The actor has always been full of surprises – and now thanks to Jilly Cooper’s bonkbuster he’s become a romantic lead. As the series returns, he talks about marriage, masculinity and meditation

Danny Dyer is dressed in white and carrying a huge bouquet of flowers when I drop in on his Guardian photoshoot. “Hello, baby,” he says to me in a voice so bad-boy East End, so fabulously filthy, that he sounds like a parody of Danny Dyer. We’ve never met before, but you wouldn’t guess.

Dyer has been in the limelight for 30 years, but never like this. As he approaches 50, he has become a middle-aged heart-throb. The week we meet, he’s on the front of Rolling Stone UK, and he can’t quite believe it. “I’m on it now, as we speak. And the cover before was Timothée Chalamet! Pretty cool! You know, I’ve had a long career and I couldn’t get on the cover of anything till now.”

The once inexorable rise in retiree living standards since the second world war has broken down. Can we keep the dream alive for future generations?

When you think of retirement, what comes to mind? Perhaps it is images of older people enjoying a well-deserved period of leisure and comfort in the final stretch of their lives. Cruise ships, garden centres, golf clubs and bungalows by the sea. The truth is that this image is now, in large part, the artefact of a bygone age. A long and comfortable retirement starting at 60 or 65 is beginning to look like a collective social experience whose moment has passed. The political and economic forces it relied upon appear to have run their course – and it’s time to start thinking about what comes next.

Retirement in Britain has a surprisingly short history, underpinned by dramatic improvements in older people’s quality of life over the past 50 years. Large public and private bureaucracies first started to enrol long-serving employees into pension schemes from the mid-19th century. In 1909, Britain introduced an old age pension funded by the state and targeting the poorest, who could claim it from the age of 70. But it was only after the second world war that a period of leisured old age become an ordinary expectation for most British workers.

Helen McCarthy is a historian and the author of Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood

This article was amended on 2 May 2026. An earlier version said that in 1909 Britain was the “first country to introduce an old age pension, funded by the state and targeting the poorest”. In fact, Denmark introduced a state-funded pension targeting the poorest in 1891.

GB News owner’s son, who wants Channel to be mined to stop migrants, is latest to have a go at transatlantic rightwing commentary

On a Los Angeles stage in 2011 Winston Marshall, then the banjo player for the folk rock band Mumford & Sons, could scarcely believe what was happening. Not only was he playing at the Grammys, he was playing alongside Bob Dylan, legendary composer of social justice anthems and one of his heroes.

About 15 years later, Marshall once again found himself stateside, this time on a very different stage. Appearing on Fox News in his new guise as a conservative YouTuber, Marshall advocated what he admitted was an “outlandish idea” to stop small boat crossings in the Channel.

American soldiers have been part of life in Landstuhl since 1945, giving the area a unique US-German identity

Despite Donald Trump’s frequent bluster, Nadine Firmont said the US president’s move to pull American troops out of Germany had hit her town like a bombshell.

“I have to tell you I was honestly shocked,” said Firmont, 45, who works at a high school in Landstuhl, south-west Germany, the heart of the largest American military community outside the US.

The actor on struggling with body image, her U-turn on marriage and her obsession with Instagram dogs

Born in Essex, Juliet Stevenson, 69, studied at Rada and made her film debut in Drowning By Numbers. Her other film work includes Truly, Madly, Deeply and Bend It Like Beckham. On stage, she has performed for the RSC and the National. She received an Olivier in 1992 for her role in Death and the Maiden and the 2019 Critics’ Circle best actress award for The Doctor. She is current touring By a Lady, a show about Jane Austen which is at the Buxton Opera House 10 May. She is married with two children and lives in London.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
I talk too much.

The East West Rail project linking Oxford to Milton Keynes was finished in 2024. There’s just one hitch: no services

The rumbling noise in the night, still enough to waken the unhabituated, is what really goads some people living in Winslow, Buckinghamshire. Freight trains running through the new station since late 2024 prove this stretch of railway is operational. But the long-promised passenger services have yet to appear – and there is no sign of any arriving soon.

Welcome to East West Rail, open or not. For well over a decade, ministers have talked up a new railway linking Oxford to Cambridge via Milton Keynes to accelerate the drive for housing, jobs and growth – an arc of tech industry hailed as the UK’s answer to Silicon Valley.

Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson and Robert Jenrick, among others, have sung the praises of the JCB PotHole Pro

Reform UK’s leading figures have repeatedly promoted a new pothole-fixing machine by the construction company JCB, while the party received £200,000 from the British digger maker, the Guardian can reveal.

Several Reform politicians including Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson, Robert Jenrick, Zia Yusuf and Richard Tice have sung the praises of the JCB PotHole Pro machine.

PM says there are instances in which he would support bans but organisers say this would ‘strike at root of free speech’

Organisers of pro-Palestine marches have said Keir Starmer’s threat to ban some demonstrations opposing Israel’s actions in the Middle East will “strike at the root of free assembly and free speech” in the UK.

On Saturday morning, the prime minister told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that “there are instances” in which he would support stopping some pro-Palestine protests altogether.

Tory leader says she did not sign off on video attacking Labour’s Troubles legacy proposals

Kemi Badenoch has apologised after footage from Bloody Sunday was used in social media posts criticising a bill on legacy issues in Northern Ireland.

The Conservative leader said on Saturday that she did not sign off on the use of a clip from the massacre, in which British soldiers opened fire on unarmed civil rights demonstrators in Derry, and that it was distributed by “very young people”.

German government calls redeployment of 5,000 troops ‘anticipated’ and reminder of Europe’s need to invest in its own defence

• ‘We love our Americans’: the German town rocked by Trump’s plan to withdraw US troops

Nato is seeking to “understand the details” of a US decision to withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany, a redeployment ordered by Donald Trump amid a feud with the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz.

The German government sought to play down the severity of Trump’s move, describing it as “anticipated”, and a reminder of Europe’s need to invest in its own defence. The US withdrawal, which the Pentagon said would take place over the next six to 12 months, comes after criticism from Merz over Trump’s war with Iran and his handling of subsequent talks with Tehran.

Four people are in hospital, with one 25-year-old man facing life-threatening injuries

A drive-by shooting in Brixton which left four people in hospital on Saturday has been called “an act of indiscriminate violence” by police.

Shots were fired in the early hours on Coldharbour Lane in the south London area, leaving one 25-year-old man in hospital with life-threatening injuries.

Arsenal supporters had almost forgotten what it was like to win without their nerves being shredded. They were reacquainted with the feeling on an occasion when everything felt right from the start and got better and better. It was all over by half-time, Arsenal three goals to the good and the Emirates Stadium purring over a virtuoso Bukayo Saka performance.

The England winger had not been himself before he was forced to take time out at the end of March to rest an achilles problem – and one or two others aches. He was back in the starting XI here and the bang he produced could be heard in Manchester. City do not play until Monday night. They will kick off at Everton six points behind Arsenal at the top, albeit having played two games fewer. Arsenal have turned up the heat inexorably.

Figures for England and Wales prompt calls for more rigorous police investigations of cases

Only 3% of suicides related to domestic abuse in England and Wales in the past five years have resulted in any sort of prosecution, figures show.

Between 2020 and 2025, 553 people took their own lives after suspected abuse in an intimate relationship, but only 17 posthumous charges were brought.

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org

Actors Richard E Grant, Michael Sheen and Bella Ramsey among star-studded cast hoping for victory as BBC’s hit spin-off series returns to screens

Considering the Traitors is a game of murderous treachery played out in a castle, the Shakespearean actors in the cast of the new celebrity spin-off series should be well set.

Oscar-winner Richard E Grant, acclaimed actor Michael Sheen and The Last of Us star Bella Ramsey will be among the thespians vying for victory this year, all of who have the Bard on their CV.

Kurdish Syrian man, 26, said he fled forced conscription by YPG militia because he ‘didn’t want to kill people’

An asylum seeker sent back to France under the controversial “one in, one out” scheme faces being returned to Syria after authorities in Paris ruled it was safe to do so, in what is believed to be the first case of its kind.

When the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the French president, Emmanuel Macron, announced the “groundbreaking” deal in July 2025 to stop small boats crowded with asylum seekers from crossing the Channel – by forcibly returning one small-boat asylum seeker to France in exchange for bringing one in northern France legally to the UK – they emphasised that France was a safe country for returnees.

Calf was transported by water-filled barge in operation deemed ‘inadvisable’ because of low chance of survival

Rescuers have released a young humpback whale that became a national sensation after it was beached in shallow waters off the coast in Germany, although marine experts have said its chances of survival are low.

The whale, variously nicknamed Timmy or Hope, was released into the North Sea off Denmark after being transported there in a water-filled barge by rescuers.

The social and economic impact of people living longer and having fewer babies is hitting countries worldwide. Adaptation is key

In Japan, there are now companies that specialise in cleaning the apartments of elderly people who have died alone and gone undiscovered for weeks or months, while adult incontinence pads have outstripped nappy sales for more than a decade. In Italy, depopulating villages are selling homes for €1 to attract new residents and keep services running. In the UK, falling pupil numbers are already closing schools and classrooms in parts of London.

These are not isolated curiosities, but signs of a broader shift taking place across much of the developed world. “In the EU in 2024, 21 of 27 countries had more deaths than births,” said Prof Sarah Harper, the director of the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing. Across Asia and the Americas, too – from Japan and South Korea, to Cuba and Uruguay – many countries are seeing the same pattern.

Education is being targeted across Palestine, with the murder of 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan only the latest in a spree of violence

The Israeli reservist shot 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan in the head just outside the western gate of the Mughayyir boys’ secondary school, where he was studying in ninth grade.

Aws collapsed instantly, bleeding heavily. More shots rang out as his friends ran to his side, picked up his now-limp body and rushed him out of the line of fire, their path along the school wall marked by a trail of their classmate’s blood.

Sassica Francis-Bruce regularly joined her father – a film editor – on set. As she grew older she loved working beside him in the cutting room

I clearly remember the first time I had a soda because it was the same day Jack Nicholson threw up on me. Deliberately. He’d burst through the doors of a church and began a profanity-riddled tirade against God and women as he gesticulated madly and accosted churchgoers.

When he reached the front row where I sat and turned towards me, I froze. His eyes were abnormally alert, his hair wild and uncombed and saliva dripped from his mouth like a Neapolitan mastiff.

When Federica met Oskar, she thought their Google translate-powered romance would be brief, but soon they were planning their future restaurant together

• Find more stories from the moment I knew series

In 2013 I moved from Milan to work as a pastry chef in Marano Vicentino, a tiny town in the region of Veneto. My new boss was the youngest chef to be awarded a Michelin star in Italy and I was excited by the opportunity to work at El Coq, living in the staff sharehouse and learning everything I could.

I’d been there a year when Oskar arrived on the scene. A fellow chef and friend of my boss, he had been working on a boat somewhere and was going to stay with us in the sharehouse for a few weeks and spend some time in the kitchen helping us develop the menu.

More trips around the sun does not mean inevitable decline, new research suggests – and having a optimistic outlook can even bring improvements

By most standards, Prof Velandai Srikanth is at the peak of his career. He is the director of the National Centre for Healthy Ageing; his decades of highly regarded research has led to work being published in leading scientific journals; and he has been awarded funding from some of the world’s biggest scientific funding bodies.

He has also turned 60, and says that as soon as he did, “Somebody said: ‘So when are you going to retire?’” The comment shocked him – he realised this was the stigma of ageing, and it was coming for him.

Josh, 30, a video game designer, meets Hannah, 31, an architectural lighting designer

What were you hoping for?
A fun evening and easy chat with an interesting and unique human being.

Jarred beans beat canned for flavour and texture, but which brands hit the buttery spot and which are floury flops?

• The best supermarket sauerkraut

As a proud supporter of the Beans is How campaign, which aims to double global consumption of beans, peas, lentils and pulses by 2028, it’s an understatement to say I’m a huge fan of beans. They’re a hero vegetable that’s full of protein, complex carbs, fibre and micronutrients, and they have myriad health benefits. But that’s not all: beans are also great for planetary health, not least because they need little fertiliser or water to grow.

Once viewed as cheap filler, beans, especially jarred ones, are now regarded as something of a delicacy. They’re more costly than canned, sure, but they’re also softer, have a signature, creamy texture and a more delicate flavour. I tested all the beans cold and straight from the jar, and rated them on flavour, texture, shape, sourcing transparency, certifications, additives and value.

Meryl Streep stars in the long-awaited sequel to the fashion-industry hit, and the comic, actor and bona fide national treasure returns to the stage

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

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

Meryl Streep returns as acid-tongued fashion-mag doyen Miranda Priestly, and the Northern Irish agit-rap trio present a new album of polemical electro-rave bangers. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

️ F1 qualifying updates from 9pm BST
️ McLaren one-two in sprint race | Mail Philip

Button, who has a world title, confident that George Russell will be competitive come main qualifying as the Mercedes driver pursues a championship of his own.

The heat is on in Miami. Drivers kept as cool as they can be by umbrellas as the cars receive their last touches. Jenson Button probably quite happy to not be wearing a race suit.

Compliments mean little to West Ham at this stage of the season. They need points more than a patronising pat on the head for playing quite well in a defeat. Positives? West Ham hit the woodwork three times, created a host of chances and contributed to an entertaining game. Negatives? Well, all of that would have been fine if they were coasting in mid-table, but given West Ham’s perilous position the overriding sense was this was a costly afternoon in their battle to stay up.

The frustration lay in blowing an opportunity to make 18th-placed Tottenham squirm before facing Aston Villa on Sunday evening. The gap remains at two points when it could have been five.

• Arsenal put pressure on Manchester City with 3-0 win

• First-half performance ‘one of the best’ this season

Mikel Arteta said his Arsenal team had played some of their best football of the season in Saturday’s 3-0 home win over Fulham and demanded that they take the positive feelings into the return leg of their Champions League semi-final against Atlético Madrid on Tuesday.

Arsenal picked a fine time to recover their attacking flow, Viktor Gyökeres scoring either side of a Bukayo Saka goal to give them an unassailable half-time lead. The result took them six points clear of Manchester City at the top of the Premier League, albeit their rivals have two games in hand – the first of which is at Everton on Monday night.

Ipswich are back in the Premier League. And in what style. Folk in this part of Suffolk have become accustomed to promotion parties under Kieran McKenna and the latest certainly did not disappoint. Two early goals dismissed any fears of shredded nerves to ensure an afternoon of revelry could commence.

By the time a late third was added, the pitch perimeter was already lined with elated spectators ready to engulf their idols at the final whistle. No police presence was ever going to be sufficient to stop their invasion.

Renée Slegers conceded OL Lyonnes were the better team after Jule Brand’s late winner settled an absorbing semi-final to end Arsenal’s defence of their Women’s Champions League title. It will be Lyonnes 12th European final, extending their own record.

With the tie level at 3-3 on aggregate after Alessia Russo’s goal for Arsenal and seemingly heading for extra time, Brand collected Melchie Dumornay’s chipped through ball and tucked a neat finish into the far corner. The goal was initially disallowed for offside, but after a three-minute video assistant referee check the goal was given, sparking joyous celebrations by the home supporters.

• 2005 winner rallies from 15-13 down to win 17-15

• Murphy will play Mark Allen or Wu Yize in final

Shaun Murphy twice overturned a two-frame deficit in the final session to beat John Higgins 17-15 and seal his place in his fifth World Snooker Championship final.

Murphy was forced to dredge up his best form to see off the 50-year-old Scot in a titanic tussle that looked nailed-on for a decider until Higgins fluffed a black on a break of 50.

• Ukrainian beats Russian 6-3, 7-5 at Caja Mágica

• Kostyuk extends her 11-match winning streak

Marta Kostyuk took an enormous step towards fulfilling her potential as the Ukrainian closed out an incredible week by winning the biggest title of her career at the Madrid Open, defeating Mirra Andreeva, of Russia, 6-3, 7-5. Although Kostyuk’s run through a WTA 1000 draw was unexpected, this did not come out of nowhere. Kostyuk won her second career WTA event in Rouen just before Madrid and has now put together an 11-match winning streak to rise to a career-high world ranking of 15.

This result has been a long time coming. Now 23, she broke through as a 15-year-old, reaching the third round of the Australian Open as a qualifier. She is one of the best athletes on the tour, blessed with a varied and well-rounded game.

• Semi-final: Leinster 29-25 Toulon

• Leinster will face Bordeaux or Bath in Bilbao final

They made a bit of a meal of it, but Leinster will march on Bilbao in a few weeks for their ninth Champions Cup final. Given that was where they last won this thing, in 2018, for the fourth time, they might consider the omen positive, but this semi-final, their 17th, was not a classic.

Which is not to say it was boring. Leinster are not convincing this season, and one telltale sign of a team with a confidence issue is the offering up of hope to a seemingly defeated opponent. The hosts, enjoying a knockout tie at the Aviva for the umpteenth time, went 18 points clear when Caelan Doris scored their fourth with a little more than 10 minutes to play. And then all hell broke loose.

The Nottinghamshire bowler took five Leicestershire wickets at Grace Road while Dom Sibley dug in against Sussex

A wicket at Grace Road, where Notts are pounding Leicestershire round the ground. Jack Haynes a fourth wicket for Ben Green. Joe Clarke is approaching his hundred. Notts 426-5.

A pretty good looking crowd at Taunton, some huddling against a brick wall for warmth. Joe Root at first slip polishes the ball, Will Smeed, slow starting again, still on nought. Jack White on the money.

The tech company Flock has 80,000 cameras across the US – and a report finds some officers are taking advantage

Who would you rate as the world’s most unlikeable tech tycoon? Elon Musk is obviously a major contender. The digital warlord Palmer Luckey is also up there.

While there’s a lot of competition, Garret Langley also deserves a shoutout. The CEO of the tech company Flock may not be a household name, but his controversial surveillance technology is rapidly worming its way into daily life. If you live in the US, there’s probably a Flock product on a highway or parking lot near you. The company, which largely sells its products to law enforcement, makes automated license plate readers (ALPRs) which capture license plate data and help track where a vehicle has been. (If you want to check if your license plate has been the subject of a Flock search you can do so at haveibeenflocked.com)

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

The terror attack in my constituency has left British Jews like me feeling alone and afraid. But I’ve seen true solidarity in action - I know it can happen

• Sarah Sackman is the Labour MP for Finchley and Golders Green

“One day, this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we’ll be people again and not just Jews.”

I keep coming back to those words from Anne Frank’s diary. They sum up what I feel as a British Jew and as the MP for the largest British Jewish community, in the face of the escalating threats, violence and terror.

Sarah Sackman is the Labour MP for Finchley and Golders Green and minister of state for courts and legal services

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

Charles III’s subtle, much needed history lesson delivered the US some tough love. But will Trump get the message?

Of the many jokes cracked by King Charles during his visit to Washington, the one recalling the definitive 18th-century Anglo-French contest for dominion over the New World was the most pointed. Speaking at a state banquet in the White House, Charles turned to Donald Trump and said: “You recently commented, Mr President, that if it were not for the United States, European countries would be speaking German. Dare I say that, if it wasn’t for us, you’d be speaking French!”

Did Trump get it? Who knows? Broadly speaking, history, even their own, is not most Americans’ favourite subject. A forward-looking people, they do not dwell on the past, nor hanker after the illusory felicities of former glories. While generations of Britons still wallow in nostalgia for Spitfires, Churchill and Vera Lynn (and beating the French), Americans typically seek new metaphorical mountains to climb. Theirs is a positive outlook, on the whole. Except, under Trump, it has twisted into a revived, ugly version of US “manifest destiny” imperialism.

Simon Tisdall is a Guardian foreign affairs commentator

The king’s US visit reminds me how glorious it would be to live in a country where sunshine is a novelty and For the Love of Dogs is on TV

The so-called “special relationship” between Britain and the United States has never seemed more tenuous. At times, it looks like the US-UK alliance is a geopolitical version of a slowly disintegrating celebrity relationship where neither side wants to admit it’s actually over, so someone has to do a crazy thing like cheating in the most high-profile manner possible to wrap things up. Like Klay Thompson (allegedly) stepping out on Megan Thee Stallion, America has been making goo-goo eyes at Israel for the last year, and King Charles is starting to get jealous.

So the king popped into the White House for a tour of all the changes Donald and Melania have foisted upon the grounds. Have you seen the gaping hole where the East Wing used to be? And what a hole it is. To your left, you’ll see the beehive.

There has been much talk of the long-awaited sequel making the most of body diversity. The reality seems to be one plus-size actor and gags worthy of the 00s

During the two-month endurance test that was The Devil Wears Prada 2’s global press tour, Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway hinted that the long-awaited sequel to the 2006 hit would champion body diversity. In interviews, both actors explained that while attending Milan fashion week they were surprised by how “alarmingly thin the models were”. As a result, Hathaway made “a beeline to the producers”, Streep said, to ensure that “skeletal” models wouldn’t feature in the film. At one premiere, Hathaway said she “thought the scene would be so much more enjoyable for the audience if we had just a wider range of bodies on display”.

