Were our readers right to put Lord of the Rings above Middlemarch? What was missing from our list? Has anyone read the whole 100 … ?

Liese Spencer, our joint head of books, and non-fiction editor David Shariatmadari are live now to discuss the huge reaction to our 100 greatest novels list, our readers’ choices of the 100 best – and any other burning questions you may have about what to read next

MomDoc asks: I would like to see a division of the best 100 novels that you would read and read again. Versus the best 100 novels that you would read and know immediately that you would never want to read again because it was a little bit traumatising to read them?

David: It’s interesting to think about what makes a book re-readable – and what kind of book you feel glad to have read but aren’t drawn back to again and again. You mention being traumatised, and it could certainly be that, but some books are more admirable than they are magnetic. I don’t think I’d re-read Madame Bovary, for example. Anyway, there are lots of reasons, and in our Books of my life Q&A each week, authors share the books they return to, as well as the book they’d never read again. Virginia Evans, who just won the Orange prize for fiction for her novel The Correspondent, recently told us she couldn’t go back to the Millennium series by Stieg Larsson because it was so disturbing!

Liese: I think there are many children’s books that are great works of fiction and some of our voters did select them in their top 10s. Novelist Katherine Rundell, for example, put Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland at number six on her list while regretting that she did not have space for Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, The Wizard of Earthsea and Pippi Longstocking. But when the votes were tallied up they did not get enough to make the final top 100.

As for genre, it was interesting to see a few more in our readers’ top 100 with Dune making the cut along with Stephen King’s The Stand. Ultimately it’s subjective as to what makes a novel one of the “greatest of all time”. I put Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban on my list which is a brilliant SF novel – partly because I loved his book The Mouse and His Child as a kid – but that too failed to make the final list!

Surreal genius from Harry Hill, trailblazing women and a passionate ode to an incredible New York rapper – these are the best listens from the last six months

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Everyone here knows this is a sliding doors moment. A win could be a new beginning for the party, a loss an unimaginable calamity

They flock to Makerfield from everywhere: canvassers and camera crews, MPs, peers and volunteers, from Swansea to Gateshead, 700 a day to help the Labour campaign. Every door has already been knocked four times, boasts the Burnham team.

How does it feel for voters to be the most important constituency in living memory? Most are quite pleased, bar the usual “we only see them round here when they want our votes”. But with a chance to choose a prime minister, never was a vote so valuable.

People tell of feeling alienated in own city, disruption to daily life including healthcare, and frustration with politicians

Belfast residents have reacted with anger and disgust at the disorder in the city in response to a an online callout by the Guardian.

People were asked if they had been affected by the unrest sparked by the stabbing of Stephen Ogilvie in the city earlier in the week.

Eras. Easter eggs. Masters. Monoculture. It has been 20 years since Swift released her debut single, setting in motion a career so extraordinary, it permanently redefined the concept of pop stardom. Not only did her fight to own her music educate a generation of fans in how the music industry works, she also bent that industry to her will, outwitting the competition and defying norms to reset its terms. This is how she did it

Trump says hundreds of tankers have escaped Iran’s blockade. Data suggests shipments are increasing but many questions remain

Donald Trump has claimed that the US has been conducting a “secret mission” in the strait of Hormuz to help Gulf petrostates bypass Iran’s chokehold on oil flows – which has roiled global energy markets for months.

In televised comments from the Oval Office on Wednesday, the president claimed Iran was unaware that dozens of tankers had been escorted out of the blockaded channel at night with their transmitters off.

Bradford-born painter, who made his name with sun-kissed visions of California, has died
• ‘David Hockney caught the look of the modern world’
• David Hockney’s life in pictures

David Hockney, the iconic British painter who cast a revolutionary gaze across 20th-century art, has died aged 88.

He made his name as a pop artist during the swinging 60s and was perhaps best known for his paintings of swimming pools that helped define the Los Angeles aesthetic. Works such as A Bigger Splash and Portrait of an Artist (Pool With Two Figures) depicted hedonistic scenes of love, lust and loss taking place below the city’s sun-soaked skies.

John Healey and Al Carns resigned from their ministerial positions on Thursday over the government’s defence investment plan

As armed forces minister, Al Carns was not involved in work on the defence investment plan (Dip). In his resignation letter, he said it was flawed not just because of the amount of funding involved; he also claimed it focused too much on the wrong capability. He said (and I’ve highlighted the key phrases in bold):

The character of conflict is changing faster than our procurement can keep up with. We are still purchasing capability suitable for the last war while our adversaries arm for the next one. Platforms that cost billions can be defeated by systems that cost thousands. Any serious defence investment plan has to start from that reality.

While I had no hand in the defence investment plan, that distance does allow me to say plainly that it is not built for the threat we face.

I want to see a higher percentage for uncrewed systems, AI, data – data is the new gunpowder – and we’ve got to move that forward if we are going to win the next war.

Too many working people in this country feel insecure even when they are doing everything right. They work hard, contribute, pay their taxes and still feel one setback away from trouble. Public confidence in our institutions is weakening and politics increasingly looks performative while everyday life gets harder.

The machinery of government itself has been left to decay. Decisions that should take days, take months. Departments fight each other instead of the problem. Officials and ministers who know the truth are not always rewarded for telling it. We are trying to govern a more dangerous world with processes designed for a calmer one, and the gap is now showing in the things that matter most.

Figures suggest common travel area being used in both directions, but particularly UK to Ireland

Up to 90% of asylum seekers in Ireland may have entered the country via the Northern Ireland land border in the last three years, figures suggest.

Irish government data shows the common travel area (CTA) is being exploited in both directions but suggests it may be more popular for those seeking asylum in Ireland than in the UK.

Ayoub Junaid, seven, given new pair but needs surgery as Gaza’s children remain unable to access treatment

A video of a seven-year-old Palestinian boy in Gaza who suffers from a severe visual impairment crying over his shattered glasses has drawn widespread attention across social and international media.

The footage of Ayoub Junaid has shone a light on the plight of the many visually impaired children in Gaza who, because of Israel’s blockade and the devastation caused by the war, have been unable to access eye examinations, corrective lenses or specialist ophthalmic surgery.

US president says ‘great settlement’ reached but Iranian spokesman says there has been no final conclusion

Full report: Trump claims US and Iran on verge of signing peace agreement

The Pakistani foreign minister, Ishaq Daar, has welcomed the “progress” made between the US and Iran, signalling that a deal between the warring parties is materialising.

Daar discussed the recent developments “regarding United States-Iran understanding” with the EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, in a phone call this morning, according to a statement on X.

Both sides welcomed the progress achieved through sustained diplomatic engagement and expressed hope that these efforts will soon lead to a durable understanding and peaceful resolution.

They reaffirmed that dialogue and diplomacy remain the only viable means to resolve conflicts and advance lasting peace and stability.”

Rolling coverage of SpaceX’s record-breaking initial public offering, after Elon Musk’s company is valued at $1.77tn in share offering

• SpaceX to list on US stock market at $1.77tn valuation in largest ever debut

SpaceX’s shares will be supported by a number of “forced buyers”, such as tracker funds.

Richard Hunter, head of markets at interactive investor, explains:

The Nasdaq index has tweaked its rules, which has allowed SpaceX to join the index on a fast-track basis. It remains to be seen whether the company will have a disproportionate effect on the index in terms of weighting, but in any event its inclusion guarantees some additional and significant buying pressure.

Mark Pougatch acknowledged the controversies surrounding the tournament, while capturing the excitement of football fans

Don’t mention the war. Mark Pougatch mentioned it, right at the start of ITV’s World Cup coverage, but I think he got away with it. He also, to his credit, highlighted the outrageous ticket prices, as well as the disgraceful treatment of the teams, fans and officials who now find themselves persona non grata in the US. Even Donald J Trump, the first (and quite possibly last) holder of the Fifa Peace Prize, got a mention. Pougatch also gave a visibly emotional Ian Wright the chance to suggest that the US has “no idea of the spirit of the game”. All unexpectedly and encouragingly feisty.

Of course, it was no Gary Lineker, railing against the hosts’ human rights record while launching the BBC’s coverage of Qatar 2022. But Lineker is a corporation ghost now – no longer at the Beeb but podcasting for Netflix. The BBC have, on the grounds of cost, opted to present this World Cup from an austerity bunker in Salford. The Telegraph derided this as a “work from home” operation. ITV are already having some fun with it too.

Elusive creatures have previously only been seen on fishing lines and experts know ‘virtually nothing about them’

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Rare and eccentric-looking goblin sharks have been seen alive in their deep ocean habitat for the first time ever.

Prof Alan Jamieson, director of the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, said goblin sharks were a bit like the colossal squid – creatures with an almost mythological quality. They were almost never seen alive, he said, and previously only when they were accidentally hooked on a fishing line.

Grande is the latest in a series of pop musicians including Sabrina Carpenter and SZA who have been angered by Trump administration videos

Ariana Grande has rebuked Donald Trump’s White House over use of her music in a video documenting the detaining of immigrants.

Earlier this week, the White House posted a montage of ICE agents handcuffing and detaining people, with the caption “Bye-bye President Trump has delivered the most secure border in history”. It was soundtracked by Grande’s 2024 song Bye.

Feeling abandoned and overwhelmed, families are turning to controversial new therapies backed by the US health secretary

Landyn Holdren is an eight-year-old autistic child who has high support needs and is nonspeaking. His mother, Christy Holdren, says he can be self-harming, slapping his chest, face or head when distressed.

Later this month, she will spend $15,000 on an unapproved stem cell treatment she hopes might help him.

Guided by floating barriers, the Interceptor has already stopped more than 143,000lbs of rubbish from entering the Pacific from one LA river

On an overcast June morning, I step from the rubber-sided Zodiac boat on to a floating barge at the mouth of Ballona Creek, where it meets Santa Monica Bay on the west side of Los Angeles. The first thing I notice? Salty air is the only smell, despite six giant waste bins sitting atop the tennis court-sized barge.

The contraption is actually two barges – a smaller platform sits nestled inside the larger boat. A floating barrier directs rubbish into the device, where a conveyor belt scoops it up. An automated shuttle then distributes the waste into six dumpsters on a separate barge, sending an alert to crews when it is full. Above, solar panels form the ceiling and a conveyor belt runs slowly, dropping bits of plastic and waste into each of the bins. The whole thing can hold about 20,000lbs (9,070kg) of rubbish – the same as one fully loaded lorry.

