Today it is a fundraising juggernaut, but when it was born 40 years ago this month, things were very different. Lenny Henry, Richard Curtis and more explain how they got the gang together for a good cause

A near-the-knuckle Spitting Image skit involving the former prince Andrew. The Young Ones performing their chaotic single Living Doll with Cliff Richard. Kate Bush somehow being coaxed on to a stage to duet with Rowan Atkinson. It was 40 years ago this month that Comic Relief staged its inaugural event at London’s Shaftesbury theatre, and while today it is a fundraising juggernaut (the 2026 event, held last month, raised £30m for charity), its origin story remains delightfully scrappy and exploratory.

In 1984, a year before Live Aid entirely recalibrated what a showbiz charity event could look like, there was a remarkable gathering of what was fast becoming the new British comedy elite at a tiny village in Hampshire. The location, Nether Wallop, was chosen seemingly on the basis of its amusing name, and the intention was to create a comedy alternative to the Edinburgh festival.

I had presumed I would love her instantly – but a traumatic birth led to devastating numbness

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was waiting for an overwhelming rush of love, but when I looked at my newborn baby what I felt was utter despair. No matter how much I smiled at her, crooned at her, fed, patted, caressed and changed her, I was absolutely numb.

I had yearned for her. Growing up in Italy, I was surrounded by images of perfect motherhood. Every rural crossroad has its tiny shrine to the Madonna and Child. I was certain by the end of my teens that I wanted to have at least one baby.

With his stand against Trump, the pope has shown the far right doesn’t have a monopoly on Christianity. If people of good faith push hard, the future could be redefined

In the same way that America’s shambolic war on Iran has turned Donald Trump into the most effective EV salesman the world has ever seen, so his attempts to defend said war have produced another unlikely outcome: the rise of a genuine and global theological debate. Led by Pope Leo but extending across Christian denominations, it’s producing the sudden recognition that a kind of progressive Christianity long given over for dead seems to be stirring. Christ is risen, as it were – and if people of good faith push hard, the future could be redefined in powerful ways.

This story has developed so rapidly, with so many steps, that it’s hard to remember them all. When America launched its cruel attack, there was widespread reporting that some officers were exhorting to treat it as a prelude to the second coming. That provoked no pushback from the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, a representative of a tattooed Christianity (not that it matters, but have these people not read Leviticus?); indeed, with each press conference Hegseth edged closer to a revival meeting, invoking God’s blessing on his bombing and pillaging. “We are hitting them while they’re down, which is the way it should be,” he said.

One moved to the UK 20 years ago. The other is considering a vote for Restore Britain. Could they agree on national symbols and Brexit?

• Want to meet someone from across the divide? Click here to find out how

Caroline, 57, Plymouth

Occupation Professor of developmental psychology

After menopause, the hormone revitalised Rose’s mind-blowing multiple orgasms, which are a huge turn-on for Jim

• How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

The connection was instant – when we first held hands, an electric current ran between us – but Jim was married

As interest in the lives of celebrities has intensified, we have become acclimatised to them curating and mercilessly monetising their image

Last month, Ryan Gosling addressed an audience about to see his new movie. “It’s not your job to keep cinemas open,” he told them. “It’s our job to make things that make it worth you coming out. This movie’s for you. Enjoy the trip!”

Small wonder they applauded. This is a strategy radically different to that adopted in the immediate aftermath of the Covid crisis, when studios believed the best way to get people to leave their homes and buy cinema tickets was to hector them to do so.

Todd Blanche says 31-year-old suspect will be charged with assault of a federal officer, discharging a firearm and attempting to kill a federal officer

• Suspected gunman at White House press dinner named

• ‘We went under the table screaming’: reactions from the White House correspondents’ dinner shooting

Donald Trump took to Trump Social on Sunday to repeat his statement from the night before in which he said the shooting at the White House correspondents’ dinner was why a White House ballroom was necessary.

“What happened last night is exactly the reason that our great Military, Secret Service, Law Enforcement and, for different reasons, every President for the last 150 years, have been DEMANDING that a large, safe, and secure Ballroom be built ON THE GROUNDS OF THE WHITE HOUSE,” Trump wrote.

It does appear the suspect was targeting members of the administration … We don’t have specifics yet about particular members of the administration, except that we do understand that that was his goal and his target.

Men in tuxedos and women in dresses dove under tables, like a scene from a dozen Hollywood movies, but now it was happening to me

• White House correspondents’ dinner shooting – latest updates

Shocking. Unnerving. Unpredictable. Violent. For a decade I have been following the twists and turns of Donald Trump’s America with the privilege of journalistic distance. On Saturday night I felt the darkness come viscerally close.

Bang! Bang! What was that? Where was it? At 8.36pm panic and pandemonium reigned in the cavernous ballroom at the Washington Hilton hotel. There were men running and cries of “Get down!” and “Stay down!”

Exclusive: Investigation into campaigning materials for local polls in May challenges tactical voting claims

Election leaflets are providing “grotesque” information about how to vote tactically in the May elections, using national polling data, “dodgy” bar charts and doorstep surveys to support claims about parties’ chances of winning.

Leaflets distributed by local politicians across England are claiming that only their party can win, or that another party “can’t win here”, when there is no good evidence to show this is true, a Full Fact investigation for the Guardian has revealed.

Prime minister says his job is not at risk over Mandelson vetting as allies back him against claims of wrongdoing

Keir Starmer has said he will lead Labour into the next general election, as his Downing Street allies denied claims of any wrongdoing over the appointment and vetting of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador.

It has been a bruising week for the prime minister after the Guardian revealed that he appointed the former Labour grandee despite vetting officials recommending that he be denied security clearance. His handling of the row was called into question, including his swift decision to sack the Foreign Office chief Olly Robbins.

Police say incident in Dunmurry in which no one was hurt shows ‘murderous intent still exists’ in paramilitaries

“Murderous intent and capability” still exists within paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, officers have said after a car exploded outside a police station on the outskirts of Belfast.

Detectives said they believed the New IRA was involved and are treating it as attempted murder.

Incoming PM Péter Magyar accuses Fidesz-linked figures of trying to shield their wealth from accountability

Along the banks of the Danube, news that the Viktor Orbán era had come to an end set off an hours-long party. The joy echoed across Hungary as people traded hugs and high-fives. For some, however, the landslide loss set off a frantic scramble.

Private jets allegedly laden with the spoils of those whose wealth swelled during Orbán’s 16 years in power have steadily been taking off from Vienna, while other individuals are racing to invest their assets abroad, sources have told the Guardian. Meanwhile, high-level figures close to Orbán have been looking into US visa options, hoping to find work at Maga-linked institutions.

What must Liam Rosenior have made of this? After being sacked as Chelsea’s head coach on Wednesday, his former players showed all the commitment that was missing during his four months in charge to battle their way past Leeds courtesy of a winning goal from – surprise, surprise – Enzo Fernández.

Only eight years ago, Rosenior’s interim replacement Calum McFarlane was an assistant coach for Isthmian League side Whyteleafe. But even if he does not yet own a pro licence that means his second spell in charge of Chelsea this season will be limited to only 12 weeks, McFarlane has now become the first English manager since a certain Frank Lampard to reach an FA Cup final, where they will face treble-chasing Manchester City next month. The irony that it was Fernández – after being dropped for two matches by Rosenior for fluttering his eyelids at Real Madrid during the last international break – who came up with the decisive goal after 23 minutes was surely not lost on his predecessor.

Staff are handing over sandwiches from behind a theft-proof counter as the high street fights back

Greggs has axed self-service display cabinets in bakery stores that have been most severely hit by shoplifters.

The move is the latest aimed at combating a problem plaguing the high street. Last year official figures revealed annual shoplifting offences in England and Wales had passed half a million offences for the first time, and since then many retailers have reported high levels of crime in their shops.

Craze for Mexican salamander as pets fuelled by Pokémon but inexperienced owners are often out of their depths

The 15th-century Dipping Bridge over the River Ogwr (Ogmore) in the village of Merthyr Mawr near Bridgend, south Wales, got its name from gaps in the parapets where farmers used to push reluctant sheep into the water for a clean. It has now passed the name on: to Dippy the axolotl, an alien-like Mexican salamander found under its arches.

Dippy, discovered by 10-year-old Evie Hill last weekend, is believed to be the first axolotl ever found in the wild in the UK; the species is critically endangered and lives only in Lake Xochimilco near Mexico City. Exactly why the 22cm (9in) amphibian ended up in the shallows under the dipping bridge may never be discovered, but Evie and her mother, Melanie – Dippy’s new owners – as well as animal welfare experts believe the most plausible explanation is that the Pokémon-like creature was abandoned.

US defense secretary’s openly Christian nationalist church continues to have growing influence in the White House

On 17 April, at a briefing on the Iran war, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth told reporters he had been “sitting in church with my family” the previous Sunday while the minister preached from Mark 3.

Hegseth then recast a passage about the Pharisees watching Jesus “so that they might accuse him” as a description of the US press corps, which has long been a target of his ire. “Our press is just like these Pharisees,” Hegseth said. He accused “the legacy Trump-hating press” of a “politically motivated animus” that blinded it to “the brilliance of our American warriors”.

The rival superpowers are ramping up preparations for a crewed lunar landing nearly six decades after the first moon walk

The world watched earlier this month as Nasa sent four astronauts around the moon – but to actually land on the surface the US is once again in a space race, this time with China. And China may well win.

Both countries plan to build inhabited lunar bases – the first settlement on another celestial body – as well as searching for rare resources and using the deep space environment to test technology for future crewed missions to Mars.

For most of his life, John Robins assumed he got more out of alcohol than it took from him. Now he knows it was the other way round

• ‘I picked up the bottle of wine and drank straight out of it. I was seven’ Read an exclusive extract from his new memoir

The comedian John Robins has always loved talking about booze. In his standup, he used to portray himself as a bon viveur who knew how to give himself the best of times; a larky drinker out for a laugh; a nerdy tippler who recorded nights out in Sherlock Holmes-themed notepads – arrival time, drinks consumed, percentages of alcohol, pub atmosphere. He also had a routine about contracting gout, even though he never has done in real life.

On the radio, he hosted a show with his friend Elis James in which they meticulously detailed pub crawls and coined the phrase “Keep it session”, encouraging listeners to stick to low-alcohol beer when out for the whole evening. If anybody was in doubt about his love of booze, Robins then devised a podcast series called The Moon Under Water, named after George Orwell’s 1946 essay describing the perfect pub. In it, Robins and his co-host Robin Allender invited guests to design their dream watering hole. Yet, despite dedicating so much time to the discussion of booze, Robins could never find the right word to describe his relationship with it. Then in 2023 he finally discovered it: alcoholic.

The uptick in children focused on skincare has some experts concerned about body image and mental health. But others warn of the risks of rushing to ‘medicalise’ new trends or behaviours

Sephora stores are being overrun with tweens pumping product testers. Eight-year-olds film themselves on “Sephora hauls” and GRMW (get ready with me) videos, applying collagen boosting serums and retinol creams for their nonexistent wrinkles. And party bags are stuffed with face masks and fluffy headbands, instead of glitter and gummy bears.