Spoiler alert: only 15 minutes into the sequel the first weight gag lands, and it becomes clear that all the chatter around size inclusivity was, in fact, just simple size-washing. That means there’s just enough for the producers to tick the inclusivity box – mainly in the casting of the comedian Caleb Hearon as Miranda Priestly’s second assistant, and a quick glimpse of a couple of plus-size models including Ashley Graham in a catwalk montage – but not enough for any actual credibility. Then there are several wisecracks about weight, although remarkably only one reference to the weight-loss drug Ozempic. Now, that is groundbreaking!

Chloe Mac Donnell is the Guardian’s deputy fashion and lifestyle editor

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

As Jews face the deadly menace of antisemitism, they should not be alone. It’s time for their fellow Britons to step up

For me, it’s mostly sadness. Among others, the overriding emotion is fear. For some, it’s anger. It was certainly anger that was most vividly on display in Golders Green after the stabbing on Wednesday of two men, both Jews, in the broad daylight of a spring day – much of that fury directed at the government. When the prime minister came to visit, they shouted: “Keir Starmer, Jew harmer.”

I understand that fury, even if I think it’s aimed at the wrong address. British Jews are angry because this was just the latest in a spate of attacks that has included, among other incidents, the torching of ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity and the attempt to burn down not one but two synagogues, all in the course of a few weeks. Jews want those in charge, the government, to make it stop.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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

The 75th anniversary of this landmark event is a timely reminder of how art can bring people together

Launched by King George VI on 3 May 1951, the Festival of Britain was conceived as a “tonic” for a nation battered by war, debt and rationing. At a time of ongoing global conflicts and austerity, there are parallels with today.

Its impact in 1951 is hard to overstate. What buildings remained were smoke-blackened; the air was full of smog. Into this dreary landscape, the festival was an explosion of colour and creativity, offering a dazzling vision of the future.

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

Energy disruption abroad drives prices at home, showing how few safeguards are built in – which is why a call for resilience must be heeded

When the Bank of England warned this week that food inflation could reach 7% by the end of the year, it revealed how little stands between a geopolitical jolt and a domestic crisis in Britain. A shock wave in the Gulf feeds through energy, fertiliser and supermarket prices into falling incomes, weak growth and job losses. What it exposes is not just inflation but a system unable to absorb disruption.

The Bank is right that interest rates cannot move global energy prices. Raising them will not fix the shock. Instead, rate hikes redistribute the impact by compressing wages and deterring investment to stop higher costs becoming embedded. What appears as inflation is, in reality, the price of dependence on the strait of Hormuz. Clearly, the UK’s stability rests on security that the country that has yet to build into its infrastructure.

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

Nick Price points out the features on Apple and Android phones that can help parents keep their children safe

A crucial facility seems to be missing from the coverage of smartphones in schools – and outside (I was wrong about the danger of smartphones in schools. It’s far, far worse than I thought, 22 April). Parental controls, which both Apple and Android have, enable downtimes to be set to ensure phones don’t work in school. They can also set downtimes for outside school and block inappropriate apps.

We use these for our 14-year-old daughter to keep her safe and manage the addictive effects of phone use. Her phone automatically switches off in school time and closes down for the day at 6.30pm.

Readers respond to Zoe Williams’ article about the rise of US nationals renouncing their citizenship to distance themselves from Donald Trump’s America

I read Zoe Williams’ piece on Americans renouncing their citizenship with particular and personal interest (‘I don’t want to be part of a dictatorship’: the Americans queueing up to renounce their citizenship, 28 April). The rot started well before Donald Trump was elected in 2016, though he and his hostile team and policies have exacerbated that.

Look back to George W Bush’s fight against terrorism following 9/11, one aspect of which involved tracking down terrorism funding by setting onerous reporting regulations on US citizens abroad, and on international financial institutions in which US citizens had an interest. Eventually some of those financial institutions outside the US decided they simply would not permit US citizens to invest in, bank with, or take out their products.

Francis Bown responds to Jonathan Freedland’s comparison of Pope Leo and Donald Trump

Jonathan Freedland is right: in a contest between a former property developer turned politician and the Vicar of Christ, there is only ever going to be one winner (It’s no surprise Trump has met his match in Pope Leo – the US president represents the polar opposite of Christianity, 24 April). The present pope is an intelligent and sophisticated Augustinian, well versed in dealing with subtle and complex disputes within the Catholic church. Crude attacks from Donald Trump and JD Vance hold no terrors. The president’s greetings-card picture of himself as a Christ-like healer was childish and self-defeating, while the vice-president’s pointed gift of volumes of Saint Augustine’s writings, as if the pontiff were unfamiliar with their contents, was simply crass.

Nevertheless, not all papal pronouncements are infallible. Pope Leo did open himself to legitimate criticism when he declared in his Palm Sunday address: “He [Jesus] does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.” In the context of the Iran conflict, we know what he meant, but the bald statement invites misunderstanding. It appears at odds with the concept of a just war – the conditions for which are laid out in the catechism of the Catholic church (paragraph 2309). The pope’s remark would hardly apply to the petitions of those who waged war against the Nazis and who liberated the death camps.
Francis Bown
London

Phil Coughlin recalls the Irish border than ran through a village pub in Spike Milligan’s novel Puckoon, while Ken Rutter reflects on the ethics of building tougher borders

In his article (Do stronger borders ever work?, 26 April) Richard Collett refers to the Irish border cleaving communities and even farmhouses in two. Spike Milligan picked up on this in Puckoon, where the border went through the public house of the eponymous village, such that two feet of the bar was in Northern Ireland and the remainder was in the Irish Free State.

The locals quickly realised that beer would be cheaper in the Northern Ireland portion, due to more lenient taxation, with the result that they all attempted to crowd into the two feet of bar “in the North”, much to the disgust of the publican. A rare instance of a border bringing people closer together.
Phil Coughlin
Houghton-le-Spring, Tyne and Wear

Critics warn that respect for rule of law could break down as executive branch flouts judicial decisions

When a federal judge shot down a Trump administration policy of holding immigrants without bond last December, it seemed like a serious blow to the US president’s mass deportation effort.

Instead, a top justice department official insisted the ruling wasn’t binding, and the administration continued denying detainees around the country a chance for release.

The race to succeed Gavin Newsom has teetered wildly, and with Democrats in disarray, the Republican ex-Downing Street adviser is leading in the polls. Can he really pull it off?

Few political aspirations have proved more futile over the past two decades than running as a Republican for statewide office in California. Yet Steve Hilton – transplanted Brit, erstwhile business entrepreneur, a former Downing Street adviser to David Cameron and a former Fox News host who says he is friends with half of Donald Trump’s cabinet – is having a remarkably good time of it.

With less than six weeks to go before a primary election that has proved to be both dramatic and wildly unpredictable, most polls put Hilton narrowly ahead of a fractured field of Democrats in the race to succeed Gavin Newsom as governor. It is an astonishing turn of events in a state where Democrats enjoy supermajorities in the state legislature and a two-to-one advantage over the Republicans in voter registration.

Breton brewer forced to stop selling craft beer after Beatles singer’s widow registered lemon name to stop him being mocked

A Brittany brewer is in a squeeze after Yoko Ono ordered him to stop selling a bestselling craft beer labelled John Lemon.

The Japanese-American artist and widow of the Beatles star John Lennon claimed it was a breach of a trademark she had registered a decade ago to stop her late husband being mocked, his name misused and his reputation sullied.

Government blocks RightsCon 2026 conference saying it did not ‘align with national values’

The world’s largest conference on human rights and technology has been cancelled just days before it was due to start after the Zambian government told organisers it did not align with “national values”.

Zambia’s government had originally welcomed the RightsCon 2026 summit on “human rights in the digital age”, due to be held in the capital, Lusaka, on 5-8 May, but Thabo Kawana, permanent secretary for the Ministry of Information & Media, said last week that the conference would not go ahead to allow time to ensure the gathering “aligns with Zambia’s national values, policy priorities, and broader public interest considerations”.

Exclusive: Greater Manchester mayor said to have identified seats where MPs would step aside to allow leadership bid

• ‘No other plan comes close’: Labour MPs turn to Burnham as pressure mounts on Starmer

Andy Burnham has a credible plan to return to Westminster “within weeks”, his allies have said, with the Greater Manchester mayor expected to use a byelection fight to set out a new agenda for government.

Burnham, who was blocked by Labour’s ruling body from running in February’s Gorton and Denton byelection, has identified several seats where MPs are prepared to step aside for his leadership bid.

Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane give the Guardian exclusive extracts as they aim to open eyes to the wonder of Britain’s declining and endangered species

When the artist Jackie Morris collaborated with the writer Robert Macfarlane to celebrate the names of plants and animals controversially removed from the Oxford Junior Dictionary, they never imagined their book, The Lost Words, would become a cultural phenomenon.

Grassroots crowdfunding ensured the book was bought and donated to more than three-quarters of primary schools in England, Wales and Scotland and to every hospice in the country.

Documentary makers seek to start ‘informed conversation’ in country where public is allowed on just 8% of land

Anger and momentum are building for Scottish style rights of access to mountains, meadows, rivers and woodlands in England where the public is allowed on just 8% of land, a new documentary suggests.

Our Land, a film whose title is a nod to the protest song by Woody Guthrie, explores the rise of the right to roam movement in England.

Wildlife cameraman for landmark BBC documentaries including The Blue Planet and Planet Earth, who was admired for his bravery and resilience in extreme environments

Filming polar bears in their Arctic home requires bravery and patience. Of all the wildlife film-makers who bring images of the natural world to our TV screens, few were as courageous or boundlessly patient as Doug Allan, who would spend weeks, even months on end in this harsh environment in order to capture unique and astounding footage.

His long list of credits features many of the classic television series that have captivated audiences over the past few decades, including Life in the Freezer (1993), The Blue Planet (2001), Planet Earth (2006) and Frozen Planet (2011).

Tebay, Cumbria: While new life begins up on our hills, down at the farmstead I say goodbye to a dear companion

Lambing is still in full swing here, and each evening I start my last rounds at 8.30pm, as by 9.30pm it will be too dark to see the sheep without the headlights of the quad bike. Our main flock of sheep lamb outside, and when the time comes they take themselves off away from the others, usually at dusk or dawn. I know that two sheep have gone up towards the railway line, so I drive along to check them as darkness falls.

From up here I can see both north and south, with the lights of the trucks of the M6 reminding me that the motorway is there. I do not process the sound of the motorway any more, and during the daytime I forget that it is there. A train speeds past with lights on inside, and I think about the thousands of people who pass through this valley every day without stopping or thinking about our lives here.

Comedian pulled from stage in Birmingham about 45 minutes into performance and audience told to leave

A live show by comedian Peter Kay in Birmingham has been stopped after a “potential suspicious bag” was found around the venue.

The Utilita Arena Birmingham was evacuated and a 19-year-old man was taken into custody, West Midlands police said on Friday evening.

Leah Spasova from Oxfordshire fought for 10 years to obtain tubal ligation procedure, while men could get vasectomies

• Analysis: questions over how accessible procedure should be

A woman denied a permanent form of birth control on the NHS over fears she might regret it, while men were allowed contraceptive procedures, has won her case with the health ombudsman.

Leah Spasova, a psychologist from Oxfordshire, spent a decade fighting to obtain female sterilisation at her local trust, a procedure that blocks or seals the fallopian tubes to prevent pregnancy. By contrast, men can undergo a vasectomy, a procedure that stops sperm from being released.

Claire Freemantle accused of causing death and serious injury by dangerous driving when vehicle hit school in 2023

The driver of a car that crashed into a south London primary school has been charged with causing death by dangerous driving after two eight-year-old girls were killed.

Claire Freemantle is accused of two counts of causing death by dangerous driving and seven counts of causing serious injury by dangerous driving after the incident at The Study Prep school in Wimbledon in July 2023.

Philip Young changes all pleas to guilty after initially denying charges of making indecent images of children

A former Conservative councillor who admitted nearly 50 offences of drugging, raping and sexually assaulting his former wife has pleaded guilty to additional offences of making indecent images of children.

Philip Young, 49, pleaded guilty in January at Winchester crown court to 11 counts of rape and 11 counts of administering a substance with intent to stupefy his former wife Joanne Young, 48, who has waived her right to anonymity.

As the Onion waits for a court to approve its takeover, creative director Heidecker previews his ambitious plan to parody the site – already sending Jones into a fury

If you’ve tuned in to Infowars over the years, you might have heard a very angry man screaming about the 2020 election being stolen for “reanimated corpse” Joe Biden, or chemicals in the water turning frogs gay, or the Sandy Hook school shooting, which killed 20 children and six staff members, being faked. Founded in 1999, Alex Jones’s Infowars has long been a platform for toxic conspiracy theories with real-life consequences, in addition to weird dietary supplements. But if the Onion has its way, the InfoWars of the future will have a very different impact.

The satirical newspaper has been working for several years to take over the site, amid legal battles over Jones’s false claims about the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. Pending a Texas court’s approval, the platform could soon be in the hands of the Onion and a newly installed creative director, comedian Tim Heidecker, known for his surreal sketches and mockery of the far right. The result would be the transformation of a dangerous political weapon into a comedy hub that undermines everything Infowars once stood for.

As a Mast of Fraternity and Memory is unveiled in Nantes, calls are growing for Macron to announce framework for discussions

In the French port city of Nantes, once France’s largest departure point for ships that trafficked enslaved Africans across the Atlantic, a new wooden mast rises 18 metres into the sky from the waterside.

The Mast of Fraternity and Memory, inaugurated this month, marks a turning point in France’s complicated relationship with the legacy of its history of enslavement – just as the French president, Emmanuel Macron, comes under pressure to make key announcements on a process of reparatory justice.

WHO prequalification of Coartem Baby means newborns can be safely treated rather than using medication for older children

The first malaria treatment for babies has been approved by the World Health Organization, opening the door to widespread use around the globe.

In parts of Africa, up to 18% of children under six months will be infected with malaria, but there has historically been no safe treatment for the smallest of them. There were 610,000 deaths from malaria in 2024, about three quarters of which were under-fives in Africa.

Spinosaurid fossil bought by Stuttgart institution in 1991 has been the subject of a long restitution campaign

It is a 113-million-year-old bone of contention.

After Stuttgart’s museum of natural history bought a fossilised dinosaur skull in 1991, researchers found it was the most complete spinosaurid skull known to date, belonging to a previously unknown genus of the huge meat-eating dinosaurs.

Documents made no reference to pitch works later added to £18m deal, with club spending £1.7m on upgrades

Wrexham AFC, the football club part-owned by Hollywood stars Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mac, used taxpayer funds to re-lay its pitch, even though initial grant documents assessing the state investment did not make reference to it.

The club has been awarded £18m in grants, with the first £3.8m tranche in February 2022. However, legally required state aid documents relating to that initial grant made no reference to the pitch works.

Apps, AI tools and shaky job prospects are pushing gen Z into markets earlier, blending caution with risk-taking

Ambrico Ranginui first heard of cryptocurrencies when he was 12 years old. By the time he was 16, he had saved enough from birthday gifts and his allowance to invest.

“Growing up in a single mum household, it made me quite a determined person to get ahead,” Ranginui said. “I wanted to find new avenues to make money and crypto was so fascinating at the time.”

Staff warned news operations face 15% cut, above BBC-wide 10% target, as corporation pushes through £600m savings plan

The BBC’s news operation is to cut costs by a steeper-than-expected 15%, with staff told to expect heavy redundancies.

The division, home to about a quarter of all BBC staff, is being saddled with one of the highest cost-cutting targets as the corporation attempts to cut as many as 2,000 jobs in the biggest downsizing of the public service broadcaster in 15 years.

Loaded with extras and produced at a cut price, the crossover SUV has overtaken rival cars from US, Japanese and Korean firms

The UK is no stranger to foreign cars. The bestseller lists in recent years have been dominated by the US’s Ford Puma, Japan’s Nissan Qashqai, Korea’s Kia Sportage and occasionally even Tesla’s Model Y.

But in March the top 10 provided a shock: a Chinese car leapt into the lead.

Her philosophical approach to therapy has become a global phenomenon, and inspired a new book. Could a session with her change Sophie McBain’s life?

The existential therapist Emmy van Deurzen moved to the UK inspired by RD Laing, the Scottish anti-psychiatrist who said insanity is a “perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world”. It was 1977 and Van Deurzen, who is Dutch and had studied philosophy and psychology in France, found work with the Arbours Association in London, a therapeutic community based on Laing’s ideas, in which people in crisis, psychiatrists and therapists lived together as equals. It was a rude awakening.

Arbours aimed to create space for people to “explore their madness”. “Now that was a very interesting idea,” Van Duerzen says, “but in practice it meant that people self-medicated, with alcohol and pot, and it was not a happy situation.” The residents were often very depressed or psychotic, and it was common to be woken up at night because someone was seeing things or had become suicidal. Van Deurzen came to believe that anti-psychiatry had “lost courage”: it had proposed a different way of thinking about madness, but having released people from asylums and taken them off neuroleptic drugs, it was “kind of leaving them to it”. “And this is what I realised wasn’t good enough,” she says. When people are experiencing a mental health crisis, they need help to make sense of what has happened to them, and to find their way to healing. “From that moment on I just knew: nobody’s doing this. I’m going to have to do it myself,” she says.

From celebrity cameos to lucrative brand partnerships, The Devil Wears Prada 2’s approach to maximising revenue is worthy of Runway’s finest

For a film that serves as a commentary on the perilous economics of today’s media landscape, it’s fitting that promotion for The Devil Wears Prada 2 has been so frank about its finances.

Speaking ahead of the New York premiere, Meryl Streep revealed she initially turned down the role of withering fashion magazine editor Miranda Priestly in the 2006 original in a bid to extract more money from its producers.

The creator of this singular work of art founded his own TV network to get it aired – and its cast is an absolute dream. Mandy Patinkin, Janet McTeer and Patti LuPone are just superb

Details about how a TV series was commissioned or why it ended up on a particular streamer are normally tedious and superfluous: once a piece of art has been made, it stands alone and our assessment of it needn’t be influenced by industry logistics. It’s impossible not to mention, however, that The Artist, a period comedy by writer/director Aram Rappaport, was shown in the US on The Network.

What is The Network? It is a streaming service set up in 2024 by writer and director Aram Rappaport. Its launch show was Rappaport’s TV debut, The Green Veil. That’s right: Rappaport founded a whole new streaming service, then released his own work on it. There’s more to The Network that is of interest, since it also imports original content but only uploads a couple of new titles per week, in the belief that users will value discernment over catalogue depth. But the point is that The Artist, Rappaport’s second series, has been made without him having to pitch it to a network, or take notes from a network, because he is The Network. It is exactly the sort of show you’d think would be made by a man who has the wherewithal, the funds and the sheer nerve to engineer a situation where he can do what he wants. This is not an insult. It might not be a compliment either. It is what it is, and The Artist is not like much else.

The Artist is on MGM+

The enjoyable 2024 movie adaptation is sliced into a four-part series. Plus, White Lotus star Aimee Lou Wood hosts SNL UK! Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC Four

A fraught drama about a gang of teenagers on a party island. Plus, turn it up to 11 – the legendary rockers are back!

Foreign language films often have their names altered for different markets and – for the most part – improve on them. Anyone up for a watch of I Will Marry a Prostitute to Save Money?

Since it is the sequel to a modern classic – an iconic film that managed to introduce no end of quotes and terms to the cultural lexicon – you could assume that The Devil Wears Prada 2 wouldn’t have to work much to attract an audience. But this is where you would be wrong.

For example, someone unfamiliar with the first film might wonder if, since the title invokes Satan, it might actually be a horror. Or maybe the name scans as an angry indie documentary about the role of designer clothing within this period of late-stage capitalism. And so it makes much more sense to do what the Vietnamese have done and simply call the film The Woman Who Loves Luxury Goods 2.

The star’s potent sexuality made him my ‘secret friend’ but, with my career in the arts stalling, his death led me to the life-changing decision to move to Minneapolis and maintain his legacy

I distinctly remember the first time I heard Prince. I was a dreamy, artistic child growing up in 80s rural Australia, feeling completely out of place. One day, I turned towards the cassette radio in my bedroom, hearing something totally different to the rock music I had grown up with – something electric and alive. It was Prince. My body moved. From that moment, he became my secret soul friend, his music carrying a powerful mix of sexuality and spirituality that I didn’t yet have the language for. Songs such as Controversy and Purple Rain felt like permission to be fully expressive, and fully myself.

My love for Prince remained as I grew up. I moved to New York to pursue a career in the arts, but never quite fully managed it, ending up as an arts administrator. I supported other artists, organised programmes, lived alongside creativity rather than inside it.

Thriving punk culture seen as response to frustrations at unemployment, urban violence, police brutality and deprivation

As black-clad police combatants charged into the hillside favela and opened fire, a black-clad punk scurried out of the community in the opposite direction, his hands trembling from fright.

“Holy shit! All those guns! Things are getting ugly!” spluttered Rodrigo Cilirio, the founder and bassist of one of Rio’s most enduring punk bands, as he took cover behind a tree.

(Heavenly)
With strong words for Keir Starmer, the Irish rave-rap trio remain unbowed by the controversy around them – and yet this is a more ruminative record than you might expect

Five tracks into Fenian, the listener is confronted by the sound of rapper Móglaí Bap expressing a desire to go and live off-grid outside a small village in County Meath. He does this in characteristic style – prefaced with the line “run along, fuck’s sake, I’m sick of you cunts” – but still, it comes as a surprise. After all, the tales of drugged-out madness on Kneecap’s previous album, 2024’s Fine Art, took place in an exclusively urban environment: at one juncture Móglaí Bap’s bandmate Mo Chara claimed that his preferred milieu was “the snug of a dimly-lit, shit, run-down pub”, presumably one like the lairy Belfast boozer in which much of the album was set. Nothing about Kneecap has given the impression of a band given to wistfully pining after a simple bucolic life.

And yet, who can blame him for wanting to switch off and get away from it all? The two years since Fine Art’s release have been tumultuous for the Irish rave-rap trio, and it’s difficult to discern how much their soaring profile has to do with their music. Fine Art was warmly received – it was potent, funny and original – but quickly drowned out by the din of controversy that began when Mo Chara was alleged to have displayed a Hezbollah flag on stage at a London gig in November 2024. He was later charged with terror offences, which he denied – Kneecap said they have never supported Hezbollah and “condemn all attacks on civilians, always” – and the case was ultimately thrown out of court. In the interim, there were cancelled gigs and tours, a ban from entering Canada and Hungary (decisions Kneecap strongly opposed), and calls from both Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch for Kneecap’s 2025 Glastonbury set to be dropped. Badenoch had already quarrelled with them over their lurid republicanism when she was business secretary, trying to cancel a grant they’d been given – and Kneecap prevailed in that case, too.

As stalwarts Sub Pop and Rough Trade celebrate big anniversaries, insiders speak candidly about the challenges they face. Can streaming ever ensure their survival?

In the late 1980s, the fledgling Seattle record label Sub Pop was a mess. It struggled to pay the phone bill; staff would race to cash their wage cheques before they bounced; and the management couldn’t even cover studio time that had been booked for their artists. “We were a big train wreck,” laughs Megan Jasper, who was then the label’s receptionist. “But the funnest train wreck you’d ever want to be on.” One of the label’s mottos became: “Going out of business since 1988.”

Then Nirvana released their debut album on Sub Pop and their success saved the company in the 1990s. Now, as the company celebrates its 40th anniversary, Jasper is the chief executive. “Is it rewarding and is the label still working? Yes,” she says. “But it’s never been easy – there have always been challenges and now there are more of them. Plus, it’s harder than ever for artists.”

From 1980s Cincinnati into the interstellar darkness, the stories of four women interconnect across the centuries in a gentle hymn to found families

This is the kind of book you pitch by analogy: JG Ballard meets Gabrielle Zevin; Isaac Asimov meets Stephen Chbosky; Ready Player One meets Love, Simon (replete with ferris wheel). I’ve been describing it to friends as a YA Kazuo Ishiguro set adrift in Kevin Costner’s Waterworld. It turns out I have two kinds of friends: those who hear that description as praise, and those who heed it as a warning.

Novels that demand comparisons rarely survive them. This one does (though it could do without that mawkish ferris wheel). American author Portia Elan’s debut is a gentle hymn to found families – the kin we choose rather than inherit – and it’s fitting that it reads that way, assembled from allegiances. Elan knows what her characters will discover: stories are how we claim one another.

Yiewsley by Daljit Nagra; Mer de Glace by Małgorzata Lebda; The Intentions of Thunder by Patricia Smith; Cherry Blossom at Nightbreak by Rishi Dastidar; Dark Night by St John of the Cross, translated by Martha Sprackland

Yiewsley by Daljit Nagra (Faber, £14.99)
Given the relish with which Nagra pushes and pulls at English, it’s worth noting that Yiewsley is a real west London suburb. This location allows him to continue his career-long exploration of childhood working-class Sikh experience and, through it, wider questions of identity. But as Nagra turns 60, location is becoming increasingly a matter of time as well as space. The classic struggle of each first generation to arrive in Britain, and the pressure on its kids to make good, now sits within a 1960s and 70s time capsule. Enoch Powell and the National Front cast violent shadows, but parkas, school blancmange and cricket strike a sweeter, almost elegiac note.

Mer de Glace by Małgorzata Lebda, translated by Mira Rosenthal (Fitzcarraldo, £12.99)
Much as they have in prose, Fitzcarraldo are awakening British poetry publishing to the glamour of braininess. Mer de Glace is named for a dying French glacier, but the sequence is set on the 1,047km-long Polish river Vistula, along which Lebda ran in 2021. Images of fires and firesides recur: we are all of us out in a wild, vulnerable world. This is ecopoetry at its most profound and informal, challenging and pleasurable. Rosenthal’s quietly fluent translations give us “books that help us close the mouth of night”, light as “Baltic mercury” and, as the runner nears the end of her journey, a “pelvis tilting / towards the open sea”.

The American author on the magic of Yasunari Kawabata, the hidden layers of Henry James and coming late to the genius of Muriel Spark

My earliest reading memory
I remember reading throughout my childhood, but it’s hard to identify my earliest memory of reading. In a lot of ways, it’s as if my childhood began when I learned to read. I do remember taking a copy of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s Dangerous Liaisons off the shelf when I was maybe 10 or 11 – far too young to be reading it. I was suitably scandalised and excited by it.

My favourite book growing up
I read a lot of Theodore Dreiser growing up, for reasons that are mysterious to me now. I don’t know how I came to him: he wasn’t assigned in school and no one in my family was reading his books. But his focus was on female characters and perhaps even then, that felt notable. I started with Sister Carrie, then read Jennie Gerhardt and An American Tragedy, but Sister Carrie was the one I returned to again and again.

A miserable misogynist is on a quest for redemption in Toltz’s fourth novel, which fizzes with dynamic prose but struggles to engender empathy for its protagonist

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In his fourth novel, Steve Toltz – best known for the Booker prize-shortlisted A Fraction of the Whole – takes on the story of one man’s loneliness to deliver a satirical and surprisingly moving ode to human connection. Much like his earlier works, this one is filled with con men, tall tales and black humour, making for a bitingly funny exploration of life’s misfortunes.

A Rising of the Lights opens with an absurd premise: two ne’er-do-well parents, in the middle of their divorce, roll dice to split up their twin children; one child will go with each parent. After winning him in this cruel game, Russell “Rusty” Wilson’s mother tells him they’ll be moving to Melbourne from Sydney – only to deem it “too much hassle”, circle the block and bring him right back to where they started. It’s an arresting opener that foreshadows the following 300 pages of Rusty’s life.

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A Rising of the Lights by Steve Toltz is out now in Australia (Penguin, $34.99)

Meeting ‘my people’ – video gamers with very long memories – took me back to an era of machine play that lacked megabytes but had far more tangible presence

I want to tell you about the game that has made me the happiest this month. It’s a game I didn’t complete. It’s a game I didn’t even start. I just held it. And smiled. I have played the game before, but not for many years. Forty of them to be precise.

The game is Daley Thompson’s Super Test for the ZX Spectrum.

Hitman developer IO Interactive’s pluralistic take on the British secret agent – his first video-game outing in almost 15 years – promises a Bond for all eras. Here’s what you need to know

If you want to tell the tale of a young James Bond, you first need to pick which James Bond he’s going to grow into. This was the task handed to Hitman developer IO Interactive, the studio taking digital custody of the spy in 007 First Light, Bond’s first video game in almost 15 years. So what’s it to be? Will their agent take baby steps towards Sean Connery’s gruff masculinity, or is he practising Roger Moore’s arched eyebrow in the bathroom mirror? That’s if he’s a “movie” Bond at all. For a generation of gamers, the character exists most vividly as a hand at the bottom of the screen in GoldenEye 007.

As it turns out, 007 First Light’s Bond, depicted by Patrick Gibson (cornering a specific market, having played the serial killer-to-be in the Dexter origins show) is an amalgam: the facial scar is an Ian Fleming detail, but the sweet-talking charm is straight from the Pierce Brosnan playbook, and the second you barge a goon into a bookcase you know someone’s been studying Casino Royale on a loop. Trying to devise a Bond for all fandoms could risk satisfying none, but in the demo we played, the performance works. Crucially, Gibson brings an outsider’s unease that’s all his own, anchored by the arrogance that’ll one day be weaponised by MI6.

PC; Grey Alien Games, Night Signal Entertainment
An innocent-looking charity shop find draws you into a compulsive world of demons, ogres and retro delights

For a while in the mid-1990s, meta horror movies were the genre everyone was talking about. Wes Craven’s New Nightmare, Scream, the Blair Witch Project – these films simultaneously examined and exploited genre conventions, seeking to scare audiences while also distancing them from the narrative action. You didn’t know whether to laugh or gasp in shock, you weren’t sure what was story or what was framing. Did that just happen or was it a dream sequence? You just had to go with it.

Now developers Grey Alien Games and Night Signal Entertainment have brought this multilayered approach to the card game solitaire, infusing a straightforward puzzler with a bloody gush of meta meaning and a dollop of nostalgia just for the self-reflexive hell of it. In Forbidden Solitaire, lead character Will Roberta picks up an old 1990s game called, yes, Forbidden Solitaire, in a charity shop vaguely recalling some internet myth about it being cursed. He discovers that the game is a sort of narrative card-battler set in a haunted dungeon filled with monsters and treasure – and then you, the player, are transported from his computer desktop into the game. So you’re both him and you.

Pragmata, Saros and Vampire Crawler bring together aesthetics, responsiveness and creative opportunities in joyous ways that can’t be defined, only experienced

Game feel is one of the most elusive concepts in the glossary of interactive entertainment, at once perfectly clear and difficult to define. Obviously, it refers to what a game feels like to play, but where does that feeling come from? How does it manifest? Or consider it from a different angle. When the chef Samin Nosrat started her career at the renowned Chez Panisse in California, she began to understand that what diners really responded to in their food were four key factors – salt, fat, acid and heat – and how these elements interacted. This idea formed the basis of her bestselling cookbook. It perhaps also inspired a video game audio director to once compare game feel to eating a potato chip: the salt and fat are part of it but so are the crunch and the sensation of the chip dissolving in your mouth (pdf). Game feel is a combination of elements – the responsiveness of the controls, the intuitiveness of the action, the aesthetics of the world and the creative opportunities they engender – all coming together in the right quantities.

I’m thinking about this a lot right now, because three games released in the last few days illustrate the idea of good game feel beautifully. The first is Pragmata, Capcom’s sci-fi action adventure in which you explore an abandoned colony base with the help of a child-like android, who lets you hack robotic enemies, lowering their defences before you blast them to pieces. The hacking mini-game takes place on a grid with nodes that add power-ups to your hack attack. As you progress, you add new types of nodes, as well as new weapons, and the interplay between these elements is complex, multifaceted and fun. This takes place in a linear world filled with hidden areas, so exploration is guided but discovery is possible. You run, jump and glide – it all feels seamless. It is joyous simply to be there.

Purcell Room, London
Works by Kaija Saariaho, Imogen Holst and Chaines were woven into Manchester Collective’s concert that blended music with dance, theatre and multimedia, with cellist Laura van der Heijden at its heart

Collaboration is an artform in itself, as Southbank Centre’s Multitudes festival has demonstrated over two weeks of sometimes divisive but never-less-than stimulating creative cross-fertilisation. This final concert, fusing wildly contrasting disciplines, was among the most nourishing, a performance in which each partner had immersed themselves in the working practices of the others. The palpable sense of collegiality and mutual respect was as heartwarming as the music-making.

The subject was butterflies, nature’s metamorphic miracles, whose complex physiological processes and unerring sense of purpose culminate in an eruption of kaleidoscopic colours. The multifaceted theatrical melange was the brainchild of experimental music pioneers Manchester Collective, cellist Laura van der Heijden, composer Chaines (Cee Haines), dance theatre company Thick & Tight, and the Camberwell Incredibles, an arts collective of adults with learning disabilities. The three musical works, each one introduced for the visually or aurally impaired, couldn’t have been more different – Kaija Saariaho’s coruscating Sept Papillons, Imogen Holst’s delicate The Fall of the Leaf and a new multimedia work by Chaines entitled oysters sing of silkworms – yet the whole was invariably more than the sum of its parts.

A revelatory Zurbarán show proves him the equal of Goya and Picasso, Angel Otero takes up a Somerset residency and Daiga Grantina brings nature to abstraction – all in your weekly dispatch

Zurbarán
A mind-bending, revelatory exhibition packed with extraordinary loans from the Prado and other top museums that prove this painter belongs with Goya and Picasso as a Spanish great. Read the review.
• National Gallery, London, 2 May to 23 August

Leicester Cathedral
Part of the Let’s Dance International Frontiers festival, Compagnie Kaméléonite’s piece about the climate crisis features two transfixing performers

In the once clear waters of the Caribbean, floating mats of toxic brown seaweed called sargassum blanket the water for months on end, exacerbated by the climate crisis and pollution. The result is a threat to biodiversity and livelihoods, and when it washes ashore, it emits gases harmful to human health, causing headaches, nausea and breathing problems.

This pressing, true story is the basis for choreographer Marlène Myrtil’s Océan Brun, informed by interviews with people living in Guadeloupe and Martinique, where Myrtil’s Compagnie Kaméléonite is based. This is the first time the piece has been seen outside Martinique, a move typical of the Let’s Dance International Frontiers festival in Leicester, which gives a platform to global artists every year, all from the African and African-Caribbean diaspora.

ICA, London
Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison and Jasmine Gregory were born in the 80s and endured the financial crash as they set out as artists – their fury is intoxicating

This is a bitter, resentful exhibition by a handful of bitter, resentful artists. Americans Jenna Bliss, Buck Ellison and Jasmine Gregory were born in the mid-1980s, coming of age in a world at its financial peak, but becoming adults just as the 2008 financial crash turned everything to crap. They saw a land of opportunity and boundless possibility, and then had it all kicked out from under them. Of course they’re resentful; we all should be.

Jenna Bliss’s first video here sets the mood. Shaky, handheld images of the New York skyline and public artworks in the city’s financial district are overlaid with text such as “We survived Y2K but now the real world source code is malfunctioning” and “Save the banks to save us all”. That’s the vibe: millennial despair at a world built to keep the banks rich and the rest of us placid.

The Corsican photographer’s patience paid off when they captured this stunning silhouette of a young woman

Anonymity has been an intriguing concept for ASA since they first took up photography. They shot this image in their home town of Bastia, on the French island of Corsica. This was 2018, in the height of summer, “when the sun was at its strongest. I like working when the light is very strong and the facades are burned by the sun,” ASA says. “Shadows fall very sharply, shapes become clearer, colours become stronger and people turn into silhouettes.”

After positioning themselves unobtrusively on one side of the street with their iPhone X, ASA waited patiently for some time as strangers passed through their frame. “This woman was walking with a certain lightness, almost cheerful. When I looked again afterwards, I had the feeling she might be going to an appointment, maybe even a romantic one. But at the time, I simply saw a young woman moving, carried by her own energy.”

Pop psychodrama Mother Mary might look and sound the part but it’s the latest failed attempt to turn the life of an arena-touring singer into a compelling movie

For anyone with even the slightest interest in Hollywood, it is not entirely surprising that Anne Hathaway recently appeared on Popcast, the New York Times critics’ podcast that has become a premier destination for music promotion. After all, the actor – whose last appearance in a musical bagged her an Academy Award – is a major part of one of the best recent movies to show pop stardom on screen. No, it’s not Mother Mary, the new A24 psychodrama for which Hathaway is making the press rounds as a world-famous diva in the midst of a spiritual and sartorial crisis. I’m thinking of The Idea of You, the improbably glossy 2024 romance in which Hathaway’s 40-year-old divorcee hooks up with a much-younger singer who looks suspiciously like Harry Styles.

The Idea of You successfully conveyed the idea that Hayes Campbell (Nicholas Galitzine) was the breakout star of a crushable 2010s boyband with a feral fanbase called August Moon. And by “successfully conveyed”, I mean the film remixed a string of One Direction-esque iconography – the jaunty rock-lite choruses, fizzy cheerfulness and class clown antics – into actual music videos and convincingly banal bops. The bar is low; many, many films have created bespoke pop stars and/or music for alternate cultural histories, but vanishingly few transcend pastiche. To be an echo is, generally, enough.

This week’s best wildlife photographs from around the world

From the Dome of Discovery to the massive cigar-shaped Skylon, the spectacular cultural showcase was an exhilarating sight in 1951. The Tories demolished those prime exhibits yet, 75 years on, it has a significant legacy

‘We ought to do something jolly … we need something to give Britain a lift.” So said Herbert Morrison, a key figure in Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour government, selling to the cabinet the idea of a Festival of Britain. It kicked off 75 years ago this weekend with a service of dedication at St Paul’s, lasted for five months and consisted of a nationwide celebration of British achievements in the arts and sciences. But did it succeed, and did it leave any lasting legacy?

I say it was a national event but there is little doubt that much of the focus was on an exhibition on London’s South Bank which reclaimed a huge tract of derelict land and attracted 8.5 million visitors. As an 11-year-old schoolboy, I was one of them, making the pilgrimage from Leamington Spa with my family. I still recall the excitement of the Dome of Discovery which was a vast scallop shell containing segments devoted to earth, sea, sky, the polar regions and outer space. The site was also dominated by the massive cigar-shaped Skylon, described as a kind of “luminous exclamation mark”. After a morning on the South Bank we spent an afternoon at the Battersea Park Pleasure Gardens where there was a funfair, a miniature railway and, best of all, a theatre resurrecting old-time music hall. Returning home, I felt as if I had been to an exhausting but exhilarating party.

When DNA test results shattered everything Lavinia and Michelle thought they knew about their family history, they also revealed something never before documented in the UK

I like being a twin. It defines who I am,” Lavinia Osbourne tells me on the 49th birthday she shares with her sister, Michelle. “It’s amazing to have a twin and have a built-in friend for ever,” Michelle says. “I’ve been really blessed to go through this journey with someone else.”

Lavinia and Michelle know that those of us who haven’t shared a womb with a sibling can be fascinated by twins: their similarities, how they differ, whether there’s any kind of mysterious synergy between them.

‘Date My Mate’ nights, which involve pitching a friend to a room of singles, are gaining momentum across the country

For many young people, the dating game has been nothing but a thankless task of endless swiping and ghosting, with little hope of finding love.

But as dating apps fall out of favour, and a relationship recession looms, young singles have discovered a new way to revive the dating scene: talking up their pals to strangers.

Our expert puts the best power washers through their paces on the toughest – and muckiest – outdoor chores, from grimy paving slabs to dirty decking

• The best lawnmowers to keep your grass in check

The trouble with the great outdoors is that it gets a bit untidy. Your garden tools might do a good job of keeping your plot in check, but keeping your patio, decking and outdoor furniture spick and span can take hours, especially if you rely on a bucket of soapy water and a scrubbing brush.

That’s where a pressure washer comes in. These handy tools connect to your hose pipe and squirt water at any cleaning problem. Stubborn and unpleasant stains, from bird dirt to years of neglect, can be lifted from your garden’s hard-wearing surfaces in seconds. With the right attachments, you can also use your pressure washer to hose down cars, bikes and boats.

Best pressure washer overall:
Ava Go P40

Best budget pressure washer:
Kärcher K 2 Classic

Peonies, padel rackets and a genuinely good low-alcohol wine … whatever your plans this bank holiday, we’ve rounded up our top spring essentials so you can make the most of it

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The weather may or may not play ball, but a spring bank holiday is a reason to kick back, get outside and get together with friends.

To help you make the most of the long weekend, we’ve rounded up some of our most-loved seasonal favourites. Whether it’s tools to spruce up your outdoor space, tipples to sip in the garden, a fake tan to jump-start your summer skin or fashion to take you from spring to summer, here are some of our favourite springtime products.

Most suitcases look hardwearing, but which ones actually are? We dropped bestselling brands’ luggage from a ladder to find out …

• The best carry-on luggage

A suitcase is like the portrait in the traveller’s attic, accumulating more than its fair share of knocks and scrapes while we refresh ourselves on the road. We trundle them over cobbles, see them tumble from luggage racks on the train – and if we choose to fly, there’s a fair chance they’ll be mishandled before we reunite at the carousel.

For our testing, we pushed eight suitcases to the limit by dropping them on to a hard surface, as if they’d been fumbled by a baggage handler. Air travel is especially tough on suitcases, so you might get away with choosing a less-resilient case if you make the climate-conscious choice to travel by rail or sea.

Best suitcase overall:
Away the Large

Best budget suitcase:
Tripp Holiday 8 Large

I spent a month testing anti-consumption strategies, from cash stuffing to ditching Amazon Prime, to find the ones that genuinely cut my spending

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I’m pretty careful with money, I say as I trip over piles of Amazon Prime boxes. I’ve never really been the shopping type, I insist as I stare at drawers groaning with unworn Asos clothes. Look how much I care about the environment, I tell myself as I click “buy now” on yet another battery charger I bought to replace the one, two or five I’ve lost around the house somewhere.

