contained there is almost no acting at all, before raising his fist as the beat drops (song: Talk To You, by ANOTR) and the room falls about in generalised hysteria.

Thomas Tuchel seems undecided, while Ståle Solbakken has been structured before the World Cup quarter-final

While there will be much focus on Harry Kane and Erling Haaland before England’s match with Norway, they carry no mystery. They will play. They will probably score.

Of far greater interest is who Thomas Tuchel and Ståle Solbakken choose to deploy as their wingers. Neither team have completed a game this summer fielding the wide forwards who began it.

• Plane flew in circles while talks with family took place

• ‘The most expensive non-transfer we’ve ever made’

Jürgen Klopp has revealed the impressive lengths Liverpool went to in their attempts to sign a teenage Kylian Mbappé from Monaco.

Liverpool were one of a number of top European clubs who tried to sign the forward when he emerged in a talented Monaco side that reached the Champions League semi-finals in 2016-17. He ultimately joined Paris Saint-Germain on loan in August 2017 before signing permanently for €180m the following year.

Close calls against Cape Verde and Egypt show Scaloni’s men are vulnerable, despite all the brilliance of Lionel Messi

It is among the defining moments of this World Cup: Lionel Messi wandering the pitch in Dallas with tears rolling down his face.

Minutes earlier, Argentina had been down two goals to Egypt and were on the brink of elimination in the last 16. Messi had missed a penalty and was set to bear blame for the result. Instead, the Argentina legend created the same magic he always seems to, spearheading a miraculous, three-goal swing in just over 10 minutes and pushing the Albiceleste into the quarter-finals.

The crossover in the American sports calendar has made for a compelling collision of cultures, from Scots in Boston to a new English folk hero in Atlanta

First they sang for Harry Kane. Then they sang for Michael Harris II.

The Atlanta Braves center-fielder is not someone many Major League Baseball fans would consider a household name. A local kid made good, he has established himself as an above-average, everyday outfielder and at age 25 is enjoying a career-best season, but his face doesn’t dominate billboards and ads in the way of Shohei Ohtani or Aaron Judge.

The High Pay Centre revealed the excesses of CEO wages. But then anti-diversity winds blew in from across the Atlantic

Shock ricocheted around the world of social research this week with the sudden news of the imminent closure of the High Pay Centre (HPC). Founded in 2011 by the former Guardian business editor Deborah Hargreaves to focus on analysis of extreme pay at the top and the widening pay gap between CEOs and their average employees, its closure feels like the death of an idea.

Others campaign on tax and redistribution but the HPC was concerned with “predistribution”. It was unique in looking at the origins of inequality in pay and control over pay rates. Its annual report is always covered, even by rightwing media, because each year it reawakens a sense of disbelief at the way we live now. Why would the median FTSE 100 CEO need £4.4m this year to do his (yes, mostly still his) gratifyingly high-status job? Why?

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Britain’s PM-in-waiting is right that the country has been failed by 40 years of neoliberalism. There will be obstacles, but he must embrace radicalism

Of all the many prime ministers who have walked through the doors of 10 Downing Street in the past decade, the one Andy Burnham resembles most is Liz Truss. Both had a view of what was going wrong with the economy. Both wanted to break with the politics of managed decline. Both had ambitious ideas for what needed to be done.

Truss, of course, came to grief within weeks of becoming prime minister, after her tax-cutting mini-budget was brutally rejected by the financial markets. The big question for Burnham is whether he can deliver on his agenda without suffering the same fate. He can, but it won’t be easy.

Larry Elliott is a Guardian columnist

Plus, bad form from Tay-Tay, Arthurian gladness and the conundrums of getting back on a bike

Another heatwave. Unbearable. And this one is going to push me over the edge. I’m going to have to take the young folk to task over how they dress. It’s not the amount of flesh on show – dear God, while you’re young and lovely and depilation is still worth the investment because it doesn’t all grow back by the end of the day, enjoy it! It’s the man-made fibres. I’m afraid that I’m going to have to pass an emergency Crone Law, requiring everyone to wear cotton once the mercury hits 30C.

As the US president swung between threats to take Greenland and promises of help for Ukraine, pledges of a ‘stronger Nato’ were lost in the wind

Nato leaders survived another nerve-racking summit with Donald Trump and the 77-year-old defence alliance lives to fight another day, proving its durability against Atlantic storms. But it will never feel safe as long as the unpredictable, vengeful and ruthlessly transactional US president is in the White House.

As usual, Trump stole all the headlines at the annual summit, with a mixture of Nato-bashing and implausible threats to take control of Greenland and cut trade with Spain. He declared the ceasefire with Iran dead and called Iranian leaders “scum” as US warplanes bombed Iranian targets along the strait of Hormuz. Pitted against such irresistible clickbait, no Nato communique stood a chance of public attention.

Amid the allegations about dark money and funding, I have a solution: limit all single donations in a year – from any individual – to £100,000

It is sobering that Count Binface’s potential victory in the Clacton byelection seems be one of the few ways we can restore any confidence in the integrity of British political decision-making. Faced with questions about the millions he has raked in before and since being elected, Nigel Farage chose to face a byelection rather than face the standards procedures in parliament. Yet we cannot continue to rely on a man with a bin on his head to stop the toxic rot in our politics feeding off the public’s concern that donations drive our decision-making. With the next election on the horizon, the eye-watering sums involved compel us to tackle the capacity of the largest wallets to be the loudest voices, or risk them overwhelming our democracy altogether.

The allegation that money buys you a mouthpiece is not new, or without precedent. Controversies over donors across the political spectrum – whether Bernie Ecclestone, Mohamed Amersi, Paul Marshall or Lubov Chernukhin – have dogged Westminster for decades. Campaigns such as Clean up Westminster have long pushed for stronger safeguards. Yet it is also true the scale of funds now pouring into our politics is fundamentally different. Research by Transparency International shows the share of private political donations coming from individuals and companies giving £1m or more has surged from just 1% in 2015 to 35% in 2024.

It comes from his willingness to violate all norms, rules and laws – and leaving everyone else to pick up the pieces

At the Nato summit just ended, Trump lashed out at other Nato members, saying he was “very disappointed with Nato” and asking: “Why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars, and they’re not there for us?” He reiterated his desire to take over Greenland, blasted European energy and immigration policies, insulted Spain, and worried allies by declaring that the fighting between Kyiv and Moscow “doesn’t affect us.”

Yet throughout the proceedings, Trump was treated by other Nato powers with as much courtesy and respect as any US president has ever received from Nato – perhaps more. “It was a great meeting, there was a lot of love in that room, a lot of unity,” Trump said when it was over.

The populist Democrat nominee for Senate in Maine bowed to the inevitable but turned his farewell into a pity party

“Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

These were the parting words of Richard Nixon after he was forced to resign the presidency over the Watergate imbroglio in 1974. For Graham Platner on Wednesday, the stakes were somewhat smaller. But when it came to suspending his Senate campaign in Maine, the Democrat had plenty of hate to go around.

When Ellis was condemned to death in 1955, the horrific violence she had suffered was ignored. Today, vulnerable women are still fighting to be heard

It has taken more than seven decades, but the grievous wrong done to Ruth Ellis has finally been recognised. Ellis was the last woman to be hanged for murder in the UK, the victim of a pitiless justice system that was uninterested in her history of horrific domestic abuse. The announcement of a posthumous conditional pardon is a tribute to the tireless campaigning of her family, including her granddaughter, Laura Enston. But it also highlights continuing shortcomings in how the criminal justice system deals with women who commit crimes after being treated horrendously by their partners.

In April 1955, Ellis shot and killed her lover, David Blakely, outside a pub in north London. The shock of a woman using a gun was so immense that she was portrayed as a cold-blooded killer, even though she had suffered a miscarriage – caused by a punch in the stomach from Blakely – only three months earlier. Her appearance worked against her, with her own lawyer worrying that her dyed blond hair and heavy makeup would prejudice the jury.

Reform UK presents itself as the people’s voice while opaque digital wealth flows around it. That makes transparency a democratic necessity

Twice now, the Guardian’s questions about Reform UK’s finances appear to have been pre-empted by stories friendly to the party. This paper revealed in April that Nigel Farage received £5m from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne – but an interview with Reform UK’s leader, claiming he needed the cash “for security”, was published hours earlier in the Telegraph. Then, Richard Tice’s suggestion that the National Crime Agency (NCA) had leaked the MP’s bank statements landed on the Telegraph site on Tuesday, just before the Guardian said bankers had reported the £5m donation to law enforcement over money-laundering concerns.

A party serious about probity would have no issue answering questions about such cash. Instead, Reform uses a pliant media outlet to frame scrutiny as persecution. In Mr Farage’s world, the questions become the scandal, not the large undisclosed sums. That is a warning about how an authoritarian nationalist party that aspires to govern treats accountability: not as a democratic obligation, but as an attack.

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.