He was subversive and bold, yet also playful and accepting – putting the fun into pop art and finding freedom and fulfilment amid the blue skies and pools of California. David Hockney, who has died aged 88, lived and painted the truth
• David Hockney – a life in pictures
• David Hockney, revolutionary British artist, dies aged 88

David Hockney changed the world just by looking at it. His art was a feast of unabashed visual pleasure, one long orgy of the gaze, the delighted lifelong epiphany of someone who cherished flowers in a vase and freeways in the sun and thought endlessly about new ways of making pictures of such passing treasures. It didn’t seem to occur to him that the way he saw was revolutionary – all he cared about was truth. But no one had ever captured the look and feel of the contemporary world with such acceptance before. He has the same simple perfection as the Beatles – just as they caught the sound of the modern world, he caught its look.

The most revealing fact about Hockney is that he loved LA. Where some might see a moronic inferno, he saw freedom and possibility under an unjudging blue sky. Low-lying houses with patio doors glinting vacantly, tall thin palm trees with tiny heads, the white spume of a diver’s splash – Hockney’s California is a vision of paradise. He is the Matisse of pop art, A Bigger Splash the 1960s answer to Matisse’s 1904 manifesto for hedonism, Luxe, Calme et Volupté.

Whether it’s fancy sauces or lesser-known cuts, skip the obvious with these creative garden party gifts (and not a pasta salad in sight)

• The best (and worst) chef’s knives – tested

Summer’s here, so you’ve probably got an invitation to a barbecue. If someone’s gone to the effort of hosting one, they deserve better than supermarket sausages and a bottle of wine grabbed from the corner shop on the way.

But what to bring that’s thoughtful and a little bit different? Whether it’s olive oil or ice lollies, green harissa or Lambrusco (yes, really), here are some suggestions from those in the know.

Of all the bases Scotland fans could have found for their World Cup journey, it had to be the city renowned for chasing the English out of town

Sam Adams is the beer of Boston, named after the fourth governor of Massachusetts and founding father of the United States. Downtown, there’s a tap room where you can drink it all day. On Thursday lunchtime the bar was packed, full of Scotland fans, and hanging over the first floor balcony was a big yellow flag. It bore the legend “Remember Bannockburn 1315”.

Of all the bases the Tartan Army could have found for their World Cup journey, it had to be the city renowned for chasing the English out of town. Supporters dressed like William Wallace have been bonding with tour guides dressed like Paul Revere. Others have been walking around wearing “Boston T Party” T-shirts, where the T stands for Tennent’s. Meanwhile, next to the site of the Battle of Bunker Hill, the Scottish Football Association has rebranded a local pub as Scotland House, and even had it sponsored by M&S Food.

As a conflict journalist, I was aware of the dangers – but nothing prepares you for the mental trauma

I arrived in Mogadishu as a conflict photojournalist in 2008. Years of civil war had left the Somali capital in tatters. As rival factions continued to fight for power, hundreds of thousands had been forced from their homes. I’d arranged to visit a camp for displaced people, joined by a Canadian journalist named Amanda.

The camp was in a militia zone, so we took two armed guards, but they soon jumped out of the car, saying it wasn’t safe to go any farther. I wasn’t happy about being unaccompanied for the drive, but it was that or abort the trip.

They come in a variety of cheerful colours, actively prefer poor soil, keep popping up for years – and you can eat the entire plant

Every time I’ve moved into a place with a garden, I’ve arrived at the wrong time of year. There’s a huge privilege to gaining access to land that you can actually grow in, of course, so it’s a minor grumble, but we arrived at our last house in the dying days of a July heatwave, and this one in early August last year.

I’ve now seen three seasons unfold here, accidentally following the old adage to wait a year and see what comes up – in this case, mostly green alkanet and a rainbow of spring-flowering trees in the neighbouring gardens – and I’m finally feeling green fingered. But, as any experienced gardener will tell you, it’s a bit late, really.

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Barney Ronay, Jeff Rueter and Jonathan Wilson as the World Cup kicks off in Mexico

⚽️ Canada tightens in anticipation | What is enough for US?
⚽️ Player guide | Bracketology | Golden Boot | Mail Martin

Five takeaways from the World Cup opener. These come courtesy of Matt Hughes who was in the Azteca (I can’t bring myself to say Mexico City Stadium).

How about this: you’re still tucking into your morning cornflakes and there’s already a World Cup daily pod to listen to. Jet-lag isn’t Jonathan Wilson’s friend but an evening in the Azteca lifted spirits, especially Raul Jimenez’s goal. Also, a glimpse behind the scenes at the first few days of Max and Barry living together in the US, insights from Barney Ronay and Jeff Rueter as well as your questions answered.

Leaving Cole Palmer at home surprised me but I know Thomas from Chelsea – he’s the type of coach to die on his sword

In Thomas Tuchel, England have an elite coach. Don’t underestimate him. In my 12 years working at Chelsea, he and Mauricio Pochettino were my two favourite managers.

Thomas is a great communicator, he’s demanding and he articulates himself really well. I admire the way he transfers information to the press and to players in a clear, concise way that is methodical, inspirational and detailed, all at the same time. I’ve seen him work at Chelsea. I’ve watched him in training and I’m a huge fan. He’s honest with his players and very direct. He doesn’t waste time – this is business, this is serious – but he’s also a fantastic guy.

Platini among former players to accuse captain of creating distraction as Deschamps defends captain’s right to speak

“If there’s one wish I have, it’s for you to ask my players about the opponents, about football,” Didier Deschamps told journalists after announcing France’s World Cup squad. “I understand that you might feel obliged to ask other questions, but they’re not there to answer them.”

Deschamps has found himself batting away questions about off-pitch issues beyond his scope before his final tournament as head coach. He has sought to protect his players from media scrutiny while insisting they are anything but sheltered from the wider political issues surrounding this tournament.

From Ogris’s Florentine charge to Quagliarella’s Ellis Park chip, half a dozen World Cup classics that deserve to be better remembered

The first six or seven World Cups certainly are not without their charms, but they are noticeably light on the kind of viscerally spectacular goals that we take for granted in the modern game. Hardly surprising when you contemplate what teams of the era had to endure: quagmire-like pitches, boots comprising 50% leather and 50% landfill, and balls so heavy that they basically constituted gym equipment.

One of football’s great arenas roared as El Tri eased past South Africa, offering fans a fleeting escape from the tensions gripping the capital

The walk to Estadio Ciudad de México – most fans know it as the Azteca – on Thursday did a pretty good job of laying out the two sides of Mexico as the World Cup kicked off.

Flanked by volunteers and channeled towards the stadium by steel barriers, the lucky few to have scored a ticket to the tournament’s opener between Mexico and South Africa chanted, waved the country’s tricolor flag and cracked beers in the middle of the street. The path was flanked with performers, the sound of traditional banda music providing a festive atmosphere.

A small, eccentric electorate gets to oust the UK’s leaders and then chooses largely inadequate replacements. It’s an absurd process and we’re locked into it again

One thing is clear. British politics has yet to rid itself of the torments of the past decade. The resignation of Keir Starmer’s defence secretary, John Healey, and the armed forces minister, Al Carns, indicates that the prime minister lacks cabinet support for his chancellor’s desperately needed budgetary balance. This gives ever greater prominence to next week’s Makerfield byelection, its multiplicity of feuding parties adding to its uncertainty. But its purpose is plain, to enable Andy Burnham to challenge Starmer’s leadership of the Labour party.

Healey is not the first defence secretary to have had to fight a lone battle for his budget. But Starmer’s argument with most of his colleagues is not over policy or principle. It is personal. It reflects the raw ambition of rivals eager to exploit his unpopularity in office. Burnham has said a byelection victory would presage a leadership vote, and it is clear that the party’s paid-up members would probably go for a change. A small town in Lancashire has thus the privilege of staging a Downing Street coup.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist

Plus, Brexit at 10, dinner as protest, 100 best novels and not watching the World Cup (yet)

We’re approaching the 10-year anniversary of the Brexit referendum. Documentaries are being aired and newspaper features are being written. But one thing seems to be missing. Why aren’t all those big names who campaigned for Brexit back in 2016 now shouting from the rooftops about what a great success it has been?

I think I’ll leave new methods to measure biological age to the Kardashians. Too much knowledge about your mortality can be bad for your health

In the season 5 finale of The Kardashians, the family took a commercially available blood test to discover how fast their bodies were ageing. It came as little surprise, given their privileged lifestyles, that the reality TV stars were said to be ageing more slowly than most mortals of the same age. Khloé, then 39, found she had a biological age of 28. Cue whoops of joy and much smugness.

The Kardashians join a growing list of celebrities who have taken similar tests and then crowed about their “biological ages”. Now, there’s a new test on the block.

Helen Pilcher is a science writer and the author of This Book May Cause Side Effects

‘Piggy’, ‘corrupt’, ‘stupid’: the president keeps lashing out. Here’s how journalists can stand up to him

For many years now, Donald Trump has been saying awful things to – or about – the female media figures who have the nerve to ask him questions and challenge his falsehoods.

“Quiet, Piggy,” he ordered a Bloomberg reporter, Catherine Lucey, last year in a press gaggle when she pushed him about the release of the Epstein files.

Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture

The 154ft-tall structure for the UFC Freedom 250 gives Trump a chance to to put the government out to the highest bidder

“If the government decides, very quickly, to bulldoze the Statue of Liberty – the people whose ancestors that was the first thing they saw coming to this country, but the government moved too fast – nothing can be done?” asked Judge Patricia Millet of the District of Columbia court of appeals on 5 June to the principal deputy assistant attorney general, Yaakov Roth. “I think that’s right, yes,” he replied.

In the case brought by the National Trust for Historic Preservation against Donald Trump’s “sudden, unilateral, and unlawful decision” to demolish the East Wing of the White House and to construct a 90,000 sq ft ballroom, “without seeking approval from Congress; without requesting review and approval from the federal commissions charged with oversight of development in the nation’s capital; without conducting the required environmental studies; and without allowing the public any opportunity for input”, Trump’s Department of Justice has countered that he can simply do whatever he wishes, whenever he wishes, however he wishes.

