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

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

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

A General Synod vote to hear a document describing Israel’s ‘genocidal war on Gaza’ was welcomed by Palestinian Christians, but prompted warnings from Jewish groups

Father Fadi Diab, a prominent Palestinian Anglican priest from Ramallah, watched quietly as the Church of England debated whether to formally hear a document describing Israel as a “colonial enterprise” that had inflicted a “genocidal war on Gaza”.

The motion passed overwhelmingly among bishops, clergy and laity – all three houses of the General Synod – last week.

You hear the word ‘empathy’ a lot when people talk about our next prime minister. I can see why

My contribution to this summer’s modest avalanche of Andy Burnham stories extends to only two. One is about Glastonbury, and the time that he and his wife, Marie-France, came for a three-day stay at the festival, which included his appearance on the Left Field stage, organised by the songwriter and activist Billy Bragg. I help with the bookings and chair some of the debate sessions: Burnham’s was titled State of the Nation: Politics in Crisis.

It was the summer of 2022 – the prologue to Liz Truss’s five minutes in power and (somewhat amazingly) Burnham’s first visit to Glasto. As well as seeing bands – the Irish funsters Fontaines DC were among his favourites – and wandering around the perfumed fields, he had come to make the case for a lot of the stuff he has been talking about in the buildup to him entering Downing Street on Monday: “rewiring” the UK by changing our systems of politics and authority, collaborating on that task with other parties, and taking away as much power as possible from Westminster. Open, self-questioning and a talker rather than a shouter, in front of 1,000 mostly hungover people in a giant tent, he passed with honours; he was even nice to the obligatory disruptive Trotskyists.

John Harris is a Guardian columnist

Experts believe it’s at least possible. We urgently need a plan to navigate the ethical implications

In January, the AI company Anthropic published a new constitution for Claude, its most advanced large language model (LLM), which contained the comment: “We are caught in a difficult position where we neither want to overstate the likelihood of Claude’s moral patienthood nor dismiss it out of hand.” A month later, Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei went on a podcast and said his company couldn’t rule out the possibility that Claude was conscious. Philosopher David Chalmers, who coined the phrase “the hard problem of consciousness”, has said there is a significant chance of conscious LLMs within a decade. And what about Claude itself? When asked during testing to estimate the probability that it is a moral patient, meaning that its wellbeing matters in its own right, it gave numbers ranging from 5% to 40% and stressed how uncertain it was.

Modern AI systems are extraordinarily complex, and they are advancing fast. In terms of structural complexity and computational scale, by some measures a few are already in the range of a mouse brain, and at recent growth rates, they could reach the range of a human brain within five to 10 years.

The soul-rockers achieved worldwide success before surprising everyone by deciding to quit while they were ahead. Now they’re back with a new album railing against the state of contemporary America

In the autumn of 2024, Alabama Shakes showed no sign of ending their indefinite hiatus – and nobody was asking them to. Seven years had passed since the blues-soul-rock band, who exploded out of Athens, Alabama in 2009, had last shared a stage. Their transatlantic Top 10 2012 debut Boys & Girls announced them; the million-selling 2015 follow-up Sound & Color went to No 1 in the US and won them four Grammys. Their fanbase included Bruce Springsteen, Robert Plant and Barack Obama. But by 2017 they were physically and creatively spent, and they stopped. Then, in December 2024, with almost no warning, they played their first show in more than seven years.

“We had a friend in Tuscaloosa who had a brewery, but it wasn’t doing so well after Covid,” explains singer Brittany Howard. “He called me and said he was going to do a fundraiser and asked if I’d like to perform. I said, ‘For sure.’” But then she started reminiscing, remembering how that particular friend had been a huge help to the band, not just her personally. She felt the band owed him something, collectively. “So I called the fellas,” she smiles. “‘Do y’all wanna perform at this thing – like, all of us, together?’ And they instantly said yes.”

The fatal shootings of two men, both killed in their vehicles by ICE agents, have rekindled anger over the US’s militarized deportation push

Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, 52, was driving to work with his brother and two other passengers in Houston, Texas, when immigration agents began tailing his car. They pulled him over and fired a fatal shot through the open passenger-side window.

Six days later in Biddeford, Maine, Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, 26, was driving around his neighborhood when agents stopped him at an intersection – right outside the laundromat where he’d often go with his three-year-old daughter – and shot him dead.

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You can also follow the build up on our news blog, which contains photographtic proof that things are livening up in NYC

“One of the big questions for those of us in the UK is how to watch the final,” writes David Wall. “For all that has been made about ITV’s coverage with their New York studio and one of two excellent pundits, I think their coverage has been less than the sum of its parts, as usual. They’ve not had people other than the commentators in the stadiums so all that studio showed was that it was quite windy in New York sometimes.

Labour leader will visit king to accept role on Monday and will start making cabinet appointments that afternoon

Andy Burnham will say Britain must be honest about the challenges it faces when he becomes its sixth prime minister in a decade on Monday, as he prepares to introduce measures to ease the cost of living and allow more North Sea fossil fuel drilling.

The Labour leader is expected to start making appointments in the afternoon after going to Buckingham Palace to accept the role of prime minister from the king.

Calls grow for global regulation as rising numbers of westerners use surrogates in countries with different laws

• Why Mexico is at the heart of ethical debate over global surrogacy

The rise in the use of surrogates abroad is leaving more babies at risk of becoming stateless, experts have said, amid growing calls for urgent global regulation of the practice.

The warning follows the suspension of a 15-year effort by The Hague Conference on Private International Law (HCCH) to establish a global surrogacy convention, which was paused due to divisions among member states.

Consortium preparing for potential legal battle amid reports new PM could put the company into temporary public ownership

The group of investors pursuing a rescue bid for Thames Water have said they are willing to discuss greater public control but are also preparing for a potential multi-billion pound legal battle amid reports that Andy Burnham could temporarily nationalise the company.

London & Valley Water (L&VW), a consortium of 100 institutional investors that hold £17bn of the company’s £21bn debt, has said it is open to government involvement with Thames Water, but indicated that this does not include public ownership in the struggling company.

NYC mayor says in Times interview that’s he’s in ‘active conversation’ with city’s law department about the matter

New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he was reviewing whether his administration could arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if as expected the Israeli prime minister visits the city for the UN general assembly in September.

Mamdani’s comments on Saturday’s episode of the New York Times’s the Interview podcast echoed ones he had made to the publication as he successfully ran for mayor last fall.

Attack on Ukraine’s capital and other cities leaves at least six people dead and dozens injured

Russia has carried out one of its biggest ballistic missile attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, launching a five-hour assault that left at least six people dead and dozens injured, and caused fires and damage across the capital.

Ukrainian officials said the capital had been hit with about 40 Iskander-M and hypersonic Zircon missiles. Residents heard an air raid siren sound at 1.30am. There was the sound of air defences, followed minutes later by a series of booms and explosions.

Centcom announces fourth troop death from separate incident in Iraq following new round of airstrikes to ‘swiftly punish’ Iran

• Two US troops killed and one missing in Jordan after Iranian attacks

Jordanian authorities ⁠have not issued any decision ⁠to ​evacuate the airport or ⁠seaport in the city of Aqaba, and have not detected ⁠any potential threats ​in ‌the past ‌hours, the state ‌news agency cited the government spokesperson as saying.

This denial comes in response to the US embassy in Jordan earlier saying the airport and seaport in Aqaba had been evacuated by Jordanian authorities because of a “specific and credible threat” (see this post for more details).

Reform leader says support from fraudster before last election is ‘totally undeclarable in every single way’

Nigel Farage has admitted his close friend the fraudster George Cottrell let him use one of his London homes and paid for social media filming before the last election but insisted it was “totally undeclarable in every single way”.

The Reform UK leader spoke in depth for the first time about his support from Cottrell and the £5m gift from the Thailand-based businessman Christopher Harborne in an interview with the anti-woke Triggernometry podcast.

As with the John Cleese original, comedian is supported by famous faces from Claudia Winkleman to David Jason

John Cleese’s 1985 advert for the BBC in which he asks a pub full of stars “What has the BBC ever given us?” is one of the most famous examples of the corporation making the case to the public for the value of paying the licence fee.

In the advert, Cleese is complaining to the bartender that he has just bought his TV licence. “Fifty-eight quid for the privilege of sitting in your own home, watching your own television set. It’s diabolical. I mean, what’s the BBC ever given us for 58 quid?” he says, before being put right by a string of punters, ranging from David Attenborough and John Humphrys to Terry Wogan and David Jason.

Incoming prime minister has set out distinctly leftwing vision while also promising to be pro-business

As an incoming prime minister promising huge change, one of the strongest criticisms Andy Burnham has faced so far is that he has failed to provide the details of what he plans to do.

The new Labour leader, who will be made prime minister on Monday, has thus far set out a distinctly leftwing vision, while also pledging to be “pro-business”.

The aerospace giant is seeking UK government support for its re-entry into the huge narrowbody jet market

In a 100-year-old hangar at Rolls-Royce’s factory in Derby, aircraft engines lie on their noses as technicians strip them down after a couple of years circling the world.

Cranes lift and flip the engines, before engineers separate different modules to be cleaned, treated in acid baths if necessary, repaired or replaced. The acrid smell of kerosene signals the part of the factory where engineers handle the metre-diameter core of the engine, in which fuel and air combine at high pressure to drive the turbines and propel 200-tonne planes through the air.

Changes inside the Florida international airport are hardly evident as state and county hold back funds for full remodel

One of Donald Trump’s most grandiose vanity projects, a multimillion-dollar makeover of Florida’s Palm Beach international airport into a self-aggrandizing, gold-plated transportation hub, is running into turbulence, barely a week after the first plane’s wheels touched the runway.

At first glance, the rebranding of the airport less than 5 miles from his opulent Mar-a-Lago resort appears to be complete. Its website bears the name and oversized logo of the President Donald J Trump international airport, and state transportation workers were quick to erect highway signs leaving drivers in no doubt where they were heading.

Childhood in War examines what life looks like when play, education and family life is disrupted by hostilities

When John Hajdu was three, his parents gave him a teddy bear small enough to fit into his hands: 86 years later, it is the only surviving object from his childhood.

The bear, which the 89-year-old simply calls “teddy”, stayed with him as his father was taken to a labour camp, his mother sent to a concentration camp, and he hid in a non-Jewish neighbour’s cupboard before being forced into the Budapest ghetto.