You don’t have to be a shopaholic to be drowning in stuff. All it takes is an averagely mindless approach to impulse buying, until one day your home is heaving with a personal landfill of tat.

Basmati rice tossed with sweet onions and chickpeas, then mixed with green herbs and salty feta, and dotted with a spicy, lemony, pine nut sauce

Spring has a split personality. The idea of it is nice: frolicking through carpets of bluebells while wearing pastel-coloured trousers, etcetera. But the reality is that it’s often dicey and unreliable: hot one minute, cold and/or tipping down with rain the next. This is a recipe that has a foot in both sides of spring. There’s the warm comfort of basmati rice woven through with sweet onions, harissa and chickpeas, as well as the light frivolity of green herbs and the salty freshness of feta. All the flavour and freshness of spring with none of the unpredictability.

A sophisticated sour flavoured with a dense and intense rhubarb cordial

The spiced rhubarb base doesn’t make quite as much as you might imagine, because it’s reduced so much that you end up with a super-thick and very intense cordial. That said, any leftover cordial also works well as a soft drink mixed with water and lemon juice to taste; it’s pretty tasty poured over thick yoghurt and/or fruit, too.

Stan O’Brien, Vivien, Edinburgh

Bright green, tangy and tender, this cake is a delicious way to sing in the spring

There is a particular green that belongs to spring: pale and luminous, it’s softer than the dark foliage of winter, and quieter than the glossy abundance of summer herbs. Spinach, the colour of new growth, captures this moment perfectly. Tender and almost impossibly vivid, this cake loses its metallic edge in the heat of the oven, leaving a gentle, vegetal brightness. Baked in a shallow tin and spread with cream cheese icing, when sliced into squares, it produces the perfect ratio of cake to icing and tastes uncommonly good.

What we inherit in the kitchen isn’t only a list of ingredients, but a living tradition – one that shifts with our lives, our fridges and the people we feed

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“Chicken, leek, flour, a few more ingredients.” That was it: my grandma’s WhatsApp response to me earnestly asking if she’d mind sharing her time-honoured chicken pie recipe. She wasn’t being obtuse – well, not deliberately. She had simply never before committed a dish that was second nature to paper, let alone an iPhone screen.

It wasn’t how she’d learned it and it wasn’t how I’d go on to learn it, either. I knew I’d have to make her chicken pie many times to get it even close to her standard, that I’d have to learn by watching as well as by asking, and that even then there’d be elements I’d miss. Such is the nature of a family dish – indeed, of any dish that has taken time, repetition and love to master, and for which, even then, perfection remains ephemeral. There is more to their method, meaning and flavour than can ever be confined to and conveyed by a recipe.

This is a fairly common problem with decades-long friendship, writes advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith. Do you respond to the person you knew, or the one you’re tired of knowing?

• Read more Leading questions

An old friend – we first met over 50 years ago – used to be kind, supportive and good company. But she has become a self-absorbed and petulant know-all. She is the centre of her own little world, and all her friends – me included – are expected to run around after her and cater to her needs.

She constantly brings up her health issues, disregarding the fact that other people in our friendship circle also have health worries. The label “narcissist” has been mentioned by some!

These negative comments about bodies and faces permeate society and could lead to some tough talks with friends

Hi Ugly,

How do I respond to my friends when they criticize their bodies, faces, skin?

Why is this column called ‘Ask Ugly’?

How should I be styling my pubic hair?

How do I deal with imperfection?

My father had plastic surgery. Now he wants me and my mother to get work done

I had presumed I would love her instantly – but a traumatic birth led to devastating numbness

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was waiting for an overwhelming rush of love, but when I looked at my newborn baby what I felt was utter despair. No matter how much I smiled at her, crooned at her, fed, patted, caressed and changed her, I was absolutely numb.

I had yearned for her. Growing up in Italy, I was surrounded by images of perfect motherhood. Every rural crossroad has its tiny shrine to the Madonna and Child. I was certain by the end of my teens that I wanted to have at least one baby.

The actor and producer on being a teenage model, making My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and the secret to long-lasting love

Born in Hollywood in 1956, Rita Wilson’s first role was in The Brady Bunch at the age of 15. She went on to appear in Frasier and The Good Wife, as well as romcom classics such as Sleepless in Seattle and Runaway Bride. She produced the highest‑grossing romcom of all time, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, as well as Mamma Mia! and A Man Called Otto, which starred her husband, Tom Hanks, and son Truman. Alongside her career on screen, she has released music since 2012. Her sixth studio album, Sound of a Woman, is out on 1 May.

My mum took this photo of me in Hollywood. I’d just started high school and was joyful, open and optimistic.

Rural dwellers reveal failings in backup plans, as campaigners call for deadline to be extended from 2027 to 2030

“Every time there is a power failure I lose all means of communication with the outside world,” says Robert Dewar of life in a remote village in the Scottish Highlands since the landlines were transferred from the old copper cable network to broadband connections.

Blackouts also knock out the village’s mobile phone signal. “Our most recent power cut lasted for 42 hours,” Dewar says. The interruption outlasted his five-hour emergency backup battery. “If I had had a heart attack there is damn all I could have done about it, except compose myself, say my prayers, and await the outcome.”

From a quintessential ‘chocolate box’ cottage to part of a grand stately home

Small top-tier Android is great to use, being fast, AI-loaded and with reasonable battery life, but falls short of rivals on camera

Samsung’s compact flagship phone hasn’t changed much in a year, but the S26 is still one of the best smaller handsets available as rivals grow larger and larger.

The S26 is the cheapest and smallest of this year’s top Samsungs, dwarfed by the top-of-the-line S26 Ultra in size and price. But like everything with a memory chip at the moment, the S26 has increased in price by £80 or the equivalent to £879 (€949/$899/A$1,349). At least it has double the starting storage.

The chancellor’s changes will come into force in April 2027, affecting everyone from savers to landlords and sole traders. Experts say to act now

Millions of people will be affected by a range of savings, investment and tax changes that take effect in just under a year’s time.

“April 2027 may feel some way off, but when it comes to financial planning, a year is not a long time,” says Jason Hollands at the wealth management firm Evelyn Partners.

This underdiagnosed condition, which causes leg pain and swelling, affects one in 10 women, yet most doctors haven’t heard of it

The first thing Becca Golden noticed was her pants.

Throughout the spring and summer of 2023, her pants stopped fitting. Her legs became puffy, with a rippled texture and heavy ache. Within a year, the 32-year-old, Austin-based podcaster went up four pant sizes, gained 30lb and found herself in constant leg pain. She had always had a little bit of cellulite, she says, but while her upper body appeared mostly unchanged, now her legs seemed to belong to a “different person, overnight”.

Madeleine Finlay sits down with co-host and Guardian science editor Ian Sample to talk through three eye-catching stories from the week, including the news that the number of years people in the UK are spending in good health has declined compared with a decade ago. Also on the agenda is the science, tech and nutrition behind two runners at this weekend’s London marathon breaking the two-hour threshold, and an answer to why some old houses feel particularly spooky

People in UK spend fewer years in good health than a decade ago, study finds

Spooky feelings in old houses may be caused by boiler sounds, study suggests

Report calls for tough action to combat ‘escalating and unsustainable burden’ of liver-related problems in Europe

Governments in Europe should impose much higher taxes on alcohol and unhealthy food to tackle the continent’s 284,000 deaths a year from liver disease, experts say.

Taxes on those products should rise sharply enough for the money raised to cover the huge costs they place on health services, the criminal justice system and social services.

Physical phone-blocking devices, powered by NFC wireless technology, are becoming a popular solution for doomscrolling. Brigid Delaney puts one to the test

Wake up, 100 messages from group chat overnight about something – what? another assassination attempt; a village destroyed in Lebanon; the football result in England; the weather in Iran being manipulated; the pesticides causing lung and bowel cancer, so everyone who eats salads is now at risk of cancer; meditate for 20 minutes, then fire up x.com, a place I thought I’d never want to revisit, with its carnival barkers and supplement salesman, and have you seen the Lego thing calling Trump a paedo?, you gotta see the Lego thing, and this is before my first coffee, yet x.com is the coffee and the tea, whatever Elon has done to the For You algorithm is evil genius, it’s like the global collective id, nasty and funny and addictive and compelling – like gawking at a car crash, like soaking in a hot bubble bath of anger, and memes, and geopolitical dramas, and Trump, Trump, Trump – soaking in Trump, and then, For Me (just as Elon promised).

So begins the circuit around my phone, that goes all day and night, around the tiny screen with its icons (when a born-again Christian once told me he had favourite icons, for a long time I thought he meant apps, not pictures of the Virgin Mary). I started to feel like I was in Canberra, on one of those enormous roundabouts, rotating between the icons – not Joseph, not Jesus, but X and WhatsApp and TikTok and even LinkedIn for Christ sakes – round and round from one app to the next, just checking, checking in case something is happening. I watched tiny videos and maybe, occasionally, got distracted by the novel I am meant to be writing, which is due on 31 July. But the novel is boring, just a static Word doc on a screen, it’s not giving; it’s taking hard work. So I spend six minutes with my novel, and then it’s time to go back to my phone, to circle the roundabout visiting all my icons again, like a demented Stations of the Cross, because I can’t focus, I just can’t focus on work right now when there is so much good scrolling to do …

Wilson is not the first high profile respondent to change her wardrobe for court, but fashion can also help plaintiffs express themselves when speech is constrained

Pitch Perfect star Rebel Wilson is being sued for defamation by actor Charlotte MacInnes. The trial has seen Wilson arrive in court wearing various iterations of white button-down shirt beneath neutral knitwear or suiting, paired with cropped black trousers and heels. Similar to the undeniably demure, court-appropriate uniform she also adopted during her trial against Bauer Media in the 2010s, her courtroom aesthetic sits in stark contrast to her usual glittery, vivacious style.

This isn’t the first time a celebrity’s courtroom look has diverged from their regular wardrobe. While it shouldn’t materially affect the outcome of a case, famous or not, how one presents at trial can carry real consequences.

Fashion’s Oscars - aka the Met Gala - arrives this Monday. But before we see this year’s outfits, our writers revisit the looks that still spark debate, delight and the occasional meme

The first Monday in May is fast approaching, which means the next iteration of the Met Gala – the biggest night in fashion – is on its way.

While we eagerly wait to see what co-chairs including Beyoncé (her first Met in a decade) wear, how Anna Wintour handles honorary chairs Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez on the steps (the couple have provided most of the funding for the gala and its exhibition), and how much impact the anti-Bezos protesters have, we thought it would be fun to hit pause on predictions and instead indulge in some Met Gala nostalgia.