Paltrow went viral this week for her commercial for 51 Park – a building just miles from where Palestinians are being killed and displaced

Gwyneth Paltrow has built a wellness empire by encouraging people to put questionable things in their mouths and up their orifices. Over the years the Goop founder has promoted parasite-busting goat milk cleanses, urged women to stick $66 jade eggs into their vaginas, and waxed lyrical about the powerful benefits of rectal ozone therapy.

Now, however, it seems that Paltrow’s brand is pivoting from colon cleansing to ethnic cleansing. The actor and businessperson went viral this week for promoting a luxury real estate development in Israel. Paltrow, who has been nicknamed “Gwynocide”, stars in a new commercial and marketing materials for 51 Park, two 51-story towers in Herzliya, just north of Tel Aviv. (The ad was filmed in New York.) The towers boast a swimming pool, a pilates pool, a wine room and gym, among other luxuries. It’s unclear how much they cost, but similar apartments in the area have gone for millions.

The party stalwart’s blistering attack is not just a problem for the prime minister – it makes the task of a successor far harder

John Healey’s resignation as defence secretary on Thursday morning was genuinely shocking. Mr Healey is not just a veteran minister, but a Labour loyalist who previously served both Tony Blair and Jeremy Corbyn. In an interview in March, he observed that he didn’t toil to rebuild confidence in Labour “just to see that wasted with internal chatter and commentary”.

Now he has maximised external chatter with a withering denunciation of the prime minister and chancellor. In his resignation letter, Mr Healey said that Sir Keir Starmer was “unable” and the Treasury “unwilling” to provide the budget needed to protect the UK – forcing him to make decisions that increased the risk to personnel and could make the country less safe. Having spent years rebuilding Labour’s credibility on national security, he appears to be demolishing it, weeks before Sir Keir faces a Nato summit. Doubtless he feels the damage was done by the repeated failure to publish the defence investment plan (DIP) – originally due last autumn – or match the armed forces’ expectations.

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.

Long-abandoned formats such as cassettes and VHS tapes are finding new life as consumers seek a digital detox

Ten years after the last video recorder manufacturer ceased production, the first straight-to-video movie for two decades – This Is How the World Ends – was released this month. The resurgence of vinyl began long ago; sales are at their highest level for over 30 years. But record buyers enthuse about the warmth of their sound and the generous visual expanse of album covers. In contrast, the new movie is shot in HD; the director acknowledges that those watching it on video will see a cropped, fuzzier image. The point of the exercise – beyond creating a buzz – lies not in the inherent qualities of VHS, but the effect of its rarity on the viewer.

When everything is available in high definition with one swipe of your screen, cumbersome physical formats that must be hunted down appear both nostalgically inviting and strikingly fresh. Last year, Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl was released in multiple physical formats, including cassette and CD – technically digital, but also enjoying a revival thanks to its retro feel. The title track of her previous album, The Tortured Poets Department, mocked a lover’s attachment to his typewriter, notoriously favoured by hipsters.

We place too little emphasis on individual failures and instead extrapolate perceived organisational issues, says a reader

As a serving police officer, I found it dispiriting, if entirely predictable, to read the way in which the awful murder of Henry Nowak was hijacked as evidence of “two-tier policing” and anti-white racism (What to do as murder is exploited to spread lies about race and privilege? Stand firm – fight back, 8 June).

On watching the body-worn video, I saw the terrible consequences of a lack of professionalism and compassion meeting difficult and confusing circumstances, rather than the legacy of diversity training or wokeness.

Stephen Pound says local authorities had to sell off housing stock but were not allowed to spend the proceeds on replacing the lost homes

Your report (Ministers could ban London councils ‘dumping’ homeless families miles away, 9 June) almost made me weep, just like I did when, as chair of housing at Ealing council in the early 1990s, I was challenged to go to Slough station at 6.30am to see 30 children in Ealing school uniforms trying to maintain a continuation of education while being housed around 15 miles from the home they’d known.

The sheer cruelty of a government that forced councils to sell off their housing stock at a huge discount, allowed them to keep only half of the proceeds and prevented them from spending even that on replacing the lost secure homes is up there in the hierarchy of horror that also saw our gas, water and electricity flogged off to spivs and distant hedge funds.

Paul Brannen extols the benefits of commercial forestry, while Dr Andrew Cameron warns of Britain ‘offshoring’ its timbers supplies, and Jane Gifford calls on the Scottish government to review its forestry policy

Last week you published a well-balanced piece on the success story that is Kielder Forest (How England’s largest forest went from commodity to conservation haven, 2 June). At the heart of this achievement has been learning from the planting mistakes of the 1970s. Today Kielder is successful both as a commercial forest, producing 25% of England’s homegrown timber, and in its biodiversity – providing habitat for red squirrels, voles and ospreys, for example.

It was therefore disappointing to read your article on commercial forests this week (Tax-break trees: how woodland became a store of wealth for the rich, 7 June). Disappointing because it contained an unchallenged and outdated trope from Camilla Fowler, chair of the Lilliesleaf, Ashkirk and Midlem community council, who stated: “This kind of forestry scars the landscape and replaces it with monocultural, dark trees that harms our biodiversity.”

Ian Abbott says the principle of inclusion for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities will remain illusory as long as private providers are in control. Plus Sarah Lane and Robin Davies on the need for special Send schools

I will always regard John Harris highly, persuaded by his convictions for improving provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send), but I cannot agree with his conclusions this time (Labour doesn’t seem to like Send schools for kids like mine – but here’s what we’ll lose if these precious places are forgotten, 7 June).

I worked in a local authority Send service during the 2014 reforms and beyond, seeing children funnelled towards private provision, which was sold to parents on a governmental stance of “state poor, private better”. Providers came and went, sometimes offering little-scrutinised quality or outcomes or specialism. And this alongside rising fees as a spurious proxy for quality. Large companies now work towards monopolisation, and Send funding, inadequate then and now, has gravitated in that direction since.

• Discover and buy more of Ben’s cartoons here

• Order your own print of this cartoon from the Guardian Print Shop

• ‘I’ve given it my all in every match,’ says Black Caps legend

• He captained World Test Championship winners in 2021

The former New Zealand captain Kane Williamson will play no further part in the Test series against England after retiring from all international cricket with immediate effect.

Williamson brings an end to a 16-year career marked by numerous accolades and by captaining his side to the title in the inaugural World Test Championship in 2021.

• Jackett spent whole playing career with Watford

• He managed seven clubs including Millwall and Wolves

The former Watford and Wales player Kenny Jackett, who managed clubs including Wolves, Millwall and Swansea, has died aged 64.

Jackett won 31 Wales caps during a playing career spent entirely with Watford, his local club, before starting his managerial career with the Hornets in 1996. He took charge of more than 900 games across spells with seven clubs, most recently Leyton Orient but also including Portsmouth, Millwall and Swansea.

Less than a decade ago, the British GP was on the brink of disappearing but this July it will break the record for the biggest ever with 570,000 through the gates

The scale of change at the British Grand Prix in recent years will be writ large come July when the meeting is poised to become the biggest in Formula One history.

This year’s race is expected to sell out its new capacity of 570,000 over four days, which will be a record-breaking 50,000 increase on the previous highest attendance of 520,000 at the Australian GP in 1995. Only Wimbledon, across two weeks, will boast more numbers in the UK summer with Silverstone the largest event on F1’s calendar.

• Report cites alleged contact with employee

• Club says independent probe led to action

• Mickelson spokesperson: matter resolved

Phil Mickelson has reportedly had his membership cancelled at a San Diego golf club following alleged “inappropriate contact” with a female employee.

Golf Digest first reported that Mickelson has had his membership terminated at The Farms following an alleged incident before he played there in the spring. The report, citing multiple sources, said the employee accused the 55-year-old of “nonconsensual and inappropriate physical contact” towards her before a game of golf. Mickelson is said to have been challenged on the incident mid-round and duly left the property.

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Updates from the latest round of Championship matches
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Delays at Grace Road, Trent Bridge and Blackpool, but all up and running otherwise.

Shoaib Bashir though is playing for Derbyshire up at CLS, and ex Derbyshire bowler Duanne Olivier for Durham, but no sign yet of Ben Stokes.

In theory the hosts have an easy route to the last four, but even a weakened Australia team are still, well, Australia

Just after midday on Sunday the England captain, Nat Sciver-Brunt, smashed the India captain, Harmanpreet Kaur, for six off Waterloo Bridge, straight into the Thames. The scratch-match, which involved all 12 competing captains, was part of a chaotic, eye-catching event to launch the Women’s T20 World Cup. Also involved were a red London bus, the International Cricket Council chairman, Jay Shah, and a day-long takeover of one of London’s busiest thoroughfares. A Women’s World Cup has never been this big, this important or this annoying for black cab drivers.

The England and Wales Cricket Board has poured a lot of resources into trying to achieve its stated goal of making this tournament “a movement, not a moment”. Last week Sciver-Brunt, Lauren Bell and Sophia Dunkley became the first cricketers to appear on a Piccadilly Circus billboard. The entire West End cast of Wicked are being transplanted to Birmingham on Friday evening, to perform the musical’s biggest hits as part of the tournament’s opening ceremony.

• 63-year-old leaves Benfica to move back to the Bernabéu

• Marco Silva agrees deal to replace him at Portuguese club

José Mourinho’s blockbuster return as Real Madrid manager has been confirmed. The 63-year-old, who was in the dugout at the Bernabéu from 2010 until 2013, joins the 15-times European champions from Benfica on a three-year contract.

Mourinho’s appointment comes after a torrid season at Real Madrid, with Xabi Alonso sacked in January amid player unrest. Álvaro Arbeloa came in as interim head coach, but failed to turn around the campaign as Real exited the Champions League to Bayern Munich at the quarter-final stage and Barcelona cantered to the La Liga title. Disharmony within the squad also continued, with Fede Valverde taken to hospital to have stitches after a confrontation with his teammate Aurélien Tchouaméni.

The world No 1’s setback in Oslo and reduced participation coincides with the emergence of a new star

Magnus Carlsen, the world No 1, had his worst tournament result since 2015 last week when the 35-year-old ended up fourth of six in the $178,000 (£133,000) Norway Chess event at Oslo, losing four games out of 10.

There were reasons for his disappointing showing. Previous editions of the event were in distant Stavanger, far from the hometown pressures of Oslo, while Carlsen is the father of a baby son and he arrived at several games seemingly unprepared.

Beloved royal, said to have embodied ‘everything good in Thailand’, died in hospital after nearly four years in coma

At King Chulalongkorn Memorial hospital in Bangkok, mourners dressed in black sat side by side, their eyes pink from crying for the woman whose portraits they cradled in their laps.

Some images were framed in gold, others in plastic sleeves, charting the life of Thailand’s Princess Bajrakitiyabha from a rosy-cheeked baby to a young royal in red military dress replete with shining badges and ceremonial sword. Later photos showed her posing with one of the dogs she was out training in 2022 when she became gravely ill with heart problems.

More women are rejecting state pressure over their reproductive choices, amid the devastating legacy of the one-child policy

Ever since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, women’s bodies have been the business of the state. In the 1950s, labour for state-controlled work units was organised according to women’s menstrual cycles. Then for decades, there was the one-child policy.

Across vast swathes of the country the policy was enforced with a brutal severity. As well as fines for additional children, women were forced to have abortions and subjected to forced sterilisations.

Desperate US parents pay up to $20,000 a session for a procedure scientists say could be bogus

Autistic children as young as 18 months old are being injected with human stem cells derived from umbilical cords in unapproved, unproven and potentially harmful “treatments” that scientists warn are proliferating across the US under the active encouragement of the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Clinics in Florida, Texas and other states are selling what they bill as “regenerative medicine” to families with autistic children who have intensive care needs. Parents who have taken their children through the process talked to the Guardian about their hopes and fears for a therapy that appears to be gaining ground in the US.

Relatives of those killed on flight AI171 are still struggling to obtain answers about what happened

When Sagar Patel’s mother boarded Air India flight AI171 on 12 June last year, she called her son as she always did before takeoff. The flight was due to leave Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel airport in Ahmedabad, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, and was destined for Gatwick.

“We always had a little traditional thing,” said Patel, a business manager from London. “Once she got on the flight, she would sit down and call me. She’d tell me: ‘Yep, I’m on the flight. See you later.’”

Arrest of Min Zin, who writes about Myanmar and Chinese foreign policy, comes just month after Trump visit to Beijing

China has arrested a US scholar who writes about Myanmar and Chinese foreign policy on suspicion of spying.

Min Zin was suspected of “engaging in espionage activities that endanger China’s national security,” China’s ministry of foreign affairs spokesperson, Lin Jian, said on Friday.

In this week’s newsletter: Joining a research team on the Darwin and Wolf Islands off the Ecuadorian coast revealed how critically endangered species are reacting to their rapidly changing ocean environment

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Darwin and Wolf Islands in the Galápagos archipelago are the kinds of places scuba divers and marine biologists dream of visiting, myself included. I even wrote a children’s book imagining a team of scientists exploring the underwater wonders of the Galápagos islands on a beautiful sailing ship.

That’s why I’m still pinching myself that earlier this year I got to take part in a real expedition to Darwin and Wolf.

‘Super-rich’s assets cause outsized amount of climate harm’

‘An equal and habitable world is possible’: academics set out sweeping vision for planetary survival

‘This may be our last chance’: rising sea levels threaten Kiribati’s World Cup dream | The Hotspot

With matches in 16 cities across the US, Mexico and Canada, players and fans face an array of weather-related challenges

With the 2026 World Cup now under way, all 48 teams face a common opposition: summer weather across North America. Matches will be played in 16 cities, from southern Mexico to Canada, with a range of weather risks possible at each venue.

Thunderstorms disrupted play before the tournament had even begun. England’s warm-up against Costa Rica in Orlando was delayed by about an hour after storms brought lightning and heavy rain that waterlogged the pitch. Safety regulations at US venues mean play is suspended when lightning is recorded within roughly 8 miles of a stadium, not resuming until 30 minutes after the last strike.

More than 20,000 votes cast in Butterfly Conservation’s poll of 60 native species to find nation’s favourite for first time

The votes are in on Britain’s favourite butterfly, and it is one of the most ubiquitous yet spectacular backyard beauties that has flown to victory.

With its lavender, yellow and maroon eye spots and luscious rusty red and black colouration, the peacock butterfly is both beautiful and commonplace, flying throughout spring, summer and autumn in all corners of the British Isles.

Imperial College scientists analysed health records before and after introduction of air pollution reduction zones

Low emission and clean air zones attract controversy whenever they are proposed, but there is growing evidence that they work in improving air quality. The Bradford zone was followed by a reduction of about 25% in GP visits for heart and breathing problems and survey data shows that the central London zone was followed by a reduction in the likelihood of a person taking sick leave.

Now analysis of health records has found emergency admissions to hospital reduced after the introduction of the T-charge and ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) in central London.

One-off programme to begin in July after recent MenB outbreaks in Kent, Dorset and Berkshire killed three people

Teenagers in their final school year and young people starting university will be offered two doses of a vaccine to protect them against meningitis B, the government has announced.

The one-off vaccination programme, which will begin in late July, comes after an unprecedented outbreak of meningitis B in Kent earlier this year along with clusters of cases in Dorset and Berkshire that, together, led to the deaths of three young people.

Report says confidence among 16- to 21-year-olds has fallen sharply as they doubt hard work will be rewarded

Young people in England are increasingly “losing faith in their futures” according to a report, as record numbers fear long-term unemployment.

Analysing survey data, including from the Office for National Statistics, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said 16- to 21-year-olds were less confident about being successful than a decade ago.

Data published for the first time recorded 2,241 daily cases of A&E corridor care, with 699 patients also treated in other inappropriate settings

Almost 3,000 patients a day in England are receiving care in hospital corridors due to an unavailability of beds in A&E units across the country, according to official figures.

Corridor care occurs when a patient receives treatment in a setting that is clinically inappropriate and is deemed to be undignified and unsafe.

Suspect detained under Mental Health Act, as police confirm counter-terrorism unit is leading investigation

A 14-year-old girl has been charged in connection with three stabbings at a school in north Manchester, police said.

The girl was charged with three charges of attempted murder and two charges of possessing a bladed article on school premises over the incident on Tuesday.

UN agency head warns of ‘major threat’ as global testing and treatment falls

A funding crisis and increasing repression of human rights are making the resurgence of an HIV epidemic more likely, the international agency tackling Aids has warned.

Winnie Byanyima, head of UNAids, said: “It’s the biggest disruption since the global HIV response was put together and it poses a major threat to the progress we have had.”

Former street seller celebrates newfound rights after debacle in claiming €500,000 scratchcard prize while undocumented

A Nigerian man who won €500,000 in an Italian lottery – but was barred from collecting his windfall because he was undocumented – said the hardship of his more than decade-long immigration journey had been eased after he was finally granted a residency permit.

“I’ve been praying for this moment ever since I arrived in Italy,” said Imagbe Ehizomwengie, 36. “It’s a huge relief. You might think it’s incredible, but receiving the permit means more to me than winning the money. I want to work and contribute to society.”

Law due to expire at midnight tonight following unhappiness over Trump’s pick for intelligence chief

Donald Trump’s hand-picked board at the Kennedy Center is mounting a last-minute effort to keep his name on the facade of the performing arts facility before a court-ordered deadline to remove it by Friday.

The board voted on Thursday to seek a stay of US district judge Christopher Cooper’s 29 May ruling that said Trump’s name was illegally added to the Kennedy Center, according to a person familiar with the move who requested anonymity to discuss a private meeting.

A luxury resort backed by the US president’s family may be built on a wildlife-rich nature reserve in one of Europe’s poorest nations

If the real estate dreams of a billionaire political family come true, an island in one of Europe’s poorest countries will become a luxury hotel complex, sweeping up stretches of the wildlife-rich nature reserve that sits across the water.

No public consultation has taken place, but there are signs the idea is on the way to becoming reality. Albania has been rocked by nearly two weeks of fierce protests after fences and heavy machinery came to a sensitive wetland and preparatory work began on the tourism vision of Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner.

High street bank to buy UK business from US fintech company Acorns as it targets young people

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Barclays is to buy an app designed to help children understand and manage their money, as it targets young people in affluent families.

The high street bank has agreed to buy the UK business of GoHenry, which provides children with personalised debit cards carrying their name, from the US fintech company Acorns, which will retain GoHenry’s US branch.

GDP hit by higher energy prices caused by Middle East conflict, after 0.3% rise in March

The UK economy contracted by 0.1% in April as the Iran war began to take its toll on growth, official figures show.

As energy prices have risen as a result of the conflict, after Iran closed off the strait of Hormuz – a vital shipping route for global trade – the UK’s strong expansion in the first quarter slid into reverse.

Gambling business, which also owns Betfair, to focus on New York in latest high-profile blow to UK stock market

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The gambling group that owns Paddy Power and Betfair is to scrap its listing on the London Stock Exchange, in another blow for the UK’s shrinking stock market.

Flutter Entertainment, the world’s largest online betting company, told investors that it would cancel its London shares on 3 August, blaming low levels of trading in the stock and high costs.

Forecast for this year downgraded to 2.5% and inflation expected to jump as a result of war in the Middle East

Global economic growth will slow to 2.5% this year as a result of the war in the Middle East – the weakest since the Covid pandemic – as inflation and borrowing costs rise, the World Bank has warned.

The Washington-based development bank has downgraded growth forecasts for two-thirds of countries in its half-yearly Global Economic Prospects report. The bank estimated that global growth was 2.7% in 2025.

Anish Kapoor gets a blockbuster showing, Barbara Hepworth’s pioneering use of colour is showcased and we look back at our beloved David Hockney – all in your weekly dispatch

Anish Kapoor
The sublime is unleashed in a blockbuster spectacle by this modern master of colour, space and mystery.
• Hayward Gallery, London, from 16 June to 18 October

The US author, film-maker and Zen Buddhist priest on smart young girls, the difference between irony and cynicism, and working her way through 13 volumes of Chekhov

My earliest reading memory
I was reading – or pretending to read – before my brain could encode memories, so probably around three or four? I “read” Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd, but that was mostly pictures.

My favourite book growing up
Charlotte’s Web by EB White. For years, I remembered it as a story about a little girl named Fern who saved her pet pig, Wilbur, but it’s not. It’s a story about a writer named Charlotte, who happens to be a spider, who spins words into her web that save Wilbur from slaughter. It’s about the power of language to save lives. Looking back at the books I’ve written, I can see now that all of them are an attempt to recreate Charlotte’s Web. It’s the perfect book.

A study in obsession and delusion explores the origin of the scandal. Plus: can Dolly Parton unite the US? Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Documentaries
The grainy 1947 footage that purports to show the body of an alien being dissected near a crash site in Roswell, New Mexico, has now been viewed by an estimated 1 billion people. But where did it come from? This hugely entertaining three-part series tracks down the parade of eccentrics behind its release in 1995 and works as a study of obsession and mass delusion. Phil Harrison

Zazie Beetz kicks ass in a relentlessly gory horror thriller, while Paul Mescal will absolutely break your heart. Plus: Wonka!

Coming from a director whose first feature was Why Don’t You Just Die!, the title of this rampantly bloody, defiantly silly horror caper suggests Kirill Sokolov has a bit of a one-track mind. An unholy stew of Rosemary’s Baby and the zaniest bits of The Evil Dead, the film follows Asia (a kickass Zazie Beetz) as she visits exclusive New York apartment block the Virgil in search of her younger sister, Maria (Myha’la), who is a maid there. But she realises there is something very wrong with the place, particularly after the residents try to kill her. The undead comic action comes thick and fast (the roaming eyeball is a standout), while Patricia Arquette’s accent is a thing of mystery and wonder all by itself.
Saturday 13 June, 9.30am, 6.15pm, Sky Cinema Premiere/HBO Max

This Polish drama is beautifully shot, darkly funny and full of social commentary about the difficulty of being a gay father in Poland. Even the toddler seems like an accomplished actor

Filip Raczyński (Ignacy Liss) is really enjoying his late 20s. We meet him on a modelling assignment, this vocation having been handed to him by his sparkling eyes and soft jawline, good looks he accentuates with a biker jacket and bleached hair. He has vodka and Diet Coke for breakfast and a bump of powder in an Uber on the way to his next job. At night we follow him through the backrooms of a club, until he finds one where the naked men are almost as beautiful as he is. He loses himself in them and worries about nothing.

It’s less fun to be in Filip’s immediate social orbit. His agent’s nervy assistant, Olek (Kamil Studnicki), has to cover for Filip’s perpetual lateness and, on the night after the club odyssey, is obliged to look after his badly behaved dog, because Filip has only just rescued it from a drug dealer who resorted to dognapping to force him to pay moneys owed. Filip’s decision to bring four of the guys from the club home with him, meanwhile, goes down poorly with his sister Anka (Sylwia Boroń), the single mum of a one-year-old girl, Tosia. Filip is crashing at their flat, and he’s not keeping to his promise to help with the bins and laundry.

Another weirdly gripping and highly improbable conspiracy thriller from Harlan Coben. Plus, Colin Farrell returns as the alien pretending to be a human private investigator

Harlan Coben is an admirably prolific writer, though it probably helps an author’s output if they have a relaxed attitude to quality control. This adaptation of his 2023 thriller is another daft, formulaic, weirdly gripping case in point. Sam Worthington stars as David Burroughs, imprisoned for life for murdering his infant son. But he didn’t do it. Could he be the victim of a conspiracy of impossibly vast dimensions? Of course! When David receives a visit from his sister-in-law, and washed-up investigative journalist, Rachel (Severance’s Britt Lower) with evidence that his son might still be alive, Burroughs must escape from prison and set off on a Fugitive-style justice mission.
Netflix, from Thursday 18 June

(Pussy Riot)
On a disappointing record helmed by co-founder Nadya Tolokonnikova, corny guitars and generically moody synths undermine the activist group’s political acuity

Great music rarely makes for great activism, and the reverse is true on Pussy Riot’s official debut album. A scattergun mix of icy electronics, pumping EDM and whispered rap, CYKA (“bitch” in Russian) follows a decade of musical protest performances from the activist collective. Made by co-founder Nadya Tolokonnikova (she and Maria Alyokhina were imprisoned in separate penal colonies between 2012 and 2013), CYKA’s powerful point of view is diluted by weak delivery.

Lead single Candy Dopamine, with metal band Avenged Sevenfold, disguises its critique of big pharma with cutesy lyrics, corny electric guitar and inconsequential key changes. Generically moody synths and cliched siren sounds run through much of the record, as does blunt-force EDM: Nothing to Lose is both a cluttered trance track, and about being hated by Russia’s “liberal intelligentsia” for supporting Ukraine.

(Broadside Hacks)
Named after a 19th-century relative, this sprawling group foreground folk’s rough edges, but are best in the emotional, less showy moments

Brown Wimpenny arrive with a name suggesting the softness of a twee indie band, before you discover it belonged to a fourth great-uncle of banjo player Seth Lockwood, who emigrated from a West Yorkshire farm to the 19th-century US. Then you hear the exploratory, hour-long debut album of this sprawling young collective, formed in Sunday sessions in Lockwood’s Manchester living room. A band happy to show their music’s muddy roots, these expansive eight tracks nonetheless pulse with ambition.

The album begins with a high-reaching medley, building from an atmospheric fiddle-led instrumental over a low cello drone. Dusty live production makes a feature of the music’s cracks and creaks, but when Lockwood’s athletic banjo takes the lead, it carries the rest of the group with arresting dynamism.

Beamish/Corbett/Whitehead/Havlat/ Irvine/Thomson/Ventris
(Delphian)
The British composer’s celebratory album is a family affair

Sally Beamish celebrates 70 years on planet Earth with an eclectic and profoundly personal album featuring friends and members of her talented musical family. At the centre of it all is Beamish herself, a musical shapeshifter, at home in classical, jazz or folk fiddle, performing on her own instrument, the viola.

It opens with April, a luminous chaconne for viola and accordion memorialising her friend, jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis Jr. Equally poignant is Gerropaedie for viola and harp, a Satie-inspired birthday gift for an elderly patron.

(Dirty Hit)
Aided by Jack Antonoff, Kim Gordon, Sampha and more, the cello-playing singer-songwriter’s abstracted yet tuneful second album is worth the seven year wait

Seven years separate the release of cello-playing singer-songwriter Kelsey Lu’s debut album, Blood, from its follow-up. Lu has suggested the long gap was an act of artistic rebellion against a music industry obsessed with providing a constant stream of new product – “tuning into my intuition, trusting myself and building a team to support that”, as they put it.

Perhaps they wanted to carve their own path after a cover version – of 10cc’s I’m Not in Love, used in HBO drama Euphoria – became their most successful song, or perhaps they simply didn’t have the time to make an album amid their plethora of other interests. They have scored two movies: the Bafta-winning Earth Mama and the Netflix documentary feature Daughters. They have collaborated with Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Yves Tumor, Mykki Blanco, Jamie xx, Boys Noize and visual artist Kevin Beasley and contributed a version of Manchild to a Neneh Cherry tribute compilation and more. They have been photographed by Nan Goldin for a Gucci campaign and staged a performance art piece at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. They have also appeared on stage with Debbie Harry, while dressed as Kermit the Frog, recreating the Blondie vocalist’s famed 1981 appearance on The Muppet Show.

Not With a Bang by Temi Oh; Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh; Atomic Coffin by Benedict Anning; The Unicorn Hunters by Katherine Arden; Bad Things Happen Here by Mark Morris

Not With a Bang by Temi Oh (Solstice, £20)
The four daughters of a doomsday prepper were trained what to do in an emergency: grab their bags and head for the well-stocked bunker he had built in the garden of their London home. But when a world-shattering event occurs, the family are dispersed, individually forced to weigh their best options for survival as they shelter in place or struggle through devastated, chaotic streets. The story could suit a disaster movie (the author also writes screenplays), but it’s the complex characterisations and conflicted relationships that make for a powerfully compelling read. The characters are shown from different perspectives, and are flawed, human and real. Perfectly paced, this is a suspenseful depiction of survival amid civilisational collapse.

A noble, if ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to argue that Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope and John Gay spending a few weeks in 1726 together was a momentous turning point in each man’s career

In 1726 Jonathan Swift, dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, crossed the Irish sea with the manuscript of Gulliver’s Travels in his luggage. Beneath the child-friendly chatter about a sailor marooned on an island full of tiny Lilliputians, the book was a scabrous satire on the corruption of public life under the politically ascendant Whigs, whom Swift regarded as a pack of moral pygmies.

Swift’s ultimate destination, though, was not Whitehall but rather the idyllic Twickenham – “Twitnam”, as they knew it – home of his old friend, the poet Alexander Pope. Here he intended to work out a plan for anonymous publication of his sulphurous masterpiece, one that would not land him in legal trouble. In Pope he could be sure of a sympathetic co‑conspirator. Both men were members of the Scriblerus Club, an unofficial association of dissident wits who nonetheless set great store by literary collaboration. Pope was equally disaffected with the state of the nation, although his loathing was directed towards the philistine Hanoverians, who had arrived from Germany in 1714 to take up the British throne. Pope, whose Catholicism disqualified him from royal patronage, made a big point of not having to scramble for favours from the court. Instead, he emphasised the superiority of his life of suburban independence on the banks of the Thames.

The stuck narrator records the minutiae of the forest and her harrowing life in a purposeful novel that demands a slow read but doesn’t always reward it

A large branch falls to the forest floor one morning. Moments later, a woman named Nellika returns to consciousness. “Belly-down, cheek jammed against dirt, trunks horizontal, the track’s edge a disorienting vertical. She had opened her eyes to the world on its side.” The branch struck her across the back, and now she is trapped, in great pain. “How could it be a tree that had done this to her?” she wonders.

This event inaugurates the two timelines of Ilka Tampke’s new novel, How to Love the World. The first is the slow tick of the clock; subheadings record the time as it passes, with the tension of the novel achieved through the slow unfurling of this day. Will Nellika be able somehow to free herself? Will a prince appear? The novel is narrated in a very intimate third person, so there are no hints to the reader whether or not this is a survivor’s tale. I won’t puncture that suspense here.

There are some advantages to being an older debutant, including knowing what it’s like to fail and not having your new novel overshadowed by early literary promise

Recently I was at a film event where I was introduced to a big producer by a very nice actor. The actor said, “this is Patrick, he has a debut novel coming out soon.”

The producer looked me up and down and said, “You took your time.”

If you fancy roaring around Japan’s open roads, scaling impossible mountains and playing with post-apocalyptic Pokémon, this year’s highlights mean you can do so without leaving your chair

PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox, Nintendo Switch; Vertigo Games
This clever update captures the 1990s magic of the original… including some of the technical issues

The 90s were a gold rush for adventure games. LucasArts kicked off the decade with its legendarily irreverent Monkey Island games. Then, Cyan Worlds materialised to deliver a series of atmospheric and boundary-pushing odysseys with Myst and Riven. Nestled between these primary genre texts is The 7th Guest, a lesser-known but still notorious adventure that earned plaudits for its unique FMV visual style, blending live-action filmed footage with pre-rendered 3D backgrounds. It was remade originally for VR, and now has been reconfigured into something playable on PC and consoles, its digital cobwebs cleared and tricky puzzles tinkered with for a fresh (or nostalgic) audience.

We are dropped into the ectoplasmic shoes of an amnesiac apparition, arriving at the gloomy haunted home of a toy-maker. Armed with a time-bending lantern and a Ouija board-shaped map, your job is to solve a historical whodunnit by literally illuminating events from the past. It’s a melodramatic, surprisingly campy adventure that effectively evokes the overzealous CD-Rom horror of its original era.

From horror galore to Chinese action games, the key trends, trailers and surprises from Summer Game Fest’s many, many hours of streams and broadcasts

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Did you spend hours of your weekend watching a relentless series of video game adverts? No? I don’t blame you – Summer Game Fest, the collection of livestreams that has arisen in place of the giant annual E3 video game expo in Los Angeles, is extremely overwhelming. There are the bigger, longer shows: the PlayStation and Xbox streams, the main SGF show hosted by Geoff Keighley and Lucy James, Future’s duet of the Future Games Show and the PC Gaming Show. Each show is two hours long. Then there are all the indie showcases: cosy games, women-led games, Black voices in gaming, Day of the Devs. Between them, they show off hundreds of games that might pique your interest.

I picked out exactly 34 highlights here: the biggest news, the most interesting-looking smaller games. But from the barrage of trailers I was also able to discern some trends. Here’s what we can learn.

Hundreds of video games were shown at June’s annual bonanza. After watching more than 15 hours of showcases, our video games editor picks the highlights

The sequel to a revered 2014 horror game from British developer Creative Assembly: this time you must evade the xenomorph on the surface of a storm-ravaged colony world.

Citizens theatre, Glasgow
The novel is adapted with equal parts wit and horror to capture the depravity of a notorious crime in Glasgow

On the bare brick wall backing Jen McGinley’s set – half courtroom, half saloon – there is a faded poster of The Searchers, John Ford’s 1956 western. The whisky-swilling hard men who haunt the clubs and dives of The Long Drop may well see themselves as cowboys. They are double dealers and grandstanders, full of bluff and bluster; sometimes cosplay baddies, acting as tough as John Wayne; other times, they are the real thing, meting out beatings and sociopathic violence.

But this is not Monument Valley. Rather, it is the same Gorbals streets outside the theatre where, in a different time, one of Glasgow’s most notorious crimes played out. Adapted with equal parts wit and horror by Linda McLean from the true-life crime novel by Denise Mina, it is the unravelling story of a triple murder.

Sadler’s Wells, London
The company’s centenary celebration isn’t about nostalgia – this occasionally thrilling triple bill of recent creations showcases some excellent dancers

Britain’s oldest dance company is celebrating its 100th anniversary but this celebratory tour is decidedly no exercise in nostalgia. As the title, This is Rambert, makes clear, it’s a mission statement, a manifesto, and all about the present moment.

So no harking back to the company’s beginnings in the early years of British ballet, or the deliberate shift into modern dance in the 1960s. The Rambert brand has gone through some chameleonic changes across the last century, settling for a while into a pattern of reputable, reliable, something-for-everyone shows. Current artistic director Benoit Swan Pouffer wants to shake things up, to prove there’s nothing geriatric about this centenarian.

O2 Apollo Manchester
The Messy hitmaker is back after taking time away from live performance, and this charming, relatable set shows why she is such a gen Z icon

The rollercoaster ride towards international pop stardom seldom runs smooth, but few rising stars have been flung through its loops and freefalls as publicly as south London singer-songwriter Lola Young. In 2024, gen Z anthem Messy became her breakthrough moment, but social media scrutiny surrounding her open struggles with addiction and a stage collapse in New York last year brought live performances to a halt.

When the 25-year-old musician strolls on stage in a baggy black hoodie, she seems relieved to be here. Casual though the look may be, she is worshipped as a Y2K style guru, as evidenced by the young crowd: a blur of bleached mullets and denim jorts cry every word of her single Sad Sob Story!.

Burgh House, London
If you thought that Constable was all rainbows and sunshine, some mezzotints he commissioned show intriguing new depths

John Constable never left England. So much of how he painted and thought about the world can be explained by this basic fact. In 1803, aged 26, he went on a trip along the Kent coast – the closest he would get to going abroad – with the enthusiasm of a man stepping foot for the first time in the new world. “I saw all sorts of weather”, he wrote. “Some the most delightful, and some as melancholy.”

This trip was an exception. For most of his life he moved between three points: Suffolk, Hampstead and Brighton. While his great rival JMW Turner, one year his senior, travelled across France and Italy, Constable took pleasure in being parochial. “I am sure you will laugh”, he told his wife, Maria, but “I have found another very promising subject at Flatford Mill”.

With beloved stars’ personal items increasingly up for grabs after they die, a new generation of fans are bidding on everything from bowler hats to dog bowls

From Diane Keaton’s bowler hats and polka dot scarfs, to Gene Hackman’s used paint brushes, to Terence Stamp’s love letters from Jean Shrimpton and even Matthew Perry’s black leather wallet (his credit cards and AAA membership card still inside), fans are being offered – at a price – increasingly personal items from the estates of dead celebrities.

The growing trend for auctions of deceased famous people’s personal items – which has boomed ever since the hugely popular Marilyn Monroe estate sale in 1999 – has even attracted its own portmanteau: “deleb” as in dead celebrity.

Evans’s The Correspondent and the BBC journalist’s ‘people’s history’ of modern Afghanistan, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, win £30,000 prizes

Debut novelist Virginia Evans has won this year’s Women’s prize for fiction, while the BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet took home the nonfiction award, also for her debut.

Evans’s The Correspondent and Doucet’s The Finest Hotel in Kabul were announced as the winners at a ceremony in central London on Thursday evening, with each author awarded £30,000.

Responding to an incident in which she was verbally abused, the actor said that ‘evil forces are rising everywhere’, as well as expressing support for MobLand co-star Tom Hardy

Helen Mirren has commented on being called an “evil Zionist bitch” while being harassed in the street in London, saying she was “attacked by mistake by a man who was maybe a little over passionate or maybe mentally not quite stable”.

Footage circulated last month of an incident, believed to have taken place last year, while Mirren was walking with her husband, film-maker Taylor Hackford. They were approached and filmed by an unidentified person, who commented on Mirren’s support of Israel and then launched a volley of abuse at her.

Film-maker says he approached producer ‘Cubby’ Broccoli after Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind were hits, but was knocked back both times

Steven Spielberg said that he was turned down twice by the producers of the James Bond movies – and now they couldn’t afford him.

Spielberg was speaking to The Rest Is Entertainment podcast and was asked if he had any “regrets” about not directing a 007 movie. Spielberg said that he had approached Albert “Cubby” Broccoli, the legendary Bond producer who worked on every “official” Bond film between Dr No in 1962 and License to Kill in 1989, after Spielberg’s 1975 shark thriller Jaws became a major hit, but was turned down. Spielberg said: “I’d always wanted to make a James Bond film from the day I saw Dr No. So I called Cubby Broccoli after Jaws and I volunteered. I said, if you need a director, I would love to direct one. And he said, no. And he moved on.”

Maturity has little to do with watching things you don’t want to, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. But it might help to be curious about why you feel differently from your peers

• Read more Leading questions

I’m 17, and feel like a sore thumb among my peers due to my aversion to almost everything stereotypically adult. I don’t want to consume drugs or alcohol, I’ve never been in a relationship and, in particular, I’m very sensitive to graphic content.

Earlier this year, I tried to warm myself up to several films featuring either explicit violence or sex, but a part of me felt uncomfortable beyond what was probably intended by the film-makers. The entire time, it felt as if I was pushing down my real self. After consuming various media, I quit the process of numbing myself, retreating back to only films and television with “moderate” or “mild” classification ratings.

About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds are not in employment, education or training – and the obstacles they face are bigger than ever. Those unemployed for a year or more explain how they are coping

Thomas doesn’t leave the house much. Apart from walking his dog, the only other excursion the 24-year-old regularly makes is a “humiliating” weekly trip to Iceland, where he stocks up on seven £1 frozen meals, usually an assortment of bland curries with the occasional garishly sweet, takeaway-style Chinese meal. “You’re going in and buying seven and the cashier is 100% thinking: oh, that’s one a day,” he says.

Half the time, he doesn’t bother eating them. “You just sit there and go: I don’t want it again. I’ve had it for two days on the trot.”

Our writer grilled halloumi, veggies and spatchcock chicken to find the best barbecues, from crowd-pleasing all-rounders to models that can smoke, roast and more

• The best (and worst) chef’s knives – tested

Salmon don’t know that they swim upstream. Some ancient instinct impels them; they don’t think about it any more than trees think about growing. You are a British person of a certain age and bearing. You are buying a barbecue.

But this half-century-old compulsion often ends before it starts. Few products are marketed with as much machismo as BBQs, and the jargon makes them surprisingly tricky to buy. While we all enjoy the unintended high camp of a snap-jet ignition, it’s unclear if such features are essentials or optional extras. Add in the tedious difference between planchas and kamados, and you can easily spend hundreds of pounds on what is essentially a hot metal box.

Best BBQ overall:
Weber Bar-B-Kettle charcoal barbecue

Best budget BBQ:
Argos Home drum charcoal BBQ with cover and utensils

Whether it’s Harry Styles’s retro tailoring, CMAT’s joyful mash-ups or Metallica’s silver tones, here’s how to nail concert dressing – without looking like a tribute act

• Jess Cartner-Morley’s June style essentials

Over the past few years, dressing to see your favourite artists live has moved on from just throwing on a band tee and calling it a day. With ticket prices higher than ever, concerts are special events; as a result, there’s been a noticeable shift towards dressing up. Fans are embracing intricate looks inspired by the live shows, songs, albums and even obscure references only the most hardcore listeners would understand. With this, the question of “what to wear” has never felt more important.

The good news? You don’t need to turn up in a full costume to feel part of that experience. There are subtle ways you can channel your favourite artist’s aesthetic while still wearing something that works beyond the venue doors. Here’s how.

Whether it’s water-saving showerheads or natural sponges, these easy swaps cut waste and make your bathroom a little kinder to the planet

• The best refillable beauty products for a sustainable routine

As a sustainability journalist, I’ve often despaired at how unsustainable our bathrooms are – from water use to plastic bottles to chemical-heavy cleaners. However, there are ways to reduce their carbon footprint. As water becomes increasingly precious, hacks for our loos that cap its usage are useful, as are smart showerheads that cut down on water, particularly as baths these days feel like a guilty indulgence.

Swap plastic-packaged and chemical-loaded products, such as bleach and multipurpose sprays, for eco-friendly ones, and buy secondhand good-as-new fixtures. From bamboo loo roll to solid shampoo bars, here are my tips for a more planet-friendly bathroom.

Our writer found a surprisingly effective way to cut down his smartphone use. Plus, what to eat while watching the World Cup – inspired by all 48 teams

• Don’t get the Filter delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

I recently learned through Apple’s Screen Time app that I was spending about eight hours a week on my phone browsing Reddit and Instagram. That’s 17.3 days a year spent consuming entertaining but ultimately pointless fluff. So my piece looking for solutions for phone addicts was highly personal.

The warning signs are if your phone is the first thing you look at in the morning and the last thing you look at in bed, says Prof Marcantonio Spada, emeritus professor of addictive behaviours and mental health at London South Bank University and chief clinical officer at Onebright, who I spoke to for my article.

Its nutty, zesty flavour combination makes this single-layer cake an absolute winner for everyday eating

A good snacking cake earns its place not through grandeur, but reliability. It sits patiently on the counter, improves with a day’s rest and can be sliced into at odd hours: with coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon or something stronger during a tense World Cup match. This lemon and pistachio version is especially companionable: tender, bright and just sharp enough to keep things lively.

Savour the glorious sound of mussels popping open and finish cooking the pasta in the shellfish liquor really to ramp up the flavour

If you put your ear close (but not too close) to a covered pan full of mussels, olive oil, garlic and a bit of white wine (not too much) over a lively heat, you will hear the sound – a cross between a crack, or that of a rip and an unzipping – of the mussels opening. To begin with, it’s intermittent, so you lift and look under the lid to reassure yourself that they are indeed starting to open … But there are only a few, so the lid goes back on. You shake the pan until, like popcorn, the mussels are off – crack, rip, unzip – at which point, get the lid off and the mussels out, so you can admire the liquor. Taste to see how salty it is and measure how much you have: you want about 200ml, so take some out, reduce or add water to get the proportions and taste to your liking.

Spaghetti (or linguine) with mussels is a recipe that benefits from finishing the cooking of the pasta in the sauce, which is also a great technique to know generally, because it can be applied to countless pasta recipes. The benefits of finishing the cooking in the sauce (or broth) are: deep flavour (because the pasta absorbs and gets completely coated in the sauce), shine and a slightly thickened sauce, thanks to the starch that seeps from the pasta and combines with the fat.

New Farm Bill places caps on non-US foods; nutritionists say it restricts availability of healthy meals for kids

School nutrition workers and advocates have “lots of concerns about bananas”, said Erin Ogden, policy associate for federal child nutrition programs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

Bananas are nutrient-dense foods that many children like. That makes them popular offerings in school cafeterias, since any healthy food that a kid will eat prevents waste and ensures that child isn’t eating either nothing or something less wholesome instead.

The relentless desire to jazz things up is to blame for the disappearance of fond favourites. But there’s always pleasure to be found in old-school cakes

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

I got into a small and pointless argument with a friend recently when she announced that a certain bakery chain (expanding across England with astonishing speed) was the only place in her London neighbourhood where she could buy scones. Surely not, I said. Then I thought about where, if I wasn’t going to make my own (pictured top), I’d find them near my own home, and realised she may have a point. (FYI, fellow N1 folks, Quince Bakery always has them on the counter.)

A few days later, I was asked to go on BBC Radio 4 to comment on the decision by Somerset’s Burns the Bread to stop selling iced buns, which naturally made me desperately crave an iced bun. But were there any to be found near me? No. Thankfully, I’ve since realised you can get an excellent example for just £1.60* at Raabs the Bakers on Essex Road in London. But, before this turns into a food guide to my neighbourhood, may I point you in the direction of Ruby Tandoh’s lemon zest-spiked recipe, or Helen Goh’s strawberry finger buns should you also suddenly have a craving for soft, pillowy dough with a crackly smear of sugar on top. Both would be just as good not jazzed up.

Jordan wants one catch-all digital resource for him and Charlene, so their social lives don’t clash, but she prefers to communicate in person. You decide whose time is up

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

I’m not trying to control her but having one shared calendar helps us plan our lives together

Up there by myself, I decided life might be best on my own. That thought has shaped my travel and relationships ever since

I grew up in Kenya and was nine when we went camping by the beach in Mombasa, with two other families. The constant games and laughter were new to me, as we were a quiet, rather insular family. I went bodyboarding, watched crabs emerge from holes in the sand, climbed all over rusty cannons in the old fort and bought colourful strips of kanga fabric in the market to make sarongs.

One day, my father asked some fishers to take us to the reef in their canoes. It was a good mile offshore: I wanted to stay behind with Mum, but Dad fixed me with a look and said: “You’ve got no sense of adventure, have you?” Then I knew I had to go, clambering shakily into the wobbly wooden construction, clinging on to the sides for dear life.

Like many couples, my husband and I bickered over who would do what and who did more. We came up with a radical solution

It was when my second child was born in 2021 that I realised I needed a new system for parenting. We were coming out of lockdown, and I was tired and overwhelmed. During the pandemic, my husband and I had built our own mini unit in the UK, as our families lived in the US. I had decided to start my own literary agency as soon as my daughter was old enough to start nursery at six months. It wasn’t ideal timing, but I wanted to start as soon as possible.

I approached finding a parenting system the way I think many women of my generation do, with the same intensity that we would have approached a school dissertation. I decided to crowdsource my research: I watched videos of home-schooling mums in the US demonstrating their morning routines, I read every parenting book I could, I listened to podcasters interviewing mothers who seemingly “had it all”, and listened to others who argued that “having it all” was impossible.

Chronicling your humdrum, solitary life has become an online trend. It’s certainly perplexing. Is it also empowering?

Name: Loneliness influencers.

Age: A few months old.

The clock is ticking to take advantage of this valuable UK scheme, as the benefits are to be restricted from April 2029

Millions of workers are able to take advantage of a scheme that allows them to boost their pension and pay less tax, and experts are urging people to “max out” this valuable perk before the rules are tightened.

Salary sacrifice lets you exchange some of your wages for a different benefit from your employer, such as a company car – or, in this case, pension contributions. You will then pay less tax and national insurance (NI) on your lower salary.

Also: Anthropic advocates for a ‘pause’ on AI advancement – days after filing to go public on the US stock market

Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, the US tech editor at the Guardian. Today we’re discussing Donald Trump’s neediness for AI and the contradictions of Anthropic’s safety-first posture.

OpenAI confidentially files for initial public offering on US stock market

Apple debuts revamped ‘Siri AI’ and new child safety features for iPhones and iPads

The Guardian view on children and the internet: rolling back big tech’s untrammelled power | Editorial

Silicon Valley including Meta has embraced Maga politics, says Nick Clegg

Bernie Sanders’ AI sovereign wealth fund plan is good. But we think this is better | Nathan E Sanders and Bruce Schneier

Majority of US’s new AI datacenters to be built on drought-hit land

Billions spent and hypothetical returns: the AI boom explained with six charts

‘A driver of political violence’: how the breakneck AI boom is fueling anti-tech extremism

The line is vital for our elderly relative’s care, but after 20 calls BT seems unable to resolve the problem

My elderly aunt, who lives alone, has been unable to receive incoming calls for more than two months after BT switched her analogue service to Digital Voice.

Her care is overseen by a rota of relatives who check on her and arrange medical appointments and in-home help.

Bereaved relatives have been bombarded with calls, emails and letters addressed to the deceased

ScottishPower sent a debt collection letter to my house demanding £130 owing on my late brother’s gas account. I am his sole executor and had informed it of his death.

The company, meanwhile, owed a £430 credit on his electricity account. It eventually paid this with a cheque issued in my late brother’s name, which could not therefore be cashed.

Influencers often brand sugar as inherently harmful – but not all sweet foods are created equal

‘It’s a common myth,” says Dr Emily Leeming, a dietitian at King’s College London – and one that thrives on social media. The confusion, she says, often comes from people cutting out sugary foods and feeling better. But that can be because removing ultra-processed sweet treats improves the overall quality of a diet (making more room for wholefoods).

Leeming says influencers who call sugar “toxic” often see it as inherently harmful – solely responsible for weight gain, poor blood sugar control and heart problems. But in controlled studies where calorie intake is kept the same, diets high in sugar don’t appear to worsen weight loss, metabolism or key health markers. “It’s not ideal nutritionally if you’re missing out on fruits, vegetables and whole grains,” Leeming says, “but sugar isn’t in itself directly harmful in that context.”

Doctors say diagnosis is usually clinical and doesn’t rely on a blood test, with symptoms often starting in the mid-40s

There’s a special frisson to period changes in your mid-forties. Every deviation from your usual pattern can feel like a harbinger of the menopause transition, also known as perimenopause.

One might spend years staring at their underwear, wondering: am I or aren’t I?

Keren Landman MD is an independent health reporter who is also trained as an infectious disease physician and epidemiologist, with experience serving as a disease detective at the CDC and conducting HIV and malaria research in resource-poor countries. Her public health newsletter is called Landmansplained

Drug that stops cancer cells hiding and a breakthrough for pancreatic cancer among highlights from Asco conference – but there were also notes of caution

Doctors, scientists and researchers shared new research about ways to tackle cancer at the 2026 American Society of Clinical Oncology (Asco) annual meeting, the world’s largest cancer conference.

The event in Chicago, attended by 40,000 health professionals, featured more than 200 sessions and 2,700 poster presentations on this year’s theme, “the science and practice of translation: improving cancer outcomes worldwide”. Here are the five biggest takeaways.

As demand for cobalt, gold and other minerals grows, mining is accelerating deforestation in the Congo basin – and increasing the risk of deadly Ebola outbreaks

For decades after the discovery of Ebolavirus in 1976, outbreaks of the disease were relatively small and contained, affecting a few hundred people at most.

Not any more. In recent years, outbreaks of Ebola have been much larger, affecting thousands and even tens of thousands of people across multiple countries. The 2014 outbreak of Ebola in west Africa infected more than 28,000 people in 10 countries on three continents. The current eruption, which began in early May and shows no signs of abating, has caused 363 confirmed cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has crossed into Uganda.

Sonia Shah is the author of five books including Pandemic: Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond, and writes the newsletter Cross Pollinations on Substack

More customers are seeking out meticulous e-file manicures, but there are concerns about the risk of infection with the cuticle-raising beauty treatment

A drill with a speed of 35,000 revolutions per minute sits on Alina Huck’s orderly work station. The drill bit is the length of an almond, and as soon as it touches the client’s nail it whips up a fine dust of dead skin.

“It’s definitely a satisfying experience,” says Huck, a Sydney-based nail technician who has spent nearly a decade specialising in e-file manicures, also known as Russian manicures.

When the singer got married in London last month, her skirt suit made headlines. But she was hardly the first to reject tradition. Here are the stories behind some other beautiful but unconventional outfits

For some people, wearing a big white dress on their wedding day feels as key as the rings. For others, less so.

When Dua Lipa wore a Schiaparelli couture white skirt suit as she wed the actor Callum Turner in London last month, she joined a long line of women who have opted for a suit. Not least Bianca Jagger, whom Lipa was speculated to be emulating – the model and activist caused a stir when she got hitched to Mick Jagger in 1971, wearing a Yves Saint Laurent Le Smoking jacket and bias-cut skirt.

Want to keep your makeup in place but always end up looking shiny? These sprays have a blurry finish that flatters everyone

I don’t know how any makeup wearer lives without setting spray, but for oily skins I do recognise it has pitfalls as well as many benefits.

Setting spray keeps makeup in place when warm weather might otherwise melt it away, and allows for creamier, more flattering products to be used in place of powders. But it also cuts through the dusty look of any powdery makeup to give it a softer, more youthful finish.

From France’s catwalk looks to Virgil van Dijk’s classic approach, these are the teams and players to watch

The 2026 World Cup may not kick off until Thursday, but the fashion tournament has already begun, as teams arrive at training camps across the US.

Fashion moments range from the outfits players wear to get to training, to the suits worn on planes and their training gear. The French team’s training camp in Clairefontaine became something of a catwalk this week thanks to the style of players such as Jules Koundé and Kylian Mbappé. Meanwhile, brands including Loewe, Gabriela Hearst, Patta and the rapper Drake’s Nocta have worked with teams on suiting and training gear.

From Iceland to Italy, you share your best adventures behind the wheel
• Tell us about your favourite European hike – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

Jeremy Clarkson described Romania’s Transfăgărășan Highway as “one unbroken grey ribbon of motoring perfection”. The route (the second highest in Romania after the Transalpina) with its hairpin bends and climbs over the mountain was thrilling. Although we’d been told bear sightings were possible, we didn’t anticipate spotting them literally on the roadside, with one hanging over a stone wall posing for photographs, taken through the car window. Because of the harsh winters in the southern Carpathian Mountains, the section of the road to Bâlea Lake is open only for a few summer months – it proved particularly beautiful.
Helen Jackson

Follow the folklore and you will discover a landscape full of wonder and powerful women – from a fearsome Scottish warrioress to the first queen of a united England

It’s just past midday and I appear to be inside a rain cloud. Soaked to the skin, my walking boots squelching through tufts of grass and black bog mud, I can hear hundreds of streams rolling off this wide mid-Wales peak, each vying to be the fastest. I’ve hiked around more than 8 miles (13km) of Hafren Forest trails to the top of Pumlumon Fawr (Plynlimon), to reach a wooden post carved with the words Source of the Severn. And I’m here, alone, because I’m hoping to meet a river goddess.

It’s perhaps not as strange as it first sounds. Starting about 150 years ago, the folklorist John Rhys travelled across Wales to archive as many local myths as possible, and among them was the very tale that brought me to this peak: the story of the birth of the River Severn, in which three sisters – Hafren (Severn), Rheidolyn (Rheidol) and Gwy (Wye) – each choose their own route to the sea. My trip to the river’s source was itself a moment of mythically inspired travel, something that has been common practice in the British Isles for as long as we’ve told stories, not least as a means of passing them on.

Affordable, family-friendly and largely flat, the Lelångenleden is a gateway to an otherworldly wilderness with wild swimming, canoes and cabins as part the ride

Imagine the Swedish landscape and a stereotypical scene of idyllic red cottages with white trim, foregrounded by a lake of glimmering blue, might spring to mind. Beyond perhaps, adding depth, lies a band of birch and spruce, and a midsummer view of wooded islands.

Now, add to this image the sight of two half-naked men lunging from a tiny sauna cabin into the cold shock of a lake. One screams. The other ducks his head under, pops up, shivers, then does it again. His skin has the pinkish tinge of salmon, but he’s smiling.

Matosinhos was built on fish, but today its retro seafood restaurants and canneries sit alongside great art spaces, museums and landmark architecture

This once declining industrial city is on the up, but not so much that it has been ruined – yet. See it now, mid-gentrification, before its humble seafood restaurants become overpriced and its beautifully curated museums and galleries overrun.

From a new-build in the UK’s only Unesco city of media arts to a buzzing area in London famous for its street art

Nor is the dreamy promise that this tech will unlock boundless potential and productivity

Everything we hear about artificial intelligence is conflicting, and hearing about it feels inescapable. AI is terrible. AI is wonderful. It will break the world. It will transform the future. It’s essential to embrace it. It’s a moral imperative to abstain from using it.

Already, AI is projected to generate nearly unfathomable amounts of revenue. In the last quarter of 2025, it represented nearly 60% of the growth in the US economy. Already, pundits and economists wring their hands about what calamity will befall us if and when the AI bubble bursts.

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

The men’s Fifa World Cup starts today, and the challenge before the quiz master is to stay up all night every night watching tons of meaningless group matches between the likes of Syldavia and Borduria to keep up a record of not having missed a single World Cup game since 1978, while also continuing to function as a normal living member of society, rather than as an exhausted zombie.

The challenge before you, however, is simple: 15 questions on topical news, general knowledge and popular culture. There are no prizes, but equally you don’t have to stay up for a 3am kick-off. Have fun. Allons-y!

There are more than one million young carers in the UK – with an average age of 12 – which is the equivalent of two kids in every school class. Do they feel supported? In Walthamstow, east London, we meet a group of carers as they are collected for a rare night off that brings a sense of community and a glimpse of fun for a few hours every few weeks. It’s hosted by Satvinder, a tenacious council worker who fights to improve the recognition of young carers in her borough and provides them crucial emotional support.

This film is released during Carers Week in the UK, a campaign that celebrates unpaid carers across the country and calls for better recognition and support for them.

Named in honour of the writer CLR James, the hub did vital work to help the city’s Black communities and now campaigners are seeking its return

“When it comes to Manchester history, there’s not a lot of Black Manchester history that’s recorded,” Bianca Danielle said.

“We’ve got a lot about certain topics like suffragettes, but if you type in Nello James, hardly anything comes up.”

Remote aircraft targeting supply traffic on route connecting occupied regions to Russia

Russian forces call it the “Novorossiya” route, the crucial main supply line that snakes through the Ukrainian territories under Moscow’s occupation, linking Rostov-on-Don in Russia to Melitopol, Mariupol and Crimea via the Sea of Azov coastline.

In recent months, however, Ukrainian forces have given the R-280 a new name – “the highway of death” – in reference to the Ukrainian drones that dominate the airspace above the road, hunting down convoys of Russian military traffic.

Reform UK leader has been unusually quiet in recent weeks – at great cost to the party during a crucial byelection

Fake images of Nigel Farage have been ubiquitous online lately – but the real politician has proved far more elusive since it was revealed seven weeks ago that he took a £5m personal gift from a crypto billionaire.

And while an AI-generated depiction of the Reform UK leader was falsely shown getting violent on BBC’s Question Time, Farage has been largely avoiding the TV studios where he might face questions over the cash.

We would like to hear your advice that might help younger people looking for a job

About 1 million 16- to 24-year-olds are not in employment, education or training – and the obstacles they face are bigger than ever. With this in mind, we would like we would like to hear your advice that might help younger people looking for a job.

Do you have experience of looking for work that you could share? What useful tips do you have for job seekers? Let us know below.

We would like to hear about your television highlights of the year so far. Share your thoughts now

The Guardian’s culture writers have compiled their favourite TV shows of the year so far – and we’d like to hear about yours, too.

Are there any new series that you would recommend watching? What have been best TV shows of the year so far, and why?

We would like to hear from people who have been affected by the disorder following anti-immigration protests

Police have used water cannon against rioters in Northern Ireland during a second night of anti-immigration protests.

It dispersed a crowd of about 300 people on Wednesday night who burned a truck and threw bricks and petrol bombs close to the Sandyknowes roundabout near Newtownabbey, eight miles north of Belfast.

We’d like to hear from UK adult adoptees about they navigated their reunion with a birth parent

Guardian journalist David Batty has described the complex family trauma many adult adoptees have to navigate during reunion with their birth parents, often without professional support.

We would like other UK adult adoptees to share their experiences of adoption reunion. How challenging was it to forge relationships with birth relatives and to maintain them? What, if any, support did you receive? How did it impact your relationship with your adoptive family?

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