A hasty handover from Starmer meant his successor has not had much time to prepare for office yet his team is quietly confident

• What Andy Burnham’s first speech as Labour leader tells us

Just 20 minutes’ walk along the road to Wigan Pier, Andy Burnham’s own route back to Westminster was cemented. At the Edge community centre, about a mile from the famous canal wharf, the result of the Makerfield byelection was announced, surpassing even his highest expectations.

“Andy knew running in Makerfield was high risk but it was the proof point he needed to show the Labour party and the country that if he could win there, he could win anywhere. He got 55% of the vote. It worked,” one of his team said.

Culture secretary Lisa Nandy is among first viewers as epic embroidery is unpacked at British Museum, a landmark in Anglo-French diplomacy

In the decade after Brexit, the relationship between Britain and France has been defined by rows over fishing rights, Channel crossings and trade. Boris Johnson even mocked Emmanuel Macron, telling his French counterpart to “donnez-moi un break”.

This week, that fractious chapter gave way to one of the most significant acts of cultural diplomacy between the two countries in decades. Almost 1,000 years after it was created, the Bayeux tapestry arrived at the British Museum, transported from France under cover of darkness, the culmination of years of painstaking negotiations between London and Paris.

The incoming PM has made a strong start – but there are several traps he needs to avoid. Brown, Blair and even Thatcher can show the way

The first piece of unsolicited advice I would offer to Britain’s incoming prime minister is: don’t take unsolicited advice. Don’t be one of those leaders who’s swayed by the last person in their ear. That’s what they used to say about Boris Johnson, that he was a cushion that bore the imprint of the last person who sat on him. Instead, Andy Burnham should study closely the experience of Johnson and the rest of his recent predecessors – and, let’s face it, there’s plenty of them.

He might start by thinking about the period that will begin the moment he steps into Downing Street on Monday. How he handles this opening phase of his tenure is crucial: you never get a second chance to make a first impression, and all that. To many voters outside Greater Manchester, Burnham is still a relatively unknown quantity. The view they will form of him will be largely shaped by what he says and does in the next few weeks. For much of the electorate, it will be the overture that decides their verdict on the show.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Guardian readers tackle a thorny topic and share their stories of dating a friend’s ex – or a friend dating their ex

Life is full of big, messy questions. How should we spend our finite time on Earth? What is the nature of good and evil? And, thorniest of all: is it OK to date a friend’s ex?

This year, reality TV fans debated this question with vim and verbosity when it was revealed that Bravo reality stars Amanda Batula and West Wilson had started kissing (!) and dating (!!) even though West had broken the heart of Amanda’s best friend, Ciara Miller.

A tournament with more teams and more games has been filled with euphoria, heartbreak, and these weird and wonderful viral moments

As a Japanese supporter exclaimed to a television camera, “Texas is good, everything is big”, we knew the World Cup had started. In those early euphoric moments, seeing the palpable joy when everything is still possible, it seemed Japan fans were the MVPs of memes.

They came in their thousands, dressed in sombreros and Mario outfits, tossed into the air like confetti and line dancing with the Dutch. Then the heartbreak arrived.

Struggling industry seeks to capitalise on Gen Z’s willingness to spend on experiences and comfort

It had always been the great British festival way: greasy burgers and warm beer, retch-inducing toilets and the descent into dishevelment as roughing it takes its toll.

But a generation of festivalgoers has emerged who are willing to splash the cash to inject luxury into the experience. This summer, there are signs the under-pressure industry is ramping up its offer, from gleaming private toilets and “pamper parlours” to fine dining, hot tubs, saunas and even a “cold waterfall drench” to keep refreshed.

Government has ‘last chance’ to get it right, says incoming PM, while anxiety surrounds his choice of chancellor

Andy Burnham pledged to lead a united Labour government free of infighting and factional politics as he took over as leader, despite anxiety on the left of party about the prospect of Shabana Mahmood as chancellor.

Burnham, who will become prime minister on Monday, set out a distinctly leftwing vision for Britain. He promised to undo the Thatcherism of the 1980s, bring in more public ownership of utilities, find the money to fix social care and build a new generation of council homes.

Exclusive: Grants are part of controversial package criticised as misuse of public money to influence European politics

Donald Trump’s state department intends to allocate $12m to organisations in the UK founded by the prominent Conservatives Jacob Rees-Mogg and Toby Young, the Guardian can reveal.

The intended grants, revealed in US government documents, are part of a package of support for European groups viewed favourably by the Trump administration. Some former US officials have criticised the funding as a misuse of public money to seek influence over foreign politics.

Kiran Kaur, 53, sentenced to three years for assisting Vickrum Digwa after he stabbed student in Southampton

The mother of Vickrum Digwa, the murderer whose false claims of racism against his victim, Henry Nowak, triggered riots in Southampton, has been jailed for removing a knife from the scene of the killing.

Appearing at Southampton crown court, Kiran Kaur, 53, was jailed for three years for assisting an offender by taking the knife from where her son had murdered Nowak on 3 December 2025 back to her family home.

Former Democratic Unionist party leader’s legal team has lodged documents with the court of appeal in Belfast

Jeffrey Donaldson is to appeal against his conviction for rape and other sexual offences against two children.

The former Democratic Unionist party (DUP) leader’s legal team lodged documents with the court of appeal in Belfast on Friday, his solicitor, John McBurney, said.

Reform leader says he’s been ‘demonised’ since revelation he received £5m from billionaire before election

Nigel Farage has accused people raising questions about his financial backing of “demonising” him as part of a “coordinated pile-on” to stop Reform UK.

In one of his first speeches since the opening of two parliamentary standards inquiries into his financial support, the Reform leader said he had been “dehumanised in the most extraordinary way” in recent months, after the Guardian revealed in April that he had received a £5m gift from the crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne before the last election.

Democrats and advocates sound alarm at Trump rehashing false claims about 2020 election in his primetime address

Democrats and voting rights groups say Donald Trump’s primetime speech making unverified claims of Chinese interference in the 2020 election is the clearest sign yet that the president is laying the groundwork to tamper with the results of November’s midterms.

The upcoming elections to decide the balance of power in Congress and many state legislatures will be a major test of Trump’s appeal to voters two years after he resoundingly beat the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris to return to the White House. With polls showing that the president is disliked by majorities of voters and his Republican allies are at risk of losing their control of the House of Representatives, the president’s Thursday evening speech rehashing allegations about the 2020 election he lost to Joe Biden sparked fears he was already looking for ways to ensure November’s results are in his favor.

• West Indian widely regarded as greatest all-rounder

• First to hit six sixes in one over in first-class game

• Vic Marks: why Sobers was the greatest of all time

• Sir Garry Sobers – a life in pictures | Obituary

Sir Garfield Sobers, the great West Indies cricketer widely regarded as the finest all-rounder in the sport’s history, has died aged 89. His death at his home in Barbados only 11 days shy of his 90th birthday was announced by Cricket West Indies on Friday, with the simple line: “A great innings has come to an end. In our hearts, now and forever, Sir Garfield Sobers.”

Sobers was the first batter to hit six sixes in an over when playing for Nottinghamshire at Glamorgan’s St Helen’s ground in Swansea in 1968. But it was just one of many feats in an illustrious career featuring 93 Test matches for West Indies – including 39 as captain – from 1954 to 1974.

Tehran bombs US allies in Middle East after US attacks on bridges, energy facilities and key port

The US hit bridges, energy facilities and a key Iranian port on Friday, expanding its aerial campaign against Iran, and prompting swift Iranian strikes against US allies in the Middle East.

US airstrikes hit bridges in Iran’s southern Hormozgan province, killing at least seven people, Iranian state TV reported. The bridges were a key transit point for Bandar Abbas, Iran’s main port. Further US airstrikes brought down a tower in Chabahar port on the Gulf of Oman that the US military claimed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) used to facilitate attacks on vessels in the strait of Hormuz. The US also targeted key electrical infrastructure and Iranshahr airport.

Radio and TV presenter, who recovered from cancer in 2024, announces she has smouldering myeloma

Lauren Laverne has announced she has been diagnosed with a blood and bone marrow disorder, less than two years after recovering from cancer.

The radio and TV presenter revealed she has smouldering myeloma, a condition characterised by an abnormal level of blood plasma cells in bone marrow, and said she made her diagnosis public out of a desire to help others. In August 2024, she announced she had been diagnosed with cancer, and received the all-clear three months later.

