(Atlantic)
How do you follow up the album that made you a star – and a caricature? In classic Charli style: with a pivot to guitar and a meta masterpiece about the instability of identity

After a decade spent trailblazing a unique kind of pop freedom from the genre’s fringes, A-list success seemed like the thing that might finally trap Charli xcx. Her 2024 club-rat opus Brat spawned memes, embarrassing political bandwagoning, Collins’ word of the year and possibly terminal damage to the bra industry. Its ludicrous cultural impact looked set to pickle her as a caricature of a Parliament-toting bad girl; the question of whether “Brat summer” could last – whether Charli could sustain the interest – was so rife she turned it into a mockumentary, The Moment. It made success look miserable: your creation turned cringe by execs wanting to milk their prize cow dry of every last acid-green drop.

Even for a pop star renowned for reinvention, it put a higher price on her next move. Pivot and risk losing new fans and looking wilfully contrarian. When Charli released the sub-two-minute single Rock Music, many heard it as a middle finger. “I think the dancefloor is dead,” she drawls over guitars that buzzed like speakers weathering interference from a Nokia 5110, “so now we’re making rock music.” There were boring thinkpieces about the dancefloor being very much alive, actually (as if Charli had ever ridden culture for clout then binned it off), and about whether she was trying to eject fair-weather new fans. But the key to this cheeky song is surprisingly earnest: “Jump off the stage / I hope they catch you today / But if they don’t it’s OK,” she sings naively, an affirmation to take creative leaps, and to come with Charli – or not, as you like – as she takes this one.

Reporting from some of the poorest seaside towns revealed how young people have been left isolated – but remain resilient and full of hope

If you were asked to summon up images of the coastline of England and Wales, you might think of sunny days, buckets, spades and carefree holidays. But for many young people growing up by the sea, decades of evidence tell a very different story. For them, rather than a picture-perfect horizon full of hope, the sea has become a boundary that swallows up opportunity.

With a 73% decline in funding for youth services in England over the past 12 years, and a lack of opportunities that has led to nearly 1 million 16- to 24-year-oldsnot in work, education or training (Neet), the situation for young people, especially in places of deprivation, has never seemed more desperate.

If Andy Burnham is minded to grasp the nettle, he will need to sell it to people like me. The right will call it a ‘death tax’ – why not a levy for ageing well?

One of the last things Andy Burnham did before entering Downing Street was to go and see his father.

Now living in a nursing home, Roy Burnham has Alzheimer’s and isn’t really aware of his son’s new job. But perhaps the prime minister wanted, in part, to try to explain why he might not be visiting so often in future.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

Versions of Amy Winehouse and hundreds of other musicians are generating millions for beleaguered UK venues. But what is the emotional toll for the imitators, and are they pushing out original artists?

As peak heatwave sun beams down on to a field in Derbyshire, Amy Winehouse tells the crowd she is in need of hydration – so Robbie Williams fetches her a drink. Elsewhere, members of the public stop the Beastie Boys for selfies, Fred Durst grooves along as Diana Ross covers Al Green, and shirtless teenagers form a circle pit during Korn as a woman sits knitting in a camping chair just behind them. James Brown and Prince turn out to be the same artist – just dressed up in different clothes.

These are all scenes from Replika festival last month, which won the Guinness world record for the biggest tribute festival, with 108 acts performing across a very sweaty weekend. The punning deserves an accolade of its own: acts included Catfishing the Bottlemen, Pearl Scam, Wrong Jovi and Iffy Clyro.

Since I started doing search and rescue five years ago, I have found seven survivors. Sadly, the number I find dead is higher

In 2012, I was a student and had arrived in Taiwan from the Czech Republic. I soon discovered something that interested me far more than my studies: the mountains of Taiwan. I would leave the campus to explore untouched trails near Taipei. I was obsessed with old maps, often looking for routes that had vanished from modern ones, and hiking paths that no one had taken for decades.

I stayed in Taiwan because of my love for the mountains – there are more than 250 peaks that exceed 3,000 metres. Among the local hiking community, I became known for my speed and knowledge of remote regions.

The troubled Games looked doomed until Glasgow stepped in but this opening ceremony had plenty of feelgood factor

The Commonwealth Games in Glasgow opened on Thursday evening to the surreal sight of King Charles and Queen Camilla stepping out of a Tardis – and a mechanical Loch Ness monster roaring the first few bars of Flower of Scotland.

The Tardis was a nod to the fact that police boxes were designed by the Scottish architect Gilbert MacKenzie Trench. But the Doctor Who reference proved to be doubly apt given the Games faced being exterminated until Glasgow stepped in after Victoria pulled out due to financial pressures.

The new tariffs will replace a 10% global duty set to expire on Friday, and comes as after the US supreme court declared many of the earlier levies were illegal

Donald Trump has imposed a fresh round of sweeping tariffs on more than 80 countries to replace a 10% global duty that was due to expire, setting off a wave of criticism and protests from US allies and major trading partners.

In its latest attempt to instate aggressive trade policies despite challenges from the America’s highest court, the US has imposed a tariff of between a 10% or 12.5% on dozens of countries, including the United Kingdom, Mexico, Canada, Australia, India, China and the 27 countries that make up the European Union. It effectively replaces the blanket 10% tariff that Trump imposed in February, right after the US supreme court declared that many of his earlier tariffs were illegal.

Burnham says ‘no one in government loses when power is shared’ as he revives Brown-era national economic council

• It’s not just a No 10 in the north, it’s an engine for growth throughout the whole UK | Andy Burnham

Regional mayors are to be given a leading role in the UK’s economic policy, Andy Burnham has said, as he called the opening of No 10 North “the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen”.

The new prime minister has revived the national economic council [NEC], first set up by Gordon Brown to put the government on a war footing during the 2008 financial crash, arguing that economic growth requires the same level of urgency, focus and collective action.

Exclusive: Westminster survey finds one in two staffers experiencing clinical levels of psychological distress

Staff employed by MPs are calling for urgently tightened security after reports of some being physically attacked and hundreds receiving threatening calls and messages.

A survey of more than 500 MPs’ staff members found that 78% had received threatening communication and nearly one in three fear for their own safety or that of colleagues.

Exclusive: Clinical assessments concluded Rudakubana could not be safely managed in prison, sources say

The Southport killer Axel Rudakubana has been moved from prison to a psychiatric hospital after clinical assessment, the Guardian can disclose.

He was transferred to Broadmoor high-security hospital from the category A prison Belmarsh this week after it was concluded that he could not be managed safely in a prison environment, sources confirmed.

Irish politicians concerned about Daniel Tatlow-Devally’s treatment in jail want Micheál Martin to send observers to Ulm 5 trial

A cross-party delegation of Irish politicians has urged Dublin to send observers to a high-security trial of pro-Palestinian activists in Germany and to raise concerns about the Irish defendant’s detention when the German chancellor visits next week.

Mairéad Farrell of Sinn Féin, a member of the seven-member delegation, said she and her colleagues had attended the hearing in Stuttgart on Wednesday of the so-called Ulm 5 activists, who are facing charges over an attack on an Israeli arms company.

Airbus A350–1000ULR becomes most watched plane on flight tracking websites as Qantas tests new aircraft for its Project Sunrise

• Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

• Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast

Qantas’s new ultra long-distance aircraft has landed on Australian soil for the first time on Friday after a 19-hour test flight from France.

The Airbus A350-1000ULR, designed for Qantas to complete some of the longest commercial flights in the world, set off on a nonstop journey from Airbus’ manufacturing facility Toulouse, France on Thursday, destined for Melbourne.

Team in Ohio finds swapping to electric has ‘very large’ impact, despite study being scaled back by Trump cuts

A US study has found a 70% drop in hospital admissions and days off from work or school when people with poorly controlled asthma had their gas stove and hob replaced with electric.

Ohio’s publicly owned MetroHealth began the study in December 2024 but funding was terminated early by the incoming Trump administration. It had been designed to investigate if replacing gas cooking improved asthma for 1,200 people living near Cleveland, Ohio.

Writing from year after gross indecency arrest challenges ‘isolated mathematician’ image, says Cambridge academic

When people think of Alan Turing, they might imagine he was arrogant, isolated, humourless, tortured. A better way of remembering the father of modern computing would be, an academic argues, as “playful, funny, cheeky, literary, and someone who really liked sex”.

The Cambridge University English literature professor Sarah Dillon has transcribed and studied a little-known short story that Turing wrote in the year after his arrest in Manchester for gross indecency.

Black-crowned night heron one of many species thriving at Holnicote Estate where river ‘reset’ has transformed area into lush oasis

A rare black-crowned night heron has been spotted on an estate in the south-west of England where an innovative river “reset” is transforming the area into an oasis for birdlife.

The heron was caught on camera in a jungly corner of the Holnicote Estate, where conservation experts have been restoring the landscape by allowing a river to return to its natural course.

Landlords say high costs of running hospitality business outweigh potential savings of business rates discount

One of Andy Burnham’s first policy measures as prime minister is a 20% reduction in business rates for pubs, clubs and live music venues.

The policy, announced on Thursday, is part of a broader agenda to support the high street and will cost £100m.

Elle’s story is one of personal sacrifice, deciding to help people despite the risk of attack by the military. Her story reflects that of a healthcare system in peril

When Myanmar’s junta seized power in a 2021 coup, Elle* and a fellow doctor fled to the jungle to provide aid to the resistance movement, one of 45,000 healthcare workers to lend their support.

Elle does not regret her decision, she supports the pro-democracy movement and later married the doctor with whom she escaped, but years of sacrifice have taken a toll. She treats patients from refugee camps at a clinic but does not earn enough to send money back to support her parents in their old age, which is her greatest wish.

EU unveils largest package in four years of measures against Russian individuals and interests; Laura Loomer shows up in Kyiv. What we know on day 1,612

The American novelist and screenwriter’s memoir covers sex work, Virginia Woolf and Hollywood success

As an eight-year-old in comfortable, solid, suburban California, Michael Cunningham felt compelled to make art before he quite understood what it was, or could do: a painting of souls ascending to heaven, for example, in which paradise resembled the Griffith Park Observatory and the dead were all depicted in profile because their creator felt unequal to the challenge of full faces. There was also a cigar box covered in gold-sprayed macaroni and a clay representation of the animals on Noah’s Ark – anything, in fact, that would challenge the painting of a placid white chicken that hung in a gilt frame on his parents’ wall.

If Cunningham moved on fairly rapidly from the visual arts, either sparing or denying us the fruits of a more fully formed talent, it wasn’t because the impulse to create had withered. Rather, it was that the experience of making material art had functioned as a temporary outlet, being less painful, less embarrassing – both emotions he ascribes to his young, sensitive self – than attempting to capture the world in words.

From the Tiramisù World Cup in Italy to street food ‘battles’ in Newcastle, your culinary highlights range from the sublime to the delicious
• Tell us about a book that inspired you to travel – the best tip wins £200 towards a Coolstays break

The town of Menton on the French Riviera is beautiful at any time of the year but becomes even more of a treat during the annual Lemon festival (Fête du Citron, 10-28 February 2027). Its microclimate, courtesy of the Alps to the north blocking colder winds, gives Menton lemons a distinct fragrance, flavour and quality that set them apart. For me, the event transformed a damp cold UK winter into a fortnight of colour, taste and light. There were food tastings, salads made with lemons, tarts, cakes and pies all full of zesty colour and flavour at stalls and markets in the town. There are sculptures made from citrus fruit, parades and exhibitions in the Golden Garden of Light (Jardins Biovès). More than a food festival, it’s a celebration of what nature can give to the world.
April

Brands are making clothes that can be adapted by the wearer. But with fast fashion giants getting in on the act, perhaps we should just stick to wearing our cardigans backwards

• Don’t get Fashion Statement delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

I’m sitting on my bedroom floor trying to fasten the sleeves back on to a new top that’s just been delivered. I haven’t had an unfortunate accident with scissors; the removable sleeves are a design feature, part of the growing trend for multi-way clothing that is being championed as a win for sustainability – or for anyone moving from air-conditioned office to outside right now. Brow furrowed, I try to attach the puff of red taffeta to the rest of the frilly blouse using the tiny buttons and loops provided. But I’m not having much luck …

I enjoy messing around with clothes. Aged 10, I pranced around a sun-drenched Greek holiday in a top that was really a skirt. But a top with sleeves that detach? I’d lose them instantly, I’m sure of it. Even if I didn’t, would my two-tops-in-one actually curb my rabid appetite for new clothes or would it simply feed the beast; another trend to be devoured and then discarded, just like the sleeves?

These bright, sharp Mexican iced treats are the perfect summer cooler – with a spiky kick

The first time I encountered paletas in Mexico, they felt strangely familiar. They reminded me of the iced treats of my Malaysian childhood: fruit-driven, brightly coloured and made less to indulge than to relieve the heat. What struck me most was the flavour logic shared by both countries, where sweetness is often enlivened with salt, chilli, tamarind or citrus, each sharpening the fruit in its own way and making it seem brighter, cooler and somehow more vivid. Paletas are rarely perfectly smooth; little pieces of fruit suspended in the ice give them texture and interest. These two paletas take different paths from the same base: pineapple – sharp, clean and bright with lime and ginger – and mango – sweeter, rounder and more indulgent, which I’ve spiked with chilli, lime and salt.

Power has been too centralised in Britain and tackling that is key to progress and prosperity. This initiative is ambitious: we’re remaking the state

• Andy Burnham is prime minister of the United Kingdom

On Monday, while the cameras were fixed on that famous black door in Downing Street, something important was happening 165 miles away. A small team of officials and advisers were walking into an office building in Manchester to set about the remaking of the British state.

This was the beginning of No 10 North: the first major act of this government and what I hope will be seen as its most defining.

Andy Burnham is the prime minister of the United Kingdom

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

The powerful politician was no stranger to controversy, but brazenly defying a ban on surrogacy that he had long defended, was the last straw

Up until last week, Jens Spahn was, by all accounts, a model of political success in Germany. At just 22, he was elected to the Bundestag for the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), and rose steadily through the ranks of the party. He was a leading official in the finance ministry, led the ministry of health through Covid and, in 2025, became his party’s leader in parliament, arguably the second-most powerful post in the country. Controversies – and there were many in more than two decades in politics – did not seem to stymie his rise to power.

So when Spahn was made to resign after announcing that he had become a father after he and his husband used a surrogate mother in the US, there was a moment of disbelief among those who thought him a Teflon political operator immune to scandal. Why was surrogacy the issue that finally brought him down? That this was the final straw for his party revealed how, in the conservative Germany of today, reproductive politics can mark a red line.

Tania Roettger is a journalist based in Berlin

The Guardian’s parliamentary sketch writer imagines Nigel Farage’s right-hand man’s thinking behind his book, How to Launder Money

Anti-money-laundering laws are supposed to stop the illicit flow of money. So far, they seem to have stopped next to nothing. About 5% of the global economy is illicit and only 0.05% is stopped by AML laws.

Which makes me, George, something of a rarity. The idiot member of the 1% who actually got done for conspiring to launder money. Just think, while 99% of criminals were getting away with it, I had the bright idea of telling an audience of undercover members of the US Internal Revenue Service in Las Vegas how I could clean up their drug money for them. Much to my surprise, they didn’t take me up on my offer. I was arrested on money-laundering charges at Chicago airport. Still, I did a plea bargain and the charges were reduced to wire fraud and I did eight months in prison. So no harm done.

One task awaiting new energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh is devising a plan to avoid a crisis by the end of the decade

Welcome to the energy secretary job, Miatta Fahnbulleh. You have a politically tricky decision to make on whether to approve production at the Jackdaw gasfield and the Rosebank oilfield. But here’s another one that can’t wait much longer: what is the broader plan to ensure Britain avoids a gas supply crisis in 2030?

By way of reminder, one of the more alarming reports published by the energy department under Ed Miliband was the one that warned of “an emerging risk” to gas supplies at the turn of the decade if an important piece of kit – an import terminal, say, or the critical 725-mile Langeled pipeline from Norway – were to be out of the action during a severe cold snap.

The 2014 film was only a modest success – but now the musical’s message of gay rights and solidarity feels both outlandish and full of hope

Hands down the hottest ticket in London this summer is the musical Pride at the National Theatre, which is booked solid until the end of its run in September and will presumably transfer to the West End after that. There are lots of gay shows doing well at the moment: I saw Oh, Mary! for the second time this week when the show’s creator, Cole Escola, came over from New York to resume the title role, and Operation Mincemeat keeps going and going. But both those shows are tonally rather than politically gay. Pride, which is adapted from the 2014 film and had modest commercial success when it came out, is a different kettle of fish and I’m curious as to why it’s flown now.

I should say up front I haven’t seen the show (can’t get a ticket!). But this week, as I watched my timeline continue to fill up with effusive praise and lots of crying about the musical, I went back to the film. It’s a strange time to watch it, in a news cycle in which issues around sexuality in public life and old views about gay rights have surfaced to yank us back to earlier times. The death of the US senator Lindsey Graham triggered widespread speculation about what, exactly, Donald Trump held over him and gave rise to a lot of gay jokes pulled out of the deep freeze.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist. She is the author of She Left Me The Gun: My Mother’s Life Before Me

When a barrister is cited for contempt because of his argument to a jury, as happened in a Palestine Action trial, the risks affect us all

• Palestine Action barrister’s prosecution criticised as ‘chilling’

Within days of Mr Justice Johnson’s decision to seek contempt proceedings against Rajiv Menon KC because of that barrister’s closing speech to the jury in a Palestine Action criminal damage trial, I happened to be making a closing speech to a jury. Neither the case nor the personnel of my case are relevant to what happened next, but it is telling that counsel for the prosecution appeared to invoke Mr Justice Johnson’s imprimatur to rebuke me for stepping over the boundary as to what was acceptable to say to the jury.

Thankfully, nothing of substance came of that. Not so for Menon. On 22 June 2026, Mr Justice Johnson handed down his approved judgment in Menon’s case such that he now faces a possible two-year prison sentence for defending his client in what was, it seems to me, in accordance with his professional duties and obligations.

The agreement offers the Saudis the same options Trump has sworn Iran will never have

The stark contrast between Donald Trump’s nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia and his nuclear demands for Iran would be comical if not so tragic. Trump has handed the Saudis the same nuclear options he swore Iran would never have.

To make matters worse, Trump seems to have offered the Saudis this sweetheart deal to make amends for his disastrous war of choice with Iran. Meanwhile, he continues to bomb Iran in a push to open the strait of Hormuz, which was not closed until Trump launched his counterproductive war.

Sadiq Khan’s heat-ready plan for London is a sensible strategy for adaptation that should provide a roadmap for other cities

“Our ability to trust that our homes will keep us safe from the outside is under threat,” the geographer Sam Johnson-Schlee writes in Hot House, his recent book on how heat has transformed domestic life. This summer, high temperatures have become inescapable. People have coped with makeshift solutions: keeping curtains drawn, placing foil over windows or – for those who can afford one – plugging in an air-conditioning unit. Planning experts warn that, with only about half of councils requiring new buildings to include cooling strategies, many homes will become “death traps” as temperatures rise.

Britain’s homes weren’t built to cope with this. The country’s historically mild climate allowed developers to build houses without insulation, while industrialisation supplied plentiful coal to burn when temperatures dropped. Many homes are consequently drafty in winter and sweltering in summer. Unlike those in Mediterranean climates, British homes lack shutters and shaded communal spaces. While Ildefons Cerdà, Barcelona’s masterplanner, was designing housing blocks with cool courtyards and chamfered edges to allow breezes to flow, Britain’s Victorian builders were throwing up rows of terrace houses – many without cross-ventilation – and giving little thought to the movement of the sun.

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.

A new Brussels study highlights the pace at which EU countries are ageing. A more informed public debate is overdue

Europe is ageing at pace as birthrates fall and people live longer. A new report by the European Commission, published this month, notes that 2012 marked the first year in which fewer people were born in EU countries than people died in them. By the middle of this century, nearly one in three EU residents will be 65 or older. The numbers of those over 80 will almost triple from 6% to 15%. The old continent is getting visibly greyer.

The transition to a “longevity society”, as the report’s authors describe it, is something to be celebrated. Many people are enjoying healthier, richer lives for longer, and redefining the meaning and possibilities of old age. But the statistics and direction of travel also point to immense social challenges, with implications for the way we work, intergenerational fairness and the future funding of care. Sadly, amid fraught and at times toxic debates about immigration and the cost of welfare, Europe’s politics is struggling to meet the moment.