The rise of Sephora kids is a widely reported issue, but the uptick of children “obsessed” with skincare has some experts concerned about the long-term effects of age-inappropriate products and increased occupation with appearance at such a pivotal age.

Literally a mix of white (blanc) and red (rouge) grapes, the light, fresh tipple is popping up in bars around the world. Move over rosé and orange wine ...

Twenty years ago, a winery could do well selling one white and two reds, says Konrad Pixner, a northern Italian winemaker who set up his vineyard, Domaine de L’Accent, in Languedoc, France, in 2019. But today, importers and bars always ask: “Do you have something new?” So up in the hills, surrounded by deep gorges and limestone plateaus, Pixner is constantly experimenting.

After a good harvest in 2023, Pixner walked into the shed he shares with other winemakers at 4am to find that his biggest vat of white wine, pressed from carignan blanc grapes, had overflowed during fermentation. He had run out of space, so he quickly “pumped the white juice into the tank where whole bunches of carignan noir were,” he says, and left them to ferment for 10 days together. In contrast to rosé, made from red grapes left for a short time with their skins on before being pressed, he created “blouge” – a light, fresh wine blended from white and red grapes that’s best served chilled. It has now caught on among creative vintners around the world.

Acclaimed stage and screen actor has taken part in Washington DC’s Folger Shakespeare Library residency program during a troubling time for the Capitol

Addressing an audience at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, Adjoa Andoh acknowledged that some of her work might look “Black or colour-centric” but that is only because of the silos the world forces us into. She could just as easily be Leeds United football club-centric, she added.

“I am missing two crucial matches to be here with you this week,” the 63-year-old exclaimed, prompting laughter in the theatre. “I have tickets!”

A selection of winning images from the 11th edition of the All About Photo awards – The Mind’s Eye. The 2026 winners receive $5,000 in cash prizes. First place was awarded to Matt McClain

Richard Gadd presents a bruisingly intense dissection of masculinity, and the soul-pop chanteuse heads out on tour. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

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

An idiosyncratic thriller sees Anne Hathaway’s pop icon and Michaela Coel’s fashion designer embark on a psychosexual romance, while Dave Grohl and his boys are back with album number 12

Mother Mary
Out now
Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel play a pop star and a fashion designer embroiled in a psychosexual affair in this A24 drama-slash-thriller from the reliably idiosyncratic director David Lowery. Also starring FKA twigs, Sian Clifford and Hunter Schafer.

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

• Kenyan wins men’s race in 1hr 59mins 30secs

• Ethiopia’s Tigist Assefa defends her women’s title

They call Sabastian Sawe the silent assassin. But it was impossible to ignore the beautiful destruction on the streets of London as the 30-year-old Kenyan became the first athlete to shatter the two-hour barrier in an official race.

As Sawe crossed the line on the Mall, the clock showed that he had run 26.2 miles in a staggering 1 hour, 59mins and 30 seconds – 65 seconds faster than the previous best set by Kelvin Kiptum in 2023.

A calamitous defence error from the goalkeeper Christiane Endler helped defending champions Arsenal to come from behind against OL Lyonnes and ensure they take a narrow lead into next week’s Champions League semi-final second leg in France.

Jule Brand had giving the visiting team, the record eight-time winners of this competition, a first-half lead in front of 26,758 fans at the Emirates Stadium. However, first Endler fumbled the ball into her own net via a deflection off Ingrid Engen as the Gunners upped the pressure in the second half before Olivia Smith gave them the lead late after another defensive mistake.

• Extra funding to be approved by Fifa Council this week

• National FAs feared losing money at this summer’s finals

Fifa has agreed in principle to increase World Cup 2026 prize money and participation fees, with details of the enhanced funding to be approved at a meeting of the Fifa Council in Vancouver this week.

World football’s governing body has responded to concerns raised by several national associations – first reported by the Guardian in February – that the high costs of travel, operations and tax in the US in particular this summer will result in them losing money, even if their side has a successful tournament and reaches the later stages.

County Championship updates from around the grounds
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Thanks to Tim Maitland who has an eye on the Headingley stream. “Lengthy stoppage after the first ball of the day at Headingley, after Tom Price injured an ankle fielding on the boundary.”

Lawrence tucks into Simon Harmer, muscling him to the rope to reach fifty off 74 balls.

⚽ Keep up with a big day in Scottish title race
⚽ All Sunday’s latest scores and results

Arsenal, the holders, take on Lyon in the Women’s Champions League.

Suzanne Wrack has spoken to Olivia Smith: “As the season reaches its climax, a Champions League semi-final against Lyon on Sunday is testament to how far up the ladder Smith has climbed. Now, she is heading towards unknown territory: a second season at the same club for the first time in her senior career. “I do feel quite calm now, knowing that I have set down some roots here, but at the end of the day, football is football and you never know what’s next,” she says. “So I’m always on my toes but, right now, I’m kind of laid-back, just enjoying the time here in the present with Arsenal and looking forward to winning more silverware and growing as a player and a person.”

I sorted out my mind: “Come on, Gigi,” I said to myself, and I gave myself strength: “When the game is over you can stop playing football. Just take on this hour and a half and then say goodbye to it all.”

Coventry celebrated their Championship title with a 3-1 victory that leaves Wrexham’s playoff ambitions in the balance.

The Sky Blues were in party mood after Frank Lampard’s side had wrapped up the title on Tuesday and before the trophy presentation after the final whistle. Brandon Thomas-Asante volleyed the hosts ahead after 19 minutes at the CBS Arena, but Ollie Rathbone replied quickly for sixth-placed Wrexham.

• Greater Manchester Police to look into ‘possible assault’

• York earned EFL promotion with draw in chaotic finale

Police will investigate a video which seems to show a York City player punching a fan after the Minstermen clinched promotion back to the Football League on Saturday.

An extraordinary conclusion unfolded at Rochdale, where York claimed a 1-1 draw thanks to Josh Stones’ goal in the 13th minute of stoppage time. The point was enough to secure top spot in the National League and a return to the EFL for the first time in a decade, leaving their hosts consigned to the playoffs.

• World champion pulls clear of Paul Seixas on final climb

• ‘It means a lot to win again one of the biggest races’

The world champion, Tadej Pogacar, pulled ahead of the 19-year-old French debutant Paul Seixas in the final climb to secure his third straight Liège-Bastogne-Liège title on Sunday, his fourth overall victory in the race.

Pogacar finished the 259.5km race in five hours, 50 minutes and 28 seconds to win the 13th Monument title of his career and his third of the year after the Tour of Flanders and Milan-San Remo.

• Defending champion faces Shaun Murphy after 13-9 win

• Mark Selby and Yu Wize level at 4-4 after first session

Zhao Xintong moved closer to cracking the so-called “Crucible Curse” as he booked his quarter-final place at the World Snooker Championship, wrapping up a hard-fought 13-9 win over compatriot Ding Junhui.

The defending champion shrugged off some evident nerves to build on a 9-7 overnight advantage despite losing an error-strewn, 46-minute opener that saw Ding temporarily reduce the arrears to a single frame.

If lawless aggression by ‘might is right’ nuclear-armed powers spreads unchecked, what other option do middle-ranking countries have?

With every bomb dropped, ship seized and blood-curdling threat of annihilation, Donald Trump increases Iran’s incentive to reject his “grand bargain” peace deal and sprint instead to acquire nuclear weapons for future self-defence. Justifying his declaration of war on 28 February, Trump claimed that Iran – and primarily its nuclear programme – posed an “imminent threat”. But Iran does not possess nukes. The US and Israel do.

US intelligence chiefs and UN inspectors agree there’s no firm evidence that the regime, while developing its technical capabilities and keeping political options open, has built, or ever tried to build, a nuclear weapon since at least 2003, when a covert scheme was exposed. But after Trump’s second unprovoked attack in a year, and his vow to bomb Iranian civilisation back to the “stone ages”, that is very likely to change.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

Of all the traditions humans thoughtlessly adopt, being socially obliged to touch someone when introduced to them is one of the worst. Good on young people for refusing

Sometimes you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. A person, place or thing you perhaps took for granted exits your existence, and only then do you appreciate what they meant to you, how important they were. This is not one of those times. New research has revealed that the handshake is in danger of becoming extinct, and surely we’re united in planning to dance on its grave, shouting “Good riddance!” and spraying champagne, Grand Prix-style.

A survey of 2,000 parents and their teenage children, by ACS International Schools, provides much hope for the future, as today’s teens seem to have their priorities correct. An impressive 59% “go to lengths” to avoid small talk; 28% don’t like answering the door or phone if they don’t know who’s calling; and 24% find giving a handshake excruciating. It would be interesting to find out the percentage of adults who agree – 98%? The other 2% being those who consider Sun Tzu’s The Art of War a business manual, and are focused on putting their free hand on top of the handshake to assert dominance, before the other party can beat them to it.

A Washington DC event descending into panic and fear after gunshots is, sadly, of a piece with the chaotic tragedy of our times

For as long as I can remember, the White House correspondents’ dinner was where the Washington press corps and Washington officials basked in each other’s celebrity.

Saturday night’s dinner ended abruptly with gunshots, Secret Service officers screaming at attendees to “get down”, Donald Trump and other officials being rapidly ushered out of the ballroom, plates crashing and chairs falling, and general pandemonium.

Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now in the US and in the UK

Labour’s immigration plans tear up the promise made to 300,000 people recruited for a sector in crisis

“We are deflated, we are sad. We feel the government is trying to pull the rug from under our feet,” says David. “It is like we are being criticised for working in a sector which the government called for us to come help with.”

David – not his real name – is a care worker for adults with learning disabilities. He came to the east of England from Nigeria in 2022 with his wife as the Conservative government turned to migration to tackle the social care recruitment crisis.

Some employers are reluctant to cut workers’ hours but pay them the same – but it just might be the future of work

We keep hearing that the four-day workweek is the future. So why are so few businesses actually adopting it?

Belgium, Iceland and Lithuania have passed legislation requiring the practice, and other countries in Europe are piloting the idea. Hundreds of companies in the UK have signed up for to give this a try. Microsoft tested the concept in Japan. Non-profits such as the 4 Day Week Foundation and WorkFour are dedicated to expanding the concept.

The cosmetic procedure raises concern about the tissue donation process – and our own anxieties about our appearance

There’s a buzzy new diva in the world of cosmetic injectables and she’s quick, easy to recover from … and came from a dead body.

Indeed, people are injecting themselves with fat from corpses in order to pump up their physiques, and it’s catching on more than you would think. “It’s a gamechanger,” Dr Douglas Steinbrech, surgeon at Alpha Male, a Manhattan plastic surgery clinic that’s become popular for this procedure, told the Guardian. “[Recipients] don’t need surgery. They don’t need general anesthesia. They don’t have recovery, and the pain from all that.”