As in the Gareth Southgate era, a diverse and passionately committed national team is offering a counter-narrative to the forces of social division

The identity of the worst performers at the men’s World Cup has come as no surprise. In the lead-up to the tournament, the world had seen more than enough of Donald Trump and Gianni Infantino in action to fear the worst once the games actually began. Mr Trump’s lobbying of Fifa to lift a one-match ban on the United States’ star striker confirmed that his bullying will-to-power extends to spheres that he neither cares about nor understands. Mr Infantino’s craven willingness to accommodate it has been an affront to sporting integrity.

From prohibitive ticket prices to the introduction of advertiser-friendly hydration breaks – conveniently replicating the lucrative four-quarter format common in US sports – there have been plenty of other reasons to question Fifa’s overly commercialised stewardship of the beautiful game. But the World Cup still delivers a unique spectacle, as anyone who marvelled at the heroic exploits of Cape Verde, or witnessed Scottish fans’ good‑humoured invasion of Boston, can testify.

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.

Being an MP should not provide a backdoor for accumulating personal wealth, says Hugh Clarke

Several years ago, when I worked in a university, gifts from students or their families had to be declared, regardless of their size (Ministers to crack down on political donations as Farage faces calls for second inquiry, 6 July). To safeguard against students buying special privileges, staff were not permitted to accept “large” gifts.

On one occasion, a member of staff was given a tablet (value £200) and the university required it to be given back, or given to the department in which she worked, with the donor’s agreement, so that other students could benefit.

Philip Collier on one such scheme that was a lifesaver for his family

As the parent of a severely disabled child, I have direct experience of the difficulties faced in attempting to secure out-of-school care not only in the holidays but also during term time (More than half of English parents struggle to find accessible holiday clubs for disabled children, 7 July). What did work for me was a scheme run in Bolton in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when play providers were offered support from the local authority to accept children with disabilities.

This was the inclusive play scheme, which sought to provide the service that your article reports is often missing. Under the scheme, a request for a place led to a meeting to explore the child’s difficulties and associated needs in advance, so that the provider received adequate support to not only enable the disabled child to access premises, but also to structure some play activities in which the disabled child could join in and feel included, not just be present.

Simon Steyne says the MP who is expected to be the next prime minister has a chance to appeal to anti-racist former supporters who reject xenophobic policies

Your thoughtful editorial about the immigration bill stresses that, despite demonstrable facts, “Each turn of the dial in a draconian direction reinforces voters’ conviction that the system is out of control, encouraging support for opposition parties that pledge increasingly extreme measures” (The Guardian view on yet another immigration bill: law as performance is a failing model, 1 July).

Indeed, besides diehard racists there are those who have been convinced that migration and asylum present existential threats to Britain. The government refuses to present the contrary evidence, and most mainstream media persistent in conflating migration and asylum, undocumented entry, smuggling and trafficking, and devote much coverage to small boats but little to the absence of safe routes. They also ignore the absence, in the 1951 UN convention, of a “first safe country” provision (if it existed, hardly any refugees would be here).

Readers respond to the Reform UK leader’s move to resign and stand again in a byelection in Clacton

Nigel Farage’s behaviour increasingly resembles that of Schrödinger’s MP: simultaneously present and absent, committed and uncommitted, depending entirely on the demands of his personal political theatre. His latest trick – resigning his seat only to stand again in a byelection of his own making – is a striking example of this paradox. It allows him to claim the mantle of democratic renewal while sidestepping the basic expectation that an MP should simply get on with the job they were elected to do.

Constituents deserve stability, not a revolving door of self‑generated electoral drama. Parliament is not supposed to be a pantomime; nor should it be treated as a backdrop for perpetual campaigning. When an MP prioritises spectacle over service, the public is left with representation that exists in name only.

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Updates from the historic one-off women’s Test at Lord’s
Hosts have redemption in mind | The Spin | Email Tanya

3rd over: India 15-1 (Smriti 3, Yastikaa 11) Yastikaa isn’t hanging around –clips two fours off Bell, one through square leg, one through backward point.

2nd over: India 5-1 (Smriti 3, Bhatia 1) There’s England’s future, right there, Lauren Filer firing balls down at 70mph plus. Varma done by a belter. Bathetically, Filer follows up with a full toss. It was a slow start but there is now a good crowd filling the bottom layer of the grand stand, and the pavilion is PACKED.

Updates from the flat 175.1km stage from Hagetmau
Stage-by-stage guide | Stage six report | Mail Luke

There are six stages categorised as “flat” on the official route guide. Stage 21 in Paris may not quite count for the pure sprinters because of the three ascents of the Côte de la Butte Montmartre towards the end … long story short, the sprinters’ teams cannot afford to mess this up today. If a breakaway was allowed to succeed, the atmosphere would be frosty at dinner tonight for those teams.

Here we go then. The riders are out on the road and have another 3.5km or so until the flag drops. We should see a very decent scrap to form the breakaway.

Five years after his last fight, the Irishman returns to the octagon. His comeback says as much about the UFC’s appetite for its fallen star as it does about McGregor himself

These days Conor McGregor resembles an ace fighter the way a movie set depicts real life. Passing similarities are obvious but anything more than a quick, squinty glance reveals they are not the same.

For the 37-year-old Irishman, the line between genius athlete and performance artist was already blurred by the time he found himself destroyed in front of Dustin Poirier five years ago, yelping foul-mouthed barbs in the painful aftermath of his fourth stoppage loss in seven fights.

• Batlle is fourth arrival after Stanway, Cerci and Reuteler

• Full-back is one of four big Barça free transfer departures

Arsenal have confirmed the signing of the Spain full-back Ona Batlle on a free after her departure from Barcelona, continuing the London club’s busy start to the transfer window.

The 27-year-old is their fourth signing, after Georgia Stanway, Selina Cerci and Geraldine Reuteler, who arrived from Bundesliga teams on free transfers, and the club are understood to have been determined to complete lots of their business early.

With Saudi spending restricted and a glut of departures and arrivals, the stakes are high for Eddie Howe and his captain, amid uncertain times on Tyneside

Is it the end of the road for Bruno Guimarães and Newcastle or are they destined to share at least one more adventure?

With Arsenal anxious to add the Brazil midfielder to their armoury and Guimarães receptive to such advances, it remains hard to predict whether Newcastle’s intransigent resistance will be broken.

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The Frenchman is ranked world No 12, but that is a disappointment after he became the youngest ever 2800-rated player at 18 years and five months

Alireza Firouzja is shaping up to be one of the nearly men of grandmaster chess. The Iran-born Frenchman, 23, has just won the St Louis-organised Croatia Super Rapid and Blitz in Zagreb. He was far ahead at the start of the last day, but had a poor run of 2/7 during the final rounds before a successful Armageddon tie-break.

Firouzja’s career has been limited by his below-par performances in the Candidates. In 2022, he spoiled his chances by playing blitz into the small hours; in 2024, he did worse still, finishing seventh out of eight. He made a major effort to qualify again in 2025, hiring the late Daniel Naroditsky as his coach for the Grand Swiss in Samarkand, but finished third when only two qualified. At the victory ceremony, the bronze medal podium was conspicuously uninhabited.

Exclusive: Move comes as allies of Andy Burnham work on proposals to take water companies into public control

Ministers are drawing up plans to set legally binding debt targets for England’s water companies as they look for ways to avoid another corporate failure such as Thames Water.

Sources say Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, is working on proposals that would force companies to keep their debt below certain levels for the first time or face legal punishment.

As UK swelters in another heatwave, 50-minute Chris Packham film outlines threats to security, economy and health

MPs are calling on the UK government to host a televised national climate emergency briefing in response to what has been described as the most “insidious threat to our society”.

In November, in the “first-of-its-kind, national emergency briefing”, nine experts gave stark assessments in Westminster Hall of the scale of the changes needed to adapt the country to the rapidly changing climate and ecological landscape.

The rapid spread of the virus has been intensified by misinformation and violence towards volunteers and treatment centres

Nearly two months after the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) confirmed an Ebola outbreak in one province, the virus is continuing to spread rapidly, reaching more parts of the country and infecting more people.

According to government data from 8 July, 1,759 cases and 600 deaths have been recorded. The virus has also spread to Uganda, where there have been 20 confirmed cases, including two deaths.

Civil liberties groups say Facewatch system in stores such as Sainsbury’s and B&M is ‘dangerous escalation’

Facial recognition technology in shops will soon alert police in real time to the presence of serious offenders, with civil liberties groups warning of a “dangerous escalation” towards surveillance and criminalisation in the retail sector.

Facewatch, a facial recognition system used by more than 100 businesses including Sainsbury’s, B&M and Spar to monitor thieves, said it was launching a UK-first feature to “alert police instantly when the most serious offenders trigger a live facial recognition match”.

