The US president took his bullying doctrine to Davos and hit a wall of opposition. If this creates a new western alliance against him, all to the good

The temptation is strong to hope that the storm has passed. To believe that a week that began with a US threat to seize a European territory, whether by force or extortion, has ended with the promise of negotiation and therefore a return to normality. But that is a dangerous delusion. There can be no return to normality. The world we thought we knew has gone. The only question now is what takes its place – a question that will affect us all, that is full of danger and that, perhaps unexpectedly, also carries a whisper of hope.

Forget that Donald Trump eventually backed down from his threats to conquer Greenland, re-holstering the economic gun he had put to the head of all those countries who stood in his way, the UK among them. The fact that he made the threat at all confirmed what should have been obvious since he returned to office a year ago: that, under him, the US has become an unreliable ally, if not an actual foe of its one-time friends.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Goodbye, clean girl; hello, blazing icon! Hairstylist Jessie’s mismatched red-and-yellow look has been a joyful shot of warmth on our screens, and makeup artists say they’re here for it

‘It’s Stephen! It’s Stephen. And here they all come to chat a load of bollocks.” So said Jessie Roux all the way back in episode four, spewing truth bombs while wearing sweetcorn-yellow eyeshadow. Yet here we are – as I write this, on the day of the final – with Stephen Libby still masquerading as a Faithful, looking th’innocent flower but being the serpent under’t, as per Lady Macbeth’s advice.

But it hasn’t been for want of Jessie trying – the 28-year-old has been a fan favourite on the latest season of The Traitors for smarts like these, but also for her bright and mismatched makeup. Often yellow and red, like Rupert the Bear’s outfit or the Lego logo, the shades are what Little Greene paint company calls exclamatory things such as Trumpet and Heat.

Done your knee in running or in a match? Pulled something while playing with the kids? These tips should get you on the road to recovery

There’s nothing quite like a persistent ache or pain to ruin your mood. Whether it’s a recurring twinge in your lower back or an acute injury from an accident, most issues stem from imbalance – when one area of the body compensates for weakness elsewhere.

“Our bodies are inherently asymmetrical – no one’s left and right sides are exactly the same,” says personal trainer Luke Worthington. “Problems arise when we inadvertently force symmetry, trying to make both sides move identically. It disrupts our natural equilibrium and leads to overuse, strain or injury.”

Many yearn and yearn for the Greater Manchester mayor to claim his Westminster crown. They should be careful what they wish for – as should he

Since Andy Burnham’s will-he-won’t-he return to Westminster is back in the news, permit me to advance a theory. Andy Burnham is Johnny Depp. Stay with me! We somehow have to make this more fun than immersing ourselves in the remorselessly petty mathematical dynamics of Labour’s national executive committee (NEC).

So here goes: movie-wise, before Pirates of the Caribbean, Johnny Depp used to embody a desirable scarcity model. As a cultural asset he was high-prestige, low-supply, and every rudderless director thought that if only the mysterious Johnny was at the helm of their project, then everything would be rosy. He was different, he was cool, he was hyper-selective, he withheld himself, he didn’t dress like the others, he wasn’t your multiplex guy. And he was, crucially, not available. But Pirates of the Caribbean changed all that and it changed Johnny Depp. After the unexpected mega-success of that film, the actor made himself available, and his aura evaporated. He made the conscious leap to middle-of-the-road A-listery and his cultural premium collapsed. Johnny Depp and his basic eyeliner were in everything, from franchises to mass-market fantasies to a couple of grim court cases with his ex-wife (obviously, Andy hasn’t been involved in even the metaphorical version of the last one, though Burnham v Starmer could be quite the rubbernecking spectacle). And honestly, most of it was highly indifferent. There was suddenly a lot less to him than had met the eye. Availability torched his cachet.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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.

Charlie Simpson, 15, is part of new generation of self-styled ‘independent journalists’ with links to far right

Andrew Rosindell had been tipped as a potential Reform recruit long before his defection from the Conservatives last weekend took Westminster by surprise.

Yet as he and Nigel Farage basked in the spotlight outside parliament on Monday, more than 200 miles away in the town of Whitby, North Yorkshire, a 15-year-old schoolboy was also savouring the moment.

The moon landing! Royal weddings! Janet Jackson’s $550,000 nipple! As television turns 100, we charts its journey from terrifyingly dangerous to the thing that unites us

1: 1926 On 26 January John Logie Baird gives the first public demonstration of television to members of the Royal Institution, from his lab in Soho. The subject of the demonstration was Stooky Bill, Baird’s ventriloquist dummy, because the lighting generated too much heat for a human to bear.

2: 1930 Luigi Pirandello’s play The Man With the Flower in His Mouth, about a man dying of cancer, becomes the first drama shown on British television, broadcast live by the BBC.

PM joins veterans in condemning claim that troops avoided frontlines and suggests US president should apologise

Keir Starmer has issued an unprecedented rebuke to Donald Trump for his “insulting and frankly appalling” remarks about British troops in Afghanistanand suggested he should apologise.

After a week of fractious relations with the White House, Starmer said he was not surprised that relatives of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan were hurt by Trump claiming they avoided the frontline.

Philip Young, who served on Swindon borough council, pleads guilty to offences against ex-spouse Joanne Young

A former Conservative councillor has admitted nearly 50 offences of drugging, raping and sexually assaulting his former wife over a period of 14 years.

Philip Young, 49, pleaded guilty at Winchester crown court to 11 counts of rape and 11 counts of administering a substance with intent to stupefy his former spouse Joanne Young, 48, who can be named as she has waived her right to anonymity

Angela Rayner is expected to urge PM to let Greater Manchester mayor stand in Gorton and Denton byelection

Keir Starmer is facing mounting pressure not to block Andy Burnham from making a comeback to parliament, with Angela Rayner planning to urge No 10 to let him stand in a forthcoming byelection.

The prime minister’s allies have been trying to prevent Burnham’s return as a candidate in the Greater Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton, amid fears he could challenge the leadership.

Trust says Reform UK leader was invited to WEF event by London-based venture capitalist as an honorary adviser

Nigel Farage’s trip to Davos this week was hosted and paid for by the $10bn family trust of an Iranian-born billionaire, the Guardian has learned.

The leader of Reform UK has been touring Davos this week, giving speeches in which he pledged to tax banks and “fight the globalists”.

Exclusive: Blueprints describe a ‘case study’ community where residents submit biometric data to gain entry

The United Arab Emirates plans to fund “Gaza’s first planned community” on the ruined outskirts of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city. Palestinian residents there will have access to basic services like education, healthcare and running water, as long as they submit to biometric data collection and security vetting, according to planning documents and people familiar with the latest round of talks at the US-led Civil Military Coordination Center in Israel.

The planned city would mark the UAE’s first investment in a postwar reconstruction project located in the part of Gaza currently held by Israel. The wealthy Gulf state has contributed more than $1.8bn of humanitarian assistance to Gaza since 7 October 2023, according to UAE state media, making it Gaza’s largest humanitarian donor.

Judge described Nick Gratwick’s crimes – which included plotting to rape children as young as six – as ‘the stuff of nightmares’

A “dangerous” paedophile who had worked as a police informer spying on environmental and animal rights activists has been jailed for life.

Nick Gratwick had been found guilty of 38 offences, including arranging to rape children as young as six in the UK and abroad.

Alleged attacks took place in Cambridgeshire and Buckinghamshire against two prominent supporters of jailed former Pakistani prime minister Imran Khan

Three men have been charged after a series of “highly targeted” attacks against two Pakistani dissidents living in Britain.

Police carried out a series of seven raids and arrests this week in London, Essex and the Midlands after four attacks, which began on Christmas Eve.

Moscow repeats call for Ukraine to leave Donbas before first trilateral talks since start of invasion in February 2022

Ukraine, Russia and the US have begun three-way talks for the first time since Russia’s full-scale military invasion began in February 2022, but with the Kremlin maintaining its maximalist demands for Ukrainian territory, it is unclear whether Donald Trump will be able to broker a ceasefire even by putting heavy pressure on Kyiv.

The talks in Abu Dhabi on Friday are the highest-level known summit between the three sides since the beginning of the war, and come as Trump’s demands to take over Greenland have strained tensions among Ukraine’s western allies as the country endures a harsh winter with much of its civilian energy infrastructure damaged by Russian attacks.

Not Such an Innocent Girl makes No 1 for single sales and downloads, after revelations about family rift

• ‘My mum went so far as to call me evil’: nine things you need to know about the Beckham family feud

There is a light at the end of the Beckhams’ hebdomadis horribilis: Victoria Beckham has the UK’s highest-selling single of the week with Not Such an Innocent Girl, originally released in 2001.

After her eldest son Brooklyn’s bombshell revelations about the rift with his parents, including his horrified account of his mother dancing “on” him at his wedding to Nicola Peltz in 2022, fans taking mater and pater Beckham’s side in the celeb gossip of the year showed their support by buying MP3s of Beckham’s debut solo single. (Her first effort without the Spice Girls, 2000’s Out of Your Mind, was a collaboration with Dane Bowers of Another Level.)

Donald Trump’s maximalist approach to foreign policy reached a crescendo this week, with the US president dominating proceedings at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Trump rescinded his threat to seize the Danish territory of Greenland, and launched his so-called board of peace for Gaza. It’s been a chaotic week in Trumpworld – but there is increasing resistance from other world leaders, and signs of an emergent new world order. Lucy Hough speaks to the Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland

After Andrew Gwynne’s exit, voters in Gorton and Denton are fractured – and increasingly willing to look elsewhere

When leaked WhatsApp messages sent by former minister Andrew Gwynne were published last year, Stuart Beard was astonished at the scenes outside his office in Denton town square.

“There must have been about 60 pensioners with placards,” he said, referring to local anger over Gwynne’s derogatory texts, which included one saying he hoped an elderly woman who didn’t vote Labour “croaked it” before the next election.

The US president has galvanised the Danish population against him, while Danes’ relations with Greenlanders are ‘under reparation’

For the past three weeks, 24 hours a day, Denmark has been consumed by discussions about whether or not Greenland, a largely self-governing part of the Danish kingdom, will be invaded by the US, the Danes’ closest ally.

“We got a wake-up call,” said Linea Obbekjær, 64, as she left a supermarket with her bike in Copenhagen’s sprawling Østerbro neighbourhood. “So we are thinking about what is important to us.” Many had been spurred by recent events to take action. “People want to do something,” said Obbekjær. “Not sit and look at the television, but go out and do something.”