Clients no longer just describe their symptoms, they arrive with screenshots of dense articles, AI chatbot information and the phrase ‘I’ve done my research’

• The modern mind is a column where experts discuss mental health issues they are seeing in their work

Ben* sat across from me, explaining how his low motivation, lethargy and trouble sleeping seemed like depression from content he had seen online. I made a recommendation to get his bloodwork done with his GP, who advised that Ben was low in vitamin D and iron, which can mimic depressive symptoms. Under the care of his GP, Ben’s symptoms quickly resolved without requiring further psychological intervention

Thuy* made an appointment with me, armed with information and old school and university records after her colleague was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. After going through the assessment process, I diagnosed her with inattentive ADHD, a commonly underdiagnosed condition among women and girls. Thuy was relieved and felt as though her life finally made sense to her, after years of assuming she was “just lazy”.

What is the study design? Is it a controlled trial or a single-case report? Locate it on the evidence hierarchy.

Who was studied? Did the research include people like yourself in age, gender, health status or ethnicity? A study on 20-year-old athletes may not apply to a 60-year-old with a chronic condition.

Who is behind it? Check the funding source and author affiliations. Is it published in a reputable, peer-reviewed journal? Be warned: the peer-review system itself is under assault from AI-generated “slop papers” – fake studies churned out to pad academic CVs – making vigilance even more paramount.

What are the numbers? How many participants were involved? Are the results statistically significant and do the authors openly discuss the study’s limitations?

What is the consensus? Is this a lone finding or does it align with the broader body of evidence? What do other independent experts in the field say?

Our lives are mediated through social media, which gives us twitchy main-character energy. No wonder we’re not enjoying it

In my teens, I wanted to be famous. I did absolutely nothing to further this goal, but I spent ages daydreaming about being profiled in Vogue, showcasing my great beauty and coolness, and choosing eight obscure indie tracks for Desert Island Discs (I listened to Radio 4 a lot; further proof of my coolness). Then I grew up and fame became horrible.

Fame was probably always horrible – think of all those golden age starlets used, abused and spat out by the studio system – but it’s extra horrible now. Lena Dunham’s new memoir, Famesick, catalogues with candour the distorting effect of internet-age global celebrity: the way it warps relationships, self-image, every interaction. Dunham describes the infinite torrent of online hate and ferocious disgust (she compulsively tallied how many times she was described as “fat” or “ugly” on Twitter); the way friends, acquaintances and strangers treated her as a “bottomless resource”; the toxic impact of fame on her mental health.

Developments in Berlin and Tokyo show how far the strategic environment has shifted in response to authoritarian threat and American unpredictability

When Donald Trump hosted Sanae Takaichi, the Japanese prime minister, last month, he could not resist a gratuitous reference to Pearl Harbor. The US president is impelled to trash longstanding alliances. He has done more than anyone to demolish the postwar global order.

This week alone, the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, questioned whether the US would be “loyal” to Nato if Russia attacked. A Pentagon memo reportedly floated suspending Spain from Nato and reviewing support for the British claim to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. And a report said US officials believe that it has depleted munitions so rapidly in Iran as to put in question contingency plans to defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion in the near future.

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.

Architect-designed loos such as the ones in Tokyo are fantastic. But even ordinary facilities enhance cities and towns

Five years on from the delayed Tokyo Olympics, one of its less obvious legacies is probably the highest-spec public toilets in the world. Seventeen architects turned conveniences across the city into what one, Kengo Kuma, called “must-see attractions” – including a design with clear-glass cubicles that become opaque when occupied. The German film director Wim Wenders took note. In 2023 they featured in his film, Perfect Days, about a cleaner.

A public realm in which humans and their needs are treated with so much dignity deserves to be celebrated. But new loos do not have to be architectural icons. The main thing is that there should be enough of them, and that they are maintained.

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.

Dr Matilda Dunn highlights problems with the expansion of biogas production

Chris Huhne is right to say that the UK faces a false choice between more North Sea drilling and greater reliance on imports of gas (Letters, 21 April). But presenting biomethane as a straightforward solution overlooks the serious environmental and health risks of its expansion.

Biogas can reduce emissions when produced from waste. Yet a growing share of feedstock for anaerobic digestion comes from purpose-grown energy crops, increasing pressure on land, competing with food production and risking wider environmental harm.

Christine Baranski and Sharon Maher make the case for investment in regions other than London

It was pleasing to read about Labour’s commitment to the principle of access to art for “everyone” (Editorial, 17 April). Everyone seemingly in London, where a whopping £135m has been invested in the V&A East museum – the latest addition to the buzzing East Bank cultural quarter.

When, I wonder, will this Arts Everywhere Fund arrive at what used to be the buzzing cultural centre of the Albert Docks in Liverpool, where the Tate has been closed for more than two years? Where the museum of slavery has closed its doors and where what was a buzzing arts area now looks neglected and abandoned.

Eduardo Gonçalves and Blair Patrick Schuyler respond to an article on the myth at the heart of trophy hunting

Regarding Cal Flyn’s article (On the trail with the hunters who believe shooting big game can save Africa’s wildlife, 21 April), I spent several years undercover in the trophy‑hunting industry, engaging with hunters and CEOs of hunting companies. I wanted to understand their motivations and whether wildlife conservation was one of them. It wasn’t.

The primary driver was most succinctly expressed by a Sussex man who had shot lions, elephants and a critically endangered black rhinoceros: “It’s like mainlining on heroin.” Since 2020, giraffes have become a favoured souvenir of the globe-trotting British hunter.

Robin Jenkins reminisces about an experiment when he was a school dinner manager in London. Plus a letter from Paul Flowers

The government’s plan to ban unhealthy items from the school menu is what I call the killjoy option (‘No cheeseburgers … they would go bankrupt’: pupils reject plan to cut fatty foods from lunch menus, 17 April). It will only alienate headteachers and pupils alike, and it certainly does not encourage healthy eating.

When I was manager of school dinners in Hackney in 1985 we introduced self-service salad bars at the entrance to the canteens. The main opposition to this initiative came from headteachers who thought that it would be practically unfeasible and probably unpopular. In the primary and secondary schools where we managed to convince headteachers to have a go, the salad bars proved to be a great success. Pupils filled their plates with salad and had less room for the less healthy items. Examination of food waste at the end of the service indicated that the salad had mostly been eaten.

Discrepancy in forecasts raises questions over government planning for net zero

One vision of the UK’s future involves a decarbonised economy powered by clean, renewable energy. Another involves making the UK an AI superpower.

The government departments responsible for these two visions do not appear to have agreed on their numbers.

Millionaire funded operation called ‘pure animal cruelty’ after environment minister sent threats on social media

Final preparations are reportedly under way for a millionaire fundedplan to tow a sickly humpback whale into the North Sea.

The 12-tonne whale, nicknamed Timmy, has been stranded on the Baltic Sea coastline for almost a month. A barge resembling a giant steel aquarium will attempt to transport Timmy 400km (248 miles) towards the North Sea, and then hopefully back to the Atlantic Ocean from where it is believed to have arrived.

Researchers find ‘alarming’ effect on fertility across global species from simultaneous exposures

Simultaneous exposure to toxic chemicals and climate change’s impacts likely generates an additive or synergistic effect that increases reproductive harm, and may contribute to the broad global drop in fertility, new peer-reviewed research finds.

The review of scientific literature considers how endocrine-disrupting chemicals, often found in plastic, coupled with climate change’s effects, such as heat stress, are each linked to reductions in fertility and fecundity across global species – including in humans, wildlife and invertebrates.

Buckingham Palace says talks taking place in light of gunman’s attempt to storm dinner attended by Trump

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King Charles’s security is being reviewed before his state visit to the US this week after a gunman attempted to storm a dinner with Donald Trump in Washington DC, Buckingham Palace has said.

Guests at the White House correspondents’ dinner on Saturday night hid under tables when gunshots were heard, as the Secret Service evacuated the president and other members of his administration.

Trade union criticises airline’s plan to halve passenger numbers to the city as ‘purely profit-oriented’

Ryanair is to shut its Berlin operating base and cut its winter schedule to the German capital in half, blaming soaring aviation taxes in the country.

The Irish budget carrier said its relocation of seven aircraft to other centres would reduce its Berlin passenger numbers from 4.5 million to 2.2 million a year, with flights in and out of the city served from October by planes based at other airports.

After a two-year wait, video of a young male crossing above a road gives hope that critically endangered species can survive habitat fragmentation

The critically endangered Sumatran orangutan has been filmed for the first time using a canopy bridge to cross a road.

In 2024, conservationists in the Pakpak Bharat district of North Sumatra in Indonesia built the bridge high over the Lagan-Pagindar road, which provides an essential route for local people but which became a barrier for animals.

Study of 1,300 campaigners finds arrests, fines and jail terms increase determination of activists to take direct action

The criminalisation of direct action climate protests in the UK is counterproductive and increases the determination of activists to undertake disruptive demonstrations, according to a study of 1,300 campaigners.

New findings suggest arrests, fines and lengthy prison sentences given to nonviolent climate protesters who have blocked roads or damaged buildings may actually radicalise them. The repression of protest could even be one driver of recent covert actions such as the cutting of internet cables, they said.

Exclusive: International Energy Agency’s Fatih Birol, the world’s leading energy economist, also says UK should largely forgo North Sea expansion

The oil crisis triggered by the Iran war has changed the fossil fuel industry for ever, turning countries away from fossil fuels to secure energy supplies, the world’s leading energy economist said.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), also said that, despite pressure, the UK should forgo much of its potential North Sea expansion.

Ernie Dosio, a 75-year-old vineyard owner, was hunting an antelope species in Africa when the incident occured

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An American millionaire big-game hunter has died after being crushed by a group of elephants during a hunting expedition in Gabon.

Ernie Dosio, a 75-year-old vineyard owner, was hunting yellow-backed duiker, an antelope species, in the central African country of Gabon when the incident occurred last Friday. While in the Lope-Okanda rainforest, he and his guide unexpectedly came across five female elephants accompanied by a calf.

Soaring cost of building materials, lack of affordability and planning bottlenecks are some of the obstacles thwarting housing target

At South and City College in Birmingham, dozens of young people clad in hi-vis vests and hard hats are building mini-walls and plastering half-formed rooms.

Some weave in and out of stacks of bricks with wheelbarrows, while others use spirit levels to check the walls are straight and flat. In a few days time, these walls will be demolished and the plastering scraped away, for a new class to come in and try their hands.

NHS chiefs fear rising costs and healthcare shortages due to the shipping standstill in the Gulf

The war in Iran has put the NHS on high alert amid fears about looming shortages and rising costs for medicines and medical products such as syringes, intravenous bags and gloves.

Much of modern healthcare is dependent on the petrochemicals now held up by the Gulf shipping standstill – whether for active pharmaceutical ingredients or to produce the millions of sterile single-use items, ranging from personal protective equipment (PPE) to catheters and diagnostic-device casings.

Individual coroners decide scope of evidence considered, which campaigners say leads to inconsistencies

The coroner’s court in England has been criticised by families of domestic violence victims for an unwillingness to consider how abuse can drive people to suicide.