Renewed attacks the largest since an interim memorandum was signed this June, with Trump saying fragile truce is ‘over’

The US and Iran traded retaliatory strikes on Thursday as US president Donald Trump threatened to escalate the conflict unless Iran stopped attacking ships in the strait of Hormuz.

Iran responded to the latest round of attacks by targeting US-allied Kuwait and Qatar and accused the US of striking near its sole nuclear power plant.

Conservationists fear more nests may have been destroyed during work on Jarrow houses by council-appointed contractor

Swift chicks are feared to have been thrown into a skip during house renovations in South Tyneside, despite rules that should stop the destruction of nests.

The Northern Swifts Group (NSG) was alerted to the destruction of at least one nest on Tuesday, in a street in Jarrow where houses were being renovated by South Tyneside council.

Researchers on Beaver Island, in Lake Michigan, are trying to find a more reliable form of power using local resources

Beaver Island sits in the middle of the northernmost end of Lake Michigan, about 70 miles from the maritime border with Canada. The forested island, just a little bigger than San Francisco in size, is a popular summer destination for tourists and home to about 600 permanent residents. Getting there requires a boat or plane ride.

Getting electricity to the island is not as easy. Power comes from mainland Michigan through cables that cross roughly 30 miles of lake bed. Outages are common during extreme weather, or when there are problems with the sensitive wires. The devastating ice storm that walloped the state last year knocked out power to the island for weeks.

Newly minted rich and those anticipating huge IPOs are fueling buying and charter spree in the private jet sector

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Aviation lawyer Amanda Applegate skipped her annual vacation last month as a surge of wealth from AI startups and SpaceX sent a wave of tech investors shopping for private jets, ⁠burying her in paperwork for aircraft-purchase agreements.

The ⁠attorney, based in Cleveland, Ohio, attributed the rush to a handful ​of major “liquidity events” in the tech industry. The initial public offering (IPO) of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, whose holdings include artificial-intelligence firm xAI, raised a record $85.7bn for the company and generated unprecedented employee and founder wealth.

Models show overwhelming chance that this year’s El Niño to rank among largest going back to 1950

El Niño is strengthening and the risks of a historic event with the power to supercharge extreme weather around the world are rising, according to the latest analysis from the US National Weather Service.

Models show there is now an 81% chance that a very strong El Niño “that would rank among the largest El Niño events in the historical record going back to 1950” will develop before the end of this year, forecasters said in an advisory released Thursday. There is almost near certainty – a 97% probability – that the conditions will persist through spring 2027.

It remains unclear how much of substance will change – and whether it will be enough to rebuild electoral coalition

On the final day of Labour’s party conference in 2023, when the public was still reeling from the brutal Hamas attack on Israel just days before, Keir Starmer took to the airwaves for the traditional broadcast round – but gave one interview that would have particularly damaging fallout.

Sitting down with LBC’s Nick Ferrari, the then opposition leader asserted Israel’s right to defend itself, a stance that was in line with the broad political consensus at the time. But then he also appeared to suggest it had “the right” to withhold power and water from Palestinian civilians.

Officers say disturbances in city orchestrated by people from outside and urge people to factcheck online claims

Scottish police have told people to factcheck online claims before going to protests, after crowds gathered outside two homes in Glasgow this week, in one case as a result of mistaken identity.

Police Scotland said that several nights of disorder in Scotland’s biggest city had “clearly been orchestrated by individuals who are not from Glasgow”.

National Audit Office says system needs to be upgraded before it is extended to ease strain on overcrowded prisons

The rapid expansion of electronic tagging to reduce pressure on prisons will put public safety at risk without robust improvements to a system already under significant strain, the UK’s public spending watchdog has warned.

The number of people in England and Wales being electronically monitored has doubled to 28,700 over five years, and is estimated to rise to 22,000 tagged each year from 2027 under government plans to combat the prison capacity crisis by managing more offenders in the community.

Gigs by Gallagher brothers, Coldplay, Lana Del Rey and Beyonce gives £11bn boost to the economy

Big name artists including Oasis with their highly anticipated reunion tour, Coldplay and Beyoncé helped to attract a record number of fans to travel to watch live music last year, helped by a surge in overseas visitors at UK gigs.

A report from the industry body UK Music estimated that 24.7 million “music tourists” attended concerts and festivals last year, up 4.8% on 2024, leading to an unprecedented £11.2bn of spending across the UK economy.

Businessman stands trial over death of Maltese journalist killed by bomb in her car after she reported on corruption

Moments before the explosion that killed Daphne Caruana Galizia, the journalist screamed in panic, a witness has told the trial of the man accused of ordering her murder.

Caruana Galizia was killed in 2017 by a remotely detonated bomb placed under the driver’s seat of her car, after writing a series of reports on political and financial corruption in Malta. The government’s handling of the investigation led to mass protests and ultimately to the resignation of the Maltese prime minister, Joseph Muscat.

Local truckers’ association says it may suspend operations, after several eyewitnesses decried Ahmad Esleem’s murder

A Palestinian driver bringing food aid from the World Central Kitchen (WCK) into Gaza has been killed by an Israeli soldier “in a field execution”, according to witnesses and the local truckers’ association, which said it may suspend operations in protest.

Ahmad Esleem was shot in the head on Wednesday when an aid convoy stopped because of a breakdown to one truck soon after entering Gaza, according to three accounts. Israeli soldiers ordered the drivers to dismount and one of them shot Esleem in the head when his hands were raised.

Unesco report shows children lost out to servicing debt in 113 countries, with 18 spending five times more on loans

Most developing countries spent less on education than they did repaying debt last year, according to the UN, at the same time as global aid to education is predicted to decline by up to 30%.

More was spent on servicing foreign debt than on education in 113 developing countries in 2025, according to research by the UN’s culture and education agency, Unesco. In sub-Saharan Africa, countries spent 3.6 times more on debt than education.

Politicians and advocates say dismissals are ‘deeply concerning and part of president’s ‘relentless efforts to interfere with elections’

• Trump fires last members of election commission, inciting fears of midterm ‘chaos’

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Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the US Senate, called Trump’s firing of the full Election Assistance Commission another step toward the president’s attempt to take over elections.

“Firing every remaining member of the bipartisan Election Assistance Commission months before the midterms is a brazen attempt to seize control of our elections before a single vote is cast,” Schumer wrote on X. “He is gutting the independent agency that certifies voting systems and helps election officials run secure elections.”

Exclusive: Plan to improve skills of thousands of financial sector workers to keep pace with tech revolution

Chancellor Rachel Reeves is to announce a new City “skills compact” that will commit firms such as Barclays and Lloyds to retraining thousands of financial sector workers for the AI revolution.

The financial services skills compact will be launched on Tuesday, during what is likely to be Reeves’s final Mansion House speech to City bosses before Andy Burnham’s expected takeover of No 10. The government-backed initiative will commit employers to improving workers’ skills and helping them “keep pace” with significant technological changes that have prompted fears of mass redundancies.

Xavier Niel buys 16% through investment vehicle Vega after Emirati telecoms group sells shareholding

The French telecoms billionaire Xavier Niel has become Vodafone’s largest shareholder after buying a 16% stake for £4.4bn.

On Friday, the Emirati telecoms group e&, which first took a stake worth £3.3bn in Vodafone in 2022, announced the sale of its entire shareholding for 112.5p a share.

Regulators say Facebook and Instagram features such as autoplay and infinite scroll contribute to ‘compulsive use’

EU regulators have accused Meta, the company behind Facebook and Instagram, of failing to tackle the risks of its “addictive design” on the physical and mental health of users.

In an official charge sheet against Meta released on Friday, the European Commission said features such as video autoplay and infinite scroll, which provides an endless stream of content, “shift the brain into autopilot mode, contributing to unhealthy habits and compulsive use”.

Airline’s board minded to recommend deal – after accepting rival one from Castlelake earlier this week

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The board of easyJet has given the green light to a possible £5.7bn offer from the US private equity firm Apollo, as the low-cost airline becomes the subject of a surprise bidding war.

The company’s board said on Friday that it was “minded to recommend” the potential all-cash offer, which values the business at £7.15 a share, to shareholders.

Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
While Britain boils in a heatwave, a new exhibition built around the much-reproduced canvas reminds us of the beauty of the natural world – and what we could lose

I first saw John Constable’s 1821 painting The Hay Wain as a postcard with cruise missiles brutally stacked in the wooden cart and pointing at the sky. Peter Kennard’s anti-nuke photomontage is just one of the many parodies and travesties this image of a seemingly eternal rustic Britain keeps provoking. A few months ago, a newspaper cartoon depicted a ballistic missile from Iran speeding through Constable’s painting. But when I visited Ipswich to see its Hay Wain exhibition at the start of the latest heatwave it was the climate making a scorching, ironic comment on this temperate scene.

Inside this Tudor house, grey, blue and brown masses of rain-promising cloud hung above Constable’s painted Suffolk fields, dappling them with shade. But outside the grass was straw yellow and the landscape around Dedham Vale and the River Stour, where Constable was born and in which The Hay Wain and many more of his works lovingly linger, appeared to have been blowtorched into oblivion.

As the classic courtroom comedy drama turns 25 meet the associates and attorneys who took Elle Woods’ pioneering spirit and ran with it

Angela McCarthy, senior associate at Lawrence Stephens, London

Alice Oseman’s LGBTQ+ romantic teen drama concludes with an intimate look at long-distance relationships, while Daniel Day-Lewis and Sean Bean are two brothers surrounded by fear and generational pain

Submerge yourself, for the last time, in the warm bath of inclusivity that is Alice Oseman’s world-conquering LGBTQ+ romantic teen drama. Despite returning as a feature film, it’s intimate, suburban business as usual for Joe Locke’s Charlie, Kit Connor’s Nick and their tight-knit circle of queer friends. The principal conflict this time revolves round Nick’s looming departure for university and the pair’s worries about how – and if – a long-distance relationship could work. It’s also about navigating everyday coupledom, with Anna Maxwell Martin (replacing Olivia Colman) as Nick’s single mum and Derek Jacobi as an older gay man giving the boys pause for thought.
Friday 17 July, Netflix

Love on the Spectrum’s Michael Theo also stars in Austin. Plus: Monty Don at the first ever RHS Badminton flower show. Here’s what to watch this evening

11.10pm, BBC One
The British-Australian sitcom about a grumpy children’s author who meets a neurodivergent man claiming to be his estranged son returns for series two. Julian (Ben Miller) receives the DNA test results and tells Austin (Michael Theo) that it isn’t a match. So they go in search of Austin’s real father … But it is Sally Phillips as Julian’s fed-up wife Ingrid who really steals the show. Hollie Richardson

On the back of our editors’ choices of the year’s finest, we asked you to share your magical movie moments from the first half of 2026

The film that had me gripped right from its ridiculous and bizarre first scene at a Brazilian country road petrol station was The Secret Agent by Kleber Mendonça Filho. The gorgeous Armando is on the run from a corrupt private company official, who wants to steal his academic expertise for his own financial gain. It’s a deal that Armando knows will sully his academic reputation but by refusing to do so, he ends up with a target on his back from the resentful Ghirotti, who sent chills up my spine. This is a stunning movie. Liz, London

Anya Taylor-Joy is looking to break away from her criminal past with one last career-crowning heist, while Will Ferrell stars in a fun new comedy as a washed-up golfer

A suitcase full of money in a swanky Vegas hotel room. It’s a conventional way to start a thriller, but even if Lucky never threatens to shatter any paradigms it fulfils its edgy, twisty brief. Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Lucky, a woman who thinks she’s pulled off a career-crowning heist with lover Cary (Drew Starkey), only to wake the following day with a belting hangover in an empty bed. Worse still, while the cash has gone, its original owners haven’t – and soon she has Annette Bening’s mob boss Priscilla on her tail as well as the Feds. Lucky doesn’t hold much back – the first episode is basically one long chase scene – but as long as you leave plausibility concerns at the door, you’ll have a blast.
Apple TV, from Wednesday 15 July

Housesharing brought the south London trio’s sounds – classical vocals, violin, clubby production – together as they bled through the walls, to shapeshifting effect

From South London
Recommended if you like FKA twigs, James K, Anysia Kim
Up next Debut album Underlight out now

There are many ways to deconstruct club music. On Bristol label Illegal Data, releases might take explosive approaches to scary (Ship Sket) and whimsical (Mun Sing) extremes. More recently, the same label finds Stolen Velour, Floco and Aria SL filling the club chest-high with liquid: you hear elements sink, dissolve, or float past serenely on the surface.

After beating Leonard Cohen to Canada’s biggest music prize and splicing dembow with classical, the cross-cultural artist is now confronting Colombia’s new president

When I speak to the Colombian Canadian musician Lido Pimienta, it’s in the run-up to Colombia’s presidential election, and she is worried. One of the two remaining candidates, Abelardo de la Espriella, “is so rightwing he wants to open up our beautiful country to fracking and the influence of the US,” she says – and at one point in his campaign, De la Espriella said he wanted to “disembowel” the left. He later waved that away as a mere figure of speech, but Pimienta fears that leftwing artists like her “would be target number one” for a De la Espriella presidency. He ended up winning in a narrow victory that brought praise from Donald Trump and a promise of “a new era, a change of order”.

Despite the potential risks, the singer-songwriter has never shied away from speaking her mind. Since the release of her breakthrough second album, 2016’s La Papessa – which beat Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker, the last album released during his lifetime, to win Canada’s prestigious Polaris prize – 39-year-old Pimienta has made ebullient, genre-defying records that hiss with indignation at racism, colonialism, misogyny and music industry expectations.

(Wren Cathedral)
Inspired by communal Hebridean Gaelic song and ceremonial music, these reels and ballads reveal the fascinating proximity of post-rock and folk rock

A thick, distant rumble, the metallic sheen of an accordion drone and a woman singing a traditional Gaelic lament for the dead: these open Keening, the first track on the most fascinating folk-adjacent set of the summer. Wild Gods is a new project from Argyll’s Jamie Livingstone, a regular collaborator with the Scottish electronic producer Barry Can’t Swim. This release is inspired by the waulking songs of the Hebrides: communal songs traditionally sung by women as they beat and softened tweed before mechanisation transformed the industry’s rhythms.

With Gaelic archival recordings and melodies rooted in Celtic ceremonial music also being stirred into this bubbling brew, these eight tracks reveal the occasional, fascinating proximity between post-rock and folk-rock. After Keening, 10-minute Carlene’s Pin marries Susannah Stark’s gorgeous Gaelic vocals to clanging Bad Seeds guitars, folk fiddle, and a bassline recalling Godspeed You! Black Emperor at their most defiantly uncheery. Rest and Be Thankful, named after both a classic Scottish reel and a famous A83 viewpoint where couples are known to meet to have sex, is deliberately built up as a tender ballad, before moments of joyous folk dance strut and erupt; a shimmering interlude follows. Ortha, named after a Celtic incantation, reflects another of Livingstone’s inspirations: a transformative ayahuasca experience.

Rennert/Konradi/Peter/Keenlyside/Middleton
(Signum)
This collection of songs that the composer wrote as a young man is full of interest and emotion. Pianist Joseph Middleton brings sensitive support and an array of illustrative colours

The second volume in Signum’s survey of Mahler song focuses on the three books of Lieder und Gesänge that the composer worked on in his 20s, rounding off the album with his first vocal masterpiece, the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.

These early ditties are highly individual, often quirky and invariably full of interest. Joseph Middleton, whose instinctual pacing and sensitive support of the vocal line is matched by an array of illustrative colours drawn from the piano, has assembled a fine cast of singers. Sophie Rennert opens with Frühlingsmorgen, her full-bodied mezzo and expressive diction mining this lilting Viennese gem for textual nuance. She’s equally persuasive in Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald, one of Mahler’s most luminous songs. Ablösung im Sommer, a bizarre celebration of a cuckoo that has fallen off its perch, is given a deliciously theatrical workout by Katharina Konradi.

The actor and activist tells the story of her brutal childhood in the deep south with eloquence and defiance

When Laverne Cox was eight years old and growing up in Mobile, Alabama, she saved up her pocket money and bought herself a fan decorated with Japanese geishas. The fan became her favourite plaything, a prop to be used while dancing in imaginary music videos or recreating scenes from Gone With the Wind in which she cast herself as Scarlett O’Hara. “I lit up, animated, whenever that fan was in my hand,” she recalls in her memoir.

But when Cox, who was raised as a boy, began fanning herself with it at school, her teacher, Mrs Ridgeway, yanked her furiously out of the classroom, paraded her and her new accessory in front of the other teachers, and then phoned her mother, Gloria. When Gloria came home that evening, she exploded with fury. She said Mrs Ridgeway had told her she too had a son who had been an effeminate child who was now living on the streets of New Orleans and wearing a dress. “You want to be in a dress on the streets in New Orleans?” shouted Gloria, who would habitually call Cox a “sissy” and other homophobic slurs. She then signed her up for conversion therapy, which duly failed. It did, however, reinforce the message that there was something deeply wrong with Cox and that she was ultimately unlovable. Three years later, she tried to kill herself.

Sublimation by Isabel J Kim; Last Day of a Prior Life by Andrés Barba; Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep by Paul Tremblay; The Carrier by Ruth Newton; Time to Burn by Ellery Lloyd

Sublimation by Isabel J Kim (Picador, £18.99)
This debut novel from an award-winning Korean-American short fiction writer is a fantastical reimagining of the immigrant experience. Here, anyone who crosses a border not intending to return creates an “instance”: a duplicate self who continues life at home. Reintegration into one body is possible, but after years of separate experiences, Soyoung wonders if it might be the psychological equivalent of murder. This idea shocks her friend Yujin, who speaks with his instance in New York every day, waiting for him to be granted the dual citizenship that will allow them to share a privileged life between two countries. The story of these two pairs is told in the second person, a destabilising choice that gradually immerses the reader in a world of doppelgangers. As in our reality, travel is hedged around with bureaucratic systems designed to codify identity and control immigration. A brilliantly realised, imaginative and compelling work of literary speculative fiction.

Last Day of a Prior Life byAndrés Barba, translated by Lisa Dillman (Scribe, £10.99)
The latest novel by the Spanish author of Such Small Hands is a gentler, more unusual approach to the ghost story. An estate agent encounters a child in the empty house she’s trying to sell, and realises she’s met a ghost. The experience causes her to think about her closest relationships and to act in ways she never has before. Knowing it could be dangerous, she goes back to the house, determined to try to help the child from another time who is trapped there. A short, subtle, eerie tale that hides depths beneath a surface simplicity.

The Scottish author on loving The Hobbit, fairytales, Frankenstein and the shock of A Clockwork Orange

My earliest reading memory
Fairytales. I was obsessed. I took fairytales very seriously as moral lessons. I soon knew that I’d always help any old lady cross the road, it really is always best to do so.

My favourite book growing up
The Hobbit was my favourite book while growing up. It expanded my understanding of what could be achieved in fiction. I found JRR Tolkien’s world transformative. I felt as if I knew the hobbits, and I so wanted to see the elves. I could hear the crack of fireworks as they turned into dragons that flew overhead.

Riwoe’s commanding new book traces a Chinese Australian family across four generations – all connected by one old longan tree

It’s the year 2049 and Daniel Connelly is 75 years old. Eccentric and lonely after decades of self-imposed isolation, his existence is “spartan”, a “relentless searching, a yearning for pieces that fit together to make a new whole”. He spends his days making sculptures from broken pottery; the shards of his life.

During a warm winter’s day, Daniel steps outside to find that the longan tree in his garden has fallen during a storm. The tree was an heirloom of sorts – a family emblem of home and belonging for generations before him.

PS5, PC, Xbox Series X/S; Ubisoft Singapore/Ubisoft
Ubisoft has removed all the boring parts of pirate life from its fantasy RPG, creating something more focused and fun

Edward Kenway isn’t your dad’s Assassin’s Creed protagonist. Neither sworn to ancient oaths nor given a noble destiny, he’s just a guy who likes coin, dislikes rules, and whose gold-chasing, rule-dodging lifestyle sees him embroiled in an ancient war between Templars and assassins quite by accident. After he’s shipwrecked with a man named Walpole who turns out to be a Templar, Edward assumes Walpole’s identity in the hopes of securing the bounty he mentioned.

Edward wears life lightly. The world around him is violent and chaotic, and those in his vicinity are more obsessed with double-crossings than a Mission:Impossible movie writers’ room. Ed just smiles, undeterred by it all, and gets on with plundering. It’s all just fun and games to him, and he is set on conquering the Caribbean on his own terms. He is a brilliant extension of the player, in that way, and that’s what this remake of the 2013 pirate-themed Assassin’s Creed does so well: the sense of freedom.

Sony’s announcement spells the end of a whole ecosystem built by superfan collectors – and signals a troubling shift in the industry

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Sony’s decision last week to quietly announce the end of physical games production for the PlayStation in 2028 is one of the most perfect PR disasters in recent gaming history – and considering what has been happening with Xbox, that’s saying something.

First, there was the timing. Sony posted the news of its decision on the PlayStation blog, less than a week after admitting that it would be deleting 550 movies from the digital libraries of PlayStation owners due to the end of a licensing deal – thereby perfectly illustrating the dangers of purchasing digital products. (Surprise! You never actually owned them!) The move is in stark contrast with the company’s stance on this very issue back in 2013. When Microsoft was attempting to push Xbox One as a digital-first console with strict controls on the sharing and reselling of its games, Sony brilliantly mocked its rival with a short video on how easy it was to lend physical games to pals on the PS4. Oh dear.

The massively multiplayer online role-playing game has grown into a virtual social space and part of daily life for thousands of players

In a small stone chapel, on the edgelands of a medieval wilderness, two women are getting married. The attenders are draped in rainbow capes, glowing armour and top hats. A scantily clad, muscular man with angel wings officiates the ceremony. Over the heads of the two brides hover the words “I do” in bright yellow text. This is RuneScape, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (or MMO) set in the Tolkienesque realm of Gielinor. Turning 25 this year, it has, over its lifetime, become a crucial virtual social space and part of daily life for thousands of players.

Lancashire-born Amelia, one of the pixelated newlyweds, met her wife on a dating app but first bonded through their love of the game. “Our first and second date was pretty much exclusively talking about RuneScape,” she recalls. Four years later they were married, shortly followed by their in-game ceremony. Morgan – a 26-year-old from the Midlands – is one of Amelia’s closest friends. They met through the game and run UWU Girls together, a RuneScape clan that Morgan founded in a bid to cater to players across the gender spectrum. “We do IRL meetups, and for a lot of these women, it’s been their first meetings with strangers online – and that’s the same for me.”

With players leaving EA’s series once life there felt like a grind beset by ethical concerns, this quirky new sim promises a better life elsewhere

For 26 years, the life-sims genre has been dominated by one series: The Sims. Originally designed by Will Wright, creator of Sim City, EA’s virtual dollhouse series has grown into a $5bn [£3.8bn] empire with the constant release of new games, expansion packs, and collaborations cementing its place among the bestselling video game franchises of all time. But things are beginning to change. New contenders are emerging and turning the heads of even loyal players in The Sims community.

The most recent, and promising, of these is Paralives, once the solo project of indie designer Alex Massé, who is now employing a small team of developers. Released on the PC games platform Steam in May 2026 as an early access title (meaning it’s technically unfinished and looking for user feedback), it sold 250,000 copies in just eight hours. On that first day, the concurrent player count hit 78,603 – not far off The Sims 4’s all-time peak of 96,328 in 2022. While Paralives is a small project, this success is understandable. Following the news of EA’s controversial acquisition by a Saudi-backed business consortium, some simmers are looking for what they see as a more ethical alternative. But this is only part of the game’s appeal. The real draw is the game’s focus on creativity over realism: the quirky details that made many fans fall in love with The Sims in the first place.

Tate Modern hosts a major exhibition of Ana Mendieta, Constable turns 250 and the accidental beauty captured by unattended online cameras – all in your weekly dispatch

Ana Mendieta
Neolithic monuments inspired this Cuban-born American artist to create her ephemeral, raw, poetic works that embrace nature in a truly original way.
• Tate Modern, London, from 15 July to 17 January

Schwarzman Centre, Oxford
Headlong’s take on Karel Čapek’s 1920 tale of romance and robots is rife with timely debates about tech’s threat but at times the philosophical discussions drag on

If our world is currently thinking through the brave new future of generative AI and super intelligence, Karel Čapek’s 1920 play RUR: Rossum’s Universal Robots proves the notion of robot consciousness and rebellion is not a new anxiety. So does Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, which Čapek’s drama resembles in its philosophical debates and moral warnings, despite its futurism.

Ella Road adapts Čapek’s play for our times in this Headlong and Schwarzman Centre co-production, its science apparently informed by research from Oxford University academics, which gives it a cutting-edge, real-world underpinning.

The horny TV series has inspired a whopping four comedy shows this summer. Their makers explain why musical theatre and steamy action are such good bedfellows – and why there’s no rivalry between them

Five minutes was all it took. The stars of Heated Rivalry barely had a chance to shed each other’s clothes before writer and composer Dylan MarcAurele started taking notes, knowing that the horny hockey TV series was going to be his next parody project. “I had this idea that it would be a one-night-only concert for friends,” says the New York-based writer of fringe hit Pop Off, Michelangelo! But then he got producer Alan Kliffer on board, and performances sold out before the script had even been written. “It was a no-brainer,” Kliffer says. “I trusted it would be good, and I was right.”

After a successful off-Broadway run, Heated Rivalry: The Unauthorized Musical Parody is now heading for the Edinburgh fringe – and it’s not alone. Three musical spoofs of the series are hotting up at this year’s festival. With the show’s success – all perky keisters, swanky hotel shags, a secret sex cottage and just a smidgeon of hockey – Kliffer reckons it was inevitable. “You just know, at the end of the TV show,” he says, “that gay men everywhere will race to write musicals about it.”

London Palladium
The Eurovision star leads a glittery production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s blockbuster but this booming show lacks context and clarity

This amped-up version of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s rock opera is presented by the same triumvirate who near enough blew the critics – and crowds – to heaven with their 2016 revival. Tim Sheader is again director, designer Tom Scutt’s set has a similar scaffold structure (but with some audience members standing around it this time) and Drew McOnie is once more the choreographer.