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.

Focusing on Donald Trump’s defects risks making war appear as an aberration rather than as a recurring feature of American power, writes David Eaton. Plus letters from Blaine Stothard and Harvey Gilbert

Simon Tisdall’s article (Trump, not Iran, is the world’s greatest danger. He’s a one-man weapon of mass destruction, 18 July) is a forceful polemic, but it risks turning a structural problem into a personal one. If Donald Trump is uniquely reckless, that deserves criticism. Yet the article implies that America’s present predicament is chiefly the consequence of his character, rather than asking why successive administrations, Republican and Democrat alike, have repeatedly resorted to military intervention in the Middle East. To focus on Trump’s defects risks making war itself appear as an aberration rather than as a recurring feature of American power.

The same applies to the strait of Hormuz. Its strategic importance does not begin or end with one president. It reflects a global economic order that depends on secure energy supplies, trade routes and the projection of military power to guarantee them. That broader context is largely absent.

Lexi Ellingsworth of Stop Surrogacy Now UK responds to news that the rise in the use of surrogates abroad is leaving more babies at risk of becoming stateless

Your article (Rise in overseas surrogates ‘increases risk of stateless babies, 19 July) suggests that the solution lies in better regulation to make surrogacy safe and ethical. But regulation cannot remove the central ethical problem: every surrogacy arrangement begins with the deliberate separation of a newborn baby from their mother, who they have naturally bonded with throughout the pregnancy.

Regulation is also not able to eliminate the physical risks borne exclusively by surrogate mothers. A study in Canada has suggested that surrogate mothers are more likely to experience severe complications including postpartum haemorrhage and pre-eclampsia than women who conceived naturally or with IVF.

Humanitarian support keeps families buying food, shops trading and clinics open when crisis hits, says Abdullahi Nur Osman

Foreign Office figures showing that the UK will almost halve bilateral aid to Somalia by 2029 (Report, 16 July) come as families across the country brace for yet another climate emergency.

Forecasters are warning that rains in Somalia in October could bring catastrophic flooding, displacing thousands. The World Meteorological Organization has flagged a heightened risk of extreme rainfall, which will strike communities still recovering from a severe drought that has left 6 million people facing high levels of acute food insecurity.

Brian F Nattrass went to a festival to celebrate his 80th birthday, started dancing and suddenly felt ageless. Plus a letter from John Parry

Thanks for an inspiring and timely article (The rave secret: why middle-aged women are larging it – and seeing big health benefits, 20 July). My 37-year-old daughter recently invited me to a festival to celebrate my 80th birthday. There were raves each night for three nights in a row. I learned to dance in the late 50s and 60s, during the era of Elvis Presley and the Beatles. I used to absolutely love dancing and used to party in clubs well into my late 30s. But reading your article, I realised that I hadn’t danced in over 40 years!

When my daughter invited me to a festival, naturally I had all the self-doubts and concerns you mentioned in your article, including “internalised ageism”. But I love and trust my daughter. She said: “Dad, you’ll do great!” So I went, and I did – dancing with total strangers until 4-5am every night for three nights.

• Cecil Alexander is competing at Commonwealth Games

• Johnson-Thompson and Asher-Smith pull out of athletics

The Falkland Islands bowler Cecil Alexander called Argentina’s World Cup banner “disappointing” after his opening men’s singles match at the Commonwealth Games.

Alexander, 45, made the comments after a straight sets 10-3, 7-4 defeat by the former world No 1 Izzat Shameer Dzulkeple of Malaysia.

With the Games about to get under way, here are 10 of the most intriguing subplots to the event

Twelve years after winning his first major international title in the 100m breaststroke at Glasgow 2014, Adam Peaty, now 31, heads back to Scotland hoping to remind everyone why he is one of Britain’s greatest swimmers. Peaty has won three Olympic gold medals and dominated the event for much of the past decade, but his aura of invincibility has faded since losing his unbeaten streak in 2022 and dealing with injuries and time away from the sport. Glasgow offers an opportunity to complete the circle.

• Richard Carapaz roars clear of breakaway to win stage 18

• McNulty abandons, Wellens and Vermeersch struggle

Richard Carapaz won stage 18 of the Tour de France after a breakaway group of six riders duelled their way to the winter sports station at Orcières-Merlette, but uncertainty surrounds the health of race leader Tadej Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates XRG, which has been swept by a virus since Monday’s rest day.

After Adam Yates’s stage-long calvary on the road to Voiron, Pogacar’s team was further weakened by the abandonment of his American colleague, Brandon McNulty, who quit the Tour with 21km of Thursday’s stage remaining.

The England attacker thrives when he can gallop into space but Xabi Alonso’s best team built attacks slowly

By Opta Analyst

It quickly became apparent this summer that Aston Villa would not be holding on to Morgan Rogers. Having helped the club finish fourth in the Premier League and win the Europa League, the 23-year-old was in demand.

Arsenal looked like his likeliest next destination, with the champions eager to strengthen the left side of their attack. The charm offensive came from many angles, with Martin Ødegaard, Mikel Arteta and the club’s England players trying to sell the idea to Rogers. But, with Arsenal reluctant to meet Villa’s asking price, Chelsea intervened and made Rogers the most expensive British player ever, surpassing the £116m that Manchester City paid Nottingham Forest for Elliot Anderson earlier this summer.

• Senior Master Cook says case in ‘uncharted territory’

• Judge blames solicitor Richard Boardman for situation

The landmark legal action over brain damage in rugby is on the brink of collapse as the managing judge weighs whether to strike out 95% of the first batch of 561 claimants on the grounds they have failed to comply with a court order to disclose all available documents relating to their neurological testing.

After two days of hearings at the Royal Courts of Justice, Senior Master Cook said the case had entered “uncharted territory” because he was unable to find any legal precedent for what to do next before retiring to make his judgment.

The Hundred put on a show at Lord’s but the hosts’ men’s and women’s teams both lost to Manchester Super Giants

London Spirit launched their new era with double defeat at Lord’s, and though they may have new owners, new coaches and new players it seems they’re still getting the same results. For the fifth time in their six-year history the men started their season with defeat, losing by seven runs a game of the Hundred that Liam Livingstone came very close to turning into The One.

The Spirit captain took responsibility for 20 of the last 25 balls of Manchester Super Giants’ innings, shouldering what should have been the hardest part of the bowling burden, and finished with two wickets for just 14. Then, with his team flailing in pursuit of 139, he scored 69 off 40 to keep them in the contest until the moment he swung at its antepenultimate delivery and was bowled by Sonny Baker.

Sam Kerr’s and Alexia Putellas’s moves were hard to miss but these transfers may have escaped your attention

There were a host of big women’s football transfers which were hard to miss across June and July, despite the dominance of the men’s World Cup. Among them were Beth Mead’s move from Arsenal to Manchester City, Mary Earps and Georgia Stanway returning to the Women’s Super League with London City Lionesses and Arsenal, Sam Kerr leaving Chelsea to return to Gotham FC and, most prominently, Alexia Putellas’s game-changing switch from Barcelona to London City.

But here are 10 transfers you might have missed while attention was focused on the action in the US, Canada and Mexico.

France asks EU for help while Spain declares national emergency around Madrid, as marine heatwave sees parts of Mediterranean Sea 5C hotter than normal

Brutal heat torching southern Europe has forced about 30,000 people to flee wildfires in France and Spain as a marine heatwave scalds the Mediterranean and researchers warn that “Dantesque” scenarios cannot be ruled out as infernos worsen.

France has requested assistance from ⁠the European Union to help it deal ⁠with a ⁠major ​wildfire near the country’s Atlantic coast, while Spain has declared a national emergency in the Madrid region and in the province of Avila, because of several wildfires burning out of control.

Sonam Wangchuk halted strike amid concerns about ‘possible violence’ in India as protest movement urges demonstrations across country on Friday over police brutality

The Indian “cockroach” activist Sonam Wangchuk has ended a 26-day hunger strike over an exam paper scandal that has spiralled into a wide ranging, youth-led wave of demonstrations against Narendra Modi’s government.

Supporters meanwhile have called a nationwide day of protest on Friday.

Far-right minister Itamar Ben-Gvir was among thousands who gathered at Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site

Israel’s far-right minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, joined thousands of Jewish extremists who stormed Jerusalem’s most sensitive holy site on Thursday.

Escorted by armed police, they prayed, waved the Israeli flag and sang the national anthem in a provocative display of political power.

Strategy will tackle ‘public health disaster’ that claims more lives than fire, flooding or knife crime

A national strategy to address the “public health disaster” of drowning has been launched in England – hours after two women died at an Essex beach, the latest in a surge of water-related tragedies.

Among the measures being considered are: providing every child in England with water safety education and swimming lessons; establishing how climate change can increase risks; and media campaigns to inform bystanders how to respond to a potential drowning.

President’s remarks follow Houthi strikes on Saudi tankers in the Red Sea and oil prices rising past $100 a barrel again

Donald Trump has said he is close to deciding whether to launch “a massive attack” against Iran, on a scale larger than strikes already witnessed during the months-long conflict with Tehran.

Speaking to the Axios news site, the US president said: “I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before. I am close to making a decision. We are all set for it.”

In this week’s newsletter: the archipelago at the centre of the extreme weather phenomenon could help scientists predict how other marine ecosystems will adapt to our warming climate

• Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

The ocean waters around the Galápagos Islands are hot. Very hot. Observed for centuries in the Pacific by fishers, the El Niño weather phenomenon begins when the prevailing trade winds slow, allowing warm water to spread east along the coast of South America. Right now, the pattern is in full flow and will build from this year into next, likely bringing record temperatures to an already overheating world.

If 2026 is not the hottest year on record, 2027 surely will be – and the Galápagos archipelago is in the centre of this climate crisis.

‘It’s only going to get worse’: wildfires forcing firefighters to make impossible choices

Millions face long-term coastal flooding risk in UK without climate action, scientists warn

Slowdown in Arctic ice melt ends after largest winter decline on record

Law change means renters and flat owners may be able to cut bills as energy costs soar amid Iran war

British households will be able to buy plug-in solar panels later this summer after the government changed the law so the UK’s biggest retailers could bring them to market for the first time.

People across the country will be able to join the millions across Europe generating their own electricity using “balcony solar panels” from 27 August, according to legislation passed last week.

While many people in the UK recognise the need to preserve water, others are furious and planning to flout the ban in their area. The target of their anger? Failing water companies and frighteningly thirsty datacentres

‘Plants are like your babies,” says Harry. And accordingly, he argues, most people would do anything to keep them alive, including break the law. This is what he plans to do this week – defying a hosepipe ban in place across large parts of England, to ensure his shrubs maintain a steady pulse.

He may not be alone. On Tuesday, Thames Water became the latest company to ban hosepipes – a restriction that will affect more than 10 million people. Since mid-July, Welsh Water, Anglian Water, Affinity Water (serving Bedfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Surrey), Southern Water and Cambridge Water have all announced hosepipe bans. And earlier this week, South East Water extended its existing ban to cover an additional 1.5 million.

In Guatemala’s Maya biosphere reserve local people are making a living from trees at the same time as increasing forest cover, showing nature is best protected by those who depend on it

The low rumbling grows louder until a huge harvester crashes into the open, dragging a 15-metre trunk of mahogany in its wake. The tractor manoeuvres before releasing its load and shovelling it like a matchstick on to a growing pile of lumber at the edge of the clearing. Then, with a crunch of gears and a belch of diesel, it turns and lurches back into the forest.

This is sustainable forestry at its most brutal, yet in a few weeks’ time silence will return to this pocket of tropical forest in Guatemala’s Maya biosphere reserve (MBR). Nature will be left to reclaim the land and chainsaws won’t return for at least four years, as part of a strict management plan that is helping to buck the trend of rampant deforestation.

Conservative leader is becoming more confident and forging a message for her party, but faces a new opponent

“So, Andy Burnham seems like a nice guy.” Those were the slightly unexpected opening words of Kemi Badenoch’s first speech since the change in prime minister. But make no mistake: she was there to bury her opponent.

Even Badenoch-sceptics inside the Conservative party and farther afield agree the Tory leader is becoming more confident, and has been able to forge an increasingly coherent message for her party, one based on a promise of economic competence.

Tribunal rules surveillance aimed at identifying Vincent Kearney’s sources was disproportionate and unlawful

A former BBC journalist has been awarded £20,000 in damages after MI5 and the Police Service of Northern Ireland unlawfully obtained data from his mobile phone.

A specialist tribunal on Thursday ordered the agencies to pay the compensation to Vincent Kearney for attempts to identify his sources while he was the BBC’s Northern Ireland home affairs correspondent.

Allan Grimson, convicted in 2001 of murdering two men, was in line for a parole hearing before new investigation

A double killer who has been in jail for a quarter of a century has claimed he is standing trial over new charges of sexual offences as a tactic to stop him from being freed on parole.

The former Royal Navy petty officer Allan Grimson was jailed in 2001 for sexually assaulting and battering to death two young men in the late 1990s.

CBA chair says contempt charge over closing speech by Rajiv Menon KC has left lawyers fearful of doing their job

The prosecution of a leading human rights barrister for contempt of court over his closing speech during a trial of Palestine Action activists has left lawyers fearful of doing their job, the chair of the Criminal Bar Association (CBA) has said.

Rajiv Menon KC, who was acting for the defence, is due to stand trial next week, accused of breaching the judge’s directions in the trial of six people for a direct action protest at an arms factory of the Israeli subsidiary Elbit Systems UK in Filton, near Bristol, in 2024.

Residents in Ladera Ranch in Orange county voice concerns after six children diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma

• Sign up for the Breaking News US newsletter email

Concerns are growing in southern California over a cluster of “exceptionally rare” cancer cases that has sickened multiple children in a suburban community.

Families living in the Orange county neighborhood of Ladera Ranch, home to about 26,000 people, have reported that six children in the community were diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma, Katrina Foley, the vice-chair of the county board of supervisors, said in a statement.

Swedish nonprofit alleges cost to repair replica was $6,000 but Universal – which made $264m on film’s opening weekend – has not stumped up

The Swedish owners of a Viking longship replica that features in the Hollywood blockbuster The Odyssey say they feel “forgotten” after film-makers allegedly returned the vessel damaged and failed to foot the bill for repairs.

In nearly three decades at sea, the warship Glad av Gillberga – based on a wreck from around 1040 found in Denmark’s Roskilde fjord – has successfully sailed the North Sea, the Baltic and even voyaged to Canada.

Author testified for second time about near-killing four years ago during event at New York amphitheater

Four years after being stabbed on an amphitheater stage, Salman Rushdie on Thursday sat across a courtroom from his convicted attacker and told jurors for a second time about the ambush that nearly killed him.

The prize-winning writer recalled feeling what he thought was a punch under his chin, then feeling blood coming from his neck.

In interview, billionaire says instead of running ‘Doge’ he should’ve ‘worked on my companies’ and shares extreme predictions

Elon Musk has admitted he became too consumed by politics during his volatile alliance with Donald Trump and his brief appointment as the president’s financial axman, running the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).

The world’s richest person, and briefly its first trillionaire after his SpaceX company floated on the New York stock exchange in June, made the confession in a wide-ranging interview with the Economist published on Thursday. He shared his positions on subjects from foreign wars to AI, and made a number of eye-opening predictions for the future.

Elon Musk’s EV company lost a quarter of its value after revealing weak profits and high spending on AI and robotics

Tesla’s stock fell about 13.5% on Thursday in one of the biggest single-day market losses in the company’s history.

Elon Musk’s automaker has struggled throughout the year, losing about 27% of its market value as huge capital expenditures and weaker-than-expected profits worry investors.

Escalating Houthi warnings to ships carrying Saudi crude through the strait lead to fears of further price surge

A fresh front in the Middle East crisis opened this week, bringing a return of soaring global energy markets and stoking fears that the oil price could surge to $120 (£90) a barrel.

In a matter of days the price of Brent crude has jumped by more than 13%, breaching the $100 a barrel mark on Thursday after Yemen’s Houthi militias took aim at a new target: Saudi oil exports via the Bab al-Mandab strait.

Staley is latest high-profile figure to testify before House amid investigation into Epstein, convicted sex offender

Former Barclays boss Jes Staley appeared before by US lawmakers on Thursday in a closed-door interview about his past ties to the convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Staley, who spent more than three decades at JPMorgan Chase before joining Barclays in 2015, is the latest in a series of high-profile figures to appear in front of the House committee on oversight and reform as part of its investigation into Epstein, who died in prison in August 2019 while awaiting trial over child sex-trafficking charges.

Firm told to treat third-party services that appear in its results in ‘fair and non-discriminatory manner’

Google has been fined a total of €890m (£760m) by the EU for breaches of online competition laws by its search and app store services.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Google had broken the Digital Markets Act by giving priority to its own services, such as shopping and hotel deals, in search results over those of its rivals.

Anton Jäger has been lauded for his exceptional ability to make sense of these strange political times – and he’s only 32. The writer and academic explains why we’re living in an age of hyperpolitics

‘I am acutely conscious,” said Andy Burnham outside 10 Downing Street on Monday, “that I am the sixth person in the last 10 years to walk up this street.” It was good to hear him say it because, beneath all the cabinet gossip and rune-reading, there is a feeling of terror about the immediate future and also about ourselves, the electorate. Is this who we are now? Wildly enthusiastic one minute, seething the next; as passionate about the change we want as we are convinced that those who promise it are incapable of enacting it?

It is perhaps not surprising that Anton Jäger’s recent book, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization without Political Consequences, is being read by Labour watchers and leftwing thinkers. As the New York Times wrote, it’s “among the best and most dazzling efforts to model the political present in all its maddening strangeness”. Still, I think Jäger was surprised to have his honeymoon interrupted so I could interview him about it. Life comes at everyone quite fast in a hyperpolitical age.

To mark the two-time Oscar nominee’s recent 50th birthday, we rate his finest screen roles – from hyper-British patricians and seething serpents, to ghastly Yanks, tragic codebreakers and sci-fi scoundrels

Benedict Cumberbatch does his considerable best opposite the equally prestigious Olivia Colman in this souped-up marital-breakdown dramedy, essentially remade from the 1989 movie with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. This time, though, it’s all about the Britons – indicating the supposed classiness of the affair. But the film is overwrought and unconvincing; it never convinces us that the couple were once passionately in love and now passionately in hate. The below-par script has the effect of bringing out an unrewarding kind of coldness in Cumberbatch, technically assured though he always is.

Pre-Covid, the movie landscape was dramatically different: YouTubers weren’t dominating the box office, video game spin-offs rarely made an impact and Winnie-the-Pooh wasn’t yet the star of a slasher movie. Why such a flurry of innovation – and what will be next?

Cinema has always been a medium of research and development. At any given point, the industry is searching for yet another breakthrough that can drive it into the future. Synchronised sound in the 1920s. Technicolor in the 1930s. The invention of the modern blockbuster in the 1970s.

Conversely, the consensus is that, if the 2020s has a defining trend, then it is one of decline. The theatrical experience is under attack from all angles: streaming, YouTube, a once-in-a-century health crisis that shut cinemas down entirely. And yet, if you look closer, this has actually been one of the most innovative decades that cinema has ever seen. Whether down to technology or desperation, the film industry has spent these last few years figuring out new ways to make films that simply could not have existed even at the turn of the decade.

Station Eleven comes to Sky Atlantic, starring Himesh Patel and Mackenzie Davis. Plus: Boris Johnson’s Ukraine documentary. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, Sky Atlantic
A great – and somehow hopeful – apocalyptic drama, which deserved more love when it first streamed in 2022. (Perhaps the story of a pandemic wiping out 99% of the world was too close to home.) It’s set across two timelines, with young actor Kirsten (Matilda Lawler) being looked after by writer Jeevan (Himesh Patel) when the killer flu strikes; 20 years later (now played by Mackenzie Davis) she tours with the Travelling Symphony. Hollie Richardson

A gripping thriller about a female killer will fray all your nerve endings – plus a gorgeous documentary bidding farewell to the smash hit LGBTQ+ romance

On the face of it, this drama by Elizabeth Meriwether (New Girl, Dying for Sex) is a very traditional detective thriller. There’s a serial killer, murdering in inventive ways, with a flawed, gifted cop on their trail. However, they are both women with traumatic pasts involving domestic violence, so genre expectations are subverted and sympathies blurred. With her talent for manipulation and deadpan brutality, there’s something of Killing Eve’s Villanelle about Lola Petticrew’s killer. Emmy Rossum’s FBI agent Alice Black, meanwhile, is all raw nerve endings and self-destructive behaviour. The pair are on a collision course – but what justice might look like is hard to unpick. Gripping. Phil Harrison
Disney+, from Monday 27 July

Danny Boyle’s drama about the acquisition of the Sun and a four-hour Elon Musk documentary will premiere alongside new films from Martin McDonagh and Werner Herzog – but only one female director has a movie in competition

The Venice film festival promises to take a swing at media moguls of the print and digital era this year, with Trainspotting director Danny Boyle’s new film about Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of the Sun and a new documentary about Elon Musk included in the lineup of the films for the festival’s 83rd edition.

In Boyle’s Ink, which will open the festival on the Lido on 2 September, Australian actor Guy Pearce plays compatriot newspaper tycoon Murdoch, whose purchase of the Sun in 1969 sensationalised the media landscape and transformed public life in Britain. The script is written by Olivier award-winning playwright and screenwriter James Graham (Dear England, Brexit: The Uncivil War).

​With her roots stretching from the Catholic church to riot grrrl, the US singer-songwriter explains how sobriety and self-analysis powered her classic new Waxahatchee-produced album

The songwriting on Brennan Wedl’s new album is so ironclad that I kept checking the credits to see if any of its songs were actually covers of peak Lucinda Williams tracks that I’d somehow missed. Nope: all originals by a 29-year-old songwriter whose radiant, hooky, tough Americana puts her toe-to-toe with genre godheads such as Williams circa Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, or Sheryl Crow had she grown up playing church basement punk shows; also, a vision of Courtney Love in cowboy boots.

“I love Lucinda’s very earnest way of looking at daily life, and I hoped to achieve that on this record,” says Wedl, calling from her Nashville home, surrounded by vintage magazines and tchotchkes. Wedl is warm and dudely; she answers almost every question with an exuberant “toootally!”. She cites her favourite of her new songs, the absurdly immediate Just Another Daddy Who Did Me Wrong, a bittersweet number that questions her self-destructive appeal. “It’s a very harsh look at reality, but also about how our minds can create so much fantasy around reality. I’m working on not projecting too much on reality these days.”

As they release their first album in 16 years, the Vini Reilly-fronted band answer your questions on sandpaper record sleeves, having Harry Styles as a fan and inventing a new style of guitar music

Vini, you’ve created some of the most beautiful, ethereal music of the last 40 years. Is it true that in your youth you were in a violent Manchester street gang? Songy24
Vini Reilly [guitars, vocals, keyboards]: Gangs then had a different meaning. It was just “their lot” and “our lot”. We’d sling insults at each other. Then you’d play football in the park and realise you were playing with the local thugs. They were actually very funny, and I could have fun with them because I was so little. At the time I’d been going through a recurring depressive illness and felt I didn’t fit in at home, so I left without any clean clothing. I wanted to end my life so I decided to go to Moss Side, where the gangsters would shoot me. Of course they didn’t. I’d had a very happy childhood until my father died when I was doing my O-levels, but I’ve come to the conclusion that the really bad things gave me more than they could ever take. How can you know happiness until you’ve known deep sadness?

Bruce Mitchell [drums]: Vini does kick off, though, properly battles. We had to section him once, and six people had to hold him down.

Actor James Norton brings a sense of gentle longing to this tale of an octogenarian looking back on the life he’s departed

The latest novel from the Reasons to Stay Alive author Matt Haig begins with an octogenarian man having a heart attack. Former business magnate Wilbur Budd is already feeling a bit peculiar when he receives a phone call from his ex-wife, Maggie, who he hasn’t heard from in years. “I wanted to hear your voice,” she tells him wistfully. Minutes after getting off the phone, Wilbur collapses on his front lawn and dies.

What sounds like the end of a story is, in fact, the beginning as Wilbur finds himself standing on a train platform with his mind “reverberating as if from some giant cosmic cymbal crash”. A train arrives and a woman disembarks and introduces herself as Agnes. She is, she says, the ghost of a bookseller who once ran a shop Wilbur visited as a child. She will be guiding him in a voyage through his past, pausing at formative moments including his brother’s premature death and Wilbur and Maggie’s honeymoon in Venice. “This is death,” Agnes tells him. “Where your life flashes before your eyes. This is how it happens. Fast and slow. Like life … ”

Decca
There are no major surprises in this live recording, just the simple but sublime sense that the music is being handed from composer, through pianist, to us

Twenty years ago, Mitsuko Uchida released a studio recording of Beethoven’s last three piano sonatas that remains a benchmark. Now comes this performance recorded live in Tokyo last October.

Those who have loved her previous recording won’t find big surprises – her interpretations remain similar, albeit at times a little broader or more elastic, and with less obvious urgency in, say, the brief second movements of Op 109 and 110. Yet, even from a pianist who has been playing these pieces for so many decades, the music emerges as if new: nothing sounds predetermined. Nor did Suntory Hall, which seats about 2,000, get exactly the same performance as she had given to a much smaller audience at Wigmore Hall in London, two weeks earlier. Most audience noise has been edited out, but the atmosphere of collective concentration remains.

After my 22-month-old child died, music and poetry brought catharsis and comfort

The day Renzo had his aneurysm, in the afternoon before it happened, I distinctly remember telling him that it was going to be a pleasure to watch him grow up. It seems ridiculous to write that here, the foreshadowing so on the nose as to be unbelievable. But it’s true. To him and my wife Allegra, I said, “I love our little family.” After the struggles around his birth, job loss, the pandemic, it felt, finally, like we had made it to the other side. We had, I suppose, just not how I envisioned it.

My friends Jayson and Stacy recommended I get to know David Kessler’s work. According to Harvard Business Review, Kessler is “the world’s foremost expert on grief”. He’d worked closely with Elisabeth Kübler-­Ross, who was the reigning expert on grief before her own death in 2004. A large part of Kübler-­Ross’s legacy is her classification of what she calls the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance, as described in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. After you experience a death, she wrote, these stages can occur in any order, with one or more possibly not occurring at all. Just weeks after Renzo’s death, I’d tricked myself into thinking I had jumped all the way to acceptance when really I was trying to outrun anger and depression. Bargaining hasn’t been a big one for me, nor has denial. The facts have been pretty hard to ignore.

A portal opens from our modern world of data centres and interior design into a medieval fantasy realm, in this playfully surreal tale from the author of Eurotrash

A reclusive interior designer named Paul travels from his home in Orkney to the Norwegian coastal city of Stavanger for a most unusual commission. A data­centre housing a vast internet server is located by a fjord on the outskirts of the city, and a prestigious arts magazine is paying him a large sum of money to give it a makeover. They want him to paint the interiors white – “not just any white, but the perfect white, the singular white”. Shortly after he arrives, a freak weather event causes a power outage, and Paul goes missing; meanwhile the magazine’s jaded editor, Cohen, takes an overdose of barbiturates.

In alternate chapters a very different tale unfolds, set in a distant medieval world redolent of Norse mythology. A man, referred to only as “the stranger”, is nursed back to health by a nine-year-old girl who has shot him with an arrow after mistaking him for a deer. He is being pursued by a vengeful duke, and persuades the girl to join him on the run. Together they leave their plague-ridden town, traverse a barren wasteland and discover a subterranean stone city whose inhabitants live a communal existence, subsisting on seafood and kelp.

Celebrities are hosting literary clubs and designers are launching products emblazoned with the classics – but does reading’s trendy turn have a darker side?

From celebrity book clubs to the revival of the edgy literary party, being a book lover is in. Dior has launched new versions of their Book Tote emblazoned with the covers of classics such as Ulysses and Dracula. Earlier this year, Coach collaborated with Penguin to produce miniature literary bag charms – fully readable micro-versions of books, from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to Sense and Sensibility. Miu Miu hosts a Literary Club; Chanel its Rendez-vous littéraire.

Being bookish is now sexy, we’re told. i-D magazine recently ran a piece on the Whitney Review – a literary journal based in New York – proclaiming its team part of the “hot literati reshaping criticism”. The founder describes the Review as “sexy, surprising, stubborn”, and its contributors “curious and beautiful” (corroborated by an accompanying shoot in which the Whitney team look more like a bunch of models than anything else). But the piece raised eyebrows in the comments section of i-D’s Instagram page: “the definition of vacuous and vapid”, writes one user; “No room for ugly literati, only HOT”, says another. Should we be sceptical about reading’s voguish turn?

Moments of beauty and horror punctuate this account of an ill-timed sub-zero camping trip

In late February 2022, Charlie Walker set off on a hiking holiday in northern Siberia. In temperatures as low as -50C, he intended to trek a thousand miles north along the frozen surface of the river Lena, then out across the solid Laptev Sea to the port town of Tiksi, before finally flying home to London. “The plan,” he writes, “was simple in concept.” A sub-zero camping trip through a region populated by wolves and bears and scarred by centuries of historical trauma, in a country that was about to invade one of its neighbours: what could possibly go wrong?

On Thin Ice is Walker’s third travelogue. Previous excursions have included a 43,000-mile bicycle ride across three continents, a 1,000-mile solo walk through the Gobi desert, and a river trip down the Congo in a leaky canoe. When not performing incredible feats of forward motion, according to his website, he gives talks to business leaders on subjects such as “risk taking” and “the line between courage and recklessness”. Reading his latest, it’s clear he’s familiar with the terrain on both sides of that line.

Renovate rooms, investigate the supernatural and watch people burst into song in this surreal British ghost story

A young American man arrives in a dilapidated British seaside town to take on the renovations of an equally run-down hotel, inherited from a mysteriously absent father he never knew. His power tools talk to him in a Scottish accent, the local people speak in baffling slang, and occasionally people burst into song. Oh, and there are ghosts.

There Are No Ghosts at the Grand is a novel mix of genres – no bad thing in these times of sequels and remakes – but, according to the creative director of independent developers Friday Sundae, Anil Glendinning, it grew organically from a single goal: to tell a very British ghost story.

These days, I ‘collect’ birdsong and wild flowers, but it all started when my sons and I first set out to find Pikachu and pals

• Don’t get Pushing Buttons delivered to your inbox? Sign up here

Believe it or not, Pokémon Go is 10 years old this month. The wildly successful smartphone game, which allows you to track down lovable creatures in the real world using GPS and augmented-reality technologies, has reportedly been downloaded 800m times across 150 countries and regions. A trillion Pokémon have been caught so far – and I have been responsible for a modest percentage of that figure.

When the game was first released, my sons and I spent many happy hours wandering the streets and parks of Frome searching for Jigglypuffs and Charizards, and the game’s social element, which lets you take on gym battles with other players in your vicinity, offered my autistic son a route to communicate with other children in a way he’d never been able to before.

Inspired by interactive theatre and fuelled by the motion capture tech used by VTubers, the vampire spies in Red Kiss have personality in spades

‘You look at the news and you’re like, ‘Another pointless war, another pointless bloodshed, another pointless genocide.’ And that can make you a bit hopeless.”

Roy van der Schilden, narrative designer and business director at Wispfire, speaks of a very human feeling. But the protagonist of its upcoming game Red Kiss can relate – despite being a vampire.

Nintendo Switch 2
The single-player offshoot of the quirky and colourful multiplayer series is disappointingly run-of-the-mill

Splatoon is among Nintendo’s most ingenious inventions of the last decade: a series of shooting games whose paint-splattered turf war nature means being bad at shooting is just as valuable as – if not more so than – being good. It is also blessed with an abundance of personality, with vibrant characters, a richly imagined world, and a hipness that the competition can only dream of achieving. Unfortunately, Splatoon Raiders makes it difficult to remember all of this.

The first spinoff in the ink-soaked franchise, Splatoon Raiders is advertised as a single player-focused entry in this primarily multiplayer series. While this is true enough – one can play through the entire game solo just fine – Raiders is clearly best enjoyed cooperatively with up to three others. Players start each session on a hideout ship where they can upgrade their equipment and tweak their play style before heading out on bite-sized repeatable missions, and this structure is tailor-made for teaming up with friends or helping out strangers (the game lets you do either), as each person works towards creating their ultimate squid-kid avatar of chaos.

Splatoon Raiders is out 23 July; £41.99

With the British dance legend at the helm, this year’s themes ranged from quantum gravity to slightly muted geopolitics

The most memorable performance in the opening days of this year’s Venice Dance Biennale had barely any dance in it at all. Italian choreographer Andrea Salustri’s Invisible is built around movement, but it’s movement of light, air, water and sound waves, with Salustri and co-creator Alice Rende as shadowy figures conducting the elements. They brew up storms like Zeus and Poseidon, with flashing veins of light, sounds of pummelling rain (in fact small drips and bubbles amplified by powerful microphones) and an enormous amount of billowing smoke that ultimately whips itself into a spinning tornado.

Salustri, who won the Italian callout to create a new work for this year’s biennale, is a circus artist and philosophy graduate, and he is also a choreographer – a definition so much wider than one who devises dance. This year marks the 20th dedicated dance festival in Venice (dance was previously seen as part of the theatre or music programmes here until 1999, since when it has been an annual, then biennial, and now annual feature of Venice’s arts bonanza). In a talk to mark this anniversary, current artistic director Wayne McGregor was joined by four former directors to discuss their aims for the event. The question of “what dance is” kept arising as the ongoing line of inquiry, a question “so ordinary that it is still necessary somehow”, said choreographer Marie Chouinard.

A new film, Life Lines, put together by McGregor and filmmaker Ravi Deepres, compiles archive clips from festivals past, showing that the range of dance here has been vast and multifarious, from the fairly conventional to the theatrically wild. There’s clearly no single story of contemporary dance’s development, and McGregor’s theme for this year’s festival is Time Does Not Exist. Influenced by physicist Carlo Rovelli and the theory of quantum gravity, his is not a linear view of time, and without doubt, in dance (and in life), we carry our embodied pasts constantly into the present. That’s no more evident than in Soa Ratsifandrihana’s piece Fampitaha, Fampita, Fampitàna (meaning “comparison, transmission, rivalry” in Malagasy, the language of Madagascar, from where the choreographer is from). It’s a piece about living in the diaspora and concerned with the sometimes joyful, sometimes painful, memories that link back home – especially the memories stored in our bodies, in songs, stories and dance steps. It’s a gentle piece, conversational between the three dancers and fabulous guitarist Joël Rabesolo, in the sense that like many conversations it meanders, then touches on the profound, then gets self-absorbed, connects again, tails off. But it has its moments.

Theatre Royal Haymarket, London
The chopped-up story means this ends up feeling like a weak impersonation of Danny Boyle’s classic film

“Choose life …” Those iconic words from that era-defining film are said more than once in this musical take on Irvine Welsh’s novel about Renton and his renegade gang of smackheads from Leith.

“Choose being in the moment,” says the disembodied voice that asks us to switch off our mobile phones before the show has begun (with, one imagines, a self-satisfied glint at the joke). “Choose life,” repeats Renton (Lewis Kidd), trying so hard, it seems, to capture the dangerous energy of that moment in the 1990s when Ewan McGregor, Jonny Lee Miller and co depicted heroin addiction as a protest against the grunting conventions of ordinary life.

Royal Albert Hall, London
Sueye Park’s poetic, enthralling Proms debut in Sibelius’s violin concerto was followed by an effervescent late-night concert from Thomas Dunford’s Jupiter Ensemble with Laurence Kilsby

A late-night Prom can sometimes serve as a musical Rennie, a soothing digestif after 90 minutes of heavyweight orchestral fare. Fortunately, none was needed here. In the early evening programme John Storgårds kept the BBC Philharmonic sufficiently light on its feet, while Sueye Park made the most poetic of Proms debuts in Sibelius’s violin concerto, a cornerstone work she owned from start to finish.

If the opening wash of strings was barely audible over the whirr of the Royal Albert Hall air-con, it wasn’t long before the South Korean violinist grabbed our attention, her lean, silvery tone penetrating and intensely lyrical. In fact, Storgårds seemed to worry unnecessarily, keeping the orchestral volume on a low simmer for much of the work’s span. Park, an enthralling musical raconteur, imbued the first movement with a forthright romantic sweep before conjuring the kind of laser-focused, ethereal fireworks that set the finale dancing.

Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon
Tamara Harvey’s production of Chekhov’s final play can seem woolly in meaning and soft-edged tone mutes its force

Laura Wade’s reworking of Anton Chekhov’s final, plaintive play brings a dazzle of big names. Helen Hunt is the aristocratic matriarch Madame Ranyevskaya, Bill Pullman her brother, and Kenneth Branagh (so soon after his lead role in the Royal Shakespeare’s production of The Tempest) their nemesis, Lopakhin, a shopkeeper’s son here who takes over the reins of the family estate and represents the rising forces against Russia’s old order of ossified elites.

But for such a starry cast Tamara Harvey’s production has a disappointing lack of sparkle. You do not feel the story’s charge, its complications around love and its stinging losses. The tone is too soft-edged, almost endearing, and the cast such an ensemble that there is no magnetic centre to hold you.

Actor best known for the 1960s box-office smash Casino Royale

Joanna Pettet, who has died aged 83, was a British-born, Canadian-raised actor who found fame in the 1960s after just a handful of films, including the James Bond spoof Casino Royale.

The 1967 film drew lukewarm reviews for its parody of the “official” 007 movies and suffered from a production history that included five directors, but it became a box-office smash with expectant audiences. In it Pettet played Mata Bond, the illegitimate daughter of Mata Hari and the retired Sir James Bond (acted by David Niven, one of multiple 007s featured). She is seen performing an exotic dance in a Buddhist temple, where Niven signs her up as a spy. “Do I get an exploding briefcase and a secret transmitter?” asks Pettet, who described the role as “campy”.

Books belonging to the beloved creator of The Snowman and When the Wind Blows were donated by his estate after his death

The book collection of the creator of The Snowman and Fungus the Bogeyman has gone on sale at Oxfam’s Hove bookshop in East Sussex and online.

More than 1,000 books from the collection of Raymond Briggs, the beloved British author and cartoonist, were donated by his estate after his death aged 88 in 2022.

Shipwrecks, ice football and igloos for dogs … the digitisation of Frank Hurley’s photographs shows the heroic trek more clearly – and unlocks some remarkable new details

John McLay, one of the founders of the festival in Bath, contacted writers who had noted a lack of diversity in the programme to request they remove comments posted to social media

Bath children’s literature festival is facing criticism after its founder emailed authors asking them to delete social media posts about the festival’s lack of diversity in its 2026 programme.

Authors said that their comments criticising the festival for its lack of representation under a post on its Instagram page were deleted, with the original post later removed and comments limited on other posts.

Whether you’re on a staycation or jetting away, drawstring trousers and clever layering will keep you cool

From an intricate bronze-like townhouse in Manchester to a sculptural property in the Essex countryside

They’re the foundation of a good routine, but which face wash does our beauty expert rate for oily, dry, or normal skin?

• How to build the perfect skincare routine

Choosing a cleanser can feel like Goldilocks’ task of searching for the perfect bowl of porridge – finding one that’s just right is rarely straightforward. Add in that our skin is constantly changing, due to hormones, the seasons and environmental stressors, and it’s easy to see why finding the ideal formula can be challenging.

Cleansers are often overlooked, but the right one is the basis of a good skincare routine. To understand what we should be looking for, I spoke with Dr Ahmed El Muntasar, GP and founder of the Aesthetics Doctor, who explained that the ideal formula depends entirely on skin type. “If someone is acne-prone or oily, I would usually recommend something more gel-based, because it helps break through excess oil more effectively,” he says. “Ingredients such as salicylic acid and niacinamide can also be helpful for those skin types.”

Best overall and best budget cleanser:
Cetaphil gentle exfoliating salicylic acid cleanser

Best cleanser if you can afford it:
Sarah Chapman Skinesis Ultimate Cleanse

Good taste doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Whether it’s designer-looking cutlery or affordable art, these clever buys start from £2 – but punch well above their price tag

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

You don’t need the budget of a boutique hotel to make your home look a bit more pulled together. It’s all down to knowing where to look, picking a few well-made objects, choosing good-quality fabrics and materials, and spotting timeless classics (or designs inspired by them) that won’t date too quickly.

Here are some tricks, hidden gems and affordable-but-stylish finds, from egg cups to art, that will elevate your space – and prove good taste and quality needn’t cost the earth.

Camping season has arrived, but which mattress is worth packing? Our expert rigorously tested 28 to find the best for durability and comfort

• The best camping chairs

Whether you love sleeping under the stars or only do so under duress, a decent camping mattress will at least help ensure you are well-rested and better equipped to handle the wider thrills and spills of outdoor living.

The days when your only choice was between a foam roll mat or a leaky airbed and foot pump are long gone. From self-inflating mattresses to lightweight sleeping pads and insulated airbeds, the comfort and portability of sleeping mats have dramatically improved. But with so many types of camping mattresses available, costing from tens to hundreds of pounds, it can be difficult to know where to start.

Best camping mattress overall:
Therm-a-Rest NeoLoft

Best budget camping mattress:
Decathlon Simond MT500 XL inflatable trekking mattress

From catnip to interactive, scented and all-natural teasers, here are the toys our reviewer’s panel of feline testers fell head over paws for

• The best gifts for cats and dogs

Watch a cat doing as they please in a garden, and you’ll witness a procession of behaviours passed down from their wild ancestors. They may crouch with ears pricked up at the sight or sound of birds in flight; rub against objects to leave their scent; chase buzzing, drowsing insects; or sniff a favourite plant with gusto. Regrettably, some will hunt and catch prey.

The best cat toys help any cat – indoor or outdoor – live out these behaviours safely, humanely, and often with their owner’s involvement. Having a few within paw’s reach is valuable to a pet cat’s fitness, mood and fundamental felinity.

Best cat toy overall:
Nature’s Goodies colourful long raffia tail teaser sticks

Best budget cat toy:
Pets at Home scrunchie ball

Iced tea doesn’t have to be the super sweet, sugar-packed mainstream brands – there are plenty of offerings ready to convert even the staunchest tea purist

As a very prescriptive tea drinker – piping hot “Stephen Fry” everyday Twinings, thank you, brewed strong with a dash of milk and no sugar under any circumstances – iced tea has always been lost on me. But there’s nothing like an unprecedented heatwave to encourage this sleepless mother to review her position on something as vital as tea.

Many of us associate iced tea with the American south, but legend has it that it was actually an English tea merchant who popularised it there. Richard Blechynden met countless visitors who were unwilling to drink hot tea in the summer heat of 1904’s Louisiana Purchase Exposition, so instead he served it over ice. With the American penchant for iced drinks being already well-documented (Mark Twain wrote that if there was one thing that could be called “American”, it was “the national devotion to ice-water”), it took off.

The classic Provencal stew, but with potato for ballast and topped with a cheesy herb crumb

We swapped the heatwave and melting pavements in Rome for a similar situation in London, which meant catching a train to Dorset felt something of a relief. Not that it wasn’t hot there too, but it was offset by the sea, a garden and a dark, cool house. The weather also meant that the always good July produce was superb and abundant: all the berries, cherries, peas, runner and french beans; but also potatoes, aubergines, courgettes, tomatoes and herbs – all of which go into this week’s recipe.

My template for ratatouille is a mix of Jane Grigson’s recipe in her Vegetable Book and Robert Carrier’s version in Great Dishes of the World, plus the advice from a French friend to cook the aubergine separately, either by deep-frying (by far the tastiest option), baking, or air frying. The benefit of this step is not just flavour; it ensures the aubergine holds its shape better, meaning distinct chunks in the final stew.

As fear and fighting ease in Mogadishu, coffee shops have become catalysts for change, bringing jobs for women and creating much-needed social spaces

Every morning at six, Saabiriin Hassan slips on her apron as she takes her place behind the counter at Cplus Cafe in the heart of Mogadishu. The aroma of freshly brewed coffee fills the air, but it is Hassan’s ever-present smile that draws the attention first.

It stays with her every move – from grinding beans and steaming milk to chatting with customers. Hassan is among the first female baristas in Somalia, serving coffee and helping a new cafe culture take root in a capital city once only known for conflict.

Fridge-friendly nougat, malty ice-cream and a hybrid brownie-chocolate bar – your summer bites are sorted

The summer heat requires special treatment of chocolate. Few experts would agree with keeping it in the fridge, but sometimes you have to gently shh them and do what feels right. Heist’s Milk and Honey Nougat is like a choc-covered torrone morbido: a big slab of milk chocolate covering honey-laced pistachio and almond nougat. It’s a disaster in hot weather. But, kept in the fridge … wow. The pre-marked pieces are so big and generous you can’t disobey them, slice your knife into it and then eat the piece within, say, three minutes before the whole lot turns molten in your fingers.

Pump Street has just launched a Walnut Brownie 60% Dark Milk Bar with Haitian beans. It features brownie crumb with English Sharpham Park caramelised, hand-chopped walnuts. It’s rich and deep in flavour.

To stay open-hearted and optimistic, you need hope, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. That’s not the same as expectation

• Read more Leading questions

I’m nearly 30 and my first serious relationship just ended a month ago. It lasted eight months, she was my first girlfriend and first kiss, etc. She broke up with me in a very kind and respectful way, and I have been … OK, I guess.

The thing is, everyone has been saying to me, “But you must feel so much more confident now.” I don’t. My self-esteem and confidence wasn’t exactly soaring before I met her, but now I feel even less so. It just feels like most people are less tolerant or accepting of my shortcomings.

Fay likes to get a good spot and watch the support acts, but Odysseus would rather rock up for the main band. Who is hitting a false note? You decide

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

Fay likes to be on the front row but I think it’s overrated

A Harris’s hawk, she is capable of flying at more than 35mph, scouring the ground for prey, while also judging my footwear. The moments of connection with this wild creature are incredible

My children brought hawks into my life. My youngest son, especially, became fascinated by birds of prey at the age of six, drawing beautiful pictures and reciting endless facts to bird owners at various country shows.

Eventually I decided, why not? We live in the countryside, after all, on Anglesey (Ynys Môn). So, during Covid, Bird, the Harris’s hawk, came into our lives. We got her from a breeder after she hatched. It was perfect timing: I was home-schooling my three kids, and at 2pm every day, rain or shine, with a brilliant local falconer, we would set out on to the headland to watch her fly. It was beautiful to see. For years, my youngest never missed a day, no matter how cold.

A social media manager and a​ transport psychology ​researcher disagreed over Palestine Action, but who ​changed their view on the triple-loc​k?

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

Hugo, 21, Birmingham

Occupation Social media manager for the Conservative party

When the problem was finally sorted out in our new-build home, it increased my tariff by 19%

Residents in our new housing development are being billed for each other’s energy after the meters were mixed up.

I realised British Gas was sending bills for my energy to the developer of the estate instead of to me. I informed British Gas of my details when I moved in seven months ago.

They are out to steal your password to commit further fraud such as crypto scams or phishing attacks

You have had an X account for years, since it was known as Twitter. When an email arrives about a new login from a location nowhere near where you live, alarm bells begin to ring.

“We noticed a login to your account from a new device. Was this you?” the email asks.

I bought a wheelchair for my daughter, but she later died in hospital and the company refuses a refund

I bought a £435 wheelchair for my disabled daughter from my local Lifestyle & Mobility store.

She had been admitted to hospital for tests and I planned to use the chair to take her on outings when she was discharged.

Vibrant areas for young workers who plan to rent while saving for a deposit and then get on the property ladder

• The new 100% mortgages for first-time buyers

• Homes to rent before buying in cities

The common property rite of passage for graduates and career-focused first jobbers has changed over the past decade. Many careers used to start in London, and an early house-share would be followed by a first flat purchase, then a move to somewhere bigger.

However, the heavy burden of housing costs in the capital is making would-be first-time buyers stop and evaluate whether – even with London weighting on some wages – it is possible to get on the ladder there.

Experts weigh in on wellness culture’s obsession with natural fibers and the growing trend of people shunning plastic-based clothing

A few months ago, Lane Koch made a decision: she would purge her family’s closets of all plastic-based fabrics and replace them with natural fibers, such as cotton and linen.

Koch, a longtime Republican political strategist who was a senior staffer on Robert F Kennedy Jr’s presidential campaign, has long avoided processed foods and rid her kitchen of plastic cookware about a decade ago. But, for all that she cared about what she put in her body, she told me she had paid little attention to what she put on her body.

Pioneering study linking noise pollution to Parkinson’s finds 3% increase in risk for every 11.5dB rise in noise levels

Long-term exposure to road traffic noise is associated with a higher risk of Parkinson’s disease, the biggest study of its kind has found.

Parkinson’s disease is a progressive disorder in which parts of the brain become damaged over time, affecting movement and balance.

People have found language for moodiest part of their menstrual cycles, and the right has seized on it

Emily Rae Detrick, a health coach, wants women to be more in touch with their menstrual cycle in its entirety. This, she said on an October episode of Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark, a podcast popular among “Make America Healthy Again” (Maha) adherents, is “a way that you honor God and the way we were created”. It also serves her self-assigned mission to help “make America fertile again”.

In the episode and on social media, Detrick speaks at length about the luteal phase, the 14-ish days between ovulation and menstruation when women are more likely to experience irritability, bloating and food cravings. If a woman does not get pregnant after ovulating, or so Detrick’s line of thinking goes, her body becomes upset. “During the luteal phase, the reason why your stress threshold is so much lower is because this is the time your body would be incubating a potential baby,” she said. No baby, and you might turn into a frazzled, nagging shrew.

Experts say reducing ultra-processed foods can be challenging in a world built around convenience, but these strategies can help make it more manageable

I have been trying to eat fewer ultra-processed foods with my family for five years, and it has been challenging.

Many experts agree that ultra-processed foods (UPF) pose health risks, whether because of unhealthy ingredients, links to disease and environmental impacts, or replacing more nutritious foods. Thus, some consumers – including me – are interested in removing them from their daily diet.

Learn techniques: “Once you know how to saute, it doesn’t matter what you put in the pan.”

Develop knife skills: “If people want to get more comfortable in the kitchen, they should take a knife skills class. Those skills are a massive upscale for confidence in the kitchen.”

Know your taste: “Know what you like, then create that, because that’s the starting place. Don’t start by making miso brownies when the core is to make a really good brownie that you like, because then you’ll do it again.”

What does a grownup mermaid look like? It starts with the silhouette …

Before wild swimming was even a twinkle in the eye of the culture, and before ice plunging went viral on TikTok, there were mermaids. Mermaids are the original summer It girls. Who doesn’t want hair that looks great when it’s wet and salty, shell jewellery, killer sex appeal and a life of sun, sea and winding up sailors for kicks? These chicks know how to live.

Mermaidcore is this summer’s hottest style vibe. It is beach chic with a hot-sauce dash of brat energy. Every summer has its own off-duty avatar – tomato girl summer, anyone? – and 2026 is all about mermaids. For legal reasons, please note this column is not endorsing the luring of innocents to certain death. The vibe is Daryl Hannah in Splash, not selkies and sirens.

Surfboards, knee-length shorts, wetsuits, flip-flops: all have been seen on the catwalks this year. But what do actual surfers think of the trend? We went to Newquay to find out

Summer is here, and with it the annual scramble to decide what kind of season we’re supposed to be having. What will it be? On offer in 2026 are “freaky sandal summer”, which requires you to wear weird shoes, and “euromaxxing”, which is presumably about making the most of the easyJet sale without considering the environmental impact. Maybe “poet girl summer” is for you, whereby you listen to Gracie Abrams while wearing a silk camisole. Or simply “no mascara summer”, which I won’t spell out but sounds quite appealing.

The most plausible contender is “board short summer”, a phrase coined by Marie Claire, which broadly involves dressing like you surf even if you’ve never set foot on a board.

From Lily Collins at Wimbledon to the cast of Love Island, heels-averse cohort is stepping it up a notch

Gen Z, the flats-only generation, has finally succumbed to the heel – albeit a tiny one. Long vocally anti-heel, the cohort who were born between 1997 and 2012 have famously shunned millennials’ obsession with Jimmy Choos in favour of pancake-flat shoes, from the Adidas Samba “It-trainer” to the split-toe Margiela Tabi and so-called “French girl ballet flats”.

But they now appear to be embracing a potential gateway heel, typically measuring in the region of 1.5in (3.8cm) or the height of a triple-A battery.

From M&S to Miu Miu, 50s US school gym staple adopted by 70s rockers is having its moment in the sun again

If the T-shirt is a ubiquitous sight on summer streets, fashion loves nothing more than changing up something very familiar. Enter, this summer, the rise of the ringer T-shirt.

A T-shirt shape but with contrast colour on the collar and ends of the short sleeves, the garment has been spotted at brands ranging from Marks & Spencer to Ganni, Hush and Levi’s.

‘Legends cling like barnacles to these shores,’ says our local writer, who reveals how the lore of these craggy cliffs and beaches resonates with the Homeric classic

The incoming tide has made a labyrinth of the beach. As silvery rivulets spread across Culbin Sands to meet the mudflats, my walk becomes increasingly circuitous: weaving inland towards the pine forest, backtracking closer to the waves, skirting tidal pools and scaling dunes constantly resculpted by the North Sea breeze.

In this shapeshifting stretch of north-east Scotland’s Moray coast, there’s not another soul in sight, nothing to anchor me to the modern day. It’s easy, then, to imagine a longship bringing weary warriors ashore, or a band of man-eating giants marauding from the woodland. Which is exactly what happens here – on screen – in Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey.

The seven inhabited isles off the North Sea coast, part of a Unesco world heritage site, are a sanctuary for wildlife – with great hotels and restaurants too

‘Can you hear that?” my guide Andrea Wellmeyer asks as I sink a little deeper into the wet ground, cold mud seeping between my toes. When the wind drops, I detect a faint but distinct crackling, similar to the rustle of a sweet wrapper or the bubbling of sparkling water. “That’s the Wattknistern,” she says, “a natural phenomenon caused by the tens of thousands of mud shrimp that live here.”

We’re standing in the Wadden Sea mudflats on Norderney, an island just off Germany’s North Sea coast. It’s Friday evening at low tide. In the town centre, bars are pumping with music, but here, just 15 minutes along the southern edge of the island, it’s a completely different story.

Almost all of the sandy stretches on the country’s 8,000km of coastline are run for profit. Now ‘free beach’ campaigners are fighting back against the mafia, the military and those profiteering from sun loungers and cocktails

Walking along Italian beaches is like strolling through a rainbow. The sand will be subdivided into colours: for 50 metres or so the perfectly spaced parasols and deck chairs will be all red, then they become orange, then yellow, green and so on.

These are the country’s famous bagni (lidos), formally known as concessioni balneari (bathing concessions). They’re simple but stylish. The sand is raked at dawn. The bar plays ambient music and serves negronis or fried squid. There will probably be a table-tennis table, or a beach volleyball area. Some have swimming pools.

With bus fares capped at £3 and free for kids in August, it’s the ideal time for wildlife watching, woodland walks, world-class art and more

Trips to waterfalls, gardens, galleries, medieval forests and prehistoric caves will make the long school holidays a lot more fun. To help families explore affordably, throughout August buses in England will be free for kids and adult fares will be capped at £3 single. Or, if you arrive somewhere by train, you could buy a PlusBus ticket, which include unlimited local bus travel. Here are six ideas for family outings by bus around England.

Exclusive: Darren Rosheski won NHS payout over partner Helen Dutton’s death from rectal cancer after GP misjudged her symptoms

“I remember the doctor, after he’d examined Helen and found a large lump in her colon, saying: ‘It’s very sinister – we need to bring you in to be investigated.’”

Darren Rosheski is recalling the moment a consultant doctor at Tameside hospital broke the news to his partner, Helen Dutton, that her symptoms – which also included back pain, passing blood and altered bowel habits – were so worrying that they needed further tests.

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

While the keys to the country keep changing hands, the Thursday news quiz remains reassuringly constant, steadfastly refusing to hand over power, or grow up in any way. Fifteen questions on topical news, general knowledge and popular culture await, this week with a hefty dose of novelty animal stories and Liz Truss again, because she won’t let it be. Anyway, there are no prizes, but let us know how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 257

From neighbourhood scavenger to baseball mascot and Daily Show guest, the Seattle animal has become social media’s newest cult hero

Pygmy hippo Moo Deng is washed up and humiliated, having flunked all three of her football World Cup predictions. Punch, the Japanese macaque abandoned by his family, is so February. And if you can even remember Grumpy Cat, may she rest in peace.

As of today the internet belongs to Jimothy: a raccoon with a striking silhouette who has gone from a minor celebrity in Seattle to social media main character overnight. Jimothy is suddenly all over Instagram, and if you hover over the critter for so much as a nanosecond, he will be all you will ever see on your feed.

The Marches, Shropshire: Eyebrights are ancient herbs used to cure eye problems, but they also penetrate grass roots to siphon off water and nutrients

A sight for sore eyes. Eyebrights flower in the short turf of Old Racecourse Common as sunlight burns a hole through rowan trees to cast sunset colours on the grass. The eyebrights are annuals with tiny flowers, 4mm-11mm long with a violet vibe, a white corolla with purple marks and a central flash of yellow.

There are about 20 British eyebright species, some of which are endemic. Their genetic complexity makes them an arcane group of plants and a taxonomic puzzle to all but their most dedicated acolytes. “Life’s too short to key out [make a precise identification of] eyebrights,” one botanist told me.

A symbol of global inequalities and shifting geopolitical fortunes, some passports offer their holders far more freedom to travel than others

Passports can resemble abridged memoirs, their stamps telling romantic stories of wanderlust, freedom and belonging.

But they are also a symbol of global inequalities and shifting geopolitical fortunes. Passports from some places allow their holders to travel abroad simply by booking a flight and packing a bag. Others, however, entail booking an appointment at the nearest consulate, presenting documents to prove identity and financial means, then waiting weeks for a decision.

New PM’s conversational tone is markedly different to his predecessor’s, but carries risk of sowing confusion

Before he became Britain’s prime minister, Andy Burnham promised to “do politics differently”. Just three days into his time in Downing Street, that approach is already being put to the test.

In the last two days, the prime minister has been accused of performing U-turns over raising the income tax threshold, raising taxes for higher earners and freezing private sector rents.

With the cost of holiday childcare rising and many parents juggling work with looking after children, we’d like to hear how you’re managing this summer

The summer holidays have begun, bringing the annual challenge many parents face in balancing work and looking after school-aged children. New research suggests arranging six weeks of holiday childcare can cost working parents up to £1,145 per child, while almost three-quarters of parents say the summer childcare juggle damages their career.

Are you paying for holiday clubs or childminders, relying on family and friends or working from home while caring for children? Are you taking annual leave, reducing your hours or working early mornings and late evenings to fit everything in?

Whether you’re part of a volunteer group or go out on solo clean-ups in the UK, we’d like to hear from you

Across the UK, people are getting together to clean up their local environments. Whether it be maintaining parkland, beaches, waterways or roadsides, we want to hear from the volunteers who are getting involved in the maintenance and preservation of their local areas.

Do you take part in weekly litter picking outings? Are you part of a group taking on the responsibility of keeping our beaches or rivers clean?

We would like to hear about the highs and lows of university clubs and societies

As a new academic year approaches, we would like to hear from students and recent graduates (five years ago or less) about their experiences of university clubs and societies that freshers might find instructive.

What was your best experience of a university club or society? And what was your worst?

We would love to hear about your workhorse appliances, why they’re so impressive and how long you’ve had them

An elderly couple in Gloucestershire are reportedly still using what is believed to be Britain’s oldest working fridge.

The Electrolux appliance was built in the 1930s and bought second-hand by their family in 1949, with the owners telling SWNS that it is “still going strong”.

Wake up to the top stories and what they mean – free to your inbox every weekday morning at 7am

Scroll less, understand more: sign up to receive our news email each weekday for clarity on the top stories in the UK and across the world.

Explore all our newsletters: whether you love film, football, fashion or food, we’ve got something for you

Get smart, sustainable shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox, every Sunday

The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.

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

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

Sign up below to start receiving the best of our culinary journalism in one mouth-watering weekly email.

Upgrade your space today, with eight emails packed with tips to brighten up your home - whatever your budget

Embrace your space: the Guardian’s House to Home newsletter is bursting with tips and tricks to help you boost your bedroom and give your living room some love.

Sign up any time, and get eight emails direct to your inbox every Sunday morning.

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world