Knowsley is a Labour stronghold. But judging by the polls and the people I spoke to, the messages of the right are truly cutting through

At the weekend, I took the well-worn journey from London to Knowsley in Merseyside. I’ve made this trip so many times that I can execute it with military precision, arriving just in time before the train doors close, even with a toddler in tow this time around. My uncle picked us up from the station and as we turned on to the motorway, I saw St George’s flags hanging over us from the sides of bridges. Union jacks circled the roundabout just before we turned off to go to my auntie’s house. Knowsley is Labour’s fourth-safest seat in the UK, but it felt like a newly minted Reform constituency.

It was a Friday evening, so we opened a bottle of wine and put pizzas in the oven. I was updated on various family milestones – a house sale had gone through, a baby bump was starting to show, the poor dog was on its last legs. My daughter entertained everyone with an energetic rendition of Sleeping Bunnies. Behind her, the BBC News at Six played images of migrants huddled on inflatable boats sailing across the Channel.

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In 2020, after spending half his life in the US, Song-Chun Zhu took a one-way ticket to China. Now he might hold the key to who wins the global AI race

By the time Song-Chun Zhu was six years old, he had encountered death more times than he could count. Or so it felt. This was the early 1970s, the waning years of the Cultural Revolution, and his father ran a village supply store in rural China. There was little to do beyond till the fields and study Mao Zedong at home, and so the shop became a refuge where people could rest, recharge and share tales. Zhu grew up in that shop, absorbing a lifetime’s worth of tragedies: a family friend lost in a car crash, a relative from an untreated illness, stories of suicide or starvation. “That was really tough,� Zhu recalled recently. “People were so poor.�

The young Zhu became obsessed with what people left behind after they died. One day, he came across a book that contained his family genealogy. When he asked the bookkeeper why it included his ancestors’ dates of birth and death but nothing about their lives, the man told him matter of factly that they were peasants, so there was nothing worth recording. The answer terrified Zhu. He resolved that his fate would be different.

Keir Starmer will have to choose how to spend limited political capital, with most pressing issues ones UK and US do not agree on

Donald Trump has repeatedly described Keir Starmer as a “good man�, distancing himself from the attacks on the UK prime minister mounted by other figures on the US far right such as Elon Musk.

One of the many known unknowns, however, of a Trump state visit is what kind of Trump will show up when a microphone is placed in front of him.

The cuddly chatbot Grem is designed to ‘learn’ your child’s personality, while every conversation they have is recorded, then transcribed by a third party. It wasn’t long before I wanted this experiment to be over ...

‘I’m going to throw that thing into a river!� my wife says as she comes down the stairs looking frazzled after putting our four-year-old daughter to bed.

To be clear, “that thing� is not our daughter, Emma*. It’s Grem, an AI-powered stuffed alien toy that the musician Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, helped develop with toy company Curio. Designed for kids aged three and over and built with OpenAI’s technology, the toy is supposed to “learn� your child’s personality and have fun, educational conversations with them. It’s advertised as a healthier alternative to screen time and is part of a growing market of AI-powered toys.

Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook on storytelling, their strangest interactions with fans and bonding over The Lord of the Rings

How does one measure success? For Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook, the historians behind the hit podcast The Rest Is History, it could be the number of unexpected and overly familiar conversations with strangers. On a holiday high up in the mountains of Bulgaria, Holland was wandering around a secluded monastery when someone called out, “Love the podcast!�

Sandbrook, meanwhile, is used to getting weird looks from fans who find it hard to compute that the man in front of them is one half of the soundtrack to their dog walks and commutes. “The weirdest thing that people say – which I’ve heard more than once – is, ‘My wife and I listen to you in bed every night,’� he says, looking mildly appalled.

Who showed up for the biggest far-right rally in British history? Ben Quinn reports

Two weeks before the Unite the Kingdom rally in central London, Helen Pidd attends a demonstration outside an asylum hotel in Stockport, Greater Manchester. As people there explain their grievances, it is clear that many reject the label of ‘far right’.

Ben Quinn, a senior reporter for the Guardian, explains to Helen what exactly is meant by the term ‘far right’, why so many people find it toxic, and the particular ways it is and is not useful in this moment.

IDF spokesperson says forces have ‘begun dismantling Hamas terrorist infrastructure in Gaza City’ with residents warned ‘remaining endangers you’

• See all our Israel-Gaza war coverage

Wafa, the Palestinian news agency, has been told by medical sources that at least 38 Palestinian people, including women and children, have been killed by Israeli forces since dawn today.

As well as facing relentless bombardments, Gaza City, the biggest built-up area of the territory, is being gripped by a famine caused by Israel’s restrictions on aid.

Labour MPs talk openly about replacing PM, as third senior ally in two weeks departs after publication of messages

The crisis engulfing Keir Starmer has deepened on the eve of Donald Trump’s visit to the UK after the resignation of a third senior ally in two weeks raised further questions about the stability of his government.

Paul Ovenden quit as the prime minister’s director of political strategy after the publication of old messages in which Ovenden relayed lewd jokes made at a party about the Labour MP Diane Abbott.

Exclusive: Campaigners attack ‘outrageous’ situation, saying waters in protected areas of England and Wales should be cleanest

Sewage is pouring into the rivers inside national parks at twice the rate that is occurring outside the protected areas, it can be revealed.

Campaigners described the situation as “outrageous� and said rivers and lakes in national parks in England and Wales should be the cleanest and most protected in the country.

US president announces defamation action, accusing title of being ‘virtual mouthpiece’ for Democrats

Donald Trump has filed a $15bn defamation lawsuit against the New York Times in his latest use of legal action targeting a major media outlet.

The US president accused it of being a “mouthpiece� for the Democratic party and of “spreading false and defamatory content� about him.

Deputy PM says legislation will ensure public officials have duty to act with ‘honesty and integrity at all times’

• The guilty escape justice. Well, not any more | David Lammy

Public servants who deliberately cover up state-related disasters will face up to two years in jail under a new Hillsborough law, David Lammy has promised, following concerns from campaigners that it could be watered down.

Writing in the Guardian, the deputy prime minister and lord chancellor said legislation would ensure that state actors from “the bobby on the beat to the highest office in the land� will face “serious punishments for serious wrongdoing�.

Thinktank says an ‘SUV loophole’ means UK buyers pay up to 20 times less tax on biggest models than in neighbouring nations

Taxing Britain’s SUVs in line with other European countries could raise almost £2bn a year for the public finances, research has shown.

The Transport & Environment thinktank has urged the government to use the autumn budget to bring in a levy on the largest vehicles, which it said would reflect the damage they caused to the environment and infrastructure.

Bill includes suite of reforms to improve criminal justice system for survivors of rape and sexual violence

The unique Scottish verdict of not proven, long considered a global legal anomaly, could be scrapped this week as the Holyrood parliament votes on the country’s most radical shake-up of criminal justice in decades.

Scotland is the only country in the world to offer juries the not proven verdict alongside guilty and not guilty, a poorly defined historical oddity that dates back to the 18th century.

Sanctions and security guarantees for Ukraine are among the ‘missing pieces’ Ukrainian president says are necessary for peace ahead of Trump’s state visit to UK

Defence and security editor

John Healey, the UK defence secretary, said Nato was “responding with unity and strength� to the threats and that Typhoons would be ready to attack Russian drones flying over Nato countries if required to do so.

Medical tribunal rules ‘very low risk’ of Suhail Anjum, who had been dismissed by hospital in Greater Manchester, repeating behaviour

A doctor who left a patient midway through an operation to have sex with a nurse is at “very low risk� of repeating his serious misconduct, a medical tribunal has ruled.

Dr Suhail Anjum, 44, and the unnamed nurse were caught in a “compromising position� by a colleague who walked in on the pair at Tameside hospital. The consultant anaesthetist had asked another nursing colleague to monitor the male patient, who was under general anaesthetic, so he could go to the bathroom.

Lowles has spent his entire adult life organising against fascism, facing countless threats as a result. He discusses the street confrontations of the 80s, foiling a murder plot, Nazi satanists – and the urgent need for optimism and action

In 1979, a 10-year-old Nick Lowles saw a hard-right party political broadcast. Born in Hounslow in London, he had moved to Shrewsbury when he was seven: “A very white town. There was a British Movement march soon after we moved up there.� Theirs was a “small-P political household�. His dad was a social worker, his mum worked for various charities. “She was from Mauritius, and now on the telly, the National Front were saying they were going to send people who weren’t born in Britain home in six months. I was petrified that my mum was going to get sent home.� The ambient racism of 70s and 80s Britain permeated everything. “I just remember being scared,� Lowles says. “We used to go on holiday and I tan really easily. I was frightened of coming back to school too brown.�

You can’t meet terrifying politics except with politics of your own, he realised in his teens. How to Defeat the Far Right is Lowles’s memoir-cum-manual, telling the story of how Hope Not Hate, the anti-fascist campaign group, came into existence in 2004. There is no other organisation like it, in its range of actions and independence of spirit. It does a lot of data (polling and analysis) but also a lot of community organising; it infiltrates fascist spaces, online and off, to subvert their plans, and it organises counterprotests. It is connected to institutional politics, though its influence waxes and wanes – Lowles is a good friend of Gordon Brown’s, but doesn’t feel especially heeded by the current government.

Educators working in extremely challenging conditions in Lebanon, Niger, Ukraine and Afghanistan explain what drives them on

Mohamad El Dirany, 24

She is Norwegian royalty. He is Gwyneth Paltrow’s healer. Now, the tale of their shocking marriage is shared in this shallow, gushing documentary. Still, at least they have Prince Harry’s blessing

In 2019 – two years after her divorce from her former husband Ari Behn – Norway’s Princess Märtha Louise went public with her new partner. To say that Durek Verrett wasn’t what the Norwegian public had in mind would be an understatement: as well as being a Black American man based in Los Angeles, Verrett was also a celebrity shaman who had worked with the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow. The trailer for Rebel Royals: An Unlikely Love Story plays up his wild side and the sense that Märtha Louise was dramatically departing from tradition by dating – and later marrying – him. But, really, this Netflix documentary shows that they have a tremendous amount in common. Märtha Louise may be a princess but she is, to use a trendy word, incredibly “crunchy� – a woman who was communicating with angels and teaching energy healing way back in 2007. The pair are convinced that they met in a past life. And by the time we see them flogging their wedding pictures to a glossy magazine, it’s clear that their connection transcends the spiritual realm and extends to the financial one, too.

Rebel Royals is presented entirely via talking heads – most notably, Märtha Louise and Verrett – giving it little narrative cohesion. Interesting titbits are teased throughout, such as Verrett describing himself as “soul-sexual�, and saying he had previously thought he would end up with a male partner. There is a section on the vile racism he faced in Norway – much of it from online trolls, but not helped by initial silence from his new in-laws. (As Verrett notes, when his father-in-law, King Harald, did speak out, he was praised by Prince Harry, who was himself embroiled in a race-related row with his family.)

At 88, she has won a Munch award for artistic freedom – despite her pioneering work being cancelled by the US university she studied at. She talks protest, polarisation and propaganda

It’s a miracle I get out of my interview with Palestinian artist Samia Halaby alive. Not just because the creaky wooden stairs to her second-floor Tribeca, New York live-work space are alarmingly steep, but because certain people view the 88-year-old acclaimed abstract artist, a pioneer of digital art, as a dangerous security threat.

In December 2023, Indiana University, Halaby’s alma mater, cancelled what was due to be the first American retrospective exhibition of Halaby’s work at the university’s Eskenazi Museum of Art. The exhibition had been three years in the making but Halaby was informed she was no longer welcome in a terse two-sentence letter from the museum’s director, citing vague security concerns. The real reason, she suspects, was the museum’s wish to distance itself from anything supportive of Palestine in the wake of 7 October. Almost a year later, says Halaby, Michigan State University abruptly cancelled the opening party for her solo retrospective and removed a painting whose title, Six Golden Heroes, referred to the escape of Palestinian political prisoners.

A reader discovered her name did not exist in the system after attempting to register a much-needed card online

I applied for a Lloyds Bank credit card, which duly arrived with my name on it. When I attempted to register it online, I discovered that my name did not exist in the system.

Bank staff could only locate a profile associated with my twin sister, who has never had a Lloyds account. She has since been emailed about my card.

A century from now, a literature scholar pieces together a picture of our times in a novel that quietly compels us to consider the moral consequences of global catastrophe

The sheer Englishness of Ian McEwan’s fiction may not be fully visible to his English readers. But it is clearly, and amusingly, visible to at least this Irish reader. It isn’t just McEwan’s elegiac, indeed patriotic, attentiveness to English landscapes – to the wildflowers and hedgerows and crags, to the “infinite shingle� of Chesil Beach, to the Chilterns turkey oak in the first paragraph of Enduring Love. Nor is it merely the ferocious home counties middle-classness of his later novels, in which every significant character is at the very least a neurosurgeon or a high court judge, everyone is conversant with Proust, Bach and Wordsworth, and members of the lower orders tend to appear as worrying upstarts from a world in which nobody plonks out the Goldberg Variations on the family baby grand. No, McEwan’s Englishness has most to do with his scrupulously rational, but occasionally and endearingly purblind, liberal morality: England’s most admirable, and most irritating, gift to politics and art.

These thoughts were provoked by a brief passage in McEwan’s future-set new novel that describes the “Inundation� of Britain after a Russian warhead goes off accidentally in the middle of the Atlantic, causing a tsunami that, combined with rising sea levels, wipes out everything but a Europe-wide archipelago of mountain peaks. In these entertainingly nihilistic pages, the fate of that other major chunk of the British Isles is not mentioned. Presumably Ireland, with its dearth of high peaks, fared badly as Europe drowned. But from McEwan’s future history, you’d never know it. I began to think of What We Can Know as another of McEwan’s deeply English stories. It has, I thought, the familiar partialities of vision. Has Brexit, endlessly backstopped by those pesky six counties, taught English liberals nothing?

It was the place to be through the 1980s, a nightclub where Johnny Rotten and Kim Wilde rubbed shoulders with the Beastie Boys and, er, Mel Smith. David Koppel’s new book captures it all

We would like to hear from people about their culinary disasters and what they think went wrong

From an overambitious birthday cake to an adventurous would-be feast that ended up in the dustbin, we would like to hear about the worst meal you’ve ever cooked.

We will feature a selection in an article of humorous (and non-lethal) anecdotes of culinary disaster for G2.

The NHS needs cheap drugs, and our economy needs a thriving pharma industry. The president threatens both – no wonder Labour is grovelling to him

Governing in the era of Donald Trump has been Labour’s miserable misfortune. As our prime minister and king grovel to the global bully with royal folderol this week, we will probably feel the full humiliation of the would-be American king.

The recent blow to British life sciences is a brutal example of our serfdom. Trump’s threat to put a 250% tariff on medicines made abroad by pharmaceutical companies, unless they move their factories, research and legions of jobs to the US, is driving out the UK pharma industry. What’s to stop him? AstraZeneca has ditched a £450m vaccine plant in Liverpool. In a shock announcement last week, the US drugmaker Merck axed a half-built, £1bn London research facility next to the Crick Institute it was destined to work with. Eli Lilly is pausing investment in the UK while Novartis is understood to be “keeping its investments under review�.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

I never thought I’d see fear spread so far and fast. Next year’s midterm elections are now crucial for the Democratic party – and for democrats everywhere

I return to Europe from the US with a clear conclusion: American democrats (lowercase d) have 400 days to start saving US democracy. If next autumn’s midterm elections produce a Congress that begins to constrain Donald Trump there will then be a further 700 days to prepare the peaceful transfer of executive power that alone will secure the future of this republic. Operation Save US Democracy, stages 1 and 2.

Hysterical hyperbole? I would love to think so. But during seven weeks in the US this summer, I was shaken every day by the speed and executive brutality of President Trump’s assault on what had seemed settled norms of US democracy and by the desperate weakness of resistance to that assault. There’s a growing body of international evidence to suggest that once a liberal democracy has been eroded, it’s very difficult to restore it. Destruction is so much easier than construction.

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist

The Hillsborough campaigners have always said those who harm and mislead the public must be held to account. A new law, in their name, will do that

• David Lammy is deputy prime minister and secretary of state for justice

Saturday 15 April 1989: one of the darkest days in British history. Thousands of Liverpool fans set out for Hillsborough stadium in Sheffield, full of excitement for the FA Cup semi-final. Ninety-five of them never came home. Two more died of their injuries years later. The terrible images from the ground still haunt us today.

What happened on the day of the disaster was appalling enough. But what came afterwards was a national disgrace. The authorities closed ranks to cover up their own failings – concerned more with protecting their own reputations than the public they were supposed to serve. And families, who had already lost everything, were forced to watch on as their loved ones were smeared and blamed for their own deaths.

Brexit removed many checks and balances from the UK government. That’s why leaving the European convention on human rights would be a huge risk

‘Humbug�, and “a half-baked scheme to be administered by an unknown court�. Nigel Farage or Robert Jenrick attacking the European convention on human rights (ECHR)? No – Herbert Morrison, leader of the Commons, and William Jowitt, lord chancellor in Clement Attlee’s postwar Labour government, respectively, both arguing that Britain should not accede to the convention.

Labour was suspicious, fearing that it would prevent nationalisation. It did not. Today, Conservatives and Reform UK fear that it will frustrate immigration control. It need not.

Vernon Bogdanor is a professor of government at King’s College London. His books include The New British Constitution and Beyond Brexit: Towards a British Constitution

Nigel’s gang has its own ‘one in, one out’ policy, having lost two MPs since the election – now it’s all eyes on the next one to exit

Nigel Farage has always been keen on a “one in, one out� policy. At the last election, Reform won five seats. Two MPs, Rupert Lowe and James McMurdock, have since left the party over artistic differences – ie, falling out with Nige – and have gained only one in the cold-hearted Sarah Pochin. Now they are back to their full complement. Five, it turns out, is the magic number. The race is on to find, not just the next recruit, but the next to leave. It could be anyone. Get too close to the Sun God Nige and you tend to crash and burn.

For once, the email from Reform insisting that Monday’s press conference would contain an important announcement was more or less accurate. Normally all you get is a parade of new councillors or a policy that is never going to happen. But this time Reform had gone all in. A room in a luxury Mayfair hotel. And Nige talking deadly earnestly about preparing for government. A job so important, it couldn’t be entrusted to any of his current half-witted derelicts, such as Richard Tice or Lee Anderson. They were really only there as cosmetics. To make up the numbers.

The whole pantomime is meaningless. The leader makes his or her speech, the commentariat falls upon it, and to anyone half normal reality simply continues, undisturbed

Conference season has arrived for the big political parties, and every year for the past 20 years, I have attended some, though not all, of it. I always have a lot of complaints, which I used to think were all different but in fact boiled down to the same thing: this pantomime doesn’t mean anything. The leader makes his or her speech, the commentariat falls upon it, more often than not declaring it to have saved them from whatever surge of unpopularity they were engulfed in the week before, and to anyone half normal, reality simply continues, undisturbed. No, Boris Johnson promising to “level up� in 2021 did not address the cost of living crisis. Keir Starmer having a tool-maker dad with his “eye on the object� (same year) did not make him more relatable or charismatic.

There were some years that I thought maybe I was being naive, and the wiser heads were correct – might Tony Blair’s admission of fault, in the vaguest imaginable terms (“I now look my age. You feel yours,� at the Labour conference in 2003), be the decisive turning point when we all learned to stop worrying and love the Iraq war? Nope, it was not.

Artificial intelligence will replace creativity with something closer to magical wishing. The challenge for future generations will be dealing with the feeling of emptiness that leaves us with

In the German fairytale The Fisherman and His Wife, an old man one day catches a strange fish: a talking flounder. It turns out that an enchanted prince is trapped inside this fish and that it can therefore grant any wish. The man’s wife, Ilsebill, is delighted and wishes for increasingly excessive things. She turns their miserable hut into a castle, but that is not enough; eventually she wants to become the pope and, finally, God. This enrages the elements; the sea turns dark and she is transformed back into her original impoverished state. The moral of the story: don’t wish for anything you’re not entitled to.

Several variations of this classic fairytale motif are known. Sometimes, the wishes are not so much excessive or offensive to the divine order of the world, but simply clumsy or contradictory, such as in Charles Perrault’s The Ridiculous Wishes. Or, as in WW Jacobs’ 1902 horror story The Monkey’s Paw, their wishes unintentionally harm someone who is actually much closer to them than the object of their desire.

As protesters go on trial, it is clearer than ever that ministers chose the wrong target and the wrong process

The court appearance on Tuesday of three protesters charged with terrorism offences because they held up signs declaring their support for Palestine Action should shame the government. The decision to proscribe the group, taken in June, was an alarmingly illiberal overreaction to the damage some of the group’s supporters are alleged to have caused to military equipment. Now ministers and the public are seeing the consequences, as non-violent protesters against the ban are brought before judges.

A long and proud tradition of civil disobedience includes campaigners for women’s suffrage, and against nuclear weapons and the burning of fossil fuels. Yet with its rash decision to lump the kind of direct action practised by Palestine Action in with terrorism, ministers have turned their back on this. More than 1,600 people have been arrested since the ban, many of them middle-aged and older. More protests are planned.

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 industry’s retreat from the UK reflects a deeper shift about how Beijing is rewriting the rules of innovation

When Merck abruptly scrapped its billion-pound London research hub last week, critics blamed Britain’s lacklustre support for life sciences and a Scrooge-like grip on NHS drug prices. But one important factor may have been missed. That Merck, which is also cutting jobs elsewhere – 6,000 globally – is recalibrating not just in response to the UK or the US, but to China.

Merck’s cash cow is pembrolizumab (brand name Keytruda), an immunotherapy drug launched in 2014 that has successfully treated advanced melanoma, head and neck, lung, cervical and other cancers. It blocks an antibody called PD-1, teaching the immune system to fight the cancer. Because some patients are out of other options, the results sometimes seem miraculous.

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

Readers disagree with an article by Polly Hudson on giving up your place to people on public transport

The suggestion that young, fit people do not offer their seats on public transport to vulnerable people for fear of offending them is nonsense (Is anything more awkward – and potentially insulting – than giving up your seat on public transport?, 7 September). I was brought up to offer my seat to any woman (of whatever disposition) or elderly person as a matter of principle. In 60 years of doing so, I have never had other than a polite demurral – more usually acceptance.

Now that the boot is on the other foot (for which I need a walking stick to maintain my balance), I find that about 30% of young people will instinctively offer me succour, which I gratefully and gracefully accept. The rest don’t seem to care.

A reader responds to an article by Susanna Rustin on the continuing boycotts and exclusions in the arts of gender-critical voices

Thank you for publishing a measured and mature piece about the rights of people with gender-critical views to be heard (A gender-critical book at Scotland’s National Library is the latest in a long line of cancellations, 12 September). We are not horrible bigots who do not accept trans people and think they should face discrimination. But that is usually the narrative.

We are mainly women who have real and well-researched concerns about, for example, the effects of medical treatment that was being given to young people – who do not have the maturity to appreciate the life-changing outcomes of puberty blockers and irreversible surgery.

Slow down and enjoy the slow burn in this overstimulating world, says Grace Gooda

Remona Aly’s love letter to the 1995 Pride and Prejudice series was a reminder to me, a fellow fan of the show and all things classic, to slow down and enjoy the slow burn (‘Looks so sizzling they could fry an egg!’ How the BBC’s Pride and Prejudice adaptation changed my life, 9 September). Regrettably, a recently attempted rewatch found me craving a little more instant drama and maybe a little more instant kissing.

I sacrilegiously switched to Bridgerton halfway through, a sin that has haunted me since. Aly’s piece highlights why.

Last Night of the Proms | Far-right fears | Deodorant harm | Saving money | Nuclear deal

In previous years, there has been animated discussion about the suitability of some of the traditional musical items in the Last Night of the Proms. But I could not help noticing the preponderance of one flag being displayed by this year’s audience – that of the European Union. Quite a difference from the ugly events on the streets of London a few hours earlier.
Dr George Mowat-Brown
Haytor Vale, Devon

• It is an indication of Nigel Farage’s “patriotic� England, where “free speech� is paramount, that some of your correspondents critical of the far-right’s flag-waving behaviour are fearful of having their names published (Letters, 14 September).
Dougie Mitchell
Doune, Perthshire

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Athletic Club’s goalkeeper on hosting Arsenal in the Champions League and the magic of San Mamés

“Sometimes you need some luck; that was mine,� Unai Simón says. “What I thought might happen in five, six, seven years happened in 19 days.�

It was August 2018, Simón was 21 and although he had been training at Athletic Club for a decade, and with the first team for three years, the son of police officers from Vitoria didn’t think there was a chance of playing in Bilbao any time soon, if at all. It was all he wanted but he didn’t even live there any more, moving 800km in search of an opportunity with second division Elche. Which is when weird things started to happen.

• Swede clears 6.30m to claim gold in Tokyo

• Shoes with metal spike enable faster run-up

The pole vault competition was two hours and 20 minutes old when Mondo Duplantis finally got serious at these World Athletics Championships. The bar had just been raised to six metres. So Mondo reached into his kitbag and dug out the Claw.

It is his weird looking special shoe, with a spike protruding from the front of it like a medieval torture implement – and the 25‑year‑old Swede takes it out only on those occasions when he sniffs a world record in the air.

• He says his generation ‘just more talented’ than today’s

• Legendary sprinter no longer runs and is ‘into Lego now’

Usain Bolt made his comeback to the world of track and field on Sunday night and, for a moment, it was like the good old days. There was his trademark To Da World pose before the 100m finals. The cheers and adulation of 60,000 fans in Tokyo’s National Stadium. A reminder of glories past.

The 39-year-old Jamaican had not watched athletics at all since retiring in 2017 until seeing Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Oblique Seville win gold. And, as he also admitted, he now spends his time streaming movies and building Lego – and even gets out of breath when he walks up stairs.

• Updates from the latest County Championship matches

• T20 Blast review | And get in touch on email or post BTL

After yesterday’s wash-out wind-out, there is a delay only at Old Trafford. Around the grounds, the captains’ coin has landed:

Durham won the toss and will field

• Protests forced cancellation of final stage in Madrid

• Dismay at Israel-Premier Tech’s refusal to withdraw

World Tour cycling teams may refuse to race against Israel-Premier Tech following the multiple protests during the Vuelta a España that exploded into street violence in central Madrid on Sunday.

Sources within rival teams have expressed their dismay to the Guardian at the refusal of the team to withdraw from the Vuelta and the lack of protection from the International Cycling Union (UCI) for its own commercial and sporting interests.

• France flanker to appeal against 12-match suspension

• Captain Manaé Feleu also sanctioned for high tackle

The France flanker Axelle Berthoumieu has been banned for biting the Ireland back-row Aoife Wafer in their Women’s Rugby World Cup quarter‑final and the flanker will miss the semi‑final against England on Saturday.

Manaé Feleu, the France captain, will also miss the England clash as she has been banned for a high tackle in the Ireland game. Both players are appealing against the sanctions.

• Franzoso suffered ‘major head trauma’ in accident

• Lindsey Vonn: ‘This is incredibly sad … RIP Matteo’

The Italian skier Matteo Franzoso has died at the age of 25 following a crash during pre-season training in Chile at the weekend, his country’s winter sports federation (FISI) has confirmed.

After suffering “a major head trauma� in the accident at the La Parva track on Saturday, Franzoso was taken by helicopter to the intensive care unit of a clinic in Santiago and placed in an induced coma. The FISI confirmed on Monday that he did not recover after “cranial trauma� and a subsequent swelling of his brain.

• Former champion’s kindness and loyalty hailed

• Andy Burnham: ‘We will find a way to honour him’

Ricky Hatton’s family have opened up publicly for the first time since the news of the boxing legend’s death, saying they feel an “immeasurable� sense of loss.

The 46-year-old was found dead in what police said were no suspicious circumstances at his home in Hyde, Greater Manchester on Sunday, resulting in tributes being paid across sport and wider society towards the fighter, a former world welterweight champion.

• Worker shown serving pint in social media post

• City confirm ‘individual has now been removed’

Manchester City have dismissed a bar worker who wore a Manchester United shirt while serving drinks at the Etihad Stadium during the derby on Sunday.

The club were made aware of the worker via a post on X from an account called @Mataniels. It included a photograph of the man in question handing over a pint while wearing a black shirt containing a clearly visible United club crest, alongside the caption: “Absolute joke @ManCity – letting one of the bar staff in block 315 wear a United shirt on Derby Day #mcfc.�

Firms are reluctant to hire and unemployment is rising, as inflation dulls the impact of higher wages

• UK labour market cools as pay growth slows and job losses rise

• Business live – latest updates

Tuesday’s latest snapshot of the UK jobs market shows what is becoming a familiar pattern: a gradual slowdown in hiring, rising unemployment, yet with wage growth still uncomfortably high for policymakers.

Whether because of Rachel Reeves’s £25bn national insurance increase, uncertainty over her upcoming budget, AI-related disruption or Donald Trump’s tariffs – or perhaps all four – companies seem to be cautious about taking on staff.

Rachel Reeves says move is a ‘vote of confidence’ in British economy as she prepares to open firm’s first UK datacentre

• Business live – latest updates

Google has said it will invest £5bn in the UK in the next two years to help meet growing demand for artificial intelligence services, in a boost for the government.

The investment, which comes as Google opens its new datacentre in Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire, is expected to contribute to the creation of thousands of jobs, the US tech company said.

Paul McCartney, Kate Bush and Elton John among creatives arguing that Labour’s AI proposals could result in ‘an artist’s life work to be stolen’

Leading British artists including Mick Jagger, Kate Bush and Paul McCartney have urged Keir Starmer to stand up for creators’ human rights and protect their work ahead of a UK-US tech deal during Donald Trump’s visit.

In a letter to the prime minister, they argued Labour had failed to defend artists’ basic rights by blocking attempts to force artificial intelligence firms to reveal what copyrighted material they have used in their systems.

Group of people who crossed Channel by boat understood not to have been on Air France plane after legal challenge

The first flight to France carrying people who crossed the Channel under Keir Starmer’s “one in, one out� deal has not taken place as planned, according to reports.

A small group of individuals were removed from an Air France flight on Monday due to travel from Heathrow to Paris after a legal challenge, according to multiple newspaper reports.

President says three people killed in strike against vessel he said was transporting drugs ‘headed to the US’

Donald Trump said on Monday that the United States had carried out a strike on a second Venezuelan boat and killed three alleged terrorists he claimed were transporting drugs, expanding his administration’s war against drug cartels and the scope of lethal military force to stop them.

The US president gave few details about the strike, saying in a social media post that the action was on his orders and that it had happened earlier in the morning. The post was accompanied by a video clip showing the boat, which appeared to be stationary, erupting into a fireball.

Nigel Topping says shifting course risks deterring capital, as he urges ministers to hold firm on green transition

Weakening or changing net zero policy would deter investors and spook financial markets, the UK government’s new climate adviser has warned.

Nigel Topping, recently appointed chair of the climate change committee (CCC), said there was “robust evidence� the UK would benefit economically from strong climate policy, despite calls from some politicians to back down.

Loss of spawning pools, insects and marshy habitats has had ‘catastrophic effect on our flora and fauna’

Hedgehogs, salmon and birds have been put at risk by this summer’s dry conditions, Natural England has said, as drought conditions continue.

The government nature watchdog addressed the National Drought Group of government officials and stakeholders in its meeting on Monday to warn of the dire effect on wildlife the dry summer weather has had.

Campaigners crowdfund £26,000 to seek judicial review of move to construct pitches in wildlife-rich area

Campaigners are mounting another legal challenge to the building of a women’s football academy by Tottenham Hotspur on wildlife-rich parkland in north London.

The Guardians of Whitewebbs group has successfully crowdfunded £26,000 to seek a judicial review of Enfield council’s granting of planning permission for the Spurs academy, which will include all-weather pitches, floodlights and a turf academy built on 53 hectares (130 acres) of Whitewebbs Park. Enfield council’s planning committee approved the proposals in February, despite local protests, on greenbelt parkland rich in bats, newts and mature trees.

Experts hope that a ‘California effect’ will push other states to ban UPFs, similar to its law against six synthetic food dyes

California has long led the way on school meals. In 2022, it became the first state in the country to make school meals free for all students, regardless of income. Many districts have implemented farm-to-school programs to bring local foods into the cafeteria. And last year, months before the “Make America healthy again� movement would make its way to the White House, it became the first state in the nation to ban six synthetic food dyes from school meals.

This week, it passed legislation that will put it in the lead on school meals in yet another way – banning ultra-processed foods. On Friday, California lawmakers passed a bill that will define, and then ban, ultra-processed foods from school meals. The legislation, which must now be signed by the governor, Gavin Newsom, is believed to include the first statutory definition of ultra-processed foods in the world.

East Wiltshire MP says he hopes others follow his path and accuses former party of clinging to ‘defunct institutions’

The MP Danny Kruger has defected from the Conservatives to Reform UK, declaring the Tory party “is over� and Nigel Farage is the “new custodian� of conservatism and the political right’s “last hope� of governing Britain.

Kruger, who represents East Wiltshire and previously served as political secretary to Boris Johnson, said: “The Conservative party is over. Over as a national party, over as the principal opposition to the left.�

Couple took newborn to live in a tent in wintry conditions in Brighton after going on the run to evade social services

Two parents who caused the death of their newborn baby after taking her to live in a tent in wintry conditions to evade social services have each been sentenced to 14 years in prison.

Constance Marten and Mark Gordon went off the grid in late 2022; their four older children had previously been taken into care due to concerns for their safety if left with the couple.

Security message has been frequent – and for some, irritating – part of Great Britain’s public transport system since 2016

It has been described as the most irritating slogan in the history of British transport, and now the infamous “See it. Say it. Sorted� security campaign is getting an overhaul a decade after being introduced.

However, to the chagrin of those hoping the frequent announcements across the UK rail network could be scrapped, the government has only undertaken a mild “refresh� of the slogan, which was launched under Theresa May’s government in 2016 to encourage passengers to report unusual items of activity.

Concerns grow about potential cuts to educational support as Lib Dem leader addresses rally at Westminster

Parents fearful about the government’s plans to overhaul special needs education in England took their fight to parliament on Monday, where the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, warned the prime minister: “Get this wrong and you are out.�

Up to 700 parents, many carrying colourful, homemade banners, took part in the Westminster day of protest. “Failed,� said one poster in blood-red paint, dripping over a list of children’s names. “Stop cuts, start caring,� said another.

Alexandre Padilha’s father fled dictatorship for the US – now the health chief’s family is a target of Trump’s bully tactics

When Alexandre Padilha’s father most needed help, the United States took him in.

It was 1971, the height of Brazil’s brutal two-decade dictatorship, and Anivaldo Padilha, a young Methodist activist, had been forced to flee his homeland after spending 11 months in one of São Paulo’s most notorious torture centres.

Gary Kirsten was a top international player and coach but rates his work in Cape Town’s Khayelitsha as one of the highlights of his cricketing career

• Photographs by Chris de Beer-Procter

It’s just after 3pm on a Friday and 22-year-old Sinelethu Yaso is in her happy place. Her spotless cricket whites pop against the synthetic green turf, while the upbeat rhythms of kwaito music waft on the breeze as she ambles in to bowl.

Beyond the boundary, in the Makhaza area of Khayelitsha township, in South Africa’s Cape Flats, laundry flutters on a wire fence and the September sun reflects off a corrugated-iron lean-to.

Exclusive: Alternative dating app Feeld reports that the once-boutique studio is now a worldwide signifier of edgy yet popular entertainment

The dating app Feeld has revealed that mentions of the film studio A24 have increased 65% year-on-year in members’ profiles over the past 12 months.

Feeld caters for those seeking alternative relationship choices and overindexes for women and non-binary people, bisexuals and pansexuals, yet it reports that the majority of members whose profiles mention A24 are cis-gender male, straight and aged 26-30.

Talk of revolution in the coffee shops of Nepal increased after protest movements across south Asia

Across Kathmandu, the acrid stench of smoke still lingers. Singha Durbar, the opulent palace that housed Nepal’s parliament, stands charred and empty, its grand white columns turned a sooty black. The home of former prime minister KP Sharma Oli – who just last week seemed to have an unshakable grip on power – is among those reduced to ruins, while Oli remains in hiding, his location still unknown.

They stand as symbolic monuments to the week that Nepal’s political system was brought crashing down at the hands of a leaderless, organic movement led by young people who called themselves the Gen Zs, referring to those aged between 13 and 28.

The internationally feted choreographer has worked with pop megastars, a sculptor and the monks of the Shaolin Temple. Now he is tackling the cultural divisions and colonial legacy of his homeland

Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui is almost offended when I suggest he’s a busy man. “When people tell me, ‘You do so much,’ I cringe,� says the artistic director of the Grand Théâtre de Genève – the largest stage in Switzerland, with its ballet and opera companies – who runs his own company Eastman in his native city of Antwerp. He is also the creator of contemporary dance-theatre productions and a choreographer for film (Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina and Cyrano), musicals (Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill), pop (Beyoncé and Jay-Z, Madonna) and plenty more.

This autumn alone, nine different works of Cherkaoui’s are being performed around the world, including An Accident/A Life, a collaboration with performer Marc Brew, about the car accident that left Brew paralysed from the neck down – “It’s maybe the piece I’m most proud of,� Cherkaoui says – and the UK premiere of Vlaemsch (Chez Moi), both in London.

Created in 1997 and once a Victorian toilet, the 10 sq metre venue was at risk of demolition until the residents of Malvern, Worcestershire, stepped in

Perched on a sign above a tiny stage draped with red velvet curtains are the Latin words “Multum in parvo�. Meaning “much in little�, it has become the motto of this minuscule establishment in the Worcestershire town of Malvern.

This is the world’s smallest commercial theatre with room for 12 people – or 16 with some standing – that has been brought back to life by local residents after falling into disrepair and at risk of demolition.

The last three contestants try to wow the judges with a trompe l’oeil creation. Plus: Michael Palin explores the barrios and natural wonders of Venezuela. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, BBC One
Pattern-loving scientist Yasmin, two-time garment of the week winner Caz and 19-year-old Órla – the show’s youngest contestant – are your three finalists in this year’s Sewing Bee. After making bias-cut gowns and sheer garments, their last challenge sees them grapple with the art of trompe l’oeil, creating illusions with fabric to fit their chosen friend or family member. Hollie Richardson

Linklater’s ahead-of-the-curve adaptation of a 1999 play about an alleged rape is reconfigured to try and reflect current concerns

Richard Linklater’s 2001 movie Tape, and Stephen Belber’s 1999 play that preceded it, were ahead of the curve in their targeting of male sexual violence, blurred lines of consent, performative apologies and self-victimising aggressors. Now comes a remake from Hong Kong for the post-#MeToo era. It makes a few updates, such as situating the film in an Airbnb apartment (instead of a motel room), where two old high-school friends convene. But, somewhat too reverential towards the original, this new version from director Bizhan Tong doesn’t do enough either conceptually or aesthetically to dig down into today’s shifted gender battle lines.

In Tong’s scenario, flippant lifeguard and small-time drug-dealer Wing (Adam Pak) invites his straight-laced school buddy Chong (Kenny Kwan) over to shoot the breeze at his apartment. Initially they smoke spliffs and banter testily about their diverging life paths; the latter, now going by the anglicised name of Jon, has become a promising low-budget film-maker. But steering the conversation to a touchy subject – Wing’s former sweetheart Amy (Selena Lee), whom Jon later slept with – Wing goads his so-called friend into confessing he raped her. Then he delivers the coup de grace: the room has been sprinkled with webcams that have videoed their exchange.

Théodore Pellerin is outstanding as Simon, a performer navigating a bullying boyfriend and a distant mother in Sophie Dupuis’s sad and celebratory film

Théodore Pellerin is a star, and director Sophie Dupuis knows it. In their third film together, the rising Canadian actor is at once magnetic and utterly heartbreaking as Simon, a young gay artist honing a budding career as a drag queen. At night, he transforms into Glory Gore, a glittery vision dressed in exquisite costumes that have been lovingly designed by his sister Maude (Alice Moreault). Off stage, Simon is much less self-assured, despite his swagger. An unexpected visit from his absent mother Claire (Anne-Marie Cadieux), along with a toxic romance with fellow drag performer Olivier (Félix Maritaud), soon throw this sensitive soul into an emotional whirlpool.

Dupuis’s astute writing keenly conveys the paradox of falling for a narcissistic manipulator. At first glance Olivier is a perfect creative and life partner, but soon whittles down Simon’s self-esteem with jabs about the latter’s talent and looks. As the relationship grows more dysfunctional, Dupuis pushes Pellerin to the edge of the frame, a visual correlation of his isolation among his real-life and drag family. Pellerin, moreover, embodies the character’s turmoil with stunning physicality; his quivering gaze betrays a vulnerability that starkly contrasts with his larger-than-life stage persona – and yet, like a boiling frog, he also luxuriates in the attention of his cruel lover.

A strange, not entirely convincing attempt to add conceptual depth sees an animator forced to erase his own mildly annoying cartoon creations

We’re in familiar children’s entertainment territory at the start of this family animation featuring a tiny little sincere dinosaur: mildly annoying lead character, mildly annoying would-be wizard sidekick delivering all the requisite snarky asides, plus mildly annoying assorted other critters. But in an unlikely swerve, this Czech/Polish/Slovakian production (dubbed into English for this release) turns out to honour the more formally and conceptually interesting heritage of east European animation. A couple of beats into the story, we suddenly find ourselves in a live-action environment, with a real human sitting in a dark basement studio, working away, drawing cartoons – the self-same cartoon, in fact, that we’ve just been watching.

The artist is then interrupted by an extremely grating woman – think Joan Cusack’s deranged hyper-girly Debbie Jellinsky in Addams Family Values – who demands that he erase his existing creations and create something marketable and “cute�. And so the erasure of the insufficiently cute begins, with devastating effect. Diplo the dinosaur loses his parents, and somewhat irritating though he is, it’s a little bit heartbreaking that he believes the destruction of everyone and everything he has ever known to be his fault.

Barbican Hall, London
Bernstein’s Symphony No 3 evoked the Cuban missile crisis before Copland’s Third Symphony lifted us on a tide of postwar optimism

This felt like a very LSO way for the London Symphony Orchestra to open its season: two 20th-century American symphonies, both of them big, bold showpieces with something to say about the time in which they were written. Bernstein’s Symphony No 3 has a huge role for a narrator who speaks words written by Bernstein himself, against a choral backdrop of the Jewish Kaddish prayer, sung in Hebrew and Aramaic. Composed either side of the Cuban missile crisis and dedicated to the memory of John F Kennedy, it is unmistakably a product of the anxieties of the early 1960s. But have those anxieties ever really gone away?

Thanks to the blazing conviction of Antonio Pappano’s conducting it didn’t feel at all dated here. The playing was bright and precise, the London Symphony Chorus equally responsive in a piece full of challenges: at one point half a dozen of them had to become conductors, each directing a sub-group of their colleagues as they sang in different tempos and rhythmic patterns. The Tiffin Boys’ Choir proclaimed their first entry through cupped hands so as to cut through the heft of the orchestra, before joining in the dancing rhythms of the finale. At the work’s centre, the soprano soloist Katharina Konradi sang a serene lullaby.

He was a genius of improvised music, a performer who abandoned composition – and wondered why anyone would buy his records. Comedian Stewart Lee celebrates the eccentric life of his great inspiration

Today’s episode of BBC Radio 4’s Great Lives is my third attempt to use my limited comedy fame to foist the non-idiomatic music-making of the Sheffield-born guitarist Derek Bailey on an unsuspecting public. In 2009, I chose Derek as my specialist subject on Celebrity Mastermind, beating the comedian John Thomson, who chose James Bond villains. To be fair, I would also have won if I had done his round. I was getting questions like, “Which Japanese duo collaborated with Derek Bailey on the 1995 album Saisoro?� and John was getting, “What colour was Blofeld’s cat?�

Musical minds immeasurably superior to mine have grappled more succinctly with the enigma of Derek, who died in 2005 at the age of 75. Writing in the Quietus four years ago, Jennifer Lucy Allan explained: “Derek Bailey is one antidote for anyone who thinks they’ll never understand improvised music. His guitar playing is that which requires a surrendering to your own ears. It is what it is, and that’s exactly what he intended it to be.� I, in turn, listen to Derek and think: “This, whatever it is, is resolutely and implacably this.� And that is what I, as a comedian, have tried to steal from it.

From his early 00s ‘gay church folk music’ via country-tinged indie, Joel Gibb has always been an outlier. Now he is back with an album of synthy pop pumpers

At a recent Monday night gig in London, Joel Gibb – AKA the Hidden Cameras – took to the stage with his acoustic guitar dressed in a sensible white shirt, looking for all the world as if he’d come straight from an office job. As he played a suite of Hidden Cameras songs old and new, the guitar was dropped, the shirt came undone then was removed, revealing a white vest. The room starting shaking to an electronic backing track, and things got sweaty. “It was a rebirth,� he says from a booth in the studio where he recorded new album of electronic pop pumpers Bronto, “like the indie boy gone bad.�

The synth-driven purr and slink of Bronto makes for a startling shift from country-tinged last album Home on Native Land and the exuberant multi-instrumental pop with which the Hidden Cameras first emerged from Toronto, Canada in the early 2000s. This genre twist was thanks to the melodies largely being written in Gibb’s head on the house and techno dancefloors of Berlin, his home for the last two decades. “I kept singing the same refrains to myself over other tracks – the ‘ooh’ and the ‘ah’, the ‘ah’, the ‘ooh’,� he says, “what else are you going to do? Dance music is very empty, but dancing is meditative.�

The long-awaited return of the series about finding closure is a warm look at parental clutter. Plus, the incredible tale of Taj, who traces his roots from being kidnapped in India to being adopted in Utah

Jonathan Goldstein’s narrative pod about regrets, mistakes and the pursuit of closure – cancelled by Spotify in 2023 – makes its return this week under the Pushkin banner, and it’s been worth the wait. Heavyweight does up-close-and-personal like few other shows, and this first episode – about a son’s fears around his parents’ cluttered house, and a plot to relocate their trinkets to a barn – is both warm and spiked with melancholy. Hannah J Davies
Widely available, episodes weekly from Thu

The TV star and his co-author make a compelling argument for properly addressing the legacies of slavery

When slavery was abolished in the British empire in 1833, it was thought only reasonable that slave-owners should be recompensed for the loss of their property: the British government had to borrow the equivalent of £17bn at current values to do this and that loan was not completely paid off until 2015. Meanwhile, the slaves themselves never received a penny in compensation.

There have always been dedicated Black campaigners for reparations, but it is only recently that their demands have gained momentum. Furthermore, it is impossible to talk about reparations without talking about race and migration – and these are issues at the top of the political agenda internationally. All this makes Lenny Henry and Marcus Ryder’s new book both timely and vital.

As the author’s future-set novel, What We Can Know, hits shelves, we assess his top 10 works – from chilling short stories to Booker prize-winning satire

Two old friends, composer Clive Linley and newspaper editor Vernon Halliday, meet at the funeral of charismatic Molly Lane, a former lover of both men (along with many other successful men of the time). This sharp 90s satire – the Conservatives have been in power for 17 years – has the misfortune of being McEwan’s only novel to win the Booker prize in his 50-year career, despite being widely considered one of his slightest. But it fizzes along like the champagne that is part of the euthanasia pact hatched by the two men in a plot that even the author conceded was “rather improbable�. New York Times critic Michiko Kakutani was right when she concluded that it was testament to the author’s skill that he had managed “to toss off a minor entertainment with such authority and aplomb� to win the gong he had so long deserved.

The bestselling author returns with an account of how her homeland has changed – and the personal costs of fame

Remarkable success notoriously brings its own problems. Wild Swans, first published in 1991 and written by Jung Chang with the help of her husband, Irish-born historian and writer Jon Halliday, had a global impact few authors dare to dream of. It told the story of three generations of women in 20th-century China – Chang’s grandmother, her mother and herself – and became one of the most popular nonfiction books in history, selling more than 13m copies in 37 languages and collecting a fistful of awards and commendations. For any author, following that would be a challenge. Now, Fly, Wild Swans returns to the story, picking it up after Chang’s own departure from China in 1978, and revisiting episodes from the earlier work with added detail.

Wild Swans was Chang’s second book: her first was a biography of Soong Ching-ling, the wife of the early 20th-century revolutionary Sun Yat-sen, which, she volunteers, had deservedly little impact. Wild Swans was different: animated by a powerful family story, set against the dramatic political background of war and revolution and enlivened by Halliday’s formidable narrative talent, it was an instant hit.

The RSL president has set up a new literary award for female writers over 60 using the £100,000 she herself won through the Women’s prize

Author Bernardine Evaristo is using the £100,000 she won through the Women’s prize outstanding contribution award to fund a new prize for “pioneering� British female writers over 60.

The RSL Pioneer prize – administered by the Royal Society of Literature, of which Evaristo is president – will award £10,000 to 10 living writers over the next decade. The prize will honour women across all genres who “have been trailblazers in their field, especially in the past when it was more difficult for women to have successful careers as writers�, said the RSL.

After a lacklustre response to the 2025 edition, the game has gone all out to engage players and respond to user feedback

In an open office space somewhere inside the vast Electronic Arts campus in Vancouver, dozens of people are gathered around multiple monitors playing EA Sports FC 26. Around them, as well as rows of football shirts from leagues all over the world, are PCs and monitors with staff watching feeds of the matches. The people playing are from EA’s Design Council, a group of pro players, influencers and fans who regularly come in to play new builds, ask questions and make suggestions. These councils have been running for years, but for this third addition to the EA Sports FC series, the successor to EA’s Fifa games, their input is apparently being treated more seriously than ever.

The message to journalists, invited here to get a sneak look at the game, is that a lacklustre response to EA Sports FC 25 has meant that addressing user feedback is the main focus. EA has set up a new Player Feedback Portal, as well as a dedicated Discord channel, for fans to put forward their concerns. The developer has also introduced AI-powered social listening tools to monitor EA Sports FC chatter across various platforms including X, Instagram and YouTube.

In this week’s newsletter: the long-awaited release from the three-person Team Cherry studio has crashed gaming storefronts and put indie developers back in the spotlight

Just one game has been dominating the gaming conversation over the past week: Hollow Knight Silksong, an eerie, atmospheric action game from a small developer in Australia called Team Cherry. It was finally released last Thursday after many years in development, and everybody is loving it. Hollow Knight was so popular that it crashed multiple gaming storefronts. With continual game cancellations, expensive failures and layoffs at bigger studios, this is the kind of indie triumph the industry loves to celebrate at the moment. But Silksong hasn’t come out of nowhere, and its success would not be easily reproducible for any other game, indie or not.

If you’re wondering what this game actually is, then imagine a dark, mostly underground labyrinth of bug nests and abandoned caverns that gradually yields its secrets to a determined player. The art style and sound are minimalist and creepy (though not scary) in a Tim Burton kind of way, the enemy bugs are fierce and hard to defeat, your player character is another bug with a small, sharp needle-like blade. It blends elements of Metroid, Dark Souls and older challenging platform games, and the unique aesthetic and perfect precision of the controls are what make it stand out from a swarm of similar games. I rinsed the first Hollow Knight and I’m captivated by Silksong. I’ve spent 15 hours on it in three days, and it has made my thumbs hurt.

PC, PS5, Xbox, Switch 2; Bloober Team
An intriguing setup sees an unnamed protagonist time-travel to discover the origins of a devastating outbreak, but a stingy inventory and one-sided battles lead to frustration

Bloober Team, the Polish developer behind 2021’s hugely underrated psycho-thriller The Medium and last year’s excellent Silent Hill 2 remake, clearly understands that there is an established, almost comforting rhythm to survival horror games. It’s baffling, then, to see this latest game excel in so many areas while failing spectacularly on several of the genre’s most basic tenets.

You play an unnamed traveller, the latest of many, sent to gather information about a devastating outbreak that transformed the citizens of a town called New Dawn into the sort of misshapen monsters that have become the staple of sci-fi-adjacent survival horror: contorted of limb, long of fang, and ample of slobber. As you explore the stark, often beautifully devastated aftermath of the outbreak, you search for places where you can travel back through time to when all hell was breaking loose, extracting persons of interest who may shed light on the disaster. A slow-burn story is revealed through the usual assortment of voice notes, missives and grim environmental clues (often, as is de rigueur, daubed in blood on walls).

In this week’s newsletter: an archaeologist and gamer on why we love to walk around finding objects in-game and in real life

The game I’m most looking forward to right now is Big Walk, the latest title from House House, creators of the brilliant Untitled Goose Game. A cooperative multiplayer adventure where players are let loose to explore an open world, I’m interested to see what emergent gameplay comes out of it. Could Big Walk allow for a kind of community archaeology with friends? I certainly hope so.

When games use environmental storytelling in their design – from the positioning of objects to audio recordings or graffiti – they invite players to role play as archaeologists. Game designer Ben Esposito infamously joked back in 2016 that environmental storytelling is the “art of placing skulls near a toilet� – which might have been a jab at the tropes of games like the Fallout series, but his quip demonstrates how archaeological gaming narratives can be. After all, the incongruity of skulls and toilets is likely to lead to many questions and interpretations about the past in that game world, however ridiculous.

Tate Modern, London
From filthy kissing to bullfights, fascists and drag acts, the artist who shattered visual conventions is thrillingly, forcefully alive in this illuminating show

The Acrobat sums up the effect Pablo Picasso had on art in his 91 years on earth. In this 1930 painting, lent by the Musée Picasso in Paris, a body with no defined gender contorts into an insoluble puzzle, a leg sprouting above its anus, the head, eyes closed, bulging where genitals might be, the other leg standing on the ground balanced by an arm whose hand functions as a foot while the other arm, fist clenched, bends like a tail. In just this way, Picasso turned art inside out and upside down, twisted it unrecognisably, yet made it all the more compelling, human and passionate.

Born into a Europe of realistic sculptures and perspective pictures, he blew up those conventions, put them back together, then smashed them again, and a few times more. It’s hard not to be awed by his achievements, his turmoil of creative energy, the scale of his artistic breakthroughs, although Tate Modern tries its best. Theatre Picasso starts with coughing noises and references to gender and artistic borrowing. But those concerns go nowhere, vanishing in what becomes – almost despite itself – a riotous celebration of his genius.

Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff
The Welsh-Ukrainian singer was in ravishing voice, and the orchestra brought richness to a reduced score, while Edward Dick’s production seemed chillingly relevant

Welsh National Opera have opened their autumn season with the production Opera North premiered in 2018. So this Tosca is neither new to the company nor helped by the attention focused on last week’s Royal Opera House staging in which Anna Netrebko commanded the headlines. Here, the focus was on the Welsh-Ukrainian Natalya Romaniw, who three years ago made an acclaimed ROH debut in the career-defining title role. This was emphatically Romaniw’s night, every inch the absolute diva, in ravishing voice and investing her characterisation with such fine nuances of gesture and colouring of the words as to hold one riveted. It was certainly worthy of Sarah Bernhardt, for whom Victorien Sardou wrote his original play and whose performance inspired Puccini to compose his opera.

Puccini’s faithfulness to the specific Roman locations and the historical facts of June 1800 in this period of the Napoleonic wars, would seem to preclude a contemporary setting elsewhere. Yet director Edward Dick’s allusions to the rise of the far right and the thuggery of the regime which chief of police, Baron Scarpia, represents are all too chillingly resonant of the political machinations and skullduggery that have only escalated globally in the seven years since Dick conceived his approach.

Coliseum, London
If you wanted to learn about the composer’s female influences, you would have been disappointed – but the arias eventually built to an electric climax

English National Opera’s first season with one foot in London and one in Manchester begins in earnest with Rossini’s Cinderella at the end of the month. In the meantime, feeling like a kind of warmup, came this one-off concert. It was filmed for Sky Arts, the cameras so unobtrusive as to be almost unnoticeable, but was still an odd hybrid of an evening, with a talking-heads-and-bleeding-chunks format that seemed geared more to TV than to a theatre audience.

We had excerpts from nine of Mozart’s operas, with the ENO orchestra and conductor Clelia Cafiero on stage behind, and with a cutely cliched, periwigged child Mozart occasionally popping up as a kind of silent host. If you wanted to learn much about the women in Mozart’s life you would probably have been disappointed, although several were at least mentioned in the informal scripted links from the presenter Lauren Laverne, who slipped into friendly interviewer mode to ask the singers for more personal contributions. It was a big ask of the singers, who were required to appear at ease as themselves on stage, offer seemingly unscripted insights into the microphone, and then switch seamlessly into character – often to portray that character at a moment of peak emotional stress.

Citizens theatre, Glasgow
The people of a small Scottish town offer hope to bereaved families in the aftermath of the 1988 bombing in a moving music-theatre show

What a joy to hear applause again in the Citz. The theatre’s seven-year renovation has been hard. In that time, many have been lost, including the victims of the pandemic and, only last month, the mighty Giles Havergal , the company’s artistic director from 1969 to 2003.

Fitting, then, that the opening production should be a requiem. Less a drama than a mass, it is a eulogy to those killed in the Lockerbie bombing in 1988, the single biggest terrorist loss of life on UK territory. The powerful act one closing song has just three words: “Let us remember.�

Rumours that Mike White’s hit series will be filming next in France have now been confirmed – but what can we expect?

The White Lotus didn’t have the Emmys it expected this year, but a little thing like critical disappointment isn’t going to slow it down. In other words: forget season three, because we already know where season four is headed.

In a post-Emmys conversation with Deadline, HBO’s Casey Bloys confirmed the rumour that The White Lotus season four will take place in France. Were there any other details? No. Did he offer even the slightest indication of even a sliver of what’s to come? Again, no. But this is the internet, so let’s speculate wildly nonetheless.

‘A guy from our record company told me to take out the whistling. I said no way. When the song went through the roof, he came to me, bent over and said, “Kick my ass!�’

Being a West German band made playing the Soviet Union in the late 1980s particularly special. We’d grown up in a divided country and had tried many times to play in East Germany, but they would never let us in. When we did our first gig in what was then Leningrad, the atmosphere was a bit grey, not very colourful or rock’n’roll – but hearts started opening up over the course of the 10 gigs we did in the city. It ended up a bit like Beatlemania, with fans circling our cars after every show.

The actor, who was cleared of historical sexual assault allegations in 2020, says he has withdrawn as a result of a social media campaign against him

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Craig McLachlan has withdrawn from the Australian production of Cluedo after a backlash to his casting seven years after he was accused of, and denied, touching, kissing and groping his female co-stars without their permission.

Last Wednesday the show’s producers Crossroads Live announced that McLachlan had been cast as Colonel Mustard in a stage adaptation of the 1985 film Clue, based on the boardgame.

In her apocalyptic new film, everything’s sorted – but you have to die at the age of 50. The actor talks about tech shocks, doomscrolling and the agent who told her to go back to Canada

This summer, Sandra Oh stood behind a lectern at a graduation ceremony in New Hampshire, preparing to give university-leavers words of hope at a time of permacrisis. She rose to the challenge, opening up about her past battles with depression and anxiety, before making a heartfelt case for embracing discomfort and kindness “so we can meet cruelty again and again and not lose our humanity�. This was increasingly important, she explained, when many world leaders “claim power through fear and oppression�. And then came the moment that would go viral. Oh instructed everyone to stand up and do something Cristina Yang, her career-making character on Grey’s Anatomy, used to do when times got tough. “Dance it out!� she exhorted as David Guetta’s Titanium washed over the crowd. “Remember this feeling!�

“I was very, very, very nervous about it,� says Oh. “I worked really hard.� She had been putting herself into the mindset of 20-year-olds not just worried about their own futures but about the larger picture. “The world is burning!� she says, imagining their dark thoughts. “There’s wars all over! My heart is so heavy, so all I’m going to do is doomscroll.� But, crucially, Oh wanted her audience to find their way to joy – thus the dancing. “Sitting there trying to bear the pain in the world,� she says, neatly summing up the philosophy she shared that day, “will help you figure out how to be in the world.�

We’ve assembled some of the freshest voices in food to bring you their finest tips and shoppable picks, from dreamy dinners and alfresco feasts, to the simple joy of a punnet of strawberries

True Turkish hospitality means providing more food and drink than your guests could ever consume. Here’s a great way to do it … with a little help from the 2024 Young MasterChef judge, best known as Big Has

I spent a lot of my childhood sitting in the passenger seat of my dad Kamil’s Volvo, on the barbecue run, listening to Turkish radio. We would usually get the same things: chicken breasts for mum, boneless thighs for the rest of us, and some sort of lamb on the bone for dad. He would purposely butcher it poorly, leaving bits of meat on the bone to grill slowly and pick at as he cooked for the rest – a “trick� he had learned from his dad. My love for barbecues, cooking over live fire, and entertaining, definitely stems from him.

Barbecues would always start with an impromptu announcement at the table after Sunday morning family breakfast. Mum would begrudgingly agree, knowing the mess my dad can produce in about 20 minutes. It didn’t take much persuading in my house to get the mangal [Turkish barbecue] lit. We didn’t need perfect blue skies. A dry day and enough sunlight to see us through to the evening would be enough to seal the deal, although dad has been known to barbecue under a tree in a bin bag if the weather didn’t cooperate.

Superhost and influencer Saff Michaelis loves nothing more than throwing a party. And if there’s one thing she’s learned, it’s to let shops she trusts do some of the heavy lifting

There is something so deliciously informal about summer hosting. Gone are the elaborate table lays, multiple courses and floral arrangements of the colder months. In exchange, we simply dust off the garden furniture, open a pack of olives and hope for the best. Picnics in the park segue straight into rosé-fuelled suppers – usually under the dappled shade of a tree your partner has been aspiring to prune since the sun first appeared.

Through these little moments with family and friends, it becomes apparent that hosting is more than a hobby; it’s a love language. Independently of what’s served at the table, hosting is a way of providing meaningful in-person interactions in an age when much of our lives feel digitised and somewhat mundane.

‘Special moments demand a suitably special menu’

From fizz destined to make a girls’ night sparkle to a watermelon needed for an alfresco summer salad, we asked three shoppers to share the meaning behind their latest online order

The meaning behind the choices we make can get lost in the rhythm of routine, particularly when it comes to the groceries we order week in, week out. But there’s a whole lot more than dinner in our shopping baskets, as these shoppers reveal. Even the most prosaic items can conjure a memory, speak to a value, or make good on an intention. It’s life, delivered by Ocado …

Reena Mistry. Photographs: Helena Dolby

My husband and I still have sex – but something’s missing. Is stress the culprit?

I’m a woman in my 50s and have been with my husband for decades. We have always had a wonderful sex life and I used to be able to climax vaginally very easily, often without clitoral stimulation. During an eventful time for the family a couple of years ago, my libido and ability to climax disappeared, though they did eventually return. A few months ago, I had a health crisis, which has slightly impaired my coordination on one side. Although I have recovered very well, I am again experiencing a loss of libido and sexual sensation.

We continue to have sex regularly and I enjoy the intimacy. I can climax with clitoral stimulation but it takes a long time and can be almost physically painful. I really miss vaginal orgasms and the release they brought. Although I am of perimenopausal age, I have no obvious symptoms and a hormone test came back normal.

Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.

If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.

A new wellbeing hotel on the tiny outpost of Styrsö in the Gothenburg archipelago is a perfect base for a relaxing, restorative break

If you came to stay on the tiny island of Styrsö (steer-shuh) in the Gothenburg archipelago in the late 19th or early 20th century, there was a good chance it was because you had tuberculosis. The island had already begun to appeal to city folk who came here for fresh air, sea baths and peace, but the sanatoriums set up by the renowned Dr Peter Silfverskiöld gained such a positive reputation that the isle became known as a health resort. Those glory days have long since faded but Kusthotellet, a new hotel dedicated to wellbeing, aims to tap back into the restorative vibe.

The conditions that first drew health-seekers to the island still pertain. It’s tucked away and protected from winds, but the lack of high ground nearby means the sun shines on its southern coast from dawn to dusk, and there’s no pollution. “This island is such a peaceful place – you can really relax and recharge your batteries,� Malin Lilton, manager of Kusthotellet, told my companion and me. “As soon as you get on the ferry your pulse rate goes down and you start breathing in the good air.�

Nostalgic tech; autumn garden hacks; and what to wear when it rains

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When I was 18, I bought a heavily reduced MiniDisc player. This wasn’t even what you could charitably call “fashionably late�, given the format was already on its last legs, but I loved it, and because nobody else was interested, blank discs were dirt cheap. I have a vague recollection of grabbing packs at Poundland, allowing me to create a glorious self-curated library of cheap music, five years before the birth of Spotify.

I’m reminded of this because this week I’ve published a piece on the Filter about the portable audio technology that killed them: MP3 players. Or digital audio players, to give them their more accurate name, given MP3 playback is just one of many supported file formats.

The best beauty Advent calendars in 2025, tested (yes, we know it’s early!)

The finishing touch: great buys for under £100 to lift your living space, chosen by interiors experts

‘It’s better than plastic and cheaper’: 20 sustainable swaps that worked (and saved you money)

How to get your garden ready for autumn: 17 expert tips you can do now – and what to skip

‘The crunch? Spot on’: the best supermarket gherkins, tasted and rated

What to take to university – and what to leave behind, according to students

How to decorate your university room: 16 easy, affordable ways to make it feel like home

Dry herbs, sow green manure, catch the rain: garden professionals share the simple jobs that will make all the difference come next spring

• The best garden tools to make light work of autumn jobs

The nights are drawing in, TV programming is kicking back into gear and there are ominous warnings about “party season�. However, that doesn’t mean we should ascribe to horticultural tradition and “put our gardens to bed�.

There’s still plenty you can do in the garden to make the most of those crisp, bright autumnal afternoons and relish the offerings of the season to come. Whether squeezing some more joy out of the garden before it dies back for another winter or doing jobs your future spring self will thank you for, these are the things that define the season.

From statement pieces to functional furnishings, 16 experts select accessories that will light up your home without costing a fortune

• The best bedding brands interiors experts use at home, from luxury linen to cool cotton

The best thing about a beautifully decorated room is often not the most expensive. Though interior designers can work with generous budgets, the savvy ones also know how to spot great design in unlikely places (hello, B&Q).

If you don’t have the budget for a full renovation, but still want to add a little design nous to your home, some help is at hand. We asked a range of experts in the interiors world for the pieces they’ve got their eye on – all of them less than £100.

Combining both salty and sour flavours, gherkins act as a great elevator for many a dish or just as a standalone snack. But whose strikes the perfect balance?

• From kimchi to kombucha, it’s easy to ferment at home. Here’s all the kit you need

A jar of gherkins reminds me of the sea around the British Isles – murky, seaweed-green and mysterious – and of that bizarre marine animal, the sea cucumber (though sea gherkin would perhaps be more accurate, given how similar some species look). Gherkins also happen to be one of my favourite foods, though I usually eat them straight from the jar and rarely save any for all those recipes that benefit from their addition, from potato salads to bloody marys.

I like a gherkin that puckers the mouth with a sour smack to the gustatory cortex. It should also be salty, but not overpoweringly so – some of those I tested tasted of salt, vinegar and not much else. Aromatics such as onion, mustard and dill intensify when pickled, so how much is used needs to be well considered; too much mustard or black pepper, say, catches in the throat, while too much red pepper turns the liquor soupy. Dill, however, is essential.