Grieving loved ones of those who have taken their own lives after abuse said it was not a “joined-up process” whether inquests into suicide deaths consider the treatment victims were subjected to while they were alive.

Exclusive: Samaritans call for mandatory training for firefighters amid rise in incidents

Suicide-related callouts to fire and rescue services in England have tripled in the last decade, with Samaritans now calling for mandatory training for firefighters, who they say are struggling to deal with the increase in traumatic incidents.

New figures show that fire services in England attended 3,250 suicide callouts in the year ending September 2025, the equivalent to 62 callouts a week. This was up from 997 callouts in 2009-10 when records began.

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 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Extreme weather likely to continue after devastating homes and endangering millions in US south and midwest

At least one person was killed after a very powerful tornado struck northern Texas on Saturday night, as extreme weather continued to devastate homes and put millions across the south and midwestern US at risk, with wildfires also raging on in parts of Georgia.

Officials from Wise county in Texas said the storm reached the area at around 10pm and caused significant damage across multiple neighborhoods. In addition to the confirmed death, six people were treated or transported by emergency responders to be treated for storm-related injuries.

Killhouse is based on real-life story of civilian couple saved from battlefield by Ukrainian drone operators

It is being billed as Ukraine’s answer to Saving Private Ryan, updated for an age of drones.

The war movie Killhouse is an action thriller which shows off the latest in battlefield technology. Released this week, it features cameos by figures well known in Ukraine, including the nation’s former military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov. One missing person is Donald Trump. The film is conveniently set in 2024, when Washington and Kyiv were allies.

Experts fear losing ground to virus even as the end of the HIV epidemic is in sight, and say decline in infant testing is ‘particularly concerning’

The US government released likely the last report from Pepfar (President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief) earlier this month and the chief science officer announced his resignation days later as the US moves to a patchwork of individual partnerships with each country, potentially driven by resource extraction.

While more leadership with other countries has long been the goal with global HIV efforts, experts fear the US is moving too quickly without being able to monitor its efforts as well as it has done with Pepfar for more than two decades. They fear losing ground to the virus even as the end of the HIV epidemic is in sight.

Early birds were like ‘T rex reincarnated’, says scientist who believes avian skulls offer insight into dinosaurs’ behaviour

T rex is often depicted as more brawn than brains, but now scientists are hoping to probe just what was going on inside its head, drawing on findings from another kind of dinosaur: birds.

Scientists have previously found some species of bird not only make and use tools, but are able to plan ahead and show basic forms of empathy – with laboratory tests suggesting emus can recognise other birds might have different experiences to themselves.

While emerging technology is banned from the Palme d’Or, an upstart movement is gaining investment and attention

In Cannes’ darkened screening rooms, the supposed future of cinema flickered into life this week and it was strange. The first edition of the World AI film festival (WAIFF) showcased visions of men with fish scales erupting from their necks and seaweed from their mouths, a heroine with a heart beating outside her body and so many massed armies of AI-generated tanned men sweeping across battlefields that David Lean would have blushed.

Last week the Cannes film festival, entering its 76th year, banned the emerging technology from its Palme d’Or competition, insisting “AI imitates very well but it will never feel deep emotions”. But this week the Croisette was taken over by the upstart AI film movement and their big-tech backers amid increasing investment and attention from the Hollywood studios. A “nouvelle vague”, they said, is coming.

Shareholders including the Church of England back call for protest votes against bank’s chair

NatWest is at risk of an embarrassing showdown at its shareholder meeting this week as investors and scientists call for an urgent reversal of what they describe as “climate backtracking”.

Campaigners including ShareAction are calling for protest votes against the bank’s chair, Rick Haythornthwaite, at its annual meeting in Edinburgh on Tuesday.

Tesla chief believes Altman broke company’s founding agreement – and legal battle promises to be explosive

The bitter rivalry between two of the tech world’s most powerful men arrives in court this week, as Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI heads to trial in Oakland, California. The case is set to feature some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley, and its outcome could affect the course of the AI boom.

Musk’s suit, filed in 2024, focuses on the formative years of OpenAI when he, Altman and others co-founded the artificial intelligence company as a nonprofit with a grand purpose.

The economy and public finances were on the right path, bond yields were falling, interest rates likely to drop further … then came the US-Israeli attack

Donald Trump’s war on Iran is “folly”; shadow chancellor Mel Stride should be “lined up for the sack”; and the Liberal Democrat Daisy Cooper’s plan for managing fuel shortages is “fundamentally economically illiterate”.

Rachel Reeves has always relished a political fight, but in recent days she has been swinging at her opponents with what looks very much like enjoyment.

Leaders have thrown up walls and barriers throughout history – but their effects are unpredictable

Four millennia ago, a Sumerian king, his frontier beset by nomadic tribes fleeing prolonged drought in their own lands, ordered the construction of the world’s first border wall: a 177km-long boundary laid in stone between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Since humanity’s earliest city-states and kingdoms arose in ancient Mesopotamia, walls, ditches and fences have defended territory, marked the edges of empires and projected political power across the void. But the world’s first border wall failed. It now lies buried beneath Iraq’s desert sands. Rome’s legions abandoned Hadrian’s Wall long ago, and the iron curtain’s razor-wire fences fell with the eastern bloc’s collapse in the late 1980s.

The reaction among officials in Germany to his bestselling novel has been hostile. As Mayfly Season is published in the UK, its author explains why

A few weeks after the German publication of his debut novel in 2024, author Matthias Jügler received a call from an employee at the German government agency tasked with investigating the human rights abuses of the socialist east.

The call wasn’t overtly threatening; Jügler was asked to explain what historical source material he had consulted for Mayfly Season and which period he was planning to tackle in his next book. But it came after another government official had accused him of traumatising some of his readership, and after the organiser of a reading had asked him to bring along documents proving the plausibility of his book’s plot.

The star on his famous acting family, wrestling Chris and Liam, the best advice from Anthony Hopkins and being traumatised by The Exorcist

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In Beast, your new film about an MMA fighter, you play Gabriel: a dirtbag guy with a dirtbag goatee. Did you base him on any dirtbags you’ve met?

Oh, that’s all me. I’m channelling my inner dirtbag. He has some inadequacy issues. He’s like a used car salesman; he looks fair and feels foul. But there are parts of me in him – I’m wearing my own snake skin boots for the whole film. I ended up actually keeping one of his suits, which I might have worn to a couple of premieres, which is pretty funny! [Laughs]

A struggling mum join forces with a recovering addict in brilliant new series The Cage. Plus: a campy Irish murder drama. Here’s what to watch this evening

Sunday, 9pm, BBC One

Famous artists including Magritte are suspects in this glossy, grisly whodunnit – and it’s loads of fun

I don’t know about art, but I know what I like: cosy crime. I’m excited by Flemish series This Is Not a Murder Mystery (U&Drama, Wednesday, 8pm, and streaming on Channel 4), which offers a classy shot of both. Silent movie credits tell us the year is 1936. An English aristocrat is hosting a private show of surrealist artists, who are all on the cusp of major celebrity. Following a wild party a week before the show, we see René Magritte wake up in bed, next to a dead woman. Their heads have been wrapped in shrouds, in a ghoulish recreation of his own painting The Lovers. Fame can lead artists to lose their heads, but this is something else.

The beak arrive in the double-act form of DCI Thistlethwaite and DC Quant. They lock down the estate, along with its bohemian guests: Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, Man Ray, performance artist Sheila Legge and the American war photographer Lee Miller. Magritte is determined to clear his name, but as the show approaches, the theatrical murders mount up. Each crime pays twisted homage to the masterpieces of the artists present, who are also suspects.

The chatshow host lifts the energy of this game where families battle to avoid being voted out of a street they move into. But he’s not onscreen often enough to save it

I’ve had a good idea. Let’s apply for a moratorium on new reality shows, at least until the frenzied desire for a challenger to The Traitors’ crown is over. Otherwise they’re just going to keep happening.

The Neighbourhood – presented by Graham Norton, its saving grace – is the latest to throw its cap into the ring. Six families take up residence in a suburban close (the neighbourhood, you get it) and each is aiming to be the last one voted out and thus claim the uncustomarily large pot of £250,000. This at least suggests that someone in the TV commissioning offices is beginning to understand the concept of inflation and the truth that yer 50 or 100ks are no longer universally life-changing amounts of money but closer to being a month’s rent or the price of a tank of petrol.

The acclaimed musician and former late night bandleader loves everything from Amyl and the Sniffers to Erykah Badu. So why can’t he stand Steely Dan?

The first song I fell in love with
I remember hearing Strokin’ by Clarence Carter because my dad would play it. I know every lyric, and at eight years old, I probably shouldn’t have. My earliest musical lessons came from my family. My Uncle Thomas would send me jazz recordings of Oscar Peterson, Milt Jackson, Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, and he sent sermons, like the Book of Revelations. So, I would learn about a whole bunch of different music, and also study the word of God.

The first single I bought
I used to buy records from Blockbuster video, in the used CDs bin. I bought Michael Jackson’s Dangerous, Björk’s Vespertine, Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun and Common’s Like Water for Chocolate. Those are the first four records I bought.

Royal Festival Hall, London
The London Philharmonic under Edward Gardner combined with video art by Ilya Shagalov that was riveting and, in places, not for the squeamish

Nobody ever came out of a performance of Wozzeck thinking that what it really needed was an extra layer to make it even more harrowing. Caution against excess, however, is not a feature of the Southbank’s Multitudes festival – gloriously so. Searing playing and singing from the London Philharmonic and a first-rate cast, conducted by Edward Gardner, combined here with Ilya Shagalov’s video art, co-created with Nina Guseva, to make Berg’s opera yet more adrenaline-inducing than ever.

Shagalov’s film, on a big screen behind the players, told Wozzeck’s story in thousands of still photos. The time was today, the place a grey city, and Wozzeck part of the invisible workforce hidden by their hi-vis vests. With a translation of the sung German at the bottom, the images sped by or turned over more slowly, always as stills – except only for the moment after Marie’s murder, when the orchestra joined in a terrifying crescendo on a single note. Then, and only then, did we see Wozzeck’s face moving, and the effect was as spine-chilling as it was brief.

Young people are high-kicking to vintage US soul tunes again, but this time London and Bristol are leading the charge. Is the scene losing its working-class heritage?

Tom found northern soul by mistake. Despite living in Salford, Greater Manchester his entire life, the 24-year-old had never heard of the movement that began in the north and Midlands – known for its bombastic dancing and devotion to obscure black American soul music. He remembers how he felt on the fateful evening, watching people his age at a northern soul club night ditch their phones for the dancefloor.

Captivated, Tom took it upon himself to learn the signature dance style: spinning, high air-kicking, and falling to the ground backwards before launching back upright. Now Tom can regularly be seen keeping the faith on talc-covered, friction-reducing floors. The evening in central Manchester was an awakening for Tom and he’s not the only one.

Northern soul is back. So say the many, many articles documenting gen-Z’s love for the subculture. “[…] across the country there’s a surge of youth-led northern soul scenes that are not only surviving – but thriving”, read a piece in youth culture magazine, Dazed. Videos of young dancers frequently go viral. Photo features dazzle us with images of twentysomethings keeping the faith during new all-nighters.

The trio combine sludgy rock, homemade electronics and squawking into a watertight groove that makes light work of their complex musicianship

From Glasgow, Scotland
Recommended if you like Horse Lords, Melt-Banana, abrasive saxophone
Up next Album out now, touring the UK and Ireland from June

Taupe’s lawless mix of “not jazz”, sludgy rock and homemade electronics hits like a shock of cold water to the face. The Glasgow-based trio are a formidable live band: thunderously loud, crushingly tight, quick to surrender all control and trust-fall their way through wild improvisations. Their third album, Waxing | Waning, out now on Prague’s Minority Records, finally captures that power, as well as the band’s oddball humour and free-flowing imagination.

The Tale of Kaho, out in July, will be 16th novel by Japanese author who has faced criticism for portrayal of women

The Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami will publish his first novel to feature a woman as the main character this summer.

The Tale of Kaho will be published in Japan on 3 July, with an ebook edition released the same day. A UK edition has not yet been announced.

The author on feeling Thomas Hardy’s pain, being duped by Donna Tartt and how reading his sister’s copy of Trainspotting made him want to write

My earliest reading memory
I only realised how well I knew the Alfie stories by Shirley Hughes when I started reading them to my own children. Every time we read one now, I’m suddenly back in my attic room in Swansea 40 years ago, watching my dad turn the same pages.

My favourite book growing up
At 10 years old, I read only Terry Pratchett. As far as I was concerned, there were no other authors. I loved everything he wrote but my favourite was Mort, where the eponymous protagonist is Death’s young apprentice. He learns the skills of the trade: traipsing between appointments, meeting the soon-to-die and reaping their souls. I liked how it made the afterlife seem ordinary, even bureaucratic, with the Grim Reaper more like a taxman – unwelcome wherever he goes.

A young woman’s dissociation from reality and her road to recovery are vividly rendered in this striking novel

Meet Ada, the anguished young narrator of 26-year-old Albertine Clarke’s radically strange and engrossing debut novel. Adrift in London, Ada occupies herself by swimming in her apartment’s basement pool and generally hiding from the world until she finds herself on the verge of a tumultuous mental collapse. If you’re allergic to the kind of novel in which characters exchange lines such as “I’m not real”, “Neither am I”, then it’s a case of diminishing returns. Otherwise, the book bears rich rewards.

The title refers to Ada’s father, an IT technician who is kicked out by Ada’s mother when he becomes obsessed with the gym – and much of the book explores how we create ourselves and others. Ada grows up surrounded by the marshy countryside near Norwich and early on experiences episodes of dissociation and ontological insecurity, including auditory and visual hallucinations. She imagines a voice on the radio saying her parents are getting divorced. The voice is “like a door swung open inside her head. Through it she could see a black tunnel, like a mine shaft, stretching down inside her.”

An imposter monkey, an underworld princess, art’s female trailblazers, and YA tales of fear, family and friendship

Our World: Nigeria by Bunmi Emenanjo and Diana Ejaita, Barefoot Books, £7.99
Part of a delightful educational series from a brilliant inclusive publisher, this colourful, joyous board book whisks babies away to spend a day in Nigeria, learning to say hello in three languages and feasting on porridge, akara and plantain.

Monkeypig by Huw Aaron, Puffin, £7.99
What makes a real monkey? This rapturously silly picture book from the Waterstones prize winner follows Molly, a pig who blends in with her simian friends – despite head monkey Norman’s best efforts to detect the impostor.

Genki Kawamura’s eerie new film expands on a haunting video game that leaves players lost in endless subway tunnels. He explains how this makes viewers and players face their worst fears

Genki Kawamura is something of a polymath. A bestselling author, film-maker, script writer and producer – he is also a lifelong gamer who grew up playing and being inspired by the games of legendary Nintendo designer Shigeru Miyamoto. His latest project Exit 8, now in cinemas, is a fascinating adaptation of the Japanese horror game, developed by a lone coder based in Kyoto, operating under the name Kotake Create. “I was captivated by its game design and the beauty of its visuals,” says Kawamura. “At the same time, I watched many streamers play it. As I did, I realised that although the game is incredibly simple, each player creates their own story, and each streamer brings their own unique reactions. It felt like a device that could reveal something fundamental about human nature.”

The concept behind Exit 8 the game is simple. The player finds themselves trapped in an endlessly looping section of a Tokyo subway station. Viewing the narrow, brightly lit corridors in first-person, you pass the same posters, the same silent commuter, the same locked doors over and over again. The only way to escape is to spot anomalies each time you pass through – maybe the eyes on a poster start following you, maybe the commuter stops and smiles – at which point you have to double back the way you came. Complete eight runs without missing an anomaly and you get to leave through the eponymous way out. There’s no story, no reason for it at all. The mystery is part of the appeal.

PlayStation 5; Housemarque/Sony
As a fast-firing spaceman, one minute you’re invincible, the next you’re dead – with every battle like watching a firework show through a kaleidoscope

On the planet Carcosa, mangled, blackened trees and crimson flowers take root next to the ruins of some ancient alien civilisation, flanked by statues contorted in pain, tearing at their marble skin. There are metallic tunnels deep underground, chasms of impossible size snaked with cables, so you feel as though you’re exploring the intestines of some giant machine. There’s a House of Leaves quality to these spaces, which shift and change and clearly weren’t built for humans.

You are Arjun Devraj (played by Rahul Kohli), a space security guy who’s on a mission to find missing colonists on an alien world before it all goes a bit Event Horizon and you become the next lost expedition. Classic. There’s some unethical space capitalism happening out here, and Devraj himself is a bit of a traumanaut who brought way too much mental carry-on luggage for this extremely long-haul flight. But it’s nothing that shooting some aliens won’t fix, right?

From mega hit Clair Obscur to the genius Blue Prince, the winners at this year’s event help me refocus on why games really matter

The 22nd Bafta game awards were on Friday, and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 took the biggest game prize. This makes it only the second game ever (after Baldur’s Gate 3) to win top prize at all five of the main awards shows: the Dice awards in Vegas; the Game awards in LA; the public-voted Golden Joysticks in the UK; the Game Developers Choice awards in San Francisco; and now London’s Baftas, the final event to celebrate the gaming output of 2025.

I’ll be honest: I was hoping for a different winner. Blue Prince, an eight-year project by the visual artist and former film-maker Tonda Ros, is the most extraordinary thing I played last year. It’s the game where you inherit a sprawling mansion that changes shape every day, and you must navigate its ever-shifting blueprint to find its secret room. I went so deep on this game that I was still playing it and thinking about it weeks after solving its initial mystery, piecing together bits of opaque lore from Reddit threads. I think it deserved at least one best game award (apart from ours).

The iconic game that came to define 8-bit programming still conjures flutters of nostalgia 40 years on – all thanks to a 15-year-old tea boy who worked a Saturday shift in a computer shop in Greater Manchester

If you were playing games on a home computer in the early 1980s, you knew about Chuckie Egg. No question. This simple-looking platform game had you wandering around a chicken shed, collecting eggs and avoiding the patrolling hens. But when you reached level eight, a large duck was suddenly let loose and would stalk the player like a feathery missile, completely changing the pace and tactics of the game. It was a boss battle before boss battles existed.

Everyone knew about Chuckie Egg because everyone could play it. Originally released on the ZX Spectrum, BBC Micro and Dragon 32 in the autumn of 1983, it immediately topped the charts, encouraging its publisher, A&F Software, to begin porting it to as many machines as possible. Around 11 conversions followed, including the Commodore 64, Amstrad and Acorn Electron. I first played it on the BBC computer in my school library, but I also had it on my C64 and a friend played on his Speccy. Like Manic Miner, Bruce Lee and Skool Daze, it was woven into the tapestry of British 8-bit gaming culture.

Riverside Studios, London
Jeffrey Longford is pedantic and superior in Farine Clarke’s medical drama – griping at everything from hospital data systems to gender-neutral loos

Heartsinks, in doctors’ private and profane lingo, are difficult patients who conjure dismay in the hearts of the medical professionals they come to see. So Dr Jeffrey Longford (Aden Gillett) reminds his friend and fellow GP after dealing with a “fit as a flea” hypochondriac who returns, week after week, albeit always with a slice of cake.

Jeffrey becomes something of a heartsink himself when he turns from doctor to patient after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. The real-life cases of Paul Kalanithi (in When Breath Becomes Air) and Henry Marsh (in And Finally) show how difficult it is for doctors to adjust to the patient role. In the case of Jeffrey, it is simply annoying: he insists the oncology receptionist use his “doctor” moniker rather than her pet endearments of “lovey” and “poppet”; he is pedantic, superior and generally full of complaint in the waiting room, griping about the electronic medical data system, the hospital’s layout and its gender-neutral loos.

Sadler’s Wells East, London
At 67, the mercurial Lecavalier is in the I’ll-do-whatever-I-want phase of her career, choreographing solos that are worlds away from cosy retirement

Louise Lecavalier is known for dancing with David Bowie (on his Sound + Vision tour and Fame 90 video) and for being the face of Canadian dance company La La La Human Steps in the 1980s and 90s. She’s also known for being contemporary dance’s most athletic, acrobatic performer, hurtling through the air like a flying bullet, launching into barrel jumps, corkscrewing on a horizontal axis.

She’s always been an exceptional dancing body, and that still holds true at the age of 67, where Lecavalier seems to have entered the uncompromising, I’ll-do-whatever-I-want phase of her career, choreographing her own solos that are worlds away from any idea of cosy retirement.

Lecavalier comes scampering backwards on stage, dressed in long coat and hood (druid vibes). Skittish as she bounces on the balls of her feet, her body quivers and quirks with a febrile quality, playing out compulsive repetitions to the restless bpm of a techno soundtrack.

Lecavalier’s movement hints at echoes of dances past – wisps of a balletic port de bras, or some entrechat jumps; a burst of hip-hop footwork – but all through a blurred filter. She’s a distinctive, mercurial presence: somewhere between witchy raver, manic pixie dream grandmother and earnest artist of the avant garde.

Danses Vagabondes is inspired by Carlo Rovelli’s book Écrits Vagabonds, a collection of essays wandering through disparate topics, the thoughts of a roaming mind. Lecavalier, too, is in constant motion, scrolling through all these impulses with a tight, nervous energy that’s strangely engaging. Although when the tempo slows the wandering goes a little off course.

It’s hard not to marvel at the way Lecavalier’s body is still very much at her command – she can still kick her leg to her shoulder, but that’s by the by. It’s harder still not to marvel at this dancer’s unquenchable maverick spirit.

• At Sadler’s Wells East, London, until 27 April

Soho theatre, London
Christopher Brett Bailey reads his surreal novella and freewheels his way through extreme vice, erotic tension and dulled indifference

No one tells a story like Christopher Brett Bailey. One minute he’s buying eggs at a gas station and the next he’s careening down the highway with the devil, the car deliberately swerving to increase their body count. Though it doesn’t quite match the motor-mouthed intensity or blinding climax of his 2014 beat-poet monologue, This Is How We Die, this live reading of his surreal 2023 novella is a free-wheeling piece of storytelling, vividly and viciously told.

There’s no music nor much set. It’s just Brett Bailey reading from his script at a table, slurping and hissing and whispering into the microphone as he weaves a story of modern America and a man literally dancing with the devil. In a fringed leather jacket with snakeskin boots and his signature freshly electrocuted hair, Brett Bailey recounts with eerie calmness an accidental road trip with his overheated companion in small town America, “two miles north of hell”.

Royal Court theatre, Liverpool
Writer-actor Aron Julius captures the sparkling charm of Liverpudlian fighter John Conteh in a punch-by-punch account of his career

Don King is singing the praises of his new signing. The boxing impresario, played by Zach Levene with an extravagant bouffant, sees something special in John Conteh, the light-heavyweight champion. It is a talent that goes beyond the ring. “He walks into a room and the air changes,” he says.

Impressively, this is a quality captured by Aron Julius. Playing the Kirkby kid who became WBC light-heavyweight champion in 1974, he is muscular, light-footed and graceful. More than that, he sparkles. With a needling Liverpool wit, he is as cheeky as he is charming. Who wouldn’t want him to win?

As Maria Balshaw steps down after nine years, her successor at the gallery needs to forge a fresh financial and cultural path

Roland Rudd, the chair of Tate, is in a bullish mood when we meet at his offices in the Adelphi Building, which sits on the Thames between the art institution’s two London sites. “Things have never been better,” he says.

It’s a rebuff to any suggestion that the organisation is in flux – and, as if he were expecting the question to arise, Rudd produces a piece of paper from his suit pocket with notes to prove his point. The recent wins, he says, are so numerous that he has written them down so as not to forget any.

In this week’s newsletter: In an era preoccupied with overstimulation, a trio of cartoon rodents​’ slowed-down reinterpretations of pop classics offer an uncanny kind of calm

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The best album I’ve heard so far this year isn’t from this year at all. It’s from 2015 (though its recordings were made decades before that), and is a collection of sludgy, doomy covers of late-70s punk, new wave and pop perennials: My Sharona, Call Me, Walk Like an Egyptian. The guitars on this mysterious tribute album have had their pitch tuned down to a low, thick squelch, the drum beats are slow and punishingly thudding, and the vocals, while sung in a sweet tenor, have a strange, almost lobotomised quality to them. The weirdest thing of all though is who is performing: Alvin, Simon, Theodore.

OK, let’s explain. Just over 10 years ago, Canadian musician Brian Borcherdt – best known as one half of experimental noise duo Holy Fuck – bought an old 16rpm turntable, designed for playing slow-speed records such as spoken-word albums. Naturally, Borcherdt immediately started messing about with it, playing normal 45rpm records on the turntable, which slowed them to a disorienting crawl. After experimenting with slowing down a few LPs, he landed on his masterwork: the Chipmunks album Chipmunk Punk, a cynical 1980 attempt by the creators of the squeaky-voiced cartoon rodents to capitalise on the ascendant musical genre of the moment, while of course not sounding the slightest bit punk at all.

The clean geometry of the Iran Mall in Tehran, and the way light moves through it, caught the fine art photographer’s eye

The Iran Mall in Tehran is the largest shopping mall in the world. Ali Zolghadri recalls it being fairly empty the day he took this image, four months before the US and Israel launched their war on Iran. “This particular spot is in the central atrium. It’s a huge, futuristic space with sweeping curved lines, layered architecture, metallic surfaces and massive skylights,” Tehran-born Zolghadri says. “The clean geometry and the way light moves through the structure really caught my eye. It’s a public space, but because of its scale, it often feels quiet and almost otherworldly.” The shot, a composite of three images, was shortlisted in the creative category of the 2026 Sony World Photography awards.

“As a fine art photographer, editing is an essential part of my process,” Zolghadri says. “Every element in the final composition was photographed by me, but some unnecessary elements were removed, and the frames were carefully blended in Photoshop. I don’t use AI in my workflow; everything is captured and edited manually by me. The post-production process is a continuation of the creative act, not a shortcut.”

As an expectant mother bringing a little person into the world, you want to feel it is mostly filled with good people. In that moment I felt reassured

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

It was my first pregnancy and I’d been sick for more than seven months with hyperemesis gravidarum. In those late stages, after the HG finally passed, I was exhausted and overwhelmed. It was the dual feeling of excitement and trepidation. Was I ready to have a baby when I’d only just got used to waddling around and the discomfort of pregnancy?

One day I was at the shops and not feeling great. As I was walking down an aisle, a woman came up behind me. I assumed she was going to ask me to move or make a not-super-friendly comment. Instead, she said: “Do you know that your shoelace is undone?” I didn’t – I couldn’t see my feet! – and thanked her for letting me know.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions on subjects ranging from trivial flights of fancy to profound scientific and philosophical concepts

This week’s question: The Missouri tofu spill was ‘unforgettable’ – but what are history’s greatest bad smells?

The furious reaction to Donald Trump’s posting of an AI-generated image of himself as a Christ-like healer resulted in a rare walkback from the US president, who deleted it from his social media account and insisted it was “supposed to be me as a doctor”. But if you were in fact the saviour of humanity, how would you go about convincing people of this? Even Jesus Christ himself struggled (although, admittedly, that was part of the plan). Bob Kenny, Dublin

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

Inspired to run your first 26.2 miles? Seasoned runners share their go-to kit, from race-day shoes to free apps (plus five UK marathons you can still enter)

• The best running shoes for every runner

When you first start running, the marathon – all 26.2 miles of it – seems like an impossible distance. Whether you’ve taken the plunge at your local parkrun or got round your first 10k, the thought of anything longer probably feels like it’s beyond you.

But this running milestone is more achievable than you think. My first marathon was Brighton in 2018, and on crossing the line, I knew I’d been bitten by the bug. Three more marathons and three ultra-distance events later, I’m gearing up for number five in Berlin this September.

Our resident product tester sips and puckers his way through a range of high-street balsamic vinegars

• The best supermarket gherkins

The old adage that you get what you pay for definitely applies to balsamic vinegar, no matter whether it’s an independent brand or a supermarket’s own-label. The best are made in Modena, Italy, and carry at least IGP (protected geographical indication) status. Though that’s not the strictest certification, it’s still a mark of quality, assuring the product has been made following certain guidelines.

None of the vinegars I tested had PDO (protected designation of origin) status, which is a more coveted certification with strict guidelines and a 12-year ageing process, and which explains why it can cost upwards of £1,200 a litre.

Whether you’re a beginner, an ultra-runner or a speed demon, our expert clocked up more than 50km in each trainer to find the perfect shoe, no matter your goal

• The best running watches, tested

Whether you’re just starting Couch to 5k or well on the way to the 100 Marathon Club, finding running shoes that suit your pace, physique and running style is mission-critical. The right shoes can help you run better, ward off injury and, most importantly, help you to build the consistency that unlocks the biggest fitness and mental health gains.

The first step out of the door is the hardest, and uncomfortable shoes are just another barrier between you and that sweet endorphin release. Yet with dozens of brands – from Hoka, Adidas and Nike to New Balance, Saucony and On – hundreds of styles, and enough tech jargon to make Susie Dent’s head spin, finding your solemate can be a challenge in itself.

Best running shoes overall:
Saucony Endorphin Azura

Best value running shoes for speed:
Kiprun Kipride Max

Want to recreate the lustre of days spent in the sun with none of the damage? Try these expert-approved formulas

• The best IPL and laser hair removal devices tested

The wise among us would never forgo our safe-sun protocol, but there’s no denying that many of us feel happier and healthier with a tan. The irresistible lure of sunkissed skin has long been a summer staple – and from tanning waters to wipes, instant tans to gradual tanning moisturisers, there are now more ways than ever to get a faux glow.

There’s also been a growing demand for multitasking beauty products, so the newest fake tan formulas often add skincare benefits alongside the bronze. Self-tans infused with hyaluronic acid, niacinamide and vitamin C hydrate, nourish and protect much like your usual body cream or facial serum.

Best fake tan overall:
Bare by Vogue Williams clear tan water

Best budget fake tan:
Boots Glow tanning milk

Impala is like no restaurant I’ve ever been to, yet it somehow has echoes of almost all of them

Late last month, Impala drove into Soho already flaming hot in the hype stakes: this was a sizzling booking to brag about even before executive chef and co-founder Meedu Saad had turned on the stoves. Impala, after all, is a Super 8 restaurant, the group that has, among others, Tomos Parry’s Brat in Shoreditch, which has been constantly, unfalteringly brilliant since 2018. It also runs Parry’s second baby, Mountain, which is likewise wonderful; sometimes weird, yes, but always wonderful. Long before that, back in 2016, they opened Kiln, the famed live-fire Thai counter hangout that cheffy boys in beanies have tried and failed to emulate all over Britain, while Super 8’s beginnings were with the boundary-pushing and much-loved Smoking Goat. That is nothing less than a litany of solid-gold bangers, and now they’ve unleashed Impala by Saad, the former head chef at Kiln.

In any normal restaurant review, it would have been common to have by now established what type of food Impala actually cooks – north African? Middle Eastern? Mediterranean? British?, etc – but in this odd, dreamy and defiantly dark nook in Soho (every single one of us in the room, even those with perfect vision, had our iPhone torches on just to read the menu), narrowing down its origin story is not quite that simple. “Bird’s tongue pasta braised with spiced oxtail?” someone asked over the loud jazz. “Molokhia, braised jute leaf and shoulder of cull yaw sheep?” queried someone else. It went on: aish baladi? Ftira? “Bird’s tongue pasta is the Egyptian name for orzo,” I ventured, adding that I thought molokhia might be a bit like spinach, but never have I been more ready for a server to turn up and ask: “Guys, may I explain the menu?”

We choose a beef tartare with a smoky, sweet Tunisian harissa and crunchy chunks of deep-fried bread as brittle as pork crackling. We scoop honey bread through an insanely good mush of pounded white beans topped with chunks of pungent bottarga. There are rustic pillows of that aish baladi, an Egyptian wholegrain bread that here comes with a fresh, rich harissa paste, and langoustine kibbeh and sun-dried wheat all wrapped in a neat perilla leaf cone.

From avocado to hemp, extra virgin olive and rapeseed, the shops are packed with various oils. But what is worth spending money on? And are any of them actually better for you?

The world of cooking oils is confusing. I keep spotting new ones on supermarket shelves, trumpeting their health claims. Cold-pressed avocado oil, extra virgin macadamia oil, organic coconut oil, premium hemp seed oil … Even familiar oils are mired in controversy. Is it OK to cook with olive oil? Should you avoid seed oils? Meanwhile, prices keep rising – earlier this month, Walter Zanre, the CEO of Filippo Berio UK, said supermarkets were “taking the mickey” out of customers over olive oil pricing. I asked the experts which oils are really worth splashing out on.

They may be pennies a packet, but the ubiquitous custard cream can be a revelation if you make them at home. But who has come up with the ideal bake?

Prue Leith reckons the custard cream is “arguably Britain’s most iconic biscuit” – and, certainly, we’ve been dunking this fern-patterned treat in our tea for well over a century, with early advertisements for this “delicious biscuit” placing it, perhaps aspirationally, in the “fancy” category. By 1920, Bermondsey baking behemoth Peek Frean could confidently declare the custard cream “far and away the most popular of all the cream sandwich biscuits”, a status only slightly dented by the time I was at school about seven decades later, when it sat just below its contemporary, the chocolate bourbon, in the playtime snack ratings.

Despite my love of both custard and cookies, however, I’ve always found this particular custard-flavoured product a bit sugary and dull. As historian Lizzie Collingham explains in her magisterial book, The Biscuit: The History of a Very British Indulgence, it combines two early industrial foodstuffs, namely custard powder and machine-made biscuits, and though they may have been created in a factory, I think they’re much better made at home.

Industry figures say that going viral is no replacement for the classic route of apprenticeships and competitions

Scroll through your timeline of choice and it won’t be long until you land on a video posted by a social media chef trying to send their recipes viral.

Such is the popularity of cooking videos that everyone from Michelin star masters to self-taught beginners like Brooklyn Beckham are setting up tripods on their kitchen counters to capture the perfect cut, cuisson or crust on their culinary creations.

The actor and producer on being a teenage model, making My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and the secret to long-lasting love

Born in Hollywood in 1956, Rita Wilson’s first role was in The Brady Bunch at the age of 15. She went on to appear in Frasier and The Good Wife, as well as romcom classics such as Sleepless in Seattle and Runaway Bride. She produced the highest‑grossing romcom of all time, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, as well as Mamma Mia! and A Man Called Otto, which starred her husband, Tom Hanks, and son Truman. Alongside her career on screen, she has released music since 2012. Her sixth studio album, Sound of a Woman, is out on 1 May.

My mum took this photo of me in Hollywood. I’d just started high school and was joyful, open and optimistic.

It feels as if your work and your identity are fused. You’ll get through this, but you may have to use this time to consider other careers

I’ve been a teacher for more than 20 years and loved it. I had promotions every couple of years and was happily making my way up the ladder. This year, however, I was made redundant because of restructuring and this has thrown me into a feeling of complete confusion. I have tried to find roles at the level I was working at, but have not been successful. It has left me feeling lost and unclear.

The last five years within education have felt fraught. I left the previous school I’d worked at because I felt the headteacher was unable to support me following the death of my mum. The school before that I left after whistleblowing on a senior leader for bullying. I am worried the repeat issues and feelings of being unhappy all come from me, and somehow I am seeking out conflict or issues.

Gillian Kennedy met Wade Freeman while working in a remote desert community. She was impressed by his playlists, and his generous spirit

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In 2007 I’d been single for a few years and had just returned from a year volunteering in a village in Bangladesh. Six months after arriving home in Sydney I decided to take up a teaching job in Mulan Aboriginal community in the Kimberley, halfway between Broome and Alice Springs, population 120.

The first term was difficult. I got along well with my housemate, Kylie, and we’d met friendly nurses and people from the surrounding communities. But we didn’t have access to a vehicle so spent our weekends working. I felt quite lonely and isolated.

Being on dating apps can feel like looking for a needle in a haystack – so Dr Jennie Young devised a technique to burn it down and find better matches

It was 2023, and Dr Jennie Young was sick of online dating. She was looking for a partner, and instead all she found in the apps were inappropriately sexual come-ons and conversations that went nowhere. It felt like looking for a needle in a big, rancid haystack. So one day, frustrated and totally out of ideas, she Googled “how do you actually find a needle in a haystack?”

The answer: burn it down.

Secondhand car buyers urged to carefully inspect vehicles, while owners told to beware tests that are suspiciously quick

• Rise of the ‘ghost owner’: 18,000 UK vehicles in use without proper records

You have just bought a secondhand car. It was older than you wanted, but were reassured because it had recently passed its MOT.

Within a few days, you notice a problem with the steering and take it into a garage to be checked. As well as that issue, they find the tread depth of the tyres is so low it should not have passed the test.

Some people are put off by myriad investment options. Here is a guide to the key decisions to help you choose

• ‘Savvy Squirrel’ ad campaign looks to push Britons towards investing

The UK government is keen to encourage people to invest. If you are thinking of dipping your toe into the stock market, an Isa is often the best way, as it lets you protect any gains from tax. Here’s how to get started.

Lucy O’Brien was shocked when she discovered how high interest rates were leading to ballooning debt

Like many of my drowning-in-debt “plan 2” student loan comrades, I didn’t think twice about diving straight into a master’s degree, bright-eyed and fresh out of my undergraduate course in 2021.

To say I was naive to the additional financial burden would be an understatement. Even less did I think that, four years after finishing my master’s, I’d be using the savings money I’ve built up – which I’d planned to put towards a deposit to buy my first property – to pay back my postgraduate loan in full. And yet here I am.

Kaf Okpattah reveals the language used by scammers, from ‘squares’ to ‘clicking’ and ‘mule herder’

Kaf Okpattah can speak the language of scammers. “Squares is one word which comes up a lot. That’s bank cards,” he says. “Fullz … that’s a person’s full financial information.”

In his new book, Scam Nation, he goes through more. “Clicking”, which means using stolen details to commit online crime; “addy”, which is used for the shipping address for fraudulently bought gear; and “mule herder”, meaning someone who recruits and manages people accepting stolen funds. Many of these are words he learned at school, he says.

NHS struggling to cope with record numbers, which Cancer Research UK says puts progress on survival rates at risk

The number of people in the UK being diagnosed with cancer has reached a record high, with one person diagnosed every 80 seconds, a report reveals.

Cancer Research UK found that more than 403,000 people were being diagnosed with the disease each year. The rise is largely due to a growing and ageing population, as people are more likely to develop cancer as they get older.

Knowing the difference between hunger and appetite, and understanding the sensory cues behind them, can help us make better decisions about what we eat

Imagine you’re in a meeting room when someone brings out the biscuits – a packet of Jammie Dodgers, perhaps, or a nice little plate of custard creams. Maybe you want one and maybe you don’t, but the chances are the people around you are all responding differently: someone will grab a couple straight away, someone else will eat one without seeming to notice, another will barely be aware the biscuits exist, and someone will spend the whole meeting wanting one but not taking it. Our appetites and responses to food vary wildly – but what’s going on behind the scenes to govern them? And has modern food somehow hijacked the process? Grab a biscuit (or don’t) and settle in.

“First, it’s important to distinguish between hunger and appetite,” says Giles Yeo, a professor of molecular neuroendocrinology at the University of Cambridge and the author of Why Calories Don’t Count. “Hunger is a feeling – it’s what happens in the run-up to you deciding you need to eat something. Appetite is everything that surrounds why we eat – including hunger, fullness and reward, or how you actually feel when you eat. Those three sensations all use completely different parts of the brain, but they all work together.”

Invoking a night imp might be ludicrous, but the superstitious and the sacred are often the same thing

• Sharing the load is a column about parenting children of all ages

I held my daughter up to better see the passing parade. She was still small enough to lift high with my hands and I watched her reaction from below, her joy, growing in the morning light. The colour and noise moved past. “You’re missing it,” I heard someone say. But I had never seen something as beautiful as that; it seemed perfect, her smile looking down at me.

My daughter appeared above me again the following morning, though something had changed. Her mouth, blood-streaked, opened to reveal a gap. She had lost her first tooth. We celebrated but I felt something else as well; it all changes from here. I wondered if it was grief.

Size does matter – as does diet – but your genes are the main driver of your cholesterol levels

Cholesterol, a fatty substance mostly made by the liver and used by the body to build cells and produce hormones, has become a heart-health bogeyman. There are several types, but high levels of LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol increase the risk of heart attack and stroke. Often labelled “bad” cholesterol, LDL builds up over time on artery walls, narrowing them and restricting blood flow.

High LDL cholesterol is not confined to people who are overweight. “Genetics are the main driver of higher LDL cholesterol levels,” says Naveed Sattar, professor of cardiometabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow. “Diets have smaller effects and it’s not necessarily the total calories that count; it’s the amount of saturated fat.” (Found in cakes, biscuits, chocolate and many ultra-processed foods, saturated fat can raise LDL levels.) All of this means someone relatively lean can still have high cholesterol, either because of their genetic profile or dietary pattern.

To celebrate the release of the film Mother Mary, starring Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel, in which a fashion designer creates a comeback dress for a pop star, we weigh up the best performative looks

“Dressed like a fabulously turned-out carrion crow,” is how our reviewer described the gothic, avian-like get-up PJ Harvey wore to perform her journalistic and theatrical ninth album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, in Brixton, south London, in 2016. The dress was the work of Harvey’s longtime friend, the Belgian designer Ann Demeulemeester, and epitomises the more dramatic stage looks – melodramatic but pared-back – that Harvey turned to for her later, darker albums. As she said of the clothes: “For me, it’s about the ability to meet the world. And it is a second skin, isn’t it? It’s protection, as well. It’s a very big part of clothing, the feeling of protection, particularly in Ann’s clothes.” Who would have thought that someone who earlier in their career took to the stage in Spice Girls co-ords and hot-pink catsuits would wind up in such serious Belgian high-fashion? Ellie Violet Bramley

Film sequel reveals how luxury brands have turned the tables on once-dominant magazine editors

The National Gallery was the grand setting for the party that followed The Devil Wears Prada 2’s London premiere this week. Donatella Versace held court in a roped-off area beneath Paul Delaroche’s The Execution of Lady Jane Grey.

Meryl Streep, reprising her role as Miranda Priestly – Anna Wintour’s fictional alter ego – wore a red satin Prada coat as a nod to the film’s title and black sunglasses as a wink to Wintour. Glossy magazine editors from Spain, Germany and the Netherlands, flown in for the night, nibbled on fried chicken served with caviar and dishes of mac and cheese presented theatrically under silver cloches.

Wiltshire town councillor Andrew Edwards, who has large collection of neckwear, is a regular at committee hearings

It was blockbuster viewing for politicos across the country: the livestreamed grilling of Olly Robbins. While the sacked Foreign Office civil servant was billed as the star of the show, for many he was upstaged by a well-dressed man wearing a cravat.

“I’ve got a big collection,” said Andrew Edwards, the scene stealer in question.

The 1980s band are being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year – but why does singer Sade Adu’s pared-back look still resonate in 2026?

Earlier this month it was announced that Sade, the British group fronted by Sade Adu that found fame in the 80s and 90s, would be inducted into the 2026 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And although the music is indisputably worthy of such a distinction, if there were a similar accolade for style, Adu would have been inducted a long time ago.

With her scraped-back hair, red lipstick, hoop earrings and penchant for simple black dresses or denim and polo necks, she has become the last word in understated – but somehow unattainable – style.

Beyond the Tuscan capital, there are exquisite towns with Medici fortresses, stunning frescoes, Roman amphitheatres – and not a selfie stick in sight

First, it was Barcelona, Venice and Dubrovnik. Now, Florence has joined the most overtouristed destinations in the world: its 365,000 inhabitants shared their city last year with 4.6 million visitors. The director of the city’s Accademia gallery – home to Michelangelo’s David – talked in 2024 about “hit and run” tourism, describing visitors “on a quick in-and-out mission to take selfies … trampling the city without contributing anything”. Local author Margherita Calderoni describes Via Camillo Cavour, a street leading to the Duomo, as a “rancid soup” of chain restaurants and “shops selling plastic trinkets from who knows where”.

Although steps are being taken – the city council has introduced a ban on new short-term lets and is promoting sights in lesser-known neighbourhoods – tackling overtourism is a challenge. And other Tuscan cities, such as Siena and San Gimignano, are suffering too. But beyond these honeypots, Italy’s fifth-largest region is full of glories, with not a takeaway chain or selfie stick in sight. Here are six of my favourites.

Clear waterfalls, mountain meadows and high-altitude refuges are just some of the highlights of this less-visited part of the stunning range

The “forgotten” Dolomites lie to the east, far from the crowds of the Tre Cime di Lavaredo and Val Gardena. Belluno is the main gateway, two hours north of Venice by train or a drive up the A27. From here, the upper Piave valley leads into the quieter Friulian mountains. The land rises gently, opening into pasture, then stone lifting into spires above the meadows.

Traditional local councils, the Regole di Comunità, still manage the land and forests collectively here, sustaining artisans and alpine farmers in scattered hamlets shaped by shared work and resilience. Pastìn (a minced, seasoned blend of pork and beef), malga cheeses and polenta, once staples for long days in the mountains, are still shared over grappa at the end of the day. Beyond the hamlets, paths lead towards Monte Pelmo or drift into the beech woods of Cansiglio, where deer call at dusk. It’s a fine place to experience mountain culture, and these are some of my favourite places.

From cycling in the Cinque Terre to sipping espresso at a secret spot overlooking the Colosseum, here are some of your Italian highlights

• Tell us about great beach bars and restaurants in Europe – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

When we visited Venice, we stayed in Padua. It’s half an hour to Venezia Mestre (Venice’s mainland suburb), trains are frequent and cheap, as long as you avoid expresses, and easy to book if you have the Trenitalia app. You’ll find accommodation and restaurants significantly cheaper if you are based in Padua and day trip into Venice, and Padua is worth exploring in its own right. There are also trains to Vicenza, Verona, Bologna and Bassano del Grappa – we found it the perfect base for a public transport trip in north-east Italy.
Fergal O’Shea

In the 1980s ‘the Antwerp Six’ put Flanders on the fashion map. Now a major new exhibition celebrates the designers’ legacy and provides the perfect excuse to visit Belgium’s vibrant second city

You know you’re in a city that takes its fashion seriously when even the Virgin Mary is dressed head to toe in couture. A short walk from Antwerp’s old town, with its ornate medieval guild houses and cobblestone streets, is the baroque church of St Andrews. Like many of the city’s Catholic churches, it has beautiful stained glass windows, an exuberantly carved wooden pulpit and more artworks by Flemish masters than you can shake an incense stick at. But we’re here to pay homage to an art form of a different kind.

In a quiet chapel, an elegant 16th-century wooden statue of the Madonna is clothed not in her usual blue cloak, but a dress of pale gauzy fabric, trimmed with a collar of white pigeon feathers, custom made by renowned Belgian fashion designer Ann Demeulemeester. It’s a bold statement but one that’s entirely in-keeping with a city where a love of fashion seems woven into the fabric of everyday life.

The piccolo tune could only have been written to intentionally drive people completely crazy

I’m sitting in the kitchen with my phone on speaker, listening to an instrumental work featuring a repeated piccolo melody, as I have been for the last half hour. At first it seemed to be a composition without end, cagily constructed to fold back on itself, but after giving it close attention for some minutes I realise it’s just a short section of a larger piece – comprising the four bars before the drums kick in, and the four bars after – that lasts exactly 30 seconds. At the end of the loop it briefly cuts out before starting over again, leaving a silent gap that makes you think a customer service representative is about to speak. But that never happens.

Around the 45 minute mark I make a quick calculation – twice per bar, 8 bars per 30-second cycle – that suggests I have now listened to the repeated piccolo melody more than 1,400 times. It’s hard to imagine this work being devised with any intention beyond driving people – perhaps prisoners – insane.

Gloucestershire: I have loved watching the busy nest near our house, now the chicks have fledged and keep coming in the house

Spring is a relief after four months of darkness in my valley. We live on the north side, so the sun doesn’t rise above the tree line for the whole winter. A sign of spring returning is the birdsong, as they call the sun back to our valley. One of my favourites is the robin, which sings all through the year, but I have really noticed them this spring. They are bold and like to sneak into our kitchen for crumbs.

Recently, a pair of our red-breasted friends built a nest in the eaves near our courtyard. Apparently, it was quite early in the year for them to nest. We watched them flying in and out, carrying small bits of twigs and moss in their beaks. Soon the busy birds stopped being so busy and I knew there must be eggs there. After a couple of weeks, we heard a high-pitched buzz coming from the nest – the birds had hatched and were crying for food. The chicks got bigger, their cries got louder and the parents worked harder.

Dartmoor: We went for a family walk on the moor, and I ended up seeing something really rare and special

It was a bright spring morning, and I had gone up to Dartmoor with my mum, my brother and my grandma for a walk in the fresh sunshine. My mum suggested that we go off the path to look at some bluebells and everyone agreed. It was beautiful. I could hear the birds singing and see the granite rocks sparkling.

My grandma and my brother walked away from us, and I went in the opposite direction towards some brambles by a slab of concrete that was catching the sun. And then I saw it – a large, black snake rearing up at me. We looked at each other for a second – it had black scales and faint zigzag patterns on its body.

From a saint and a lion to ‘the original nepo baby’, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Which US state was once an independent monarchy?
2 What cold spell lasted from circa 1300 to 1850?
3 Which bestselling book series is abbreviated as Acotar?
4 What word meaning haughty comes from the Latin for eyebrow?
5 Which pop compilation series was launched in November 1983?
6 What is the most visited museum in the UK?
7 Who described herself in a 2026 memoir as “the original nepo baby”?
8 Which saint is often depicted writing, with a lion at his feet?
What links:
9 Scotland (7, 10, 12, 14); Rwanda (15); England (the rest)?
10 Checkmate; Job; The Haunted Ballroom; The Rake’s Progress?
11 Mariner 10; Messenger; BepiColombo?
12 Evie and Ossie; Gladstone; Larry; Palmerston?
13 Phil Chisnall; Paul Ince; Thomas McNulty; Michael Owen?
14 Death From Above 1979; Royal Blood; the Black Keys; the Kills; the White Stripes?
15 Inertia (1); acceleration/force (2); action and reaction (3)?

Christine Dawood found herself trapped on the ship, waiting for signs that the Titan submersible carrying her family would surface. She talks in detail for the first time about those harrowing four days

Walking into Christine Dawood’s kitchen, it’s impossible not to be drawn to the model Titanic in the centre of the room. Sitting in its own glass-fronted cabinet, the Lego ship is almost 1.5 metres long, constructed of 9,090 of the iconic plastic bricks. Dawood’s 19-year-old son Suleman spent almost two weeks building it. “People are always a bit shocked to see it,” she admits. “But what was I going to do? Break it up? Hide it away? Suleman put all those hours in. He’d been fascinated with the Titanic since we went to a huge exhibition when we lived in Singapore.“

I went to that same exhibition when it came to London, and remember marvelling at the china dinner plates that had survived intact; the unused lifejackets that had failed to save someone; the sheet music belonging to the orchestra who had supposedly bravely played even as the ship went down. Instead of a ticket, you were given a replica boarding pass with a real passenger’s name on it. At the end, you could find out who survived and who didn’t.

Saturday marks one year since Virginia Giuffre’s death – and other survivors are making a public reckoning possible

Saturday will mark one year since the death of Virginia Giuffre, one of the first women to surrender her anonymity, detail her experiences and publicly call for criminal charges against convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. For other Epstein survivors such as Liz Stein and Jess Michaels, Giuffre’s public reckoning made it possible to finally name what had happened to them.

“I saw myself in Virginia, in [Epstein survivor] Maria Farmer, in all of them,” said Danielle Bensky, who was pulled into Epstein’s orbit when she was 17. “And I thought: if they can be victimized, anyone can be. I was not alone. I finally understood that we were not going to be silent any more.

Being hairless on top has never been in style, but r/bald members encourage one another in the face of insecurity

I was sitting in a cafe a few weeks ago when I overheard a rare bit of sunny talk about advances in medicine and technology when a woman said: “Nobody will be bald in the future.” The way she said it made me think of people in the 1950s imagining the 21st century as a world with flying cars, sassy robot maids and no wars; a world where everybody has hair on their heads is possible.

Bald has never exactly been in style, but these days, it feels like going bald is tougher than ever. It can feel lonely watching all those clumps fall out when you’re in the shower. Yes, there have been plenty of advances in hair restoration, and treatments have been proven to help some people avoid getting to the point where they need a doctor to surgically redistribute the follicles from the back to the front of their heads. But it won’t work for everybody, and people will still lose their hair as long as genetics and hormones have a say.

We want to hear from you about the rise of child skincare trends

Children as young as two are appearing in TikTok videos demonstrating their skincare routines, a Guardian investigation has found, raising concerns about the beauty industry’s reach. Dermatologists say children do not need multi-step skincare and warn the trend may be fuelling anxiety about appearance from an early age.

We want to hear from parents of children of primary school children or younger. Have your children asked for skincare products or felt pressure to follow routines they’ve seen online or heard about from friends? Have you noticed changes in how they think about their appearance? Do you have concerns?

We would like to hear your experience of job interviews that were conducted partially or wholly by AI

Companies are increasingly using AI in their hiring processes – including conducting job interviews themselves. With this in mind, we would like to hear your experience of job interviews that were conducted partially or wholly by AI.

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If you’ve changed your holiday plans, we’d like to hear from you

Rising fuel prices, aviation fuel prices, and changes to travel rules such as the new EU border system, EES, are causing some holidaymakers to reconsider their travel plans. Holiday companies have predicted an increase in bookings for UK summer breaks after a jump in interest from Britons fearful of flight cancellations linked to the Iran war.

Have you changed your summer holiday plans in light of recent world events? We’d like to hear from you.

We’d like to hear from people who are in a throuple or who used to be in one, and what their relationship was like

The Guardian’s Saturday magazine is looking for throuples to talk honestly about the experience of love and commitment.

We’re particularly interested in talking to throuples living together under one roof, as well as throuples who are raising children as a unit of three parents. Is it easier to manage the chore rota and childcare when there are more adults in the room? Or more difficult?

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