Bernard MacMahon’s film about the 70s giants took advantage of audience enthusiasm to make a major impact in cinemas – and it’s just the latest in a string of films about the era of classic rock

Bare-chested swagger, out of control hair, thunderous guitar riffs … the heroes of 1970s hard rock are back, and burning up the cinema box office. Becoming Led Zeppelin, a film about the British band that dominated the music industry in the 1970s, was the most successful feature documentary at the US box office in 2025, taking over $10m, with a worldwide gross of over $16m. (Taylor Swift’s The Official Release Party of a Showgirl grossed considerably more, with $34m, but as an album-promoting clipshow it is evidently in a different category.)

Despite breaking up in 1980 after the death of drummer John Bonham, Led Zeppelin remain one of the world’s bestselling music acts, with estimated sales of over 200m records and 14.9bn streams. The band were famously press-shy in their prime, but agreed to take part in Becoming Led Zeppelin, which focuses on their early years up to the release of groundbreaking second album, Led Zeppelin II, in 1969. And contemporary audiences have responded – especially to the film’s presentation on the giant Imax screens, where it recorded Imax’s best ever opening weekend for a music documentary and became the format’s highest-grossing documentary of 2025.

In an exclusive interview at his base, athletics’ ‘iron man’ reveals why his career feels like ‘99% losses’ but he plans to retire as the greatest distance runner in history

On a bone-cold new year’s morning, the world’s most compelling athlete is sweating so much that tiny puddles are starting to ooze across his treadmill.

For 40 minutes Jakob Ingebrigtsen makes 6min 40sec mile pace look like a Sunday stroll, breezily chatting away even as the heatbox in his home gym pushes the temperature inside to more than 32.4C (90F). Only when I ask the double Olympic champion what his super-strength is does he pause to take a proper breath. “In Norwegian we have a word for it,” he eventually replies. “Ingen kompromiss. No compromise.”

Ca’ Dario, empty for years, has failed to find a new owner, with local legends suggesting it is jinxed

It ought to be an estate agent’s dream. Primely positioned on the banks of the Grand Canal in Venice, just steps away from the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, the storied Ca’ Dario has shimmered on the water since the late 15th century, its elegant early Venetian Renaissance facade among the city’s most distinctive.

Named after its first owner, Giovanni Dario, a diplomat hailed a hero after securing a peace treaty with the Ottoman empire, over the centuries the palazzo has been home to nobles, merchants and even British rock music royalty. In 1908, it was painted by Claude Monet during his trip to Venice and one year later was cited by Henry James in his travelogue Italian Hours.

Too hot, too cold, never right? From microfibre to British wool, sustainable down to dual-tog designs, these are the duvets worth cosying up to

• The best mattresses, tested

At alarm o’clock on a January morning, any duvet will feel like heaven: anything’s better than having to haul myself out into the freezing dark. There’s no need to go to the extreme, though: find the best duvet for you and you’ll sleep so well that you’ll rise with a spring in your step and a smile on your face.

You probably don’t need a scientific study to tell you that you feel more refreshed the morning after a good night’s sleep, though there’s plenty of research demonstrating just that. A duvet that helps you sleep better will improve your days as well as your nights. The key is to find one that hits the perfect balance between warmth, weight and breathability for you and your sleep style.

Best duvet overall:
Panda the Cloud

Best budget duvet:
Slumberland All Seasons

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

Keep Calm and Carry On: that’s not how people felt as the second world war loomed. But maybe, as Trump stalks, that old slogan is finally making sense

It has become known as the “war of nerves”. An apt name for a jittery, jangling time in British history, consumed with fear of what may be coming, in which the sheer unpredictability of life became – as the historian Prof Julie Gottlieb writes – a form of psychological warfare. Contemporary reports describe “threats of mysterious weapons, gigantic bluff, and a cat-and-mouse game intended to stampede the civilian population of this island into terror”.

It all sounds uncannily like life under Donald Trump, who this week marched the world uphill to war, only to amble just as inexplicably back down again. But Gottlieb is actually describing the period between the Munich crisis of 1938 and the blitz beginning in earnest in September 1940. Her fascinating study of letters, diaries and newspapers from the period focuses not on the big geopolitical picture but on small domestic details, and what they reveal about the emotional impact of living suspended between peace and war: companies advertising “nerve tonics” for the anxious, reports of women buying hats to lift their spirits and darker accounts of nervous breakdowns. We did not, contrary to popular myth, all Keep Calm and Carry On. Suicide rates, she notes, rose slightly.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

With conflict averted for now, European leaders will be tempted to retreat to their comfort zone of cowardice. But the next crisis will soon be here

Donald Trump’s climbdown, after days of escalation during which he had refused to rule out a military attack to annex Greenland, was spectacular. In his Davos speech, Trump repeated his desire to own Greenland, claiming that you cannot defend what you do not own, only to then announce that he would not conquer the Arctic island by force. Hours later, he claimed that he had reached an unspecified deal on Greenland, and would therefore refrain from imposing additional tariffs on those European countries that had had the audacity to participate in a joint military exercise in Greenland at Denmark’s invitation.

We know neither the details of the framework agreement reached by Trump and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, nor whether it carries any weight, given the US president’s fickleness. But it appears that the deal, while open to discussing Arctic security, mineral rights and possibly even the sovereignty of US bases, preserves Greenland’s sovereignty within the Kingdom of Denmark. In short, this has been a remarkable U-turn.

Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist

Does a society truly become safer when part of its population learns to live in constant fear?

On 15 June 2025, the Trump administration issued an official statement directing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to begin what it described as “the largest mass deportation operation in American history”. Major cities such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York were identified as primary targets. The stated goal was to keep communities “safe and free from illegal alien crime, conflict, and chaos”. Federal agents rapidly became a part of many residents’ everyday lives.

No stable state can protect its borders, public order and the legitimate interests of its citizens without immigration law and effective enforcement mechanisms.

Abdul Wahid Gulrani is a political sociologist from Afghanistan, whose work focuses on migration, gender and national security. He is currently engaged in teaching and research at Georgetown University and the George Washington University

The only positive of this stranger-than-fiction scenario is that Greenland and Denmark stand more united than ever

• Adam Price is the creator of the TV series Borgen

As a writer of political fiction for many years, including four seasons of my TV series Borgen, I find myself in the strangest of landscapes watching Donald Trump desperately wanting Greenland like a spoilt child who has never heard the word “no”.

We dedicated an episode to Greenland in the first season in 2010 and then it became the main setting for the fourth season in 2022. Our focus on this former colony of Denmark, and its amazing Indigenous people, was motivated by one big factor. For political drama I always look for stories with emotion, and the old colonial tale of Denmark and Greenland is full of it.

As long as you want to work and have wisdom to offer, you should continue to do so. Although some on the world stage outstay their welcome

So Prue Leith is standing down from The Great British Bake Off. She has done nine years and feels it to be “the right time to step back” and “spend summers enjoying my garden”. Her fans and her friends will be sorry to see her go and will wish her well. The only thing they might question is her throwaway justification, “I’m 86, for goodness sake.”

What has that to do with it? Ever since the Equality Act of 2010, various discriminations in employment have been illegal. They included those based on ethnicity, gender, faith and age.

Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist and the author of A Short History of America: From Tea Party to Trump

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.

Squint hard into the darkness and you’ll find there’s so much to feel positive about. Gwyneth Paltrow and HBO Max for starters

Ah, Blue Monday – it seems to come round quicker every year, no? For those of you not familiar with the term, it denotes the third Monday of January, which is alleged to be the most depressing day of the year. Collectively, I mean – obviously each of us has a birthday, plus a year coming up that will inescapably include bad haircuts, disappointing Vinted purchases and expensively untraceable leaks in the home. And Prue Leith’s leaving Bake Off.

As a lightning government offensive leaves the Kurdish-dominated SDF reeling, the political horizon needs attention as well as security

In little more than a fortnight, a dramatic Syrian government offensive appears to have undone over a decade of Kurdish self-rule in the north-east and extended President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s control. The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) held around a quarter of the country and many critical resources – but were forced out of much of it within days. Though the SDF has effectively agreed to dissolution in principle, it has not shown it will do so in practice: a worrying sign for a fragile truce. A peaceful resolution is in everyone’s interests. Forcible integration by Damascus would risk breeding insurgency.

The US relied upon the SDF in the battle against Islamic State. But Donald Trump has embraced “attractive, tough” Mr Sharaa – a former jihadist who had a $10m US bounty on his head until late 2024. The US administration became increasingly frustrated at the SDF’s failure to implement last spring’s agreement to integration into the new army, apparently due to internal divisions. Tom Barrack, the US special envoy to Syria and ambassador to Turkey, wrote this week that the rationale for partnership with the SDF had “largely expired” because Damascus was ready to take over security responsibilities.

Excluding a popular mayor would fracture Labour’s coalition and make Downing Street look fearful rather than authoritative

Politics, as Lyndon B Johnson understood better than most, is not about eliminating conflict but managing it. “It’s better to have them inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in,” the former US president observed. His enduring point was that strong leaders use their parties to contain power; weak ones try to banish it. Sir Keir Starmer seems ready to make this mistake over Andy Burnham.

Reports suggest that the prime minister’s allies will block any attempt by the Manchester mayor to run in a parliamentary byelection after a Labour MP, Andrew Gwynne, resigned. Mr Burnham may be eyeing a route back to Westminster and the possibility of a future leadership challenge. But No 10 wants to stop him before he gets going. Sir Keir is not asserting authority through confrontation. He is surrendering control and accepting responsibility for the consequences.

Guardian readers respond to Lara Feigel’s powerful account of divorce and the family court

Lara Feigel highlights the impact of “win/lose” adjudication in the adversarial court system, a system tailor-made to produce the worst possible outcomes for separating families (I was warned my children would be ripped in half when we divorced. But I had no idea just how brutal custody cases can be, 18 January). In heightening conflict between parents, this system destroys the potential of a negotiated co-parental agreement determined by parents themselves. The best laws are those which limit judicial discretion, including in family law, where children are caught squarely in the middle of the conflict.

There is a viable alternative to the dominant litigation model for couples in conflict: a legal presumption of equal parenting, rebuttable in family violence cases, a model that reduces the harms of adversarial resolution. Shared parenting maintains children’s relationships with each parent and their extended family, reduces inter-parental conflict, and prevents first-time violence. What is missing, however, is the political will to enact legislative reform based on reliable scientific evidence on the benefits of shared parenting and a child-focused and collaborative approach. Despite family courts’ invocation of the “best interests of the child”, meaningful law reform remains elusive in the UK and beyond.