Surprisingly easy to manoeuvre and skilled at cleaning carpet and hard floor, Shark’s upright bagless model is one of the best corded vacuums I’ve tested

• The best vacuum cleaners

Corded vacuum cleaners aren’t as glamorous as their cordless cousins, but swapping battery power for a plug socket has its advantages. The device will never be short of power, so it can keep cleaning for as long as you need it to. Prices also tend to be lower because there’s no expensive battery to factor into the cost.

On the downside, there’s a cable to manage while you clean, and even the longest cords usually need to be switched from one plug socket to another if your home is any larger than a small flat.

Over the last decade, the understanding of these devastating headaches has grown enormously, as has the understanding of what can be done to treat them

We’ve been trying to cure migraines – without much success, until relatively recently – for as long as we’ve been able to identify them as a distinct ailment. The Ebers Papyrus, a scroll dating back to 1550BC that mentions a “disease of one half of the head”, suggests anointing the scalp with fried catfish; Galen, the second-century Roman physician whose term “hemicrania” evolved into the modern word, recommended blood-letting (this, to be fair, was his answer to a lot of things). By the 20th century, doctors were suggesting repressed emotions might be at fault, leading to suggestions that women – who suffer from migraines far more than men – were simply too fragile and neurotic. As recently as a couple of decades ago, “vascular theory” – the idea that blood vessels in the brain expanding and contracting were to blame – was still the standard explanation in many medical schools.

Over the last decade, though, our understanding of what causes these neurological disorders, which are technically a sub-category of headache, has progressed enormously, alongside the options for treating them. One of the biggest problems, as in centuries past, is a lack of sympathy for sufferers. The biggest difference, these days, is that we actually understand what is happening, and why.

Both Denzel and Sarita left sexless relationships before they met, but together they have discovered toys and Tantric sex

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

She’s brought a different side to my life I didn’t know existed

Many say lack of regulation allows people to exploit women’s bodies, but others argue it offers financial freedom, and a child to those with no other option

• Rise in overseas surrogates ‘increases risk of stateless babies’

Diogo Amaro met his future husband, Loup, in Paris and from the first date, he made one thing clear: he wanted to have children.

“Right off the bat, I was like: ‘If I’m going to be in a relationship with somebody, I really want to build a family,’” he said. “‘That’s important to me, so please tell me if you want to walk.’”

Andy Burnham’s recent promise to create a ‘No 10 North’ echoes BBC’s successful Out of London plan

When the BBC first announced its intention to move a significant chunk of its operation to Salford in Greater Manchester – the “Out of London” plan, as the then director general Mark Thompson called it in 2004, with a faint “here be dragons” whiff – there were plenty in the organisation who were scornful that it could ever work.

Senior staff would never leave the capital. Star talent wouldn’t dream of travelling. It “didn’t take a brain surgeon”, said the Breakfast presenter and Strictly Come Dancing winner Chris Hollins, to see that the prime minister would never appear in person.

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

Matt Damon dons the sword and sandals in Christopher Nolan’s epic, while the LA singer-songwriter shares more arena-friendly scream-along anthems

The Odyssey
Out now
Christopher Nolan tackles one of the granddaddies of the western canon – Homer’s meaty tale of Odysseus (Matt Damon) and his long trip home after 10 years in the Trojan war. Also starring Robert Pattinson, Lupita Nyong’o, Zendaya and Charlize Theron.

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

Chris Packham takes us back to the beginning in awe-inspiring fashion, while Christopher Nolan heads for Homer with a grand adaptation. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

• White House confirms Trump will attend World Cup final

• Shakira, Madonna and BTS headline first half-time show

• World Cup final liveblog: all the football | Mail Tom

Streamer IShowSpeed, probably more famous than 98% of the players at this World Cup, is performing too. It’s probably not even watching the match now that he’s been on.

Post Malone has rocked up to perform at the closing ceremony, which is now taking place. Swae Lee joins him for toe tapper Sunflower.

The biggest job in world football is up for election - and there’s just one candidate: Gianni Infantino, who is on course to be re-elected as Fifa president by a landslide in March.

The Guardian understands more than 200 of Fifa's 211 member associations have already sent formal letters of support for a fourth Infantino term, with only a handful - Germany the most high-profile among them - yet to declare.

The endorsements have flooded in despite a summer of controversy. Watch this video to learn more about why Infantino's power is so untouchable. Fifa has been approached for comment.

• Fifa boss unlikely to face IOC sanctions over Balogun red card scandal

• Infantino tells football fans to ‘chill’ in response to Fifa’s critics

• German created ‘best England group for togetherness’

• Captain underlines importance of Nations League games

Harry Kane has backed Thomas Tuchel to learn from England’s World Cup semi-final defeat against Argentina and believes they must use the forthcoming Nations League campaign to gain experience of playing against the top teams.

Kane was an unused substitute as England sealed third place with an entertaining 6-4 victory against France on Saturday – their best finish at a World Cup on foreign soil. Tuchel, who signed a contract extension before the tournament, has been criticised heavily for his tactics against Argentina when he opted to switch to a back five to try to defend a 1-0 lead.

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Every World Cup produces cult heroes, icons who make it possible for us to sit back and start misty-eyed recollections by saying: “Do you remember Roger Milla/Saeed Al-Owairan/Keisuke Honda/Paul the Octopus?” Well, the Geopolitics World Cup has not let us down! Here are 10 cult heroes who’ve emerged from this tournament.

• Fifa deal with prediction market company under fire

• Balogun reprieve showed ‘rules bend under pressure’

Fifa has been accused of providing an “open door to fraud” and allowing political influence to cast doubt on the integrity of the World Cup in a stinging rebuke by the Council of Europe’s secretary general.

In an open letter published to coincide with Sunday’s final, Alain Berset also called for a new integrity framework to be built before the 2030 tournament, which is mainly being staged in Europe, and warned that Fifa was embroiled in a crisis involving money and power.

Fifa’s orchestration of incompatible or frankly absurd corporate sponsorship suggests the balance may have tipped too far

It’s almost all over. No more hydration breaks, no more obligatory pans of the TV cameras to Hollywood A-listers, or dread of the crushing inevitability of English disappointment. The Fifa World Cup 2026 is at an end, after another month of planet-straddling drama laced with significance and symbolism, both on and off the pitch.

Before the kick-off between Spain and Argentina on Sunday evening, the result is already clear: football’s greatest prize is more than a sporting event; it is a geopolitically charged economic juggernaut.

The neo-luddites are fighting the good fight. But my life before smartphones felt lonelier and more dangerous

Welcome to the Summer of Ludd. That’s the name of an anti-smartphone festival recently held in New York. It was slightly under the radar for obvious reasons – there was no Instagram, TikTok or website; advertisements were on “wheatpasted monochrome posters”. Those attending followed the rules: “Be present, and absolutely no phones, recording, or photos allowed.”

That’s perhaps why, the Economist reported, “crowds were small” – but they seemed to be having fun, with events including “Google in Real Life” (festival attenders answering questions on their specialist subjects), “flirting rehabilitation” and “hanging out with rats”. I was particularly charmed by the festival’s “media spokespuppet”, Gowanus: more events should be fronted by carpet offcuts with sock arms and button eyes.

From Shirley Valentine to my own adventures with friends in Italy, all-women holidays offer the perfect mix of freedom and self-discovery

I have just come back from a much-anticipated girls’ holiday to Puglia, and to say that it fulfilled expectations would be an understatement. We swam, we napped, we reminisced, we ate little bits of crudo alongside lovely sips of fiano, we danced around the table of the Airbnb while singing along to Sarà perché ti amo. Most of all, we laughed, sometimes until our stomachs hurt and our faces were wet with tears.

What a joy the girls’ trip is (despite our ages, “women” doesn’t feel right here somehow). Maybe that’s because at times during the holiday I was transported back to when we were indeed “girls” and studying together in Italy (although this time with far less street harassment – a realisation that prompted mixed feelings until a belated “Che bellissime!” saved the day).

When this is all over, people will tell us to move on. But those who perpetrated this reign of terror must be held accountable

One day, when Maga is out of power and the conditions of political possibility have changed, there are going to be people who tell you that the best thing for the country is to move on. There are going to be people who tell you that attempts to hold the purveyors of Trumpism accountable are petty, vindictive, engaging in a kind of petulant recrimination and score-settling. There are going to be people who tell you that there must not be investigations, that it would be a waste of time to have trials. There are going to be people who tell you that it is not wise to change the law to allow for prosecutions and lawsuits; that too great an emphasis on the past will only divide the country, and keep us from looking toward the future. This argument was made after Watergate; it was made after the civil war. It was wrong back then, and it will be wrong again when it is delivered, with piety and smugness, after Trump.

When Maga leaves power, all of the officers, bureaucrats and leaders of ICE – from the uniformed thugs in masks on the streets, to the contractors guarding concentration camps, to the suited vultures directing the operation in Washington and drafting legal memos to justify it – all of them must be held accountable. Their immunity from criminal prosecution and civil suits must be eradicated, and their liability must be made retroactive. They must be investigated, tried, fined, punished and ostracized. Needless to say, ICE must be abolished – attempts to merely reform it must be resisted as betrayals of democratic values. But it is not enough to abolish ICE. Those who are responsible for ICE must be driven from public life.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

My husband has a personality transplant within a five-mile radius of any airport. There is no chatting, no dawdling, no time to buy water or go to the loo. But I have happened upon a better way to travel

If we are being observed by aliens, they probably wonder why couples on Earth invent so many ways to be apart while together. The sleep divorce, screen divorce, meal divorce, chore divorce, hobby divorce … “Just split up already!” the beings from Nerfleurg 7 undoubtedly yell at their surveillance screens. However, there’s a new relationship hack in town and it could be the best yet: the airport divorce.

In the run-up to holiday season, is there anybody who didn’t read those words and feel wistful? Even if you’re single, going away with a friend, you can still have an airport divorce. This strategy is as all-inclusive as a resort package.

One Nation’s polling popularity is proof we live in an upside-down world which surpasses substance and vaults reason

Pauline Hanson’s podcast with Tommy Robinson was dispiriting in unexpected ways. Racism was a given: more deflating was the recognition of its entertainment value. Enough attention has been directed towards Robinson, real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon. He is a thug, a fraudster, a bully and a bigot.

Despite, or because of this, there are those who rush to swing hands with him.

The president no longer treats the people who defeated him as voters. He treats them as suspects

There is a version of this country in which Donald Trump tells Americans the truth he has been handed: that their elections are secure. Once, he apparently wanted to.

The Atlantic reported after Thursday night’s address that a February 2020 election-security briefing pleased Trump so much he wanted to announce the news himself. The press conference never happened. The election did, and Trump lost it.

Communal spaces where people can share big moments are a vital part of our shared life

“People can’t get enough of football fever,” a pub landlord, Sam Hale, told the Guardian last week. The World Cup provided the UK’s struggling hospitality industry with a much-needed boost, with pubs benefiting from extended opening hours and one estimate suggesting that an extra 5.5m pints were sold in the group stages alone. The tournament lifted customers’ spirits too – even if it ended in disappointment for England and Scotland fans – as millions of people relished the communal spectacle.

These sociable few weeks could not have come at a better time for pubs, which are closing at a rate of two a day, with about 2,000 gone since 2020. This reflects a long-term trend away from going out, combined with pressures from rising costs including energy bills, business rates, wages and national insurance contributions. The hope in the sector, and among its advocates, is that the temporary uplift of the past few weeks will focus minds on the importance of venues, including pubs, in promoting social cohesion and “watercooler moments”.

Startling new research shows that in many countries – including old US allies – the public prefers Beijing to Washington

Earlier this year, a spate of western TikTok and Instagram creators announced that they were at “a very Chinese time in my life” – drinking hot water and wearing slippers around their homes. The Chinamaxxing phenomenon primarily reflected the constant need of influencers for novel content. But social media trends also reflect a growing fascination with China, as the economic historian Adam Tooze has noted.

While it broods over China’s economic, military and technical advance, the Trump administration is accelerating Beijing’s diplomatic progress, as striking new polling by the Pew Research Center shows. For the first time, China and Xi Jinping are seen more favourably than the US and its president in most of the 36 major countries surveyed – including Canada, Mexico and Australia. Only in six countries did people rate the US more highly. While Beijing has seen significant improvements in some places, the slump in Washington’s standing is more dramatic. Across 20 countries, the median percentage with a favourable view of China rose from 32% to 46% between 2023 and this year; for the US, it fell from 58% to 36%. Views of China were much more positive in Latin America, Africa and parts of south and south-east Asia than in wealthier European and east Asian countries.

Readers give their views on Britain’s new prime minister

How fortuitous for Andy Burnham that just as Keir Starmer departs from Downing Street, the threat from the menacing presence of Nigel Farage is also beginning to dissolve (Editorial, 15 July). Burnham is an unknown quantity to most of the public so he needs to define who he is, what he believes in and what he will do about the things people care about most – the cost of living, the housing market and the parlous state of public services.

In stark contrast to Keir Starmer’s cautious and forensic persona, Burnham is a skilled operator, familiar with the rough cut and thrust of politics, and a track record of fusing the energy and talents of people from diverse perspectives to work towards a common good.

Gwyn Daniel and Phil Gaunt respond to an article by Nesrine Malik about the horrors taking place in Israel’s prisons

Nesrine Malik’s incisive piece (In Israel’s prisons, torture and death have become a norm that it barely tries to hide, 13 July) lays bare the fact that all the illegal detentions, deaths, torture and sexual abuse in Israeli prisons are not aberrations from a legal system, but deeply embedded in the practices and intentions of the state. She mentions the psychological dimension to deliberately eroding the capacity of Palestinian civil society to exert any kind of autonomy.

As mental health practitioners, working alongside our Palestinian co-professionals, we have long recorded the ways in which practices of degradation, humiliation and debilitation constitute attacks on minds and relationships as well as bodies. They are designed to undermine the fabric of family, social and community life, and to destroy those systems of connectivity upon which all citizens, especially children, are dependent if they are to flourish. The carceral system is part of a set of state interventions which not only detain, murder, maim and mutilate Palestinian bodies, but also conduct an unrelenting assault on their growth, dignity, personhood and identity.

In the 1980s, I was director of the Northampton juvenile liaison bureau, which became a model nationwide, writes Jim Crook

I completely agree with Kirsty Brimelow that the age of criminal responsibility should be raised from the age of 10 to 14 (Jailing children does not make us safer – we need to get rid of this Dickensian delusion, 11 July). Also, that many more children could be diverted away from the criminal justice system. In the 1980s, I was director of the Northampton juvenile liaison bureau, a multi-disciplinary team that was successful in diverting more than 80% of the children between the ages of 10 to 17 who were offending away from the criminal justice system by employing informal methods of control, support and care, including restorative justice.

It gained a national reputation and became a model for the creation of youth-offending teams. Research revealed no increase in youth offending or repeat offences as a result of this policy. Due to the reduction in the number of juvenile court sittings and fewer children being processed through the criminal justice system, it saved in today’s money nearly £2m per year in Northampton alone and avoided children acquiring criminal convictions and criminal records. Research also found that the biggest impact on preventing further offending by the majority of children was being caught, spending a night in police cells, and the consequences of having to face parents.
Jim Crook
Stillington, North Yorkshire

The new normal | Cool school | Italian idiom | Word Wheel | Covid failings

Your article (‘Unprecedented’ changes in UK climate are normalizing extremes, report says, 15 July) reminded me of the rhyme to help people convert from fahrenheit to centigrade when I was a schoolgirl in the late 60s. This was “five, 10 and 21 – winter, spring and summer sun”, denoting the then average temperatures. Maybe this could be updated for the 2020s. I was thinking of “10, 15, 28 – reduce emissions before too late”.
Liz Haggart
Bearsted, Kent

• Of all the inequalities in education, access to tree shade would not be high on my list (Private schools offer 41% more tree shade than state schools in England, 16 July). It’s a poor metric, as if a state school is forced to sell an open playing field, the proportion of its site covered by trees could increase. I would look at the extent of air-conditioned classrooms first.
Peter West
London

• USA’s Cameron Young falls short by a single shot

• Rory McIlroy hints at DeChambeau joining Irish Open

What a way to enhance a family dynasty. Ryan Fox, son of a New Zealand rugby legend and grandson of one of the country’s cricket captains, is the Open champion. Three generations, three sports, one Claret Jug. Fox displayed the fortitude of Grant, his old man, to snatch victory from Cameron Young on such a dramatic Open Championship Sunday.

Fox took to the 18th tee level with Young at nine under par. The American had finished more than two hours earlier, his total looking ever more promising as others took it in turn to wilt under the heat of Royal Birkdale. Fox laughed in the face of adversity. He crashed a drive 330 yards down the fairway, flicked an iron to 11ft and holed out for a birdie three. This will trigger quite the party, including in his homeland. This Open needed something to switch the conversation from Bryson DeChambeau and a rules breach. In Fox, the tournament found a bold and deserving champion.

• Dane was woken by doping control at 2am on day of stage

• Remco Evenepoel outsprints Pogacar to claim victory

Jonas Vingegaard crashed out of the Tour de France on the first Alpine stage on Sunday, only hours after being woken up in the early hours to undergo doping controls. He will have collarbone surgery in the next few days.

The double Tour winner, who also won the Giro d’Italia this year, climbed gingerly into a race ambulance, his right arm in a sling, after falling as the main peloton exited a roundabout in Bonneville.

• 3rd ODI: England, 387-3, bt India, 360-7, by 27 runs

• Rohit Sharma hits searing century but India fall short

After a cascade of wickets during the much-criticised Test here six weeks ago came a landslide of one-day international runs. In the end, despite a ferocious century from Rohit Sharma that turned Lord’s into his personal playground, England had enough on the board to seal a 2-1 series victory against India.

Harry Brook must have thought it was mission accomplished for his side at the halfway stage, with Ben Duckett’s 141 from 135 balls having powered them to 387 for three. Both were men’s ODI records at Lord’s, with Duckett having surpassed Viv Richards and the unbeaten 138 made during the World Cup in 1979.

• Russell clipped by Hamilton on lap one after power loss

• British driver 50 points behind Antonelli in standings

Toto Wolff, the Mercedes principal, has admitted the team let George Russell down. The British driver failed to score a point at the Belgian Grand Prix after a clash with Lewis Hamilton which Russell attributed squarely to his car’s performance not being up to scratch.

The race at Spa was won by Russell’s teammate, Kimi Antonelli, who now leads Russell by 50 points in the world championship, a serious blow to the British driver’s title hopes.

Returning world-beater has made real difference but Fin Smith laments continuing ill discipline after Argentina win

The most impressive analysis of England’s fluctuating July fortunes, as is so often the case nowadays, came from their fly-half Fin Smith. Where others choose to obfuscate, deflect or shoot the messenger, the admirably clear‑eyed Smith prefers to tell it as it is. And at the end of a long, draining season, his view is that England are still frustratingly short of where they need to be.

Yes, they beat Argentina 31‑24 on Saturday in a turbulent game containing eight tries and the tightest of finishes. It means they have claimed back-to-back Test wins for the first time since November and, in Manny Feyi-Waboso, they have a genuine world-beater. Equally, though, there can be no ignoring the bright yellow elephant in the dressing room. Four more yellow cards has taken England’s tally to 14 in 10 games this year, a habit they still seem unable to break.

• Time of 3min 42.66sec betters El Guerrouj in 1999 by 0.47

• Kerr becomes seventh British man to hold record

Having put himself out there in the manner that he did, Josh Kerr left nowhere else to go. He had to deliver on Saturday. You call your shot, you take it. So he did. And boy, was it spectacular.

For the first time in 27 years there is a new one-mile world record-holder. On the morning of this London Diamond League meet, Sebastian Coe – a three-time mile world record-holder himself – described Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj, the incumbent, as the greatest miler in history. If that fact remains undisputed, the record books will now show Kerr’s name above El Guerrouj as the man who ran one mile in 3min 42.66sec. Just as he said he would.

• Fee makes Rogers most expensive English player

• Arsenal were also keen on Rogers, a £15m Villa signing

Chelsea are poised to sign Morgan Rogers from Aston Villa for £117m. The attacking midfielder has agreed terms on a six-year contract and is due to undergo a medical on Monday.

Arsenal were interested in Rogers and made contact with Villa this month but Chelsea have long tracked the 23-year-old’s progress and have moved quickly to land one of Xabi Alonso’s top targets.

More than 30 injured and 300 displaced after buildings collapse near Sicaya

A 5.5-magnitude earthquake shook the Andes region of Peru, killing at least six people, authorities said Sunday. More than 30 people were injured and 300 have been displaced.

The US Geological Survey reported the quake struck on Saturday at 9.24pm, with its epicentre located 2km (1.2 miles) west-south-west of the city of Sicaya in Huancayo province. It was 10km (6.2 miles) deep.

Emergency response has rescued 67 people, including 15 children, from one of the country’s worst maritime disasters

A ferry carrying 116 passengers and crew sank ⁠off the coast of Guyana in South America ⁠late Saturday, with 67 ⁠people, ​including 15 children, rescued so far, according to Guyana ⁠authorities.

A massive search-and-rescue operation continues for dozens of missing passengers in what has been described by officials as one of the country’s worst maritime disasters.

Tom Homan’s comments come amid scrutiny over federal immigration agents’ fatal shooting of two men in six days

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will require its officers to record vehicle stops with at least one body camera, said Tom Homan, the Trump administration “border czar”, on Sunday. The action comes as the agency is under renewed scrutiny after ICE officers fatally shot two men earlier this month.

“They exonerate more law enforcement than they convict, and I want officers to wear body cameras because I want the American people to see what the ⁠officers saw when they took that action,” Homan said on the Fox & Friends Weekend program.

Health Foundation paper argues health is an economic asset and improving it could generate £72bn for public finances

Restoring the deteriorating health of the UK’s population to the level of 2014 would boost GDP by 2% and generate a £72bn dividend for the public finances, research suggests.

A paper by the Health Foundation thinktank, published on Sunday, argues the nation’s health should be valued by policymakers as an economic asset.

Britain seeks extradition over charges including rape, trafficking for sexual exploitation and offences relating to extreme pornography

The controversial influencer brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate have been arrested in the US as part of a UK police investigation into a number of alleged sexual offences.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said it was bringing further charges in relation to four further individuals, and had requested the two men’s extradition.

From Nevada to Manchester, developers are trialling innovative solutions to clean energy’s biggest challenge

In the deserts of the United Arab Emirates a sprawling clean energy project, stretching across an area roughly the size of 12,600 football fields, will play host to a breakthrough allowing solar energy to power the equivalent of half a million homes through the night.

The Gulf state has been steadily combining 5.2GW of solar power capacity with 19GWh of battery storage to create the largest battery scheme in the world.

Award-winning entomologist Dino Martins, known for his work on pollinators, shows in his latest book that even the most gruesome creatures have vital roles to play

Dino J Martins has never been able to resist the small things. The renowned entomologist and evolutionary biologist spent his formative years in biodiversity-rich western Kenya with his foster parents, Joe and Sarah Ellen, looking at birds, flowers and insects on Mt Elgon, and in Kakamega forest and Kerio valley.

He was especially transfixed by the miniature world beneath his feet – dung beetles rolling mounds of cattle dung; safari ants’ migrations across the plains; male butterflies that suck salt and other nutrients from the mud to produce “nuptial gifts” during mating; and bees pollinating the critically endangered African violet alongside crops in a farmer’s field.

Top Democrat says findings show public ‘way ahead of the politicians’ as Trump dismisses global heating as ‘hoax’

Amid a summer of dangerous heat, drought and floods, a majority of Americans are connecting increasingly severe weather to the climate crisis, new polling shows, despite efforts by Donald Trump to dismiss global heating as a “con job” and a “hoax”.

It’s a sign that attempts to suppress polarize climate concerns may not be seeing full success, said Grace Adcox, senior climate strategist at Data for Progress.

Greenpeace UK says 2.87bn litres lost daily, a fifth of all water pumped through network

Water companies are wasting five times more water through leaky pipes than even a nationwide hosepipe ban could save, environmental campaigners say.

Research by Greenpeace UK found that 2.87bn litres of water a day seep from leaky pipes in England and Wales. That is enough to fill 1,150 Olympic-sized swimming pools and amounts to a fifth of all water pumped through the network.

People in Tunbridge Wells area face lower pressure, intermittent supply or no water after ‘instrument failure’

Thousands of homes and businesses in Kent are facing water supply problems for a second day, including a “complete lack of water” in some cases, South East Water said.

About 7,000 properties in the Tunbridge Wells area could face low pressure, intermittent supply or no water, after an “instrument failure” at a nearby water treatment works, SEW said.

Campaigners hope move will force commercial banks to rethink holding assets linked to the fossil fuel

Climate campaigners have declared a victory after the Bank of England said it would no longer accept bonds linked to one of the most polluting industries on the planet for key loan arrangements.

The ban, which comes into force in October, marks a fresh crackdown on thermal coal, which is burned in power plants to create electricity, and has long been a target of green policy activists.

Data shows 32,559 earnings-related overpayments in 2025-26 after DWP’s measures to end carer’s allowance scandal

Scores of unpaid carers were hit with demands to repay sums of more than £20,000 and hundreds more put at risk of prosecution last year as a result of official failures in what appear to be continuing problems with carer’s allowance.

New figures showed carers were asked to repay £33m in 2025-26 as a result of 32,559 earnings-related overpayments, despite the introduction of measures over a year ago designed specifically to prevent carers falling foul of the system.

Annual lectures will discuss work of writer and campaigner who ‘revitalised the anti-slavery cause’ in Britain

He was one of the most important figures of his time, an author, orator and American statesman who was born enslaved. But some of the most important years in the civil rights leader Frederick Douglass’s life were spent in Britain.

This month marks the 180th anniversary of a series of lectures Douglass gave in Manchester, speaking at venues across the region.

Sex, drink and religion are common motifs in the ‘extraordinarily rich’ colloquial vernacular of Ireland’s second city

If Des MacHale had to nominate a favourite from the lexicon of insulting and inexplicable terms that comprise Cork slang, it would have to be “langer”.

Depending on tone and context it can mean idiot, drunkenness or penis, a versatility that baffles outsiders and further enhances the word’s value. “Langer is an absolutely beautiful word. I’m very fond of it,” says MacHale.

Fans evacuated from sold-out open-air show as organisers promise full refunds

An open-air show by the Puerto Rican music star Bad Bunny was abandoned in Italy on Saturday night because of a violent hailstorm, but the organiser said ticketholders would be reimbursed.

Videos posted on social media showed large hailstones hitting people at the sold-out show, along with strong winds and driving rain, after the star began his set at Milan’s Snai La Maura Hippodrome.

Investigators arrest 31-year-old man identified as Charles Medina in connection with death of Rapp who was 26

US boxer Hannah Rapp, who in June fought for the World Boxing Council (WBC) women’s featherweight championship, was killed on Saturday while she bicycled in Texas after a motorist struck her with his car, according to authorities.

Rapp was 26, and investigators arrested a 31-year-old man identified as Charles Medina in connection with her death, the sheriff’s office of Brazos county, Texas, said in a statement.

Incumbent Carlos Vila Nova hopes to defeat his former party and secure second term as independent

Voters in São Tomé and Príncipe go to the polls for a presidential election on Sunday as one of Africa’s least populous countries seeks to burnish its democratic credentials.

According to the National Election Commission, about 142,000 people are registered to vote in the tiny African state’s elections, approximately 15% of whom live in the diaspora.

CEO’s pay packet surges to £791,000 as union says public ‘sick of obscene pay’ and bosses ‘feathering own nests’

Wessex Water awarded its chief executive an above-inflation pay increase even as the company was banned from paying bonuses because of sewage spills, it has emerged.

Ruth Jefferson received a 14% base salary increase in October, from £590,000 to £670,000, before other benefits, according to accounts published this month. It was far above the 3.5% given to workers, and put her pay at 18 times that of the company’s median employee.

Exclusive: Watchdog asked to look into how James Watt got data of ex-crowdfunders he invited to join buy-back bid

James Watt, the BrewDog founder who sold the debt-laden “punk” brewer earlier this year, is the subject of complaints to the UK’s data privacy watchdog linked to his surprise bid to buy the company back, the Guardian has learned.

BrewDog’s brand, intellectual property, UK breweries and 11 bars were sold to the US cannabis and drinks firm Tilray in March for £33m, in a deal that rendered the shares of more than 200,000 crowdfunding investors worthless.

East Midlands Railway cancels trains on Midland mainline, as drivers on LNER and Avanti West Coast ballot

Intercity rail travellers face potential disruption this summer across Great Britain’s three north-south mainlines, with drivers voting on strike action on two lines and timetables slashed on the other owing to malfunctioning trains.

East Midlands Railway announced it will cancel hundreds of services in the coming weeks from its intercity timetable on the Midland mainline, because of continued problems with its fleet of Hitachi trains.

One UK man whose bill is usually less than £1 says he ‘almost had a heart attack’ when he saw £5.8bn invoice

People always suspected big tech was greedy, but not quite like this. Patrons of Amazon Web Services have been landed with panic-inducing monthly bills running as high as $1.5tn for subscriptions that usually cost less than the price of a cup of coffee.

From Bangalore to Bolsover, the bills have been causing alarm after a computer glitch resulted in the astronomical invoices being dispatched around the world by Jeff Bezos’s company, which provides data and cloud services to millions of customers, from students and small charities to big businesses.

Actor who was the first Irish woman to win an Oscar for her role in the 1989 film classic My Left Foot

Brenda Fricker, who has died aged 81, was only the second Irish actor – and the first female one – to win an Oscar, for her role as Daniel Day-Lewis’s mother in the 1989 film My Left Foot, after shooting to fame in the original cast of the BBC medical drama Casualty.

As the nurse Megan Roach, she was the Mother Earth of the fictional Holby City hospital’s A&E department for the programme’s first five series (1986-90). “We knew the show had to have compassion,” said Casualty’s first producer, Geraint Morris. “We made Megan the person everyone could talk to.”

The Avengers star teams up with real-life scholars for a look at the eruption of Vesuvius. At points it’s elegiac and moving, at others it’s majestic and brutal

It’s always funny when documentaries strategically pair a possibly boring topic with a famous face, just to sex them up. A History of NCP Car Parks By Tinie Tempah, say, or World’s Deadliest Sleep Disorders With Anna Maxwell Martin. So when I saw that Tom Hiddleston was hosting a National Geographic investigation into the destruction of Pompeii in AD79 (Disney+, from Thursday), there was no way I wasn’t watching.

The actor has famously sauntered through life’s most vaunted way stations: Eton, Cambridge, Rada, Kong: Skull Island. Privilege and perceived smugness have long been sticks to beat him with. It’s harder to argue he’s not qualified for this job, having earned a double first in classics. Here, he slips into the role of undergraduate detective. A real-life scholar is forced to cosplay as his don during their interview, addressing Hiddleston by surname, issuing prim little reprimands. Hiddleston even translates Latin headstones in the first episode. I don’t know what the ancient Roman for “screw it, I’m leaning in” is, but I think that’s what it means.

Carrie Underwood and Kathy Mattea celebrate 100 years of Grand Ole Opry. Plus: controversial comedy in Unacceptable. Here’s what to watch this evening

7pm, Sky Arts

It’s silly, singular and occasionally tearjerking: this tale of a mechanical companion to an elderly widow is shot through with love and care

The home, warns Jamaican nurse Brianna (Michelle Greenidge), can be a “lethal” environment for elderly people. “You lucky like plucky you never smash your head on the corner of the coffee table, or land teeth first on the iron doorstep!” she says, fatalistically, as Sue (Sue Johnston) tries in vain to explain that she didn’t “have a fall”, but fainted due to low blood pressure. In any case, Sue – widowed two years ago – has wound up in hospital with a sprained wrist and is discharged with her arm in a sling.

At least she has her son, Michael (Paul Ready), to rely on. Except that Michael – gutless, whiny and covered in red blotches from a drug trial he’s joined for quick cash (“if it was dangerous”, he says, “do you really think drug companies would do it?!”) – is moving back in with his cheating ex. His solution? A robot carer, preloved and purchased on a 24-month contract. Cocking snooks at an era where everything is on subscription and at the general direction of late-capitalist travel, the preloved Ann Droid robot is useless without an internet connection, and is delivered by overburdened delivery driver Cass (Sarah Kendall), who we later discover has completed a PhD on Chaucer. Sue is appalled.

The director’s more-is-more approach to the 1986 sequel gave us seat-edge action and an indelible performance from a rule-breaking Sigourney Weaver

James Cameron loves tough female characters. That seems like a given now, after three Avatars and two particularly muscular arms belonging to Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2. Even the lushly romantic Titanic is about a supportive, sweet-natured boyfriend lending his love the extra smidge of strength she needs to live a rich and iconoclastic life without him, until she’s freely chucking diamonds into the sea at 100 years of age. But in Cameron’s 1984 de facto feature debut The Terminator (after a Piranha sequel that he attempted to disown), T2’s Hamilton is stalked and appropriately terrified by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s slasher-like killer robot. She’s a great character who gets majorly pumped up for the sequel in 1991. By then, Cameron had plenty of practice: he had already written and directed Aliens, maybe the best pumped-up sequel ever made, which turns 40 this week.

Ellen Ripley, introduced as the warrant officer onboard the ship Nostromo in Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi horror picture Alien, is already a great character by the end of that film. But while the anecdote about James Cameron pitching a sequel by appending a dollar-sign to Alien’s title, concisely showing what a simple pluralization could do, has perhaps overtaken the buffing up of Ellen Ripley in the most-circulated lore about this movie, she’s really the first subject of Cameron’s great plussing. Without betraying the simplicity and resilience of her character in the first film, Cameron reintroduced Ripley as a survivor, landing on Earth almost 60 years after the events of the earlier film. (In a deleted scene restored in the film’s longer special edition, Ripley even learns that her daughter has died in the interim – as an adult, given that Ripley was in cryosleep for decades.)

Wembley Stadium, London
Mars sings every line like it’s his big solo in a show that leans more on his stage presence than pyro and pageantry

Wembley Stadium is awash with crimson as the Bruno Mars operation rolls into town for the first of a six night run. The tour is named for the diminutive singer’s 2026 album The Romantic. Mars is feeling amorous and the Saturday night crowd is very happy to be romanced, clad in red and brandishing hand fans that read “Hot for Bruno”.

He starts with a prayer, a kitschy video in which he asks for a hand giving the audience a show we’ll never forget, before emerging in a puff of dry ice. Stained glass behind him and twinkling fairy lights all around, it’s half seedy club, half church service as he barrels into Risk It All. Is this show meant to be a spaghetti western or a 50s high school prom? The Romantic Tour bravely asks: why not both?

The trip-hop star doesn’t believe in getting jiggy to songs and would choose Cyndi Lauper at karaoke. But which classic reminds him of his mum?

The first song I fell in love with
I was going out with this Jamaican girl when we were about 15, and would listen to Night Nurse by Gregory Isaacs all the time. We had a daughter together when we were 17 – she’s 35 now and works as a social worker in Bristol – so that song has always stayed with me.

The song that makes me cry
Astral Weeks by Van Morrison, because it reminds me of my mum and growing up in Bristol. He sings about his mum dressing him and showing him pictures, and my mum was exactly like that. In every childhood photo I’m in a shirt and tie and looking proper.

After 20 mutilated animal corpses were left outside a rural primary school, the creators of award-winning podcast Buried began investigating – with a little help from Chris Packham. It plunged them into organised crime, the dark web and Line of Duty-esque rumours of police corruption

In 2024, a village in Hampshire woke up to something truly disturbing. A mound of dead animals had been dumped outside a school, and blood oozed out on to the streets before children’s classes started for the day. There were about 20 carcasses, including rabbits, hares, pheasants, a fox and a muntjac deer with its head severed. The village was dumbfounded, and the biggest question was: why?

The husband-and-wife investigative journalist team of Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor – the pair behind the award-winning BBC podcast series, and now forthcoming documentary, Buried – found themselves wondering the same thing. Their new 10-part podcast, Buried: Dead Rabbit, delves into this and finds them plunged into the shady world of illegal bloodsports. Specifically, hare coursing – where dogs hunt hares to kill them, an activity that has been banned in the UK since 2005 – and its links to organised crime and the dangerous, violent characters who are terrorising villages across the country.

Buried: Dead Rabbit is on BBC Sounds now.

A Grammy nom at 17, a US No 1 ... then silence. With new album Oh Yeah? finally out after four years away, the genre-hopping artist explains the trauma and heartbreak that informed it

Since Steve Lacy became a Grammy-winning artist with a No 1 hit in the US, little has changed for him. His single Bad Habit was one of the biggest songs of 2022, leading to a sold-out tour across North America, Europe and Australia. But off-stage? He bought a new home in Los Angeles, but he hasn’t made any new famous friends. He doesn’t get hounded in public, because he’s a natural homebody. Besides, he’s not really that famous, is he?

“I think my name is bigger than my face, which is great,” he says, smiling mischievously. Sitting in a private room in a London hotel, wearing a Serge Gainsbourg T-shirt and jeans so ripped that they might as well be shorts, Lacy says he thinks he has pulled off the greatest trick of modern pop stardom: being one of the most celebrated musicians of his generation while remaining almost unrecognisable.

Sinister bogland discoveries haunt the intersecting lives of four characters in this meditative, exquisitely written tale

Almost 14% of Ireland is bog: vast swathes of moss-carpeted land, below which layers of ancient history have been compounded into mulch-black turf. Captivated by their otherworldly beauty, Seamus Heaney wrote some of his finest poetry about bogs – and the bodies discovered, perfectly preserved, in their eerie depths.

Sheila Armstrong’s exquisite second novel, The Red Mouth, also centres around two bog discoveries: the “monstrous, bog-black antler” of a great Irish elk, and the mutilated body of a girl who comes to be known as Belroe Woman. From here we follow the intersecting lives of those haunted, both literally and figuratively, by these excavations and the uncanny landscape that yielded them.

The former poet laureate on growing up with Lawrence Durrell, rereading Henry James and getting to grips with the genius of Alexander Pope

My earliest reading memory
My parents were country people who thought that looking after or chasing animals was more fun than reading: my father used to say that he’d read half a book in his life (The Lonely Skier by Hammond Innes), and while my mother got through three or four novels a year, she didn’t expect me to do anything equivalent. But I do remember enjoying something my grandmother gave me – My Father’s Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett. I must have been seven or so, and thought it was amusing and ingenious.

The books that changed me as a teenager
At my first school, I somehow got my hands on White Eagles Over Serbia by Lawrence Durrell, which my parents thought was unsuitably violent. I never finished it, but enjoyed carrying it around as proof of how grown-up I was. Then, at my secondary school, my history teacher read us some Wilfred Owen (we were studying the first world war), and the poetry-lights in my mind immediately flickered on. When I subsequently bought Owen’s Collected Poems it became a kind of sacred text for me (it still is).

The Runner by Scarlett Thomas; The Madman by Henning Mankell; Everything She Didn’t Say by Jane Casey; The Spy and the Snake by MJ Robotham; Murder at the End of the World by Akane Araki

The Runner by Scarlett Thomas (Scribner, £16.99)
Part thriller, part romantic suspense, Thomas’s latest novel begins in Cyprus, where 34-year-old Jay is literally on the run from someone who wants to kill him. Jay (not his real name) is well used to evading hitmen: the attempts on his life began at university, when a Japanese man arrived at his flat with a samurai sword. People have been trying to murder him ever since, the contract on his life traded like a commodity, in bitcoin. Now his only apparent ally is the mysterious Ellie, although – given his track record – it’s quite possible that she’s trying to off him, too. Just before the reader’s sense of intrigue turns to irritated bafflement, the action rewinds to Jay’s childhood in Kent, and the reasons slowly become clear in this quirky, exciting tale that takes in exorcism, dictators, high finance, con artists and marathons along the way.

The Madman by Henning Mankell, translated by George Goulding and Sarah de Senarclens (Mountain Leopard, £25)
Written in the 1970s and published in English for the first time, The Madman is set in a Swedish town in the late 1940s. The country’s wartime neutrality-on-paper continues to divide: the town’s pro-Nazis want the past forgotten, but the communist sympathisers, bitter about having been interned, want a reckoning. When a letter to this effect appears in the local paper, those accused, including the director of the town’s sawmill, claim that newcomer Bertil Kras has been stirring resentment for political ends. When the sawmill burns down, Kras is blamed for that, too, and the disintegration of the life he has tried to make provokes an existential crisis. An older Mankell might have been more concise, but the slow build towards inevitable disaster makes for true emotional depth, and the theme of othering, isolating and penalising people for their opinions remain horribly topical.

Christopher Nolan’s film adaptation of the ancient Greek epic has sparked a new appetite for an old classic. Here are the translations, podcasts and audiobooks that make the Homeric world more approachable

The Odyssey was once all Greek to me. I struggled to keep up with the characters, the mass of heroes and villains, the swarms of sons and daughters. I found the Homeric formula – repeated stock phrases passed down from the oral tradition – confusing and tiring. The prose in my 1946 EV Rieu translation, revised by his son DCH Rieu, felt laboured and laborious. I have put the Odyssey down, several times, in the course of my life. But, like Sirens, difficult books tend to have a hold on us. The recent film adaptation pushed me to once again try reading the Odyssey, so I decided on a new approach. I spoke to classicists and conducted research, aiming to render the inaccessible accessible.

To read the Odyssey, start by avoiding the Odyssey. “Begin with contextualisation” – get to grips with themes and content – Antony Makrinos, associate professor in classics at UCL and director of the Summer School in Homer 2026, told me. He sent me an exhaustive list of recommendations, and I found myself in the British Museum, mid-heatwave, learning about Mycenaean civilisation and ancient Greece. I cooled down that evening with a Simon Armitage documentary, Gods and Monsters: an intriguing assessment of our flawed hero.

Evil Empire creatives explain how it is playing to today’s ‘metroidvanias’ and honouring the original’s legacy with much fresh slaying to be done

Since the last Castlevania game hit the shelves (2014’s Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2), Konami’s dormant series has unexpectedly spawned a hit genre. With an entire generation raised on “metroidvanias” – a portmanteau of Metroid and Castlevania – millions of players have only ever seen the games inspired by Konami’s seminal games. Now with Belmont’s Curse, launching in October, Castlevania is finally dashing back to console, where Konami hopes to reclaim its side-scroller throne.

Set 23 years after the events of 1989’s Castlevania 3 – the same setting as the hit Netflix show – Belmont’s Curse shakes off the series’ 3D ambitions and takes the Belmonts back to basics. Dispatching players to the demon-infested streets of 1499 Paris, you’re placed in the tattered boots of Trevor Belmont’s daughter, Rose. As a bishop pleads with the Belmonts to rid Paris of the ancient evil besetting the city, Rose heads into the sewers, longsword in hand, and her demon-slaying adventure begins.

PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch 2; Undercoders
Colourful, counter-cultural and captivating – this rail riding game set in a dystopian Japan is as weird as it is exhilarating

Every now and again a game appears with a premise so outrageous you stop in your tracks to take it all in. Denshattack!, a game about kickflipping trains across a dystopian future Japan, is the epitome of this feeling. Set in a post climate disaster world, people have retreated to corporate-owned domed cities to live out their days in air-conditioned, ignorant comfort. Save for a handful of outcasts, the rest of the country is a mess of broken infrastructure, where rival gangs battle it out on the ruins of Japan’s famously extensive rail network. Naive upstart Emi has one goal: become the best Denshattacker there is, one sick nosegrind at a time.

Taking the idea of an on-rails platforming game to its extreme conclusion, developers Undercoders have combined the best bits of the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series – grinding, flipping and spinning through an entire dictionary of tricks – with the anti-establishment message behind Jet Set Radio. The rivals Emi encounters showcase the history of Japanese misfits, pitting you against ageing rockabillies and violent girl gangs without a shred of judgment.

Brennan Lee Mulligan’s Dungeons and Dragons push is part of a wider trend using tabletop games for political action

Just before their election day, six Los Angeles city council candidates stood on stage at Hollywood’s Fonda Theatre. But they weren’t there for a debate or a black-tie gala. They were there to play Dungeons and Dragons.

Comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan guided the politicians through a short D&D campaign to defeat corporate villains and an evil dragon. Hundreds of enthusiastic fans in the crowd pledged additional donations up to $150 each to give the candidates what is called an “auto crit” for maximum damage to the dragon.

As global anxieties multiply, ​v​ideo games from Resident Evil to Mouthwashing are providing rich source material to help decode society’s problems

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Horror is so hot right now. There’s Obsession, Evil Dead Burn and Hokum in the cinema, Widow’s Bay, From and Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen on TV, and, of course, a rotting smorgasbord of horror games including Resident Evil Requiem (pictured top) and Reanimal, soon to be joined by Silent Hill: Townfall, Silver Pines and Dreadmoor. We’re also seeing weird cross-pollinations, with horror movie studio Blumhouse making games, while games themselves become horror films and the whole backrooms genre infects every medium it touches.

So it was fascinating to attend last week’s horror and gaming conference at Falmouth University, in Cornwall: a gathering of students, researchers and lecturers, all engaged in the academic study of horror games. There were brilliant talks on zombies and posthumanism, the gothic in games, and the role of monstrous little girls in survival horror (there are a lot of them!). Subjects as diverse as masculine fragility, disability and ageing came up; Will Doyle, creative director at Supermassive Games, gave a great keynote on the art of creating horror in games using tools such as revulsion, spatial alienation and the human instinct of apophenia. I learned a lot about theorists such as Julia Kristeva and Mark Fisher, and about the technical similarities between indie horror games and film noir (for example, the use of darkness and creative camera techniques to “hide” budget restrictions). It was incredible fun.

Soho theatre, London
Jake Brasch and Nadja Leonhard-Hooper are vivid storytellers and fine musicians and foley artists

A filthy fable about a god-fearing Christian sect in rural Nebraska who, in a racy, sci-fi twist, are forced to wear butt plugs to avoid being sucked up into the ether, could be utterly naff. But the sheer artistry behind this hard-working two-hander ensures every second is surprisingly enchanting – even when it makes you blush.

It’s written and acted by Jake Brasch and Nadja Leonhard-Hooper, who perform together as New York-based outfit American Sing Song. They are not only vivid storytellers but fine musicians and foley artists – creating their own sound effects on the fly. Over the course of this 80-minute show, every pop, suck and ominous whoosh (as a plug is fatefully removed) is heard, and every innuendo lands, sometimes in harmony.

Mick Lally theatre, Galway
Eva O’Connor’s intense new play explores the lives of spiky Glaswegian Mo and naive Dubliner Réaltín through competing monologues, blunt humour and dance moves

Staying together for the sake of a child takes on additional weight in Eva O’Connor’s intense new play for Fishamble Theatre Company. In their mid-20s, Mo (Catriona Faint) and Réaltín (Lara McDonnell) initially seem like bickering young parents; “chosen family”, attending a therapy session, with the audience in the role of therapist. As the pair’s story spools back to their comical first meeting as new university students in Edinburgh, a portrait of an obsessive friendship emerges.

Playwright and actor O’Connor has written previously about compulsion, and here she vividly conveys the confusing mix of love, dependency, admiration and desire that can be poured into young women’s friendships: “the wild magnet pull of us,” Réaltín calls it. Initially it was the contrasts between the spiky, politicised Glaswegian, Mo, and the naive, middle-class Dubliner, Réaltín, that cemented their bond – captured in Faint and McDonnell’s committed, passionate performances.

King’s Head theatre, London
Camp comedy from The Simpsons’ Harry Shearer and Seinfeld writer Tom Leopold explores the relationship between FBI boss Hoover and protege Clyde Tolson

This queering of FBI history does not seem like the stuff of fringe theatre. Created by American comedy royalty – Harry Shearer, a long-time cast member of The Simpsons, pens the book and lyrics with Tom Leopold, of Cheers and Seinfeld writing fame – the music is by the late Peter Matz, known for his work with Barbra Streisand. Alongside those commercial chops, Mad Men actor Bryan Batt plays the lead. It is even more curious that, as a very American story about the life and times of the eponymous first director of the bureau, it premieres in Britain.

It has been decades in the making too (beginning life on radio in the 1990s). How has it ended up here?

Underbelly Boulevard Soho, London
A grab-bag of awkward ‘lessons learned’ by a middle-aged entertainer reflecting on her journey, the US comic’s song-filled show has savour and schmaltz

Among Americans, Tony award-winner (“and four-time Tony award loser,” as she self-deprecates here) Laura Benanti is a well-loved Broadway doyenne. But prior to national treasure status (boosted by her popular Melania Trump skits in recent years), she was a blushing innocent, performing on the Great White Way aged 18, being propositioned by bigshot producers and breaking her neck in a revival of Into the Woods. A “pathological people pleaser,” she didn’t raise a fuss, and the injury was covered up.

This eyebrow-raising history contains quite enough to justify a 65-minute solo show about being, in Benanti’s words, a “recovering ingenue”. And when that’s what Nobody Cares is, it’s at its strongest. Delivered with musical director Todd Almond plus two-piece backing band, the show is cringingly funny about the younger Benanti’s conflict avoidance, as she lurches from one disastrous relationships to another and squirms out of a marriage proposal in the least appropriate way imaginable.

The showcase library’s centenary was celebrated by thousands who filled the still-relevant public institution

The central library in downtown Los Angeles has seen its fair share of colorful moments.

The architectural gem, which turned 100 this week, has been the backdrop to the epic street battle between Pacino, De Niro et al in Heat, and was where the original Ghostbusters came across their first ghost, a friendly older lady librarian who was anything but. Television shows such as Moonlighting, Murder, She Wrote and LA Law filmed there too, when characters were researching or investigating a case.

The British actor on no-nonsense women, learning her lines in the bath and encountering a ‘nation of beautiful people’ while filming a new medical drama in Australia

You’re starring in Australian medical drama The F Ward. What was the best medical fact you learned on set?

Some of the operations I studied and watched in order to emulate them, I couldn’t believe that the patient was alive. Half of their body was outside of them; that should be inside!

The film helped me realise that getting out into nature would also allow me to escape my anxieties, but I started to see the costs of constant escape

It’s 5.30am, and I’m waking up on a granite slab overlooking the Domeland Wilderness, with nothing but forest, stone and silence for miles. I am 44 days into hiking the Pacific Crest Trail – a journey of about 2,650 miles from the Mexican border to Canada through desert scrubland, pine forests, deep valleys, volcanic terrain and alpine mountains. Each day, I walk about 20 miles with everything I need for the next four months on my back.

I was 16 when I first watched Into the Wild, the film telling the true story of Christopher McCandless, an adventurer who gave up his middle-class life to live in the wilderness. I’d always had a sense of adventure and was enticed by the idea of breaking away from expectations and moving through the world on my own terms. I began to fantasise about escaping my north London bubble to live somewhere as remote and unknown as the wild American landscapes in the film.

The writer of cult hit If Women Rose Rooted is on a mission to bring folklore to modern readers. She talks about confronting her fears, communing with nature – and the power that comes with age

Like many of the wise women in her books, Sharon Blackie lives miles from anyone. Hers is the only house on the road winding through a valley deep in the Yorkshire Dales. The River Eden runs along the bottom of her garden, which overlooks the ruins of a castle built, as legend has it, by King Arthur’s father. The writer shares this romantic idyll with three border collies, six sheep, nine hens and her husband, David Knowles, a former RAF Tornado pilot.

It seems an appropriate setting for an author who is on a mission to bring fairytales to modern readers. Blackie runs spiritual retreats and workshops at the nearby Broughton Sanctuary and publishes a popular Substack called The Art of Enchantment. Her books, including word-of-mouth hits such as If Women Rose Rooted and Hagitude, are a beguiling mix of memoir, mythology and eco-feminism – manifestos for a better way of living.

The long-running series in which readers answer other readers’ questions answers a sporting puzzle

This week’s question: Some people want to break up the EU. Why don’t they want to break up the US?

France and Italy play rugby to a very high standard, but Germany has no comparable rugby culture. Why? Tim Hare, by email

Send new questions to nq@theguardian.com.

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

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

Hugo, 21, Birmingham

Occupation Social media manager for the Conservative party

Our writer braved smelly pits to see which deodorants, from aluminium-free sticks and creams to long-lasting balms and roll-ons, pass the sniff test

• 12 sustainable toiletries subscriptions that make life easier

Like many people, I’m becoming more concerned about sustainability and the ingredients in my personal care products. Natural deodorants have become more appealing, especially with refillable options becoming more common. Unlike antiperspirants, which tend to use aluminium salts to reduce sweating, natural deodorants are usually aluminium-free. Instead, many use absorbent powders, such as tapioca starch, to soak up moisture, alongside ingredients such as sodium bicarbonate to help neutralise the odour caused by bacteria.

Once confined to health shops, they’re now firmly mainstream, with sticks, creams and roll-ons lining the shelves and making bold claims about effectiveness and gentleness. But do they work? In practice, results are far less predictable. Natural deodorants don’t behave like antiperspirants, and what feels effective for one person may fall short for another. Choosing one tends to involve a fair bit of trial and error.

Best natural deodorant overall:
Luna Daily the All Over deodorant

Best budget refillable deodorant:
Wild refillable natural deodorant

Our writer trekked more than 50 miles to find stylish pairs that can go the distance, whether you’re hiking, sightseeing or commuting

• The best hiking boots for women – tested

Whether you’re planning countryside rambles, hilly walks, or just want practical, cool footwear for your next holiday, walking sandals will be your new hot-weather-adventure best friends.

The best walking sandals should offer the grip and support of a hiking shoe but without the bulk or heat, and cope just as well with rural trails as they do with pavements. With so many options available, from sporty trail designs to more polished, wear-anywhere styles, it’s worth knowing what to look for before you buy.

Best walking sandals overall:
Vivobarefoot Tracker Ora

Best budget walking sandals:
Jack Wolfskin Ridge

From blackout masks that block 5am sunshine to silk Bluetooth masks that feel cool on your skin, these eye masks could genuinely improve your sleep

• The most-hyped sleep remedies, tried and tested

The best product I’ve ever reviewed for the Filter cost less than £10 and sent me to sleep. When I tested sleep aids last year in an effort to tackle insomnia, an eye mask helped me nod off faster and stay asleep for longer than numerous purported zzz-enhancers, including magnesium and lavender spray. Between you and me, it also worked better than the melatonin tablets I’d brought back from a trip to the US.

Even so, when I was asked to test a range of eye masks for this article, I didn’t expect the cheap MyHalos blackout mask to retain its pole position. Masks from leading sleep brands Tempur and Manta Sleep, and therapeutic tech specialists such as Therabody, use innovative designs to calm your mind and even sync with your heartbeat. The Lumenate Nova, which deploys soothing LED light therapy, reportedly has Jennifer Aniston among its many fans.

Best budget eye mask and best overall:
MyHalos blackout 3D sleep mask

Best Bluetooth eye mask:
SnoozeBand Pro

Always wondered what everyday stuff celebrities buy, where they shop for food, and the basic they scrimp on? The chef and restaurateur talks vintage plates, proper photo albums and cycling with the Filter

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Angela Hartnett is a chef and restaurateur known for her sophisticated yet simple Italian cooking. Her passion for food was instilled in her by her Italian mother and grandmother. After starting out in Gordon Ramsay’s kitchens at Aubergine and Pétrus, Angela became head chef at Pétrus, helping the restaurant achieve a Michelin star. In 2008, she co-opened the now Michelin-starred Murano in London’s Mayfair with Gordon Ramsay before taking full ownership two years later. Several Café Muranos have followed, as have Hartnett Holder & Co at Lime Wood in Hampshire and Cicoria at the Royal Opera House.

She co-hosts the podcast, Dish from Waitrose, with Nick Grimshaw. She has an MBE and an OBE for services to the hospitality industry and to the NHS during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Vieni dances a fine line where British Italian restaurants often fail

Vieni, an Italian restaurant in the Jewellery Quarter of Birmingham, is small, Sicilian and scrappy. The Instagram bio of its chef and founder Angelina Adamo reads, “Bite off more than you can chew and learn how to fucking chew”, which feels like a battle cry for almost everyone stepping into hospitality, especially independent places like Vieni, where the waters are choppy and your skillset needs to be varied. Arancini with one hand, signing off payroll and ordering loo paper with the other.

Vieni, which is about a mile or so from the city’s Bull Ring, is a million miles from Albert’s Schloss, Big Mamma’s La Bellezza and the multitude of vast, impersonal pleasure machines that have spread their legs in Brum city centre. Of course, a gigantic Rosa’s serving pad thai and Tattu with a plastic purple flower ceiling all have their place, and make people happy, but I have joy in my heart for places like Vieni.

Cooked vegetables, pickles and good mayonnaise are key components of this traditional but adaptable dish

In much of the world, including Russia itself, this richly satisfying collation is known as salade olivier, after the 19th-century Belgian-born chef credited with its creation. Its wide popularity is testament to its adaptability and essential deliciousness: robust enough for picnics and packed lunches, it also keeps well and is great paired with just about anything, from fish to a simple green salad.

Prep 40 min
Cook 15 min
Serves 4

Hot summer days call for a pasta dish that’s treated like salad leaves – tossed gently through a fresh, room-temperature sauce

In her encyclopaedic but not at all stuffy book about Neapolitan food, Jeanne Caròla Francesconi provides half a dozen recipes for pasta with raw tomato sauces suitable for hot days. The one I always notice is vermicelli all’insalata, because of the arrangement of the words. Not the familiar insalata di pasta (pasta salad), but all’insalata (like a salad), which serves as a reminder that, as with salad, the important thing with this family of recipes is that the pasta is treated like leaves of salad and tossed gently but thoroughly with plenty of tasty and suitably cut condiments and dressing.

The dressing in this instance is the result of mixing two recipes that we used to make during cooking lessons on hot days at the old Latteria Studio: pasta with courgette, and pasta with double tomato sauce. The courgette softened in plenty of olive oil with spring onion is the warm part of the recipe, while a raw and juicy salsa of tomato, garlic and herbs provides the room-temperature element.

Tomatoes come into their own in summer, but which supermarket offerings are super sweet, firm and juicy and which are forgettably flavourless?

• The best supermarket salad bags

From brick-red to intense maroon, the tomatoes in this test varied greatly, with the most flavourful ones often also being the richest in tone. I measured the sugar content using a Brix refractometer, and the tomatoes’ sweetness also varied hugely, from a sometimes bland and watery Brix score of four (each point represents 1% sucrose in the juice by mass) to a satisfyingly sweet seven.

I also scored the tomatoes on overall flavour. The sweetness of the best examples is well balanced, with a refreshing acidity, a fresh and potent tomato leaf aroma, and a complex umami profile that provides an explosion of flavour in the mouth. I also awarded points for value for money, provenance, transparency and growing methods – though, disappointingly, an organic certification did not necessarily equal the flavour I’ve come to expect.

I went out into the car park to see if I could spot anyone nearby who might have just left the restaurant

• Read more in the kindness of strangers series

I lost my wife in 2020 and my son in 2021. A few years later, I was living alone in a retirement complex when I decided to go out one night for dinner. There was a little Vietnamese restaurant nearby that my wife and I used to frequent, which had excellent food and held many happy memories. It just so happened to be Father’s Day.

I dined alone, ordering my usual rice paper rolls. When I went to settle the bill, the lass behind the counter told me my meal had already been paid for.

Your friend gave you little choice but to end your relationship. You were right to prioritise your own wellbeing

I had a friend who I always felt on edge around, but I tried to push past that and give them an opportunity. They had experienced childhood trauma and had mental health issues. I put my discomfort down to having to be a bit more accommodating.

They seemed incapable of maintaining friendships and would paint themselves as a victim, saying they constantly get ghosted.

At work, Alison Muir’s relationship with Peter Thorn veered between flirtation and hostility, until one day he stopped sidestepping his feelings

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In 1990, I’d started an exciting job as executive assistant to the director and chief curator of the not-yet-opened Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. On my first day, I was introduced to Peter, the museum’s talented publications manager. I smiled as I shook his hand, but he made no distinct impression.

As I settled into my role, I felt as if he was deliberately avoiding me. I chalked it up to his apparent conceit as, along with good looks, he had a swagger and confidence that made half the female staff infatuated with him.

Hugh, 55, a teacher and musician, meets Edie, 50, an independent advocate

What were you hoping for?
An exciting, exhilarating experience and a beautiful lady to talk to.

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

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

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

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

• The new 100% mortgages for first-time buyers

• Homes to rent before buying in cities

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

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

Almost half of working-age adults in the UK do not save into a pension. Four readers explain why they fear for the future

“I am 35 and have essentially nothing saved for my future, which is a huge concern.” Sarah* works in library services in Oxford – full-time at one library and part-time at another. She has saved £5,000 into her pension.

After finishing her PhD in 2020, she said she had “good intentions of contributing to pension schemes. But because I then had a succession of part-time jobs, I never started. I never thought, this is a job I’ll be doing for long enough.”

Banks and building societies have started relaxing affordability rules and becoming more creative with products

For many first-time buyers, getting their foot on the property ladder can feel like an impossible dream. However, the good news is that there are a growing number of mortgage deals that require only a small deposit, or no deposit at all.

Metro Bank is the latest high street lender to launch a deal that allows eligible first-timers to borrow up to 100% of the value of a property. Home loans that let people borrow 100% have been making a bit of a comeback – they were once fairly commonplace but were axed after the 2008 financial crisis.

The England defender wears a tracker, the heptathlete is experimenting with kiwi fruits – and world champion swimmer Adam Peaty swears by hours and hours of history videos …

Katarina Johnson-Thompson

From mattresses to saucepans, scientists offer tweaks to help detoxify your space

The problem Whenever we burn anything inside our homes, we cause indoor air pollution, whether we’re cooking using gas, frying bacon, lighting a wood burner, an open fire, a cigarette or incense, or ruining the toast. “ We spend 80-90% of our time indoors,” says Prof Francis Pope, chair of atmospheric science at the University of Birmingham. “And there is potential to have quite high concentrations of pollution indoors. This affects your respiratory and cardiovascular systems; certain components are carcinogenic, and there’s a growing body of evidence that air pollution affects cognition. In the long term, you get awful diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. But relatively short exposures to air pollution are linked to things like educational outcome, workplace productivity and general mental wellbeing.”

As a teenager I declined a painful operation to straighten my spinal curvature, and it was a decision I sometimes regretted. But through daily stretching and exercise, my relationship with my body was transformed

I was 13 when a spinal surgeon gave me unsolicited career advice. “Scoliosis won’t ruin your life,” he said, peering over his spectacles, “unless you want to do bikini modelling.” As a young teenager, I hadn’t thought much about job prospects, let alone modelling, but his words stung. It also curdled my situation into a lose-lose scenario: either have a painful operation to fuse metal rods with my spine, or endure a lifetime with an abnormally twisted back.

Until this point, I’d perceived my spinal curvature in terms of the inward experience: pain. Now, I became aware of an external dimension: a disfigurement. Something to be hidden. This did me no favours as a teenager in the age of Instagram. While I declined the operation due to the risks and the extended leave from school, the surgeon’s blithe remark burdened me with shame.

Analysis of 12 indicators including asthma, obesity and vaccination finds child health is ‘national embarrassment’

Children in the UK will grow up to be one of the unhealthiest generations in decades, with child health outcomes having declined or stalled completely across all areas, a group of leading paediatricians has said.

Reduced vaccination rates alongside rising hospital admissions for asthma and mental health disorders are all contributing factors to the UK’s record on children’s health, which should be seen as a “national embarrassment”, their analysis has found.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Designers say that as well as offering a degree of protection from surveillance, their clothes make a powerful fashion statement about the importance of privacy

As facial recognition technology is rolled out across Britain’s public spaces, a new generation of designers say privacy could be the next big fashion trend.

Companies have started incorporating “adversarial patterns” in their garments – carefully designed arrangements of shapes, colours and repeated motifs said to exploit weaknesses in some computer vision systems.

Using tinted tips and undercuts, footballers are rewriting what ‘professional’ looks like in elite sport in the process

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At the World Cup this summer locs, or what are commonly known as “dreadlocks”, have become as ubiquitous as free kicks. Defenders pin theirs back for clear sight-lines; forwards loosen and shape theirs for the cameras.

Antoine Semenyo of Ghana paired his with a sharp undercut. Spain’s Nico Williams bleaches his tips. Belgium winger Jeremy Doku has a mix of blond tinted tips, cornrowed. England’s Eberechi Eze has a variant styled into cornrows, while his former Crystal Palace teammate (and soon to be similarly gutted opponent in Saturday’s third-place “bronze” play-off) France’s Michael Olise opts for a slickly styled taper fade, a technique that emphasises the volume of the locs on top. Manu Koné, also of Les Bleus, has sported braided locs, while Switzerland’s attacking midfielder Johan Manzambi has gone for jumbo locs in combination with rope-like, protective Senegalese twists.

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

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

From 100,000 sunflowers in Gower and cosmic art in Galloway to a bat safari and messing about in boats, there’s enough here to keep you and the kids busy till September

At the westernmost tip of the Gower peninsula, Rhossili Bay is a gloriously wide sweep of sand, backed by dunes and licked with waves perfect for bodyboarding and surfing. Wild ponies graze on the southern headland, while walkers time their trip across to the serpent-like Worm’s Head promontory to not get cut off by the tide.

From a boat tour in Northern Ireland to a farm with great ice-cream in Surrey, you share your top tips for day trips

The MV Kestrel has been taking boat tours out from Enniskillen on Lower Lough Erne for as long I can remember. We were brought out as primary schoolchildren on a geography field trip and I was recently a passenger for a civilised stag party. It’s popular for a reason: the tour (adults £15, under-12s £11) passes the old alma mater of Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett (Portora Royal School), and stops at the sixth-century monastic settlement on Devenish island. The silence out here has to be heard (or rather not heard) to be believed. The lough is beautiful regardless of the weather – and with this being Fermanagh, if you don’t like the weather just give it 10 minutes.
Tom

Preston and St Helens were heartbeats of the industrial age, but their power faded. In the last of our series, we discover how their legacy is finally being celebrated

• Where tourists seldom tread, parts 1-20

This double act of “Lancashire” locations is my final celebration of Britain’s bypassed towns. My native county has dominated my life of late, and one key question asked in these columns has been: can you holiday right at home?

The French author Xavier de Maistre believed you could fit a journey inside a single room. And in Instructions on How to Climb a Staircase the Argentine-French writer Julio Cortázar turned a walk upstairs into a quest. An entire county offers enough adventures to fill a life.

The singer and actor on the edgy artists of his youth, a controversial 2009 kiss, and his relationship with Brian May and Roger Taylor

Born in Indianapolis in 1982, actor and musician Adam Lambert rose to fame in 2009 as runner-up on the eighth season of American Idol. His second album, Trespassing, made history as the first No 1 on the Billboard 200 by an openly gay male artist. He went on to front Queen + Adam Lambert from 2012, made his Broadway debut in 2024 as the Emcee in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, and starred as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar at the Hollywood Bowl in 2025. His sixth solo album, Adam, is out now. He performs at London’s Roundhouse on 21 July.

This was my first professional headshot. When I was 12 I would spend a lot of time driving from San Diego to Los Angeles for auditions with my mum and my brother, who also wanted to act. That guy in the plaid shirt never booked a single job. My brother did, though. He was a far cuter, more photogenic kid than I was.

Ellie wanted a high tea. We picked a sunny afternoon in spring, not long before her 12th birthday

When I was about 12, I had my confirmation. I wore the same lacy white dress my terminally ill sister had worn two years earlier, with a red sash I had screen-printed at my Catholic school with a dove, symbolising the Holy Spirit.

Typically, a child picks a saint’s name as their confirmation name, someone they would most like to emulate. I was permitted to take the name of someone who was still alive, Lúcia of Fátima. Her cousin had been the one to see Mary, mother of God, before dying young and innocent. Lucia, on the other hand, had been condemned to live into old age. I could relate to Lucia. My sister, living with brain cancer, had always been the religious one.

Death salons are spaces that allow free-flowing conversations about mortality and are becoming more popular around the country

In a small cream-colored room at a cemetery in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Nefertiti Moor sat at the head of a semicircle. Dressed in black with her long hair in locs, she delivered instructions for the evening discussion. “It’s not death counseling or a debate,” said Moor. She invited the two women in attendance to talk freely about their cultural associations with dying and grief. Tasha Johnson, who worked in behavioral health, said that she felt desensitized after the recent deaths of several people she knew. She was grappling with “the reality that it can be anyone at any point”.

The free-flowing conversation about mortality, otherwise known as a death salon or death cafe, was unique in that it was designed for people of color. Death salons for marginalized communities are becoming more common around the country, with practitioners addressing the unique end-of-life concerns of queer, trans, or Black and brown people. Acting on a lifelong interest in how communities process grief, Moor became a death doula, a non-medical professional who provides emotional and practical support to people who are dying and to their loved ones.

The singer on struggling with the English weather, a secret celebrity crush, and her terror of tinned spaghetti

Born in Sydney, Australia, to an Italian father and Australian mother, Natalie Imbruglia, 51, joined the cast of Neighbours at the age of 17. In 1997, she released her debut album, Left of the Middle, which gave her the global hit single Torn. She releases her seventh studio album, Algorithm, on 4 September. She lives in Oxfordshire with her son.

What is your greatest fear?
As an Italian, tinned spaghetti. As a child, I was once served it at someone’s house. It was quite frightening.

Aiden is an unforgettable young caregiver in Walthamstow, east London, who has been looking after his mum for over half his life. Every few weeks, Aiden and other young carers get a rare night off thanks to tenacious council worker Satvinder, who fights to improve the recognition of young carers in her borough. This film joins them as they reclaim a few hours of their teenage lives back.

Is Mum OK? is released during Carers Week in the UK, a campaign that celebrates unpaid carers across the country and calls for better recognition and support for them. There are more than one million young carers in the UK – with an average age of 12 – which is the equivalent of two kids in every school class.

Solomon’s Pools date back to the second century BCE, and have become a source of recreation for nearby Bethlehem

Israel is threatening to seize ancient water reservoirs near Bethlehem, in what would be a significant escalation in an intensifying campaign for control of West Bank land and the Middle East’s historical narrative.

Since Israel’s extremist finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, made an explicit threat in May to “erase” the agreements that confirmed Palestinian ownership of Solomon’s Pools more than 30 years ago, Israeli settlers and troops have stepped up their presence around the spectacular site.

Ingenious crossword setter who compiled the weekly quiptic in the Guardian under the pseudonym Hectence

The quiptic crossword is billed in the Guardian as the “puzzle for beginners and those in a hurry”. The mind-bending tricks and idiosyncratic conventions that are sometimes to be found in the cryptic are avoided: the emphasis is on pleasure. It was an ideal style for Wendy Law, otherwise known as the crossword setter Hectence, who has died aged 65 of cancer.

In the Guardian, where she started, and at the Financial Times from 2019, where she used the setter name Zamorca, from the Bosnian for “guinea pig” (the animals were a lifelong passion for Wendy), she was cherished by solvers for fair, accessible clues.

If you’re wearing the new glasses, we want to know more about how you’re using them. We’d also like to hear from people about how they feel about others around them wearing the glasses

With over seven million pairs of glasses reported to have been sold by Meta in 2025, it is clear that their popularity is growing and we’d like to find out more about how people are using them.

There have been some concerns around nonconsensual filming and the data protection of users, however the glasses have proved life-changing for those with visual impairments and hearing loss.

Ahead of Andy Burnham taking over from Keir Starmer, we’d like to hear what qualities, values and priorities people want to see in the next prime minister

Andy Burnham is to become the next prime minister after winning the backing of 349 of the party’s MPs to replace Keir Starmer.

In a recent op-ed in The Times, Burnham wrote: “Doing politics differently means levelling with the public, engaging them in decisions and ensuring more social value in return for increased government spending.”

The Guardian’s Saturday magazine is interested in hearing from couples, partners and former lovers to talk about their sex lives

How often do you have sex? The Guardian is looking for couples to talk honestly – and completely anonymously – about what they get up to in the bedroom for the Saturday magazine’s much-loved This is How We Do It column.

The idea behind the column is to provide a counterpoint to the airbrushed, exaggerated stories about sex we see on TV and in the media. We want to publish un-sensationalised interviews with real couples, so we are particularly keen to hear from you if you have hit a roadblock in your sexual life. How do you navigate intimacy when your partner wants sex more than you do? Or after an affair? Or when you are not feeling spectacular about your body?

We’re looking for couples of all ages and sexualities. We would not publish your names or where you live.

If you’re having trouble using the form click here. Read terms of service here and privacy policy here.

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