Christopher Nolan’s star-studded take on Homer’s Odyssey has received rave reviews from critics and is one of the most hotly anticipated films of the year. The three-hour Imax blockbuster has an estimated budget of $250m and a star-studded cast including Matt Damon, Zendaya and Tom Holland. But will it live up to expectations? Annie Kelly speaks to film editor Catherine Shoard

She is shaking up showbiz and redefining the way disability is portrayed on screen. Ahead of her end-times thriller The Rapture, the star talks about being a Doctor Who badass and why her husband finds her job hysterical

The day I met Ruth Madeley in a hotel in central London was the peak of the last heatwave, the buttons on traffic lights almost too hot to touch. Eerily, this is a major theme of The Rapture, the BBC’s new adaptation of Liz Jensen’s 2009 bestseller. It’s set in a children’s secure psychiatric unit, and the 38-year-old actor plays Gabs, a clinical psychologist recently paralysed in a car accident that killed her husband. She becomes transfixed by the inmate Bethany – a surly, biting performance from India Amarteifio – who has been convicted of killing her own mother. Gabs is hard-boiled, as far from gullible as you could imagine, and Bethany’s “visions”, which pour out of her in frenetic drawings of faces, disasters, landscapes, don’t fall on fertile ground. Yet Gabs cannot help but notice when they start to come true.

In the background, the heat is stultifying and climate crisis activists are begging the world to take notice. “Yes, it’s feeling very timely,” she says wryly. This is on-brand; her first major role was in Russell T Davies’s Years and Years, the apocalyptic smash hit that ends with a monkey flu pandemic (sorry, spoiler), “and then a year later we were in lockdown. I told Russell: ‘You’re not allowed to write anything else, my nerves can’t take it.’”

Film fanatics arrive from US, Switzerland and Ireland for midnight premiere of director’s critically acclaimed epic

Odysseus made his name by embarking on a perilous journey from Troy to Ithaca, plus a few unplanned diversions courtesy of the gods. But this is nothing on Christian Campbell, who last night travelled more than 4,000 miles to see the Greek king’s epic fable on the big screen.

The 22-year-old film graduate, who aspires to be an editor, made the journey from Atlanta to London to watch Christopher Nolan’s take on Homer’s epic poem, The Odyssey.

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.

The Lord of the Rings author’s debt to Norse mythology is simply irrelevant when it comes to the appearance of hobbits and elves on screen today

Casting has come a long way since the early 1980s when it was somehow still acceptable to sign up Max von Sydow to play Ming the Merciless in Flash Gordon in 1980, or hire Peter Ustinov as the lead in Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen in 1981 (despite protests at the time). These days, film-makers will have to defend an all-white cast in a medieval fantasy flick, which appears to be what has happened this week to The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum’s Andy Serkis.

Asked by the BBC why every major casting for the new film has been a white actor, Serkis appeared to lay the blame on his literary source material. “Tolkien himself was influenced a lot by Norse mythology, there’s a lot of that feeling,” he said. “The Shire feels very, very much like a very, a very white, you know … They’re not very concerned about what goes on beyond the borders of the Shire, but they know they don’t want people coming in.

Dying is difficult, a nurse told me. It might have been even more appalling had Dad not been clear about his wishes. Yet most of us remain deeply reluctant to outline how we want the end to go

My father spent the last 12 days of his life unconscious, unresponsive, in a hospital bed on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

My mother sat beside him night and day, holding his hand. I massaged Dad’s legs, horribly swollen, the effects of oedema – a buildup of fluids. His mouth fell open, dried out; I swabbed it constantly in an attempt to keep it wet. Sometimes his breath was a gurgle. My brother and I took turns sleeping on a stretcher in his room – the “dying room” was what hospital staff called it.

• Only a handful of FAs have not declared their support

• Uefa has made its opposition clear on number of issues

Gianni Infantino has the formal endorsement of more than 200 countries for re-election as Fifa’s president despite the climate of unrest that has swirled since the scandal surrounding Folarin Balogun’s reprieve from suspension.

The Guardian understands only a handful of Fifa’s 211 member associations are still to send letters of support for Infantino, who is on course to be voted into a fourth term by a landslide at its congress in March. A small number of European countries are among the outliers, with Germany the highest-profile FA yet to provide official backing.

Two minutes and 55 seconds. That’s how long I really had hope of reaching the World Cup final. And it didn’t kill me

In her book Hope in the Dark the author Rebecca Solnit examines if it is possible to have hope when you consider all of human suffering. She quotes the Bulgarian writer Maria Popova: “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naivety.” By all accounts it is a compelling argument for hope as a catalyst for social change.

Meanwhile, Graham Burrell wrote: “It is the hope that kills you” following Lincoln City’s 2-1 home defeat to Wigan in 2024. “I feel perhaps our playoff push was finally killed off yesterday.”

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Donald Trump has largely steered clear of the Geopolitics World Cup: he is yet to attend a game and appear on screen with his good pal “Jonny” Infantino. Oh, though there was that time Trump rang Fifa to lobby for a review into Folarin Balogun’s red card against Bosnia and Herzegovina, with the reversal of the USA USA USA forward’s last-16 suspension crushing the integrity of the competition. An impactful cameo off the bench, you could argue.

Re: naming the 2030 World Cup (Football Daily letters passim). May I suggest ‘The Carbon Footprint WC’ or simply ‘El Carbonaro’” – Krishna Moorthy.

Brian Saffer’s suggestions for letting everyone join in the next World Cup and splitting into three divisions surely must lead to it being called the Swiss Model World Cup – SMWC” – George Paterson.

You could always stop trying to be too clever by half and just refer to it as ‘the World Cup’” – Alan Burgess.

Oh, you thought the STOP FOOTBALL campaign might last two days but, no, Major League Soccerball is back, baby! Four matches were played last night as the league announced, via its back-to-action campaign: ‘Thanks, World; We’ll Take It From Here’” – JJ Zucal.

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Spain’s streak started after a defeat in 2024 but Argentina are no slouches – they are on an unbeaten run of 14 matches

Spain look unstoppable. Their 2-0 victory against France meant they have not lost a game in normal or extra time for 37 matches, which Opta revealed has equalled the best such stretch by a European team. However, Spain did lose the final of the 2025 Nations League to Portugal on penalties.

Their “unbeaten run” matches the efforts of Italy between October 2018 and September 2021, a streak which included Roberto Mancini’s side winning Euro 2020. Unlike Spain, Italy were truly unbeaten.

Technical class in the fiercest battles was again lacking at the World Cup but there is hope amid the soul-searching

The post-match inquest into England’s elimination was almost over when Thomas Tuchel offered a revealing analysis of Argentina’s knack of instigating late comebacks at this World Cup.

“In their culture, ball possession plays a crucial role. It starts from a young age,” he said. “That is in the DNA and it demands a lot of self-confidence – natural self‑confidence to always want the ball, to always be in the gaps, to always define yourself through the ball. I think that is a crucial thing: to show courage.”

Pete Hegseth wants to win the war on Iran with a secret weapon: testosterone. Meanwhile, JD Vance is worried about how to eat an ice-cream

Are the men of the Trump administration OK? Feels like it’s been a tricky week for some of them. On the one hand, you’ll note the US is already rebooting its Iran war. Clearly, many will feel this latest version of the conflict is coming too soon after the last one, with fans simply not given enough time to miss the IP. A lot like the live-action Moana currently falling off the screen in cinemas. On the other hand, defence secretary Pete Hegseth seems to have moved the defence department beyond even its latter-day renaming as the department of war, posting a video entitled “The High-T Department of War” in which he announced mandatory testosterone screening for US troops aged 30 and over. We’ll get to JD Vance being unintentionally aroused by footage of Joe Biden eating ice-cream in a minute. Or as soon as I can face it.

Even the lower-ranking White House operatives seem to be spinning out. You may remember the UK’s political betting scandal, where various police officers, campaign officials and aides to former prime minister Rishi Sunak were arrested or investigated for putting bets on the last general election date. Everything’s bigger in the US, of course, so in some ways it’s not a surprise to learn that the guy who operates Trump’s teleprompter has allegedly made $100,000 on Kalshi by placing bets on words or topics appearing in Trump’s speeches. He is currently on unpaid administrative leave, according to press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who yesterday added solemnly, “there are very strict ethical guidelines here at the White House”. A statement so hilarious that I refuse to believe Leavitt herself didn’t say it for a bet. Probably with Hegseth. “Dude, I know I can get it in. I back myself. And if I do say it, you owe me $1,000 and an off-the-books testosterone shot.”

Marina Hyde’s new book, What a Time to be Alive!, is out in September (Guardian Faber Publishing, £20). To support the Guardian, order your signed copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

Keir had achieved greatness, his legacy would be eternal … until the new Labour leader got up to speak

The king is dead. Long live the king. Not so much Labour electing a new leader, more a coronation. There were no surprises. No real drama. The deed had been done the moment Andy Burnham had won the Makerfield byelection. That was when Labour MPs switched off Keir Starmer’s life support machine.

Even Vladimir Putin would be moderately happy with a 379 to one victory. The only dissenting voice was Neil Coyle, who nominated Catherine West, saying there was “no more room up Andy’s arse”. There again, if Friday’s victory march was anything to go by, anything to do with Andy is a comfort blanket for Labour members to allow themselves the security of believing there may be hope after all.

Christopher Nolan’s epic adaptation has been met with almost universal acclaim – from mostly male film critics. Might women find the journey less comfortable?

Long ago, almost as long ago as Homer composed The Odyssey, I was a film critic on the Sunday Telegraph. People sometimes ask me how sexist the scene was then, back in the bronze age mid-noughties, when male critics outnumbered female by about eight to one. Well, there wasn’t any sexism. It was actually totally fine and everyone was really nice.

They were nice in Soho, anyway. Farther afield, less so. Particularly certain readers, when it came to certain films, made by certain directors. Quentin Tarantino, obviously. Ken Loach, weirdly. And Christopher Nolan. Question their genius and prepare for epic correction by a legion of self-appointed bouncers.

Meta touts safety features – but for women, the dangers of these recording devices are obvious

Imagine if every time you left the house, you couldn’t be sure that the stranger you met at a bar – or even the person walking by you in the street – wasn’t secretly recording you. It sounds like something out of a Black Mirror episode, but let’s face it, the era of wearable technology is fully upon us as everyday accessories have been developed to help track health and fitness data, receive smartphone notifications, and provide hands-free accessibility.

So when Meta announced their AI glasses a few years ago, it wasn’t too surprising that one of the biggest (and most embattled) tech companies on earth had begun cashing in on our obsession with watching others. And their AI glasses have already raised serious concerns over privacy, personal safety and even our sense of agency.

Dehumanising politicians is the first step towards justifying their elimination. It matters more than ever to keep putting the person back into the picture

Ann Widdecombe was never one to hide from an argument. And she wasn’t afraid for her safety either. She scoffed at friends’ suggestions that she should get electric gates, as an elderly woman with a public profile living alone on Dartmoor, just as she dismissed concerns about her health at 78.

Having lost friends in the Brighton hotel bombing that almost killed Margaret Thatcher, she wasn’t naive about security. But she was forged in a different era: one before Jo Cox was murdered, when the greatest risk was to politicians identified as symbols of the state, rather than as the embodiment of an idea. She posed happily for press photographs inside her retirement bungalow, including one available to anyone casually Googling that included the house’s distinctive name: Widdecombe’s Rest. She would have been so easy to find, had anyone gone looking. Perhaps she never really believed that anyone would.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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Watching Colombia v Switzerland outdoors with a throng of fans showed me how to improve British spirits. And all it takes is a mobile phone, a mop and some coconuts

With the World Cup nearly over for another four years, it’s time to reflect on what a strange, sleepless reverie it’s been, and turn our attention to the next competition. Beyond Djed Spence’s sliding tackles and Jude Bellingham’s imperiousness, my highlight was not an England game, but the evening I joined London’s Colombian diaspora in Elephant and Castle for last week’s match against Switzerland.

Little Bogotá was lit up by a sea of yellow shirts and flags, arrayed across the streets and pavements of “Latin Elephant”. It was, as it always is for Colombia games, a delightful scene: an unofficial, chaotic, self-organised fan zone. The cafes and bars were doing a roaring trade, and a guy with a cleaver standing atop a pickup truck was hacking the tops off coconuts and selling them to drink. Children ran around chasing each other, older couples danced together and hundreds of fans, passersby and neighbours milled happily around, sharing views of the tiny screens and lamentations about Colombia’s inability to score, making new friends and sort of half-watching the game.

Dan Hancox is a writer and editor covering music, politics and cities. His latest book is Multitudes: How Crowds Made the Modern World

Thanks to Arthur Fery, Maja Chwalinska and Cape Verde, we have been blessed with a glut of unexpected stories of late

“Where has he been?” Gary Neville said of Vozinha, the Cape Verde goalkeeper. “We should have met him before.” Should you have, really? Met him before? Surely that would have defeated the point. The appeal of the underdog, after all, is that a month ago you wouldn’t have been able to name them. They’re supposed to come out of absolutely nowhere and they have: what with Arthur Fery, Maja Chwalinska, and Cape Verde, we’ve been spoilt for choice these past two months.

Fery’s Wimbledon semi-final loss to Alexander Zverev brought a great underdog story to an end. The four teams left in the World Cup are also the four highest-ranked teams in the world. But the long shots will linger for a while. Ranked 114th, Fery is the lowest-rated player to make it into a grand slam semi-final since … well, since Chwalinska the Polish qualifier, also ranked 114th, made a similarly astonishing run at the French Open. Chwalinska took it a step further: she beat Diana Shnaider to secure a spot in the final, becoming only the second ever qualifier in the open era, man or woman, to do so.

Larkin, Harrison and Shakespeare shaped Labour’s leader. Now comes the harder task: turning language into lasting change

Andy Burnham is finally Labour leader. After trying – and failing – twice to be elected by party members, he took the top job on Friday without a contest. Sir Keir Starmer remains prime minister until Monday, when he will tender his resignation to King Charles, who will invite Mr Burnham to form a government. Then the future that Mr Burnham has long imagined will cease to be a promise and become a test.

Much will be written about the man. But why does Mr Burnham believe what he believes? One clue lies in the Guardian’s letters page in 1991. Fresh from graduating in English at Cambridge, the 21-year-old Mr Burnham defended an “uncouth and uncultured” Philip Larkin from critics who dismissed him as “too parochial”. Larkin – a bigoted curmudgeon – is difficult to admire, but his poems are not.

The lack of diversity in the latest film is a backwards step. Adaptations of Tolkien’s epic must reflect our times

There is trouble in Middle-earth – again. So far, all of the actors announced for the latest The Lord of the Rings film instalment, The Hunt for Gollum, to be released next year, are white. Kate Winslet, Jamie Dornan, Anya Taylor-Joy and Leo Woodall join a cast that has already been criticised for its lack of diversity. “Tolkien himself was influenced a lot by Norse mythology,” the film’s director, Andy Serkis, who plays Gollum, said. “The Shire feels very white.”

Ironically, Serkis invokes fidelity to Tolkien to defend the casting, yet his “modern film version” of Animal Farm, which came out this week, plays fast and loose with Orwell by replacing the novel’s crushing conclusion with a hopeful one.

Alex Dickie on Uberto Pasolini’s 2024 film, Darryl Accone on differing translations of the Greek original, and Roberto Breña on the excitement around Christopher Nolan’s new version

As Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey sails into view, epic both in scale and emotional heft (Editorial, 10 July), it is interesting to note that Uberto Pasolini’s 2024 film The Return strips the poem of gods and monsters to reveal Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) traumatised by war, emotionally and psychologically bewildered – an ancient precursor to post-traumatic stress disorder. Penelope (Juliette Binoche), as wife and mother, has her own inner demons to contend with in a male world immersed in physical prowess and killing. Both have been hollowed out by their experiences.

Perhaps Homer set out to tell a good story, but in doing so revealed so much more, not least the futility of war and in the words of Robert Burns: “Man’s inhumanity to man / Makes countless thousands mourn!”
Alex Dickie
Edinburgh

Andreas Swadlo, Andrew Wardrop and Tony Coghan respond to an etiquette guide saying swimmers must dash ashore rather than relieve themselves in the water

I have long been puzzled by the widespread belief that if nature calls while swimming in the sea, one should dash ashore in search of a lavatory (Summer etiquette: 47 essential rules – from sex to sunloungers to shopping in swimming trunks, 14 July). Why this is considered the more virtuous option escapes me. The contents of the lavatory are, after all, treated and eventually discharged into rivers and seas. The ocean merely cuts out the middleman.

Assuming one is well away from other bathers, the environmental distinction seems elusive. The Atlantic Ocean has the capacity to cope with a few hundred millilitres of highly diluted human urine. It has been dealing with whales for rather longer than it has with us.

Stephanie Calman is mystified that the regulation of these massively profitable services is being left to the user

Asking teenagers to limit their own social media use is a laughable waste of time (UK 16- and 17-year-olds to be encouraged to follow midnight social media curfew, 14 July). I am still mystified that the regulation of these massively profitable services is being left to the user.

In Britain, television is tightly regulated by Ofcom, with rules governing the showing of sex, drugs and violence, and the requirement for impartiality and accuracy. The public must also be protected from unduly offensive material.

Juliet Gardiner | England’s World Cup hope | DIY spirits | Slang

It was good to read David Kynaston’s appreciation of Juliet Gardiner’s writing, so widely admired (Juliet Gardiner obituary, 14 July). The school we both attended, leading to a lifelong friendship, failed to recognise her talent. On the bus together one morning, Juliet let me read her latest piece of homework: 11 strikingly imaginative pages about the stone effigies of knights in St Peter’s church, Berkhamsted. At the end I found her teacher’s only comment: “This essay is too long.”
Ann Segrave
Lewes, East Sussex

• I was 18 in 1966. As the fourth goal for England went in against West Germany, after he’d leapt from his seat my dad said, “watch this, you’ll never see it in your lifetime again”. I fear he might have been right. I’m also reminded of Brian Clough’s quote: “We were the best team on paper – unfortunately we played on grass.” Looking forward to the Euros now. Hope springs eternal.
Chris Walters
Buxton, Derbyshire

West Indies legend, who has died aged 89, was cricket’s finest all-rounder, delivering victories with style and grace

Cricket nuts like an argument. Who is the best fast bowler ever? The best spinner? The best wicketkeeper? The best slip catcher? They – oh all right, we – can spend hours discussing the candidates. But the best all-rounder?

That does not take any longer than the debate over the best batter; here we have to concede even in the presence of our Australian friends the supremacy of Don Bradman. The best all-rounder is universally agreed to be Garry Sobers. The other contender, WG Grace, lived so long ago that we are reduced to guesswork. So Sobers it is.

World No 2 was in full flow off the tee but off colour on the greens and knows he needs to make a charge on moving day

One of the sweetest sounds in sport is the elongated swoosh that comes as Rory McIlroy’s driver connects with his ball. Really, it is a beautiful thing. You imagine the impact will be a violent clank. Instead it is more like a yogi softly exhaling having found nirvana.

But as McIlroy stepped on the 414-yard par-four 9th on Friday, he was still searching for inner peace. He was plus one for the tournament. The leaderboard was turning a sea of red. And he had substantial ground to make up.

• British rider moves into fourth in general classification

• Schmid claims first Tour win after mass breakaway

Tom Pidcock leapt up the overall standings in the Tour de France, briefly climbing as high as second place, after a fulminating stage to Belfort ended in a first Tour win for Switzerland’s Mauro Schmid.

Pidcock was one of the key instigators of a mass breakaway that formed on the rolling roads of the Jura and Doubs, on the long approach to the 9km climb of the Ballon d’Alsace, overlooking Belfort.

• Zimbabwean informed ECB this week he is not interested

• Langer due to lead Manchester Super Giants in Hundred

Justin Langer is believed to have moved to the top of the England and Wales Cricket Board’s shortlist of potential coaches of the men’s Test team, after Andy Flower ruled himself out of the running for the position on Friday.

Less than a week after Brendon McCullum was sacked as red-ball coach Rob Key, the managing director of men’s cricket who is leading the ECB’s recruitment process, has made significant progress in his search for a replacement.

• Jamie George promises ‘the strongest of reactions’

• England players were racially abused by fans last year

England’s rugby players are threatening to walk off the pitch in protest against Argentina on Saturday if there is any repeat of the racial abuse aimed at black squad members on their last visit a year ago. Further incidents will not be tolerated and, according to England’s captain, Jamie George, will prompt “the strongest of reactions”.

George was also present in San Juan last July when his replacement prop forward Asher Opoku-Fordjour and Chandler Cunningham-South were the target of racist slurs from a group of home supporters during the warm-up and the first half of the second Test. World Rugby later confirmed England had made a complaint, but, despite an investigation, the individual perpetrators could not be identified.

Antonelli’s lead in the F1 drivers’ standings looked insurmountable after Monaco, but now Russell is potentially within one race win of wiping it out

Squaring off at this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, Formula One’s leading title protagonists Kimi Antonelli and George Russell are embroiled in an increasingly tense head to head.The teenager and his experienced Mercedes teammate facing each other as well as each addressing their own approach to a championship still very much up for grabs.

The 19-year-old Antonelli appeared to have an iron grip on the lead, having secured five straight victories, the last at Monaco, after which he enjoyed a 68-point lead over Russell. However, with Antonelli enduring some bad luck during the past three rounds and Russell taking a strong win in Austria, that gap has reduced to 25 points. A seemingly insurmountable chasm has suddenly become all too bridgeable and with it the title race is on again.

• ‘I like goals that are lofty and sport needs moments’

• Keely Hodgkinson races in 800m in Diamond League

A bullish Josh Kerr has insisted he is in the shape of his life and “not scared of failure” as he attempts to break the one-mile world record at Saturday’s London Diamond League.

The former 1500m world champion and double Olympic medallist has developed a reputation as an admirably straight‑talker throughout his career, unafraid to state his ambitions publicly. Few have ever been so lofty as the one that awaits this weekend, though, as he attempts to surpass the great Hicham El Guerrouj’s one-mile mark of 3min 43.13sec that has stood since 1999. An entire generation of athletics fans were not even alive to see it happen.

Another 22 reportedly injured while mourning Palestinian killed in Israeli attack earlier in the day

An Israeli strike on a funeral in the Gaza Strip has killed at least seven people and injured another 22, according to a local hospital.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

MP for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich cleared over incident at London members’ club in 2023

A Conservative MP has been cleared of sexually assaulting two women at the Groucho Club in London after claiming that he just wanted to give them a hug.

Patrick Spencer was seen on camera coming up behind two women and putting his arms around them at the private members’ club during a night out in August 2023, less than a year before he was elected to the seat of Central Suffolk and North Ipswich.

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.

Republican Josh Hawley accuses Mark Zuckerberg’s firm of relentlessly pursuing and attempting to bankrupt her

A US senator has accused Meta of using lawfare in “efforts to destroy” a whistleblower who made allegations about the social media company’s dealings with China and its treatment of teenagers.

In a letter to its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, the Republican senator Josh Hawley demanded to know what measures Meta had taken to monitor Sarah Wynn-Williams, Facebook’s former global head of public policy, and her family.

Firm pleaded guilty to 13 offences over discharges at Margate and Broadstairs wastewater pumping stations

Southern Water has been fined more than £7m after illegally dumping sewage off the Kent coast between 2019 and 2021.

The company, described by the judge as having a “record of criminality” that was “an exceptionally serious aggravating factor”, pleaded guilty to 13 offences at Medway magistrates court last April over sewage discharges at Margate and Broadstairs wastewater pumping stations between 2019 and 2021.

European Commission proposal to overhaul emissions trading system would give companies less demanding pathway to reductions

Europe’s most effective method of cutting dangerous planet-heating gases risks being weakened after the European Commission proposed an overhaul of its flagship carbon market, critics have said.

In a long-awaited review of the European Union emissions trading system (ETS), the European Commission proposed giving companies a less demanding and cheaper pathway to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Campaigners say field will bring minimal benefit for UK economy, as industry lobbies Burnham for go-ahead

More people can fit on to the top deck of a standard London bus than will be directly employed on the new Jackdaw gasfield in the North Sea, industry documents show.

Only 27 direct full-time jobs would be created by Jackdaw, one of the biggest gasfields remaining in the North Sea, according to an environmental impact assessment filed publicly by its owner, Adura, a joint venture between Shell and Norway’s Equinor.

Escaped flowerhorn cichlids are causing concern for native species and about parasites capable of infecting humans

Escaped ornamental aquarium fish have integrated into a local ecosystem in the Philippines, but scientists say they may be threatening the native biodiversity of the lake.

Flowerhorn cichlids – human-bred hybrid fish prized for their bright-gold colour and prominent head humps – are believed to have escaped from breeding facilities into Lake Sampaloc, which sits in a volcanic crater, during a typhoon.

Knowledge learned over more than a century in Australia is being tested by worsening fires. It’s a familiar narrative around the world

The violent hot red flames of deadly wildfires across the UK and Europe and scenes of panicked communities fleeing homes could not, at least geographically, be further away for Jan Harris.

But sitting in her new home at Reedy Swamp in rural New South Wales in Australia, the 67-year-old has found herself in tears.

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.

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.

British domestic holidays are being pushed to their highest levels since Covid

The start of the peak summer season is set to bring millions of drivers on to British roads, with concerns of traffic chaos as the port of Dover faces its biggest test yet of new EU border controls.

The semi-functioning entry-exit system (EES) is credited, along with the heatwaves and fears about flights after the war in Iran, with helping push British domestic holidays to its highest levels since Covid halted international travel.

Keynote speakers included US influencer Jack Posobiec as former PM aims to gain influence among British right

Hard-right figures from around the world have gathered in London for the inaugural British spin-off from America’s influential CPAC gathering, which powered the rise of Donald Trump.

The first CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) GB has been spearheaded by Liz Truss, the former Conservative leader who was the UK’s prime minister for six weeks, as she seeks to rebuild her legacy and influence on the British right.

UK police adviser in the early 2000s and global consultant in ‘no-body’ homicide cases says he has narrowed down the outback search area

• Peter Falconio murder 25 years on: new footage shows dying Australian outback killer’s refusal to reveal body’s location

The former British government expert who consulted on the search for the remains of the murdered backpacker Peter Falconio says he has now identified a “most likely” potential burial location – an abandoned racetrack only 8km from the scene of the infamous outback attack at Barrow Creek.

In July 2001, Falconio and his partner, Joanne Lees, both from Yorkshire, were ambushed and attacked by Bradley John Murdoch as they drove along a remote stretch of road in Australia’s Northern Territory, about 300km north of Alice Springs.

Visas will be shortened to 240 days, down from five years, and Chinese journalists will be limited to 90 days

The Trump administration has said it will drastically shorten visas for foreign journalists in the US to 240 days, down from five years, and cut those for Chinese journalists to only 90 days.

The rule announced by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will do away with the “duration of status” system, which allows foreign journalists to stay and work in the United States as long as they meet eligibility requirements.

Female lawyer tells CNN’s Christiane Amanpour about alleged ‘escalation of attempts’ as second woman also speaks out

Two women who have accused the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court, Karim Khan, of sexual abuse have spoken out about their claims against the prominent British lawyer.

In an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Thursday, an ICC staffer identified by her first name, Sarah, spoke publicly for the first time about her allegations, which have engulfed the court over the past two years.

The ousting of Ma Xingrui – the third Politburo member in recent years - suggests Xi’s tolerance of dissent is diminishing, say analysts

On Tuesday, China expelled Ma Xingrui, one of the ruling party’s most senior officials, making him the third politburo member to be purged since 2022 as Xi Jinping deepens his years-long anti-corruption campaign.

Ma, a former Communist party secretary for China’s north-western region of Xinjiang, was accused of corruption, abuse of power and trading political favours for sex. The announcement came after Ma was placed under investigation in April for suspected “serious violations of discipline and the law”.

Shift in pecking order illustrates that investors are reassessing outlook for artificial intelligence

Apple overtook Nvidia on Friday to become the world’s most valuable company, reshuffling the top ranks of tech heavyweights as investors reassess the outlook for artificial intelligence.

Apple was last valued at $4.88tn as ⁠its shares held steady, while Nvidia ⁠was roughly at $4.86tn, ​after a 3.5% decline.

£200,000 investment comes after harvests in Britain hit by wet winter, spring frost and hail, then heatwaves

The owner of Ribena is to invest £200,000 in helping blackcurrant bushes withstand stress after extreme weather put a squeeze on this year’s UK harvest.

That harvest is now under way in the berry’s main growing regions including East Anglia, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Kent and Scotland. It is expected to be about 10% below the average of 10,000 tonnes, as the climate crisis drives extreme weather across Britain and elsewhere.

Move dealt ‘severe blow to Chinese companies’ confidence in investing in the UK’, says Ministry of Commerce

China’s government has said it is “strongly dissatisfied” with the decision to nationalise British Steel this week, 15 months after the UK government intervened to prevent the closure of its steelworks in Scunthorpe and the loss of 4,000 jobs.

On Thursday, British Steel was brought under public ownership to protect “the future of steel production”, the government announced.

Move would allow Wall Street trading firms and other institutions to potentially profit from seeing president’s posts first

Donald Trump’s media company is planning to charge for special high-speed access to Truth Social posts, including possibly his own, affecting national security and financial markets.

The move announced on Thursday would allow Wall Street trading firms and other institutions to get news first from top Truth Social contributors so they could profit off subsequent moves in stocks, bonds and interest rates.

Malmö Dockteater is adapting Jackie Collins’s debut novel about the swinging 60s using anatomically enhanced dolls. Puppets help you explore sex in a different way, they say

Erik Holmström holds up a naked, headless Ken doll. Most of the figure is as you’d expect: lean muscles, smooth skin. But lower down, something’s different. Between those hairless thighs is a small plastic penis nestled in a tuft of hair. “It’s real hair,” says Holmström, the director of Malmö Dockteater (that’s “puppet theatre” in Swedish). Performer and puppeteer Kajsa Ericsson jumps in. “Not real pubic hair,” she clarifies.

This doll is not just a prop of the company’s new show; it’s one of the stars. Malmö Dockteater has adapted Jackie Collins’s debut novel, The World Is Full of Married Men, into an experimental puppet production that leaps fearlessly into the explicit sex scenes that got the novel banned in several countries when it was first published in 1968. After performances in Malmö and Stockholm, the company is bringing the show to the newly refurbished Yard theatre in east London, where it will be performed in Swedish with English subtitles.

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.

Phillips plays the amateur sleuth with scissors in an audacious show that, even by cosy crime standards, is an unyielding slab of snuggle. Bloomin’ heck!

Gather ye rosebuds and clench ye bumcheeks, for there be rumblings in rural Crimeshire. A hairdresser has arrived in the fictional village of Blossom Vale armed with a blow-dried backstory (worked with fancy types in London but apparently now wants peace, quiet and “a place of me own”) and the keys to the high street’s dilapidated salon. Lily Petal (Sally Phillips) is cock-a-hoop with her purchase. “It’s like a time capsule!” hoots capable new assistant Clary (Charlotte Jordan), boggling at the salon’s abundance of browns and oranges. “It hasn’t been touched since the 1970s,” grins Lily, who, with her corduroy flares, diaphanous headscarves and penchant for the collected works of Hot Chocolate, is something of a time capsule herself.

But hark! A local busybody has been found, squished, next to her stepladder. Accident? Or murder most foul? Lily lunges for a magnifying glass.

The Hairdresser Mysteries aired on BBC One and is on iPlayer now

What begins as another celebrity lifestyle documentary shifts completely when the former Little Mix star faces a devastating diagnosis for her newborn twin daughters. Every scene is affecting

The fact that cameras were there to witness the worst moment of Jesy Nelson’s life was seemingly a coincidence. Prime Video had been following the former Little Mix singer for a documentary on her life since leaving the band, as well as the birth of her premature twins. What no one could predict was that, seven months later, as producers continued to film the growing family, Nelson’s daughters, Ocean and Story, would be diagnosed with the life-threatening muscle wasting condition spinal muscular atrophy (SMA).

Jesy Nelson: Life Changing starts with a clip from the last time viewers saw Nelson as she relocated to Cornwall with the father of her twins, her fiance Zion Foster, last year. “When they start walking, they can walk on the sand,” a smiling Nelson tells Foster as they sit with their babies on the beach. Of course, anyone who has seen the headlines in recent months knows this is achingly foreboding; a lost future that must be grieved and reshaped.

The film-length finale to the teen LGBTQ+ show has poignant moments but feels like fan service by numbers

If it were up to Kit Connor, Heartstopper would have ended quite differently. “If I’d had my way, I would have had Nick and Charlie cheating on each other and doing all those stupid things,” he recently told the Guardian. “Because young people do that and don’t necessarily need to be villainized for it.”

Midway through Heartstopper Forever, the film-length finale of Netflix’s series, I started to see his point. The central star-crossed lovebirds of Alice Oceman’s megahit are now 18 and 17, and like most teenagers they have sex, get drunk and fight with their annoying siblings. Unlike most people their age, they don’t vape, don’t use sex apps and they definitely don’t cheat.

A fun sports comedy about a failed tennis prodigy, plus Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman go at it in a gloriously sweary and scandalous period drama

There is plenty of comic potential to be found in has-been sports pros still living off former glories. In Josh Greenbaum’s amiable comedy, that figure is Dusty “the Hammer” Boyd (New Girl’s Jake Johnson), a tennis prodigy who failed to make the grade and is now reduced to coaching nine-year-olds at his father’s country club. Dad Chuck (a wonderfully dismissive Ed Harris) is fighting a rearguard action against tennis’s increasingly popular offshoot pickleball – “the coronavirus of sport” – and his son is desperate to please him. But when Dusty checks out the new game, he meets sparky older woman Candace (Mary Steenburgen, delightful) and his priorities change.
Friday 24 July, Apple TV

Kings Theatre, Brooklyn

The queen of Philly soul is on phenomenal form in a saucy and effortlessly virtuosic show celebrating 26 years in music

At one point during her triumphant phones-free show at Brooklyn’s Kings Theater, Jill Scott takes a moment to introduce Dwayne Wright, her bass player and co-musical director who is known to his friends, the queen of Philly soul informs the 3,000-strong audience, as the “pussy whisperer”. The crowd cracks up, but she’s not done. “I want you to close your ears and listen with your vagina,” she instructs, as Wright launches into a deep, toe-curling run on his instrument. “Kegel to the music!” she whoops. “You come to a Jill Scott concert and you become a virgin again.”

Perhaps Scott is emboldened by the no phones policy tonight; ours were stashed in Yondr pouches upon entry à la recent Jack White and Phoebe Bridgers concerts. But the emotionally attuned, pointedly political and proudly horny soul singer probably doesn’t need any help in getting loose. Despite my initial grumbles, the technology ban turned out to be an inspired decision in an evening that felt deeply connected, as if we were at a summer block party hosted by the neighborhood’s most charismatic character.

The industrial dance duo make music for this summer’s heatwave: filled with dread and jangling with pent-up energy

From Manchester, via Peterborough and Shanghai
Recommended if you like Crystal Castles, Mandy, Indiana, acid house
Up next Festival dates including East London Block Party, Brighton Psych Fest and End of the Road

Salford’s Silverwingkiller sound how this summer’s heatwave feels: delirious, dread-filled and jangling with pent-up energy. Named after the Chinese title for Blade Runner, they build pummelling industrial dance music from nervy breakbeats, the acid sounds of the Roland TB-303 synthesiser and the shared sense of creative freedom that James Baca and Yushang Ni discovered on moving to Greater Manchester, from Peterborough and Shanghai respectively.

BBC Philharmonic/Havlat/Kaziboni/Piatti Quartet
(NMC)
Einstein’s field equations, Newton’s universal law and artificial intelligence are among the subjects of Laidlow’s ambitious orchestral works

Robert Laidlow is as at home in the realms of science and technology as he is in the world of classical music. As this NMC debut album demonstrates, his intricate, wildly imaginative work is eminently approachable, even if the core concepts are highly complex.

Warp, a terse, 12-minute piano concerto, proposes a musical solution to Einstein’s field equations as the intrepid Joseph Havlat boldly goes where no pianist has gone before amid the distorting fabric of orchestral space-time. Strident orchestral lines spiral ever upwards, stretching instruments to their limits, while the piano maintains its course towards a serene conclusion. Handsomely recorded, the BBC Philharmonic and Vimbayi Kaziboni offer vibrantly detailed support.

(Enodoc)
The emotive lyricist and surefooted improvisor sounds lustrous in a 1990 recording featuring an exquisite I Loves You, Porgy

When Norma Winstone, the peerless English vocalist and lyricist, reached 80 in 2021 – still in entrancing voice – a cascade of tributes included one from ECM Records boss Manfred Eicher, legendary master of doing more with less in new music: “She hears things differently, and tells us about them in her own quiet way.” Winstone’s confiding storytelling could have struggled in a noisy world, but landmark albums, the accolades of peers and fans and an MBE have confirmed its soft power across 60 years. So does the release of A Timeless Place, a long-archived 1990 radio broadcast with Winstone fronting Hanover’s NDR Radio Orchestra.

The title track is her much-covered lyric (Mark Murphy, Jazzmeia Horn and Cécile McLorin Salvant have explored it) to pianist Jimmy Rowles’ lovely tune The Peacocks. Glimpsed happiness, missed chances and the sounds and colours of emotions (“I’m drowning now, slowly sinking in a sea of blue and green”) typify Winstone’s materials, and her lustrous low sounds and vaulting octave leaps constantly mutate the implications of words.

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.

Marylebone theatre, London
Christine Lahti tells the story of family life, misunderstandings between mothers and daughters, and her career – but its focus is blurred

Christine Lahti’s autobiographical show addresses many important issues and emotional pressure points. It is the story of family life, misunderstandings between mothers and daughters, Lahti’s career trajectory, a second wave feminist awakening and a post #MeToo reflection on a time in showbusiness when the casting couch was the norm and female actors were judged for their “fuckability”.

All in the space of 90 minutes. That is the problem here. Lahti stands on Sarah Beaton’s near empty stage design with occasional neon lights (why?) and a white sofa covered in “upscale plastic” to evoke the sterility of the unhomely 1950s Michigan home in which she grew up, and her parents’ demand for perfectionism.

Buxton Opera House
Olivia Fuchs’ delirious spin on the baroque opera comes with TV trickery, more hearts than a cardiologist convention and absolutely gorgeous singing

It’s day seven on “Melissa’s Island”. Melissa is grafting hottie Amadigi but he keeps mugging her off. Amadigi’s head’s been turned by fit bird Oriana, but snakey Dardano is trying to crack on with her too and she’s got the ick. It’s giving toxic relationship energy.

The absurdity of Handel’s magic operas can be a headache for directors. But not for Olivia Fuchs, whose Amadigi for Buxton festival takes the composer’s paper-thin four-hander and swaps magic for TV trickery, sorceresses for all-powerful producers, and a set of foolish lovers for the cast of a Love Island-style reality show. Add an inflatable flamingo, a barrage of cameras and more hearts than a cardiologist convention, and you’ve got a staging that keeps you so busy smiling that you barely notice that you’ve, well, caught feelings.

Town Hall theatre, Galway
A beautifully knit ensemble bring infectious, giddy fun to Dion Boucicault’s 1874 caper, finding a delicious balance between whimsy and sincerity

Dion Boucicault’s comic melodrama from 1874 holds a place in theatre history for its playful upending of national stereotypes and expectations. Finding a delicious balance between whimsy and sincerity, Garry Hynes’s inventive production for Druid theatre company celebrates Boucicault’s gifts as a playwright and master of stage spectacle, whose creations dazzled 19th-century audiences in New York and London.

This staging takes a miniaturist approach, with Sligo landscapes, cliff tops and gothic towers depicted as picture-book illustrations glimpsed from a distance. Ladders and furniture descend and glide, with assistance from the nimble cast of 10, most dextrously by Conn “the Shaughraun” (Aaron Monaghan), poacher and trickster. Here, Conn also acts as master of ceremonies cum stage manager, as if standing in for Boucicault himself.

Pitlochry Festival theatre
Following its star through rehearsals and squabbles with her director, this is modelled on Cocteau’s La Voix Humaine but it’s not speaking very clearly

If Frances Ruffelle fancied putting on a one-woman cabaret show, it would be pretty good. The West End and Broadway star has certainly pulled together a decent set of original songs to flesh out I Can Die Too.

Written by a dozen or so songwriters and brightly arranged by musical director Frew, they have the 1980s/90s pop feel of Cyndi Lauper, Britney Spears and Ultravox; a touch of torch song here, a slice of synth ballad there. Backed by cello, violin, keys and drums, Ruffelle is in her element singing them: nothing histrionic and the good judgment to know when the song needs a swing of the hips, a soft-shoe shuffle or just a straight, closed-eyed rendition.

More than 800,000 copies of Impossible Creatures will be distributed to year 6 and P6 children through The Queen’s Christmas Present initiative

Every child in year 6 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and P6 in Scotland, will be given the bestselling book Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell this Christmas, to coincide with the end of the government’s National Year of Reading.

Queen Camilla announced the initiative, called The Queen’s Christmas Present, to mark her birthday on Friday.

The acclaimed Irish actor started her career in Coronation Street and Casualty before a string of high-profile Hollywood roles

Brenda Fricker, who became the first female Irish Oscar winner for acting with My Left Foot, has died aged 81. Her agent Phil Belfield told the BBC in a statement: “We will never see her like again and the world is lesser for the lack of her … I was honoured to know, love and work with her and she will always have a place in my heart and in the heart of so many film and TV fans the world over.”

In My Left Foot, Fricker plays the mother of Christy Brown, whose cerebral palsy means he only has muscular control over one of his feet. The film, directed by Jim Sheridan, was released to enormous acclaim in 1989, winning the best actor Oscar for Daniel Day-Lewis as well as best supporting actress for Fricker.

The alt-rock icon is preparing to release her latest solo album Sugar on Blackstone, and will answer your questions about her five-decade career

As frontwoman of Throwing Muses then an acclaimed solo artist, Kristin Hersh is one of the defining voices of US alt-rock, and as she readies new album Sugar on Blackstone she’ll be joining us to answer your questions.

Formed in the early 1980s in Rhode Island with Hersh’s stepsister Tanya Donelly and others, Throwing Muses were added to the growing stable at the UK’s 4AD label, and by 1989’s Hunkpapa album were charting in the UK – part of a vibrant wave of college rock and dreampop alongside peers and labelmates such as Pixies and Cocteau Twins.

Neill’s co-star in the 1994 comedy-drama Sirens remembers a man of rare beauty, generosity and delight

By the time I met Sam
He had already assumed a kind of mythic status in our household,
playing Reilly on Ace of Spies.
My stepfather was his boss.
11 years on and I get to work with him,
Playing Norman Lindsay (wryly).

He was
Electric-minded
Some fantastic mischief lurking just around the grin
The twinkle of his eye
An astronomical scintillation
No time for Acting
Too busy Being.
Present
(Before I knew what present even was)
There for the other actor
Made it seem so simple
Really asked the question
He could conjure anything
Puckish

So blessed to have had that time
The proximity
With the hope that something
Might rub off

Yes

His softly softly take

The first tasting of
Two Paddocks
Pinot noir
On a gentle evening
Chez lui
(Another case of his generosity)
The satisfying ritual of the swirling, the sniffing, the sipping,
The glass half-full
Raised
To the life fully lived

Fine unbuttoning of stories and some
Past glories
Never boastful
Never cruel

Only

A delight at the sharing
The wit and the wine
and the
Wrapping us all in his open embrace

Us, being a shimmer of sirens,
A bouquet of sheep shearers
And an exaltation of Hugh Grants.

(To be sure, the badinage that flowed on set was an art form in itself)

I’m looking at him now
Shooting his closeup for a scene in the garden,
Where the children
Watch a fairy show
Staged by the artist’s models.
His face flooded
With imagination,
With his own wonder,
His own childlike joy.

The 2018 final against Germany went to penalties – we thrashed them and won gold

I was 12 years old when I first played foosball – table football – in the summer of 1975 in Beirut. My home city was under siege, split by civil war. School was cancelled and roads were closed. We couldn’t get to the beach and the only place to go was the amusement arcade. Luckily for me, it was across the road.

Alongside billiard tables and games machines were a couple of foosball tables. I watched older kids play for hours, mesmerised by a game where you could outsmart an opponent two feet away, then celebrate in their face. You needed 20 pence, or qurush in Lebanese money, to play: 10 pence for the table and 10 pence for the winner. Money was scarce, so I made a deal with the guy who owned the place – if I cleaned the tables, I could play for free. With machine guns rattling on the nearby green line, which divided the east and west of the city, I’d stuff a towel inside the goal and practise until I was confident enough to play. I got really good. By the following summer, I was winning 10 games in a row.

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.

The Filter’s authority on camping and the outdoors, Sian Lewis answered your questions on the best tents for all conditions, how to keep out wildlife, and meals to make your kids happy

ejtp19 asks: My six man Hi-Gear tent complete with zipped off sleeping area is on its last legs and I need to replace it. I’ve got the romantic urge to go for a teepee/bell tent ... but I’m worried I’m going for style over substance. How annoying is not having a zipped-off sleeping area? Is there a teepee/bell type tent with a separate bedroom and is it worth it?

Sian replies:

I have a bell tent and I absolutely love it for festivals, weddings and family camps, but they do have limited uses - they’re heavy, only have one room as you said, and take a while to erect and dismantle. I also paid to have mine cleaned after a few years of use as polycotton isn’t fully waterproof and can get mildewed if you don’t put it away fully dry.

You could look at something in between a bell tent and a tech-y tent - I rate Robens for quality and its Fairbanks Grande and Fairbanks Venturer are gorgeous, teepee styles that are easier to transport and erect (but with no sleeping areas). The only teepee-style tent with sleeping compartments I can find is Decathlon’s Teepee 5.2.

Firstly, camping alone as a woman is brilliant - once you get used to it. It can take a few camps to feel confident, and I’d recommend starting in a comfy campsite by yourself or even going for a solo glamping trip and seeing if you enjoy having some time alone under canvas. I’ve wild camped alone hundreds of times and always really enjoyed it. I’d suggest trying one night alone not far from your car - if you don’t like it you can always drive home and try another time.

If you fancy trying wild camping, firstly make sure you’re aware of where you can camp legally, and let someone know your plans and location. I like to take some creature comforts such as a good book or a podcast (not a true crime one, mind).. Remember that no-one knows who you are once you’re inside a tent. Pitch late and leave early and you’ll probably have your spot all to yourself.

Come into the garden for a sparkling summer spritz with flavours of elderflower, apples, eau-de-vie and a splash of absinthe

A bright, floral summer spritz, inspired by the gardens of France and simplified for home purposes.

Leon Gasco, bar manager, Bar Antoine, London W1

This fruity summer dessert combines taste and texture with its layers of soft frangipane, crunchy sugar crust and a silky topping

If there’s one thing I’m very likely to have in my freezer, it’s a pack of ready-rolled puff pastry. And especially so during the warmer months, when I can use it for quick sweet or savoury tarts, be it a casual midweek bake or a fancier dinner party dessert. Layering texture is key, and here we’ve got crisp pastry; soft, slightly chewy at the edges frangipane; a crunchy demerara sugar crust; a silky mascarpone topping and squidgy raspberries.

From taco in a bowl to cantaloupe and courgette, assemblies of raw ingredients are a terrific choice for lo-fi, hot-weather meals that require minimal cooking

Sign up here for our weekly food newsletter, Feast

When Shakespeare coined the phrase “salad days”, he was referring to a state of youthful inexperience. But at 41, and midway through the hottest summer on record, I can safely say my own salad days – these weeks of endless salad-eating – are the result of experience. As my organs segue into their fifth decade, I need more than rosé and a bag of Tyrrells for dinner. (Although if you’re interested, I’m a salt-and-vinegar Furrows person and my favourite rosé – Catalan producer Can Sumoi’s La Rosa – is on offer.)

I’m not only eating salad, of course, but assemblies of raw ingredients are an obvious choice if you’re looking for lo-fi meals that involve more interaction with the fridge than the oven. I like Tom Hunt’s rubric for a fridge-raid dinner salad, which – rather than sending you out for ingredients and sweat patches – uses whatever you have on hand. And Meera Sodha’s no-cook salad of tomatoes, chickpeas and rose harissa delivers fibre and flavour without so much as a struck match. And then there is Feast’s archive of recipes by Yotam Ottolenghi, which boasts doozies such as his tomatoes with mango-miso dressing and this courgette and cantaloupe salad. Ottolenghi’s lime and poppyseed slaw with curry leaf oil, meanwhile, has accompanied almost every barbecue or “family-style” spread – the citrus juice softens and “cooks” shredded cabbage, carrot and onions into submission, and don’t even get me started on its maple-turmeric cashews. The whole lot cries out for a beer – preferably Table Beer by the Bermondsey brewery the Kernel, a pale ale that is big on hops and low on booze (variable, but about 3%).

Aluminium is practical, recyclable and, for wines drunk young, the ideal container. Better still – high-quality options are increasingly available

Cans are the answer to many of the problems posed by wine. On picnics, at festivals and generally on the trot, what are more practical than bottles? Cans! For the carbon-conscious, what have a significantly lower environmental impact than glass? Aluminium cans! And what if, for whatever reason, you don’t want to commit to a full 750ml bottle of wine? Try a can! This small, light and sustainable format is a secret weapon to keep, quite literally, in your back pocket; with cans – wherever you are and whatever you’re doing – drinking wine is always possible. Not to get too Barack Obama about it, but “yes, we can”.

Gen Z are largely behind the recent boom in canned wines, which stands to reason: fewer of them are drinkers and those who are do so only moderately, so a smaller format suits. According to a 2025 survey by Ocado, 53% of them “have been directly influenced by social media to try boxed or canned wine”. This shows in the way those formats are marketed: the peachy-pink can of Nice’s Pale Rosé, for instance, reads, “Won’t shatter on the dancefloor”, while Vinca’s catarratto “pairs well with great company”. A and almost all of them make a point of their recyclable packaging, appealing to the most environmentally-conscious generation to date. (Glass bottles are, after all, consistently found to be one of the largest contributors to wine’s carbon footprint.)

The more unusual you are, the more unusual it is to find people like you, advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes. With time, her world will expand

• Read more Leading questions

Our teen daughter is a deeply sensitive, perceptive kid who longs for close friendship but often feels sidelined; she reads slights quickly, ruminates and compares herself harshly. Her 16th birthday was heartbreaking: the in-person warmth and social-media love she expected didn’t materialise, and she’s crushed. We try to parent with empathy and backbone, validating her feelings while nudging her towards agency: widening her circles, getting busier and repairing frayed ties without begging for approval.

But how do we wisely accompany a teenager whose self-worth is repeatedly tested by imperfect peers (in her mind at least) and the distortions of online recognition? What practices, language and boundaries help a highly sensitive adolescent convert disappointment into dignity and build friendships rooted in mutual regard rather than constant self-surveillance?

Damien says plants last longer, but Tolu doesn’t think things have to survive for years to be worthwhile. Who should turn over a new leaf?

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

Flowers are a fleeting gesture. Why not buy plants that last years instead?

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.

Rick and Rachel are non-monogamous – but they both know this arrangement may not work forever

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

I’ve tried knowing and not knowing, and I find both difficult. In an ideal world, we’d go looking for sex together

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.

From a flat on the ninth floor of a 34-floor skyscraper on Liverpool’s waterfront to a mid-terrace cottage in Norwich

Treasury says shoppers will get a ‘fairer deal’ as new rules for BNPL credit are introduced on Wednesday

Millions of shoppers will enjoy more rights and protections from Wednesday as new rules for “buy now, pay later” take effect in the UK.

The government said it was delivering on its commitment to end the buy now, pay later “wild west”.

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.

Doing a split may look impressive, but experts caution it should not be done without practice and it may not be for everyone

On Love Island USA’s recent eighth season, contestant Kenzie Annis quickly distinguished herself with her ability to perform the splits, abruptly deploying the maneuver in fits of both delight and rage.

Seeing the splits on TV shows such as Love Island and RuPaul’s Drag Race can make people “want to take on that challenge and to push themselves to new heights”, said Ramoni Overton, a yoga instructor and YouTuber based in Los Angeles.

Ministers consider bringing e-cigarette laws in line with tobacco as data shows 20% of teenagers have tried vaping

Vapes could be sold in plain packaging as part of a range of proposals to stop them being marketed to children.

The UK-wide plans also include limiting device colours to white, black or grey, and keeping vapes out of sight in shops, according to the Department of Health and Social Care.

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.

The ubiquity of GLP-1s is wreaking new havoc on bridal designers who must scramble to accommodate rapid weight loss

In bridal stores across the world, solicitous sales assistants are being trained to ask a new, blunt question: “Are you planning on losing a drastic amount of weight?”

Wedding season’s new disruptor is semaglutide, now used by 10% of engaged couples, according to a survey by the wedding planning platform Zola. In the same survey, 42% of couples said the ubiquity of GLP-1s has made them feel they should “look a certain way” for their wedding.

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.

As Christopher Nolan’s star-studded adaptation is released, Australian archaeologist and cyclist Sam Wood has recreated Odysseus’ journey on two wheels

Backpacking around Europe is a rite of passage for many young Australians but when Sam Wood proposed a trip with his two brothers in 2009, he had something a little more ambitious in mind.

An avid cyclist who studied classical archaeology at the University of Sydney and spent three years working at the British Museum, he suggested retracing the route that the Carthaginian general Hannibal took over the Alps with his war elephants in 218BC.

A catamaran service from Dover to Boulogne is the perfect start to a trip exploring the Pas-de-Calais and marshes of Saint-Omer by bike, boat and kayak

“It’s all about tuning into the culture of the sea,” helmsman Chris O’Brien tells me, scanning the rippling cobalt horizon from the wheel of a catamaran. “People find the water, and the meditative experience of sailing, healing.” Meditative isn’t a word that usually comes to mind when talking about cross-Channel ferries on a bank holiday weekend, but this is no ordinary ferry.

Launched last year, SailLink operates a largely wind-powered (engines are only used when necessary) service from Dover to Boulogne up to five times a week between April and mid-September, with a new Shoreham to Fécamp route due to start trials later this year.

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.”

Comfrey is my favourite because it’s so nutritious for flowers, fruit and veg, but nettles, dandelions and groundsel are good too

I hope that, as you’re reading this, your veg patch is in full swing. Despite my slightly later than usual start to the season (spring was confusing, weather-wise!), my tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes are growing well, and I have just planted out another round of lettuce and spring onions. Now we’re in midsummer, much of our attention is taken up with keeping our crops watered, well and harvested. It is also a good time to consider adding supplemental feeding.

This doesn’t necessarily mean a trip to the garden centre, because it’s fairly easy – if a little stinky – to make your own plant feed. There are a number of plants that you can use in this process, but my favourite is comfrey since its leaves offer up such a nutritious elixir that crops seem to really respond to. Comfrey is a perennial plant that produces thick, hairy leaves and clusters of drooping pink, purple or white flowers; it thrives in damp earth. It can be found by the side of streams and rivers, though it’s robust enough to grow in less welcoming ground, pushing a taproot deep into the earth and pulling up nutrients into its leaves, where we can harness them. A huge added bonus is how much the bees, hoverflies and butterflies benefit from its flowers, especially in spring.

Mackerel skies and mare’s tails signal arrival of warm fronts that push moisture to high altitudes and creates distinctive clouds

“Mare’s tails and mackerel scales make lofty ships to carry low sails,” runs an old English saying about summer skies.

Mackerel skies are cirrocumulus or altocumulus clouds in regular but patchy rows, resembling the light and dark-scale pattern on a mackerel. The cirrocumulus version is white and wispy, altocumulus is grey and thicker. One easy rule is that cirrocumulus is narrower than a finger at arm’s length, altocumulus more like three fingers.

Annagh Marsh, County Mayo, Ireland: I hold my breath as I watch a red-necked phalarope darting about, tweezering food. Without habitat restoration, it wouldn’t be here

On a sunny morning a few weeks ago, Dave Suddaby, the reserves manager with the conservation organisation BirdWatch Ireland, led me across the machair to where the fairy birds were nesting in Annagh Marsh. “Fairy bird” is the name given to the red-necked phalarope by the Irish naturalist Robert Lloyd Praeger after he encountered the species in this area during the early 1900s.

As we walked, the habitat restoration that drew this diminutive wader back to breed here in 2015, after an absence of more than 30 years, was already casting a spell over me. The air was full of the sounds of lapwings, redshanks, corncrakes and snipes. The sward was a dazzle of wildflowers. Eventually we came to a narrow freshwater pool, where we stopped to wait.

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.

Mykhailo Fedorov, celebrated by many for innovative, tech-driven approach, was sidelined for military old guard

Volodomyr Zelenskyy’s abrupt dismissal of Ukraine’s youthful and innovative defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, at precisely the moment Kyiv appeared to be gaining advantages in several spheres of its war with Russia has exposed, not for the first time, a troubling flaw in the president’s leadership.

The move, which has startled senior European officials and caused consternation, and demonstrations, in Ukraine, is all the more shocking given Fedorov’s role in pushing a clear strategy to prosecute the war, leveraging Ukraine’s rapidly developing technological advances in drone and missile technology.

In the second part of a two-part profile, Josh Halliday charts PM-in-waiting’s journey northward, where as mayor he revelled in his Covid-era popularity – and changed his approach to politics

• Part one: From Cambridge ‘impostor’ to New Labour star

Andy Burnham was a broken man. In a pub a short walk from parliament, which he had taken to calling “the madhouse”, he plotted his escape over beers with three trusted colleagues.

It was late March in 2016. Burnham, the MP for Leigh in Greater Manchester, had been in Westminster for 15 years but here, in a politico-free pub on Horseferry Road, his mood was dark.

US president using office and intelligence agencies to try to undermine confidence in elections before midterms

Donald Trump used the imprimatur of the presidency and United States intelligence agencies to try to undermine confidence in American elections in a presidential address on Thursday that seemed bluntly aimed at laying the groundwork for further destabilizing the electoral system before November’s midterm elections.

In his address from the East Room at the White House, Trump attempted to give the impression that his administration had uncovered new bombshell findings about vulnerabilities in the US’s election system. China, he claimed, had illicitly acquired voter information on 220 million Americans (many states allow anyone to buy voter roll information; Trump did not say the means by which the country acquired the data). He claimed that China interfered in other ways to undermine his 2020 campaign and that the information had been suppressed by intelligence officials.

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.”

We want to hear from those working or living at sea, including maritime workers, sailors, port staff and family about how the situation is affecting their work

The conflict in the Middle East continues to disrupt shipping across the region, including in the strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s busiest maritime routes.

Donald Trump has once again threatened to take control of the strait of Hormuz, as he announced the reimposition of a naval blockade on Iran and demanded a 20% tariff on all cargoes shipped through the key maritime passage.

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

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

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

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Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, wildfires in Europe, ICE in Maine and the World Cup semi-finals – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists