Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey might be the one to beat but a crop of competitors is starting to materialise

Reporting from fall film festivals used to be a more streamlined process – what’s good, what’s bad, what’s being sold, what has Oscars chances – but with each year, the season arrives with larger, more existential questions.

The 2025 run, from Venice to Telluride to Toronto, was notably underwhelming and took place months after Sinners went from box-office hit to legitimate contender and at the same time as One Battle After Another skipped festivals and went on to win best picture. The pipeline that had once birthed winners such as Birdman, Spotlight, 12 Years a Slave and The King’s Speech had no longer played as big of a part with Covid-affected Nomadland being the last fall festival film to win the top prize. Even without an awards hat on, there has been a more general lack of buzz, an excitement of something new that much harder to find as more films of considerably lower quality took up underserved space. If the trades are to be believed, a lot of it is down to studios choosing against the risk of bad buzz and potential embarrassment to A-listers because for every The Shape of Water or Poor Things, there’s a White Noise or Joker: Folie à Deux. So while this season might see new films starring Tom Cruise, Timothée Chalamet, Anne Hathaway, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Ben Affleck and Mikey Madison, none of them are braving a festival premiere.

Rhonda believes Ned ruins woks. He reckons he has famous chefs on his side. You decide whose argument is in flames

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

He whacks the heat right up, which stains our wok and makes it really hard to wash up

The person doing the cooking is in charge of the temperature – plus a wok is supposed to blacken

Endless pursuit of wealth and power by western leaders led us here. What strikes me most is how many saw what was coming

The symptoms of decline are everywhere you look. On Sunday, Germany’s far right won another state election, taking nearly 40% of the vote in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. France is preparing a €54bn fiscal squeeze, which could turn the screw still further on a foundering so-called European social model. At the UN general assembly, Donald Trump once again threatened to “annihilate” Iran, even as the fourth failed western war on a Muslim nation this century has added more than $100bn to Americans’ fuel bills.

There is little dispute over the symptoms. The great fight of our age is over the diagnosis, and the right has been winning it for years. Its story is simple and, as the latest German state election underlines, effective: the west is dying because of migrants, Muslims, trans people, “woke” and the “deep state”. So when I told friends I was writing a book called The Fall of the West: How They Really Lost It, they worried I had shape-shifted into Liz Truss, who, after being outlasted in office by a lettuce, produced Ten Years to Save the West.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist. His latest book, The Fall of the West: How They Really Lost It, is published on 1 October. Order your copy at the Guardian bookshop

The new prime minister has declared he wants to end 40 years of neoliberalism. But is he really prepared to be that radical?

In May 2025, when Keir Starmer was still prime minister, Labour politicians, campaigners and journalists gathered at the Ministry of Sound in London to watch a series of panel talks and presentations illuminated by the lucid glow of club lights. The day-long event was organised by a campaign group called Compass, and the subjects included child poverty, the Murdoch-owned media and the rise of the radical right.

“We felt as though the Labour government was failing, and needed to be pulled into the 21st century,” Neal Lawson, the founder of Compass, told me. The Starmer government’s support for the Conservatives’ two-child benefit cap, its equivocating stance on Gaza and its emulation of far-right rhetoric – crystallised in a speech on immigration, during which the prime minister suggested Britain risked becoming an “island of strangers” – were causing Labour supporters to rapidly desert their party. “The Starmer project was so obviously intellectually bankrupt. He was personally so disinterested in ideas and big thinking that I thought, this is never going to fly,” Lawson said.

Furnace Brook in East Sussex was home to carp, tench, bream, roach and trout – and 15 trailer-loads had to be buried. The mystery led to a neighbouring farm, and a story of waste, pollution and dirty rivers that reveals a lot about Britain today

When Alistair and Diane Gould bought Furnace Brook in 2013, they had big plans. It was an idyllic spot: a stream-fed fishing lake nestled in a secluded valley in the High Weald, East Sussex, surrounded by woodland and fields. “People loved to come fishing here because it’s so beautiful,” says Diane. “Some of them had been coming for so many years that they got to know the individual fish.”

Diane moved here from Kent in 2000, when Furnace Brook was owned by a distant relative. Her two younger sons, then 10 and 14, flourished. They would chat to the anglers about the fish they were catching and throwing back in, and sell them bacon sandwiches. Her elder son, Simon, moved from London to join them in 2006 and became a keen angler himself, and then the fishing manager, or bailiff, looking after the fish and the landscape around the lake.

A conflict that began with tanks and then artillery is now pivoting around a new generation of drones focused on military, industrial, economic and civilian targets

Finally, in the dead of night, the threat above has passed. The rain has eased and the Ukrainian drones are ready, prepared by a ground crew shrouded in hard-to-detect green and red lights. A small succession of Ukrainian Fire Point FP-2 craft, miniature monoplanes with a 6-metre wingspan and more than 100kg of explosive, line up for an attack mission into occupied Luhansk, over 200 miles away.

The drone’s main piston engine is a familiar scooter’s buzz, but its launch booster is something else. The jet sound reverberates, almost painfully. A burst of fire lurches into the distance, the last of which signifies it is time for Ukraine’s 413 Raid drone regiment to pack and go.

The launch of an FP-2 drone during the mission into occupied Luhansk

Thirty-seven-year-old in custody on suspicion of crimes including criminal damage with intent to endanger life

The far-right agitator and anti-migrant activist Daniel Thomas has been arrested on suspicion of “criminal damage with intent to endanger life”, after he filmed himself appearing to slash the side of a dinghy in the middle of the Channel, while a rescuer was onboard.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight constabulary said a 37-year-old man, of no fixed abode, had been arrested after a boat that had an emergency responder onboard was damaged in the Channel. The man was arrested “on suspicion of destroying ships or fixed platforms or endangering their safety”.

Polling suggests Andy Burnham is attracting progressives back to Labour, motivated by desire to stop Nigel Farage

• How Labour’s majority depends on five progressive voter types – in charts

• UK politics live – latest updates

Progressive voters could push Reform UK into fourth place and put Labour within touching distance of a majority if tactical voting is widespread at the next election, a major poll has found.

Andy Burnham is beginning to attract a significant number of left-leaning voters back to Labour, motivated by a desire to stop Nigel Farage, the results suggest.

Unions say record high figures, including assaults on rail workers as well as members of public, show need for more staff and policing

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The number of reported assaults on Great Britain’s railways has risen to a record high of almost 25,000 incidents in a year.

Unions said the “horrendous” figures showed the need for more staff and policing, as the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) revealed a sharp increase in assaults on the travelling public and on railway staff last year.

Rising cost of 10-year gilt to near 19-year high hikes upfront cost of government investment and limits chancellor’s room for manoeuvre

• Business live – latest updates

• International bodies warn of rising debt and borrowing risks

• Burnham stands by claim UK is ‘in hock’ to bond markets

A global sell-off in government bonds has put fresh upward pressure on UK borrowing costs, before a tough budget for John Healey next month.

The yield – effectively the interest rate – on 10-year UK bonds, known as gilts, had risen to 5.38% by mid-morning on Thursday, approaching the 19-year high set last week.

A federal judge had ruled Trump administration must immediately return the outlets’ press passes and said ban likely unconstitutional

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The third day of the UN General Assembly’s annual gathering of world leaders is about to kick off in New York City today, with speeches from leaders on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is expected to devote at least part of his address to attacking Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s progressive mayor who has labeled Netanyahu a war criminal and threatened to arrest him for his country’s killing of civilians in Gaza.

New York mayor has been a vocal critic of the Israeli PM who is addressing the UN later today

The Russian foreign minister Sergei ⁠Lavrov has been spotted speaking to officials on the sidelines of the general assembly. He has already spoken to the US secretary of state Marco Rubio and is scheduled to address the general assembly on Saturday. Meanwhile his country has continued bombing Ukraine, where at least seven people were killed and a further 12 people injured in a Russian strike on a farm in the north-eastern region of Kharkiv. My colleague Jakub Krupa has the latest over on our Europe live blog here.

To follow Donald Trump’s movements today, including his talks with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, my colleague Chris Hippensteel has the latest over on our US politics live blog here:

Role for Anant Ambani, son of India’s richest person, who also runs a controversial mega-zoo, met with incredulity

Newcastle University is facing a backlash from conservationists over the appointment of the heir to an Indian oil and gas fortune who runs a controversial mega-zoo as a professor of sustainability.

The university announced that Anant Ambani had been given a professorship of practice for “his work in conservation, biodiversity protection, animal welfare and environmental stewardship” and “significant contributions to advancing a more sustainable future”.

Ministry of Defence claims book by soldier known as Christian Craighead contains alleged breach of confidentiality contract

An injunction preventing a former member of the SAS from publishing a book about his role in a counter-terrorism operation has been extended after an application by the Ministry of Defence.

The block on publication of the book in the UK will continue until the conclusion of a government legal action against the soldier, who is known only by the pseudonym Christian Craighead.

Taraneh and Romina Rahimi were charged with ‘waging war against God’ after joining protests against Tehran regime

The family of 21-year-old twins who have been sentenced to death and decades in jail for protesting against the Iranian regime have appealed to the United Nations for help for the young women.

A formal “submission of information” relating to the case of Taraneh and Romina Rahimi has been submitted by British human right lawyers on their family’s behalf.

As the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each tells the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the conflict. Overcoming internet cuts and power outages, Mahmoud battles to provide his students an education

It is time for Mahmoud Seydam’s online lecture on museum architecture. He squats in front of the step he calls a table and opens his laptop.

“Is Mohammed the only one here?” He pulls out his phone and types into the students’ chat group that the lecture is about to start. There are two students now. Mahmoud decides to wait a little for the others to join.

Analysis reveals groups with sharply contrasting priorities – and who has drifted the most from Labour towards Greens and Reform

• Tactical voting at next election could push Reform into fourth place, poll finds
• UK politics live – latest updates

A new MRP poll suggests Labour would remain the largest party if a general election were held now, but would fall well short of an overall majority as Reform surged into second place.

Behind those headline figures, research from Survation and 38 Degrees casts new light on five distinct voter groups who are collectively defined as the “progressive majority”. These people share concerns about living costs and the NHS, but differ over immigration, the environment, political trust and the pace of change needed to address the UK’s policies.

More than a year after a peace deal was signed, violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is forcing people south to Tanganyika, where camps are already home to hundreds of thousands living in dire conditions

A cry of panic erupts across the camp as several shelters are engulfed in flames. Women rush to pull their children and meagre possessions away from the blaze. The young men of the camp quickly tear down the neighbouring shelters to form a firebreak.

Fire destroys homes at the Muganwa camp outside the town of Kalemie, DRC, on 11 September

Mima, Middlesbrough
In a truly competitive year, Kira Freije’s apocalyptic humanoids trounce everything in their path, even the sculpture that looks like a pile of biscuits

The Turner prize is most exciting when you passionately support one of the artists and want to convince everyone she’s a genius. In this year’s show at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, I felt that thrill so strongly, I want to get a T-shirt made to support my artist like the Boro scarves and banners you see around here.

Kira Freije has her own floor, separated by a tall flight of stairs from the three other shortlisted artists, because apparently the fine watery mist in her installation could damage their fragile materials. Yet setting her apart seems like a statement and it’s justified. She shows 33 lifesize statues of tragicomic steampunk cyborgs, individual works but gathered in a vaporous apocalyptic wasteland, with an impact and resonance that’s on a level of its own.

