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

When I moved to York I thought everyone sounded like a cross between Sean Bean and Mel B. But now the north’s linguistic richness really is being flattened

At our wedding reception 15 years ago, my new father-in-law stood up, pint in hand, looked me squarely in the eye and welcomed me to the family – and to Yorkshire. He acknowledged my obvious defect – my London roots – before offering a note of comfort. “Don’t worry, Zahaan,” he said. “You’ll fit in here eventually. It’ll just take 50 years.” He added that if I’d been from Lancashire, there’d have been an extra zero on that 50.

Not long after the wedding, my wife and I relocated from our first place together in London to her beautiful home city of York. The quality of life and the glorious scenery on our doorstep have made the move more than worth it – but over the last decade and a half, it’s felt like the people of Yorkshire and I haven’t always spoken the same language.

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

RambleCat57 asks: I adored Man in a Black Bag and I’m delighted to see it make the shortlist! Absurd and very funny. I see both poet-novelists have made the shortlist, and I’m curious about the link between poetry and literary fiction. Does being a poet first give a novelist an edge? Heightened sensitivity to language, rhythm, word choice, restraint?

Charlotte:

I really enjoyed Black Bag too, and I was really pleased to see it on the shortlist. It’s so unexpected and funny, and very thought-provoking – a real achievement. It’s great to see both Luke Kennard and Rebecca Perry on the shortlist – and perhaps not a surprise to note that there are two poets on the judging panel: Patricia Lockwood and Raymond Antrobus.

Justine: Is it relatively conventional? I’d say it’s still one-third joyfully weird – the success of The End of Everything and May We Feed the King has been one of my favourite things in 2026 so far. I was sad to see The Vivisectors go, but it did seem to me to share quite a lot of territory with Helen of Nowhere. The judges mentioned aiming for “range”’ at the shortlist event yesterday evening, which makes sense.

To Firstpoet: I wouldn’t have predicted Man in Black Leather Bag or Inexplicable Alien Artefacts this year. Inevitably, the shorthand of describing books can seem repetitive and shopworn. Toxic masculinity klaxon! Brexit! Love and loss (ie, everything)! I’d say one definition of a good book is that it can’t be summed up, it has to be read in full, and then we get back to issues of time and space.

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. At 76, Mansoura’s most precious possession is the key to her former home

As the war in Gaza approaches its fourth year, this week, the Guardian follows five ordinary Palestinians as they go about their lives. Each will tell the story of their day, revealing the terrible toll of the ongoing conflict.

The flat-bed truck is open to the hot summer air, its metal frame covered on two sides by draped tarpaulins, the rear by a pegged-up bedsheet. On the tin floor lies a squab mattress and pillow with a yellow frilled cover.

Last night, I stayed awake until 2am. I barely sleep during the night because of the mosquitoes and the heat. I fall asleep for a short while, I wake up early in the morning, pray to God, and wait to hear the call to dawn prayer. When I wake up, I call for my grandson to bring over the white plastic chair that I need to climb in and out of the truck.

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.

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.

Defence secretary places annual payments to Mauritius on hold as UK government reviews deal over Diego Garcia base

• UK politics live – latest updates

Wes Streeting has said annual payments worth at least £120m to Mauritius are on hold as the government reconsiders its deal over the Chagos Islands, after Donald Trump refused to back the agreement.

The defence secretary said the payments would not be made “at this stage” and confirmed the deal “can’t go ahead without US support”.

PM aims to ‘stem poisonous tide’ of disinformation and deepfakes with National Centre for Information Defence

Security chiefs will set up a new national centre to tackle disinformation and deepfakes from hostile states such as Russia, Andy Burnham has announced, saying the government had a duty to “stem the poisonous tide” from damaging British interests.

The National Centre for Information Defence will “detect, attribute and disrupt” information attacks by foreign powers, many of which are enabled by AI, bringing together the intelligence agencies, law enforcement and social media companies.

NHS England initiative to reduce cut-off period to three months ‘disproportionately affecting’ most deprived areas

An NHS policy to remove “ghost patients” from GP lists is inadvertently leaving some of the poorest people in England without vital healthcare, analysis has found.

Under previous NHS rules, inactive patients at risk of being removed from their GP practice were given six months to respond to outreach. But under NHS England’s accelerated list validation timeline, introduced last October, patients now have only three months to reply.

Richard Clayton KC had undergone operation for ruptured achilles tendon day before hearing optician’s appeal

A judge was wrong to hear a case from his bed via video link while recovering from surgery, the court of appeal has said.

Richard Clayton KC, sitting as a deputy high court judge, heard an optician’s appeal against a finding of serious misconduct from bed the day after returning from hospital where he had undergone an operation for a ruptured achilles tendon.

New report predicts a heavy toll from Nigeria to the US – and comes on top of existing impacts of the climate crisis

More than 450,000 people are projected to die from the additional heat brought by the super El Niño in the next six months, according to estimates by climate scientists.

The toll is on top of the early deaths resulting from temperatures already driven up by the climate crisis. It will strike across the globe, from Indonesia to India, and Nigeria to the US. Many further deaths are expected from the droughts, wildfires and flooding that El Niños bring.

Ofcom says site’s age-checking regime may not be ‘highly effective’, as required by the Online Safety Act

One of the world’s most visited pornography websites is being investigated by the UK’s communications watchdog over concerns it can still be accessed by children.

Pornhub’s age checking regime may not be “highly effective”, according to Ofcom, and could be in breach of online safety laws requiring strict measures to prevent under-18s from accessing sexually explicit content.

Cuts are part of plan to save £500m and lose as many as 2,000 staff by 2028

The BBC is to axe sports bulletins on its news channel and make more senior journalists redundant, as the corporation begins to unveil a series of painful cost-saving measures.

Lunchtime and overnight bulletins that currently appear on the BBC News channel will no longer be shown, according to internal announcements made to staff.

Oil prices fall for a sixth day in their longest losing streak in over a year, as Saudi Arabia reportedly restarts its east-west pipeline and amid hopes for progress in US-Iran talks

The Co-op has called on Andy Burnham’s government to “create an environment where we have confidence and certainty to invest” which it needs to support “lifeline stores” in urban and rural communities across the UK.

Kate Allum, the interim chief executive of the mutual who stepped in after the unexpected departure of Shirine Khoury-Haq last year, said:

We have no intention of closing any lifeline stores.

We have a big estate and we want to continue to invest but what we need is confidence. We don’t want unintended consequences of decisions.

consumer confidence is pretty uncertain. We talk to our members all the time and the cost of living has been their number one concern for a significant period of time.

Bryan Seaver, who announced Parton’s death to the world, is alleged to have intimidated her manager and others, which he denies

The estate of the late Dolly Parton is involved in a dispute with the country star’s nephew and former head of security, and has filed for a restraining order against him amid allegations of threats.

Bryan Seaver was responsible for Parton’s security, and was tasked with announcing her death on 25 August with a video, “something Dolly asked of me years ago”, he said.

Two leaders could discuss tech safety issues and US-China trade ties but may skip over climate emergency

• Analysis: AI looms large over Trump-Xi meeting

The leaders of the world’s two superpowers are meeting in the US this week. It is Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the US in more than a decade. The last time the Chinese president was hosted in Washington (by Barack Obama in 2015), the issues on the agenda included cybercrime, technology, the climate crisis and human rights. The star of the day was Ne-Yo, who serenaded Xi and his wife, Peng Liyuan, with Peng reportedly singing along at the state dinner.

This time, Xi is meeting Donald Trump, who has overhauled the world order and recalibrated the US-China relationship. Trump is contending with a China that is in a much stronger position than it was 10 years ago. Here are five things to look out for at this week’s US-China summit.

Wirral mother among renters turning to food banks as gap between a two-bed and housing benefit hits £158 a month – rising to as much as £324 in London

Do you prioritise paying the rent, putting food on the table or keeping the house warm in winter? In practice, says Laura Braddock, a single mum from Wirral, Merseyside, you always pay the rent first and improvise the rest. “If I’ve got a roof over our head, then everything else I can muddle through.”

The pressing problem for Braddock, 39, is that muddling through is getting harder. The monthly rent for her two-bedroom flat far outstrips the local housing allowance (LHA) she receives – and the gap may widen.

It’s inspired careers, moved you deeply and helped you reevaluate your own journeys. As the series that began in 1964 comes to an end with 70 Up, Guardian readers explain the impact of the decades-spanning tale

ITV’s landmark 7 Up documentary series has launched its final outing after 63 years. The show started following the lives of 10 boys and four girls in England when they were seven years old, and has returned every seven years since.

As the final season 70 Up reaches its conclusion, seven people tell us what it has meant to them over the decades – along with pictures of themselves contrasting their appearance now with their childhood selves.

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.

In an interview before the White House’s media ban, Carlson called on reporters to push back against Trump’s misogyny

Donald Trump has achieved something rarely seen in Washington: uniting rival television networks against him. When he banned CNN and MS Now – along with Politico – from the White House, their competitors suspended shared coverage of the US president’s events.

Gretchen Carlson, a journalist, author and former Fox News host, hopes this will not be the only example of solidarity from a White House press corps facing what she describes as an “outright onslaught” from the administration.

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.

It is a symbol of the connection between the fanbase and club, but there is a growing fear executives would prefer stadiums full of one-off tourists

The document known as “the oldest football season ticket in the world” promises its bearer access to every Burnley home game of the 1884-85 season. It is a ticket that predates the Football League by four years, with all the fixtures played against east Lancashire neighbours. All the same, the legend on the ticket carries a stern warning: “This card is not transferable. Any member violating this rule will be at once expelled from the club.”

For Burnley 1884 read Manchester United 2026. While the oldest remaining season ticket is safely preserved at Turf Moor, at Old Trafford 685 season tickets were voided this summer after a club investigation found evidence of their having been resold on the secondary market. United said such practices “undermine fair access to tickets for genuine supporters and have no place at Manchester United”. United fan groups again protested against the actions of the club’s ownership, claiming: “The way you treat us is a disgrace.”

Each autumn the traditional alpabzug (descent of herds) sees farmers in Switzerland move their livestock from mountain pastures down to valley barns. In the Griesalp area above Kiental around 70 alpacas were herded down the valley, before being transported by truck to their winter farm at Aeschi, near Spiez, in the Bernese Oberland

As the UN gathers, signatories from Bernie Sanders to Yeb Saño issue an open letter calling for clean power for all

• The climate fight has one great ally. You just can’t look at it directly


We the undersigned write this letter out of great fear and great hope.

Over the last few months, we’ve seen the world set ablaze by both war and warming. From the conflict in Iran, which has claimed thousands of lives and disrupted billions more, to the series of ever worsening climate disasters, from wildfires in Europe to collapsing glaciers in Nepal, the world seems to be falling apart exactly when it needs to be coming together.

Ed Davey’s strategy is meant to build a ‘firewall’ of MPs to prevent Reform UK entering government. The stakes are high if he gets it wrong

No politician craves obscurity, but it is better to be unknown than despised. That is consolation for Liberal Democrats, gathered in Brighton for their annual conference, fretting about Ed Davey’s low profile and wondering whether a more prominent leader would hoist their flagging poll ratings.

Renewal by decapitation is a concept that has succeeded twice this parliament for other parties. Labour’s fortunes were transformed when Andy Burnham entered No 10. The Greens enjoyed a polling surge last year when Zack Polanski was elected leader. In the fidgety culture of British politics, Davey’s six-year reign feels like an aeon. But the experience of other parties has little to teach the Lib Dems.

The PM’s shiny newness could explain the easy ride he got this time. But who would dare predict the ever-shifting weather in the president’s head?

Watching footage of Andy Burnham at the UN general assembly on Tuesday was like watching your child from behind a tree in the playground. Are they making friends? How normal do they seem relative to the average? How will they react when they come into contact with that hulking great child who seems to be running things? Burnham’s first face-to-face with Donald Trump was billed as a knife-edge encounter that, due to the latter’s capriciousness, could go either way. In the event, it was drama-free, leaving observers to ask: was it Burnham’s brilliance or simply the weather in Trump’s head?

To viewers at home, Burnham’s performance at the press conference looked like that of a man who had worked out his best approach was to go for the sheepish, slightly cheeky air of the junior partner. Burnham is 24 years younger than Trump, on top of everything else – which can afford a certain licence to the less powerful person in any exchange. At the last minute, the meeting had been moved behind closed doors and afterwards, in a windowless room at the UN, the two men appeared side by side, mirroring each other’s body language: just two guys, legs akimbo, shoulders hunched, hanging on a bench in the locker room.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

My sourdough starter died and my lone tomato nearly ruined me financially and emotionally. How did domestic drudgery and hard labour become an aspirational aesthetic?

I have just eaten what may be the world’s most expensive tomato. It comes from a little region of Philadelphia better known for sports culture than horticulture and was cultivated by yours truly. I spent only a few dollars on the plant, but then I had to buy a tomato cage and a few companion plants to keep it company. Then I had to spend an ungodly amount of time watering it and hacking away at weeds. In short: I put a huge amount of emotional investment into that tomato. Was it worth it? Absolutely not. I should have just gone to Aldi.

Of course, the tomato growing wasn’t really about saving money, it was about saving my sanity. Earlier this year, my wife and I got a plot at our local community garden; buoyed up by this development, I decided to ward off existential angst by throwing myself into tradwife-adjacent hobbies such as gardening and baking. I don’t know if it’s possible to be a gay tradwife but, after Googling the subject, I did find a magazine piece entitled The Curious Case of the Bisexual Tradwife. Alas, I can’t tell you much more about the phenomenon because there was a paywall. There are a lot of walls to pay in this life and this one did not make the cut.

The US relationship is stabilising, but how will Europe face up to Russia and China if President Le Pen is in power?

I addressed a group of more than 100 European ambassadors recently on the big challenges facing the continent this year and next. My main point to these senior diplomats was that, perhaps counterintuitively, Europe’s biggest external challenges over the next 12 months will come from Russia and China, rather than the US.

Europe’s relationship with Trump’s America remains difficult. The US president has weakened confidence in Nato, raised new transatlantic trade tensions and introduced uncertainty into everything from US support for Ukraine to his territorial designs on Greenland. Yet paradoxically, and notwithstanding Trump’s latest tariff threats over the EU’s outreach to Canada, the transatlantic relationship is becoming the more stable part of Europe’s external environment. Not stable, but more stable.

Mujtaba Rahman is the managing director for Europe at Eurasia Group, a political risk research and consulting firm

From a dangerous new bioweapon to total societal breakdown, is a ‘superintelligent’ AI capable of wiping out humanity?

Earlier this month, artificial intelligence researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic after just four months. In an announcement on X, he stated: “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

A senior member of Anthropic’s staff, Evan Hubinger, actually agreed with Coxon, adding he personally thinks the chance of this happening in the next decade is more than 10%.

I found being a Booker judge hugely rewarding. All the works on our shortlist will change how you see the world

• This year’s Booker prize shortlist

As a Booker judge, I think I have worked harder than I have ever done before. Reading 163 novels in six months, making careful assessments, being ready to argue for your judgment, going back to check you haven’t got it wrong … in some ways it took more energy than actually writing a book. But it was also hugely rewarding and fun. I shall never forget the discussions in our regular judging meetings, and the pleasure of discovering how we had sometimes reached almost exactly the same view of a book, and sometimes dramatically diverged. There were no big newsworthy squabbles, but a lot of discussion, a lot of listening and re-reading.

When each new batch of 30 or so novels arrived at home, through the spring, I plunged in and picked them out at random (only occasionally cheating by selecting a slim volume when I felt I needed to get my total up!) But so that you have more to go on, here is a quick guide to each of the books on the shortlist – in strictly alphabetical order.

Explore the shortlist for this year’s Booker prize and, for a limited time, get all six books for only £79 at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

The party leader offers social liberalism and lower taxes, hoping opposition to Reform UK will hold together voters with competing economic interests

Sir Ed Davey’s speech at the Liberal Democrat party conference was a calculated appeal to voters who recoil from a rightwing bloc associated with Brexit, nationalism and reactionary politics. That’s not a bad place to start. But he wants this message not to be lost in the headlines about his party’s £17bn tax giveaway aimed at disillusioned Conservative voters. To walk that line, his address sought to present Reform UK’s politics as an existential threat to Britain, appealing directly to left-leaning tactical voters. At the same time, he told moderate Tories that only a vote for the Lib Dems can reliably block both Reform and a Conservative-supported Nigel Farage premiership.

It’s a clever strategy. Too clever, think some in his party, who yearn for clearer dividing lines. Yet the Lib Dem leader is nothing if not ambitious. He claims that his party could have more MPs than the Conservatives after the next election. In 2024, the Lib Dems won 60 of their 72 seats from the Tories; they were also second in a score of Conservative-held seats. That electoral geography pushes the Lib Dems as replacing the Conservatives as the respectable, pro-market opposition, while Reform occupies the space of the nationalist right. The logic is that in a multiparty system under first past the post, it may no longer be necessary to be a national party. Sir Ed might become kingmaker as the parliamentary expression of a liberal southern tendency.

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.

As the chancellor, John Healey, ponders options ahead of his first budget, the playwright’s new work offers lessons from the past

Still only 44, James Graham has become a formidable chronicler of our national story. On themes such as the rise of Rupert Murdoch, social upheaval in post-industrial Britain and the neuroses of the England men’s football team, the playwright and screenwriter has made it his vocation to read the signs of our times and write them up for the stage.

Graham’s new play goes a bit further back in history, but its subject matter is characteristically of the moment. Opening this week in the West End, The Standard of Living offers a portrait of the sentimental and intellectual passions of John Maynard Keynes (played by Rory Kinnear), as the great economist makes his name between the first and second world wars. As Keynes rails against the laissez-faire ethos of the age, he seeks to devise a theory of growth that justifies state intervention on people’s behalf in the wake of the Great Depression.

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 respond to an article on women being less likely than men to be offered active treatment for the same conditions

As head of pharmacovigilance at a clinical trials technology company, I was not surprised that a review of global research found that women are less likely than men to be offered active treatment for the same conditions (Women with same health conditions as men ‘less likely to be offered active treatment’, 16 September).

This inequality costs lives. A British Heart Foundation-funded study found that women were less likely than men to receive recommended care after a heart attack. Research in 2018 estimated that more than 8,000 women’s deaths may have been prevented over 10 years had they received the same standard of care as men.

Providing psychological safety to Black, Asian and ethnic minority staff so they can raise concerns about patient care without fear would save lives, write Dr Jennifer Creese, Dr Joy Spiliopoulos and Prof Carolyn Tarrant

Your report (One in five black, Asian and minority ethnic NHS managers in England plan to quit amid racism, report finds, 15 September) rightly highlights racism, exclusion and blocked career progression in the NHS. But it also points to a wider risk: patient safety. Care mistakes already cost the NHS £14.7bn a year.

A March 2025 report by the NHS Race & Health Observatory notes that Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) staff, who make up more than 40% of the medical and dental workforce, still face harassment and discrimination in promotion, everyday work and disciplinary processes. This fuels stress, burnout and poorer mental health. Bullying and harassment are estimated to cost NHS England £2bn a year through staff turnover, sickness and lost productivity. In such environments, BAME staff are less likely than white colleagues to speak up about patient safety, fearing that their concerns will not be understood or taken seriously.

There has never been a real rebellion for the Kremlin to squelch, writes Mergen Mongush

To an old Russian like me, Rafael Behr is as wrong as sin, because he is watching (and describing) the smoke without seeing the fire (To understand the threat to our real democracy, watch Putin’s fake one, 16 September).

In their unqualified admiration for your democracy, our leaders have done a lot to emulate it: in 1861, Alexander II abolished serfdom; in 1905, Nicholas II allowed the creation of our elected parliament; in 1917, Kerensky allowed women to vote; in 1990, Gorbachev reintroduced a multiparty system; he, Yeltsin and Medvedev resigned in 1991, 1999 and 2020 respectively (like your Wilson, Thatcher, Blair, Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Starmer in 1976, 1990, 2007, 2016, 2019, 2022, again 2022, and 2026 respectively).

Stephen Gillian says the super-rich could help guarantee a decent wage for low-paid people in return for some tax benefits. Plus letters from Les Bright and Steve Brown

I have a simple solution to help keep the super-rich happy with their tax bills while keeping their enormous wealth safely stored offshore and allowing them possibly to spend more time in the UK (Manchester United Muslim fans group calls on co-owner Jim Ratcliffe to quit, 19 September). They could insist that any company they earn their wealth from commits to paying all UK staff a decent living wage.

For this small compromise from the billionaires (who will still play the money markets and profit from others’ hard labour), the government could offer to reduce employers’ taxation costs by increasing the point at which low-paid people pay tax. Perhaps it could reduce national insurance payments for low-paid people, both employee and employer, thereby stopping the farce of the government paying income support to those on low incomes and then increasing taxation to fund it.

Donald Trump has praised the UK prime minister as a ‘natural businessman’ after their first meeting at the UN general assembly

From veteran strikers to exciting young talents, here are 10 signings who could prove to be bargains for their new teams

Even in this era of relentless transfer inflation, a fee of more than £20m does not usually represent a bargain. Roma’s move for the Porto playmaker Mora may be an exception, though. The teenager has been on the radar of Europe’s elite teams since starring for Porto’s B-team at 15, and Porto were braced for his €70m (£59.5m) release clause to be met in the summer of 2025. That didn’t happen and Mora then fell out of favour under the new head coach, Francesco Farioli. Roma swooped with an offer of €25m (£21.4m), plus a 50% sell-on fee which can be bought out. The potential move also intrigued Mora, who was eager to play under Gian Piero Gasperini. “He played a big part in my decision to come here because he likes players with my qualities, and I’m a fan of the way he wants his teams to play,” Mora said. The early signs are positive, with Mora netting his first Roma goal against Lecce as the Giallorossi made a flying start in Serie A.

• Heimir Hallgrímsson accused of ‘stupidity’ by Israel’s FA

• Micheál Martin says IFA’s response is ‘unacceptable’

Ireland’s prime minister, Micheál Martin, backed his country’s football manager, Heimir Hallgrímsson, after Israel’s football federation accused Hallgrimsson of “stupidity, ignorance and hypocrisy” over comments about the war in Gaza.

“I think those are unacceptable remarks; they should be withdrawn,” Martin told reporters in New York, where he is attending the UN general assembly. “Israel can’t keep denying what the world knows, and what the world understands.”

• Arsenal match was interrupted during the second half

• Break understood to be have been unintended

Disney+ has been criticised by viewers after an advert break interrupted the second half of Tuesday’s live television coverage of Arsenal’s opening Women’s Champions League fixture.

Fans were unable to see the action for about three minutes, with some 15 minutes remaining, during Arsenal’s 1-0 victory over the Danish side HB Køge.

Plus: the longest waits for 0-0 draws, more early replica kits and champions with the smallest ground

• Mail us with your all of your questions and answers

“As someone who occasionally has to search for stadiums to find directions and the like, I always enjoy that people take the time to rate their experience of visiting a football ground,” begins our very own Will Unwin. “Hull City, for example, have 4.3 stars from 3,655 reviews. I therefore ponder … which ground has the highest and lowest Google rating?”

Pete Tomlin comes up clutch with this answer and one of the most impressive tables in Knowledge history. “I have literally searched every home football ground in the Football League via Google and I have recorded the rating and number of votes for every one,” he starts. “The range is not particularly large – the highest recorded rating is 4.7 and the lowest is 4.0. Therefore, where the scores are tied, I have used the higher number of votes as the decider with the largest number of votes being the winner. Not surprisingly, the bigger and more successful clubs tend to have the higher ratings. The nine highest-rated grounds are all Premier League clubs.

England batter’s agony on missing out at Edgbaston reminded us that however well you play, a century remains the ultimate validation

“Nooooo!”

There was something about Dan Lawrence’s pained groan at Edgbaston in England’s first innings of the third Test against Pakistan. For a split second it looked as if he might plunge his bat into the turf like some tormented Norse warrior. His stumps had already been flattened by his own hand, an attempt to run the ball down past point off Mohammad Imran had ended in him hacking an innocuous delivery emphatically on to them.

Bath have a point to prove, Newcastle are shy of an A-lister and Aaron Wainwright could prove the signing of the summer at Welford Road

The 2025 champions go into the new campaign with a point to prove after they were humbled on home turf by Exeter in last season’s semi-finals. Successfully defending the title is no easy task – it has not been done since Saracens in 2019 – but last season’s failure to return to Twickenham should stiffen the sinews in Johann van Graan’s squad. There is a World Cup at the end of the campaign and plenty in Bath’s squad also have a point to prove to Steve Borthwick – the centres Ollie Lawrence and Max Ojomoh, and Ted Hill chief among them. Recruitment has been kept to a minimum, but the arrival of Dan du Preez adds some more Springbok beef. Losing Thomas du Toit, who has returned to South Africa, is a huge blow, but Will Stuart’s return after a lengthy layoff due to an achilles injury softens it somewhat. If they finish in the top two Bath would forgo a home semi-final with the Rec finally undergoing much-needed refurbishment, which could ultimately count against them. Expect them to be in the mix.

On 23 September 1926, two of the best heavyweights in American history met in front of 120,000 fans in Philadelphia. The fight drew in a nation

The two fights between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney rank with boxing’s most-storied championship bouts and are among the greatest sports spectacles ever seen in America. Wednesday marks the one hundredth anniversary of their first encounter.

Dempsey bridged boxing’s old and modern eras and was one of the most charismatic fighters in history. When Dempsey was young, biographer Randy Roberts recounts, “he lived in mining camps and hobo jungles, rode the rods, and more than once begged for food. What separated him was his willingness, even eagerness, to work. He accepted any type of employment from washing dishes, cutting lawns, and scrubbing floors to the harder work of coal-mining, digging ditches, and picking fruit.”

• Club coach also allegedly grabbed female official’s hand

• Referees’ union criticises MLS’s two-match ban

Major League Soccer club Columbus Crew have sacked their reserve team coach after he allegedly grabbed a female referee’s hand and told her “don’t forget this is a man’s game”. Federico Higuaín was sent off for the incident, which occurred during a MLS Next Pro league match, and was later given a two-match ban.

Columbus Crew’s general manager, Issa Tall, said in a statement: “We determined it’s in the best interest of our club, players and support staff to dismiss Federico Higuaín from his responsibilities. After conversations this week and further assessing the past month, our club’s standards of what’s expected from a leader for one of our teams have not been met.”

Fifa president continues to lobby for re-election despite no other candidates coming forward to challenge him

For Gianni Infantino there is no international break. The Fifa president is widely expected to make an appearance at the United Nations general assembly this week in New York, where he will lobby heads of state for their federations’ support as he continues his campaign to be re-elected next year.

Infantino has not been idle during the lull since Fifa abandoned its World Cup sell-off plan last month, instead crisscrossing the globe on a private jet provided by Qatar Airways as part of its sponsorship deal with world football’s governing body.

Trump says further talks possible as barrel of Brent crude falls to below $100 for first time in two weeks

• United Nations general assembly – latest updates

Iran has pushed back on claims that it dropped former preconditions for reopening the strait of Hormuz in surprise talks held in New York under the mediation of Qatar between Tehran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, and Donald Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

Trump said the three-hour talks held in a room at the UN headquarters had gone very well and been very productive. He suggested further talks were possible imminently, which led to the price of a barrel of Brent crude to fall to below $100 (£75) for the first time in two weeks. Witkoff said the talks had been “encouraging, constructive and successful”.

Congress has so far done little to rein in the AI industry even as some of its most prominent leaders warn about potentially catastrophic risks

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Trump won’t be back at the United Nations today, but world leaders speaking after him on day two of the General Assembly’s gathering will be reckoning with the international order he’s shaped.

In particularly, the leaders of both Iran, the nation Trump started a war with, and Ukraine, whose war with Russia Trump staked his 2024 campaign on ending, will feature in Wednesday’s lineup of speakers.

Housing rights campaigners decry landlord’s ‘barbaric behaviour’ after apartment Maricarmen had lived in for 71 years was bought by a developer

There were violent scenes in Madrid on Wednesday as riot police fought with protesters trying to prevent the eviction of an 87-year-old disabled woman from her apartment in the Retiro district.

Hundreds of protesters had gathered, many of them overnight, in an effort to block the fourth attempt to carry out the eviction. Activists from the Madrid and Barcelona tenants’ union, and celebrities including the actor Carlos Bardem and the singer and actor Ana Belén, joined the protest.

Discovery of Gallo-Roman period structure hailed as ‘major breakthrough’ by French culture ministry

An ancient wall discovered beneath Paris has been described as a “major breakthrough” by France’s culture ministry, with the archaeological find possibly confirming the location of the city’s original settlement.

A roughly 20-metre (65ft) stretch of wall dating from the Gallo-Roman period was discovered in Paris this summer beneath a building on the Île de la Cité, near Notre Dame Cathedral in the heart of the French capital.

Arrest of Shadrack Sibiya comes as country reels from cases of femicide and alleged police corruption and criminality

One of South Africa’s most senior police officers has been charged with raping an 18-year-old woman and grooming a 16-year-old girl, as the country’s police face allegations of corruption and failing to tackle violence against women and girls.

Shadrack Sibiya, who was already suspended from his role as deputy national police commissioner over allegations he interfered with political killings investigations, was arrested on Monday. He is facing charges of rape, people trafficking, promoting the sexual grooming of a child and two counts of grooming a child.

New York event hears about the red Muppet’s fears during a recent storm as climate crisis increasingly affects children

A generation of political leaders has failed to galvanize sufficient action on the climate crisis for so long now that it was perhaps little surprise that an audience in New York City turned to a three-and-a-half-year-old red furry monster for inspiration on Tuesday.

Elmo, the Sesame Street denizen, made a starry appearance at a Climate Week event that highlighted how the impacts of global heating affect children. The red creature, who frequently refers to himself in the third person, recounted to the audience his fear when a storm hit Sesame Street, an event depicted in a recent episode that featured the singer Post Malone.

New rice varieties give hope that farmers can overcome the climate emergency and a warmer future that threatens harvests

When schoolchildren in Shiroishi were enlisted to plant rice seedlings in June, Shinto priests blessed the land and asked the deities for a bountiful crop. Judging by the fields behind farmer Haruki Kawasaki, their prayers have been answered.

The 63-year-old is preparing to harvest this year’s crop of hinatamaru, a variety of rice whose plump grains have thrived despite exposure to another hot and dry summer, conditions that typically punish rice yields.

New study finds subsidence caused by groundwater extraction can take place as far as 20km from site of mine

The impact of opencast mining goes far beyond the edge of the pit. Studies of an opencast coalmine in western Germany show that opencast mining triggered extensive subsidence in the surrounding area and re-activated dormant geological faults.

Underground mines are often associated with ground subsidence, but less is known about the risks associated with opencast mines. Researchers from the GFZ Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam, Germany, studied satellite data and geological field measurements from the area around the opencast Rhenish coalfields, between Aachen and Cologne.

António Guterres laments world leaders’ inaction and says oil and gas firms ‘must pay’ for climate devastation

For one last time, António Guterres tried to fix the world’s gaze upon the dangerously escalating climate crisis. But the departing UN secretary general found world leaders still largely focused on other issues, even after a painful summer of stunning climate-driven disasters.

Speaking to assembled dignitaries at the UN on Tuesday, Guterres railed against big oil for treating “the atmosphere as an open sewer” and warned again of the catastrophic effects of the climate crisis.

‘Radical’ report likely to influence party’s platform also proposes abolishing inheritance and capital gains taxes

A thinktank linked to Reform UK has called for the abolition of the state pension and £75bn worth of sweeping tax cuts in a “radical” report likely to influence the party’s platform for the next election.

The Centre for a Better Britain’s (CFABB) report – which also calls for weaker rules for UK banks and Trump-style investment accounts offering £1,000 to newborns – will be formally launched at a private event with City executives on Wednesday.

IPPR North says one bad decision could derail devolution agenda as regions gain control of billions in funding

England’s mayors should face much greater official scrutiny to avoid Andy Burnham’s devolution agenda being “derailed by one bad decision”, a thinktank has said.

Ministers will set out plans next month to give regional leaders control over potentially billions of pounds of additional funding under a “transformational” shift of power outside Whitehall.

Charity’s head coach ‘shocked’ after Sunderland council leader says it will not support ‘politically charged’ groups

Anti-racism education in some schools will be scrapped after a city council now led by Reform UK ended its 30-year support for the charity Show Racism the Red Card.

Announcing the decision last week, the Reform leader of Sunderland city council, Christopher Eynon, said it would no longer support “politically charged organisations with an agenda”.

Counter-terrorism police say ‘long-running investigation’ disrupted alleged plot days after two men arrested on eve of the holy day Yom Kippur

Police believe they have stopped an imminent plot to attack Jewish communities in the Manchester area.

The announcement on Tuesday follows the arrest of two men on Sunday at 2.45pm in Manchester and comes during the period of festivals at the beginning of the Jewish new year.

The move comes after Jamaica’s culture minister Olivia Grange travelled to the UK earlier this month to lodge the historic petition

King Charles has referred a landmark slavery reparations petition from Jamaica to a high-level UK appeals court for legal advice, Jamaica’s culture minister announced in parliament on Tuesday.

Referring to the move as a “really big deal”, Olivia Grange told Jamaica’s MPs the monarch had confirmed that their legal questions have been passed on to the London-based privy council – the final court of appeal for UK overseas territories and some Commonwealth countries.

As political discourse in the country is increasingly suppressed and polarised, in a village tent, a local magistrate’s attempt to bring back a national tradition attracted thousands of participants

The setting for perhaps the country’s biggest exercise in public debate was quintessential rural India: fields of green paddy, a pond, a temple. On a normal day, as dusk falls in the village of Ajgara, in Uttar Pradesh, people gather beside the pond to chat about the price of crops, the weather, or the theft of a goat.

But for more than a month, metaphysics and ethical dilemmas replaced the usual topics. Is it permissible to use deceit to defeat an evil enemy? Is a lie justified to save a life? What is the nature of reality?

Brandon Herrera, a YouTuber known for making outrageous pro-gun statements, is the frontrunner to represent a district devastated by mass shootings

The video begins with Brandon Herrera staring intently into the camera. He is filming himself in a hotel room seated between twin beds, his black hair slicked back and beard neatly trimmed. He is wearing a T-shirt branded with his trademark nickname, “The AK Guy”, above the image of a semi-automatic rifle primed for action.

Three days earlier, on 3 August 2019, a white nationalist armed with a semi-automatic firearm not dissimilar to the one stamped across Herrera’s chest entered a busy Walmart store in the Texas border city of El Paso and opened fire.

Islamic State-inspired bombings of churches and hotels in 2019 was one of the country’s worst ever attacks

A court in Sri Lanka has convicted 15 men on terrorist charges for their involvement in the deadly 2019 Easter bombings and sentenced them each to at least 220 years in prison.

The terror attacks, which targeted luxury hotels and churches as they held Easter services, left 267 people dead and wounded almost 6000. The bombings, which were inspired by Islamic State (IS), were among the deadliest terror attacks in Sri Lanka’s history and sent shockwaves through the country.

Programme will initially involve voluntary redundancies in the UK but the insurance and pensions firm will consider mandatory job cuts depending on the take-up

Legal & General plans to cut 1,000 jobs by the middle of next year, about a tenth of the British insurance and pensions firm’s workforce.

António Simões, the chief executive, is wielding the axe as part of his attempts to create a “leaner organisation” since taking over from longtime CEO Nigel Wilson in January 2024. L&G described the move as “the next stage of that transformation”.

Sunil Bharti Mittal’s Airtel Money targets $9bn IPO in boost for ailing UK stock market

A payments business that operates across Africa and is ultimately controlled by an Indian billionaire has announced its intention to float on the struggling London Stock Exchange.

Airtel Money, the mobile money arm of Airtel Africa, is planning one of the biggest UK listings in years, in a boost for the shrinking London market that has faced a string of recent departures.

Some economists say it is now ‘inevitable’ that chancellor will need to raise taxes in the budget next month

The UK government borrowed a higher-than-expected £18.3bn last month, increasing the pressure on John Healey as he attempts to calm jittery bond markets before next month’s budget.

Some economists said it was “inevitable” that the chancellor would need to raise taxes on 28 October if he is to meet demands for extra spending on defence without further borrowing from investors on international money markets.

Some of continent’s biggest pharma firms write to national leaders calling for action to safeguard the sector

Some of Europe’s biggest pharmaceutical companies have said the continent is “losing ground” to rivals including the US and China in developing new drugs and attracting investment.

The chairs of nine companies, including Britain’s AstraZeneca, GSK and Denmark’s Novo Nordisk, wrote to Andy Burnham and the national leaders of other European countries on Tuesday to call for action to “safeguard our companies’ future”.

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.

Before Anthony Hopkins’ Dr Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, Brian Cox played a cannibalistic killer in Mann’s pioneering Red Dragon adaptation

Five years before The Silence of the Lambs, there was writer-director Michael Mann’s pioneering Thomas Harris adaptation Manhunter, now on re-release in a director’s “final cut” for its 40th anniversary. It was his version of Harris’s 1981 novel Red Dragon, a movie which features Dr Hannibal Lecter (here spelt Lecktor) in a relatively minor part, and played in a much more coolly matter-of-fact and downbeat way by Brian Cox, who is first discovered in his cell lying down with his back to the camera.

It has long been a haughty, hipster film-bro affectation to claim that Cox is better in the role than Anthony Hopkins. (Lecktor’s early acoustic stuff was great, you see, before he went electric as Lecter.) I think that’s a bit obtuse, for all that Cox is of course very good. Hopkins in The Silence of the Lambs is the definitive version: face it. But I will concede that Cox is more interesting than Hopkins by the time the latter came to make the 2002 adaptation of Red Dragon, at which stage the franchise had become a bit tired. Manhunter itself is a very interesting and watchable movie, but feels a little unevolved compared to Jonathan Demme’s masterly guignol spectacle, although Demme clearly inhaled Mann’s excitement at jets, ’copters and military hardware deployed at speed to bring down just one man.

The newest judge on the culinary competition is a soothing presence who is the ideal complement to Paul Hollywood. Long may the show continue with her on it

There’s a very good argument to be made for requiring a national referendum on whether presenters of shows that are part of our cultural identity should be allowed to leave, followed by – if necessary – a vote on who should replace them. At the very least, this would avoid the parlous state of affairs we face right now: at the very moment the public is grappling with the new-look Strictly Come Dancing (Tess and Claudia replaced by Emma Willis, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe, three whole different people!) we are asked to cope with a change to the order of the tented universe too.

For The Great British Bake Off lineup has replaced Prue Leith (who stepped down after deciding that, at 86, she would quite like to go back to having holidays instead of filming the series all summer) with – the one! The only! – Nigella Lawson.

John Boorman generously details the mortifying experience of making a sequel to 1973 hit horror The Exorcist, which was widely and unfairly panned

David Kittredge gives us a thoroughly enjoyable, detailed account of the catastrophe that was John Boorman’s 1977 film Exorcist II: The Heretic, the deeply ill-conceived and widely derided follow-up to The Exorcist, a bizarre but ambitious fantasy supernatural rhapsody, brimming with unintentional comedy. Yet it was visually bold and even brilliant, pioneering in its use of Steadicam; Linda Blair and Max von Sydow were persuaded to return; Richard Burton was cast as a troubled priest, and Louise Fletcher as a psychiatrist whose weird “mind-reader” contraption was entirely ridiculous. At the first film, people screamed. Now they screamed with laughter.

According to an apocryphal tale gleefully repeated by William Friedkin, director of the first film, the sequel resulted in an enraged audience one night turning round and booing Warner Brothers executives in the back row of the cinema, and then chasing them out of the building and down the street. Boorman desperately recut the film with the sillier bits removed. But the damage was done.

Diver Peter van Rodijnen’s footage of basking whales, plankton blooms and fatherly fish disputes the idea that the North Sea is a bleak wilderness

The North Sea, with its cold grey waters, is the world’s drabbest. Or so you might have thought, but this documentary featuring the Dutch diver and underwater cinematographer Peter van Rodijnen sets out to tackle the misconceptions. His stunning footage puts all the splendours of this stormy stretch of water on show, and his voiceover gives it an endearing eccentric charm.

First, the greyness. Van Rodijnen films the North Sea’s waves sparkling with the cosmic blue light of bioluminescent algae, and lit up with the disco colours of coral and plankton blooms. He also brings us cute, coo-worthy stories from the depths; take the male shorthorn sculpin fish (no looker, it must be said) who spends the winter looking after his eggs, cleaning and blowing fresh water over them. Van Rodijnen’s camera is there for the baby fish hatching – pop, pop, pop out of their pearly plump pink eggs. There are some quirky stories, too, including a barnacle with a superlong penis.

The actors co-star in a lightly fictionalised meta-comedy about their real-life bromance – and possible sharing of parents. It’s a tasty little treat

The cheek! The indulgence! The privilege! Did anyone, anywhere in 2026, look up from news of a world in flames and say, what we really need now is a meta-comedy where two actors play gently self-satirising fictional versions of themselves?

They did not, and yet here are Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. They once co-starred in the first season of True Detective, one of TV’s darkest and best crime dramas, but otherwise their personae have them as lifelong besties who are both free spirits, unencumbered by the rules of the fame game – not the sort of chaps who would stop and think about how their self-referential comedy bagatelle might be received. In Brothers, they portray themselves as blokes who don’t stop and think, full stop.

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.

At 14, he heard Stravinsky and resolved to be a composer. As Reich approaches his 10th decade, the man revered by the likes of David Bowie reflects on a life that changed the soundtrack of modern living

Steve Reich is not yet 90 but the celebrations have already begun, with the world premiere of his new piece for large ensemble, In All Your Ways, at the Edinburgh festival last month and a late-night concert at the BBC Proms. But when I ask this most supremely influential of living composers how he feels about becoming a nonagenarian on 3 October, Reich is coy. “I haven’t quite got there yet,” he says. “I don’t want to dot the i before I even get there. I’ll let you know in due course …”

Born in New York in 1936, Reich has spent the last six decades producing music that has changed the soundtrack of modern life in Europe and North America, and inspired superlatives from a wide array of music critics. The New Yorker has called him “the most original musical thinker of our time”.

Creators of Post Script, made with vocals by the late Mark E Smith, defend it as ‘a great, positive record’, but fiancee describes it as ‘ethically wrong’

The fiancee and last manager of the late Mark E Smith, frontman of the Fall, has hit out against the release of an album being marketed as the band’s final official album, calling it “ethically wrong” and a “cash grab”.

When Post Script was first announced in June, several media reports assumed the nine-track album contained recordings that the final Fall lineup were working on before the singer’s death, in January 2018. However, it subsequently emerged that it contains unused studio vocals recorded between 2001 and 2014, to which longtime Fall associates Ed Blaney and Simon “Ding” Archer have posthumously added music.

This revelatory history shows just how deeply embedded slavery is in the foundations of modern Britain

One tedious aspect of Britain’s post-imperial melancholia is the number of amateur historians who would rather we stopped going on about our role in the slave trade. Isn’t it all in the past? Weren’t we the first to abolish it anyway? In April, the Reform party announced a new policy of halting visas to people from countries seeking slavery reparations from Britain. “The United Kingdom is not an ATM for ethnic grievances from the past,” the party’s home affairs spokesperson, Zia Yusuf, said.

Unfortunately for those who would rather forget, the slave trade, as William Pettigrew argues in this grimly important book, can be found “in the depths of Britain’s grain”. Ninety per cent of the enslaved Africans transported to America went on British ships, and slave traders’ actions transformed Britain in ways that still resonate today.

At once a grand sweep through history and a domestic novel of petty differences, this tale of corruption and betrayal is packed with drama

We learn about the murder of the Chopra clan’s shifty, crude, charismatic patriarch Laxman in the opening pages of The Complex. Twenty-five years have passed, but the stain on this once-respectable Punjabi family remains. The man who did it, Laxman’s nephew Brij, has served his jail time and is about to be released. Some relatives think Brij is too dangerous, too shameful to return to the family home, but his son Mohit decides the pair will live together – and rewinds the clock to tell the story of the decades leading up to the crime.

Karan Mahajan’s warmly received first two works, Family Planning and The Association of Small Bombs, explored individual lives alongside larger forces – urban development in the former, a car bomb’s traumatic aftermath in the latter. His excellent third novel has Delhi at its heart, but also visits Indian villages and cities, the American midwest and London, its short chapters flitting between different members of the Chopra family. You start by nodding in appreciation at Mahajan’s observant character portraits; before you know it you’re waist-deep in frustration, corruption and betrayal, as the book ranges through politics, faith, migration, infidelity and entrepreneurship.

This recklessly ambitious doorstopper follows the 16 days of England’s medieval uprising from a vast array of viewpoints, and in startlingly rich prose

AK Blakemore’s third novel tells the story of the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381, when commoners of all classes – not only peasants, but merchants, servants, smugglers, and some local lords and officials – rebelled at the imposition of a poll tax and rampaged through southern England, burning records of debts, killing their oppressors and laying waste to their homes. The book closely follows the events of the rebellion’s 16 days, employing a vast array of points of view, including the young king Richard II, several of his courtiers, dozens of elements of the rebellious Commons, a porpoise and a runaway horse. The title suggests the novel’s portrayal of these events as an inevitable reckoning; a “doom painting” was a picture of the Last Judgment on the wall of a medieval church.

As a book of this scope must be, it’s a doorstopper. As any novel by Blakemore will be, it’s dazzlingly rich in lexical glamour, and this is likely to be any reader’s lasting impression of the book. Sometimes it feels as if the author is out to use every word in the English language in a startling, aestheticised, puckish way that expands both the word and the world. The result can be joyously silly. Who else would give us slugs that “blurb their elementary forms from out of the undergrowth to begin a dank and toothless festa”, or “lunar-brilliantined mud”? But there is also gravity and passion here, especially when she intimately imagines the lives of the commoners: “they rise, to fry eggs in butter and pork fat; they rise, to whet knives on scarred stone; they rise, to braid the manes of their draught horses; they rise, to count arrows; they rise, setting aside their glitchy dreams of hairy stars and blue-skinned devils; they rise, fearful and powerful, into the bright day.” The cheekily anachronistic appearance of “glitchy” in this medieval scene is typical of Blakemore’s method. All forms of language, high and low, archaic and modern, are here. Her use of detail to convey a historical scene is also extraordinary: the barber’s chair where “a crowd has gathered beneath the ribboned pole to watch the draining of a cyst”; the brewer with “a grotty beard, chlorotic with hops, [that] hangs down almost to his belt”; or “the horseflies waltzing over the liquefying flesh of severed heads”.

Amid genuinely touching passages about his sister, the earl can’t help but put himself and his grievances centre stage

Charles Spencer’s Swan Song, a memoir of his relationship with his sister, the late Diana, Princess of Wales, is a fascinating document that tells us a little about Diana and a great deal about Charles Spencer – perhaps more than we needed to know. If that sounds snarky, after 400 pages of score settling, chest thumping, wild indiscretion and some truly touching passages about his late sister, the reader is left with a head-spinning story of the world that created Diana and a certain sourness at the manner in which it is told.

Let’s start with the headlines in last week’s Daily Mail, the newspaper to whom Spencer sold serialisation of a book which includes a line describing tabloid journalists as “those who inhabit the murky swamps of malevolence, and who need to suck their victims dry of their souls”. Perhaps he meant a different set of hacks. Anyway the top line in the Mail was that, shortly after Diana’s death, King Charles insulted her in a phone call to Spencer: “‘Rest assured,’ he hissed, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough.’” Your take on this quote will likely dictate how you receive the book, and here’s mine: I’m willing to believe the king behaved badly, but “hissed” is a red flag, one of those embellishments, like “snarled” or “flounced”, that writers tend to use to make those they’re writing about appear worse. Spencer, always the injured party, has so many axes grinding away in this book that at times it’s impossible to hear what he’s saying.

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.

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.

PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox; Arbitrary Metric
The latest work from the team behind Paratopic is part compulsive time-loop management sim, part eerie subterranean adventure

Fetch the chair from storage. Deliver a message that causes disgust. Clean vomit in the afternoon and pour another glass in the evening. In Roman Sands RE:Build, you provide concierge service to delirious, broken people who couldn’t care less about the sweat on your forehead and the bags under your eyes.

In this reimagining of the 2019 visual novel Roman Sands, crafted by the team behind the Americana horror road trip Paratopic, you’re trapped in a beach resort and tethered in a time loop. The task is deceivingly simple: fulfil menial directives from four gluttonous individuals, unlock tools and items to open more rooms and then do it all over again.

The first console I ever bought, it was hyped as a threat to the PlayStation, then mocked as a flop. But now, as it marks its 25th anniversary, it’s looked back on with misty-eyed reverence

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the Nintendo GameCube, the first console I ever bought with my own money. I vividly remember getting on the bus after school with a year’s worth of savings safely zipped into the pocket of my bag and going to a branch of Currys, where I dumped a bunch of notes, coins and vouchers on the counter to collect my pre-order. (It turned out that some of the vouchers from the previous Christmas had expired, but the guy at the checkout clearly felt so sorry for me that he redeemed them anyway. If you’re out there, Currys guy: thank you for taking pity on a desperate 13-year-old.)

If it hadn’t been for the ill-fated Wii U console, whose failure to take off in 2012 resulted in the first unprofitable periods in Nintendo’s game-making history, the GameCube would be remembered as the company’s biggest flop aside from the infamous Virtual Boy, from 1995. Released in Japan this week in 2001 (and in May 2002 in Europe), this surprisingly powerful purple cube sold much less than the Xbox and the PlayStation 2. With its squat, colourful form and unusual controller, arranged around a big traffic-light-green A button and small analogue sticks designed for small hands, it had a hint of Fisher-Price about it.

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.

Gagosian Gallery, London
With his clever conundrums, the Belgian loved satirising both psychoanalysis and surrealism – and occasionally painted rubbish to annoy his family. What a dude!

René Magritte is the most inexplicable of artists. It’s much harder to get a handle on him than such supposedly difficult modern greats as Cézanne or Picasso. After all, cubism is a perfectly rational attempt to capture the complexity of reality. But Magritte? He confronts you with wilful mysteries. This show sets choice examples of his magic against modern art and is full of quirky, unexpected treasures that give your wonder at Magritte little twists in new and perverse directions.

A painting of puffy white clouds held me across the gallery and still floats ineffably in my mind. It’s a shock because it is so painterly and subtle. If you think Magritte fashioned his surrealist images in a deliberately flat, even banal style, think again. This simple painting of clouds in the blue is full of supple shadow and ethereal light, a brilliantly observed view of nature in the vein of Gainsborough, Constable or Hockney.

National Theatre, London
Tiago Rodrigues’s play has incensed audiences abroad with one character’s hellfire rightwing invective. But its combination of boredom and shocks ultimately feels confusing

What does it say about an audience who, while watching a character make a speech that has sparked screeching protests and angry walkouts in its run across Europe, sit politely listening until the end?

The booing does come, but only after the actor playing a far-right politician and kidnap victim (Romeu Costa) has finished a half-hour invective that takes in everything from the scourge of minorities to that of elites, homosexuals, and the far-left. It is a masterclass in rightwing rabble-rousing, with its appropriation of the word “freedom”. Yet on press night at its British premiere, all that is summoned in response is nervous laughter, a chorus of coughs and a few loud whistles.

The French artist has stalked people, posed as a hotel maid to get into rooms, and filmed her mother’s last breath. Has she any regrets? Non! As a major UK show opens, she recalls her career highs

I’ve read enough interviews with Sophie Calle to know that the conversation ahead could be tricky. France’s most famous conceptual artist can be a touch evasive. Which is why I’m so surprised by the woman before me, who is friendly and seemingly open, all smiles. She’s wearing big tinted glasses, and behind them I picture her eyes twinkling. Then, 10 minutes in, she tells me she is obsessed with absence. When I ask why, she says: “Why do you live in England? Why are you wearing that sweater? I am not here to do therapy with you.”

She is talking to me from the same Paris apartment she has been living in for almost 50 years. Hanging from the ceiling is a disco ball, and, alongside pictures and books, there are boxes that I imagine are filled with the innermost thoughts and feelings of her subjects. Since the early 1980s, Calle has made a name for herself with art that is at once intimate and detached, morbid and playful, immersing us in the lives of others – and in her own life, too. With a camera and a notebook in hand, she has invited strangers to sleep in her bed, posed as a hotel maid to document the belongings of guests, and called everyone in a lost address book to build a peculiarly tender portrait of its owner. Now, at 72, she is about to open her first big show in the UK for nearly two decades.

The singer, songwriter, actor and advocate, who has died following a cardiac arrest while touring in Europe, kept his band’s flame burning until the end

Gary “Angry” Anderson – who has died aged 79 after he was hospitalised following a cardiac arrest while on tour in Germany with the band Rose Tattoo, the balls-out band he fronted for 50 years – was not a nice boy growing up. As one of the founding members of Melbourne motorcycle club the Vigilanties, Gary Anderson initially earned the sobriquet Mouse, on account of his diminutive stature.

Determined to prove himself a man, he developed a penchant for taking on blokes twice his size. It earned him a new nickname: the Angry Ant. “Angry” – shortened for impact – suited him better. An accomplished rabble-rouser and ferocious rock’n’roll singer, Angry Anderson ended up channelling his energy into a variety of causes.

Highlights from three new shows to mark the opening of the 15th edition of Berlin Art Week – from Chernobyl to migrating birds, and a retrospective solo show from Carrie Mae Weems

Church, a prominent supporter of Palestinian causes, criticises Sheeran over removal of Macklemore from US tour

Charlotte Church has accused Ed Sheeran of choosing “consumerism and capitalism over doing the right thing” over the removal of his friend and support act Macklemore from his US tour.

Sheeran’s tour was thrown into crisis after Macklemore made “free Palestine” declarations on stage. After a significant backlash, including pressure from the owners of stadiums hosting scheduled shows, the rapper was removed from the tour. Shortly afterwards, Sheeran’s other support acts quit in solidarity.

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.”

Whip up a curry mayonnaise and turn your leftovers into a semi-instant classic

It was my gran’s funeral a few weeks ago, so today’s recipe seems rather fitting, because coronation chicken was one of the few savoury dishes she cooked, and also one I loved. This homage to her glorious personality and astonishingly sweet tooth (add extra mango chutney for sweetness) is a wonderful way to use up leftover chicken from a roast, barbecue or whatever. I make the mayo from scratch, because I don’t keep mayonnaise in my larder, but I do have eggs and extra-virgin olive oil.

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.”

Which supermarket syrups ooze with potential? We put 10 of the finest, grade-A bottles to the test

• The best supermarket runny honey

Though today’s maple syrups vary dramatically in intensity, complexity and taste, they’re all of decent quality and have that classic and unmistakable flavour. I avoided blended or maple-flavoured syrups for this test, and instead tried only 100% pure, grade-A maple syrups, using Agriculture Canada’s flavour wheel and four-step tasting process as a guide. I poured a small shot into a glass to observe the colour. Then I followed the tasting process: I smelled the syrup with three quick sniffs, took a small sip and swirled it around my mouth before contemplating the flavours. Step four is to assess the flavour intensity. Alongside appearance, aroma, texture and taste, I awarded extra points for specific provenance and organic certifications, as well as for value.

Prices vary greatly, and although the dearest bottles taste divine, so do the cheapest. Each pure maple syrup is unique in flavour, with nuanced notes from mild clove tones to intense, woody and almost menthol-like piney flavours. Like wine, maple syrup has the tang of its terroir: it’s an artisanal product that tastes of the land.

Is an Oxford shirt the ultimate wardrobe staple? Are skin-tight fits ever a good idea? And what’s the perfect fabric for autumn and winter? Our menswear expert has all the answers

• The best white T-shirts for men

The photo above stopped me mid-scroll: Harry Styles, before his 30-show residency at Madison Square Garden, dressed in a big white shirt and smart tailored trousers. After a summer spent parked in front of three fans with ice packs on rotation, when wearing actual clothes felt like punishment, here was proof that normal service had resumed.

So, now the rain’s back and autumn’s creeping in, it’s time to follow Harry’s lead and reintroduce some structure to your wardrobe: coats, knitwear, tailoring, all the pieces that make you look forward to getting dressed in the morning. One staple that’s long overdue a comeback? Shirts.

Snacks never tasted so good: spicy corn fritters with a lime pickle-spiked yoghurt, and king oyster mushrooms laced with blackberries, pomegranate molasses and soy

King oyster mushrooms are quite the centrepiece: relatively meaty and receptive to big flavours. Paired with a vibrant glaze spiked with sweet blackberries, tart pomegranate molasses and savoury soy sauce, every bite balances the richness with sharp, fruity acidity. But first some tangy, fresh fritters, celebrating fresh corn with an earthy base of gochujang, which works brilliantly against the lime pickle yoghurt. Creamy, crisp and the perfect treat.

A rich Levantine fusion dish of sumac-spiced roast chicken, onion and flatbread with tahini yoghurt, and a simple, textured salad

Fattet musakhan, a celebration of two beloved Palestinian dishes, takes centre stage here, bringing together crisp bread, creamy yoghurt, sumac-spiced onions, tender chicken and fragrant olive oil in one rich and comforting dish. Alongside, the salad brings a welcome freshness, with crisp cucumber, creamy avocado and bright acidity cutting through the richness of the chicken. Together, they make a beautifully balanced meal, bringing the generous, communal spirit of Palestinian cooking to the table.

Scottish breakfasts are worth getting up for: think eggs and potato cakes in a freshly baked roll, or toasted barley bread laced with sticky plums and honey butter

I’ve long wanted a space to cook the food that really excites me, and Clementine, which opens its doors in north London next month, is exactly that. These two recipes capture what the cafe is all about. This is food that feels both considered and completely unfussy: crisp morning rolls stuffed with folded scrambled eggs and tattie scones, and griddled barley bannocks served warm with salted honey butter and roast plums. Breakfasts worth getting out of bed for.

Sometimes cooking is about celebration or indulgence, but there are other times when you just need a speedy but delicious midweek meal

Of course, the act of cooking can be many things – joy, ritual, nourishment, comfort, celebration, indulgence – but this fish pie pasta bake and tomato and feta lentils are strictly about speed. Because, in reality, these are exactly the kind of recipes we all need in our repertoire, ready to whip out on a Wednesday night.

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

Anna Malos and Georgie bonded over their shared love of travel and horses. By their third date, an awkward encounter cemented their relationship

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

Georgie and I met at a kick-boxing club in London in 2004. We sparred together in a few beginner classes, just hitting soft pads. Although I didn’t pay her too much attention initially, I immediately recognised she was tall, elegant and very good looking.

It wasn’t until the club’s Christmas drinks that things kicked off between us. We started talking and couldn’t stop. We’d both travelled and worked in Latin America, and also loved horses – Georgie had volunteered with a horse-riding business for tourists in Ecuador. The sparks were flying all over the place.

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.

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

Saddling up is only likely to be an issue for elite athletes – and those with low sperm counts

“Cycling isn’t big on the radar of fertility doctors,” says Prof Colin Duncan, a fertility expert at the University of Edinburgh.

For women, he says, the only time cycling is likely to affect fertility is when it’s done at extreme levels, such as the kind of training undertaken by elite athletes.

Modern lifestyles seem to be exacerbating the problem of bromhidrosis – an underresearched condition that is widely misunderstood and devastating for sufferers

If Hayat goes out to eat, she’ll choose a table far away from other diners, ideally by a door or open window. She likewise tries to avoid people at the cinema or on planes, even if it means paying extra – whatever it takes to avoid being too close to others.

She chalks it up to a persistent past insecurity. “I still have that paranoia … It’s just in my head, because of everything I went through.”

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.

Combination of Miuccia Prada with Belgian designer Raf Simons once again spins gold for fashion house

Miuccia Prada’s style formula is simple: begin with a great skirt. Her personal uniform is a knee-length skirt, A-line or pleated, most often with a plain sweater and kitten heels.

The Prada collection that opened Milan fashion week made a compelling case for her favourite outfit, with a skirt the star of every one of the 63 looks – no dresses, no trousers. It won the room over, so expect to see the personality skirt on a high street near you soon.

Textile designer brings florals, vines and smiley doodles to brand’s luxury checks for one-off paired collection

Burberry and Celia Birtwell are both national treasures of sorts. One is Britain’s grandest luxury name, the other the textile designer who dressed bohemian 1960s London in her prints and has a place in art history as David Hockney’s favourite muse.

Burberry’s designer, Daniel Lee, has always loved Birtwell’s prints. When the two met this spring, he fell for “her energy, and her zest for life”, and a one-off Burberry meets Birtwell collection that closed London fashion week was born.

Brand returns to its physical and unconventional roots as it battles undergoes stark restructuring

Back when a young Lee McQueen was showing at London fashion week, there was Dante, the show in a Hawksmoor church with a skeleton in the front row and a blaring soundtrack of organ music and gunfire. And there was Voss, where models were trapped inside a giant mirrored box set up as a psychiatric ward.

Twenty-five years later, the Alexander McQueen brand returned from the Paris schedule to a creepily beautiful subterranean 17th century London chapel, with steel harnesses, bulky ankle strapped heels that looked like electronic monitoring tags, and a chain mail dress of tiny silver skulls.

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.

Beautifully situated refuges with superlative views offering sanctuary to intrepid hikers and climbers

A good mountain hut, I reckon, should be small and only accessible on foot after considerable effort. Throw in a bit of historical interest and I’m bound to be happy. In which case, Cabaña Verónica in the Picos de Europa is a fine start to this list. It sleeps six, and at 2,325 metres requires a two-hour trek from the nearest cable car station, never mind road. It has incredible views and a friendly custodian who keeps things in good order. Yet the real attraction is that this place was formerly a gun turret of a US navy battleship that was scrapped in Bilbao in 1960. An enterprising engineer, Conrado Senties, had it carried up on horseback and reassembled on a plug of rock in the middle of nowhere. Don’t ask why, just enjoy the eccentricity.
€15, reservarefugios.com

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.

Cardigan: Taking a walk beside the River Teifi, I encounter trees beginning to fade into new season colour, and the low blur of a weasel

It is rare for me to visit the same place twice within a couple of weeks, but my walk in the Teifi Marshes recently was curtailed by heavy rain, and I feel that I have unfinished business. Last time I started from the Cilgerran end of the marsh, so today begin at the seaward side – crossing the bridge over the Teifi and heading upstream past the site of the old, sadly long-departed Cardigan railway station.

My route follows the former course of the railway line, but I briefly divert along a boardwalk into the broad reedbeds at the heart of the marsh. Here, I am surrounded by the ambient sound of the wind in the reeds, which ebbs and flows with an almost animate organic static – pushing back the distant sounds of traffic on the main road. Scrub and small trees interact with the reeds at the margins, their autumn bounty of fruits already well advanced. The blackberries are almost over, but the sloes are plump and mature with the promise of a warming winter spirit to come.

It might seem a perfectly natural thing to do. But, on TikTok, a recruiter has expressed her dismay at gen Zs showing up with a takeout drink – and it’s caused a ruckus

Name: Iced coffee.

Age: Colonial troops in Algeria invented a sweetened cold coffee beverage known as Mazagran in around about 1840. However, in Japan, a cold brew was popular among sailors even earlier, in the 17th century.

In her new book, The Case For Quitting: The Surprising Benefits of Opting Out, Lindsay Crouse discusses the costs and traps of never giving up – and how she set herself free

Lindsay Crouse used to define herself as not a quitter.

She went to Harvard University, where she learned to become even more high-achieving and ambitious, then landed an assistant job at the New York Times and worked her way up to become an opinion writer and producer. On the weekends, Crouse ran marathons and did endurance sports, clocking new personal bests throughout her thirties.

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

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.

Houthi militants have made a lightning advance along the Red Sea coast, capturing strategically important territory in Yemen.

Hundreds of civilians have been killed and more than 100,000 people have been forced to flee their homes.

The Guardian's Oliver Holmes explains why this conflict has world governments on edge

Drug gangs have moved off Britain’s streets and into vulnerable people’s homes. Addicts like my friend are easy targets, but the reality can be more complicated than it seems

Duncan is a good friend of mine. He looks like a Dickensian rock’n’roller: tall and skinny, long hair, retro clothes. He’s read the Flashman novels three times. We met in secondary school in west London in the early 1980s. We got drunk, smoked Rothmans and banana skin spliffs and played Dungeons & Dragons. At 14, we got into punk together and spent our teens playing music and seeing live bands. As we moved into our 20s, I trained as a journalist and Duncan, a talented songwriter and guitarist, carried on with music.

At the age of 23 he got involved in heroin. He found the lifestyle immediately seductive, his partner at the time, Lucy, told me. He would often befriend his dealers. “I remember more than once waiting in his car as he’d gone up some tower block to score, thinking where on earth is he?” Lucy said. “He’d be hanging out chatting. There were some genuinely fascinating characters with incredible stories to tell.”

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.

Perhaps you want to know her favourite Shakespeare sonnet or what is was like working on Bond

This autumn, we’re giving you the chance to ask Judi Dench anything.

Over her extraordinary career, the actor has won an Academy Award, eight Laurence Olivier Awards and 10 Baftas – as well as the hearts of legions of fans.

Whether you’ve got a question about on-stage pranks, her favourite Shakespeare sonnet, working on Bond, her love of gardening, or her thoughts on the future of theatre, Hollywood or the world, share it with us here and we’ll put it to her as she releases her new book, Is It Too Late to Make a Run for It?

Perhaps you’ve ditched algorithmically curated playlists for vinyl and enjoy DVDs rather than streaming

Are you turning your back on hi-tech forms of entertainment to escape algorithmically curated content?

Perhaps you are enjoying listening to vinyl rather than the constant flow of music playlists. Or maybe you have ditched streaming services to watch DVDs instead.

From renting and troublesome landlords to buying or selling a home, send us your UK housing questions

Are you dealing with a problem with your landlord or tenancy, wondering about buying or selling a home, or facing another housing issue?

We’re planning to launch a new column answering readers’ questions about housing in the UK and helping them understand their options.

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