Salik Rosing on the Greenland prime minister’s striking attire worn at a press conference. Plus a letter from Colin Parish

Your article (‘Designed for uncertainty’: windbreakers are a hit in turbulent times, 17 January) refers to Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, “wearing a glacial-blue windbreaker” that “took on a new, loaded and striking messaging”. The anorak is not a fashion statement or sending a message. It is formal wear, which we Greenlanders use for special occasions from weddings to a child’s first day of school and the state opening of parliament. When Nielsen wears his blue anorak, it is the equivalent of a European leader wearing a suit. Existing as a non-European person is not a statement.
Salik Rosing
Elsinore, Denmark

• Re the piece on windbreakers, I don’t want to be an anorak, but I think they used to be called “windcheaters”. I’ll get my coat…
Colin Parish
London

Kevin Whately recalls his work with the late actor in Dusty Hughes’ play, Bad Language, in the early 1980s

I was lucky enough to play Alan Rickman’s gay lover in a Dusty Hughes play, Bad Language, at Hampstead theatre in the early 1980s, and, while I wasn’t as physically attracted to him as some of your female correspondents (Letters, 15 January), I did find him one of the kindest and most perceptive and intelligent actors I have ever worked with.

Summoned soon after by the ladies in the casting department of Anglia TV, I was disappointed to find that they weren’t looking to cast me, as they spent half an hour raving about Alan, but lamenting that they just never knew how to cast him. It took another “late, great”, Anthony Minghella, to cast him as the romantic lead in Truly, Madly, Deeply for Alan’s screen career to take wing.
Kevin Whately
Aspley Heath, Buckinghamshire

Barry Glendenning’s half marathon | The Premier Inn Milton Keynes | Bodø | The Beckham family feud | ‘The North’

Barry Glendenning’s column was heartfelt and very entertaining (How hard can it be to run 13 miles? With help from the pub, park and peas I am finding out, 17 January). As a fellow bar-stool athlete, I could almost smell the tobacco smoke from years past when studying form in the Coach and Horses. Indeed, it was as though Jeffrey Bernard had briefly risen for “just the one”.
Max Tannahill
Wivenhoe, Essex

• “Nobody has enjoyed a night at the Premier Inn Milton Keynes more than we have,” says Beth, 75 (This is how we do it, 18 January). I have tried to reserve a double room for me and my wife, at the Premier Inn in Milton Keynes, only to find that it’s fully booked for the foreseeable...
Bren Pointer
London

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Mikel Arteta’s side have scored 19 goals from corners this season. Why are their set pieces so effective and can they be stopped?

Set pieces are dominating the Premier League this season, with almost 30% of goals coming from corners, free-kicks, penalties or long throws. The leaders, Arsenal, are kings of the dead ball, scoring 17 of their 40 league goals from set pieces (including penalties). But what makes Mikel Arteta’s side so effective in these areas, and what can opponents do to stop them? The data provides some answers.

This weekend’s fixtures are the reverse of a first round in which Nottingham Forest thrashed Brentford and there was optimism at Spurs

Start-of-season shape:

• Uncapped props called up to boost front-row options

• ‘We want England fans flooding across the Channel’

Steve Borthwick is plotting an ­English raid on Paris and has called on his side to set their sights on clinching a first Six Nations title in six years in the French capital on Super Saturday.

England have not won the title since the Covid-hit championship in 2020 and last managed the grand slam in 2016 when Eddie Jones’s side clinched a fifth straight victory at the Stade de France.

The Free Solo star will attempt to climb the 1,667ft skyscraper without ropes in a live Netflix broadcast, drawing awe, ethical concern and global attention

Alex Honnold has spent the past three months training for this moment: free soloing – climbing without ropes or a harness – one of Asia’s tallest skyscrapers, Taipei 101. It is an ambition that began more than a decade ago and is now close to being realized.

The climb will be broadcast globally on Skyscraper Live, Netflix’s latest foray into live sports programming. The star of the 2019 Oscar-winning documentary Free Solo insists that climbing Taipei 101 will feel no different from any other of his ascents.

Evonne Goolagong Cawley Day is a welcome initiative but meaningful change will only come with a structural approach

The riverside walk to the Australian Open courts is a scenic joy for the sporting pilgrim. Rowing crews train up and down the water, framed by the city’s sun-flecked skyline. The Melbourne Cricket Ground floodlights signal distantly ahead. Beneath the feet of the crowds hurrying to ticket barriers, the concrete path transforms into an artwork: a twisting confluence of eels honouring their Yarra River migration, which once provided abundant food for the Wurundjeri people.

On Wednesday the celebration of country continued inside the precinct. This was Evonne Goolagong Cawley Day, when the tournament celebrates First Nations people and culture. A packed schedule of entertainment included a smoking ceremony on the steps of Margaret Court Arena, a Q&A with Cathy Freeman, and a performance from the Coodjinburra pop star Budjerah. There were taster sessions and weaving workshops, and all the ball kids were from tennis programmes for Indigenous peoples.

• Ferrari unveil 2026 car amid regulation reset

• Williams not ready and will miss next week’s first test

Lewis Hamilton has emphasised the scale of the challenge facing drivers and teams as Formula One enters a new season with a regulation reset that the British driver described as the biggest of his career, as his Ferrari team look to a new start after a disappointing 2025.

The Scuderia launched their new car, the SF-26, with Hamilton driving it at the team’s test track at Fiorano for the first time on Friday. He was optimistic, having been involved in the development of a Ferrari for the first time but acknowledged that a huge task lay ahead.

• American tops leaderboard but sanctions loom large

• Rory McIlroy toils seven shots off the lead

Patrick Reed finds himself in a curious situation. The former Masters champion could prevail this weekend in the Dubai Desert Classic and see a decent chunk of the $1.5m (£1.1m) first prize duly handed back to the DP World Tour in fines. Reed has joked that it will not be particularly easy for him to make a profit on this tour during 2026. Indeed, he basically starts his season in the red.

Reed’s membership of the DP World and LIV circuits leads to sanctions from the former every time he tees up on the latter. He lost an appeal over that situation in 2023 yet, unlike some others, opted to keep playing on what was once the European Tour. Reed’s position is further affected by the general understanding that LIV would no longer pay fines on behalf of its members from the end of 2025.

Owner-of-the-moment is biggest potential story at this year’s festival with The Jukebox Man in the Gold Cup

The first meeting between Sir Gino and The New Lion, the top two in the Champion Hurdle betting, is among the highlights of Trials Day at Cheltenham on Saturday but every contest on the eight-race card will offer pointers towards the festival and owner-of-the-moment Harry Redknapp will hope to see another big-race contender emerge in his colours in the concluding race.

Redknapp’s attempt to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup, the blue riband of chasing, with The Jukebox Man, his recent King George VI Chase winner, already looks sure to be the biggest story at this year’s festival. It never hurts to have strength in depth at Cheltenham in March, however, and a win for Taurus Bay in the Grade Two AIS Novice Hurdle would see him shoot towards the market leaders for the Turners Novice Hurdle.

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

Politicians call for more infrastructure funding amid anger that county is seen as ‘holiday playground’

Accessed by a steep, winding lane, the tiny settlement of Cucurrian in the far-west of Cornwall feels remote at the best of times. But over the last two weeks, the people who live here have felt even more isolated after they were left without a way of communicating with the outside world as a result of Storm Goretti.

“I think people feel let down, angry, failed,” said Mark Pugh, an audiobook producer, who has spent more hours than he would care to tot up carefully picking his way out of Cucurrian and sitting in his car in a layby to find a mobile signal good enough to work from. “This storm has shown that Cornwall isn’t resilient enough. A lot is promised, but not enough is delivered.”

Brighton & Hove Albion football club owner confirms placing bets through accounts of Reform UK adviser George Cottrell, according to legal documents

The billionaire owner of Brighton & Hove Albion football club has confirmed his syndicate placed millions of pounds worth of bets through the gambling accounts of the Reform UK adviser George Cottrell.

The admission comes in a document filed to the high court by Tony Bloom, who also admits that he, Cottrell and a former employee, Ryan Dudfield, had an agreement under which winnings were due to be split between them.

Nord and Pas-de-Calais prefecture aims to stop anti-migrant groups travelling for ‘Operation Overlord’ protest

French authorities have announced a sweeping ban on British far-right activists planning to take part in a “stop the boats” protest against asylum seekers hoping to cross the Channel to the UK.

Friday’s announcement by the prefecture in northern France goes further than a previous ban by the French interior ministry on 10 unnamed far-right activists associated with the organisation Raise the Colours for “having carried out actions on French soil”.

Snow, sleet and freezing temperatures are forecast for the south, midwest and east coast over the weekend

• Trump says the big US winter storm is proof of climate hoax – here’s why he’s wrong

The dangerous monster storm threatening half of the US was bearing down on Friday, with 16 states and Washington DC already declaring emergencies and areas typically unused to prolonged Arctic temperatures bracing for power failures and supply shortages.

At least 230 million people are likely to be affected by the huge winter weather system as it forms in parts of the Rocky Mountains and Great Plains and surges across southern and midwestern areas from Friday, blowing up the east coast on Saturday and as far north as Maine by Sunday.

Labor unions and progressive organizations have called on workers across the state to stay home in an ‘economic blackout’

• Full report: Economic blackout in Minnesota to protest against ICE: ‘No work, no school, no shopping

Talks between Russia, Ukraine and the United States have begun in Abu Dhabi, according to the United Arab Emirates’ ministry of foreign affairs.

The UAE is hosting a rare set of trilateral talks, bringing together negotiators from Russia, Ukraine, and the US. The talks have started today, and are scheduled to continue over the next two days.

US president asks ‘whatever happened to global warming?’ Well, it could be making our winter storms worse

Donald Trump has erroneously cited an enormous winter storm that is set to deliver freezing temperatures and heavy snow to half of the US as supposed proof that the world is not heating up due to the burning of fossil fuels.

Trump, who has repeatedly questioned and mocked established climate science in the past, posted of the storm on Truth Social: “Rarely seen anything like it before. Could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain – WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???”

Conservationists hail the ‘desperately needed’ measures and urge greater protection after up to 11% of endangered Tapanuli orangutans wiped out

The floods and landslides that tore through Indonesia’s fragile Batang Toru ecosystem in November 2024 – killing up to 11% of the world’s Tapanuli orangutan population – prompted widespread scrutiny of the extractive companies operating in the area at the time of the ecological catastrophe.

For weeks, investigators searched for evidence that the companies may have damaged the Batang Toru and Garoga watersheds before the disaster, which washed torrents of mud and logs into villages, claiming the lives of more than 1,100 people.

Region has higher share of net zero economic output, data shows, and Labour leaders fear Reform would dismantle industry if it wins power

Rachel Reeves has been urged to put the north of England at the heart of the UK’s net zero strategy as research shows the sector contributes a larger share of the region’s economy than it does nationally.

The Labour peer Julie Elliott said the north must be “front and centre” of the Treasury’s growth strategy for clean energy.

Researchers found a new way to filter and destroy Pfas chemicals at 100 times the rate of current systems

New filtration technology developed by Rice University may absorb some Pfas “forever chemicals” at 100 times the rate previously possible, which could dramatically improve pollution control and speed remediations.

Researchers also say they have also found a way to destroy Pfas, though both technologies face a steep challenge in being deployed on an industrial scale.

Exclusive: Author of The Crown’s Silence tells how navy and monarchy protected slave trade for hundreds of years

The British crown and the navy expanded and protected the trade in enslaved African people for hundreds of years, unprecedented research into the monarchy’s historical ties to slavery has found.

The Crown’s Silence, a book by the historian Brooke Newman, follows the Guardian’s 2023 Cost of the crown report, which explored the British monarchy’s hidden ties to transatlantic slavery.

Marcus Fakana, 19, was killed in crash after spending about a year in a UAE prison for having sex with 17-year-old girl

A driver has admitted killing a British teenager in a car crash shortly after the 19-year-old had been released from a Dubai prison sentence for having sex with a 17-year-old girl.

Marwaan Mohamed Huseen, 20, was attempting to get away from pursuing Metropolitan police officers when he crashed a BMW into a lorry, killing 19-year-old Marcus Fakana, who was one of the vehicle’s passengers.

Campaigners believe evaluations have been suppressed as they cast further doubt on safety and economic benefits

• UK politics live – latest updates

Road campaigners and motoring organisations have urged UK government ministers to immediately release a series of “withheld” safety assessments of smart motorways – some dating back to 2022.

Designed to increase capacity, smart motorways have the hard shoulder converted into a live lane of traffic, relying on occasional laybys and electronic overhead signs to close lanes in emergencies.

In focus groups in Warrington and Godalming, there was a feeling Keir Starmer was adrift – but are Reform’s ‘Globetrotters’ the answer?

Boris Johnson’s election victory in 2019 was so sweeping you could walk from Land’s End to Hadrian’s Wall without ever leaving a Tory constituency. You could also have walked between two constituencies where More in Common ran focus groups with 2019 Conservative voters this week – Warrington South and Godalming and Ash. These are two seats that tell the story of the breadth and collapse of the Conservatives’ 2019 coalition.

Warrington South, a north-west marginal that has flipped between Labour and the Conservatives, sits just outside the “red wall”. It voted leave in 2016, backed Johnson in 2019 and swung to Labour in 2024. Today, More in Common’s MRP (multi-level regression and post-stratification) modelling suggests it would be won comfortably by Reform UK.

Display at President’s House site, residence to George Washington, had information on people enslaved by him

Philadelphia is taking legal action against the Trump administration following the National Park Service’s decision to dismantle a long-established slavery-related exhibit at Independence National Historical park, which holds the former residence of George Washington.

The city filed its lawsuit in federal court on Thursday, naming the US Department of Interior and its secretary, Doug Burgum, the National Park Service, and its acting director, Jessica Bowron, as defendants. The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring the exhibits to be restored while the case proceeds.

Court says alleged abuse and trafficking offences occurred outside Spain, leaving it without jurisdiction

Spanish prosecutors have shelved a complaint brought by two women who have accused the singer Julio Iglesias of sexual assault and human trafficking, arguing the country’s courts have no jurisdiction as the alleged offences took place outside Spain.

Two female former employees who worked at Iglesias’s Caribbean mansions 10 days ago accused the veteran entertainer of sexual assault, saying they had been subjected “to inappropriate touching, insults and humiliation … in an atmosphere of control and constant harassment”.

Much-anticipated trial scheduled in New York over killing of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson

Luigi Mangione’s federal murder trial in the killing of the United HealthCare CEO Brian Thompson is scheduled to start with jury selection on 8 September, a judge said on Friday, triggering one of the most eagerly anticipated criminal trials in recent US history.

Judge Margaret Garnett announced the trial date to a packed Manhattan federal courtroom shortly before an evidence-related hearing in his case.

Court told US president’s son contacted woman shortly before alleged assault in London

A man accused of raping a woman in London denied he was angry when she received a call from Donald Trump’s son, a court has heard.

Barron Trump, the youngest son of the US president, was on a video call in January last year with the woman, who cannot be named, when he allegedly witnessed her being assaulted by a man in London and alerted police.

Kristalina Georgieva says research suggests 60% of jobs in advanced economies will be affected, with many entry-level roles wiped out

Artificial intelligence will be a “tsunami hitting the labour market”, with young people worst affected, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned the World Economic Forum on Friday.

Kristalina Georgieva told delegates in Davos that the IMF’s own research suggested there would be a big transformation of demand for skills, as the technology becomes increasingly widespread.

US president’s $5bn lawsuit against JP Morgan and Jamie Dimon follows a steady rise in tensions between the two men

Weeks after Donald Trump’s first shock election win, bosses from across corporate America were scrambling to enter the president’s orbit.

Business leaders ranging from the General Motors boss, Mary Barra, to Disney’s chief, Bob Iger, quickly signed up to a new advisory council in 2016 to help shape the aggressively pro-growth policies of this new populist politician. Among them was the head of America’s largest bank: Jamie Dimon, the chair and chief executive of JP Morgan.

Megan Greene says apparent end to the decline in wage growth could hinder fight against inflation

The Bank of England may not be able to lower interest rates as much as expected this year, due to strong UK pay growth and expected rate cuts in the US, one of its top policymakers has said.

Megan Greene, a member of the Bank’s monetary policy committee (MPC), which sets interest rates in the UK, said she was concerned that wages appeared to be growing strongly again this year and this could stop inflation from easing.

Architect of government’s water plan says nationalisation might not fix everything and the current system can work

The privatisation of water in England is not the reason for its failings, the architect of the government’s water plan has said, as he warned there was no one “simple solution” such as nationalisation.

Sir Jon Cunliffe, a former Bank of England deputy governor who was involved in reforming banking regulation after the 2008 financial crisis, was enlisted by the Labour government to write a report on the water industry. He was tasked with addressing problems such as the sewage scandal, frequent tap water outages and lack of preparedness for drought.

With the search for the country’s first town of culture under way, Guardian writers pick their favourite spots for art, architecture, food, festivals, music and celeb spotting

Why did Caesar, Saint Augustine, Hengist and Horsa make Ramsgate their first port of call on assorted crusading trips to England? Proximity to France? Easy landing beaches beneath the cliffs? The lively arts scene?

Lining up for best supporting actor in the year’s most hotly-tipped film, the Lewisham-born actor has long been a favourite of the Malcolm X director and is poised for brighter limelight

In the aftermath of the Oscar nominations, Wunmi Mosaku was heralded as Britain’s saviour after her best supporting actress nod at Hollywood’s most prestigious awards. The UK had been facing its first nomination-less year in the acting categories since 1986.

But the Sinners star was joined by a fellow cast member, Lewisham-born, Delroy Lindo, who will also be representing Britain on the big night on 15 March.

Sundance film festival: there’s a dearth of both laughs and scares in this one-joke comedy horror that feels like it would have made for a better short film

Before we get Ayo Edebiri and Daniel Kaluuya’s take on an A24 Barney movie, a project that’s been in some various level of development hell for seven years, here comes Buddy. Like an off-brand ripoff from the 90s (anyone remember Ricky’s Room?), he’s another friendly, furry friend to wide-eyed young children, the main star of a TV show we’re thrown straight into, neatly styled to feel like we’re suddenly transported back to that era (similar to 2024’s far darker and far superior Sundance throwback I Saw the TV Glow).

The formula is familiar – lessons, singing, syllables overpronounced – but there’s something off. The persistence of Buddy, an orange unicorn with undying enthusiasm, is bordering on aggressive as his playful suggestion to dance suddenly devolves into something far more sinister. What if Buddy isn’t really our friend after all?

Buddy is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

Sundance film festival: the documentarian’s feature debut, essentially an extended episode of his HBO series, turns an exploration of concrete into a meditation on change

For those in the know, the release of the Sundance film festival lineup last December contained one perfect, tantalizing log line, for a documentary plainly called The History of Concrete: “After attending a workshop on how to write and sell a Hallmark movie, filmmaker John Wilson tries to use the same formula to sell a documentary about concrete.”

Wilson, a film-maker from the Nathan Fielder school of meandering, bone-dry observational comedy, is a master of the modern documentary-essay-memoir, with an uncanny eye for the idiosyncratic, unintentionally hilarious and disturbing vignettes hiding in plain sight. Over three near-perfect seasons, his peerless HBO series How To With John Wilson, executive-produced by Fielder, spun spoofs of practical guides (“How to Cook the Perfect Risotto”) into profound meditations on the loudness, loneliness and ridiculousness of modern urban life, each half-hour episode a magic trick of elaborate, bizarre tangents reined in at the last second. For fans of the show – in my opinion, the single best TV series about New York this decade – Wilson’s feature documentary debut, supposedly about the most iconic element of urban life, was a must-see.

The History of Concrete is screening at the Sundance film festival and is seeking distribution

Any attempt to add a down-to-Earth note to this wildly psychedelic 80s cartoon risks missing the point of its gloriously overblown origins

There is a rule in the science fiction and fantasy milieu – or at least there ought to be – that these types of properties should never, ever set any of the action in our own solar system. With the notable exception of Alien: Earth, which cleverly reframes the franchise’s xenomorphs as little more than fluffy house cats compared with humanity’s own talent for self-destruction, it is almost always a terrible idea. Who remembers Galactica 1980, the early-80s offshoot of Battlestar Galactica that lasted all of one season? Or the later seasons of Lexx, which took one of television’s most glorious space operas and promptly shrank it by parking large chunks of the action in this solar system.

And then there was the 1987 big-screen adaptation of Masters of the Universe, which somehow decided to send Nordic lunk Dolph Lundgren to LA before audiences had even finished adjusting to the idea of him being He-Man at all – as if the true stuff of epic fantasy was not skull-faced castles, cosmic sorcery and men built like exploded anatomy textbooks, but shopping malls, car parks and the vague promise of a California food court.

Move over, Wonder Woman! The latest MCU spin-off is an intriguing and surprisingly meta affair. Plus: a brilliant documentary about the boyband – and more regency raunch as Bridgerton returns

In terms of audience recognition, Wonder Man is no Wonder Woman. But, as this latest addition to the MCU shows, that can afford a certain freedom. This miniseries is a surprisingly meta affair; a superhero fantasy by way of the kind of behind-the-camera machinations familiar to fans of Seth Rogen’s The Studio. It tells the story of a pair of struggling actors, Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) and Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley), who are hustling hard to be cast in eccentric European director Von Kovak’s movie Wonder Man. But what seems like a simple Hollywood satire soon develops special powers as Simon finds he shares certain attributes with his fictional persona. Intriguing.
Disney+, from Wednesday 28 January

(Columbia Records)
Styles is wonderfully loose and unhurried on the lead single to his new album, taking a bold path away from the rest of today’s mainstream pop

Now the proud owner of six Brits, three Grammys and seven UK Top 10 singles, it’s fair to say Harry Styles has elegantly sidestepped the potholes that pepper the route from ex-boyband member to solo superstar. His well-earned confidence means that rather than fill the gap between 2022’s Harry’s House and last week’s announcement of his fourth album – the confusingly-titled Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally – with various one-off releases, spurious anniversary variants or curated social media moments, Styles basically disappeared. In fact, the only sliver of excitement for his fanbase to grab on to came last September when he ran the Berlin marathon in a very respectable 2hr 59min.

Having endured the music industry at the height of its #content-heavy obsession in One Direction, there’s something old-fashioned about Styles’ absence between album eras. That’s unlikely to be accidental: since launching his solo career with 2017’s muted, 1970s soft-rock-indebted self-titled debut, Styles has cast himself as a cross-generational throwback beamed into the present, albeit one sporting fashion choices that rile gender conformists. Each album has arrived with a list of influences more akin to the lineup on the Old Grey Whistle Test than the current TikTok algorithms, while 2019’s Fine Line, Styles told us, was crafted under the influence of those vintage psychedelics, magic mushrooms.

The LA-based pop duo are sending a jolt through TikTok with maximalist songs that emote wildly in every direction

From Los Angeles
Recommend if you like Erasure, Chappell Roan, Jade
Up next Debut album Big Disgrace out 13 March

Just when you think pop is finally moving away from the synth-heavy 80s sound, another thrilling new act comes along to say: “Nope!” With shades of Erasure and a good dollop of theatre kid energy, Haute & Freddy are the Regency-styled freaks sending a jolt through TikTok. Their latest single Dance the Pain Away is the year’s first true banger, a dazzling sad-pop production that bursts through the January gloom, thrusts a spritzer in your hand and drags you to the dancefloor.

Brixton Academy
Nominated for producer of the year for his album Baby and work with Justin Bieber, the US musician’s passion and experimentalism shine in this daring performance

Dijon may have sold out two nights at Brixton Academy, but the first feels more like the audience are witnessing a joyous jam session between friends: musicians who are totally attentive to one another and unabashed in their passion.

Following an extensive US tour of his acclaimed album Baby – and ahead of next weekend’s Grammys, where he is up for producer of the year thanks to his work with Justin Bieber – the US singer-songwriter clutches the mic as if it’s giving him life, seemingly preoccupied only with the sounds surrounding him. His music is a kind of lo-fi but densely produced R&B, but his setup here is the stuff of electronic prog rock, with soundboards and decks, a vast array of synthesisers, a live kit, electric guitar and bass, a violin and backing vocals. That ambition is matched by the setlist: 21 songs in two hours played in quick succession.

(Tiny Tiger)
Moving from dream pop to acoustic clarity, the Dutch-British songwriter delivers her most personal record yet where loss is transformed into something quietly powerful

The warm sounds of folk guitar provide the roots of Tessa Rose Jackson’s first album under her own name, time-travelling from Bert Jansch to REM to Sharon Van Etten in every strum and squeak. The Dutch-British musician previously recorded as Someone, creating three albums in dream-pop shades, but her fourth – a rawer, richer affair, made alone in rural France – digs into ancestry, mortality and memory.

The Lighthouse begins with its title track. Strums of perfect fifths, low moans of woodwind and thundering rumbles of percussion frame a journey towards a beacon at “high tide on a lonesome wind”. The death of one of Jackson’s two mothers when she was a teenager informs her lyrics here and elsewhere: in The Bricks That Make the Building, a sweet, psych-folk jewel which meditates on “the earth that feeds the garden / The breath that helps the child sing” and Gently Now, which begins in soft clouds of birdsong, then tackles how growing older can cosset the process of grief. Her approach to the subject is inquisitive, poetic and refreshing.

Caring canines; daring donuts; a golden monkey; a boy from another planet; a dark take on Little Women and more

The Good Deed Dogs by Emma Chichester Clark, Walker, £12.99
Three very good dogs’ attempts to help others keep backfiring with chaotic consequences – until they pull off a successful kitten rescue in this exuberantly charming picture book.

Auntie’s Bangles by Dean Atta and Alea Marley, Orchard, £12.99
Everyone misses Auntie, especially the jingle of her jewellery; but eventually Theo and Rama are ready to put on her bangles and dance to celebrate her memory. A sweet, poignant picture book about loss, joy and remembrance.

The Scottish author on a masterclass from Toni Morrison, the brilliance of Simone de Beauvoir and the trim novel by Tove Jansson containing everything that really matters

My earliest reading memory
Apparently I taught myself to read when I was three via the labels on the Beatles 45s we had: I remember the moment of recognising the words “I” and “Feel” and “Fine”. It took a bit longer to work out the word “Parlophone”.

My favourite book growing up
Sister Vincent taught primary six in St Joseph’s, Inverness, and was a discerning reader with very good taste, plus the kind of literary moral rectitude that meant she removed Enid Blyton from the class library because she believed Blyton’s books were written by a factory of writers. In 1972 she and I had a passionate argument when the class was choosing a book to be read out loud to us and I championed Charlotte’s Web by EB White, with which I was in love. Sister Vincent put her foot down. “No. Because animals speak in it, and in reality animals don’t speak.” I recently reread it for the first time since I was nine, and it moved me to tears. What a fine book, about all sorts of language, injustice, imaginative power and friendship versus life’s tough realities. Terrific. Radiant. Humble.

The plight of a reluctant medieval king is glimpsed through scattered pieces of the past, in an ingenious novel that asks how much we can really know about history

In a medieval palace an unnamed king chafes under the new and unsought burden of power. His uncertain fate plays out in the present-day imagination of an unnamed curator of unspecified gender, who has been employed by the palace to dress some of its rooms for public viewing in the wake of an undescribed personal tragedy.

It’s likely that you’ll either be utterly intrigued or deeply put off by that summary of poet Rebecca Perry’s debut novel, May We Feed the King, a highly wrought puzzle-box of a book which deliberately wrongfoots the reader at every turn. However, the intrigued will find that it richly rewards those who approach it with curiosity – just not in the ways we as readers (and as interpreters of stories in any form) have been trained to expect.

Feigel uses her own experience as a starting point to examine the past, present and future of separation

This book about child custody is, unsurprisingly, full of pain. The pain of mothers separated from their children, of children sobbing for their mothers, of adults who have never moved on from the trauma of their youth, and of young people who are forced to live out the conflicts of their elders. Lara Feigel casts her net across history and fiction, reportage and memoir, and while her research is undeniably impressive and her candour moving, at times she struggles to create a narrative that can hold all these tales of anguish together.

The book begins with a woman flinging herself fully clothed into a river and then restlessly walking on, swimming again, walking again. This is French novelist George Sand, driven to desperate anxiety as she waits to go into court to fight for the right to custody of her children. But almost immediately the story flicks away to Feigel’s own custody battle, and then back into the early 19th century, with Caroline Norton’s sons being taken away in a carriage in the rain by their father.

Quake Brutalist Jam began as a celebration of old-fashioned shooter level design, but its latest version is one step away from being a game in its own right

A lone concrete spire stands in a shallow bowl of rock, sheltering a rusted trapdoor from the elements. Standing on the trapdoor causes it to yawn open like iron jaws, dropping you through a vertical shaft into a subterranean museum. Here, dozens of doors line the walls of three vaulted grey galleries, each leading to a pocket dimension of dizzying virtual architecture and fierce gladiatorial combat.

Welcome to Quake Brutalist Jam, the hottest community event for lovers of id Software’s classic first-person shooter from 1996. First run in 2022, the Jam started out as a celebration of old-school 3D level design, where veteran game developers, aspiring level designers and enthusiast modders gather to construct new maps and missions themed around the austere minimalism of brutalist architecture.

After years away​ revisiting my abandoned island uncovers new features, old memories and the quiet reassurance that ​you can go home again

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Nintendo’s pandemic-era hit Animal Crossing: New Horizons got another major update last week, along with a £5 Switch 2 upgrade that makes it look and run better on the new console. Last year, I threw a new year’s party for my children in the game, but apart from that I have barely touched my island since the depths of lockdown, when sunny Alba was my preferred escape from the monotonous misery of the real world. Back then, I spent more than 200 hours on this island. Stepping out of her (now massive) house, my avatar’s hair is all ruffled and her eyes sleepy after a long, long time aslumber.

I half-expected Alba to be practically in ruins, but it’s not that bad. Aside from a few cockroaches in the basement and a bunch of weeds poking up from the snow, everything is as it was. The paths that I had laid out around the island still lead me to the shop, the tailors, the museum; I stop by to visit Blathers the curatorial owl, and he gives me a new mission to find a pigeon called Brewster so that we can open a museum cafe. “It’s been four years and eight months!” exclaims one of my longtime residents, a penguin called Aurora. That can’t be right, can it? Have I really been ignoring her since summer 2021? Thankfully, Animal Crossing characters are very forgiving. I get the impression they’ve been getting along perfectly fine without me.

PC; Inkle
The UK game developer’s latest is a database mystery constructed from an archive of fictional books. Their combined contents threaten to crack the code of reality

Bletchley Park: famed home of the Enigma machine, Colossus computer, and, according to the premise of TR-49, an altogether stranger piece of tech. Two engineers created a machine that feeds on the most esoteric books: treatises on quantum computing, meditations on dark matter, pulp sci-fi novels and more. In the mid-2010s, when the game is set, Britain finds itself again engulfed by war, this time with itself. The arcane tool may hold the key to victory.

You play as budding codebreaker Abbi, a straight-talking northerner who is sifting through the machine now moved to a crypt beneath Manchester Cathedral. She has no idea how it works and neither do you. So you start tinkering. You input a four-digit code – two letters followed by two numbers. What do these correspond to? The initials of people and the year of a particular book’s publication. Input a code correctly and you are whisked away to the corresponding page, as if using a particularly speedy microfiche reader. These pages – say, by famed fictional physicist, Joshua Silverton – are filled with clues and, should you get lucky, further codes and even the titles of particular works. Your primary goal is to match codes with the corresponding book title in a bid to find the most crucial text of all, Endpeace, the key to understanding the erudite ghosts of this machine.

Embark Studios’ multiplayer extraction shooter game has already sold 12m copies in just three months. Will it capture you too?

Released last October Arc Raiders has swiftly become one of the most successful online shooters in the world, shifting 12m copies in barely three months and attracting as many players as established mega hits such as Counter-Strike 2 and Apex Legends. So what is it about this sci-fi blaster that’s captured so many people – and how can you get involved?

So what is Arc Raiders?

Royal Court theatre, London
Rosie Sheehy and Robert Aramayo excel as a couple reeling from an ultrasound scan in Luke Norris’s extraordinary play

The trigger warnings are handed to us on a card as we file into the auditorium. For good reason: Luke Norris’s play is a harrowing portrait of pregnancy and grief, plumbing the depths of sorrow within a marriage. But it is not only that. It is funny and profound, intense without ever becoming overwrought.

The play follows a thirtysomething couple who remain unnamed, just like their baby, as they navigate loss. Their relationship seems to feed off a sparky kind of contrariness. She (Rosie Sheehy) is clever, ferocious, always up for a fight. He (Robert Aramayo) is gentler, using humour – and poetry, even in the face of her jeering – to soften her edges. Their dialogue sounds like a contact sport – ricocheting, fast and furious – while they wait for the results of their 20-week ultrasound scan in the first scene.

At Royal Court theatre, London, until 21 February

Southwark Playhouse Borough, London
Despite the vocal bravura of the cast, this show doesn’t capture the Jazz Age power couple’s dazzle or darkness

For decades people have been seeking to rescue Zelda Fitzgerald from her reputation as F Scott’s mad, bad wife. She’s been remade as a feminist icon – a woman driven to extremes, and even incarcerated, by a society and a husband who couldn’t cope with her creativity. Some have tried, too, to capture the Fitzgeralds’ melodramatic marriage on stage (such as in the Craig Revel Horwood-directed Beautiful and Damned in the West End in 2004), with limited success. This latest attempt, with music and lyrics by actor Hannah Corneau, is directed by Michael Greif, the man behind the original Broadway productions of Rent and Dear Evan Hansen.

He has, unsurprisingly, assembled a cast that can pour plenty of vocal bravura into Corneau’s largely poppy score. We follow the well-worn trajectory of the Fitzgeralds’ ascent and decline from Jazz Age fame through the lens of their daughter Scottie as she wanders through their archive (book-lovers will ache over Shankho Chaudhuri’s set of shelves and stacks). The framing is as little explored as the rest of the show’s ideas – why is Scottie there in the first place? – but does allow for a moving performance from Lauren Ward, as she interacts with her parents at various ages.

Milton Court, London
The new music group’s engaging programme of works by Corie Rose Soumah, Anna Meredith, Alex Paxton and Eden Lonsdale moved from the swaggering to the subtle

‘Brace yourself,” the concert programme warned. “This is music that refuses to behave.” After more than 10 years and some 350 world and UK premieres, we’d expect nothing less from Riot Ensemble. This is a group whose promo images once saw them brandishing drumsticks as clubs, music stands as Kalashnikovs, that treats new music as a bloodsport: they like to be in at the kill.

Fresh on the slab were four works from across the spectrum of scope and mood – “music of maximal difference” as conductor Aaron Holloway-Nahum put it – a playlist designed to bring a polite midweek audience up to frenzied, club levels of intensity before cooling us down and sending us out dazed and disoriented.

Soho theatre, London
The standup mines familiar comedy scenarios, but dazzling one-liners and shaggy dog stories elevate the set

Pierre Novellie protests that life is getting harder for observational comedians because, in these siloed times, we have so few reference points in common. It would be a more persuasive theory if he didn’t begin his show with two of the most relatable topics known to comedy, becoming middle-aged and moving to the suburbs. He’s clever and funny on both, mind you, and throughout a show that, at least for a while, cleaves to familiar tropes of thirtysomething standup: fussiness about dishwasher stacking; fear of turning into a “crusty old colonel”.

You might incline to the conclusion that the South African-born Brit is a better writer than he is a performer. His one-liners are frequently dazzling (“I played rugby at school the same way that horses fought in the war”) but his show is formally conventional and his delivery a little stiff. I spent a portion of the show thinking along those lines, until the sheer quality of Novellie’s routines in its second half bulldozed my resistance. His grumpy riff on how people dress in airports, with a droll sidebar on Winnie the Pooh’s couture, is fun, but pales next to its succeeding section, on the game of chicken Novellie played with the cleaners in his Melbourne hotel.

Avatar director, who moved to New Zealand after the Covid pandemic says he will soon be a citizen of a country where people ‘are, for the most part, sane’

James Cameron has said that New Zealand’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic is the reason behind his decision to relocate there from the US.

Speaking to Stuff, Cameron – who shot much of the most recent Avatar feature in the southern hemisphere – described being the US under Donald Trump as “like watching a car crash over and over” and said his New Zealand citizenship was “imminent”.

Ask the likable comedy actor about Spaced, the Cornetto trilogy, West Ham, his new horror film Whistle or his forthcoming role as Hagrid in Harry Potter

There’s something inherently likable about Nick Frost. It often feels as though he’s not acting at all – just being himself. That may be because he wasn’t an actor at all until Simon Pegg cast him as his best mate Mike Watt in the much-loved sitcom Spaced, when Frost was working as a waiter in a Mexican restaurant in London. After bonding over a shared love of comedy, horror, Star Wars and video games, the pair became slacker flatmates as well as friends.

Their bromance soon continued on screen, with Frost playing slovenly best mate Ed to Pegg’s Shaun in Shaun of the Dead, followed by the guileless West Country police officer Danny Butterman opposite Pegg’s Nicholas Angel in Hot Fuzz. They reunited once more for the final instalment of their Cornetto trilogy, with Frost as teetotal lawyer Andy – childhood friend to Pegg’s Gary – in The World’s End. The pair also co-wrote and starred as British geeks on a US road trip with an alien in Paul, and later teamed up again for the criminally underrated Amazon series Truth Seekers.

Virtuoso trumpeter and founder of the Wallace Collection brass ensemble who performed alongside Kiri Te Kanawa at the 1981 royal wedding

John Wallace, who has died aged 76, was a virtuoso trumpeter, composer and educator whose roots lay in the brass band tradition of working-class communities in his native Fife.

He nurtured that connection throughout a hugely successful and eclectic performing career, as principal trumpet and soloist with leading UK orchestras and conductors, and founder of the Wallace Collection brass ensemble, before becoming principal of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2002. Wallace was also an effective campaigner for free instrumental tuition in Scottish schools, enabling children of all backgrounds to explore and develop their talents.

Jessica Rankin sews up painting, arte povera’s Mario Merz comes in from the cold and Andy Warhol brings pop to the Midlands – all in your weekly dispatch

Jessica Rankin
This New York artist’s abstract works hover between embroidery and painting and have a seductive, lyrical beauty.
• White Cube Mason’s Yard, London, 28 January to 28 February

Identical twins Helen Besgrove, a marketing executive, and Kirsty Neal, a GP, share their different experiences perceiving the world

Helen Besgrove: My twin sister, Kirsty, and I have a very similar experience of synaesthesia in that our experiences of sounds, tastes, smells, words, noises and motion is very visual. Whether it’s a name, a personality, a sound or a smell – everything has a colour and a texture in our mind’s eye.

What’s interesting is that the colours and the textures Kirsty and I see can be very different. When I drink a glass of chardonnay, I get these swirls of custardy oil but Kirsty might describe the same wine as fuzzy or blobby. It’s the same with people’s personalities, which we both see as a coloured and textured aura around that person. My best friend Jenn’s personality is poo brown, which she hates. For Kirsty, Jenn’s personality is yellow and blue with a brown stripe in the middle.

Advice about how to deal with barbs and those who throw them has trickled down from the Bible and through the generations for Meg Keneally and her father Thomas

• Read more in the Home Truths series

I’ve always been a dramatic soul. As a young teenager, I would stumble home from early high school, fresh from another day of taunts about my weight, the strange protrusions developing on my chest, or the perm I gave myself from a home kit at the weekend (it was the 1980s!). And, of course, I would relay every insult, every slight, every barb to my parents.

Whether you’re heading on a multi-day trek or need waterproof shoes for countryside walks, these are the best boots for the job – tried and tested by our writer

• ‘I’d never head out without one’: 10 hiking essentials

There are two types of people on any UK hiking trail: those wearing walking boots, and those who have yet to experience the unmistakable sensation of cowpat seeping through their trainers. I belong in the first camp and firmly believe that the great outdoors is best enjoyed in appropriate footwear.

A solid pair of walking boots will not only protect your feet from countryside unpleasantness but also save you from rolled ankles and skidding on slippery surfaces. Plus, provided they’re waterproof (and not just water-resistant – more on this later), they will keep your feet dry in inclement weather. I’ve tested more than 20 pairs: here’s my guide to the best walking boots out there.

Best walking boots overall:
La Sportiva TX5

Best budget walking boots:
Merrell Moab 3 Mid GTX

Central heating and chilly temperatures playing havoc? Our beauty expert shares her go-to fixes to hydrate and repair

• The best hand creams to soften dry and chapped skin

January has brought with it dark days, freezing temperatures and Arctic winds. Combined with drying central heating, your skin and hair may look and feel thoroughly out of sorts.

Adding a few extra steps to your routine to hydrate and repair can help, as could some carefully chosen swaps if your skin is particularly parched or irritated.

They’re hyped as fixes for everything from anxiety to insomnia, but can lying under seven kilos of fabric really help you unwind? We put weighted blankets to the test

• I tested the most-hyped sleep aids – here’s what worked

Anyone who’s ever nodded off under the weight of a purring cat or snoring dog already knows how weighted blankets work. The warmth, the softness, the hefty pressure that renders you unable to fidget or indeed move. Worries subside, and you have no choice but to slide into slumber.

Studies have demonstrated some success for weighted blankets as sleep aids, but where these hefty quilts seem to excel is in alleviating anxiety – and not just according to TikTok influencers. Scientists, medics and the NHS are trialling them to comfort dementia patients, soothe neurodivergent children and even relieve chronic pain.

Best weighted blanket overall:
Emma Hug

Best budget weighted blanket:
Silentnight Wellbeing

Looking to cut heating bills or warm just one room without firing up the boiler? We cosied up to 12 electric heaters to find the best

• The best hot-water bottles

Are you in need of a stopgap stand-in for your central heating? Or perhaps you’re looking for an efficient appliance to heat a small space. If so, investing in one of the best electric heaters will rid the cold from your home.

Electric heaters range from compact, fast-acting fan-powered models to oil-filled radiators and wall-mounted panels. Some also have smart functionality, so you can ask Alexa to turn up the heat, and other advanced features such as air purification and adaptive heating. But which are best?

Best electric heater overall:
Beldray 2,000W smart ceramic core radiator

Best budget electric heater:
Russell Hobbs oscillating ceramic 2kW heater

Single malt prices soar, but scotch should be fun and affordable

We have Robert Burns to thank for perhaps the greatest poem about any dish ever – a poem so good that it inspires an entire nation to dedicate an evening of each year to eating haggis, even though most people find it kind of gross.

No? If the “Great Chieftan o’ the Puddin-race” were that delicious, we’d all be eating it all the time, surely? And yet Burns’ Address to a Haggis is enticing enough to dispel any such doubts just once a year. I especially like the bit about slitting it open so the bright entrails spill out: “And then, O what a glorious sight / Warm-reekin, rich!”

Based on a cocktail called the bees’ knees, this winter warmer will put a bit of sunshine into your evening

This drink is full of ginger spice and aromatics from both the honey and the London dry gin. The fresher it is, the better, so don’t keep the syrup for longer than two days. I’m pretty particular about citrus shelf life, too, so always squeeze it fresh and never keep it overnight or, heaven forbid, even longer.

Ross Finnegan, bar manager, The Palomar, London W1

There’s a ton of winter comfort in the rich, golden and indulgent cake with its appealing orangey edge

A Breton butter cake is a proud product of Brittany’s butter-rich baking tradition: dense, golden and unapologetically indulgent. True to its origins, my version uses salted butter, with an added pinch of flaky salt to sharpen the flavour. It also takes a small detour from tradition: a slick of marmalade brings a fragrant bitterness, while a handful of ground almonds softens the overall richness and lends a tender crumb. The result is still buttery and luxurious, but with a brighter, more aromatic edge.

After Spudulike closed in 2024, the reign of the jacket potato seemed over in the UK. But now the favourite is back, piled with new toppings, sold by new companies and promoted all over social media by potato influencers

They were once a lunch option that inspired little excitement – but the jacket potato’s time has finally come. After decades in epicurean exile, the humble spud has made a roaring comeback in the UK and piqued the interest of foodies across the world. A-listers, tourists and trend-hopping teenagers are queueing for hours to get their hands on them. For Jacob Nelson, who sells loaded spuds that have gone super-viral on social media, this was all part of the plan. “We thought: how can we make the jacket potato sexy again?” he says.

The 30-year-old, who runs SpudBros with his brother Harley and dad Tony, was among the first crop of social-media savvy spud vendors to give the jacket potato a much-needed makeover. After a slow start in lockdown, the brothers spoke to some youngsters in Preston Flag Market, where they had set up shop, to find out why they were shunning spuds. “It was an absolute ghost town,” says Harley. “We spoke to one student walking past us. He said to get on social media.” The pair listened, filming their interactions with customers while showing off their mouthwatering loaded spuds, and subsequently went stratospheric on TikTok in 2023.

As a defence lawyer, I rely on witness statements. But one unusual case prompted me to reconsider the role of memory, and a traumatic experience that had affected me for years

I spent nearly 20 years working as a criminal defence lawyer in the remote communities of the Canadian Arctic. Nunavut – roughly the size of western Europe – is home to fewer than 40,000 people, most of whom are Inuit. The brief summers boast endless days, while polar night descends over long winters where temperatures occasionally drop as low as -50C. Despite the lack of urban centres and a small, homogenous population, the territory records one of the highest violent-crime rates per capita in the world.

There are no roads connecting Nunavut’s 26 communities. Aircraft is the only option, except for a brief ice-free window in late summer when supplies and fuel can be delivered by boat. Several times a year, the justice system arrives: a travelling circuit court sets up a temporary courtroom in local gymnasiums or community halls for three to four days.

From naked embraces and sofa snogging to the very final stages of life, a new exhibition proves there is no one way to age

From repurposed engagement rings to parties, tattoos and the wild home renovations of #DivorcedMomCore, relationship splits have entered a surprising new era

Name: Divorce rings.

Age: Relatively new. British Vogue is reporting that they are a thing. And if it’s in Vogue the chances are it’s in vogue.

In China, marriage and birth rates have hit record lows and many people are living in isolation. Is the Are You Dead? app just a practical response to this – or something more troubling?

A few days before Christmas, after a short battle with illness, a woman in Shanghai called Jiang Ting died. For years, the 46-year-old had lived in a one-bedroom apartment in Hongkou, a residential neighbourhood that sits along the Huangpu River. Neighbours described her as quiet. “She rarely chats with people. We only see her when she goes to and from work, and occasionally when she comes out to pick up takeout,” said a local resident interviewed by a Chinese reporter. Her parents long deceased, Jiang had no partner or children to inherit her estate. Her lonely death sparked a debate in Chinese media about how society should handle the increasing number of people dying with no next of kin.

For Xiong Sisi, also a professional in her 40s living alone in Shanghai, the news triggered uncomfortable feelings. “I truly worry that, after I die, no one will collect my body. I don’t care how I’m buried, but if I rot there, it’s bad for the house,” she says.

Millions of graduates are trapped by ballooning debts, as their repayments are dwarfed by the interest added

Helen Lambert borrowed £57,000 to go to university and began repaying her student loan in 2021 after starting work as an NHS nurse.

Since then she has repaid more than £5,000, typically having about £145 a month taken from her pay packet. But everything she hands over is dwarfed by the £400-plus of interest that is added to her debt every month, thanks to rates that have been as high as 8%.

From an Italian-style townhouse in London’s Chelsea to a country retreat in Dorset where every room is its own gallery

Despite the recent interest rate cut, many fixed-rate bond or easy-access account rates have held up longer than expected

Savers are being urged to shop around and move fast if they want to get hold of one of the competitive deals still available. These include one-year fixed-rate savings bonds paying up to 4.35% and an easy-access account with a rate of 4.5%.

The impact of the Bank of England’s pre-Christmas interest rate cut – the sixth reduction since August 2024 – has been making itself felt, with reductions to rates on many savings accounts. But some best-buy savings rates have arguably held up better than one might have expected.

From understanding jargon such as APRs and 0% transfer offers, to getting perks such as air miles or cashback

When you apply for a credit card or personal loan, the lender will quote interest as the annual percentage rate (APR). This is, essentially, the total cost of borrowing over 12 months, shown as a percentage of the amount you have borrowed. It takes fees into account, as well as interest. The rate should give you an idea of how much you will have to pay back on top of the money you want to borrow.

Mini breaks and micro-stretches could help strengthen your neck and reduce pain and stress, say experts

• Read more summer essentials

If you’re reading this on your device, chin tucked into your chest, or leaning over your desk shaped like a question mark, pause for a moment. How’s your neck feeling?

The way we sit, scroll and work means we often hold static positions for too long, creating tension and stiffness that radiates through the upper body.

Pricey deworming remedies are being touted as cure-alls. Supermodel Heidi Klum gave it a go – experts roll their eyes

Last August, supermodel Heidi Klum revealed that she and her husband, Tom Kaulitz, were planning a worm and parasite cleanse.

“Everything on my Instagram feed at the moment is about worms and parasites,” she told the Wall Street Journal, ominously adding: “I don’t know what the heck is going to come out.”

Spruiked by online influencers as a way of gaining insight into our health, experts say at-home tests oversimplify complex factors and can cause unnecessary distress

• Read more in the Antiviral series

For a few hundred dollars you can put your poo in an envelope and post it off to a laboratory. In return you’ll get a report (sometimes generated by AI) outlining your food sensitivities, metabolic fitness, and what pathogens or fungi you’re harbouring.

These at-home gut microbiome tests or “GI mapping” kits are frequently promoted by influencers as a way to “hack your health” and “take control” through analysing some of the trillions of organisms that live in your digestive tract.

As a boy, Tom Stoltman was diagnosed with autism and bullied at school. When he became depressed in his teens, his older brother, a bodybuilder, suggested a trip to the gym

• ‘I was told I wouldn’t walk again. I proved the doctors wrong’: the bike-obsessed pensioner who broke his neck and started afresh

Tom Stoltman was a skinny kid: 90kg, 6ft 8in, with glasses and sticking‑out teeth. Diagnosed with autism as a young child, he felt he didn’t fit in. “I was really shy,” he says. “I got bullied in school for being different.” Back then, the boy from Invergordon didn’t like what he saw in the mirror. He lived in baggy hoodies. “Hood up. That was my comfort.” He loved football but “I used to look at people on the pitch and think, ‘He’s tinier than me, but he’s pushing me off the ball.’”

By 16 he’d hit a “crashing point”. He went from football-obsessed to playing Xbox all day. He’d skip meals in favour of sweets. “Sometimes it was four or five, six bags.”

Fashion designer’s death has brought the red dress – and his distinctive shade of the colour – back into the spotlight

“The red dress,” said Valentino Garavani in 1992, “is always magnificent”.

This week, after the announcement of his death at the age of 93, the red dress – and the distinctive shade of red long associated with the designer known simply as Valentino – is back in the spotlight.

Slim frames and tinted lenses are reshaping how men present themselves. Glasses have become the must-have accessory – even if you don’t have a prescription

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Last spring, Tom Broughton, founder of eyewear brand Cubitts, was asked to comment on a meme that was going viral, that featured a pair of his company’s ‘Plimsoll’ frames. The small, delicate, and slightly round unisex shape had been worn by British actor, Jonathan Bailey, in leaked stills from the 2025 movie, Jurassic World Rebirth – and had been dubbed by the internet as a pair of ‘slutty little glasses’.

“It all just blew up,” remembers Broughton, noting how the brand struggled to deal with the sudden demand for what had become the sexiest specs on the market. A subsequent capsule collection, made in partnership with Bailey’s LGBTQ+ charity the Shameless Fund, sold out almost instantly, too. Thousands of pairs were gone in minutes, and after multiple restocks, “we’re maybe down to our last 15 pairs,” adds Broughton. Nearly the entire run was bought by men.

A neat alternative to messing around trying to get the perfect T-shirt tuck. Here a three outfits to get you started

I was surprised by the dormant ringlets springing to life as I hunched over the basin, squishing in conditioner to define each tendril

• Read more summer essentials

My housemate has a special phrase for some of my old photos: “Ima’s whiteface era” – hair seared straight down the middle with brassy blond highlights.

Where I grew up, in a regional coastal town, the gold standard was sandy blond beach babe.

From the jungles of Colombia to sailing in Croatia, our readers reflect on the life lessons travel has taught them
• Send us a tip on a museum or gallery – the best wins a £200 holiday voucher

I did a circuit of the Old Man of Coniston in the Lake District on a grey, drizzly weekday in October and it quietly rewired my head. I’d been running on always-on mode, and that climb forces you to slow down and breathe properly. From the Coppermines valley up to the ridge, then along the rocky summit and back via Goat’s Water, it’s rugged without being showy. The weather kept the crowds away, and the low cloud made the tarn feel like a secret. I came home muddy, soaked and weirdly calm, and started making space for long walks again.
Brandon Kindell

GeoKarst is a new EU-funded project highlighting a unique landscape of caves, gorges and medieval villages near Trieste

Our guide turns out the lights and suddenly there is nothing. Just total darkness, the sound of gentle dripping and a creeping feeling of unease. The switch is flicked back on and the shadowy world that lies deep beneath the Karst returns. I’m in Vilenica, thought to be the first cave in the world ever opened to tourists, with records of visitors dating back to 1633. It’s a magical sight: a grand antechamber sculpted through erosion, filled with soaring stalagmites and plunging stalactites streaked in shades of red, terracotta and orange by iron oxide, and dotted with shimmering crystals.

Vilenica is just one of a network of thousands of caves located in the Karst region of western Slovenia and eastern Italy, which is known for its porous, soluble limestone rock. Above ground, this creates a distinctive landscape, filled with rocks bearing lined striations and pockmarked by hollows known as dolines, where the limestone has collapsed underneath. But below ground is where it’s really special, with enormous caves, sinkholes and subterranean rivers. Later in the day, I visit the region’s other main visitor cave, Škocjan, where I’m amazed to see an underground river thunder through a chamber almost 150 metres high. It’s an almost surreal sensory experience, with the rush of the rapids echoing around the walls.

With 64% of the city’s residents relying on buses and trains so overloaded that up to 10 passengers die a day, anger is rising over a taxpayer-funded road most will never use

Mumbai is known for its graphic inequality, its gleaming high-rises where the rich live with panoramic views of the Arabian Sea standing next to windowless hovels perched over drains. It is home to 90 of India’s billionaires, but also to more than six million slum dwellers, about 55% of central Mumbai’s population.

Now Mumbai has a new symbol of the gulf between rich and poor: a high-speed, eight-lane motorway on its western coast, which critics say serves only the wealthy despite being built with taxpayers’ money.

The city’s architecture travels through time and continents, incorporating everything from slabs of the Italian Alps to meteorites that hit southern Africa 2bn years ago

In the heart of London’s Square Mile, between the windows of a tapas restaurant, a 150m-year-old ammonite stares mutely at passersby. The fossil is embedded in a limestone wall on Plantation Lane, sitting alongside the remnants of ancient nautiloids and squid-like belemnites. It’s a mineralised aquarium hiding in plain sight, a snapshot of deep time that few even glance at, a transtemporal space where patatas bravas meet prehistoric cephalopods.

How often do you give thought to the stones that make up our towns and cities? To the building blocks, paving slabs and machine-cut masonry that backdrop our lives? If your name’s Dr Ruth Siddall, the answer to that question would be yesterday, today and every day for the foreseeable. Her passion is urban geology, and it turns out that the architecture of central London – in common with many places – is a largely unwitting showcase of Earth science through the ages.

Seeing them separated for the first time felt like a miracle

I was already a mother of three when I lay back for my 10-week ultrasound in 2019. At first, seeing the gel on my stomach and the flickering black and white image on screen was familiar and soothing. Then I saw the look on the sonographer’s face.

She dropped the probe and ran out of the room without a word. I tried not to panic, but by the time she sprinted back in with a doctor, who looked at the screen and said, “Oh my goodness”, I was terrified.

What could be better than working at the Friendship Inn with my best friend, Ned? Almost anything else, as it turned out

I adored pubs. They were my natural home. And now, thanks to my best friend, Ned, I’d got a job at the Friendship Inn in Prestwich. It was the mid-1980s, and I was in my early 20s, preparing for the first shift. What could be better than working in a pub called the Friendship alongside my bezzy? And I understood drink – you left Guinness to stand, aimed for half an inch of head on a pint of bitter, and if someone asked for water with a whisky you didn’t fill the glass. Easy-peasy.

As soon as I got behind the bar I panicked. There were perhaps half a dozen people waiting to order, but it looked like a sea of thousands. The bar was particularly tricky because it was shaped like the bow of a ship. Every time I went to one side, customers started calling from the other. I couldn’t remember the faces. Nor the drinks they ordered. I took a funny turn. The faces became twisted, distorted, ghoulish, cackling manically or cursing my incompetence. I felt like Mia Farrow confronting the neighbours’ coven in Rosemary’s Baby, only thankfully I didn’t have a knife.

I poured Guinness for people who had ordered a glass of red, Budweiser for those who wanted a Boddingtons. There wasn’t a thing I didn’t get wrong. And then I broke my first glass. The crowd staring at me got more Rosemary’s Baby by the second. My bitter was headless; my lager all head. I broke another glass. I was getting dizzy, struggling to breathe. My legs were collapsing.

In a less flowery garden, you can spot the gaps more easily – and fill them with bare-root plants at this time of year

This time last year we were about to put our old flat on the market – the first proper garden I had as a gardening adult. The one that taught me so much, where I made compost for the first time and cut peonies from the bare roots I’d ordered as soon as we exchanged contracts on the place. Where I painted the back wall pink and strung up lights and held parties and watered the ground with cheap prosecco; where I planted a tree for my newborn son, and lay beneath it with him in languid, too-long summer afternoons, trying to make sense of motherhood.

Anyway, every time I’d show estate agents around our two-bed flat, they’d conjure unconvincing compliments about our airing cupboard, before sticking their head cursorily out the back door and saying: “Oh, it’s winter, no gardens look good in winter, no buyers will be expecting it to look nice,” and I’d seethe.

Amateur conservationist and social media influencer Theerasak 'Pop' Saksritawee has a rare bond with Thailand’s critically endangered dugongs. With dugong fatalities increasing, Pop works alongside scientists at Phuket Marine Biological Centre to track the mammals with his drone and restore their disappearing seagrass habitat. Translating complex science for thousands online, Pop raises an urgent alarm about climate change, pollution and habitat loss — before Thailand’s dugongs vanish forever

The Testament of Ann Lee is a bonkers musical fantasia about an obscure religious sect. Its star and writer-director Mona Fastvold talk fear, bonding – and not needing an Oscar

Not many actors take an interest in the audience’s aftercare. When it comes to The Testament of Ann Lee, however, Amanda Seyfried is hands-on. “Did you watch it with someone you could talk to?” she asks, tilting her head sympathetically, then dipping her full-beam headlight eyes and giving a worried look when I admit that I saw it alone. “It’s nice to process it with somebody else.”

Her concern is understandable. Whatever feelings the film provokes, indifference will not be among them. Heady and rapturous, this is an all-round odd duck of a movie, the sort of go-for-broke phantasmagoria – an 18th-century musical biopic complete with feverish visions and levitating – that was once typical of Lars von Trier or Bruno Dumont. I confess I didn’t know exactly what to make of it, but I knew I had been through a singular experience. Its director, Mona Fastvold, seated beside Seyfried on a sofa in a London hotel room, looks delighted. “That’s my favourite sort of feeling,” she says.

By turning conflict into entertainment US games company is ignoring its living legacy, says victims rights’ group

It pits the IRA against the British army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary, it lets players plant bombs and make political deals and it promises to wrap up the conflict within six hours.

Welcome to the Troubles – the provisional board game version. The brainchild of a US games company, The Troubles: Shadow War in Northern Ireland 1964-1998, is played with dice, tokens and a deck of 260 cards.

Director of al-Hawl camp describes chaotic scenes as Kurdish guards fled and government fighters arrived. Will Christou reports from al-Hawl

The children crowded the wire fence, waiting for the guard to turn his back, and made a break for it. They pumped their little legs furiously but did not make it far in the squelching mud, and were quickly chased back inside, grinning and joking to their friends in Bosnian as another guard scolded them, his rifle swinging by his side while he wagged his finger.

Their mothers, foreigners who travelled to Syria to allegedly join Islamic State (IS) and its blood-soaked caliphate, stood silently behind them. Each had their belongings packed in a bag beside them, ready to leave at a moment’s notice.

We would like to hear your suggestions for the UK’s first town of culture

With the search for the UK’s first town of culture under way, we would like to hear your suggestions.

Guardian writers’ own nominations include Ramsgate in Kent, Falmouth in Cornwall, Abergavenny in Monmouthshire, and Portobello in Edinburgh. Which town would you nominate, and why?

As television turns 100, we would like to hear your highlights of the century

As television turns 100, we’ve charted TV history in a timeline of 100 extraordinary moments. Now, we would like to hear your highlights. Did we miss anything? What is your favourite TV moment of all time?

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We’d like to hear your questions ahead of the next episode of It’s Complicated

The team from our It’s Complicated Youtube channel are looking at how eating throughout the day has become normal in many Western contexts, what that might be doing to our bodies, and whether this new wave of wellness fasting really does what it claims.

We’d like to know what you want explained. If you could sit down with a leading expert on fasting, what would you ask them? Send us your questions, large or small via the form below. Your questions could help shape our reporting and be featured in the show.

Our clothes can be one of the most powerful non-verbal communicators – tell us yours reflect who you are and what you do?

From uniforms to suits to tracksuits to costumes, clothes keep us warm and covered – but they are also one of the most powerful non-verbal communicators, a second skin which reflects who you are and what you do.

We want to hear from people about why they wear what they wear. Do your clothes help you in the workplace? Are they making a statement? Maybe you’re a waiter and have worn the same work uniform for years, or maybe your job involves wearing very little. Please tell us about yourselves.

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ICE in Minneapolis, Russian airstrikes in Kyiv, protests in Greenland and the Africa Cup of Nations final in Rabat – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Warning: this gallery contains images some readers may find distressing