As the country trio once known as Dixie Chicks celebrate 20 years of their album Taking the Long Way, we count down the best of their catchy, sometimes controversial catalogue

One of eight singles released from the album Fly. Amazement at the sheer number should be matched by astonishment at their consistency. If I Fall … is just great. Organ-driven rock lent a Nashville twang by the fiddle, it barrels along, rich with the confidence of a band who know they can’t put a foot wrong.

Theatrical rollout across 56 territories planned for documentary about Israel’s mass killing of civilians in Gaza before film will stream on Guardian website

NAZA, the award-winning documentary from Israeli film-makers Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, is set to be released in cinemas in more than 50 countries before a digital global release on theguardian.com.

The film, which the Guardian produced, premiered at the Venice film festival earlier this month, where it was met with a 25-minute standing ovation – a festival record. The documentary went on to win the special jury prize.

In which a UK coffee lover, long devoted to her moka pot, tiptoes gingerly into the world of coffee-derived drink products

My family has benefited hugely from charities that support healthcare, so it is with extra zeal that I’ll be drinking coffee with a slice of cake tomorrow to mark this year’s Macmillan Coffee Morning. In anticipation, I’ve been tasting some coffee-flavoured drinks.

I should preface this by saying that, when it comes to coffee, I am a creature of habit and, almost 30 years into my relationship with the stuff, I know what I like: short-ish, strong, preferably made in a moka pot and only a tiny splash of milk. I’m less faithful to brands, though I do rate Union’s House Roast, which is bold, crowdpleasing, not too bitter and sold in most big supermarkets. Much as my partner has tried to seduce me to the trendy charms of filter coffee, this leopard can’t seem to change her spots.

Buying preloved always feels that bit cooler, says celebrity stylist Bay Garnett, but how do you find a gem in charity shops or online? She reveals her top tips

• Your favourite secondhand finds

I’ve been championing secondhand shopping for decades. For my debut shoot for British Vogue in 2003, I dressed Kate Moss entirely in pieces I’d found in New York charity shops – including a banana-print top that cost $5 and a gold sequin jacket I found in the Salvation Army for $7.

I think every shoot I have done has had secondhand in it – vintage jeans, blazers, coats, belts, boots – and they are always the pieces the people I am dressing exclaim over and want. So, often they just look and feel cooler.

The French photographer and actor’s deep love of Harlem and the Bronx was so strong it led to her being invited to gang apartments, child boxing matches and even a stranger’s wedding

When a former Labour deputy leader joins a firm built on surveillance and military targeting, it deepens public cynicism – and democracy depends on trust

Whatever is said about Tom Watson, the former deputy leader of the Labour party has a knack for landing headlines. In the past he did it at the expense of the rich and powerful – from News International, over phone hacking, to the Home Office, over its mass surveillance of our data. But his latest headline – that he has joined Palantir as a senior vice-president – has been at the expense of public confidence in the political class.

His new appointment is more than just a private career choice. It sends yet another signal to a weary public about just how far the rot in our democracy has spread.

Clive Lewis is the Labour MP for Norwich South

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.

Changes in guidance and science seem to have little impact on millions of devastated lives. It’s a shocking social crisis playing out behind closed doors

I’ve spent my working life covering neglected issues. But few are neglected like the devastating chronic condition ME/CFS (myalgic encephalomyelitis, or chronic fatigue syndrome). In severe cases, the illness shuts down people’s lives almost entirely, causing an extreme loss of energy and a wide range of physical and cognitive symptoms that can prevent patients from working, socialising and, sometimes, even moving or eating. Yet these people have been more or less airbrushed from our minds.

To find out what this neglect looks like in practice, this week I put out a call on Bluesky asking people with ME/CFS about their recent experiences of treatment. I was immediately inundated with horrifying testimonies. “I’ve just been completely abandoned”; “a 10-year waiting list for treatment”; “we’ve given up seeking medical support”; “stuck in limbo”; “I just felt utterly unheard, invalidated”. I’ve been sent hundreds of shocking and heart-rending accounts.

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

Shortcuts work against the rewards of friendship: authentic relationships can surely only be forged when you’re not expecting a return on your money

What price would you put on friendship? In these hyper-capitalistic times, where nothing is beyond being given a monetary value, perhaps even Mastercard wouldn’t dare to claim that it’s priceless. A YouGov survey found that 15% of Britons say they have no close friends, while nearly one in 10 (8%) have no friends at all. The numbers are similarly dismal in the US. As we face this contemporary crisis of connection, it is little wonder that friendship, or at least the possibility of it, is increasingly being marketed for sale.

There has been a striking increase in online platforms and apps that promise to introduce you – algorithmically, through social mixers or a combination – to your next BFF. There’s Cliq, PLY, standing for “People Like You”, and RealRoots which promises user satisfaction with the tagline: “Make new friends. Guaranteed”. Meanwhile, 222 boldly declares it is “not a friend-making service”, but a means to “explore serendipity” through social experiences with compatible people.

Elle Hunt is a freelance journalist

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.

Both Greek and British citizens think the sculptures should be returned. What’s needed now is political will and courage

• Kyriakos Mitsotakis is the prime minister of Greece

For the first time in nearly 1,000 years, the Bayeux tapestry is back in Britain. Its arrival is a significant cultural moment, and a reminder that, in an age of social media and ubiquitous screens, historic objects still capture the public imagination.

The British Museum describes the tapestry as one of the “wonders of the medieval world”. But the museum already houses many wonders, including one that is instantly recognisable: the Parthenon sculptures, chiselled away and illegally removed from Athens to be taken to Britain more than two centuries ago by Lord Elgin.

Kyriakos Mitsotakis is the prime minister of Greece

My veg patch has turned into a chard jungle and now it’s chard for breakfast, lunch and supper

Chard. It’s hard with so much chard. As Jennifer Lopez might put it if she were in my gardening shoes, I used to have a little, now I have a lot. There was too little last year, for whatever reason. I probably did something wrong. This year, I sowed more. Come summer, the crop underwhelmed me again. So I sowed still more, throwing around seeds of as many varieties as I could get hold of. Then I went off to Croatia for most of August, where there is chard aplenty. That’s not why I go there, incidentally, but it suits me because I really like it, which is just as well because on the Adriatic coast it comes with every meal.

If you have not tried chard, I’d describe it as like spinach, but more substantial. In Croatian it’s called blitva, which oddly enough is the sound my belly starts making when I eat too much of it, as I do every summer there. It can get too much. In Split, I met a woman who was so sick of chard she got rather angry at the very mention of it. She was the cousin of the wife of a famous Serbian footballer I know. She wrote pop songs for a living, but she won’t be penning a love song to blitva any time soon, I can tell you that. As she started forking it off her plate on to mine, she spat out the word blitva as if it were a profanity rather than the sound of a stomach-gurgle. And now I, too, am taking its name in vain.

Conservatives long promoted a politics of sexual prohibition. Now such morals have been shed in favor of male domination

Under Kash Patel, the FBI will now hire you even if you have a history of hiring prostitutes, or of having sex with animals. The rightwing Maha influencer Alex Clark had a guest on to her talk show to discuss the idea that wives should provide sex for their husbands on demand. A new ad for a sports gambling website is being hailed as a victory for the political right, because it features a nude Sydney Sweeney clutching footballs to her breasts. The Tate brothers, who encourage their male followers to pursue compulsive sexual conquest and who have been accused of sex trafficking and violence in the operation of their online cam porn business, have reportedly been friendly with members of Trump’s circle. A dizzying array of elites on both sides of the aisle – conservatives very much included – seem to have been socializing with a pedophile financier, and were so unfazed by his constant coterie of underaged girl companions that one begins to wonder whether they were habituated to such scenes. A prominent conservative writer, best known for her opposition to gender transition care for children, has announced a new book claiming to tackle the problem of young women who are supposedly unwilling to have enough sex. And the women of the president’s members club, Mar-A-Lago, are so well known for their dramatic facelifts, and their lips so stuffed with filler that they cannot quite close their mouths, that their faces are now a shorthand in the world of plastic surgery.

Raunch, vulgarity, a boorish entitlement to women’s sexual service, and the aesthetics – and, indeed, the business – of pornography are being embraced by the right.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

It is sad and dangerous that at such a perilous moment, the United States is saddled with a president like Trump

Donald Trump’s speech on Tuesday to the United Nations general assembly was an object lesson in his lawless rule and remarkable capacity for self-delusion. Disregarding the UN charter’s emphasis on the peaceful resolution of disputes, he doubled down on his violent unilateralism while denigrating the global issues that the UN is designed to address.

For many, the headline remark was his musing about whether to “annihilate the Islamic Republic” of Iran. “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?”

Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, a senior fellow at Yale University and a former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments

As the secretary general, António Guterres, prepares to step down, the general assembly is highlighting the scale of the organisation’s challenges

The United Nations was created, its charter states, to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”. Donald Trump used his address to the general assembly to threaten Iran, another member state, with annihilation again. The charter also speaks of the obligations of international law. On Venezuela, Mr Trump gloated that “to the victor belong the spoils”. His speech in New York on Tuesday might be regarded as an improvement on last year’s only in that it was not an explicit, full-scale attack on the UN itself, merely on its founding principles.

The absences this year are perhaps as telling as the US president’s hostile presence. Vladimir Putin has not attended for more than a decade. Nor has Xi Jinping – but the snub is more striking as he is in Washington to meet the US president. India’s Narendra Modi is not present; nor are Cyril Ramaphosa, Bola Tinubu or Abdel Fatah al-Sisi – the leaders of Africa’s three giants, South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt. While their reasons are various, the gaps speak collectively to Mr Trump’s wrecking capability and the broader challenges faced by the UN.

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Andy Burnham’s accusation against the Kremlin tells half the story. Domestic extremists amplified by US big tech are part of the same problem

In November 2020, Barack Obama warned of an “epistemological crisis” facing western democracies. Polarisation and radicalisation were corroding trust in established information sources. “If we do not have the capacity to distinguish what’s true from what’s false, then by definition the marketplace of ideas doesn’t work,” the former US president said.

That vulnerability has grown since then. Democracy’s enemies have become more determined to exploit it. This is the threat that Andy Burnham highlighted in a speech at the United Nations this week. The prime minister accused Russia of waging an “industrial-scale assault” on the UK’s information environment using bot armies and fake websites to spread falsehoods, interfere in elections, foment discord and poison inter-community relations.

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.

Readers on the new grading regime that is causing more stress and health issues for school staff than ever before

Your report (New Ofsted inspection regime is damaging our health, headteachers say, 21 September) reflects what those of us supporting school leaders are hearing. As a volunteer with Headrest, a school leader wellbeing helpline, I cannot discuss individual cases. I can, however, describe the disturbing patterns we encounter.

We have spoken to headteachers whom mental health professionals considered suicide risks following their experience of the Ofsted process. We have spoken to leaders whose physical or mental health has been seriously damaged by inspections. We have heard from headteachers who successfully navigated inspections but then chose early retirement rather than face that level of stress again.

Celebrities like Ed Sheeran should not shy away from expressing political opinions, writes Dr Richard J Goy, while Anna Emms praises the singer’s commitment to his fans. Plus a letter from David Parry

Nadia Khomami provides an excellent analysis of current dilemmas regarding political songs and engagement (‘A maelstrom of his own making’: how Ed Sheeran’s tour turned into a full-blown culture war, 19 September).

However, I do feel that it lacks a longer timeframe. Outspoken, overtly political singers and songwriters have been active for decades. My own generation was brought up on Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. A bit  further back were Woody Guthrie and Billie Holiday. Who would dare to write Strange Fruit today? In all, far too many are being deterred by fears of censorship by media billionaires and their like. They need to get out there and shout and scream about the world’s appalling injustices. We need a hundred Billy Braggs, not just one.
Dr Richard J Goy
Cambridge

Readers have advice for a cross-party committee of MPs looking into the UK’s poor record at the song contest

I agree with Laura Snapes that the very last thing we need is MPs’ questionable tastes entering the murky waters of the UK’s Eurovision song choice (What do you think of the MPs’ inquiry into UK Eurovision song contest failure? I give it nul points, 21 September).

However, one thing I can’t believe hasn’t happened is for the UK to draw upon our ridiculously rich folk tradition. Loads of other countries do it – Ukraine won it a few years back with a song that infused Ukrainian folk with pop – so why can’t we?

Readers respond to the news that an Oxfordshire village has voted to leave the UK over plans to house asylum seekers nearby

So the people of Piddington have spoken – an overwhelming majority want to leave the UK (English village votes to leave UK in protest over migrant housing plan, 16 September). They didn’t really consider the consequences, did they? We can say goodbye, but to protect our borders we would need to erect a solid barrier around the village. Obviously anyone who works in the UK outside Piddington’s borders would need a work visa now, and travel visas will be needed by people wanting to visit supermarkets – or relatives. I note that there’s a small river running through Piddington. Any attempt to leave on small boats should be dealt with like any other attempted illegal entry.

I’m not sure they really thought through the reality of leaving, preferring instead a mix of populist soundbites and protest votes. It’s going to go badly. Where have I heard this before?
Neil Knowles
London

• Over-by-over updates, second ODI from 12.30pm BST

• County Championship finale | South Africa v Australia – live

1st over: Sri Lanka 1-0 (Nissanka 1, Kamindu Mendis 0) Headingley is usually a great place to bat, so Sri Lanka will probably want upwards of 300. Fifty overs is a long time*, which means Kamindu Mendis can take a bit of time to get his eye in. He plays out five consecutive dot balls during an accurate opening over from Archer.

* Drink

• Fight on 11 December announced by Turki Alalshikh

• Fury v Joshua to be streamed globally on Netflix

Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua’s highly-anticipated heavyweight clash will take place at Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on 11 December after a deal was finally agreed.

The details will for the bout, one of the biggest in British boxing history, were announced by Turki Alalshikh, chairman of the General Entertainment Authority and president of the Saudi Boxing Federation, with the tagline: “Years in the making. One night to settle it.”

With interest in the league rising, some are calling for dedicated away ends at stadiums to improve atmosphere

With interest in the Women’s Super League on the rise and more clubs playing at their main stadiums, there are questions over whether to separate supporters into stricter home and away sections, as in the men’s game, or to continue with mixed seating and optional away ends.

From the 2023-24 season, new league regulations required clubs to include an away-ticketing policy in their licensing agreements, a move backed by the Football Supporters’ Association (FSA).

Updates from final round of county cricket games
Warwickshire ‘in the groove’ as destiny calls
Get in touch with James on email or comment BTL

That man Jack Leach has got the breakthrough in Taunton. Michael Vaughan and Steve Finn have both been calling for Leach to be recalled into the Test side, definitely one to keep an eye on, particularly with the Bangladesh series early next year.

Leach snares his old England teammate Rory Burns who plays a loose sweep and gifts a top edge to Tom Abell.

His long career gives him the perspective to see how the game has been transformed, and what matters. “Cricket has changed a little bit, there are lots of offshoots, and the franchise world of course. But on a day-to-day basis, the measure of you as a cricketer is either Test cricket if you can play it, or otherwise the County Championship.

To do well in county cricket is incredibly satisfying, and being able to win the championship is a great marker in your career. It says a lot that the great Chris Woakes could have sailed off into the sunset, but he has stayed for weeks like this.” By Sunday, we will know how the die fell.”

Manager is not responsible for underlying weaknesses but there are reasons for optimism in the buildup to Euro 2028

In the end, Steve, Brian, Gaz or similar, he’s just not done the job he was hired to do. The job? The one he was hired to do? He’s not done it. How can I put this? There are three things here. The job. The being hired. The doing it. And him. Four things. And if you put those things together, there is no clear equation of … no linear semiotic cluster, he’s not, he’s just not, what I’m saying is …

How many times have you heard variations on this statement in the few short, tender weeks since England’s World Cup campaign? Perhaps you strayed too close to a sport-themed radio show, or accidentally ingested a celebrity football pundit podcast. Either way the verdict is pretty much universal, and delivered always with an air of finality, a sad shake of the head.

The violence at the Luton Town v Millwall FA Cup match in 1985, along with the Heysel Stadium disaster, saw the Thatcher government enact new laws

UK prime minister, Andy Burnham has spoken out about football fans facing “discrimination” because they cannot drink alcohol in the stands, signalling that he may change the law.

The ban was hastily introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s government in 1985 to crack down on football violence, which had blighted the domestic and national games for several decades. Excessive alcohol consumption was seen by the authorities as a significant factor in disorder.

• Harlequins, Saints and Gloucester attracting interest

• Prem using Hundred sales as template for growth

Harlequins, Northampton and Gloucester are attracting serious interest from overseas investors with Prem Rugby entering an expansionist phase before its first season as a closed league begins on Friday.

A source with knowledge of the discussions disclosed that there have been approaches from several high net worth individuals from the United States and the Middle East, as well as consumer brands whose interest has been piqued by Red Bull’s takeover at Newcastle last year.

Sylvain Houles’ newly promoted team finished alongside Catalans in mid-table but their big battle is for exposure

By No Helmets Required

Every now and then, something dramatic is required. No one could blame Sylvain Houles for threatening to quit rugby league if his Toulouse Olympique team were replaced in Super League next season by London Broncos. After all, he has just taken them to eighth in the table on half funding, finishing above their rivals Catalans Dragons for the first time in 25 years in the process.

The rumour that Toulouse could be ranked 14th by IMG and relegated has since been quashed – to every sane league fan’s relief. Shane Richardson, the NRL head of strategy, says the aim is to build the code’s presence in France, not slash it in half.

• Hitler was an artist in Vienna before first world war

• Horse also has full sister called New Order

The US Jockey Club has ordered a racehorse to be renamed after ruling the animal’s name was a reference to Adolf Hitler.

Austrian Painter won its debut race at the Horseshoe Indianapolis track on Monday. However, the Jockey Club received a complaint about its name and began an investigation. Hitler, who was born in Austria, was a professional artist in Vienna before the first world war. People often use the term “Austrian Painter” online to discuss Hitler without naming him in order to avoid content moderation filters.

The report says there could be ‘greater consequences for the targeted countries than in the past’

In a separate interview with DR, intelligence chief Thomas Ahrenkiel repeated his top line that “Russia is stepping up its hybrid attacks” across Europe, and Denmark should be on high alert for similar incidents there.

He warned that “Russia is focusing its attention in particular on the defence industry and the part of the industry that supports Ukraine,” but also more broadly on stopping any aid from reaching Ukraine.

President lays out red carpet as treasury secretary announces extension of ‘Busan agreement’ pausing trade war hostilities

• AI, trade, Taiwan and climate: what will and won’t be on agenda at Trump-Xi summit

Donald Trump has welcomed Xi Jinping to the US, taking the unusual step of greeting the Chinese leader on the tarmac at Joint Base Andrews to kick off his state visit to Washington.

Xi’s plane was met with a lavish arrival ceremony that included a 30-metre-long (100ft) red carpet flanked by US service members, a military flyover by two B-1 bombers and a presentation of the flags and national anthems of both countries.

Exclusive: Levy that allows almost 16,000 houses to be built on Norfolk Broads will not cover cost of mitigating environmental damage, critics say

A new levy on developers to allow almost 16,000 homes to be built in the environmentally protected Norfolk Broads has been cut by tens of thousands of pounds per house, the Guardian can reveal.

Ministers say the government’s environmental delivery plans (EDPs) were created to unblock housing growth across the country and are a “win-win” for development and nature.

Paris public prosecutor opens investigation into online harassment of Riner, one of France’s most popular sportspeople

Paris’s public prosecutor has opened an investigation into the racist abuse and online harassment of the French judo star Teddy Riner after he expressed concern about the rise of the far right.

Riner, who has often been voted France’s most popular sportsperson and is one of the most successful judo competitors of all time, told a TV sports show this month that he felt “anxiety” about the rise of the far right in France. Numerous racist insults and hate messages were subsequently directed at him online, the prosecutor’s office said.

Former deputy PM now involved in tech industry says many within sector are ‘winding themselves up into a lather’

• UK politics live – latest updates

Nick Clegg has dismissed fears over AI’s “godlike power to exterminate humanity”, calling it a sign that tech bosses are “breathing their own fumes”.

The former UK deputy prime minister said that tech bosses should focus on addressing known specific threats such as cybersecurity and bioweapons rather than the “slightly hand-wavy view that this technology is unavoidably going to develop some godlike power which is going to turn on us and exterminate humanity”.

A fossil gas boom that lifted millions out of poverty has collapsed and inflation is rising – but not everyone believes selling gold and soya is the answer

Once hailed as the “energy heart of South America”, Bolivia’s economy was buoyed up by a fossil gas boom from 2006 to 2014. At its height, then-president Evo Morales commissioned a gleaming presidential skyscraper and installed the world’s longest urban cable car network in La Paz, the seat of government.

Flush with cash, the country grew its GDP, expanded social programmes and halved poverty rates. But then commodity prices plummeted and gas reserves started to dry up, bringing Bolivia’s “economic miracle” crashing down. Inflation – once the region’s lowest – has soared.

Britain has seen an explosion of migrating insects – in some cases from as far as northern Africa

It was a stifling evening in July and Matt Phelps was out for a stroll, when a piercing, whirring noise stopped him in his tracks. As an ecologist, Phelps knows his fauna – and he could think of no UK creature that could emit such a sound.

“It was like the classic sound effect of a cricket in a film, a beeping sort of little trilling sound,” said Phelps, who works at Knepp Estate in West Sussex. He returned with entomologist Graeme Lyons to track it down. But the sound, though incredibly loud, “seemed to be all around us … it was very ventriloquial”.

El Niño poses critical threat to nations’ defences, says Ed Miliband in presentation to global foreign ministers

The UK has warned countries around the world that the climate and nature crises and the coming El Niño threaten their national security and defence, presenting foreign ministries with the findings of a report suppressed under Keir Starmer.

Ed Miliband, the UK’s foreign secretary, made a presentation to the foreign ministers of the EU as well as Kenya and other countries on Wednesday night at a private meeting during the UN general assembly in New York, based on the report by the UK’s spy chiefs that found the collapse of natural systems around the world would lead to conflict, migration and food shortages.

Known as the ‘energy bars of the sea’ the fish are a key food source for many species, but closing fisheries to allow numbers to recover would cost millions

It began on 28 July, when fishers near Saldanha Bay on the west coast of South Africa reported seeing dead sardines (also known as pilchards) floating at sea. Then, in early August, more dead sardines began washing up on beaches near Cape Town.

In the weeks that followed, similar reports came in from places across a vast area spanning 2,600km (1,600 miles) of coastline, such as Henties Bay in Namibia and Mbotyi in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.

But Kyriakos Mitsotakis says he cannot accept any arrangement that recognises British Museum’s ownership of the sculptures

• Kyriakos Mitsotakis: Britain would not cut up the Bayeux tapestry. So seize this moment and reunite the Parthenon sculptures in Greece

The Greek prime minister has said a deal can still be reached to return the Parthenon marbles with “political will” but his country will not accept a loan in the style of the Bayeux tapestry’s visit from France.

Writing for the Guardian, Kyriakos Mitsotakis said Greece “cannot accept any arrangement that would require it to recognise the British Museum’s ownership of the sculptures, or a scheme that would mean we ‘borrow’ parts of our own monument”.

Approach to treating high blood pressure ‘not fit for purpose’, say researchers, with 59% of cases undiagnosed

Only half of people being treated by a GP for high blood pressure in England have it under control, and millions more are completely unaware they have the “silent killer” condition, research reveals.

Most people with hypertension (59%) are in the dark and undiagnosed, raising their risk of stroke, heart attack and early death, according to the largest ever study of its kind.

Courses such as finance and construction form part of PM’s push for education ‘that offers a path for everybody’

Teenagers are to be offered a range of new vocational GCSEs under a radical shake-up of the school system in England designed to tackle a crisis that has left nearly a million young people out of work or training.

From 2029, pupils will be able to supplement compulsory GCSE subjects such as English, maths and sciences with courses such as construction, creative media production and child development, marking the biggest changes to the qualification for more than a decade.

Witness says T2 Hawk aircraft, which was being used for a training flight, ‘was basically on fire’ on takeoff

An RAF jet crashed and exploded moments after two pilots ejected during a training flight over Anglesey (Ynys Môn) in north Wales on Wednesday.

The aircraft, a Hawk T2, had just taken off from RAF Valley on the west of the island when the incident occurred, witnesses said.

Roberto Hamidovic, 48, ran network of thieves who targeted tourists in Paris Métro and Disneyland

A clan leader who sent gangs of child pickpockets to target tourists in the Paris Métro and popular attractions such as Disneyland Paris has been jailed for human trafficking.

Roberto Hamidovic, 48, likened to Fagin, Charles Dickens’s notorious criminal boss, ran a network of child thieves, mostly girls, some as young as 10, who brought in an average of €25,000 (£21,500) a day, according to police.

Argentinian president accuses United Nations of being filled with ‘parasites’ in bellicose general assembly speech

Javier Milei has condemned the UN as he warned that Argentina would take “matters into our own hands” in its dispute with Britain over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands.

In a caustic speech at the general assembly in New York, the Argentinian president criticised the UN for being ineffective when it came to the long-running tensions over the British overseas territory in the south Atlantic known in Argentina as the Malvinas.

Agreement with Mauritius over Diego Garcia unlikely to be revived unless president changes his mind, insiders believe

The Chagos Islands deal is on hold for as long as Donald Trump objects to it, UK officials believe, with no immediate signs it can be adapted to suit the US president.

After Trump savaged the three-way plan as “a terrible deal” during a meeting with Andy Burnham at the UN general assembly, the prime minister said he was “confident” the UK would be able to find a solution to revive the idea.

Online electricals retailer says latest purchase continues to broaden its appeal beyond white goods, phones and TV

• Business live – latest updates

The troubled camera retailer Jessops has changed hands after AO World acquired the business from the Dragons’ Den star Peter Jones.

The online electrical retailer said on Thursday it had completed the acquisition of Jessops.

IPPR finds failure to align testing standards has forced companies to abandon exporting to EU and is costing costing 0.18% of national income

The UK is losing out on annual exports to the EU that could be worth as much as £6.5bn without a deal with Brussels that allows manufacturers to jettison duplicate product testing.

In the latest attempt to calculate the loss of trade with the EU after Brexit, the IPPR thinktank said many companies have given up selling goods to the EU or set up subsidiaries inside the trade bloc after successive governments failed to secure a mutual recognition agreement that would avoid the extra administration costs.

Motor vehicle and part exports would have been between £2.48bn and £3.42bn higher each year.

Electronic exports could have been between £1.17bn and £1.67bn higher.

Pharmaceutical exports would have had an estimated annual uplift of between £740m and £820m.

Explosive growth in imported vehicles omitted from EV tariffs fuels concern for future of European carmakers

• EU imports three times more from China than bloc exports there

• Business news – live updates

Sales of Chinese hybrid cars have rocketed in the EU in the past four and a half years, data shows, underlining growing concerns in Brussels over the future of the European car industry.

In 2022, just 659 Chinese-made fully hybrid cars (vehicles in which the petrol or diesel engine charge the motor and battery) were sold in the EU. However, after Brussels imposed anti-subsidy tariffs on fully electric cars from China in 2024, sales of hybrids have shot up to 160,662 in the first seven months of this year.

IIF highlights challenges facing US, France, UK and Japan, while OECD and IMF also voice global concerns

Three heavyweight international bodies have issued stark warnings about the risks of rising debt levels and soaring borrowing costs across large economies.

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Institute of Finance (IIF), the voice of global banking, on Wednesday highlighted the dangers of soaring interest rates on $365tn (£275tn) in global borrowing.

(Rough Trade)
Your favourite band’s favourite band unleash a thrilling and relentless 42 minutes of monstrous noise whose precise instrumental source always remains discomfitingly unclear

Gilla Band have attracted some impressive plaudits since announcing their fourth album this summer. A feature in Pitchfork heralding its arrival described them as “Ireland’s most influential band since My Bloody Valentine”. Should any readers feel this was a classic example of music journalism hyperbole, it was followed up with a succession of quotes from the Dublin quartet’s musical peers, all eager to attest to their importance, originality and impact. One of them, Selin Macieira-Boşgelmez – one half of Brighton-based punk duo Lambrini Girls – went so far as to say precisely the kind of thing about Gilla Band that people said about My Bloody Valentine 35 years ago: “They basically reinvented guitar music.”

Under the circumstances, there’s something faintly disappointing about the fact that Pugnello opens with a very prosaic and familiar sound indeed: that of someone striking a power chord on a distorted electric guitar. But then something disconcertingly odd happens. The power chord doesn’t fade away. It just … keeps going, for the best part of two and half minutes. That grinding drone underpins a track called The Angelus, punctuated by frantic bursts of warp-speed rhythm that would sound like drum’n’bass breakbeats were it not for the fact that they appear to be played live on a drum kit consisting entirely of snares. The drone is eventually replaced by a series of ferocious, shuddering bass explosions, overlaid with a sound that could, theoretically, be feedback, but most evokes a dial-up modem.

In the last 15 years, she has gone from respected actor to stratospheric, garlanded star. Now she is back on TV as a chic sleuth in a racy car – despite being terrible at guessing whodunnit

It is high summer and, while Lesley Manville may be suffering a bit with hay fever and the heat (“I’m so white, all I do is burn”), she doesn’t do wilting. Soon to head outside to tend to the ailing garden of her London home, she is enjoying a rare period of rest after six almost unbroken months of Oedipus on Broadway and then Les Liaisons Dangereuses at the National. She keeps, incidentally, the Tony she won for playing Jocasta in Oedipus on a shelf by the computer, “next to its friend, Larry Olivier” – an Olivier awarded for the same role.

“You don’t go into a job thinking about awards,” she says, before grinning conspiratorially. “Listen, you don’t say to an Olympian, ‘Oh, is it OK that you didn’t win?’ Yes, you like to win!”

A new Paramount+ series premiering Thursday turns pushy sports parents into glossy entertainment – with the children largely ushered off stage

Remember when pushy sports parents were deserving objects of our collective scorn? When Marv Marinovich and Jim Pierce were bywords for abusive fatherhood, Sarah Palin made the overbearing hockey mom a global punchline, and grim stories of pushy parents assaulting officials, kids and one another grabbed headlines and trained a harsh spotlight on youth sports? Well, the rebrand is in full swing.

Team Moms: Baseball is a glossy new reality series premiering Thursday that aims to recast the pushy sports parent as something well worth coveting, a sexy black hat with a designer label. From the makers of Love Island (ITV America), for Hollywood’s most rapacious studio (Paramount Skydance), with none other than basketball mom Kim Kardashian attached as executive producer, the Paramount+ series follows a cluster of parents whose sons attend Legendary Prep Academy – a Scottsdale, Arizona baseball hothouse with an intense focus on cultivating diamond gems. Anyone coming to this expecting genuine insights on a $40bn industry that’s now under siege from private equity, swallowing ever larger chunks of hard-earned family budgets along the way, should know up front: this is a closer cousin to Bravo’s Real Housewives franchise than ESPN’s 30 for 30.

This trip into the celeb couple’s Cheshire mansion is nowhere as real as they’d like you to believe. But their self-deprecation is hard not to enjoy

‘No one knows the real Rooneys,” says Coleen Rooney at the start of her family’s new reality-TV series, The Real Rooneys. “This is a side of us we’ve never shown before.” Coleen and her husband, ex-footballer Wayne, have had their personalities dissected in the tabloids every week for the past two decades; now we’re promised the truth. But how real can The Real Rooneys be?

There are two obvious problems here, the first being that the Rooneys’ lives feel like fiction: he was a generational sporting talent, a one-in-a-million player whose success has bought him and Coleen a ridiculous Cheshire mansion with a cinema, indoor pool and adjacent football pitch. To get back to the road you have to drive over a bridge across a lake. As we join them, Coleen is working out how to capitalise on a recent appearance on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!, while Wayne is plotting an uptick in his media appearances that he hopes will make him a regular on Match of the Day. Technically, the Rooneys exist on our Earth, but – as they both admit, recalling their working-class childhoods in Croxteth, Liverpool – they have left ordinary life behind.

Many of the original cast of this Cosby Show-spinoff are back (including Jada Pinkett-Smith, briefly). Its look at life on a black college campus has its sights set firmly on comedy

In the golden age of remaking old content and young-adult television, it was only a matter of time before a streamer got its hands on A Different World, the pioneering black sitcom that ran from 1987 to 1993 in the US. Set at a historically black college (one of a discrete group of US higher education institutions known as HBCUs), it covered issues ranging from HIV/Aids to date rape. It was a laughter-track-heavy affair that helped to pave the way for other series about upwardly mobile black Americans, among them The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Living Single. In any case – for reasons that will probably be abundantly clear – A Different World is an easier sell for a 2026 reboot than the programme it was an offshoot of: The Cosby Show.

This new version is still steeped in the world of its predecessor (A Different-ish World?), and even boasts many members of its cast – among them Jasmine Guy, Kadeem Hardison, Darryl M Bell and Cree Summer, with a cameo from Jada Pinkett Smith. The original series ended with Dwayne (Hardison) and a pregnant Whitley (Guy) preparing to move to Tokyo; now their daughter, Deborah (Maleah Joi Moon), is attending their alma mater. (Yes, if we were following real-world time, Deborah would be in her 30s, but – from experience – it would have probably been considerably less exciting to watch a series about Deborah indulging in such thirtysomething pursuits as planning a get-together with your friends eight weeks in advance, or realising your knees have started making a weird noise every time you stand up.)

This over-controlled adventure never takes a breath or a moment to let its characters come to life

Frantically and even stroboscopically over-energised, this big new movie from DreamWorks about best friends for ever seems to me another example of exhausting AI-type content production in animation. You could make the same argument against plenty of live-action films of course, but it is in animation that this kind of soulless blitzkrieg tends to predominate. Forgotten Island is over-controlled and over-determined, a movie that never, or hardly ever, takes its pedal from the metal, never takes a breath or a moment to let its characters come to life. At times it seems to be aping the world of Japanese anime, but without its sense of character or capacity for calm.

The story, weirdly reminiscent of The Hangover of all things, is set in the Philippines in the pre-social media 90s. Jo, voiced by R&B star HER, is a lonely and super-imaginative teen always in trouble at school; like Moana she has a wise grandma who guides her to her ancestral destiny and has captivated Jo with stories of her culture and identity – stories of the forgotten island of Nakali. Jo makes friends with similarly lonely Raissa (Liza Soberano) who like Jo is smart but with a much more focused sense of academic discipline.

Like many south Asians in the UK, he kept creativity separate from a corporate career. But after co-signs from dance music’s A-list, he’s releasing a defiant – and daringly titled – debut album

When Ahad Elley was 12, his family moved from Karachi to the UK. Quickly, he discovered his Pakistani identity was the basis of a slur. “Growing up in Pakistan, I never knew that was a bad word, because why would it be? The word ‘pak’ means clean, it has no negative connotations.” Elley’s childhood response was to disconnect from his heritage, and what followed was “potentially shrinking or hiding parts of myself to fit into society”. It’s likely a familiar story for many diasporic south Asians who, at some point, have felt the call to assimilate.

Twenty years later, Elley is better known as Ahadadream, an integral architect of the current British south Asian music scene, as well as a DJ, producer, label head, A&R and promoter shining a light on dance music from around the world. His tracks are favourites in sets by A-list dance artists such as Fred Again, Caribou, Peggy Gou and Four Tet, and with the release of his debut album, P★KI (pronounced “pee-star-kay-eye”) Elley’s star is set to rise further.

LSO St Luke’s, London
Gabriel Kahane’s whimsical song cycle about grief, divorce and death brings irresistible melodies and moments of comic brilliance to the virtuoso US vocal ensemble

Between having a clarinet concerto at the Proms and a duo project with violinist Pekka Kuusisto this autumn, the singer, songwriter and composer Gabriel Kahane is touring with Roomful of Teeth, the virtuoso US vocal ensemble whose founding members include Caroline Shaw.

Elevator Songs, which he wrote for them in 2023, is a darkly whimsical piece somewhere between a concept pop album and a song cycle. We are in a wormhole of a hotel, where the elevator – cue chimes – takes us to what seem like parallel worlds. Kahane’s songs deal deftly with grief, divorce and death, but within his style – tuneful, melancholic, full of twisty harmonies – it was the comedic ones that hit most immediately here.

The playwright’s daughter found Catch Me Who Can after her mother’s death. Now it has become a compelling audio drama with Toby Jones and Rita Tushingham

Was Shelagh Delaney a one-hit wonder? Absolutely not. Aside from A Taste of Honey which, in the words of Dominic Dromgoole, “has a rock-solid heart and the gleam of the natural”, she wrote the screenplays for the films Charlie Bubbles and Dance With a Stranger, TV series including The House That Jack Built and several radio plays. But now a 30-minute piece, Catch Me Who Can, has come to light, been released as an audio drama and turns out to be a little gem.

Its origins are fascinating. It deals with a teenage truant and was discovered by Delaney’s daughter, Charlotte, after her mother’s death in 2011. But why did it lay hidden for so long? According to Charlotte, who has adapted it for audio: “It imagines my last few hours on the lam having run away from home and school when I was 14 in 1978. I was gone for three days and two nights. I’d suggest it’s a racing certainty that the reason nothing has ever been heard of it is that it’s about me and my mum had rules about that kind of thing.”

Royal Festival Hall, London
Marin Alsop, the Philharmonia and three outstanding choirs gave the London premiere of Wolfe’s work about the deaths of 146 workers in a New York garment factory fire in 1911

On Saturday 25 March, 1911, Greenwich Village’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory caught fire. One hundred and forty-six garment workers – mostly recent Jewish and Italian immigrant women – died, many prevented from escaping the flames by stairwells and exits locked by the management.

The disaster is the catalyst for Pulitzer-winning composer Julia Wolfe’s 2019 multimedia oratorio Fire in My Mouth: the third in her series of large-scale works drawing on the history of the American worker, and a punchy opener to the Southbank Centre’s autumn season.

The earl on his globally lauded eulogy for Diana, King Charles’s sausage fingers and toxic Raine, topped off with a lavish sprinkling of adverbs

Cheers were heard up and down the land. Halley’s comet made an unscheduled appearance in the ethereal night sky. In very heaven, angelic choirs rang out. A saviour had been born. A light to lighten the world. But enough about me. For this paragraph at least.

In my universally acclaimed funeral address, I aimed to speak for my sister. The real Diana. For only I truly knew her. She had the heart of a lion. And I had a glut of cliches. Yet when Diana had swept so triumphantly into the arena of royal life, I was but a callow youth awash with hormones and gripped by the self-centredness of adolescence. Nothing much has changed. Yet I know, with all my heart, that Diana would have wanted me to tell our story.

Is the price of stability necessarily the loss of freedom? Two possible future worlds are linked in the new novel from the author of Station Eleven

In her second novel, 2009’s The Singer’s Gun, Emily St John Mandel tells the story of Anton Waker, a young man desperate to make a break from his criminal family. His plans are thwarted by his cousin Ari, whose hard-nosed talent for operating outside the law has become a way of life. A decade later in The Glass Hotel, a painting called Swan Dive that hangs in the lobby of the luxury retreat stands as a symbol of escape from a trap that is closing. You will not need to have read either of these earlier novels to enjoy Mandel’s seventh, Exit Party, though their loose intertwining of narrative threads will provide extra pleasure and a sense of homecoming for those who have. It is also interesting to observe Mandel’s evolution from a writer of quirky tales of offbeat protagonists to a novelist whose world-spanning, politically resonant narratives now attract a wide and devoted following.

Exit Party begins five years into our future, in 2031. Ari Waker has just come out of prison after serving an 18-year sentence for the attempted murder by contract killing of her cousin Anton. Much has changed while she has been inside: a second civil war has devastated lives and blighted the economy, and the United States as such has ceased to exist.

This year’s shortlist for the Booker prize was announced last night. Our books editors answered your questions about the contenders, the judges and literary fiction

Kohtao says: Can’t believe the two best books – Switzy and Shadow of the Object - were cut. Huge shame as they really added something different to the range.

Liese: I was sad not to see Switzy on the shortlist too. I am a big fan of Emma Cline’s writing and felt that it did something really interesting. I am sure that, as always, there were plenty of arguments and some horse-trading among the judges to arrive at this list – which does still include ambitious and experimental work such as The Disappearers (Marlon James) and one of my other faves, the brilliantly weird Black Bag.

Charlotte: It’s interesting that even Jarvis Cocker, one of this year’s judges, said that he found the male dominance of the list “quite surprising, because generally speaking the male-written books weren’t as good as the ones written by women”. And it’s also surprising in the light of the recent debate around the lack of contemporary novels written by men – there was even a small press, Conduit Books, established last year to focus on new male writers. So perhaps we could say that’s succeeded! But in fact, a lot of the men on the list are very long established, and there are two previous winners among them – Marlon James and Douglas Stuart.

I would say that although the perspectives are predominantly male, they’re not necessarily similar in other ways – they encompass different sexualities, and as you say, one isn’t gendered at all (funnily enough, I hadn’t read it that way, but others on the desk did and that’s obviously how it was intended). It’s interesting that we have a female author, Elizabeth Strout, writing from a male perspective, and a male author, M John Harrison, writing from a female perspective. Though Harrison’s novel isn’t entirely from Marnie’s perspective, and for me there are many other themes that jump out from these books, beyond masculinity – anxiety about the world and the future, sexuality, history, oppression. As a shortlist, it seems pretty varied to me, and I didn’t find that I missed a female perspective when I was reading these books.

Returning with his first-ever adult novel, the bestselling author reflects on fame, YouTube and his brother’s AI controversy

By his mid-30s, John Green had done pretty well for himself. His debut novel, Looking for Alaska, had won a prestigious award for young adult literature. He and his brother, Hank, had launched a popular YouTube channel, where they regularly posted videos about their lives. With their combined incomes, Green and his wife were able to cobble together a living, buying a house and starting a family in Indianapolis.

And then, in 2012, he published The Fault in Our Stars.

They offer advice, referee card games and manage players’ tantrums – we caught up with some of the volunteer profs who keep the competitive game going at this year’s world championships

Professors may be the most revered characters in the fictional world of Pokémon (apart from perhaps the Gym Leaders). In Pokémon Red and Blue, Professor Oak greets the player in a pixelated lab coat, and later provides trainers with their first battle partner; since then, each successive generation of games has introduced another professor to aid and guide trainers through their journeys. If you’ve ever played a Pokémon game, they are often the first people that you meet, apart from your in-game mom.

But you may not know that there are also real-world Pokémon professors – volunteers who help organise the game’s competitive communities around the world. Instead of lab coats, they can be seen at events wearing red Pikachu-mascot shirts labelled “staff”, paired with black trousers and shoes.

From highlighted ledges to characters telling you what to do, blockbuster games are increasingly taking the challenge out of playing – and players are pushing back

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Marvel’s Wolverine, the latest action game from Sony’s stable of expensive blockbuster-factory studios, has had an unfortunate launch. Reviews were decent, if not stellar, but a series of viral video clips from reviewers and streamers have made it the scapegoat for a patronising flavour of game design that gamers have hated for decades. This clip, from Skill Up’s review, shows the player entering a beautiful wintry landscape before being overwhelmed by visual cues telling them what they’re supposed to be doing there. Sonar pulses point you in the direction of objectives. Targets – which, it bears emphasising, are shaped like targets – get an extra reflective visual effect so you know you’re supposed to pay attention to them. A trail shows you not just where to go, but where the level’s sole hidden collectible is.

It is hand-holding to the point of parody. Indeed, it reminded me of the sniggersome Mario in Unreal Engine satirical videos that makes the social media rounds every few months (“A mushroom? I should take a look at this”). Skill Up’s clip has been followed by hundreds of others, gleefully ripping into Wolverine with ironic savagery. In one much-copied clip, a streamer simply lays down his controller during a motorbike chase sequence and watches as Wolverine speeds on regardless, bouncing off the scenery as the game plays itself.

PlayStation 5 (version played), PC; Screen Burn
Tragedy, and an apocalyptic fog, befall a fishing community. It is up to outsider Simon to offer some kind of closure

You spend a considerable portion of Silent Hill: Townfall in a kind of foetal position, cowering behind objects that will be eerily familiar to anyone who lived in the UK during the 1990s. Cars seem to be modelled on the era’s boxy Volkswagen Golfs; logos adorning phone boxes should narrowly escape the attention of copyright lawyers at BT Group. (For millennials, the deja vu will likely intensify the horror, as if stepping back into a childhood nightmare.) Simon, the nerdy, unassuming star of the game, pokes his head around corners to catch a glimpse of the demonic entities that wish to maim him, before shrinking back down again with a downwards motion of the analogue stick. In such moments, it’s easy to imagine him wrapping his arms around his knees, clasping his eyes shut and wishing himself away from this place.

The game’s setting, St Amelia, is based on the fishing communities of the East Neuk of Fife. The terror lurking here is wonderfully specific: absent lairds, island poverty, an oil-drilling corporation. Anguished beasts lumber down quaint streets lined with sandstone houses and fluttering bunting. This venerable horror series may have shifted to Scotland, yet we remain firmly in classic Silent Hill territory – weather and all. St Amelia finds itself suffused in supernatural fog and the vast majority of its inhabitants have vanished following some kind of mass tragedy. The artful, evocative presentation is such that you can almost taste the in-game air, the briny seaside tang diluted by rainy mist.

PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC; Remedy
A surprisingly conventional game from a famously weird developer, this sequel to 2019’s Control is accomplished but safe

This is an arthouse action game from Finnish developer Remedy, masters of exactly this type of thing. It’s a sequel, however, so not only must it clear the high bar that its strikingly distinctive predecessor has set – it must also ideally arrive with a bushel of new ideas. There are clear and valuable strengths here in character progression and the lustrous presentation of its paranormal world, but Resonant doesn’t feel as enjoyably recondite or expansive in its influences as 2019’s Control did. As you wander New York brandishing supernatural abilities against glowing orange foes, the sad sense creeps in that you might be playing any number of games.

As paranormal event survivor Jesse Faden, your journey through the original Control was like a sequence of playable Twilight Zone episodes, battling prosaic household objects with supernatural properties that teased and twisted reality inside an endlessly fascinating supernatural government bureau called the Oldest House. You’d navigate architecturally impossible spaces bridging the subconscious and the bricks-and-mortar world, in order to defeat a malevolent fridge. That’s broadly true again in Resonant, albeit with diminishing returns. This time you’re playing as Jesse’s brother Dylan, waking up after years of containment in the Oldest House to find its contents have escaped into downtown Manhattan. So you head out of the interesting place, and into a setting you’ve explored before in Marvel’s Spider-Man, The Division, Max Payne, and others ad infinitum.

The actor we know as Dustin was a ‘theatre kid’ from age 11. Now he’s starring in a new staging of Rent. He discusses why the musical is as relevant as ever – and what it’s like being a child star in the internet age

Rent is a study in both joy and despair. The 90s rock opera spawned the kinds of irrepressible musical numbers – Seasons of Love, Take Me Or Leave Me – that would become Broadway standards, mastered and massacred in choir auditions and high schools across the world. Jonathan Larson’s self-described attempt “to bring musical theatre to the MTV generation” is also a capitalist critique: a drama about a bohemian coterie of penniless creatives sticking it to the man, all while their circle is ravaged by HIV and Aids. It still feels highly relevant today; see: What You Own – sample lyric “And when you’re living in America / At the end of the millennium / You’re what you own”.

Gaten Matarazzo says “that song may arguably be more impactful now than in 1996, considering what we know about what American media and world media would become, and our access to constant mind-numbing noise …” This autumn, he makes his West End debut as Mark, the struggling film-maker who chronicles the lives of his friends in New York’s East Village, and serves as the show’s de facto narrator.

In the choreographers’ new work, virtuosic movement and some green-screen magic unfurl the theatricality of high-stakes television interviews

It appears the interviewer has got him on the ropes. “For the record, I did not take part in a pagan ceremony with minor members of the royal family in which we daubed ourselves in paint,” states the beleaguered politician, caught outside Buckingham Palace with his flies undone and forced to defend himself. This is a fabrication, of course – I’m watching the scene play out in an east London dance studio – but it doesn’t feel miles away from something that could be true. And how do we know what’s the truth anyway? That’s the question in Deepfake, the latest piece from award-winning dance duo Jessica Wright and Morgann Runacre-Temple, AKA Jess and Morgs.

The pair tell modern stories with ambitious tech – film and live camera work – and often techy themes, too. “We’ve always been drawn to where there’s a crossover between the theme and the form,” says Runacre-Temple. “What gets us excited is seeing the contemporary world reflected back.” The pair scored a massive hit with their 2022 piece Coppélia, made for Scottish Ballet, which turned a twee 19th-century ballet about a dancing doll into a cautionary tale of AI automatons and unrestrained tech bro egos. Definitely not one-hit wonders, earlier this year they made their debut at the highly esteemed Paris Opera Ballet.

New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme
Cacophonous and comedic staging sees an experienced, older duo engage in an enthusiastic liaison rather than a rebellious first romance

As in any production of Shakespeare’s tragedy of star-crossed lovers, the nurse can tell Juliet’s age “unto an hour”. In this collaboration between the New Vic and Not Too Tame, however, that age is older than most. The Capulets’ upcoming party – a barrage of Balearic beats around a swimming pool with Tybalt (Patrick Knowles) on the decks – will mark her 40th birthday.

Played by Natalie Casey, Juliet gets ready to the sounds of a chamber orchestra playing Like a Virgin. If you believe the nurse (Louise Haggerty), she is anything but.

At New Vic, Newcastle-under-Lyme, until 10 October

Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
Joe Hill-Gibbins’ claustrophobic staging of Bartók’s opera of dark symbolism is paired with his brand new production of Stravinsky’s psychological drama, with Peter Hoare superb as the tragic hero

Welsh National Opera might be marking its 80th year, but any feelgood factor is decidedly absent from their season-opener. Bartók’s only opera and Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio form a challenging double-bill: serial murders, patricide and incest, blood and more blood, but gripping performances made this a powerful experience.

Béla Balázs’s libretto for Bluebeard’s Castle transformed the Perrault fairytale and its happy ending into an intense psychological drama: the castle with its weeping walls and seven locked doors a metaphor for the secret inner workings of the male psyche, and Judith, Bluebeard’s new wife, his fourth, the archetypal woman, too curious for her own good.

Duo had US hits with their cover of Always Something There to Remind Me as well as Promises, Promises and more

Pete Byrne, the frontman of British new wave group Naked Eyes who carried them to repeated chart successes in the US, has died aged 74.

The news was announced on the band’s website and social media on Wednesday, stating that Byrne died peacefully in Los Angeles on 14 September after a brief illness.

From émigré roots to a titan of modern cinema, penning classics such as Double Indemnity, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, a new retrospective celebrates the father of film noir’s incredible career

Like all survivors, Billy Wilder never forgot where he came from or what he had left behind. He was born at the start of the 20th century in Austria-Hungary and died at the start of the 21st in California, the inscription on his gravestone a nod to his most famous line: “I’m a writer but then nobody’s perfect.” Wilder, though, had a habit of of making flawless films throughout his career, a point proved by Almost Perfect, a comprehensive retrospective of his work, running at the BFI Southbank from 19 October until the end of the year.

Wilder was an inveterate self-mythologiser, a film-maker with a brand long before there were opportunities for promotion through Instagram accounts and chicken shop dates. He told a story of living in Berlin during his fledgling years in show business and being kept awake all night by “a toilet that was on the blink”.

Mercury prize-winner reveals ‘quite severe’ bleed was why he’d missed support slots with Mumford & Sons this year

The British singer-songwriter Michael Kiwanuka has said he has suffered a stroke and faces a “long tough journey” on the road to recovery.

The 39-year-old singer from London, whose hits include Cold Little Heart and Home Again, said the “quite severe” bleed in his brain was the reason he had missed some tour dates this year when he was due to support Mumford & Sons, and that the stroke had been brought on by high blood pressure.

Making vast versions of sardine tins and fishing lures, the Dutch sculptor explains how she imbues disposable objects with autonomy and meaning

Midway through my conversation with Magali Reus, we are interrupted by a courier. They’ve arrived at the artist’s studio to deliver an important package – one of the final components of a sculpture being finalised for Reus’s show Swimming By Night at the Perimeter in London.

The studio is filled with such sculptures, all in various stages of completion. Reus likes to take everyday, often disposable, items – pizza boxes and sardine tins among them – and recreate them on a larger-than-life scale. One of them – vast looming fish hook lures made to look like uncanny cupcake cases or severed skeletal limbs – looms nearby, resting against a studio wall.

Chore jackets and loose-fit trousers nod to ‘nonconformist glamour’ of Amelia Earhart and other pioneers

The Max Mara catwalk at Milan fashion week had well-cut coats, sturdy block-heeled boots, crisp white shirts and capacious suede handbags. What it quite deliberately did not have was shock value. “I hope everyone watching this show can recognise something of themselves in what they see,” said Ian Griffiths, the British designer who has been at this Italian house since 1987. “I think that’s really important. Without being critical of other brands or designers, so much of fashion alienates people and makes them feel that they aren’t good enough or thin enough or young enough to wear what’s being represented.”

Trousers were pleated and roomy, skirts long enough to be elegant but not long enough to trip you up. In shades of sand and chalk, grey and black, every piece was designed to work with everything else, and to blend into an existing wardrobe. The styling gestures – a popped collar here, a knotted belt there – stopped short of gimmick. The models could have walked off the runway and on to the Milan street – which, Griffiths said backstage, was the point. “The catwalk show is only the prelude to what to me is the real presentation, which is when I see women walking down the street in my clothes.”

The new wearables come at a time of uncertainty for smart glasses, which are facing backlash over privacy concerns

Meta announced an advanced new set of virtual reality glasses and a collection of new smart glasses Wednesday, including an audio-only version without a camera.

At the firm’s Meta Connect conference in Menlo Park, California, executives said the new Ray-Ban Meta models set new standards for battery life and weight. They said the new glasses with screens in the lenses squeeze capabilities previously reserved for a full headset into a light set of spectacles that rest on a user’s ears.

Whether it’s streamlining shoes or being strict with toiletries, we asked the experts for the home organisation hacks they swear by

• How to get rid of household clutter – without sending it to landfill

Few things conjure a sense of achievement quite like a clearout or bringing order to that cupboard of doom you’ve been ignoring for months. But how best to tackle this beast of a job?

To help you make a start, we asked professional organisers and declutterers for their tips and tricks, as well as the products they recommend to help streamline the areas everyone struggles with. From never buying round storage containers to getting the kids to help tidy up, these are the solutions they swear by.

A new smartphone needn’t cost a fortune. From Samsung, Google, Apple and more, these are the lower-cost models we rate most – and how to buy a refurbished handset

• How to make your smartphone last longer

Buying a flagship phone in 2026 makes little sense unless you’re really going to use all the features at hand. By comparison, the budget smartphone market has come on leaps and bounds in the past few years, and you can now get most of the features you’d want, including a high-quality OLED screen and a well-performing chipset, all for a reasonable price.

There’s more choice than ever for shoppers who don’t want to spend too much on their next upgrade, but many models simply aren’t worth your time. That’s where this guide comes into play. I’ve tested the latest models and pinpointed the nine best budget phones available right now – all you have to do is pick the one that best suits your needs.

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food, and the basic they scrimp on? The retired diver talks scrapbooking, cheap chargers, and trouser fails with the Filter

• How I Shop with Laura Jackson

Tom Daley OBE is a retired professional diver who has won five Olympic medals, including gold at Tokyo 2020. Since retiring from competitive diving, he has hosted Channel 4’s Game of Wool: Britain’s Best Knitter, while continuing to share his passion for knitting and crafts through his Made With Love brand and YouTube channel. He is married to US screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, and the pair have two children.

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Readers and the Filter team share the best buys they still treasure, from charity-shop gems to Vinted bargains. Plus, the fashion experts’ guide to women’s basics

We love secondhand shopping here on the Filter – whether it’s Second Hand September or not. You can unearth one-off, affordable pieces, and feel good about not adding overconsumption to your list of things to worry about. So to inspire us, we asked you for your best-ever preloved finds, whether that’s furniture or fashion or more (and added a few of our own, too).

“An Ercol daybed I bought on eBay for £50, in need of some TLC,” reader Fiona told us. “Stripped, re-webbed and with a new cushion, it is now a thing of beauty and very comfortable.”

The weather is in transition, so here are some dishes to bridge the gap between crisp salads and hearty stews

• Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

The weather in London can’t quite make up its mind. You leave the house in the morning and immediately wish you’d brought gloves, but by lunchtime you’re carrying your jacket under your arm, and by dinner you’re closing the windows again. Summer hasn’t exactly gone, but winter has started sending little reminders that it knows where we live.

We love this time of year. The air feels fresh from the occasional shower, the days are still long enough to make something of, the light is perhaps the most beautiful it will be all year, and, for cycling, it is perfect. There are days when London seems to contain two seasons at once: summer in a sunny spot at lunchtime, winter the moment the sun disappears.

The pastry chef gives autumn’s best ingredients a golden glow-up

I have come to adore what the British autumn brings: beautiful apples, pumpkins, plums and quince galore. These pies not only sing the praises of this bounty, but put them front and centre. I also use ingredients such as piloncillo (a Mexican raw cane sugar), tonka bean (which adds a beautiful fig-leaf flavour) and buckwheat flour (for a wonderfully nutty taste). These aren’t always easy to find, but they are worth the extra effort, taking these bakes to the next level.

A well-seasoned and comforting meal to ease you into the autumn months

At this time of year, baked tomatoes stuffed with rice and surrounded by a packing-chip sea of potatoes are typical all over central and southern Italy, and in many other places besides. So much so that when I see a tray of those wrinkled red caps in a bakery or canteen-like tavola calda (literally, “hot table”), it doesn’t cross my mind that the hollowed-out tomatoes underneath might be filled with something other than rice. It was only when the woman behind the counter was wrapping my two portions of cannelloni and four slices of margherita pizza that another person’s order alerted me to the fact that these tomatoes were in fact filled with breadcrumbs, chickpeas, sausage, cheese and herbs. Suddenly, the tomatoes were the most appealing item behind the steamed-up glass, and the only thing I could want. We were in Tavola Calda in Latina, just south of Rome, during the lunchtime rush, which is why I didn’t feel able to add to my order, but then I was dissatisfied with my lunch.

But dissatisfaction gave me a reason to pull Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food from the shelf, for her chapter dedicated to stuffed vegetables, which draws inspiration from Turkish, Uzbekistani, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Greek, Egyptian, Persian, Syrian, Lebanese, Saudi Arabian and north African recipes. Having noted that almost any vegetable can be stuffed, Roden adds that the most common filling for a hollowed-out vegetable is a well-seasoned mix of chopped onion, minced meat, rice, chopped parsley, and maybe chopped tomato; and she then goes on to give seven filling variations – some with rice, some with meat (no pork), and with various herbs and spices. She also provides a not disappointing filling including chickpeas, which is what I have adapted, also with inspiration from the busy Tavola Calda, for this week’s recipe.

Move over ready salted, salt and vinegar and cheese and onion. Gourmet crisps are everywhere, but which are actually worth trying?

It seems the era of the “holy trinity of flavours” – ready salted, salt and vinegar, cheese and onion – is over. Gourmet crisps are everywhere. Caviar and truffle flavours are on corner-shop shelves, while supermarket brands now include everything from glazed meats to blue cheese. We tasted 100 of the strangest crisp options available to find out which are worth coming back to and which should have stayed in the test kitchen.

100. Grouse and whinberry, Taste of Game
For someone who has tasted neither grouse nor whinberry before, after eating these crisps I never want to. Smelling as meaty as a butcher’s but tasting sweet, this is truly the worst of all worlds.
Taste: 0/10, texture: 2/10, novelty: 10/10

Financial pressures suspected to be behind figures showing failed marriages are lasting longer in England and Wales

Couples are putting off divorce because of the cost of living crisis, lawyers have said, after figures showed the average length of a marriage ending in divorce in England and Wales reached a record high last year.

The Office of National Statistics (ONS) released figures on Wednesday showing that the average marriage ending in divorce in 2025 lasted for 13 years. This is the longest since records began in 1963 and up from a record low of 8.9 years in 1985.

At 51, I want many more years of a healthy, happy sex life. So I decided to compile my own guide

When I got divorced after 28 years of monogamy, I was excited to be having sex again, but had concerns. I was 48, and the last time I’d been single was in the 90s; terrified of pregnancy and hyperconscious of HIV/Aids, I hadn’t considered condomless intercourse an option back then.

Now, at 51, I’ve been wondering how important barrier protection is for me. Though I haven’t hit menopause, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) says that “by 45 getting pregnant naturally is unlikely”, and HIV/Aids prevention and treatment have improved significantly in the last three decades.

A Reform politician and an NHS worker had different takes on Nigel Farage, but could they agree on renewable energy or tax policies?

Chris, 42, London

Occupation Electrical supervisor of the maintenance team at an NHS hospital

Rory left the monastery after feeling lonely; with Orla, herself a Catholic, he’s been making up for lost time

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

We had sex after a week. I remember thinking afterwards wow, everything has changed

A First Saver account was set up by my mother when the children were born which we planned to use to fund them through university

My mother set up NatWest First Saver accounts for my children when they were born. The accounts are held in trust for when they turn 18 and my parents have paid into them monthly to help fund them through university.

My mother is now in the final stages of Alzheimer’s and I have registered financial power of attorney for her.

In her weekly column for the Guardian, Anna Tims solves readers consumer problems – ranging from the devastating to the ridiculous. She answered your questions on AI chat bots, consumer protection and how companies keep getting away with terrible customer service

TLouis1990 asks: What are your tips for getting the best out of customer service? Are there mistakes we all make that make issues worse?

Anna: I like your question; too often we focus on what customer service agents owe us rather than vice versa. Remain calm and polite is my top tip. That’s not always easy, especially when you feel you are being messed about, but it’s essential. Temper and rudeness is not only unfair on call centre staff, it can backfire on you. Companies may refuse to deal with abusive customers. Occasionally, when I’ve contacted a press office about a reader’s complaint, I’ve been so horrified by transcripts of their treatment of agents that I’ve dropped the case.

When you complain, include all relevant information such as booking references, your address, screenshots of relevant bills or letters to save to-ing and fro-ing. You basically want to ensure that they can identify you quickly on their system and that they have evidence of the problem. If you’re phoning, have all that information at your side. Make a note of who you spoke to and when in case you have to follow up. And be reasonable in terms of timescales and redress. Demands for £500 in compensation when you report a burned Deliveroo may stop you being taken seriously.

Anna: Thank you for your thank you! If you mean companies I’ve dealt with professionally, there was a now defunct utilities company who offered a reader a spa day to help her recover from the stress its blunderings had caused her. Bagcraft, a luggage store in Essex is a stand-out. A customer had ordered two suitcases for a New Year’s holiday. One of them arrived from the manufacturer with a fault. The store owner reordered it and, worried that it would not reach the customer in time, set off the day after Boxing Day on a 820 mile round trip to deliver the cases in person.

Readers often write in to praise Le Creuset for its no-quibble lifetime guarantee which has resurrected the most ancient of steelware. And speaking as a customer, I was amazed when the online plant supplier Primrose informed me that part of my order was unavailable, sent a generous voucher unbidden as an apology and answered my subsequent questions about suitable alternative plants with prompt, personalised responses. And no, they didn’t know I was a journalist!

People in the UK are more interested in oral health than ever - and you can now buy prebiotic toothpastes and brushes that cost up to £600. Yet we remain in the midst of a serious dental crisis

A December 1969 report from the consumer magazine Which? explored a relatively new gadget that, it predicted, many people would be giving as Christmas presents: the electric toothbrush. For those who hadn’t yet seen one, the magazine described it as “not that much different in principle from an ordinary brush – you have a stick with a brush on the end. The difference is that an electric one moves the brush head for you”. Progress indeed.

Nearly six decades on, electric toothbrushes can do a lot more than merely jiggle, offering multiple speeds and movement sensors for real-time tracking of where you’ve brushed – some even promise gum-massage or tongue-cleaning modes. Prices range from about £25 for a basic Oral B model to £599.99 for a Philips Sonicare model that gives “smart coverage feedback”. The latest super-toothbrush – a mere £419.99 – features a camera and a built-in water jet to clean between teeth, using AI to identify gaps. Created by Dyson, it’s still, essentially, a stick with a brush on the end (although there is another toothbrush on the market that’s shaped like a mouthguard, with individual brushes, that claims to clean your teeth in 20 seconds).

A 90-minute wait on a motorway hard shoulder was terrifying with lorries thundering past

My partner and I were among a group of passengers left stranded for 90 minutes on a motorway hard shoulder after our coach driver was arrested for suspected drug driving.

We had boarded the Cambridge to Brighton Flixbus service at Gatwick. The coach was an hour late, was visibly damaged on the outside and the driver set off without closing the luggage hatch.

It’s natural to want to soothe eye irritation, but mishandling could lead to more problems, experts warn. We asked them for advice on how to deal with it properly

It may feel like a gritty, annoying sensation, or a sharp pain. Either way, you may have the same problem: something is stuck in your eye and needs to come out.

Addressing the situation incorrectly can lead to bigger issues such as infection, scarring, an ulcer or corneal scratches, which are abrasions on the clear covering of your eye. Ignoring the dilemma can lead to similar consequences.

A growing number of men, including singers Shaggy and Harry Styles, are taking up pilates. When I realised I could no longer touch my toes, I decided to try it out

I realised something needed to change when I nearly toppled over trying to tie my shoelaces. I was on a busy high street, with people rushing past holding shopping bags, when I saw my open shoelace spooled on the ground. I bent down to deal with it and felt gravity move against me. Only a quick flail of my arms stopped me from faceplanting. When I raised myself back upright, I felt a sharp pain in my lower back. This can’t be right, I thought.

Bracing my foot on a bin to finally fix my shoelace, it dawned on me. I’d become rusty. My core strength was nonexistent, as was my flexibility. Years behind a desk had taken a toll, not helped by an after-work routine of watching TV or playing video games on the sofa. But after getting home and doing some research (yes, from my sofa), I found a potential remedy: pilates.

Test using urine and vaginal fluid samples raises hopes thousands of lower-risk women could be spared internal ultrasounds and hysteroscopies

Doctors have developed a simple test that could help rule out womb cancer in women who experience bleeding after menopause.

The approach has the potential to transform care for thousands of women each year and spare them from invasive and uncomfortable tests that can also be costly for healthcare systems.

As diet trends proliferate on social media, it can be hard to work out which are backed by science and which should be ignored. From paleo to keto, raw food to intermittent fasting, each attracts a tribe of ardent followers. Now Daniel Lieberman, professor of biological sciences at Harvard University, has written a book to try to cut through the noise. In Fed Up, he uses his background as an evolutionary anthropologist to scrutinise the evidence, turning himself into a guinea pig in the process and trying various diets. In this podcast, he tells Ian Sample which one has remained part of his routine

The push to buy lasting, sustainable clothes is a good thing, but every wardrobe need a bit of mischief

I do hope you are wearing your zebra stripe trousers today. Anyone who is anyone is wearing zebra stripes this month, you know. If you haven’t yet got with the programme, I suggest you nip to the shops and snap some up before they are all gone. It would be mortifying to be the last one without a pair. Hurry!

Only teasing. Fashion doesn’t work like that any more. The days when people like me bullied everyone else into wearing banana yellow one season and puffball sleeves the next are over. Looking trendy is over. Timeless chic is the only show in town. Peacocking has been phased out in favour of understatement and personal style.

Milan show full of diaphanous dresses and visible bras celebrates ‘incredible feminist’ of the 1970s, Raffaella Carrà

Maria Grazia Chiuri has been having more fun with clothes since she decamped from Paris back to her native Rome to work at Fendi. “I have less of a uniform these days. I think it is because being back here makes me feel young again. I’m not sure my daughter appreciates [this attitude]! But I don’t care,” she said at a preview before her Milan fashion week show.

Not that Chiuri doesn’t approach her work as a designer seriously. She described her second ready-to-wear season at Fendi not as a show, or a collection, but as “the second part of the project I am working on for them”.

Stop ‘pushing through the pain’ or ceaselessly searching for the ‘right retinol’ – there are some great alternatives

Anyone with an internet connection will no doubt have heard that retinoids – a group of vitamin A-based compounds – are the most evidenced and effective ingredients in treating the visible signs of skin ageing. Message received loud and clear. But what often goes unheard are the voices of many beauty consumers who have found that they simply cannot use them. All too often, I see experts online telling those complaining of discomfort, unremitting dryness, persistent redness, stinging or angry reactions that they just need to “find the right retinol” or simply “push through” the pain barrier. But I will die on this hill: not everyone can use retinoids, and they can still achieve great results without them.

If I don’t convince you, believe my esteemed consultant, dermatologist Dr Justine Hextall (a woman I respect and trust so completely that I have entrusted her with my children’s skin health), because she agrees. While Hextall, as any good derm would, prescribes retinoids on a daily basis, she also sees patients for whom there is a more appropriate, kinder pathway. “While retinoids are effective, they can be difficult to tolerate and may not be used consistently in those with sensitive skin,” she says. “Consistency is the key in skincare.”

The star’s rise from Ramsay Street to global superstar is the subject of a new book. It’s a journey that has cleverly harnessed the power of fashion to transform, subvert – and shock

On 20 December 1989, Kylie Minogue first harnessed the power of fashion. Attending the Australian premiere of her film The Delinquents, she wore a custom sequined noughts-and-crosses minidress by Australian designers Morrissey Edmiston and a cropped blond wig. She also arrived with a new accessory: a rock star boyfriend in the shape of Michael Hutchence from INXS.

Before then, there’d been her Neighbours character Charlene’s peak-80s silk taffeta and lace wedding dress, and Kylie the pop star on the cover of her first album, in 1988, wearing a topless hat showing off cascading curls. But that had been fashion forced on her, at a time when she had no say in her image.

Under the Finnish capital lies a world of swimming pools, go-karting tracks, playgrounds – and even an art gallery

The moon is an impostor. Swimming backstroke beneath its surface, I look up at craggy hollows in close relief. White rock undulates in all directions, a forest of peaks rising next to a desert of craters. Every time I trick myself into thinking I’m somewhere celestial, the sound of children splashing brings me back to earth.

This is no lunar landscape but Helsinki’s underground swimming hall, excavated from granite bedrock and officially opened in 1993. These days, Itäkeskus uimahalli is one of the Finnish capital’s most visited leisure facilities, welcoming 400,000 people a year. Local people mingle with tourists, I will discover, during a week exploring Helsinki’s subterranean metropolis.

This once industrial area has been transformed into a vibrant artistic hub with a thriving food and drink scene

Located just north of the Centrale train station, Bolognina neighbourhood is more than just a Little Bologna. It is a completely different world from the medieval maze of palaces, churches and towers that define the city’s “Centro Storico”, which is increasingly filled with crowds of tourists as Bologna joins the big league of Italian getaway destinations.

A long-distance walking route in the south of France devised by the celebrated land artist offers intrepid hikers an opportunity to immerse themselves in nature and art

At 69, I had never hiked with a backpack and I had no idea what land art was. Nonetheless, when my friend Jackie, a nature documentary film-maker, invited me to join her and her friends Wendy and Sasha on a hiking trip to Refuges d’Art in the mountainous countryside of Haute-Provence, I said a resounding “yes”. We would be sleeping alongside sculptures by the renowned land artist Andy Goldsworthy.

First, I watch Rivers and Tides, a documentary on Goldsworthy’s work, and discover he has built exquisite ice sculptures and stone cairns in my own country, Canada. His work seems to speak to an older part of the soul. Then, I start walking up hills, gradually adding weights to my backpack until I can comfortably carry 9kg (20lb).

The Alpe Adria loop is an eight-day walking trail that crisscrosses borders, taking in dramatic peaks, glorious meadows and charming places to stay

‘Achtung! Staatsgrenze!” OK, the signpost marking the “state border” didn’t have exclamation marks but, with its no-nonsense Prussian font, it did feel quite shouty. The only thing was, no one on the Feistritzer Alm – a peaceful sweep of Alpine pasture at the meeting of Austria and Italy – was paying any attention to it at all.

Hikers hiked straight past. Mountain bikers used it to prop up their cycles. Cows grazed willy-nilly. And the patrons of the Schutzhütte Oisternig enjoyed their cold beers regardless of which country they were in. While official boundaries may have changed in these parts over the centuries, the magnificence of the mountains has not.

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

Last weekend the quiz master was taking in the sights, sounds and overwhelming history of Istanbul. Did that deter the writing of 15 questions on the week’s headlines, random pop culture and general knowledge? Absolutely not. However, you may detect a certain “Cats of Istanbul” flavour to today’s effort, which is in no way a transparent attempt to show off the quiz master’s holiday photos. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 266 – Cats of Istanbul special

The year’s most popular slang reveals what young people think about artificial intelligence – and it’s not positive

Name: “That’s AI!”

Age: Brand new.

A feature called AI Overviews has been a profound change, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting

Google has put artificial intelligence at the front and center of its search bar. The most-visited site on the internet still shows the same list of links to users, but they have to scroll past a summarized response from an AI chatbot, a feature Google calls AI Overviews. The change to what was once the gateway to the rest of the internet has been profound, and the browsing habits of billions of people are shifting.

“AI is driving the most significant upgrade of the Google Search experience ever,” wrote Liz Reid, Google’s vice-president of search, last August. In May, the company said more AI is coming.

The water was my childhood playground but, as I grew up, my health left me landbound. Then my brother found a way to launch me back into the waves ...

My brother and I grew up surfing at Porthcawl in south Wales. My earliest memories are of playing in the waves and I learned to bodyboard not long after I learned to walk. When I lost the use of my legs, I felt as if I had lost the sea – and a part of who I was.

I was in my teens when I started to develop chronic illnesses, including endometriosis. At first, I was still able to surf – I just needed to rest afterwards. Then, in my early 20s, I developed further chronic conditions, including a connective tissue disorder that affected my joints and muscle strength. I could stand just for a few seconds and was able to walk only a few metres. At 23, an acute infection led to complications, including the loss of the use of my legs. Later, my stomach became paralysed; I’m now fed via a tube that runs down my oesophagus, through my stomach and into my intestines.

A teenager struggling with climate anxiety searches for hope in an unexpected place – writing letters to imprisoned activists. Max, 14, is on a quest to understand the human stories behind direct action and why so many climate protesters are in prison​. As replies begin to arrive, a dialogue bridging generations unfolds and connection transforms despair into purpose. ​When Max writes to the judge presiding over a high-profile trial​, he is surprised to hear the letter referred to in the judge's closing remarks

Whether produced by Russia, China or far-right influencers, deepfakes and disinfo are pushing multiple false narratives

Russian disinformation campaigns are varied in their falsehoods and strategies.

The narratives range from a deepfake Tom Cruise criticising the Paris Olympics to portraying a recent Russian attack on a train near the Ukraine-Poland border as a false-flag operation.

As experts fear for future of UK capital’s bus network, some commuters are giving up entirely. London is not alone – with worrying implications for the poorest in society

Experts warn that slower buses risk driving passengers away: research cited by Transport for London (TfL) suggests a 10% fall in speed leads to a 6% drop in demand.

Passenger journeys in London have already fallen by more than 300m a year, or 16%, since 2013, despite the city’s population growing by almost a million people.

In more than two decades in the Prison Service, Pia Sinha gained a reputation as a fixer. Now, as head of the Prison Reform Trust, she’s sounding the alarm about overcrowding and other problems

Pia Sinha has led the Prison Reform Trust since 2023. In that time, she has seen a Conservative government finally admit to an overcrowding crisis that had tipped over the edge. (It was in October 2023 that the early release scheme was devised; by May 2024, the Tories had also launched Operation Safeguard, using police cells as temporary housing.) She’s watched a change of government, then a change of prime minister, then Andy Burnham instantly assailed by negative headlines as the consequences of that early release scheme unfolded: prisoners had to actually be released early. “We’re a bit concerned about how [Burnham] has handled it,” she says, in the trust’s scruffy, un-corporate offices in central London, “but that’s in the knowledge that he had a bit of a hospital pass.”

To recap on Burnham’s handling: when he came in in July, he paused the scheme for an urgent review; in August he announced a series of exclusions, further crimes for which people couldn’t be released early, including manslaughter and death by dangerous driving. That solved an immediate problem, that the killers of PC Andrew Harper would otherwise have been released, but had the knock-on effect of reducing the numbers expected to be released by about a quarter. The conversation Sinha wants to have is what prison overcrowding looks like, what it does to prisoners and staff – and what it means for society.

How did you find them? Were they helpful in getting you to the next stage in your education or in securing a job?

Teenagers are to be offered new vocational GCSEs in England, marking the biggest changes to the qualification for more than a decade.

From 2029, pupils will be able to supplement compulsory GCSE subjects such as English, maths and sciences with courses including building and construction, creative media production and child development.

We’d like to hear from people who have stayed together or continued living together after separating because they can’t afford to live on their own

The average length of marriages ending in divorce in England and Wales has reached a record high, with lawyers suggesting that financial pressures may be causing some couples to delay separating.

Rising housing, childcare and other living costs can make the prospect of maintaining two households difficult or unaffordable. Meanwhile, some separated couples are continuing to live under the same roof.

Is this a recent development, or are you a die-hard compact disc fan? What do you like about the format?

Despite the prevalence of music streaming services, CDs players appear to be having a resurgence.

John Lewis said searches are up 96% since July, and portable CD players are also proving popular, which chimes with a report this year that found CD sales are up 16%.

We would like to hear from people working in tech industries about their views on joining a union

For the first time, Meta has agreed to give a trade union direct access to its UK staff, according to the FT.

It will mean that Prospect trade union will be able to speak directly to the social media company’s 5,000 UK staff about the benefits of belonging to a union.

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