One in three UK postcodes now has more dogs than children. Meet the Dinkwads (dual income, no kids, with a dog). Plus Tim Dowling’s guide to the best breeds for Dinkwads

Bryan Bell was at home when his one-year-old Patti collapsed, shaking like a leaf in a gale-force tornado. She was having a fit. Bell’s husband, John, was out of the house and he didn’t know what to do. “It was quite a traumatic experience because I didn’t know what was happening,” the 40-year-old PR recalls. Eventually, Patti’s fit subsided and the couple soon found a diagnosis from her doctor: their miniature dachshund had epilepsy. “She’s all medicated now, so it’s under control. But when it happens, you feel like: ‘Is this going to be the fit that’s too much for her little head?’”

Medical scares, behaviour issues and a tendency to eat you out of house and home – many dog owners will tell you that getting a four-legged friend bears more than a few similarities to having a young child. But as birthrates plummet across the world, a curious inverse trend has emerged: couples are getting dogs. Lots and lots of couples, in fact. They’re called Dinkwads (dual income, no kids, with a dog) and their numbers are growing. With one in three postcodes in England home to more dogs than children, you are now more likely to hear the howl of a basset hound than the sound of kids playing. If you counted up all the estimated 13 million dogs in the UK, from pint-sized chihuahuas to lolloping great danes, you’d only be two million short of the total number of children. And unlike the human birthrate – which in Britain hit a record low in 2024 – the number of dogs only looks set to increase.

The Reform UK leader has belatedly clocked that most British people really don’t like the US president on whose coat-tails he has spent the past decade riding

At last, the culture has thrown up a split more nauseatingly up itself than Gwyneth Paltrow’s from Chris Martin. It is Nigel Farage’s attempt to consciously uncouple from Donald Trump, a man up whose backside he’s spent the past decade most firmly lodged. Nigel’s made such a massive, self-satisfied show of his real estate in the presidential large intestine for 10 years now that I actually don’t think non-surgical extraction is possible at this stage. He doesn’t just get to walk away whistling. The only way out is a full Faragectomy. I’ll give the president a piece of drone fuselage to bite down on.

Anyway: conscious uncoupling. Back in the day, you’ll remember, Gwyneth and the Coldplay singer deployed this particular phrase when announcing their marital split. Did the public love it? They did not. The general vibe – as with so much of Her Vajesty’s output – was that she would do even marriage failure more smugly and unachievably than mere plebs could ever. The pivot from gushing about her perfect marriage to gushing about her perfect divorce felt like mere days.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

What a Time to be Alive! by Marina Hyde (Guardian Faber, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Transformative 999-year deal is a massive moment in the history of the club and the violent cultural push-pull of London

I have in my hand several hundred pieces of paper. Dog-eared, scribbled with rewrites, and stained with sweat and ancient Bermondsey vinegar. But a wodge of paper that may just guarantee, finally, what passes for peace around here.

There was a moment at the Den on Saturday afternoon that carried its own strictly localised sense of history. An hour before kick-off in Millwall’s Premier League playoff-push game against Portsmouth, the key personnel gathered in a wedding-style lineup around the centre circle.

A powerful new fact-based drama depicts Huw Edwards’s fall from being the BBC’s top news anchor to a conviction for making indecent images of children. The Doc Martin star talks about secrecy, off-the-record research – and why his ears needed to be stuck down

Huw Edwards has not sat at a newsreader’s desk since July 2023, when he was suspended by the BBC following a report in the Sun that he had paid a teenager £35,000 for intimate images and conversations. A year later – when new BBC News at Ten anchor Clive Myrie announced that his predecessor had been convicted of possessing indecent images of children – the Welsh broadcaster’s career effectively ended.

But on Tuesday the night of 24 March Edwards is back on screen, reading the news in the late-night slot he occupied for decades. He is played by the actor Martin Clunes and his BBC desk has been recreated in the London canalside news studio at Channel 5 by the producers of Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards.

At a time when Britain has never felt more divided, we should draw on Christian values to reject hate and focus on what unites us

When you think about the unedifying political furore about the open iftar held in Trafalgar Square, try to bear in mind that every year on Remembrance Day – a stone’s throw from Trafalgar Square – the bishop of London leads a public Christian act of lamentation in the open air. It is an act of religious observance which happens in cities, towns and villages across the country. Alongside the hymns sung, there are readings from the Bible and prayers made in the name of Jesus Christ, and a blessing invoking the holy trinity. In Leeds, where I have the honour of leading the service alongside the Roman Catholic dean of Leeds, I am accompanied by leaders from other faiths: Jewish, Hindu, Sikh and Muslim. We join together in this public, open-air, unmistakably Christian service.

Over years of attending and conducting such services – and others like it such as those held in memory of Queen Elizabeth II – I have never heard a complaint from those of other faiths that such services represented a “domination of the public sphere” or that such services in our civic spaces were “an expression of power and intimidation”.

Arun Arora is bishop of Kirkstall in the diocese of Leeds

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.

Causes of meningitis, what the public health response has been, and how the situation differs from Covid

The deadly outbreak of meningitis in Kent has fuelled concerns about how far the disease will spread and seen the return of people wearing masks and queueing for vaccines. The scenes are reminiscent of the Covid crisis, but meningitis is very different. Here we look at how the outbreak has unfolded.

US president says ‘Nato is a paper tiger’, as officials tell Reuters news agency that more troops will be heading to the Gulf

Kuwait’s state oil firm KPC said its Mina Al-Ahmadi refinery was hit by multiple drone attacks early on Friday, causing a fire in some units, with no initial casualties reported, the state news agency said.

Firefighters responded immediately, with several units shut down as a precaution to ensure workers’ safety.

Arab states have so far only acted defensively, but there is growing fear war is entering new, more dangerous phase

• Middle East crisis – live updates

The boom reverberated so loudly over Dubai marina that the windows of the surrounding skyscrapers and exclusive hotels gave a loud, disconcerting rattle.

“That sounded close, do you think a missile has hit something?” said a young man to his friend as they sipped coffees. Moments earlier, all mobile phones in the vicinity had sounded off with a shrill alarm, the new normal for those living in the Gulf, warning of missile and drone strikes in the area. Customers barely looked up.

Palestinians say the move is part of a wider Israeli strategy to leverage security tensions to tighten restrictions

For the first time since 1967, al-Aqsa mosque – Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site – was closed at the end of Ramadan on Friday, with tensions rising among Palestinians as Israeli authorities keep the complex shut, forcing worshippers to hold Eid prayers as close as they could to the sealed site.

On Friday morning, hundreds of worshippers were forced to pray outside the Old City, as Israeli police barricaded the entrances to the site.

Exclusive: Chris Bryant says policy agreements are being done in bits and pieces but a greater vision is needed by both sides

It was all smiles and warm handshakes when the two men in charge of renegotiating the UK’s relationship with the EU met in Brussels this week.

Maroš Šefčovič and the UK minister for EU relations, Nick Thomas-Symonds, sharing a stage on the third floor of the vast European parliament building, were at pains to show the cross-Channel relationship was in a good place after years of rancour.

Actor who rose to fame after starring in Bruce Lee’s The Way of the Dragon also became a TV fixture with Walker, Texas Ranger

Chuck Norris, the former world karate champion who used his fight prowess to become the star of a string of low-budget but financially successful action movies, has died aged 86.

His family posted a message on social media saying Norris had died on Thursday, adding: “While we would like to keep the circumstances private, please know that he was surrounded by his family and was at peace.”

Man and woman, one of whom is understood to be Iranian, held after asking to enter sensitive military site

Two people have been arrested, one of whom is understood to be Iranian, after they tried to enter the Faslane nuclear submarine base in Scotland in what may have been an attempt at espionage.

A man, 34, and a woman, 31, were detained by Police Scotland after they had asked to enter one of Britain’s most sensitive military sites late on Thursday afternoon. The base is home to the UK’s Trident submarines and not open to the public.

Exclusive: Richard Hermer, who is Jewish, says Tory leader and shadow minister seem ‘to only have an issue with Muslim events’

Richard Hermer, the attorney general, has challenged Kemi Badenoch to say whether she would object to Jewish prayer in public, after the Conservative leader backed one of her shadow ministers who said an Islamic prayer event was intimidating and un-British.

Hermer, one of the UK’s most prominent Jewish politicians, said Badenoch’s decision to support the views of Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, put her on a par with Reform UK and Tommy Robinson, the far-right activist.

Stuart Niven found to have diverted Covid grants to personal account and other candidates’ Islamophobic remarks revealed

• UK politics live – latest updates

Reform UK has suspended one of its Scottish candidates after it emerged he had been struck off as a company director, and the party faces growing attacks for fielding candidates making Islamophobic remarks.

Reform confirmed on Friday morning it had suspended Stuart Niven, its candidate for Dundee West, after the Herald revealed he had been struck off after diverting tens of thousands of pounds of Covid grants into his personal account.

Raynor Winn’s lawyers have confirmed she published a previous book in 2012, years before the memoir that won a £10,000 prize for debut writers

Author Raynor Winn published a book under a pseudonym six years before her 2018 memoir The Salt Path, despite repeatedly describing the later work as her debut, it has emerged.

Winn received widespread acclaim for The Salt Path, including a £10,000 prize for debut writers.

Mette-Marit says she ‘did not know he was a sex offender’, despite Googling him three years after his prison sentence

Norway’s crown princess, Mette-Marit, has said she was “manipulated and deceived” by Jeffrey Epstein as she spoke publicly for the first time about her years-long relationship with the late sex offender.

She also claimed that she “did not know he was a sex offender or an abuser” – despite telling him in an email in 2011, three years after he had been sentenced to 18 months in prison and pleaded guilty to soliciting sex from girls as young as 14, that she had recently Googled him.

Three people were suing ex-Sinn Féin leader for liability over IRA bombings in UK that left them injured

Three victims of IRA bombings who sued Gerry Adams alleging he was a member of the paramilitary group and culpable for the attacks have withdrawn their lawsuit on the last day of the civil trial.

John Clark, Jonathan Ganesh and Barry Laycock, who were injured respectively in the 1973 Old Bailey bombing, the London Docklands and Manchester bombings in 1996, were seeking symbolic “vindicatory” damages of £1 each.

Owner of labrador says bottle find may be connected to poisoning that led to one of England’s last public hangings

A man in Devon believes his beloved dog has dug up a key piece of evidence in his back garden connected to a notorious Victorian murder case.

Paul Phillips, 49, told reporters that his labrador, Stanley, recovered a blue glass bottle with the words “Not to be taken” written on the side from their home in Clyst Honiton.

In Denmark, the spread of solar panels in rural areas has become a divisive issue among voters, especially in rural areas

In one telling of the story, the golden fields of a proud farming nation are under attack. Besieged by an industrial sprawl of solar panels, they are being smothered at the behest of an urban elite.

That narrative has failed to thrive in conservative heartlands such as Texas and Hungary, which have embraced solar power while lambasting green rules. But it is taking root in Denmark, the most climate-ambitious nation on Earth. “We say yes to fields of wheat,” said Inger Støjberg, the leader of the rightwing populist Denmark Democrats in a speech in 2024. “And we say no to fields of iron!”

Strong showing for Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s LFI party will suggest its electoral base is firm despite recent controversy

Farouk stood at his doorstep on a row of redbrick terrace houses in the northern French town of Roubaix – once the glory of the textile industry before decades of factory closures and unemployment made it the poorest town in mainland France.

“It feels like there’s a lot of darkness in the world and we just want to let in a little light,” said the 73-year-old former market shoe trader and father of seven, before Sunday’s local elections.

The actor was Marlon Brando’s PA, and received career advice from Al Pacino. But it’s for the catchphrase-strewn classic that he’ll be best remembered. He talks about the film’s legacy, and its director Reiner, who he will ‘miss terribly’

In 1988, the actor Cary Elwes’s career had taken a nosedive. His latest film, a fantasy in which he played a farm boy turned swashbuckling hero, had bombed at the box office and the actor had been out of work for a year. One day he was in a New York restaurant when he spotted Al Pacino, so he went over and introduced himself. “He asked me if I was working and I said no,” Elwes recalls. “He said: ‘You need to exercise your [acting] muscles,’ and told me to go back to school and train.” Pacino put him in touch with the Lee Strasberg Institute, where he had studied with his friend and mentor Charlie Laughton. “I auditioned, I got in and ended up working with Al’s mentor, and it changed my life.”

The meeting with Pacino wasn’t the only life-changing event for Elwes that year, however. The “dud” movie in which he played the handsome farmhand, Westley? That was The Princess Bride, a fairytale spoof that was also an adventure story aimed at adults and children alike, and that its director Rob Reiner later said was a nightmare to market. A year after its theatrical release, it came out on VHS and suddenly took on a life of its own.

From budget to Japanese-style models, here are chef Ben Lippett’s sharpest picks for comfort, cut and cost after weeks of chopping. Plus, what to know before you buy

• The kitchen gadgets top chefs can’t live without

A great chef’s knife is less a tool and more an extension of the person holding it. In the kitchen, your knife effectively becomes your right (or left) hand. Balance equals control; good steel spells confidence and longevity; a sharp edge means ease.

I’ve put a handful of knives through the only trials that matter: shallots diced to translucence, tomatoes sliced gossamer thin, herbs chiffonaded to perfume. I’m looking past marketing into geometry, materials, grind and ultimately how each knife feels – at minute one and hour 10. Does it bite eagerly, or wedge and bruise? How does it feel in your hand – is it perfectly balanced or too blade-heavy? Does it sing on the board, or thud? Will this knife need lots of TLC, or will it look after itself?

Best chef’s knife overall:
Wüsthof classic chef knife, 20cm

Best budget knife:
Victorinox Fibrox chef’s knife, 20cm

Evidence suggests saunas can boost heart health, but their real power may lie in bringing people together in an increasingly digital world

From fields to floating pontoons, in horseboxes, barrels and beach huts, saunas are springing up across Britain. The British Sauna Society now lists about 640 saunas – up from 540 at the start of the year – while a recent report predicted that the UK could become the world’s largest sauna market by 2033, outpacing even Finland and Germany.

“The continuing growth suggests that the peak has still yet to come – if there is one,” said Gabrielle Reason, the society’s director. But are saunas a tonic for the nation’s health – or a wellness fad with hidden risks?

In his first newspaper interview after fathering a child outside his marriage, Grohl discusses his changed outlook, his grief for Taylor Hawkins, and the 430 therapy sessions he’s had

‘I’m just going to recline.” Weighing up the seating options in a luxury London hotel suite, Dave Grohl opts for the sofa. He lays his head and swings his legs round until his black leather boots are resting on the upholstery, and clasps his hands across his stomach. Punk-rock disregard for shoe etiquette aside, it’s the classic pose of the psychoanalysed. “I’ve been in therapy six days a week for 70 weeks,” he says. “I did the math the other day: over 430 sessions.”

Even by US standards, that is a lot – but if anyone needed to work out who they are and why they were doing what they were doing, it was Grohl. Nirvana ended traumatically after the death of Kurt Cobain in 1994, but their drummer Grohl quickly formed a new band, Foo Fighters, stepping up to frontman and turning them into the definitive stadium rockers of the new century with hits such as Everlong, Best of You and The Pretender. Grohl was often described as “the nicest man in rock”, a label his team tells me he dislikes, but he was certainly genial and seemed to be settling into middle age with hobbyist projects – documentary series, memoir, horror-comedy film – between a series of world tours and middle-ranking Foo Fighters albums. He had married second wife Jordyn Blum in 2003 and they’d had three daughters together. Bassist Nate Mendel tells me: “When we were first rehearsing in the mid-90s, Dave said: I just want this band to be low-drama, and for it to be fun.”

Grand Palais, Paris
An epic collection of the artist’s final 13 years of work explodes with the stunning colours and spiky cutouts that redefined art

Forget the joy and energy of youth – your best days might yet be ahead. Henri Matisse’s were, even when he barely made it out of surgery alive in his early 70s as war was breaking out across France. Sitting in his wheelchair, his hand wobblier and weaker than ever, his body scarcely able to muster the strength to stand and paint, he reinvented himself and reshaped modern art in the process.

The Grand Palais’s huge exploration of the last years of Matisse’s life – from his surgery in 1941 to his death in 1954 – is a dizzying, joyous celebration of colour, form, line, light and then a whole bunch more colour. It’s so good, so beautiful, so totally overwhelming. It was always bound to be – it’s Matisse, with all the resources of France’s vast collection of Matisse works. It’s a show full of hits.

Under the shadow of war in the Middle East, Muslim worshippers around the world unite to celebrate the breaking of the fast

Labour recognises how crucial education is at the start of life, but still the poorest children are missing out

The news is very good (mostly). The cost of full-time childcare in England for children under the age of two has dropped by a phenomenal 39% since last year, thanks to government funding. This stat, from the 25th annual survey of nurseries by the children’s charity Coram, provides a good opportunity to stop and consider how far the country has come in that quarter-century.

In 1995, there were nursery vouchers for a few, but only 4% of children under five in England were in nursery: the right argued young children were the responsibility of families, not the state, and that mothers should stay at home. Labour’s strong cohort of women arriving in the Commons in 1997, led by the veteran Harriet Harman with her childcare strategy, fought hard to finally add the missing cradle to the “cradle to grave” welfare state. In 2003, the Treasury introduced childcare tax credits, although more as a way to get women into work. Then, in 2004, the government extended free part-time nursery places to all three- and four-year-olds in England. That was a giant step – but every step of the way was a fight, and still is.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Guardian Newsroom: Can Labour come back from the brink?
On Thursday 30 April, join Gaby Hinsliff, Zoe Williams, Polly Toynbee and Rafael Behr as they discuss how much of a threat Labour faces from the Green party and Reform UK – and whether Keir Starmer can survive as leader.

Cheerleader-in-chief demands more enthusiasm for US-Israeli assault that is helping Russia pay for its war on Ukraine

When even your mother calls you out as a cheat and a liar, then it’s probably fair to assume you’re a wrong ‘un. Not that this stopped Donald Trump from appointing Pete Hegseth as his defence secretary. Or as Trump prefers, his war secretary. After all, there’s no point in having all this shiny military hardware if you’re not going to use it. For most of the past two weeks, Hegseth has been the president’s cheerleader-in-chief for the war on Iran, and at the weekend he decided to have a pop at the media for not being enthusiastic enough. It seems we’ve been concentrating on trivial matters like asking what the overall plan for the war is. We heard the president talk about regime change and then change his mind when it was clear that, though he had killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the regime was still in place. We heard the president say he wanted to neutralise Iranian nuclear facilities when he had already claimed to have done so last year. We heard Trump say that the war was already won though he fancied winning a little bit more, while the Iranians were insisting they were not beaten.

Though the president wields great power, the conflict in the Middle East is spiralling in unforeseen ways that he may not be able to control

What a pity Benjamin Netanyahu remains at large after an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes committed in Gaza was issued in 2024. Had he been detained, as he certainly should have been, the peoples of Iran, Lebanon, the Gulf – and Israel itself – might have been spared much present-day pain and suffering.

The Israeli prime minister’s lifelong, passionate obsession with eradicating the real and imagined threats posed by Iran was reportedly a key factor in prompting Donald Trump’s abrupt, unprovoked plunge into all-out war. Netanyahu should be in jail, not committing more crimes while the powerful but ego-driven US president negligently looks on.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

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This is not Britain’s war, it’s Trump’s and Netanyahu’s. The prime minister should be wary of becoming ensnared like Blair was with Iraq

Is this the turning point? A deranged US president and an Israeli prime minister facing prosecution are seeking to entice the armies of the world into the stupidest war of the 21st century. Israel’s strike this week on Iran’s South Pars gas field was clearly meant to provoke an Iranian retaliation so massive as to ensure a ferocious response from Donald Trump. Thus escalation beckons. This is how small wars become big.

There is only one way of calling a halt. It is for Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu to stop bombing Iran. Yet both leaders clearly see themselves as trapped. Trump, having already claimed to have won the war, now feels lonely. Though he has amassed the largest aggressive force of modern times, he pleads with his one-time allies to come and give him moral support. But Trump started this war. He must face the wound to his pride that may go with stopping it. He must then complete the harder task of getting Israel also to stop.

Refusing to take sides in wartime can be dangerous. The ‘choice’ for civilians trying to survive is often an illusion

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Living in London, my elder brother – someone I have always looked up to – makes good use of his relative proximity to our ancestral home in Afghanistan. He travels back and forth so often that, from my base in Melbourne, I sometimes joke he has visited our village more times in the past few years than I have visited any other Australian city.

His most recent trip, however, did not go as planned. Flight disruptions linked to escalating tensions in the Middle East left him stranded in Istanbul for several days. Eventually he gave up and flew back to London, missing both the anniversary of our mother’s death in Kabul and the Eid celebrations many of the family members had hoped to mark together at the end of Ramadan.

As missiles fall from the sky and energy infrastructure is targeted, the limitations of relying on the US for protection are becoming all too obvious

For more than two weeks, missiles and drones have been crossing the skies of the Gulf, as a war many in the region sought to avoid – between the USand Israel, and Iran – continues to escalate. Airlines are diverting flights, shipping routes are being disrupted and air defence systems across the region are operating at constant alert. Now, with attacks extending to energy infrastructure including gas facilities and production sites, it is likely that the war has entered into a dangerous phase of escalation.

Yet the governments now living with these risks were among those that most tried to prevent the conflict, encouraging negotiations in recent months and warning about the dangers of escalation.

Sanam Vakil is the director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House

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From Brexit to fiscal rules to living costs, diagnoses multiply. Steel policy points to a missing link – the need for a strategy to rebuild

The government has raised tariffs to protect the steel industry. It also nationalised the UK’s remaining blast furnaces last year to keep them running. Both moves point to the same conclusion: the current economic model is not working. A series of interventions from Labour’s Sir Sadiq Khan and Angela Rayner as well as the Green party leader, Zack Polanski, this week suggests that an economic debate on the centre-left and left of politics is under way. The disagreement is no longer about whether there is a problem. It is where the problem lies.

Sir Sadiq, the London mayor, is right that Brexit has raised costs for businesses and households. Closer EU alignment would improve trade, investment and market access. That matters. But rejoining the EU won’t on its own rebuild the UK’s domestic capability. Ms Rayner points to a real institutional problem. If the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) understates the benefits of public investment, the state may be constraining itself unnecessarily. That matters too. However, changing the OBR model is not a strategy.

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.

The US president wanted an easy win, but the conflict is spiralling following Israel’s attack on a gas field and Iranian retaliation across the region

Shortly after the US and Israel began their illegal assault on Iran, with the US president still preening himself over the kidnapping of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro the previous month, a state department official joked that Donald Trump had a new foreign policy credo: “Decapitate and delegate”. It was a reversal of Colin Powell’s invocation of the “Pottery Barn rule” ahead of the invasion of Iraq: you break it, you own it.

Gen Powell, then secretary of state, was warning that wars can escalate beyond expectation and are harder to exit than enter. It remains unclear what precisely the Trump administration expected from this conflict – perhaps not least to the White House itself – but it is certain that the president was not paying heed when people described the likely consequences.

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.

Responding to an article that asked whether the flagship Radio 4 news programme has lost its way, Francis Bown writes that it was ever thus

Since I went up to Cambridge in 1968, BBC’s Today programme has been the invariable way the wireless has kickstarted my brain for the coming day (Has Today had its day? BBC’s flagship Radio 4 show grapples with podcast age, 13 March).

Complaints about content, structure and presenters have always accompanied its broadcasts, being simply signs of the programme’s importance – just as was the telephone call to the studio from Margaret Thatcher, when the prime minister wanted to make a point live on air. Yet even its old fans must admit that Today has recently lost its way in two important respects. (Assessing the personalities I will leave to others: I am still mourning the departure of Jack de Manio.)

Dr Simon Williams says the UK is trying to build a quantum ecosystem while hollowing out the academic pipeline that produces the talent

Liz Kendall is right to warn that the UK must not let quantum computing talent slip through its fingers (UK must learn lessons from AI race and retain its quantum computing talent, says minister, 17 March).

However, UK Research and Innovation’s current funding decisions risk doing exactly that.

Readers offer suggestions on how to make the upper chamber more relevant, in response to an article by Polly Toynbee

A reformed Lords could give us the best of all worlds: a chamber that connects and legitimises the disparate parts of our higgledy-piggledy devolved constitution without challenging the primacy of the directly elected Commons (So long, hereditary peers – but the Lords is still full of absurd anachronisms, 13 March).

Three-quarters of its members could be indirectly elected by local councillors, with temporary seats reserved for the heads of the national governments and regional mayors. Party leaders not yet in the Commons – such as Zack Polanski – could also sit there. The remaining seats could be time‑limited appointments for experts such as retired civil servants and former ministers, perhaps with different voting rights. An independent commission could oversee appointments, vet eligibility and weed out dodgy donors.

Political repetition | Lakes v loughs | Weighty fruit | First fibs

One thing missing from most of the commentaries following the death of Jürgen Habermas (Editorial, 18 March) was his use of the expression “history as a learning process”. That he took the idea seriously was understandable, given that he was born in Germany in 1929, but the sad truth is that politicians keep making the same old mistakes even when the consequences of their actions are staring them in the face.
Dr Charles Turner
University of Warwick

• “Testing of water from Lough Neagh, which has a surface area 26 times bigger than Windermere” (Report, 14 March). I am in Ohio and I don’t know the size of Windermere. I reckon it is about 26 times smaller than Lough Neagh.
Mary Jo Hanlon
North Royalton, Ohio, US

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⚽ Football updates as England squad announced
⚽ Things to look out for this weekend | Mail Xaymaca

So, who has been left out of the squad? The big omission is Trent Alexander-Arnold. The defender has started seven of Real Madrid’s last nine games after being out of favour earlier in the season. Reece James is also unavailable as he picked up a hamstring injury against Newcastle. It seems strange to leave him out of a 35-man squad.

Goalkeepers: Dean Henderson, Jordan Pickford, James Trafford, Aaron Ramsdale, Jason Steele

Steve Borthwick will be reprieved by the RFU’s review but there are other factors at play from the makeup of his backroom team to the conveyor belt of talent

The Rugby Football Union’s review into England’s least successful championship for 50 years is already up and running with an alacrity that would impress Louis Bielle-Biarrey. And one detail seems clear: barring something spectacular, Steve Borthwick will still be coaching the team this summer. As one well-placed insider put it: “This review is about supporting Steve to make improvements. If change is needed, change is needed but it’s not about punishing him. He’s absolutely going to be in post this summer, there’s no question about that.”

• Briton wins heat despite blister from borrowed spikes

• ‘I won’t be happy with anything other than gold’

No opponent has come close to knocking Keely Hodgkinson off her stride in 2026. But after breezing into the semi-finals of the world indoor championships, she revealed that her preparations had been interrupted by an airline, KLM, losing her kit for 48 hours on the flight to Poland.

It led to the overwhelming favourite for 800m gold having to train in whatever she could beg or borrow – and getting a blister as a result. Not that it seemed to bother her as she cruised into Saturday’s semi-finals with a dominant victory in 2min 0.32sec.

• O’Sullivan snookered Ryan Day at start of first frame

• Seven-time world champion won 5-0 to reach semi-finals

Ronnie O’Sullivan has made the highest break in professional snooker by hitting a 153 at the World Open in Yushan, China.

The 50-year-old achieved the feat after leaving Ryan Day in a snooker to begin the opening frame of their quarter-final and the Welshman’s failed escape attempt gave O’Sullivan a free ball.

• Calandagan to race in Sheema Classic next weekend

• Aga Khan Studs consulted staff in Dubai about decision

Calandagan, the world’s top-rated Flat horse in 2025, will fly to Dubai from Paris on Saturday to run in the Sheema Classic at Meydan next weekend, despite the continuing conflict in the Gulf region.

The gelding’s owner, Aga Khan Studs, consulted staff already in Dubai before deciding to give the green light to Francis-Henri Graffard’s five-year-old, the winner of four Group One events last season including the Japan Cup in November.

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• Teenager files application to prevent fake products

• Littler defies boos to fight back and defeat Gerwyn Price

Luke Littler has made an application with the Intellectual Property Office to trademark his face. It is understood the application will prevent fake products powered by AI using his picture without permission and breaking copyright laws.

The teenager, who has won back-to-back World Darts Championship titles, is highly marketable and his face appears on a wide variety of branded products, from his own dart board to video games and bags of nuts. Littler has already trademarked his “the Nuke” nickname in the US.

• Wigan 23-22 York

• Wigan recover from 14-0 down to stay unbeaten

These were the nights that critics of Super League’s decision to expand to 14 teams feared but as the new season settles into a rhythm, they are fast becoming some of the most enjoyable.

Yes, the result was what almost everyone – even the most optimistic York Knights supporter – would have predicted at kick-off. But goodness, what a rollercoaster ride this was as Super League’s newest team pushed arguably its biggest and most recognisable heavyweight every step of the way on a thrilling evening in Wigan.

Experts continue to analyse strain of MenB to understand whether it has become more likely to spread or cause disease

The Kent meningitis outbreak may have reached its peak after only two new cases were reported by officials on Friday.

The UK Health and Security Agency said that as of 12.30pm on Thursday, there were 18 confirmed and 11 probable cases of meningitis linked to the Kent outbreak, taking the total number of people with the disease to 29. Of the confirmed cases, 13 were meningitis B.

Move follows the granting of a worldwide asset-freezing order on company’s founder, Paresh Raja

• What is the £1.3bn MFS mortgage scandal and what is private credit?

The UK’s financial regulator has launched an investigation into Market Financial Solutions (MFS), the mortgage lender that collapsed last month amid allegations of fraud.

The move follows the granting of a £1.3bn worldwide asset-freezing order on MFS founder Paresh Raja on Wednesday, as creditors successfully gained court orders in London and Dubai barring the tycoon from dissipating assets.

Kim Leadbeater says people are ‘extremely angry’ at delaying tactics of peers as time runs out to pass bill

The House of Lords “signed its own death warrant” over its stalling of the UK assisted dying bill, the MP Kim Leadbeater said as she joined more than a dozen terminally ill and bereaved people in protest outside parliament.

Marking the second anniversary of the death at Dignitas of the prominent assisted dying campaigner Paola Marra, Leadbeater, whose private member’s bill for England and Wales looks set to run out of time, said many MPs, who had already voted by a majority to pass the bill, were “angry and upset” by the addition of about 1,200 amendments in the Lords, which will probably result in the bill falling without a vote.

Kyiv sources say they think injection contained relaxant meant to make people more talkative in interrogations

Hungarian security operatives administered a “forced injection” to one of the Ukrainians detained earlier this month during a dramatic raid on bank vehicles carrying gold bars and tens of millions of dollars and euros in cash, sources have told the Guardian.

Hungary’s TEK anti-terrorism police detained seven Ukrainians from the state savings bank, Oschadbank, on 5 March. They were accompanying a convoy of two armoured cars from Vienna to Ukraine, as it transited Hungary in what Kyiv claims was a regular transfer of state funds. Hungarian officials have claimed it was money for the “Ukrainian war mafia”, without giving details.

Consultancy forecasts typical £1,972 annual dual-fuel bill as conflict pushes UK’s gas market past three-year highs

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Household energy bills in Great Britain could increase by more than £330 a year to almost £2,000 from this summer after the Iran war pushed the UK’s gas market past three-year highs.

A typical combined household gas and electricity bill is now forecast to reach £1,972 a year from July under the UK government’s quarterly price cap, according to analysis by the energy consultancy Cornwall Insight,.

Exclusive: Lack of enforcement is allowing people to drop rubbish with complete impunity, says Clean Up Britain

Scores of councils across the UK have in effect ended enforcement of fines for littering, while others are letting litterers off lightly and many more are neglecting to enforce fines for fly-tipping.

At least 71 councils failed to issue a single fine for littering last year, while a further 67 issued fewer than 10, according to data from the Clean Up Britain campaign.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

A US startup supplies spray for fast-growing loblolly pines with the hope of increasing biodiversity – and reducing the need for artificial fertiliser

At a commercial tree nursery near Evans, western Louisiana, 5m pine seedlings are packed on to 12 vast circular irrigation tables, each as wide as a football field. Last September, many of these young trees were sprayed with what looked like muddy water.

The substance was in fact a liquid extract teeming with hundreds of species of wild soil fungi. Brad Ouseman, the nursery manager, is confident he will see results from this fungal inoculation, which is intended to improve yields and reduce the need for artificial fertilisers.

In the middle of the city, traditional growers blend crops with native species to preserve Pedra Branca state park’s biodiversity

The sound of the scythes wielded by brothers Jorge and Ubirajara Cardia breaks the silence in the hills of Vargem Grande, in the south-west zone of Rio de Janeiro city. Quilombola from the Cafundá Astrogilda community, they harvest bananas the same way their ancestors used to. Every week, they select the bunches of prata, maçã, and Cavendish bananas, cut them down and, on the back of their mules, go down the hillside with the newly harvested crop.

Through sloping ways in the forest, they travel about 5km (3 miles) along paths first opened by the Indigenous Tupinambá people and enslaved workers of African descent.

Peter Coates’s family welcome end to years pursuing answers after he died when breathing apparatus stopped

A family has welcomed a coroner’s conclusion that ambulance delays possibly contributed to a man’s death in 2019 after enduring “years of distress trying to pursue answers”.

The family of Peter Coates said they had been met with “delays and resistance” from a regional ambulance service as they tried to discover the full circumstances of his final minutes.

Fire service warns ubiquity of batteries in everyday products is outpacing public understanding and safety regulations

Lithium-ion batteries represent a new technological hazard that one fire science expert has said keeps him awake at night, as fire service chiefs warn the ubiquity of the batteries in everyday products is outpacing public understanding and safety regulations.

The blaze that devastated a historic building in Glasgow and resulted in the closure of Central Station, Scotland’s largest rail interchange, is believed to have started in a shop selling vapes, which are powered by lithium-ion batteries. Glasgow’s Central Station has since reopened.

Exclusive: Testing in Bentham, home to UK’s highest recorded Pfas levels, finds one in four have blood levels in greatest risk category

Alarming levels of toxic forever chemicals have been found in the blood of people living in a town previously revealed to be contaminated with the UK’s highest recorded level of Pfas.

Pfas, short for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances and commonly known as forever chemicals because of their persistence in the environment, have been linked to a wide range of serious illnesses, including some cancers. They are used in a variety of consumer products but one of their most prolific uses is in firefighting foam.

Animal Aid says reclassification of research facilities as key infrastructure could catch even most peaceful action

A charity has filed a legal challenge over a “chilling” change in the law that restricts protest outside animal testing facilities in England and Wales by reclassifying them as “key national infrastructure”.

Animal Aid says last month’s amendment to the Public Order Act could capture even the most peaceful, non‑disruptive advocacy. It claims the change is unlawful because it goes beyond parliament’s intention at the time the act was passed.

Peter Vandermeersch says he ‘fell into trap of hallucinations’ after being investigated by NRC title where he had once been editor-in-chief

The publisher of Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf and the Irish Independent has suspended one of its senior journalists after he admitted using AI to “wrongly put words into people’s mouths”.

Peter Vandermeersch, former head of the Irish operations at Mediahuis, said he “fell into the trap of hallucinations” – the term for AI-generated errors – when using the technology.

Interim president announces changes after firing defence minister, who was close to Maduro, the leader ousted by US

Venezuela’s interim president has said she has replaced all her senior military commanders, the latest in a flurry of changes since the US ousted Nicolás Maduro.

Delcy Rodríguez announced the changes in a social media post a day after firing the long-serving defence minister, who had been close to Maduro, and replacing him with a former intelligence chief.

Senior public servant wrote ‘police will be dispersing them if numbers exceed capacity’ while premier says protesters confronted after attempting to march

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Police planned to disperse the crowd at a Sydney protest against the visiting Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, if it exceeded 6,000 people, according to correspondence between senior New South Wales public servants.

The messages released under freedom of information (FoI) laws contain information not referenced in public comments by the NSW premier, Chris Minns, and the police commissioner, Mal Lanyon.

The right to protest is ‘fundamentally American’, says Bajun Mavalwalla who awaits trial and faces six years in prison

This story was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center

A US military veteran arrested on federal conspiracy charges after participating in a June 2025 protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told the Guardian he refuses to plead guilty and is ready to face justice.

Artificial intelligence agent instructed engineer to take actions that exposed user and company data internally

An AI agent instructed an engineer to take actions that exposed a large amount of Meta’s sensitive data to some of its employees, in the latest example of AI causing upheaval in a large tech company.

The leak, which Meta confirmed, happened when an employee asked for guidance on an engineering problem on an internal forum. An AI agent responded with a solution, which the employee implemented – causing a large amount of sensitive user and company data to be exposed to its engineers for two hours.

Britons are likely to have little loyalty to the car park operator as it goes into administration with a £305m debt burden

Nearly a century old and once host to London fashion week, the NCP car park in Brewer Street in London’s Soho is facing an uncertain future. Its former glories – which at one time included separate rooms for chauffeurs and changing rooms for theatregoers – have long given way to complaints about a lack of security and high parking charges, but this week things got worse.

National Car Parks, one of the UK’s biggest car park operators, which dates back to 1931, filed for administration at the high court in London after struggling to pay its rents and buckling under a £305m mountain of debt. This means the future of 340 car parks across the UK, in town and city centres, at hospitals and airports, is uncertain along with the fate of 682 people who work for the Japanese-owned business.

Deficit rises unexpectedly to £14.3bn in February as stock markets slide amid fears that Iran war will escalate

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UK government borrowing costs reached their highest level since 2008 on Friday, while financial markets now expect as many as three interest rate rises this year as investors digest the impact of the Iran conflict.

The yield, or interest rate, on 10-year borrowing was pushed to heights not witnessed since the global financial crisis, as investors dumped UK government bonds.

Company says tool to compare self-reported hours with computer estimates is for ‘awareness, not enforcement’

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JP Morgan Chase has started to compare the hours junior investment bankers claim to have worked against logs on its IT system.

The US bank said it would begin issuing reports to junior bankers that compare computer-generated estimates of their work weeks against their self-reported time sheets as part of a pilot scheme.

From electroclash pioneers to dancefloor-fillers via viral TikTok fame thanks to their hit Seventeen, the Liverpool band are back with a new album and another metamorphosis

It was October 2001 in New York City, and Mira Aroyo and bandmate Reuben Wu were invited to DJ a new party. The gritty, 200 capacity Luxx on Brooklyn’s Grand Street specialised in forgotten queer electro sounds from the 1980s. The party’s name? Electroclash.

“It was us, Peaches, people from Berlin,” remembers Aroyo. Larry Tee, the Atlanta DJ and RuPaul collaborator, had booked them for their love of overlooked gems by Gina X or Bobby O. “It was hedonistic, nonbinary, flamboyant.”

The actor has played many classic roles and his love of film is clear in his garden, from the Saltburn proscenium arch to the pergola where Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd have partied the night away

Step into Richard E Grant’s garden in Richmond, London, and you’ll be met with a rather unconventional sight. Instead of the daffodils and tulips you’d usually find in an English garden at this time of year, Grant’s space is full of props and decorations from the films he’s starred in – from Saltburn to Carrie Cracknell’s 2022 adaptation of Persuasion.

After any job, he says, “I go to the production department and try and buy or bribe my way” to get pieces to put in his garden. The space has, until now, been a private spot for Grant to entertain his actor friends. But now he has shared it with the world as part of the Royal Horticultural Society’s new podcast, Roots. I took a look around it – here are some of the weird and wonderful things that can be found there.

Late-night hosts panned Trump’s joke about the 1941 attack, addressed new unredacted Epstein emails and talked popular puppy names

With The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on hiatus until at least 27 March, late-night hosts on Thursday discussed Donald Trump’s snafu while meeting Japan’s prime minister, his caginess over Iran, and new findings in the Epstein investigations.

A dumpster-diving TikToker struck gold the morning after the Academy Awards. But why are they binning carpets after one brief use? And where can we find the uneaten chocolate Oscars?

The Oscars are over, and the world has moved on. No longer are we debating the merits of any particular film, or the validity of any given win. Now there are only two sets of people who care about the Oscars; the agents of the winners, who are all busy renegotiating their clients’ contracts, and amateur Los Angeles-based carpet fitter Paige Thalia.

Thalia found a small amount of viral fame this week, after she discovered the Oscars red carpet languishing in a skip the morning after the ceremony, and decided to kit out her home with it.

A corporate getaway is the new setting for this hoax reality show in which all but one person is an actor. Luckily, that person has a real ‘captain fun’ attitude – even when faced with icky situations

In 2023, Freevee (owned by Amazon) aired Jury Duty, a hoax reality show starring an unsuspecting member of the American public who was unaware that everyone else deciding the outcome of a trial in an LA courthouse alongside him was in fact an actor. It was frequently ridiculous – not least when X-Men actor James Marsden was parachuted in as a member of the jury. It did, however, have a lot of heart, and a lovable mark in the form of Ronald Gladden, a sweet man who blindly followed the “hero’s journey” he was unaware was being meticulously plotted by producers, and who took the eventual reveal very well. Some questioned the ethics of this Truman Show-esque premise, although Gladden seemed fairly undamaged by his accidental fame. Certainly, you imagine that his prize – $100,000 and a two-year deal with Amazon – would have helped to soften any initial feelings of “WTF”.

And so to season two, which retains the Jury Duty brand name but takes place at an annual retreat for Rockin’ Grandma’s hot sauce, a company that – spoiler alert – doesn’t exist. Taking the starring role this time is twentysomething Anthony Norman, an office temp who quickly becomes the company’s most beloved employee. It is, we learn, the final Rockin’ Grandma’s retreat for CEO Doug Womack, who is set to retire and hand over the company to his son, the lackadaisical, cod-Jamaican-accented Dougie, a former ska band member who is somewhere between Chet Hanks and the Dude from The Big Lebowski. Like Gladden before him, Norman is kind and obliging to a fault, and a big fan of organised fun – the perfect candidate to take over the running of the retreat when HR boss Kevin taps out after a humiliating social faux pas. One minute Norman’s the new guy – the next he’s running around in a yachting cap, declaring himself the new “captain fun”. For somebody who thought he was merely taking on a short-term job – and being filmed for a documentary about the corporate world – his seemingly unending reserves of enthusiasm and commitment to the dysfunctional world of Rockin’ Grandma’s are commendable.

The Oscar-winning star of Bullets Over Broadway and Hannah and Her Sisters has three major movies coming up. To mark her 78th birthday, we cast an eye over an (almost) immaculate back catalogue

Every great performer should have at least one baffling movie on their CV, and this curio, produced by Ismail Merchant, is Dianne Wiest’s. The plot is bananas: she plays an opera singer leading her gay teenage son to believe that his father (Simon Callow) is dead, by taking the boy to visit a fake grave each year. Guess what? He’s alive! Not for long, though: he’s soon murdered by his own gay pickup, with his son witnessing it all from inside a wardrobe. Wiest flails around Paris in a turban and a tizzy, while Jane Birkin is a fake therapist under the illusion that she is Vanessa Redgrave. The real Redgrave pops up briefly, as does Jerry Hall, because why not?

(Big Hit Music)
Ending a hiatus that began in 2022, the septet recapture a distinctiveness that had been threatening to ebb away

The general consensus seems to be that as BTS’s commercial stock has gone stratospheric – more than 500m units sold worldwide, including over 104bn streams, making them the bestselling Asian act of all time – the actual music has become more and more irrelevant. Before taking their hiatus in 2022 to fulfil their mandatory military service in South Korea, their saccharine, English-language bops such as Dynamite and Butter – while gargantuan global hits – had smothered the K-pop-specific idiosyncrasies that peppered their earlier material. By 2020’s double whammy of Map of the Soul: 7 and Be, the band’s early years as a hip-hop-focused collective were a distant memory, and thanks to a more westernised sound and studio cast list, so was their identity as a Korean act.

On the eagerly anticipated Arirang – pointedly named after a Korean folk song dating back to 1896, and presented with the tagline “born in Korea, playing for the world” – the septet do their best to right those wrongs. Crucially, it manages to capture the K-pop spirit of experimentation while welding it to a litany of memorable hooks. And when western collaborators are brought in, they’re interestingly off-kilter, including outsider rapper-producer Jpegmafia, and producer El Guincho, known for his work with Björk and Rosalía.

The radical work of the musician and composer was dismissed by sexist critics and overshadowed by the legacy of her late husband John. But today, musical stars from Doja Cat to David Byrne all champion her experimental sound

It is 19 years since Alice Coltrane’s death and more than half a century since her best known albums, yet only now is her first biography, Andy Beta’s Cosmic Music, being published. The first major exhibition dedicated to her took place last year in LA, too, and she’s championed by musicians from mainstream to left field, to the point there’s now even an abundance of cosmic jazz harpists on festival lineups. “For so long it seemed like her contributions were overlooked,” says her grandnephew Steven Ellison, AKA the psychedelic electronic and hip-hop musician Flying Lotus, who’s worked with the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Thom Yorke and Herbie Hancock alongside his own acclaimed solo material. “As I was growing up, it seemed like everyone just wanted to ask her about John Coltrane.”

Of course John Coltrane was a musical titan. But, as Cosmic Music spells out, Alice was integral to the radicalism of her husband’s late, gamechanging period from the masterpiece A Love Supreme onwards. Not only did they create a sense of stability from 1963 in raising a family and marrying, post his quitting heroin, but they were partners in spiritual and musical exploration. She was a formidable musician before she met him, too. As pianist Alice McLeod, she was “known as a badass on the scene”, says Carlos Niño, longtime California “beat scene” colleague of Flying Lotus and, lately, producer of André 3000’s avowedly Alice-inspired New Blue Sun album; her skills honed in Detroit’s gospel churches and playing Stravinsky and Rachmaninov for pleasure by her mid-teens.

Following in the footsteps of Heavenly and Tiger Trap the duo’s high-tempo electroclash-indie-pop deftly explores young womanhood in 2020s London

From London
Recommended if you like Heavenly, CSS, the Teenagers
Up next I Have to Get Hotter out now

The Femcels’ music is euphoric and depressive, sometimes ironic but mostly sincere, often high-tempo, and all delivered with wired, unvarnished vocals. In that sense, it is 80s and 90s twee reincarnate; move past their band’s shitposty name and you’ll find that Rowan Miles and Gabriella Turton have a lot to offer when it comes to exploring the chills and thrills of young womanhood in 2020s London.

(True Panther/Capitol)
The New Yorker’s third album leaves behind her DIY origins to channel cult pop classics by Lorde and Sky Ferreira

New Yorker Grace Ives broke out as a bedroom pop artist, self-producing 2nd, her 2019 debut, on her Roland MC-505 and carefully expanding her sound for 2022’s appealingly messy Janky Star. Her third album abandons caution in windswept, hyperdetailed songs that streak by like big city streetlights and shimmer with cosmic awe.

Ives escaped her bedroom in more than one sense. Janky Star reflected her development of a healthier relationship to substances, yet she hit new lows after its release, making sobriety non-negotiable. She went to write in California, finding safety in a fresh context rather than trying to change alone at home. Her determination and vulnerability fuel Girlfriend, which shares the conspiratorial sweetness and broken-mirror glitter of cult pop classics by Lorde (Melodrama) and Sky Ferreira (Night Time, My Time).

This careful analysis of so-called ‘great replacement theory’ offers a lens through which to view our broken politics

Informationsüberflutung? Weltschmerz? I’ve been searching and I don’t think even the Germans have a word that fully captures just how overwhelming the news cycle is right now. The zone has been well and truly flooded; just as you start trying to process one shocking event, something new hits the headlines.

Chain of Ideas, a new book by professor Ibram X Kendi, doesn’t provide a one-world encapsulation of our modern woes. But, in a meticulously researched 500 pages, it lays out an essential framework for parsing current events.

Whidbey by T Kira Madden; Based on a True Story by Sarah Vaughan; Killing Me Softly by Christie Watson; The Dangerous Stranger by Simon Mason; Astronaut! by Oana Aristide

Killing Me Softly by Christie Watson (Phoenix, £20)
In her second psychological thriller, Watson, a former nurse, perfectly captures the frenetic atmosphere and mordant humour of an under-resourced A&E department in a city hospital. The plot revolves around three strongly drawn characters: senior nurse Aoife, whose extramarital trysts with clinical lead Michael help keep her sane, and whose new intake includes the naive, sanctimonious Eden and the more experienced but alarmingly cynical Sophie. After their arrival, the death rate spikes: long wait times may play a part, but Eden makes mistakes and Sophie has an attitude problem … The conclusion is surprising yet authentic in a story that is ultimately less about individual culpability than the policy failures of successive governments.

Whidbey by T Kira Madden (Tinder, £20)
Native Hawaiian writer Madden’s powerful debut novel explores both the aftermath of child sexual abuse and the commodification of trauma. It’s summer 2013, and former reality TV star Linzie King is publicising her ghostwritten memoir of abuse at the hands of Calvin Boyer, the adult son of the school bus driver. It contains information about Boyer’s other victims, among them Birdie Chang who, unhappy with the appropriation of her story and trying to escape media scrutiny, has fled Brooklyn for Whidbey Island in Washington’s Puget Sound. Linzie is grappling with the narrative produced by the ghostwriter – the truth is considerably more complicated – and Boyer’s mother, who has always defended him, blaming his “sickness”, is struggling to process her feelings after he is deliberately run over and killed. A satisfying mystery, although whodunnit takes second place to Madden’s unflinching, unsettling examination of how girls are conditioned into compliance, and the discrepancy between lived experience and society’s preferred “victim narrative”.

The debut author on the brilliance of Charlotte Brontë, coming late to Harper Lee, and aspiring to write like Claire Keegan

My earliest reading memory
The summer I was four, my mum read EB White’s Charlotte’s Web to me and my older sister. I don’t recall much of the story, only that my mum was unable to go on reading through her tears. And when a relative took over, after just a few pages, she too had to pass the book on, this time to my father to try and finish dry-eyed. That afternoon, at a subconscious, cellular level, I absorbed something about the emotional impact a well-told story can have on both children and adults, and how it can gather everyone to the same imagined space.

My favourite book growing up
I loved Shirley Hughes’s books, for the pictures as much as the words. Her illustrations of unmade beds and busy kitchen tables invite you right into the heart of family life and were a reassuringly cosy backdrop to whatever drama might unfold. Moving Molly was a favourite, and stoked a lifelong nostalgia for the details that make a place home.

It’s recently been accused of turning ‘woke’ – but the institution has been gay since the beginning, argues this deeply researched book

When it emerged that the National Trust had put vegan scones on the menu, it was seized on by some newspapers as a marmalade dropper – or strawberry jam dropper, perhaps – proof that the institution was woke. Wait until they hear about all the queer men and women who helped to make the Trust what it is today. The charity’s 5.4 million members and others visit its grand piles for a nice day out and a tea towel, unaware that they are surrounded by the ghosts of these figures. They are brought to life by Michael Hall, a former architecture editorof Country Life and author of books on Waddesdon Manor and the gothic revival in Britain.

Some of them, such as the buttoned-up Henry James, who lived at Lamb House, Rye, merely lent their lustre to properties that were later taken over by the trust. Others introduced features to the estates that continue to delight trippers to this day. They include Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, partners in a lavender marriage, who created the gardens at Sissinghurst, appropriately enough.

From owing a debt to obscure Japanese horror Sweet Home to the influence of Aliens and Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the franchise continues to petrify players three decades on

To many of us playing and writing about video games in the 1990s, Resident Evil seemed to come out of nowhere. The emerging PlayStation and Saturn consoles were all about slick, bright arcade conversions – the shiny thrills of Daytona and Tekken – and Japanese publisher Capcom was in a rut of coin-op conversions and endless sequels to Street Fighter and Mega Man. Scary games were rare at the time and mostly confined to the PC. So when the news of a horror title named Biohazard (the Japanese name for the series) started to emerge in 1995, it caught the attention of games journalists as it seemed radically out of step with prevailing trends. Games were about power, but as early demos quickly revealed, Resident Evil was about vulnerability.

Thirty years later, it’s still here. The series has sold more than 180m copies worldwide, with 11 core titles and dozens of spinoffs and remakes, as well as film, television and anime tie-ins. Its characters and monsters are icons, its tropes now embedded in game design practice. What has allowed it to not only survive but flourish in such a rapidly changing industry? Why do we still let it scare us?

The fates of two ostensibly similar online games released this year, Marathon and Highguard, prove that success is becoming close to unattainable

What does success look like for developers of online video games? In 2026, the answer could not be clearer: no one has a clue.

Consider Highguard, 2026’s first big flop. Signs were promising on its launch on 26 January, with a peak of 100,000 concurrent players on Steam – plus those enjoying the game on PlayStation and Xbox, which do not make player counts public. As a free-to-play game, the barrier to entry for Highguard was low. And thanks to a prime advertising placement at the end of December’s The Game Awards – a buzzy spot usually reserved for known hitmakers, not free-to-play upstarts – curiosity was high.

In this week’s newsletter: the creators of All Will Rise on standing up to the tech giant – and joining the No Games for Genocide movement

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Video games are in a funding crisis. Investor money flowed freely during the pandemic gaming boom, but now the well has run dry. It is increasingly difficult, for indie developers especially, to get the capital to make games. It is extremely unusual, then, to hear of a developer returning an investor’s money. Yet that is what Speculative Agency, developers of All Will Rise, have just done.

Last year, All Will Rise, a deck-building game about a team of activists fighting for the future of their oligarch-run city, received money from Microsoft as part of a developer acceleration programme. In late-2025, however, the team became aware of No Games for Genocide, a collective of developers, journalists, union organisers and others that came together as a result of Israeli assault on Gaza to protest against “material and commercial ties between the games industry and enabling genocide, war crimes, and the military industrial complex”.

Team Artichoke; PC/Mac
Ancient Greek gods, adorable raccoons and hypnotic puzzling from Olympus to the mortal realm and back

There’s been a trend for a while where familiar puzzle game genres are imbued with novel stories to give them depth and meaning beyond simply clearing a screen for points. Occult object sorter Strange Horticulture and historical romance card game Regency Solitaire are lovely examples, and now here’s Mythmatch, a match-three game in the style of Candy Crush or Bejeweled that’s also a warming tale of friendship and community set in a small town in ancient Greece. Interspersed with cerebral challenges are dialogue scenes with villagers and with gods which accentuate each other and give little clues that are picked up later, making this both puzzle game and communal oral drama.

You play as Artemis, the immortal daughter of Zeus, who is tired of getting overlooked for plum jobs in favour of her oafish brother Apollo (brilliantly portrayed as an insufferable proto-tech bro). When the role of God of the Hunt comes up, she applies, but finds she must first earn favour with a council of her elders on Mount Olympus, and they all have puzzle-based jobs for her. Hephaestus wants her to help make arrows and hammers in his foundry, while Apollo needs her to protect his collection of chimp soft toys (a not-so-subtle dig at NFTs). These mini-tasks take the form of match-three puzzles, though cleverly they also bring in elements of other puzzle games such as Plants vs Zombies and Overcooked.

Leeds Playhouse
Featuring stellar performances across the cast, Matthew Xia’s production breathes new life into Andrea Levy’s sprawling family saga

A novel from more than two decades ago, telling a story that begins over a century ago: what can an adaptation of Andrea Levy’s Small Island tell us in 2026? Plenty, it transpires, as Helen Edmundson’s adaptation is brought to the stage with gravitas and speaks to our current era with startling clarity.

Rufus Norris was in the chair for the original National Theatre production of the play in 2019. With its regional premiere, director Matthew Xia has breathed life into the piece by simply allowing it to exist in its period – he has not tinkered with either the sense of time or place. The costumes and the apparently simple set first place us between the two world wars that devastated Britain, then take us up to 1948, when the HMT Empire Windrush docked near London, before charting the freezing cold “welcome” those arriving from the Caribbean received from this small island.

York Theatre Royal
John Doyle’s atmospheric production shrouds Frances Hodgson Burnett’s story in the ghosts and secrets of the grownups at Misselthwaite Manor

In this version of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic children’s book, the eponymous garden is nowhere to be seen. York Theatre Royal’s revival of the Marsha Norman and Lucy Simon musical opens with the stage shrouded in dust sheets, setting the tone for what’s to follow. This is a gloomy, interior space, filled with ghosts and secrets, into which young newcomer Mary Lennox finally starts to shed some light.

Norman’s adaptation shifts emphasis away from Mary and her young companions and on to the adults in the story: Mary’s tortured uncle and guardian Archibald Craven, his conflicted brother Neville, and the ever-present spirit of his beloved dead wife Lily, whose walled garden Mary discovers and brings back to life. It makes for a darker, more haunting telling of the story, atmospherically accompanied by Catherine Jayes’ orchestrations of Simon’s score. Director John Doyle’s actor-musician production adds to the sense of phantoms watching from the walls of Misselthwaite Manor, with the multitalented players constantly present on the edges of scenes.

Konrad Mägi is given his time to shine, Fiona Banner hits a word-picture high and Carrington takes over the home of Sigmund Freud – all in your weekly dispatch

Konrad Mägi
You mean you haven’t heard of “Estonia’s greatest modernist painter”? Who knows, this exhibition may put his name in lights.
• Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, from 24 March to 12 July

Playhouse, Sheffield
Characters are shaped by the shifting sands of modern history, from the moon landing to the pandemic, in Leo Butler’s new drama

There is a bit they like to do in pantomimes when an audience member appears to have arrived late. To get them up to speed, there is a high-velocity replay of the opening 10 minutes. Leo Butler’s family saga creates something of the same effect – except instead of bringing us up to date on a couple of scenes, it races, boldly and exhaustively, through the last six decades.

We get 1969 and Neil Armstrong; 1971 and decimalisation; 1974 and the Wombles; 1979 and Margaret Thatcher; 1984 and Orgreave – right up to 2020 and Covid, followed by the Barbie movie and Ukraine.

An intriguing chat about warped DNA in the record-breaking trailer for the new Spider-Man movie could mean a host of long-awaited arrivals in the MCU

There was a time when the mere mention of the term “mutant” in the Marvel Cinematic Universe was frowned upon. Rival studio 20th Century Fox owned the rights to the X-Men and with it the whole idea of a parallel branch of humanity, which meant superheroes were contractually obliged to have received their powers from somewhere else. Radioactive accidents, experimental serums, infinity stones, the bite of an unusually committed arachnid: Marvel tried them all, but left the mutation thing alone. Occasionally, comic book icons such as Scarlet Witch were retconned in the MCU to remove their X-gene origins, but for the most part, the very notion of mutation seemed to be placed under narrative quarantine – as if this were a door the studio had quietly agreed not to open.

This week saw the record-breaking release of the debut teaser trailer for Spider-Man: Brand New Day, and it was immediately clear that something had changed. We all know the X-Men are coming to the MCU: Deadpool and Wolverine have already had their own movies, while various mutants have turned up in post-credit scenes and brief multiversal detours. Now Spidey seems to be edging close to the same territory.

From directing The Lego Movie to becoming a single entity, Phil Lord and Chris Miller have had quite the ascent. Now, sending one of the globe’s best actors to his cosmic doom in Project Hail Mary, they’re aiming for the stars

When Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were starting out in Hollywood – long before they became a popcorn-flick industry unto themselves with The Lego Movie, the Jump Street films, the Spider-Verse franchise and their latest, Project Hail Mary – the duo found themselves summoned before a panel at the formidable Directors Guild of America (DGA). Lord and Miller wanted to be credited, as they would be for the rest of their career, as co-directors, and that was something the DGA – which, as Miller puts it, prefers “one set of hands on the steering wheel” – was uneasy about. In order to get approval, the pair would have to plead their case to some very famous peers.

“It was like a Senate hearing,” says Miller, his eyes widening at the memory. “Steven Spielberg and Jon Favreau and all these people asking questions like: ‘All right, but what happens if one of you gets sick? What are you gonna do?’ It was … interesting.”

Archivist Jo Klett says the 40 boxes of material will provide ‘a full picture of Roger’s entire working career’

“It’s a joy to be old,” wrote Roger McGough, one of Britain’s most popular, prolific and funniest poets. “The dog dead and the car sold.”

Another joy might be decluttering. After the departure of dozens of boxes of notebooks, manuscripts, drafts, project files, journals, posters, letters, personal artworks and more, McGough has admitted his house is significantly emptier. “If anyone wants to buy some old empty filing cabinets then get in touch … through you,” he joked.

Boyband drops album that speaks to its Korean roots ahead of Seoul comeback concert, with more than a quarter of a million fans expected to attend

K-pop stars BTS released a new album on Friday billed as reflecting the maturing boy band’s Korean roots and identity, as buzz built ahead of their open-air comeback concert in the heart of Seoul.

The Saturday night gig, which is expected to draw around 260,000 people, will be BTS’s first after a hiatus of almost four years while all seven members served compulsory military service. It comes ahead of an 82-date world tour.

Wellness enthusiasts on TikTok and Instagram claim the combination bestows glowing skin and better digestion

A shot of lemon juice and olive oil might be delicious on a salad – but would you drink it straight up?

That’s what wellness enthusiasts on TikTok and Instagram are doing, claiming it bestows glowing skin and better digestion, and supports the dubious process of “detoxing”.

All the talk on red carpet night was of leading guys such as Adrien Brody and Leonardo DiCaprio flashing the bling

While the eyes might be the window to the soul, lapels are certainly doing some talking. On the Oscars red carpet last Sunday night, Hollywood’s leading men flashed a lot of bling on their suits.

From Adrien Brody who wore an astronomically large brooch titled Ulysses, arguably as big as the James Joyce tome is thick, to a clean-shaven Pedro Pascal, who distracted from his newly bare chin with a silk and feather Chanel Camélia brooch, lapels were vying for the spotlight.

Travelling over Easter? Whether it’s mini magnets or collapsible buckets, here’s the parent-tested kit that’s actually worth bringing (and what’s just a waste of money)

• How to get kids outdoors

Holidays are a different experience after having kids. A concept that once evoked the promise of rest and relaxation becomes a feat of logistics and endurance, where one forgotten item can mean a week of no sleep (been there, done that, got the T-shirt).

Despite fears that we’d never be able to holiday again after having children, my partner and I have taken numerous trips with our two offspring – both under four – and some of the breaks have actually been enjoyable. The most memorable was when we took our eldest around Thailand for our honeymoon when he was seven months old. But we’ve really earned our travelling-with-kids stripes thanks to the family commitment that requires frequent trips to New York.

Our expert puts the best power washers through their paces on the toughest – and muckiest – outdoor chores, from grimy paving slabs to dirty decking

• The best lawnmowers to keep your grass in check

The trouble with the great outdoors is that it gets a bit untidy. Your garden tools might do a good job of keeping your plot in check, but keeping your patio, decking and outdoor furniture spick and span can take hours, especially if you rely on a bucket of soapy water and a scrubbing brush.

That’s where the pressure washer comes in. These handy tools connect to your hose pipe and squirt water at any cleaning problem. Stubborn and unpleasant stains, from bird dirt to years of neglect, can be lifted from your garden’s hard-wearing surfaces in seconds. With the right attachments, you can also use your pressure washer to hose down cars, bikes and boats.

Best pressure washer overall:
Ava Go P40

Best budget pressure washer:
Kärcher K 2 Classic

They’re one of the most-hyped kitchen appliances of the last decade, but are these low-fat cookers worth the cost and counter space?

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I owned an air fryer long before they attained peak ubiquity, and I use it on a daily basis, so I’m surprised when people express zero interest in them. For my lifestyle, air fryers are brilliant: I’m usually multitasking, so being able to pop chicken, veggies or sausages in a drawer and walk away frees me up.

But if you’re thinking of buying one, it’s worth exploring whether it will work for how you live – and the food you cook – to avoid cluttering your kitchen counter with another underused gadget, and needlessly spending money.

Whether you want buildable or barely there, our beauty writer put 19 formulas through their paces – plus, makeup artists on how to apply it

• The best concealers for camouflaging blemishes and dark circles

As a makeup-loving teenager, I spent countless hours of my precious youth practising how to apply makeup, and spent more money than I dare to count buying products.

My cosmetics drawers quickly filled with fun mascaras, bronzers and eyeshadow palettes, but my choice of foundation was ruining the look of anything I applied on top. Whether it was oxidising and turning my skin orange, or mismatched formulation types causing the whole look to separate on the skin, getting a lasting natural finish seemed impossible. Had I spent a little more time picking out the best foundation for my skin type, I wouldn’t be haunted by so many embarrassing photos from my adolescence.

Best foundation overall:
Charlotte Tilbury Airbrush Flawless Foundation

Best budget foundation:
L’Oréal True Match foundation

Bringing food back to life is a great kitchen skill. No, you can’t just microwave it

There is nothing lovelier than seeing a cook do their thing. By “doing their thing”, I do not mean just going about kitchen work – that is often excruciating to watch (why are they cutting onions like that?) I mean doing their thing: their culinary equivalent of a Mastermind subject, that one dish or process that they do so well, and with such evident pride, that the most crotchety backseat cook is forced to shut up.

Take my partner’s method for making fish-finger sandwiches, which involves frying the fish fingers in butter, then creating an in-pan sweatbox to melt artisanal cheese on to them and custom blending condiments. It creates, on average, as much washing up as a full cooked dinner. Others have a special pancake hack or carrot cake recipe, and people tend not to let these things go unnoticed – it’s always my salad dressing, possessive, but we forgive their hubris, because each of us has “A Thing” of our own.

Herb is the word in this pungent seasonal infusion with a taste of honey

It’s wild garlic season, which is as much cause for celebration on the drinks trolley as it is in the kitchen. Forage your own, ideally before the plants flower, or ask a decent greengrocer to get some in for you.

Matthew Wakeford, sommelier, Bear by Carlo Scotto, Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire

Crumbly, buttery biscuits encrusted with nuts and topped with a spoonful of jam

Niki Segnit writes in The Flavour Thesaurus that, while grape jelly is the familiar partner to peanut butter in the classic PBJ, she thinks blackcurrant, with its sharper, more complex character, would be a far better match for the fatty and salty peanuts. I couldn’t agree more, though I’ll admit I’m not entirely impartial: blackcurrant is my favourite jam. Here, it’s spooned into the centre of a tender, peanut-crusted shortbread, where it bakes into a glossy, slightly chewy jewel that sits in perfect contrast to the crumbly, buttery biscuit. It’s the sort of small pleasure I find myself returning to again and again.

From asparagus fritters and crab cakes to rhubarb tarts and barely dressed baby potatoes, now’s the time to embrace fresh, bright flavours

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

After what felt like months and months of endless rain this winter, in the UK at least, the arrival of spring is more welcome than ever this year. It’s undeniable that a few days of sunshine and milder temperatures change everything: my mood, my palate, my dinner table (see below for my achilles heel: serveware).

And to mark the change in season, the Guardian is launching a new seasonal food magazine. This Saturday will see the arrival of the Guardian Food Quarterly, for which I have showcased crab – one of my favourite spring arrivals. I have written five recipes, including a speedy, spicy crab cake banh mi with quick pickles, and a hot cheesy crab and chive dip inspired by the American south. If you are in the camp that thinks that cheese and seafood are a no-no, then I hope you will trust me on this one. Just be sure to use that sweet, punchy brown meat in the mix, too, for maximum flavour.

Chantelle would like Hugo to show more affection when they are out. You decide who is being touchy
• Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

Friends and family have noticed that we don’t hold hands and it’s become a running joke

I find holding hands annoying. Besides, I’m quite caring and I tell her I love her on a daily basis

As stories of men leaving their dates in ‘sketchy situations’ go viral, experts say these incidents could stem from big egos and poor communication

MJ calls what happened to her in Zion national park “small ‘T’ trauma”. She knows women have experienced worse from their partners. But she still feels the anger of being left behind on a hike by her now ex. “It brings up stuff in my body that maybe I have not cleared out yet,” she said.

Five years ago, MJ and a new partner – he was not exactly her boyfriend, and the pair were not exclusive – traveled from Los Angeles to Utah for an adventure getaway. MJ, who is 38 and works in PR, was looking forward to exploring Zion’s striking scenery; its vast sandstone canyon and pristine wading trails were on the list. But on the morning of their big hike, MJ was not feeling well. She could not shake the feeling that something was “off”; indeed, MJ would learn on this trip that her partner was seeing other women.

Drugs, defence, discrimination … we want to hear from people across the UK who hold different views on some of the more divisive issues of our time for our series Dining across the divide

Are flags hung from lamp-posts intimidating? Do we need to spend more on defence? Should we legalise drugs? Where do you stand on these or other issues – and could you persuade someone with a different view?

For the Guardian series Dining across the divide, we would like to hear from people living in the UK who have differing viewpoints about some of the most divisive issues that affect us now.

Our aim is to find out whether encountering someone with the opposite point of view can make a difference. We’re interested in hearing from adults from every part of the UK with an interest in meeting and discussing opposing views with another reader.

In a world teeming with social media and smart devices, there are many ways to upset people, whether you’re checking your watch notifications or sending a voice note without a text to explain the subject. Here’s how to navigate it all

In an age of smartphones, social media and instant communication, it has never been easier to connect … or to offend everyone around us. Many of today’s most common etiquette breaches stem not from malice but from convenience: a badly written message, a thoughtless post, a device that demands our attention. Yet good manners still hinge on the same old principle: consideration for others. From eschewing headphones on public transport to ghosting invitations and sharing thoughtlessly online, here are some of the most common modern etiquette mistakes, why they grate, and how they can be avoided.

To understand this you need to know about swap rates and the impact of the war in Iran

On 16 January, the average rate on a new two-year fixed-rate mortgage was 4.78%, according to the financial data company Moneyfacts. Two months later, it was 5.20%. Between those two dates, the Bank of England voted to keep the base rate at 3.75%. More significantly, though, the US and Israel carried out airstrikes on Iran and a conflict broke out.

The US air attacks on Iran have caused economic shocks across the world. Stock markets have tumbled, petrol and heating oil prices have gone up and there have been warnings of higher bills to come, for everything from food to holidays. All of this feeds into interest rate expectations, and from there into mortgage rates.

Whether it’s buying and selling clothes online or some freelance work on the side, plan ahead for potential tax issues

Since the start of 2024, online platforms such as Vinted, eBay and Airbnb have been required to share data with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for any users who sell more than 30 items a year or earn more than about £1,700 (the threshold is set at €2,000) a year. However, this does not necessarily mean that those users owe any additional income tax.

I was suddenly presented with a nearly £2,000 bill backdated to 2020 when it had mistakenly stopped collecting my direct debits

Thames Water has blindsided me with a bill for nearly £2,000, backdated to 2020. It turns out that it mistakenly stopped collecting my direct debits back then and has not sent any bills since.

It admitted its error and promised to write off charges older than 12 months, but now it is trying to recover almost the full amount.

Criminals exploiting Middle East crisis by targeting customers seeking help or refunds from affected carriers

Your flight has been delayed as a result of the Middle East crisis and you want to find out what’s happening, so you go online for an answer. You find a social media account run by the airline you are booked with and post a question, and get a reply offering help.

You’re asked to send a direct message with details, which seems reasonable. A conversation starts and you are told to give your phone number as you may be due compensation. This is where it all starts going wrong: instead of being given money, you have it taken. Although it looked official, the account that replied was a scam.

A happiness researcher called prolonged eye contact ‘the best thing ever’, claiming it can bring couples closer. Does it really work?

In January, business professor and happiness researcher Arthur C Brooks appeared on the Modern Wisdom podcast to offer advice on optimizing morning and evening routines. His tips seemed reasonable – think exercising early and no alcohol before bed. Then, for couples, he made a kookier suggestion: every night before going to sleep, spend five minutes holding hands and staring into each other’s eyes.

“This is the best thing ever,” he enthuses, explaining that it can help with mood management and to strengthen your relationship.

After years of hiding his substance abuse, Ken Rideout finally confessed to his wife. It was the start of a difficult and rewarding journey, which led to athletic success in his 50s

It started in 1998, with a pain in Ken Rideout’s ankle. A podiatrist gave him a prescription for seven Percocet, a drug containing the opioid oxycodone. Rideout was a high-flying commodity trader in New York, outwardly successful but racked with impostor syndrome. The Percocet dulled his foot pain – and also his anxiety. Rideout was used to alcohol and cocaine, but this was different. He felt happy, confident and optimistic.

He returned to the podiatrist for more pills. Then more. Soon he was altering the prescriptions manually, changing a seven into a two and adding a zero, before targeting smaller pharmacies that wouldn’t run verification checks.

A growing body of evidence suggests the vaccine may also lower risk of stroke and heart attack

One in three people in the US get shingles. Despite this, US vaccination rates remain low – about 35% of adults over 60, consistent with overall vaccination trends.

“We have a vaccine that works really well,” says Dr Andrew Wallach, ambulatory care chief medical officer at NYC Health + Hospitals. “But there is a lot of what I call vaccine fatigue right now.”

While it’s not effective as an antibiotic, some evidence suggests honey can help with wound healing – but good-quality research is lacking

• Read more in the Antiviral series

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Humans have been consuming honey for thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians and Greeks used it as a sweetener, but also a treatment for burns. Hippocrates, often referred to as the “father of medicine”, championed the sticky stuff – mistakenly – for purposes as varied as contraception and baldness.

Today, honey is often described as a superfood with a laundry list of promised benefits: a treatment for coughs, an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, a potential solution to combat drug-resistant superbugs. Antiviral has previously debunked claims about hay fever and honey, finding there is little evidence that raw honey can reduce symptoms of allergic rhinitis.

Donna Lu is an assistant editor, climate, environment and science at Guardian Australia

Antiviral is a fortnightly column that interrogates the evidence behind the health headlines and factchecks popular wellness claims

A neat cuff can elevate an outfit in seconds – but it takes more than a quick fold to get it right

Trousers – they’re not rocket science. But there are plenty of ways to mess them up, or to elevate them above their primary role of covering legs. A classic styling trick has emerged recently: the turn-up. Harry Styles had them for his pinstripe trews at the Brits, actor Chase Infiniti turned her trousers up at Paris fashion week and hefty turn-ups feature on baggy blue and ecru jeans and olive-green track trousers in JW Anderson’s latest collection for Uniqlo.

Turn-ups are the bread and butter of preppy labels such as J Crew-adjacent brand Alex Mill. Head to the website of this New York label and turned-up jeans paired with purple loafers and pink socks, or with letterbox-red ballet flats and yolk-yellow socks, will wash over you like salt spray. At John Lewis, meanwhile, turn-ups run the gamut from pencil-thin to the depth of an Oxford English Dictionary.

The spring equinox is here, which means days in the park, ice-cream selfies and an extra layer for the evening

Bold shades are all over the catwalks, but they can be tricky to wear. These tricks will make them work in the real world

You would think primary shades would be the easiest colours to wear. Red, yellow, blue: we can name these before we can tie our shoelaces. They are not sophisticated colours, such as Armani greige or Pantone favourite Mocha Mousse. They are not challenging-to-wear colours, like chartreuse or mustard. They are Mr Men colours. So wearing them must be child’s play, surely.

And yet they are weirdly tricky to wear. They can feel shouty and basic: the getting dressed equivalent of speaking loudly without saying anything particularly interesting, which is – to paint it in primary colours – not what any of us are aiming for.

I was 12 and it was the first makeup I had ever worn. While people’s responses ranged right up to genuine repulsion, they couldn’t quell my happiness

I wore makeup for the first time just after I turned 12: a tube of green mascara from a pound shop in my home town in south Wales. This was not a chic emerald or a flattering forest green. It was a frosted, mucous-tinted green – a colour that looked like the aftermath of a minor chemical incident involving Shrek. There was a reason it cost only a pound.

I slicked it on with no real understanding of beauty, but a clear instinct that I loved how it altered my face. The outside world was less enthused. People hated it. Teachers told me to take it off; I’d then reapply it in the toilets. Girls in my year looked at me with genuine repulsion. It wasn’t pretty, or cute – so nobody understood why I would want to look like that.

From a deconsecrated London cemetery to a Cumbrian seal colony, our readers select wonderful ‘havens for both human and non-human visitors’
• Tell us about your trips to France – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

I always take friends on an afternoon walk when they visit Bristol, to experience the swift changes in scenery: starting at the tobacco warehouses of Cumberland Basin before ascending from the muddy banks of the River Avon up into Leigh Woods, a national nature reserve. As well as possible animal sightings like peregrine falcons and roe deer, the woods are an important site for whitebeam trees, with several species only growing here. It’s easy to spend a full afternoon crisscrossing the trails before walking over Brunel’s famous suspension bridge for a well-deserved coffee at the Primrose Café in Clifton village.
Tor Hands

I loved Tanzania – we flew over hungry lions in a national park

I can still remember my first flight, in 2002. It was magical. I was working as a tour guide in Myanmar. I met a British balloon pilot called Phil, who had a spare place on a flight. He offered to take me, too.

I don’t particularly enjoy flying in planes, but this was different. We floated gently with the wind, out in the open air. There was no turbulence. It was so serene and picturesque as we flew over temples. I immediately fell in love with ballooning.

Ski accommodation can be prohibitively expensive, but a cosy youth hostel puts the Montafon resort and its glorious runs within reach for those on a budget

‘Want to come skiing in Austria at half-term?” I asked my 13-year-old son. “It’ll be just like one of those luxury chalet holidays, only we’ll make our own beds, cook our own dinners and carry our gear back to our accommodation ourselves.” Osian didn’t hear the caveats. “Sounds amazing,” he said, his eyes glazing to a cinematic sweep of white powder and the chance to perfect his 360.

For many families, the dream of a catered chalet – and its ready-lit fires, homemade strudels and chauffeured lift shuttles – remains just that. Apartments offer access to the slopes at less vertigo-inducing prices, but they tend to come with a minimum seven-night stay. If you only have a few days to spare, or a budget that won’t stretch to a full week’s lift pass, hotels fill the gap, but then you’re back navigating the moguls of cost.

The ruins of Tintern Abbey have inspired artists and poets. Now, the restoration of a historic inn has given visitors a perfect base for exploring this corner of Monmouthshire

Standing in Tintern Abbey, you can feel the magic that has given this small Monmouthshire village on the banks of the Wye and its famous ruin such an outsized place in culture. JMW Turner, Gainsborough and Samuel Palmer are just some of the artists who have captured this landscape, and Wordsworth and Tennyson famously wrote poems inspired by Tintern. But it was Allen Ginsberg’s Welsh Visitation and his “clouds passing through skeleton arches” that came to mind while I sheltered from a cloudburst in the abbey’s nave. It’s a vast and fascinating site, and seeing it through sheets of rain as the sun went down was really special.

Ginsberg was here in the 1960s, following in the footsteps of the Romantics. But Tintern’s fame came thanks to its inclusion in travel writer William Gilpin’s 1782 book Observations on the River Wye. Gilpin’s writing about the “picturesque” – landscapes that inspired art through their rugged beauty – was so popular in the late 18th century that the Wye Tour was created to meet tourist demand, one of the first package trips in British travel history.

You can pep up your cooking by growing wild garlic, crow garlic and three-cornered leek

Unlike most gardeners, I’m not especially captivated by spring bulbs. I do love that they symbolise the return of fairer weather, but I only have the tulips and narcissi that I adopted when we moved here and, every autumn, I fail to consider planting more to replenish their dwindling numbers. Lucky for me, I also adopted the kind of spring bulb that I’m more inclined towards – because they’re edible. Wild alliums are what I’m really looking for to herald the arrival of spring.

Too many edible wild plants are only edible in theory, in my opinion. I’m mostly of the “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” school of foraging. But that’s not the case when it comes to the most well-known member of this wild allium group. The strongly flavoured leaves of wild garlic (Allium ursinum) cover the woodland floor wherever they are resident, producing clusters of white, star-shaped flowers that are edible too – but leave most of them for the pollinators please! I’m a big fan of this delectable plant and am fortunate enough that it has made a home in my front garden. As with all foraging endeavours, make sure you’re 100% certain you have identified the plant correctly, pick where you are allowed, and always leave plenty behind. Fortunately, when it comes to this group of plants, it’s fairly easy to know if you have gone wrong as all the leaves should smell strongly of and taste like garlic or onions.

From a real get-away-from-it-all isolated ‘off-grid’ cottage by the sea to a 42nd-floor three-bedroom flat in a London tower block

We all see money differently, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. If you want your friends to see it your way, you’ll have to communicate it

• Read more Leading questions

I’m a university student with a good part-time job. I make about $250 a fortnight and I have always been taught how to look after my money and save responsibly. My two closest friends are both unemployed, but by choice. No matter how much I help them apply for jobs, they never do.

I often go out on the weekends drinking or partying, where naturally I spend money on alcohol, maybe some food and an Uber ride home.

After a 1,088-day wait, a jury acquitted the man Nichols accused. She describes her experience of the system as a complainant – and explains why she went public

• Warning: this article contains graphic testimony

• Charlotte Nichols on her rape trial ordeal – podcast

Sitting in the House of Commons, waiting for the speaker to call her name last week, the MP Charlotte Nichols was doing breathing exercises to try to keep calm. “I was just trying to get myself into the headspace where I could say what I wanted to say without either completely garbling it or just crying or bottling it at the last minute.”

She didn’t bottle it. She stood up, asked MPs to be gentle with her, and then went public with her biggest secret.

In week three of Rhik Samadder’s diary, our resident AI skeptic let AI give him a tour of London’s best-kept secrets

• Sign up for AI for the people, a six-week newsletter course, here

I recently met a friend for a drink who had just visited three galleries. She was having a cultural day – curated for her by AI. Based on what it knew about her, it suggested exhibitions she would enjoy, places to eat, even the best routes between stops. I was stunned. (Was I part of the itinerary?)

As part of my skeptic AI diary, I decide to use it to rediscover my home town. I ask ChatGPT to plan a full day out about town in London, packed with activities I might not normally choose. I tell the AI to ask me a few questions first, to gauge what I’ll enjoy and steer clear of neighbourhoods I already know well. I also ask it to check in after each stop, to vibe-check what comes next and offer backup options.

Rhik Samadder is a columnist, playwright and performer who co-runs the Tuscan Table, a creative writing retreat in Italy

Day 2 of our Guardian analysis of more than a million Epstein emails exposes the child sex offender’s deep relationships with more high-profile figures

• Day 1: the prince, the billionaire and the politicians

The Epstein files have led to intense scrutiny over links between the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the rich and powerful. But the vast trove of information has made it difficult to assess the extent of some of those connections.

In this second of a two-part series, The Guardian has focused on Epstein’s links to high-profile people in business and the arts – including the renowned economist and former US treasury secretary Larry Summers, the New York film director Woody Allen and Jes Staley, the former head of Barclays.

We’d like to hear from volunteers who have experienced a charity closing

Across the UK, many small charities face increasing financial pressures, forcing some to shut their doors. When this happens, it can leave the people who relied on those services without support - and volunteers and communities trying to step in and keep things going.

We’d like to hear from volunteers who have experienced a charity closing. Have you or others tried to continue the work informally and what were the challenges of doing that? Did you try to keep it going - and what difficulties did you face? What happened to the people who depended on the service?

Health officials, schools and a university in Kent are working to contain an outbreak. We want to hear from those living in the area

A meningitis outbreak in Kent has been linked to a strain that most young people are not routinely vaccinated against, with two people confirmed to have died and 11 more in hospital. Health officials have offered antibiotics to those at risk, as authorities work to contain the spread.

We want to hear from people living in Canterbury and the surrounding area whether the outbreak is being well managed by the authorities.

We would like to hear about the ways people have helped each other feel less isolated

Was someone there for you when you were feeling lonely? As part of the Guardian’s Well Actually series, we would like to hear about the ways people have helped each other feel less isolated. You can tell us your story below.

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

We are looking to speak to lollipop people about their experiences on the job

Lollipop people in Suffolk have become the latest neon-clad, road patrollers to don body cams amid a rise in abuse. We are looking to speak to lollipop people about their experiences on the job.

The council has launched a six-week awareness campaign called “Lollipops Aren’t Just For Children” to remind drivers to slow down, be patient, and show respect at patrol points. The cameras have been used by school crossing patrols in Greater Manchester, Clacton and Basildon for similar reasons.

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