The production, in spirit, goes back not just to the first century when Jesus of Nazareth rises to become an inspiring preacher, radical tearaway and thorn in the side of the temple clerics, but also to the 1970s era of hippy-dom and flower power from which the original show arose.

Six-part series will explore the band’s years in Hamburg, including the overlooked influence of Harold Phillips

In 1960, the Beatles arrived in the German port city of Hamburg. Inexperienced, keen and – in the case of George Harrison – underage, they were at the start of a two-year spell that would become a key part of Beatles lore, a time when the band honed their skills while entertaining rowdy sailors.

The Hamburg stint, during which the band played more than 250 gigs between 1960 and 1962, is the focus of a new BBC drama, Hamburg Days, which will tell the story of how the band were beaten into shape by performing near the notorious Reeperbahn.

As his American Utopia tour film hits cinemas, the musician answers your questions about his Scottish sense of humour, working with Brian Eno and his desire to direct another film

In May 1977, Talking Heads along with Ramones toured the UK starting at Eric’s Club in Liverpool. Did touring as punk exploded have an impact on you? SpiritofWacker
There was something really great about that tour because other than maybe a few singles the audience had never seen us, so there was a lot of curiosity and openness to us and Ramones, as different as we were. Later on, fans kind of decided they liked this band or didn’t like this band, but everything happened very quickly. I remember we did a show at the Roundhouse [in London] where somebody in the audience was gobbing on the bands and, of course, Ramones really didn’t like this. Understandably enough, they didn’t see it as a sign of – ha! – respect: “We’re with you so we’re gonna spit on you.” Ramones got more of that than we did, but at least they had leather jackets. We didn’t.

Ever since the Stop Making Sense tour, it seems to me that your live shows have been a quest to unchain the band from the physical restrictions of the typical rock concert. If that is so, where do you go from here? Lucifer_Sam
From various tours I’d realised that my guitar could be wireless. Then I did a tour with St Vincent where the brass players had started in marching bands, so were used to being mobile. I thought: “OK, what about drums?” I looked at drumline in American football and samba schools in Rio. I asked my longtime percussionist Mauro [Refosco] how many players we’d need to break down the drum kit into components and he said six. I took a big gulp and said: “I think we can afford it.” Then I discovered a Hungarian company which had invented a Midi keyboard on a self-powered rack. Suddenly, the whole band were liberated to move about, which democratised the concert experience for the musicians and the audience, who get to understand what each one does.

Speaking at a Guardian Live event at Love Supreme festival, the band tell us about lessons with Tony Allen, mayhem in Lagos and why musicians should be ‘pillars of the community’

At Sussex’s Love Supreme festival last weekend, Femi Koleoso and James Mollison of British jazz figureheads Ezra Collective joined me for a wide-ranging conversation on their artistry, the power of the dancefloor and hopes for the future of British music.

With Koleoso noting that “dancefloors are dancefloors, whether it’s people with instruments or people with turntables, there’s a synergy between all those spaces”, the pair reminisced about some of their own favourite dancefloor memories. Mollison mentioned east London’s now-shuttered Passing Clouds, while Koleoso remembered north London’s University of Dub night at the Scala, as well as Sunday sessions at the Haggerston pub, where a jazz jam would take place at the same time as a disco night: “I was so conflicted on which room to go to!”

The South African photographer, whose images arise from being embedded in queer and rural communities, has been named the winner of the James Barnor prize

Every year I spend six to eight weeks on board – it has brought new friendships and showed me how generous people can be

When I was a teenager in Denmark in the 1980s, my older brother drove me to Roskilde, a city with five original Viking ships. We started working with the Viking Ship Museum of Roskilde as volunteers to build one of the first replicas. Since then, Vikings have been in my life.

Until my retirement four years ago, I worked at an IT company, and on the side volunteered for the Oseberg Viking Heritage Foundation, in Tønsberg, Norway, which promotes Viking ships and handicrafts. I became chair in 2023.

They promise smoother skin with less regrowth – but which of these tools are worth the money?

• The best epilators – tested

Tired of waxing, bored by shaving and fed up with ingrown hairs? In the past few years, a quiet revolution has been taking place in the hair removal market, promising to banish stubbly regrowth and take away the pain of waxing and epilation. I’m speaking of the growing number of IPL (intense pulsed light) and laser devices suitable for home use.

Put simply, IPL uses pulses of light to make the hair go into its resting phase (stop growing) and fall out. IPL isn’t a permanent hair-removal solution such as electrolysis, but you should see a significant reduction in hair regrowth over time. With the right device, it’s also simple to do at home, fairly quick and almost completely painless.

Best IPL device overall for face and body:
Philips Lumea 9900

Best budget IPL device:
Bondi Body v2 laser @home

From thermal blinds to putting your knickers in the fridge, here are the clever – and surprising – ways Filter readers are keeping cool as the UK swelters

• How to sleep in a heatwave

After record-breaking June temperatures, parts of the UK are in the throes of another heatwave. So with more uncomfortably hot days and sweaty, sleepless nights in store, we asked how you keep cool when the temperatures soar.

Some of you shared tips for keeping your homes cool, others on avoiding overheating on the go, and some on ways to exercise safely. From thermal blinds and fans to sunscreens and UV-protective hats, here are your, and our, favourite hacks to beat the heat – and some of them are free. (And no, none of you has any commercial links to these companies or products – we always check.)

The hot weather is back. Beat the heat while on the move with our tried and tested portable neck and handheld fans

• The best fans for your home, tested
• Shark ChillPill 3-in-1 fan review

Another month, another heatwave. The climate crisis means things are heating up year on year, and while we can hide in air-conditioned shops and offices, our homes can get uncomfortably – sometimes dangerously – hot.

We also have to go outside – or worse, pack ourselves like sweaty sardines on sweltering public transport. On those occasions, a portable fan can make all the difference between manageable discomfort and indulging in an inadvisable quantity of ice-cream. Their recent popularity has led to manufacturers churning out cheap-but-not-especially cheerful products that ultimately end up as clutter in your house – or worse, landfill, where an estimated 4.3m will end up this year alone.

Best handheld fan overall:
John Lewis handheld and foldable fan – currently out of stock

Best budget handheld fan:
Fine Elements folding rechargeable mini travel fan – click and collect only

No more warm beer or sweaty cheese: these are the cool boxes that keep their chill when it matters

• The best (and worst) wine coolers

Whether you’re heading to a festival or pitching up at a campsite with the whole family, nothing spoils a trip faster than a bottle of sour milk and a warm can of beer. A reliable cool box is your best defence against such disappointments, and today’s models are designed to keep your provisions frosty, long after you’ve lost your phone signal. But which ones are actually up to muster?

From insulated picnic bags to heavy-duty ice chests, I’ve tested 18 of the best coolers and rounded up the ones that should keep you (and your hummus) fresh. Because no one should have to settle for tepid wine after the effort of pitching a tent.

Best cool box overall:
Coleman Pro cooler box

Best budget cool box:
Campingaz Icetime Plus

This spicy gin and citrus combo has a kick that belies its modest size

Gimlets may be on the small side, but they tend to make up for that by packing a pretty decent punch. This gently spiced, citrus-forward example is no exception, and makes for a gloriously summery aperitif.

Harneet Baweja, owner, Empire Empire, London W11

A touch of spice balances the sweet meringue and draws out the flavour of this fragrant and fruity dessert

British strawberry season barely needs embellishment, so I haven’t done anything wild here. This is essentially a classic rolled pavlova: crisp at the edges, marshmallow-soft within and filled with clouds of cream and strawberries. The small flourish here is sumac, which has a gentle tartness that somehow amplifies the berry flavour while balancing the sweetness of the meringue. Add a little lime zest, too, and the whole thing tastes bright, fragrant and unmistakably of summer.

As sales of sparkling wine continue to soar, one aromatic French fizz is worthy of particular appreciation

It was in the middle of the pandemic that I ceased stashing sparkling wine. There were no special occasions, or occasions at all, really, save for daily episodes of the BBC’s Baby Club with two cabin-fevered infants and the weekly thrill of a veg box. I might have been stockpiling chickpeas, but I was cracking bubbles open willy-nilly because, well, why not?

And I never stopped. The unrelentingly grim news agenda seems as good a reason as any to pop a cork these days, because sparkling wine invariably lifts my spirits. And I’m not alone in drinking more of it: according to a study by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine, sparkling wine sales have grown faster than any other style in recent years, rising in value from €2.3bn to €8.5bn over the past quarter-century. (That said, I might be an outlier on the timing front, because 2020 figures also point to a dip in sales)

You don’t need any complicated kit to eat well while sleeping under the stars. Just take a stove, a spork – and these recipes

Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

Much as I love camping, I understand why so many recoil at the idea of spending their holidays sleeping in a field and sharing bathroom facilities with several hundred other people, plus the local spider population. But, having just enjoyed a week in Devon in a one-person tent, with an elderly terrier, I have to come out in praise of campsite cookery. Though we ate in some superb pubs, the meals that brought the most joy were the ones we threw together from the small village shops we passed. (Shout out to the Holne Community Shop and Tearoom for being so well stocked – and to the kind fellow shopper who gave me and the dog a lift back to the campsite with our loot.) It gave me pause for thought about the kind of meals you actually cook when camping … and by camping, I don’t mean sleeping in a van kitted out with a fridge and a cooker, nice as that looked while struggling with guy ropes. I mean when your only equipment is what you can carry on your back: ie a small gas stove or a disposable barbecue, a knife and a spork.

Joe Woodhouse has some lovely ideas here, and there’s plenty of advice in this collection of recipes from the likes of Ben Tish and Melissa Hemsley. But, for me, the trick is always to focus on one key ingredient that doesn’t need to be kept too cool (this will, of course, vary depending on where you’re camping), and base all your meals around it until it runs out, at which point you’ll need to track down a new one. Ours, on this trip, were chorizo – the cured, rather than the cooking kind – and feta. With those two flavour bombs, and the olive oil, chilli sauce and salt that should be on everyone’s packing list anyway, you can make a feast from almost anything you find en route. Claudia Roden’s spicy potatoes from Rioja would have been ideal, as would Thomasina Miers’ piperade with baked eggs and crispy chorizo, though we might have had to lose a couple of the spices in favour of Tabasco.

Gary got a free festival ticket and agreed to go halves on a full-price one for Rita, but now he won’t stop going on about it. He says calling it a favour is simply a fact. You decide who the party pooper is

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

The way he presents it makes me feel as though I’m being a burden or that I now owe him something

You might hurt him terribly in the short term, Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes. But sometimes sparing people pain isn’t what’s good for them

• Read more Leading questions

I am deeply conflicted about whether to separate from my husband of 20 years, yet I am deeply burnt out from supporting him. He arrived as a refugee, spoke little English at the time, is from a very different culture to mine and has, as yet, untreated ADHD and PTSD. After much coaxing he agreed to couples counselling but we have now exhausted two therapists to no avail.

If I decide to separate I know that I will be far more supported by friends and family than he will be.

As a child, enduring break after break, I thought of myself as simply unlucky. Truth was, I needed to tune in to my aches, pains and well-founded fears

It was the first day of spring this year. I was topless, face-down on a foldaway travel table, as the masseuse uttered six words that brought my attempt at relaxation to an abrupt end: “I think your arm is haunted.”

I have broken my right arm seven times: seven breaks on seven separate occasions. Some years, my arm was in a sling more than it was out of one. The novelty of getting your mates to cover your cast in that 00s graffiti “S” and the relief of missing the bleep test at school quickly wore off.

My daughter’s scruffy little pet would fall asleep with me on the sofa, stilling my racing mind. And then he changed my life in an even more significant way …

I never wanted a hamster. My eight-year-old daughter, Lily, on the other hand, had folders. Habitat drawings and wheel specifications – a case for ownership of such rigour it bowled me over. As a boy I’d had a hamster, Jerry, and remembered him as fine – but nothing more than that. So I went to a Cardiff pet shop on a cold January morning in 2021 with no plan whatsoever to fall in love.

At the back of the enclosure was a scruffy one nobody else wanted. Skinny. A bit unkempt. When the staff member lifted him out, he yawned and looked at Lily as if he’d been expecting her. She named him Popcorn Sushi and took him home in a pink carrier.

Nearly a quarter of market traders now hold master’s degree, PhD or medical doctorate, research shows

One in five young market traders now holds a master’s degree, PhD or medical doctorate, according to exclusive figures shared with the Guardian, in a sign of how Britain’s markets are attracting an unexpected new generation of highly educated entrepreneurs.

Separate data from Kerb, the street food collective behind some of London’s best-known food markets, points in the same direction. Almost three-quarters of its founders have university degrees, including one in four with postgraduate qualifications. About 95% work in their businesses full-time rather than treating them as weekend side hustles.

You can keep temperatures down without the cost – or environmental price – of air conditioning. Here’s some tips and tricks

• The best fans to keep you cool in 2026 – tried and tested

In the UK we are used to worrying about our homes being warm enough, but after struggling to cope with high temperatures in May and June the race is on to cool them down before the next heatwave hits.

And while it might be tempting to swap your desktop fan for a portable air conditioner, there are lots of low-cost, more sustainable ways to stop rooms overheating.

My elderly parents’ home was left uninhabitable, and they are owed £3,300 for repairs they had to fund themselves

My elderly parents spent much of last year dealing with what should have been a straightforward insurance claim after a dishwasher installation by John Lewis caused a leak.

Instead, it became a year-long ordeal, marked by repeated failures and an almost total absence of accountability.

‘Home fee’ qualification ends in 2028, leaving those hoping to study in UK not now eligible for British loans

British teenagers living in the EU could be priced out of UK universities in two years’ time as a Brexit rule change means they face the double whammy of paying costlier international fees, while losing access to student finance.

British passport holders living in the EU still qualify for “home fee” status at UK universities. But this will no longer be the case when the grace period ends in 2028, meaning the first wave to be affected are starting their A-levels, or equivalent, this autumn.

Ministers consider bringing e-cigarette laws in line with tobacco as data shows 20% of teenagers have tried vaping

Vapes could be sold in plain packaging as part of a range of proposals to stop them being marketed to children.

The UK-wide plans also include limiting device colours to white, black or grey, and keeping vapes out of sight in shops, according to the Department of Health and Social Care.

Not everyone experiences heat the same way, and studies show aggression, violence and road rage increase on hotter days

Recently, my husband and I embarked on what should have been a pleasant spring errand: a stroll to the local farmer’s market. But a passing heatwave had made it unseasonably hot outside. I cut him off on the sidewalk and he snapped at me, so I snapped at him for snapping at me. We spent the rest of the excursion in sweaty, stony silence. When we were almost home, he said, miserably: “I’m sorry! It’s just so hot.”

Our grouchiness was not simply a weakness of spirit. “Heat doesn’t just affect your body,” said Dr Susan Albers, clinical psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic. “It affects your mood too.”

For young people, flaunting eye bags and bed rotting has become a cheeky rebuttal of body optimization culture

Picture a typical hangover: a morning spent curled under a comforter, chugging Gatorade and shame spiraling about what you might have said at the bar the night before.

Not so for the young people who are “romanticizing” their hangovers on TikTok and Instagram. Instead, they are flaunting their dark eye circles and raging headaches as the aftereffects of a good time, broadcasting their bad decisions to the world with a glowy sheen.

There are more than 3,000 conditions in dermatology, experts warn – and chatbots’ recommendations can be flaky

• Read more in the Antiviral series

Who among us has not, in a moment of panic or curiosity, consulted the internet in search of solutions to a medical ailment?

Increasingly, people are turning to AI for health advice, and skincare is no exception. Purpose-built apps promise to identify that rash, while people are sending selfies to AI chatbots seeking “full skincare analysis” and personalised regimens of treatments. On Reddit forums, people post before and after shots of the results from their AI-recommended skin routines.

With the singer sporting an array of ties on stage, fans have been customising, repurposing and even creating whole garments from the office neckwear staple

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When Harry Styles kicked off his Together, Together tour in Amsterdam in May, he bounded on to the stage in navy pleated trousers and a blue shirt, topped off with a colourful floral printed tie from Celine.

Four days later, Styles paused mid-set at the same stadium to take in the crowd. “There’s a lot of ties in the audience tonight. I see you queens, I see you,” he said.

Maria Grazia Chiuri returns to city of birth with haute couture inspired by kimono shapes and draping the body

“This is a cultural problem, and a political problem,” said Maria Grazia Chiuri before her first haute couture catwalk show for Fendi.

The problem, as the designer sees it, is Italy’s unwillingness to acknowledge fashion’s role in culture by giving it space in museums. To challenge this, Chiuri has bookended her Rome catwalk event with two fashion exhibitions in the city.

Reputation for frumpiness is over as M&S wins over younger audience with shows at Silverstone, Ibiza and now LFW

This autumn’s London fashion week boasts plenty of familiar labels, from Burberry to Alexander McQueen, ready to show off their wares. But on Wednesday there was an unexpected addition: Marks & Spencer is joining the luxury lineup.

The British high-street retailer will celebrate its 100th anniversary in the fashion industry by staging a catwalk show in September highlighting its latest women’s and menswear collections.

It’s my job to unpack beauty culture – but I’m still not immune to it. Plus, it’s a particularly strange time to be a bride, beauty-wise

My 91-year-old grandmother had her 1954 wedding album out on her lap when I visited the other day. “I wanted to remember how beautiful I used to be,” she sighed.

Every time my mom comes across a photo of her own 1984 nuptials, she says the same thing: “Look at how skinny I was!” (Or, sometimes, “Can you believe Daddy wore a white tuxedo with tails?” Which I cannot.)

From the Fanad peninsula in Ireland to the forested beaches of Finland, these are your favourite escapes without the fear of getting frazzled
• Tell us about your favourite food festival – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Saulkrasti’s long beaches and scented pine forests are an hour from Riga on the frequent local train. The forests come right down to the long, long sandy beach and the relaxing and well-marked trail takes you the 4km from Saulkrasti station through the trees to the big dune and blue river at Balta Kapa. We enjoyed a July picnic in the forest and occasional dips in the Mediterranean-warm Baltic, before returning happy to Riga.
Bruce

I didn’t see being a couple of years away from technically qualifying for an 18-30s jaunt to be a problem. But the booze, humiliation and a ‘mystery pooer’ made me rethink my entire life

‘First the bad news,” yelled our lairy Irish club rep as the coach drove us from Ibiza airport to our hotel. “All the great clubs: Amnesia, Space, Pacha … they’re CLOSED!”

A confused silence descended. “But the good news?” he yelled. “We’re gonna have a fucking amazing time anyway!!!”

Bishop Auckland is abuzz with culture and family fun, thanks to the vision of Auckland Palace’s owners – and the new Kynren show featuring birds of prey, Viking raids and mythical beasts, which opens next week

Booming Hans Zimmer-style cinematic music reaches a crescendo, shaking my bones. Two turquoise macaws swoop within an inch of my hair and join a sky filled with nearly 250 birds. Hawks, kites, pelicans, and an owl soar and swoop around a pagan-looking wooden circle. Peacocks fuss at the makeshift river below, coaxed by two actors telling the story of humans’ relationship with nature. Grey clouds roll in, dark with rain. After all, we are risking an open-air performance in north-east England. I’m at a preview of Kynren: the Storied Lands, the latest gloriously unrestrained project in the market town of Bishop Auckland, 12 miles south of Durham.

I grew up near Bishop Auckland, which was once an important coal-mining and railway town. Last time I was here, its centre was dominated by discount stores. If, in 2003, you’d told teenage me that the high street would become an ode to art, history and culture, I would have laughed. Well, I would have grunted and turned up the Nu metal on my MP3 player.

The owners of Teffont House are aiming for modern rural hospitality that puts guests at the heart of village life

Walking into the Orangery at Teffont House during the golden hour, the restaurant is glowing. Sunlight falls across cocktails the colour of spun sugar, spills on to a terrace trailing constellations of fleabane, and bounces off spoons sinking into raspberry trifles. What really gives the room its sparkle is none of these things, however, but the fact it’s packed with local people. On a warm June evening this new hotel, 10 minutes’ drive from the Wiltshire village of Tisbury, already feels embedded in village life.

It’s the latest venture of the Beckford Group, which runs a small clutch of West Country inns and restaurants, including the Talbot Inn in Mells and the Beckford Canteen in Bath. The company has carved a niche in modern rural hospitality, teaming unflashy furnishings (all chalky pink and moss green paintwork framed by antiques and contemporary art) with menus designed for greedy locavores and pricing that delivers an unstuffy demographic. Underpinning all of this is an ability to tap into local communities to create soul. With this, the Beckford Group’s first hotel, it is making that connection more explicit by labelling it as a village, rather than a country house, hotel.

From a warehouse conversion in London with views of the water, to a 17th-century barn with an annexe used as a yoga retreat

Langstone, Hampshire: Tree bumblebees are generally placid, but they’re not keen on someone prodding their home with the end of a bamboo cane

Last summer, one by one, all our visiting hedgehogs fell victim to the road. For the first time in years, the hedgehog house beneath a purple-leaved elder in a secluded corner of the garden sat empty over winter.

Then a few weeks ago I found fresh faeces on the patio, glistening with fragments of undigested insect exoskeleton – a sure sign that a prickly visitor was about. A few nights of camera trapping revealed a rotund adult with a distinctive arrowhead-shaped mark on its rump.

Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?

Brenda from Bristol entered the history books when she uttered the immortal words “You’re joking! Not another one” about the prospect of a general election. The Thursday quiz feels much the same when it looks at the calendar and notes that yet another week features a Thursday, and it needs to rouse itself to write something. Fifteen questions on topical news, general knowledge and popular culture await. There are no prizes, but let us know how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 255

Aiden is an unforgettable young caregiver in Walthamstow, east London, who has been looking after his mum for over half his life. Every few weeks, Aiden and other young carers get a rare night off thanks to tenacious council worker Satvinder, who fights to improve the recognition of young carers in her borough. This film joins them as they reclaim a few hours of their teenage lives back.

Is Mum OK? is released during Carers Week in the UK, a campaign that celebrates unpaid carers across the country and calls for better recognition and support for them. There are more than one million young carers in the UK – with an average age of 12 – which is the equivalent of two kids in every school class.

Two women who alleged they were raped by Tyrion Davis in Suffolk had to testify at an invasive court martial on a US base

Minutes after fleeing the home of an American airman, Rebecca called 999 in tears to report that he had raped her. She recalls vomiting at a police station in Suffolk as she described being repeatedly and violently attacked.

Officers took her to a sexual assault referral centre for an intimate examination. There, a nurse measured and photographed her injuries, including bruises and bite marks on her neck.

Intensive farming has all but destroyed England’s ancient woodlands and freshwater wetlands. On a farm in Lincolnshire a radical aristocrat hopes to show there’s money in protecting nature

• The summer issue of the Long Read magazine is out now. Click here to order

In the silent countryside south of Grantham, three vast steel barns rattled in the breeze. Gathered in a loose circle beside them were 15 landowners, land agents and a couple of young investors; all expensively dressed men, many with a sceptical mien. It was June 2022, and Sir Charles Raymond Burrell, 10th Baronet, was explaining how the purchase of 1,525 bleak acres (617 hectares) of prairie fields of wheat and beans could revolutionise farming and nature conservation, not just in South Lincolnshire but across Britain and beyond.

Burrell, known by everyone as Charlie, led the group on a walk from the barns beside the unlovable modern farmhouse, a red-brick behemoth with small windows like piggy eyes. We began by crossing a field of broad beans. Less than a century ago, it had been a patchwork of 10 fields. As we walked over the hard, cracked ground, we encountered not a single insect. Later, by a verge, a couple of butterflies flew. As for humans, we didn’t meet a single other person in our two-and-a-half-hour stroll across a range of footpaths and field edges. “This is a ruined landscape,” said one of the guests, the architectural historian Matthew Rice. “Not because of the soils. Because there are no people here. I’m sorry there are not enough stoats but I’d like there to be some children here, too.”

‘Perhaps it’s all a fever dream,’ suggests parody candidate, expected to be Reform leader’s only challenger for seat

Count Binface had been looking forward to a relaxing journey back to his home planet of Sigma IX when Nigel Farage dropped a political bombshell on Tuesday.

Instead, Britain’s hottest new political property said he was left with no choice but to perform a swift intergalactic handbrake turn when news broke that Farage had resigned as MP for Clacton, triggering the possibility of a byelection in the English coastal constituency he has represented since 2024.

Prediction markets have grown rapidly in popularity in recent years, particularly in the US. We’d like to hear confidentially from people in the UK who have used them

We’d like to find out more about how people in the UK are using prediction markets and what has attracted them to these platforms.

Prediction markets allow people to buy and sell contracts based on the outcome of future events, such as sporting tournaments, elections and financial markets. They have become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly in the US.

Has the pill format prompted you to consider GLP-1 medication for the first time? Have you already started taking it? Or has weight loss medication changed your lifestyle in other ways?

A once-daily Wegovy weight-loss pill has gone on sale at high street and online pharmacies in the UK, offering an alternative to injectable GLP-1 medications.

We’d like to hear from people who are considering taking a weight-loss pill, have recently started one, or are planning to switch from injections.

We would like to hear from young people in the north of England about their experiences of looking for work

About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds in the UK are not in employment, education or training (Neet), according to a report published in May, which warned that the figure could rise to 1.25 million by the early 2030s without urgent government action.

We are particularly keen to hear from young people living in northern England who are not currently in work or education, or who have been struggling to find a job.

How long did you have to wait? Perhaps you are in a queue now. Tell us your experience

The EU has rejected calls to suspend its biometric border checks despite warnings from airports, airlines and ports that the system could lead to long queues and delays during the peak summer holiday season. MPs in the UK have also warned of potential disruption at the Port of Dover as holiday traffic builds.

We would like to speak to people who have been affected by the new system. Tell us about your experience – has the new system worked well or have you experienced delays? How long did you have to wait? What did you do to pass the time? Or maybe you are in a queue now? Tell us your experience.

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A weekly email from our star chefs featuring the latest recipes and seasonal eating ideas

Each week we’ll send you an exclusive newsletter from our star food writers. We’ll also send you the latest recipes from our star chefs, stand-out food features and seasonal eating inspiration, plus restaurant reviews from Grace Dent.

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