There’s more to this classic look than simply wearing your nightwear as daywear. Try it with a T-shirt or a silky bomber – and always with a slick of lipstick

Jennifer Rauchet, wife of Pete Hegseth, caused partisan uproar by supposedly wearing a bargain dress to the formal event – but what it says about our attitudes to fast fashion is more interesting

Although far less important than the political violence at the White House correspondent’s dinner in Washington over the weekend, the sartorial choices of the Maga administration are now getting airtime – and one dress is causing a particular furore.

It is being reported that Jennifer Rauchet, wife of the US secretary of defence, Pete Hegseth, wore what appeared to resemble a gown listed on Shein for $42 (and similar to another on Temu for half the price).

It once housed the fanciest shops and restaurants in Greece’s capital city – then it crashed. Now the area is reborn as a vibrant, multicultural neighbourhood

After my father’s will banned me and my siblings from his funeral, I wrote a novel about some brothers and sisters stealing their dad in his coffin. The emotions were drawn from my painful experiences, but I invented the characters and the tragi-comic narrative in Stealing Dad. Despite growing up in England, I’ve lived in and written about Athens for 25 years, and it came naturally to create several Greek characters. Alekos is a wild sculptor who dies in London, and his daughter Iris (one of seven dispersed half-siblings) lives off Victoria Square – one of Athens’ most fascinating corners.

In the 1960s, Plateia Viktorias was a fashionable neighbourhood with the fanciest restaurants, shops and theatres. Townhouses from the interwar period were being demolished and Athenians were occupying the new six-storey apartment blocks so fast that construction dust and the constant drilling were the main problem. Today, through wrought-iron and glass doors, elegant, marble-lined halls reveal concierges’ desks and traces of a vanished bourgeois life.

These are the less explored corners of Stockholm, Amsterdam, Berlin and Porto that you’ve ‘stumbled into and ended up staying’

• Tell us about a great trip in the UK – the best tip wins a £200 holiday voucher

When friends came to visit while I was studying in Berlin or I wanted to flaneur through the city, I would go to Maybachufer, a neighbourhood in the Neukölln district. Wander from U-Bahn station Kottbusser Tor in the direction of the Landwehrkanal and peruse the multicultural market taking place Tuesdays and Fridays. You can also attempt to haggle in your best German at the fortnightly Sunday flea market. Useful phrase: das ist zu teuer für mich (that’s too expensive for me). Stop for a bite to eat (or an Aperol spritz) alfresco at buzzing La Maison and spend the afternoon sat by the canal next to the Admiralbrücke historic wrought iron bridge, or at the nearby independent cinema Moviemento, which shows a wide variety of English-subtitled films. End the day with a döner kebap from one of the many takeaways or restaurants nearby and a trip to one (or more) of the local bars: Multilayerladen for its laid-back, homely aesthetic or Soulcat Music Bar for 50s and 60s music on vinyl.
Kitty

The natural world is the headliner at these joyous gatherings, while the support acts include live music, immersive art and fire ceremonies

Winner of the UK’s best micro-festival in 2025, Between the Trees returns to Candleston Woods in the spectacular Merthyr Mawr national nature reserve (between Cardiff and Swansea) this year. Designed to reconnect people to the natural world, the programme features science and nature activities, folk music and storytelling. Workshops in the Eco Hub include micrographia sessions – exploring the world of insects on the reserve – and nature crafts. The Seren area has plenty of new talks and walks on offer, including stories of Welsh witches and forage-and-taste outings. With camping spots next to a wild beach and huge dunes, the site itself will ignite plenty of awe.
27-30 August, weekend tickets £195 adults, £50 children, betweenthetrees.co.uk

Gentle cycling is the perfect pace to enjoy the region’s sunflower fields and medieval towns – with gourmet food and fine wine along the way

As I cycle in golden light through the Loire’s vineyards, I have the sudden wish to wear a flowing floral dress, tuck a sunflower behind my ear and answer only to the name Delphine. Opulent chateaux, honeyed stone villages, blazing fields of sunflowers … the Loire is so ridiculously and relentlessly beautiful it’s no wonder artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Émile Vernon made it their home.

A short zip across to Paris on the Eurostar and then an hour south on the TGV to Saint-Pierre-des-Corps and it feels as if we’ve stepped into a live JMW Turner landscape (he toured the region in 1826).

None of the audience are laughing at my jokes. Until …

The band I’m in is on a spring tour, 16 dates across the UK, from Tavistock in Devon to Edinburgh by way of Birmingham, Norwich and Liverpool. The first gig is in South Petherton, a village in Somerset where we played once 10 years ago.

Here’s what I remember about last time: we arrived after dark and loaded our stuff into a chilly village hall with a high ceiling and a narrow stage. Normally I set aside time to learn a few local facts in order to ingratiate myself with the audience, but on this occasion there was no phone reception.

Feeling overwhelmed by all the stuff in your life? Understanding why we hold on to things is the first step in finding a healthy way to let go

Most of us have a complicated relationship with our stuff. There’s the endless collection of chargers and wires, the overflowing “everything drawer” in the kitchen, the tote bag of tote bags. Clutter is not a character flaw. It is, more often than not, a conversation your home is having with you about something deeper.

As an integrative therapist, I regularly hear that conversation. Clutter rarely arrives as just a tidying problem. It carries anxiety, grief, identity, shame and transition. Understanding what lies beneath is often the first step to being free of it.

Without Christine Marie, Samuel Bateman might never have been jailed for his crimes among the Mormon community of Short Creek. What drives the heroine of Netflix’s hit documentary Trust Me: The False Prophet?

When Christine Marie and her husband, Tolga Katas, packed up their lives in Las Vegas in 2016 to start from scratch in Short Creek, a remote desert community in the Arizona Strip, the odds of fitting in were surely against them. This was the headquarters of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), the secretive polygamist sect, known for its patriarchal control, where women and girls wore prairie dresses and “married” wherever they were placed by their leader. Marie, with her blond ponytail, pink cowboy hat, pink boots and pink glasses, was a former beauty queen, ventriloquist and escape artist, now finishing her psychology doctorate. Tolga, once a rock singer, was a videographer, a city dweller who had never been on a hike.

This is the starting point of the Netflix documentary Trust Me: The False Prophet – and unsurprisingly, the couple’s arrival is met with deep suspicion. What follows, though, is gripping TV, recorded as it happened, but paced like a thriller. Having gained the community’s trust, the couple discover a polygamous, predatory paedophile among them, and a situation of horrifying sexual abuse. Working with the FBI as double agents, they infiltrate this tightly knit cult and ultimately gather enough evidence to secure arrests and convictions.

From carpetbaggers to Melodifestivalen, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 What theatrical legacy did Mathew Prichard receive on his ninth birthday?
2 What conditions does the Tdap vaccine protect against?
3 The bestselling book in the US in 1981 was a guide to solving what?
4 What is selected each year at the Melodifestivalen?
5 Carpetbaggers were profiteers in the aftermath of which conflict?
6 The confectionery lokum is better known as what?
7 In 1996, which UK sport moved from a winter to a summer season?
8 Who founded the Peripatetic school of philosophy?
What links:
9 Thomas Tyers; Hester Piozzi; John Hawkins; James Boswell?
10 Admiralty Islands; New Britain; New Hanover; New Ireland?
11 Millbank, 1897; Merseyside, 1988; Cornwall, 1993; Bankside, 2000?
12 Sodium (1); carbon (2); oxygen (3); sulphur (4); tin (10)?
13 Kelpie; melusine; naiad; nixie; rusalka; selkie?
14 Igor Tudor at Spurs; Eric Ramsay at WBA; Brian Clough and Jock Stein at Leeds?
15 Made in America; -30-; Felina; Person to Person; The Iron Throne?

Belting out terrace anthems is part of the experience of watching a match, but why do supporters do it? And would I be able to get a chant going?

A notification on my smartwatch warns me that I’m in a loud environment, and I’m not surprised. Casemiro just played an impudent no-look pass into the penalty area. His Brazilian compatriot, Matheus Cunha, receives the ball on the half-turn and wallops it with a vengeance into the top corner. I’m at Old Trafford, and Manchester United just went 2-0 up against Fulham.

The match-day crowd has become a sea of twirling scarves and flailing limbs, and I’m swept along with it, hugging strangers while shredding my vocal cords. As the celebrations die down and the teams head to the centre circle for the restart, a momentary lull falls over the Stretford End. There’s a popular song that fans at Old Trafford sing at glorious times like this. It goes: “We’ve seen it all, we’ve won the lot, we’re Man United, and we’re never gonna stop.”

Guardian photojournalist Sean Smith has been following the Reform UK leader as he criss-crosses the country on a busy schedule of walkabouts and meet-ups with prospective councillors and supporters before the May elections

Nigel Farage and Reform are campaigning around the country in the local elections and consistently polling higher than the other parties. Reform’s campaign started with a series of rallies for supporters and candidates, where they asked attenders who were not already members to join the party and put their names forward as candidates. Now Farage is on a busy schedule of walkabouts and meet-ups with prospective councillors and supporters around the country.

Nigel Farage shows his colours.

If you’ve changed your holiday plans, we’d like to hear from you

Rising fuel prices, aviation fuel prices, and changes to travel rules such as the new EU border system, EES, are causing some holidaymakers to reconsider their travel plans. Holiday companies have predicted an increase in bookings for UK summer breaks after a jump in interest from Britons fearful of flight cancellations linked to the Iran war.

Have you changed your summer holiday plans in light of recent world events? We’d like to hear from you.

We’d like to hear how you’re adapting your expenditure as the cost of living rises amid the conflict in the Middle East

Rising prices and economic uncertainty linked to the conflict in the Middle East are putting pressure on household budgets across the world.

The International Monetary Fund has warned the conflict is pushing up the cost of energy and food, increasing borrowing costs and weighing on economic growth. Surveys suggest millions of households are already making changes to cope – cutting back, dipping into savings or taking on debt.

What was your experience? Have you found another place to rent?

Solicitors have said they were inundated with requests to serve last-minute section 21 no-fault evictions prior to the Renters’ Rights Act, which came into force in England today.

Citizens Advice said thousands of people facing a no-fault eviction had approached it for help in the last month.

As David Attenbourugh turns 100 years old, we would like to hear your memories over the years – including any encounters you’ve had with him in the wild

As David Attenborough turns 100 years old on 8 May, we would like to hear your memories of the great naturalist and broadcaster over the years – including any encounters you’ve had with him in the wild.

What is your standout memory of Attenborough? Have you ever met him? You can share your stories – and pictures – below.

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The Washington Hilton shooting, the crisis in the Middle East, a funeral in Kyiv and the London Marathon – the past seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists