Nothing will ever be the same for the disgraced royal or the other Windsors. He can still live in Royal Lodge, but it’s a terrible blow to his sense of entitlement

The saga of Andrew Windsor, the ex-Duke, who henceforth will be known as only plain old Prince, may have finally reached its end. At least the rest of the royal family will hope so. But even that is likely to depend on what may further emerge from any more releases of Epstein files, letters, records and emails in the US. His image, such as it remains, may yet be tarnished further.

It is the loss of titles that will certainly hurt him most. Andrew has not formally lost them – removal of his dukedom requires an act of parliament, which neither government nor Buckingham Palace will want, taking up as it would embarrassingly public lengths of time – and he can’t shed his princely tag since he indubitably is the son of a monarch.

Stephen Bates is a former royal correspondent of the Guardian

From brain-rotting videos to AI creep, every technological advance seems to make it harder to work, remember, think and function independently …

Step into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab in Cambridge, US, and the future feels a little closer. Glass cabinets display prototypes of weird and wonderful creations, from tiny desktop robots to a surrealist sculpture created by an AI model prompted to design a tea set made from body parts. In the lobby, an AI waste-sorting assistant named Oscar can tell you where to put your used coffee cup. Five floors up, research scientist Nataliya Kosmyna has been working on wearable brain-computer interfaces she hopes will one day enable people who cannot speak, due to neurodegenerative diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, to communicate using their minds.

Kosmyna spends a lot of her time reading and analysing people’s brain states. Another project she is working on is a wearable device – one prototype looks like a pair of glasses – that can tell when someone is getting confused or losing focus. Around two years ago, she began receiving out-of-the blue emails from strangers who reported that they had started using large language models such as ChatGPT and felt their brain had changed as a result. Their memories didn’t seem as good – was that even possible, they asked her? Kosmyna herself had been struck by how quickly people had already begun to rely on generative AI. She noticed colleagues using ChatGPT at work, and the applications she received from researchers hoping to join her team started to look different. Their emails were longer and more formal and, sometimes, when she interviewed candidates on Zoom, she noticed they kept pausing before responding and looking off to the side – were they getting AI to help them, she wondered, shocked. And if they were using AI, how much did they even understand of the answers they were giving?

Only a genius like Boris Johnson’s former right-hand man would have had the wisdom to keep stumm until now

And … relax. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s Super Dom! At a time of heightened worries about national security, who better than Dominic Cummings to shine a light on the murky world of spying?

The man who turned a drive to Barnard Castle into an advert for SpecSavers. The man who gave us Brexit. Which one of us didn’t vote for a 4% hit to GDP? The man who gave us Boris Johnson. Truly, Dom has enriched us all over the past 10 years.

A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back with special guests at another extraordinary year, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here

Laid up with the flu? Suffering with a sore throat? From chicken bhuna to fire honey, this food should get you back on your feet

Hydrate with teas
For Dr Ricardo José, consultant in respiratory medicine, hydration is key: “It’s about taking frequent sips throughout the day to keep the mucous membranes moist.� Immunologist Dr Jenna Macciochi agrees, saying: “I often stir a spoonful of raw honey – nature’s soothing antimicrobial – into a cup of thyme tea (thyme steeped in water), which helps ease irritation and supports respiratory health. I also love marshmallow root tea, which is great for the mucous membranes.�

Manchester United’s striker is a topic of context-free condemnation as social media’s sluice of aggravation sinks us all

The first thing you need to do is find a photo of Rasmus Højlund looking happy in a Napoli shirt. There you are. Now you find a photo of Benjamin Sesko looking sad in a Manchester United shirt. Like he’s just missed an open goal. No, obviously you don’t need to find a photo of him missing an open goal. The less context here, the better. Now pop the photos side by side. Overlay the goal stats in big buffoonish font. Don’t forget the emojis. Post to all social media channels.

Will you mention that Højlund’s tally includes goals in the Champions League while Sesko is not competing in Europe at all? You will not. Nor will you mention that four of Højlund’s goals have come against Belarus and Greece, or the fact that Denmark are a much better team than Slovenia and create many more chances. You run socials for a big media brand, pure liquid engagement is what puts food on your table, United are the biggest meal of all, and as ever, context will be your sworn enemy.

Venison bourguignon, coq au vin, confit duck, salmon and beef wellingtons: this new range of supermarket meals certainly sounds fancy. But the prices have made people gulp. I taste-tested all five to find out what is good value – and what’s best to avoid

Like Tesla cars and the ending of the Sopranos, Charlie Bigham ready meals seem to be rather divisive. On the one hand, people clearly love them: about 31m dishes were sold in the past year alone. On the other hand, they generate a heap of mockery. The critique seems to be that only a gullible idiot would shell out up to a tenner on an oven-ready fish pie, chilli con carne or – as one commentator once memorably labelled it – a tray of “Tory slop�.

Those critics will be sharpening their kitchen knives because Bigham, who is a kind of Tim “Wetherspoons� Martin for centrist dads, has just announced the launch of his Brasserie range: deluxe versions of his meals with prices that fetch up to … wait for it … £30! Thirty whole English pounds!

Exclusive: Footage reveals Kent leader berating councillors amid rows over budgets and bullying claims

Bitter divisions in Reform UK’s flagship county council have been laid bare in a leaked video of a chaotic internal meeting where members were told to “fucking suck it up� if they did not agree with decisions.

Councillors can be seen complaining about “backbiting� and being ignored by their leader, Linden Kemkaran, who tells them they will be “screwed� and that Reform can forget about winning the general election if they don’t balance Kent’s budget.

In statement released by Buckingham Palace, Andrew says he will give up titles and honours

• Virginia Giuffre book extract: ‘Prince Andrew believed having sex with me was his birthright’

• Analysis: Prince Andrew’s fall from grace complete as monarchy cuts him loose

Prince Andrew has agreed to give up his use of the Duke of York title, he said in a statement released through Buckingham Palace.

He will also give up use of his honours as a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) and Royal Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, meaning his only remaining title will be that of prince, which cannot be removed as he was born the son of a queen.

Bernie Sanders to headline rally in Washington DC as other Democratic officials lend support

• What to know about the anti-Trump protests attracting millions

Democratic officials across the US have posted in support of the No Kings protests.

The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, wrote on Saturday morning in a social media post: “Do not let Donald Trump and Republicans intimidate you into silence. That’s what they want to do. They’re afraid of the truth. Speak out, use your voice, and exercise your right to free speech.�

“They have a ‘Hate America’ rally that’s scheduled for October 18 on the National Mall,� the House speaker, Mike Johnson, said on Fox News on Friday. “It’s all the pro-Hamas wing and, you know, the antifa people. They’re all coming out.�

The Republican Minnesota congressman Tom Emmer said the party’s “terrorist wing� was holding the “Hate America� rally. “Democrats want to keep the government shut down to show all those people that are going to come here and express their hatred towards this country that they’re fighting President Trump,� said the House majority leader, Steve Scalise. The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, embellished the story on Fox, referring to the demonstrations’ “paid protesters� and adding: “It begs the question who’s funding it.�

Authorities urge UN to intervene ‘to protect unarmed civilian populations’ after attack on bus that killed 11

Gaza’s media office has accused Israel of violating the ceasefire with Hamas 47 times since the truce came into effect in early October, killing 38 Palestinians and wounding another 143.

“These violations have included crimes of direct gunfire against civilians, deliberate shelling and targeting, and the arrest of a number of civilians, reflecting the occupation’s continued policy of aggression despite the declared end of the war,� reads the statement.

Exclusive: firms run by five of the party’s councils have used legal loophole to serve section 21 notices

Labour-run councils have used a legal loophole to issue almost 200 households with no-fault eviction notices since the party was elected on a promise to ban the practice, a Guardian investigation has found.

Scrapping these orders, known as section 21 evictions, was one of Keir Starmer’s main pledges before last July’s general election but, more than a year later, they remain lawful.

âš½ Premier League updates from the 5.30pm BST kick-off
âš½ Live scores | Top scorers | Postecoglou sacked | Mail Scott

The teams emerge from the Cottage. Fulham in white, Arsenal in second-choice blue. A heady atmosphere down by the river. It won’t be too long now.

Marco Silva talks to Sky. “[To have Raúl Jiménez back] is crucial … we have two strikers who have been scoring more than 20 goals a season together … we miss Rodrigo [Muniz] … it is crucial to have at least one of them.�

One of the largest mussel exporters in Britain lose £150,000 after three lorries were prevented from entering the EU

One of Britain’s largest mussel exporters has suffered a £150,000 loss, after three of its shipments to the EU were rejected in recent weeks by French customs.

Family-run business Offshore Shellfish, based in Devon, has continued exporting blue mussels to its European customers since Brexit, despite the administrative burden and onerous paperwork requirements.

It’s ballroom business as usual after Movie Week, with Alex Kingston’s Fast Car rumba and Vicky Pattison shaking it to Madonna. But who will get into the groove? And whose moves will be so bad they need a holiday?

Amanda Holden-hosted quiz The Celebrity Inner Circle just winding up on BBC1 now. Still no idea of the rules but Strictly alumni Montell Douglas and Colin Jackson were competing in this episode, so it’s not all bad.

The couples are bidding to get through to Strictly’s second ever Icons Week next Saturday, with dances inspired by musical legends. Last year it happened in week seven and involved Chris McCausland in KISS make-up, Sarah Hadland in a Madonna cone bra and Shayne Ward dressed as a Beatle. Halycon days.

Club and Penguin bars are now ‘chocolate flavour’ after owner McVitie’s cuts cocoa content amid soaring prices

If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit you can no longer join our Club or pick up a Penguin, as the lunchbox favourites have reduced the amount of cocoa in their recipe so much they are now only “chocolate flavour�.

The two snacks, both made by McVitie’s, changed their recipes earlier this year amid soaring cocoa prices – which have prompted manufacturers to try a number of different tactics to keep prices down.

Waymo plans London robotaxis as early as 2026, but the history shows hype, hesitation and a few missed turns

The age-old question from the back of the car feels just as pertinent as a new era of autonomy threatens to dawn: are we nearly there yet? For Britons, long-promised fully driverless cars, the answer is as ever – yes, nearly. But not quite.

A landmark moment on the journey to autonomous driving is, again, just around the corner. This week, Waymo, which successfully runs robotaxis in San Francisco and four other US cities, announced it was bringing its cars to London.

Families are going back to Gaza City and surrounds to find their neighbourhoods obliterated, with many forced to camp in the ruins

When the Gaza ceasefire took effect a week ago, tens of thousands of Palestinians began to move from the sprawling camps in the south back to their homes in Gaza City and the surrounding area.

For most, it was a shocking and bitter homecoming.

First Brands and Tricolor failures raise concerns for wider financial sector, including traditional banks

The collapse of two US firms, First Brands and Tricolor, has shone a light on private credit and its growing influence in the global economy.

The failures have led to ballooning losses at traditional banks, and, coupled with worries about the health of US regional banks, have raised concerns about weak lending standards and potential threats from an opaque corner of the so-called shadow banking sector.

We tested 10 birds to see which supermarkets give a cluck about their poultry

• The best Le Creuset alternatives, from cast-iron casserole dishes to skillets

Today’s test confirmed my conviction that knowing where your food comes from is among the most effective actions consumers can take. This means buying from farmers’ markets, butchers or directly from farms (online or in person). Some supermarkets also now work with independent family farms to provide better levels of transparency (although, do beware of fake farms, because some supermarkets have been known to make up fictional brands).

After roasting today’s chickens, it was abundantly clear to me that birds from independent family farms are leagues above supermarket own-brand chickens, even organic ones. It’s generally accepted that properly slow-grown, free-range and organic chickens develop firmer, more flavourful meat from the exercise they get by scratching around outdoors. Feed matters, too: pasture, herb and corn-fed birds have much more complex flavours and often sweeter, more buttery flesh.

Emma, 32, a doctor, meets Julien, 41, an advertising creative

What were you hoping for?
Big love … but I was happy to settle for an evening of exchanging ideas and learning what makes a person tick.

Five MTV channels will close at the end of the year in the UK, leaving just one – which mostly plays reality TV. And with budgets pinched, directors say they are struggling

The launch of MTV, in 1981, ushered in a new era of music. Showing music videos 24 hours a day, the television channel redefined artist marketing and launched the careers of artists such as Michael Jackson and Madonna, whose public personas became inseparable from the gripping, frequently controversial clips they produced to be played on the service.

Now, that chapter of music history appears to be drawing to a close, with MTV’s parent company Paramount announcing last week that its five dedicated music channels in the UK – MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV and MTV Live – will cease broadcasting after 31 December. (The flagship MTV channel, which broadcasts reality programmes such as Catfish, The Hills and Geordie Shore, will remain in operation.)

Like all good addicts, I couldn’t tell you how much time I’ve spent with First Time Hearing clips on YouTube. They sucked me in and didn’t let me go

• Read more in the Internet wormhole series

Oh the pleasant pain of waiting impatiently for someone to understand the point! Oh the power of dramatic irony; the smug joy of knowing something they don’t.

Oh how I wallowed in these feelings and more, when YouTube sucked me into a genre I had previously known nothing about: First Time Hearing videos, where people film themselves watching the music video of a song they’ve never heard before and grace viewers with their impromptu reactions, thoughts and facial expressions.

The millennial crowd-pleasers return with a second helping of their sizzling romcom … and it’s just as much of a pleasure. We already know exactly which spin-off we want too!

For a while, it seemed as if the romcom as an art form died and had been replaced by Marvel sequels and issue-led dramedies. Rachel and Ross were a distant memory (and not just because it was 20 years ago). Luckily, the genre – and our collective broken hearts – has been given CPR by a flurry of new releases. Few have been more affecting than Nobody Wants This (Netflix, from Thursday 23 October), the stomach-flipping story of rabbi Noah and relationship podcaster Joanne.

When the first series appeared on Netflix last year, the success was somewhat unexpected. With the streaming giant focused on content viewers could watch after a lobotomy, few expected a mega hit that would create a genuine emotional connection. Then we met Noah (millennial nostalgia-fix Adam Brody) and Joanne (Kristen Bell) and the combination of acting, lovable characterisation and tight writing saw critical acclaim, Emmy nominations and – most importantly – old-fashioned longing. The internet had a new boyfriend. Fleabag’s Hot Priest was old news. Hot Rabbi was here to save us. And he was a really good listener who could also cook pasta.

Inspired by creator Erin Foster’s experience of converting to Judaism for her husband, Nobody Wants This boils faith, family and modern dating into 26 tightly packed minutes. On top of ex-girlfriends and formidable mother-in-laws, our two lovers have a central obstacle to overcome: if he wants to be head rabbi, Noah needs to marry a Jewish woman.

When we last saw the couple, they were at a crossroads: Noah had been offered his dream job and Joanne had done the selfless act of leaving him so he could take it. The final scene of the two reuniting and kissing in the street perfectly set up a second season and with it pressing questions. Will Joanne convert? Will Noah quit his vocation? Will Noah’s mum murder Joanne when she finds out?

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

Sally Wainwright brings us a superb drama about women of a certain age forming a punk band, and Nina Conti’s monkey makes for an unlikely movie star. Here’s the pick of the week’s culture, taken from the Guardian’s best-rated reviews

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

Guillermo del Toro offers his take on Mary Shelley’s cobbled-together creature, and the baroque rockers follow up their chart-topping debut album

After the Hunt
Out now
Julia Roberts stars in the latest from Challengers director Luca Guadagnino: a cancel-culture thriller set in the aftermath of an accusation of sexual assault on a college campus. She plays a philosophy professor at Yale, whose colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) claims he is innocent of the charges against him.

Five months on from coming within a point of Champions League football, Nottingham Forest are in a relegation fight

Hand the keys back, pack the suitcase, take down the pictures, terminate the lease. Ange Postecoglou really should have never left temporary digs for a Nottingham apartment during the international break. Football moves fast, the Australian sacked after just 40 days and eight games in charge.

One hundred and sixty-four days ago, Chelsea’s previous visit to the City Ground on a sunny May afternoon, the complexion was different. At kick-off there was a contrasting kind of jeopardy in the air. It was the final game of the season, qualifying for the Champions League still a distinct possibility.

Erling Haaland’s double seized the points, took him to 23 goals in 13 games for club and country, and kept Tottenham as the only foes the uber-striker has failed to score against this season.

The 25-year-old’s finishes – on 58 and 63 minutes – shredded David Moyes’s visitors in two high-quality moments that decorated a generally middling affair. Without the injured Rodri and the departed Kevin De Bruyne, this Pep Guardiola iteration does not purr along like his finest ones have. Jack Grealish was not on the sward for Everton, because of the parent-club rule, and City’s manager may ponder the wisdom of allowing the forward’s nous and class to be loaned away.

For most of this breathless encounter, Bournemouth supporters were relishing the prospect of going top of the Premier League, albeit potentially only for a few hours, and inflicting only Crystal Palace’s second home defeat of 2025.

Andoni Iraola’s impressive side had led through two goals from teenager Eli Junior Kroupi before being pegged back by Jean-Philippe Mateta and thought they had won it when substitute Ryan Christie scored with two minutes of normal time remaining.

As Brighton’s mix of young hearts ran free, a canny campaigner condemned Newcastle to defeat in a stadium they are yet to win at in the Premier League. Danny Welbeck’s two goals were moments of rare composure in a squall of a contest. Welbeck’s also denied the Toon Army’s latest folk hero. From Lewis Miley’s pass, Nick Woltemade’s backheel flick, a speciality, had levelled the scoring.

Welbeck’s first was a moment of equal delicacy, his second saw him thrash a loose ball home. Brighton snatched a third win of the Premier League season, all against opponents playing in the Champions League, Newcastle following Chelsea and Manchester City.

• Leicester 22-20 Bath

• Lewis Moody, who has MND, watches his old teams

Leicester-Bath this may have been, the great rivalry of English rugby, courtesy of their pre-eminence either side of the turn of the millennium, but there was as much for rugby connoisseurs to savour at half-time on the Welford Road turf as there was during the actual match. Martin Johnson led a phalanx of Leicester old boys in honour of Lewis Moody, who has announced his diagnosis with motor neurone disease.

“I thought today’s game was a great advert for how we get behind our own,� said Geoff Parling, Leicester’s head coach. “Not just Lewis, but Ed Slater too. I was at Newcastle when Doddie [Weir] was there. When something happens to one of ours, the whole rugby community gets behind them.�

• Winner is elite British racing’s longest-priced victor

• Cicero’s Gift follows up at 100-1 in Champions Sprint

Calandagan became only the second horse ever to win the King George and Champion Stakes in the same season at Ascot, matching the achievement of the great Brigadier Gerard in 1972, but it was a very different moment of racing history that may stick longest in the memories of many racegoers at the track.

When Qirat set a record for the longest-priced victory in a British Group One race with a 150-1 success in the Sussex Stakes in August, it seemed likely to remain unmatched for years if not decades, but instead his tenure as elite British racing’s unlikeliest winner lasted only until mid-October and Powerful Glory’s 200-1 win in the Champions Sprint.

James Tavernier’s late goal earned Rangers a 2-2 draw with Dundee United at Ibrox as the interim manager, Steven Smith, got a taste of the fragility which has dogged the club all season.

The under-19s coach was taking the reins for the first time while the Light Blues search for a new manager to replace the sacked Russell Martin, with former Rangers player Kevin Muscat set to take over. Improvement under Smith was immediate and after 25 minutes midfielder Thelo Aasgaard scored a terrific first goal since signing from Luton in the summer.

• Thomas-Asante and Torp strike for Coventry

• Stoke beat Wrexham; West Brom back into top six

Coventry reclaimed their spot at the top of the Championship with a 2-0 victory over Blackburn.

Frank Lampard’s side had slipped to second in the table after Middlesbrough’s victory over Ipswich on Friday night, but goals from Victor Torp and Brandon Thomas-Asante took them back to the summit. Liam Kitching should have made it three near the end but he headed over from inside the six-yard box.

• Substitute scores winner three minutes into added time

• Bayer Leverkusen’s unbeaten away run hits 37 at Mainz

The substitute Ronald Araújo scored three minutes into added time as Barcelona secured a 2-1 win over a stubborn Girona in La Liga. Barcelona took the lead in the 13th minute, when Pedri received Lamine Yamal’s quick ball into the box and ran across the defensive line before dispatching a low left-footed finish.

Yet Axel Witsel’s spectacular bicycle kick off Arnau Martínez’s header levelled for Girona seven minutes later. The hosts pushed hard for the winner with five shots on target in the first 30 minutes of the second half and their efforts were finally rewarded when the late substitute Araújo struck in added time.

This story will be updated

Sally Carson’s Crooked Cross was written and set during the rise of nazism. It shows both how extremism takes hold, and the moral certainty needed to resist it

A few days ago I asked an American acquaintance – as one does these days – where he sees “it�, by which I meant the political situation, heading. He took a breath. “In my opinion, the US is in a very similar position to Germany in 1933-4,� he said. “And we have to ask, could 1936, 1937, 1938 have been avoided? That’s the point we are at. You can try to say fascism couldn’t happen in the US. But I think the jury’s out.�

His words seemed especially resonant to me because I had just finished reading a remarkable novel precisely to do with Germany in 1933-4, a book written in the former year and published in the latter. Forgotten for decades, Sally Carson’s Bavaria-set Crooked Cross was republished in April by Persephone Books, which specialises in reviving neglected works. Since then, it has been a surprise hit, a word-of-mouth jaw-dropper, passed from hand to hand.

Manufacturing is buckling under sky-high energy bills. Time to closely regulate price-gouging gas plants or take ownership of supply

Ed Miliband may want his political legacy to be a transition to net zero, but he could find his eventual political epitaph includes words on how he helped bury UK industry under the weight of high electricity charges.

Industrial ovens are being switched off and turbines spun for the last time as businesses add up the cost of powering their factories and decide it’s not worth the time and trouble.

This isn’t the first time Cory Mills has faced allegations of misconduct – but the House speaker wants to talk about ‘serious’ things

Meet Cory Mills, a Republican congressman representing Florida. He is rabidly anti-abortion, incredibly anti-immigration, and obsequiously pro-Trump. Earlier this year, perhaps in a desperate bid to get Dear Leader to notice him, he introduced a bill, dubbed the “DON-ument Act�, which would make the wall on the US-Mexico border a national monument.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist

The youngest and most vulnerable have suffered extreme mental and physical trauma. We can help – but we must be granted immediate access

• Alison Griffin is head of conflict and humanitarian campaigns at Save the Children UK

In the last few days, we have seen celebrations alongside cautious optimism about a future for Gaza without bombs and bullets. This much needed pause in hostilities is providing children with the chance to sleep without the fear of drones above their heads, airstrikes on nearby buildings or fires breaking out in their tents. Families in Gaza are slowly returning to their neighbourhoods and trying to salvage what they can of their lives from the rubble.

But crucially, what they are still not currently getting is full and sustainable access to aid supplies and vital services. This is about fundamental basic rights for children in the occupied Palestinian territory, which we have been demanding and advocating for since 1953.

Alison Griffin is head of conflict and humanitarian campaigns at Save the Children UK

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.

Fans who moan when a show is axed after its first season should be careful what they wish for. If only my TV obsession had ended a long time ago

It’s an all-too-familiar feeling. The second series of your favourite TV show has just begun streaming and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. Season one ended sooo perfectly: future plotlines were teased tantalisingly and a main character had – cliffhanger! – been offed (or had they?) In the months since the finale, you were perusing Reddit threads with other hardcores to find some Easter egg clues illuminating what would happen next.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. It feels like the entire writers’ room has been fired and replaced by artificial intelligence. Cut to the second episode, and your favourite cast member has done something that you and Reddit user Fishy2345 agree is totally out of character. By episode five, it’s clear that the showrunners have had collective amnesia around the storylines aggressively signposted in season one. And by the disappointing finale, you silently wish that the show had just been cancelled.

Priya Elan writes about the arts, music and fashion

His ruthless use of the national guard to menace cities and political enemies is unprecedented. He is preparing for battle against the ‘enemy within’

Donald Trump had better hope the members of the Nobel committee are not paying attention to what’s happening inside the United States. If they did take a look, they’d notice a jarring pattern. While the US president likes to play the peacemaker abroad, at home he is Trump, bringer of war.

It’s easy for the first fact to conceal, or divert our attention away from, the second. This week was a case in point. It began with Trump travelling to Israel, where he was hailed as a latter-day Cyrus, a mighty ruler whose name would be spoken of for millennia to come, the man who had brokered what he himself boasts is an “everlasting� peace.

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 indictment of critics including John Bolton rings alarm bells as the US president expands his power and seeks to use the justice system to exact revenge

“He who saves his country does not violate any law,� Donald Trump posted after beginning his second term – emboldened, perhaps, by the supreme court’s bombshell ruling on presidential immunity last year, which many say gave the office-holder the powers of a monarch.

Millions of Americans are expected to push back against the president’s growing power at No Kings protests across the US on Saturday. The demonstrations come as former intelligence and national security officials warn that the country is sliding towards “competitive authoritarianism�, in which elections and courts survive but are systematically manipulated by the executive.

The appetite for onscreen versions of much-loved literature is endless, but dogged faithfulness to a text is not the only way to stay true to authors’ spirit

It is a truth universally acknowledged that every classic novel must be in want of a sexed-up adaptation. Ever since Colin Firth’s Mr Darcy waded out of the lake in a wet shirt in the BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice adapted by Andrew Davies, we have expected the undercurrents of novels to be writ large on screen: the novel is dripping in sexual tension – who knew? No one objects when Jane Austen’s couples kiss on TV, although it never happens on the page. But we are reluctant to imagine more troubling historical realities, such as maternal mortality, or where the fortunes behind the big houses came from.

As part of the 250th celebrations of Austen’s birth, Davies shocked audiences at the Cliveden literary festival last week with revelations that he is working on versions of Emma and Mansfield Park that will include death, debauchery and slavery. Spoiler: Emma dies in childbirth.

Readers respond to an article by John Harris on the decimation of youth services

John Harris is right to suggest that youth clubs tackle the issues of loneliness, phone addiction and isolation increasingly affecting young people (Britain’s youth clubs have been quietly decimated. What’s most revealing is that few seem to care, 12 October).

I see this every day in my role as CEO of the youth charity OnSide. Whether it’s watching a teenager celebrating with their youth worker after scaling the climbing wall or proudly sharing a meal they’ve cooked in the centre’s kitchen with their friends, our network of youth clubs – known as youth zones – build the real-life connections and social skills that teenagers need to thrive.

Readers respond to Jonathan Jones’s Tate Modern review, including the charge that the artworks ‘fail to impose themselves on the venue’s vast space’

Jonathan Jones’s review of Máret �nne Sara’s installation at Tate Modern in London completely misses the point (13 October). The land the Sámi live in is “quite big�, just as the Turbine Hall is in Jones’s words, but the Sámi do not take over the entirety of their landscape. They live within it.

The “fort� is not a place to “hide�. That is a city-boy reading rather than a deeper understanding of the ancient methods that Sámi families use for herding reindeer in the vastness of their lands, combined with the political realities that surround them. Jones is too close to playgrounds and not close enough to the realities of the Sámi and northern political history.

Jonathan Michie responds to an article about the pioneering wartime work of the Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers

Andrew Smith is right to applaud the work of Tommy Flowers for building Colossus, the world’s first digital programmable computer, delivered to Bletchley Park in 1944 (Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn’t see in the movies, 12 October). The piece concludes with Flowers stressing: “It’s never just one person in one place� – teamwork and collaboration are key. This is even truer than the article might imply, when it says “subsequent models� of Colossus “included many new features and innovations�, as if these had been the result of Flowers working alone, just upgrading his design. Quite the contrary.

It is well documented (for example, in the 2006 book Colossus by B Jack Copeland and others) that the Bletchley Park codebreakers Jack Good and Donald Michie not only utilised Colossus to help break the codes, they enhanced the computer; it was these developments that were so successfully incorporated by Flowers in subsequent machines.

Orthodoxy that prevents women occupying key roles in the Church of England is pretty much a description of misogyny, writes Simon Burch. Plus a letter from James Caird

Rev Simon Jones puts in a plea for a broad church, stating that “traditionalist� views are neither misogynistic nor bigoted (Letters, 13 October). And yet the appeal to tradition and orthodoxy that prevents women occupying key roles is pretty much a description of misogyny and patriarchy. No doubt there are many sincere and educated clerics within the Taliban who similarly justify the withholding of education for girls. Some convictions, however genuinely held, are bigoted and should not be accepted within the modern church.
Simon Burch
Abergavenny, Monmouthshire

• In matters of theological difference, Rev Simon Jones appears to value the small print more than the mission statement.
James Caird
Ludlow, Shropshire

Exclusive: Peer meet Israeli officials and business leaders on visit that had no support from ministers

The Foreign Office recommended that David Lammy endorse a trade mission to Israel, days after he suspended trade talks and rebuked the country’s government, internal documents reveal.

In an unusual move, officials asked for ministerial advice over Ian Austin’s visit to Israel in late May. Bureaucratic dysfunction meant the trip by the trade envoy went ahead without the support of ministers or advisers.

Driver lost control of bus in Saloá in Pernambuco state and cause of accident is under investigation

A passenger bus in north-eastern Brazil has crashed into a sand embankment and flipped on its side, killing 15 people, local authorities have said.

The bus was carrying about 30 passengers, police said on Saturday, but the number of injured, who were taken to nearby hospitals, was not immediately clear. The vehicle departed from the state of Bahia and crashed in Saloá, a city in the neighbouring state of Pernambuco.

No one was hurt in the incident when a wing from one plane struck the tail of another United aircraft

A United Airlines plane heading for its gate clipped the tail of another United aircraft at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, authorities said.

No one was hurt in Friday’s incident, and the 113 passengers on flight 2652 from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, were able to leave the plane normally after a delay, United officials said in a statement.

Tehran terminates 2015 deal under which sanctions were lifted in return for curbs on country’s nuclear programme

An international deal with Iran designed to keep the world safe from the spread of atomic weapons has officially ended, with Tehran announcing the termination of the decade-old agreement.

Iran said on Saturday that it was no longer bound by the 2015 agreement, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), under which international sanctions were lifted in exchange for limitations on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

Johnathan Walton, who was a victim of Marianne ‘Mair’ Smyth, had helped UK authorities track her down

A US podcaster and author who helped UK authorities convict a woman derisively known as the “Queen of the Con� of defrauding a group of Northern Irish mortgage advice customers has expressed disappointment in her being sentenced on Friday to only four years in prison.

“She scams or tries to scam everyone she meets, and she will never change,� Johnathan Walton said in a statement after Marianne “Mair� Smyth’s sentencing closed the books on a transatlantic case against her.

Margot Raggett, whose latest compilation shows animals scrubbed from natural habitats, calls for rethink on UK accelerated housebuilding

Margot Raggett has spent the past decade raising money for conservation efforts around the world but now she feels nervous about the future. “It does feel like we’ve taken a backward step,� she said.

The wildlife photographer has raised £1.2m for the cause in the past 10 years through her Remembering Wildlife series, an annual, not-for-profit picture book featuring images of animals from the world’s top nature photographers. The first edition was published in 2015, when the Paris climate agreement was being drafted but, in the years since, efforts to tackle the climate crisis have been rolled back.

Stoats have been an existential threat to Orkney’s rare birds but technology is helping to eradicate them

At first, the stoat looks like a faint smudge in the distance. But, as it jumps closer, its sleek body is identified by a heat-detecting camera and, with it, an alert goes out to Orkney’s stoat hunters.

Aided by an artificial intelligence programme trained to detect a stoat’s sinuous shape and movement, trapping teams are dispatched with the explicit aim of finding and killing it. It is the most sophisticated technology deployed in one of the world’s largest mammal eradication projects, which has the aim of detecting the few stoats left on Orkney.

From Venice to the Iguazu Falls, an exhibition in London illustrates the hidden cost of our gadgets and devices

Artists have created visualisations of the impact of the climate crisis on some of the world’s most recognisable landscapes, in a project to highlight the environmental effects of tech consumption.

Venice in Italy, the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, Iguazu Falls on the border of Argentina and Brazil, and the Seine River in Paris were among the locations used to explore to potential impacts of the climate crisis by the end of the century. The results are on display at an exhibition in London.

Ten platypuses were reintroduced into Sydney’s Royal national park in 2023. This week, two new juveniles were discovered, leading one researcher to cry ‘Oh, give me a hug’

Hunting platypuses takes patience. On Thursday afternoon, I headed into the Royal national park, south of Sydney, with researchers who had reintroduced a small population of the elusive monotremes two years ago.

There was a big net and torches – and our dinner. It could be a long wait.

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Exclusive: More than 14,600 women readmitted within 30 days of birth in last year, raising alarm over early discharges

Thousands of new mothers are being readmitted to hospital in England every year, figures reveal, raising fresh concerns about NHS maternity care.

Discharging women from hospital prematurely increases the risk of conditions linked to childbirth being missed, and can be extremely distressing. If childbirth injuries or other conditions are not treated until the mother is readmitted days or weeks later, the chances of a complete recovery may also be reduced.

The Met’s elite SO15 unit alleged a parliamentary researcher helped his friend create 34 reports for a shadowy front

For Christopher Cash it was а job he adored. The young parliamentary researcher, then in his late 20s, was a China specialist working successively for two influential backbenchers, Tom Tugendhat and Alicia Kearns. He had a parliamentary pass and was plugged into Westminster’s gossip network during 2022, a year of Conservative turmoil in Westminster, three prime ministers and future policy uncertainty.

At the same time, Cash was in close contact with a friend, Christopher Berry, a teacher based in Hangzhou, eastern China, where the Britons had first met five years earlier. They discussed politics constantly, using an encrypted app. At one point, on 18 July, Berry allegedly told him he had met a senior Chinese Communist party leader (though he now denies meeting anybody of that rank). In a reply the next day, Cash said: “You’re in spy territory now.�

Rachel Reeves understood to be eyeing cuts to Motability scheme as she tries to plug hole in country’s finances

Rachel Reeves has said she “can’t leave welfare untouched� this parliament, with the Treasury understood to be considering axing up to £1bn in tax breaks for a scheme providing cars for disabled people.

The chancellor set out her thinking on welfare before next month’s budget in an interview, having previously said she would need to make cuts and raise taxes.

Dune star says performers are regularly pressed to have bodies scanned on set with few rights over how data is used

• ‘Have we done ourselves out of a job?’: concerns in film and TV industry over on-set body scanning

Actors should have as much control over the data harvested from scans of their body as they do over nudity scenes, the actor Olivia Williams has said, amid heightened concern over artificial intelligence’s impact on performers.

The star of Dune: Prophecy and The Crown said she and other actors were regularly pressed to have their bodies scanned by banks of cameras while on set, with few guarantees about how the data would be used or where it would end up.

Canada isn’t helping to repatriate refugee applicant Mahin Shahriar, a 28-year-old Bangladeshi man, his lawyer says

A refugee applicant living in Canada is trapped at a US immigration detention facility after he says he mistakenly crossed the border, but his lawyer says Canada isn’t helping to bring him back.

Mahin Shahriar, 28, who came to Canada from Bangladesh in 2019, told the Canadian Press he accepted an invitation from a “friend� to visit a property near Montreal, which he now suspects was part of a broader human trafficking operation.

BPA, a synthetic chemical used in production of plastics, found in baby products made by three big European brands

A chemical linked to impaired sexual development, obesity and cancer has been found in baby dummies manufactured by three big European brands.

Dummies made by the Dutch multinational Philips, the Swiss oral health specialists Curaprox and the French toy brand Sophie la Girafe were found to contain bisphenol A (BPA), according to laboratory testing by dTest, a Czech consumer organisation. Philips said they had carried out subsequent testing and found no BPA, while Sophie la Girafe said the amount found was insignificant.

Generation Z women represent the most leftwing demographic in modern US history: ‘There’s definitely a gender divide’

When Emily Gardiner first started paying attention to politics, she was 15, just beginning high school in 2016. It was the start of the first Trump administration, a moment that politicized a lot of young Americans.

Now 23, Emily works as a library assistant in eastern Connecticut and is rewriting the second draft of her adult fantasy novel. She describes herself as “definitely leftist, not liberal�.

Normalisation of far-right stances likely to affect success of such parties at ballot boxes across Europe, say researchers

Mainstream parties are increasingly allowing the far right to set the agenda, researchers in Germany have found, describing it as a shortcoming that had unwittingly helped the far right by legitimising their ideas and disseminating them more widely.

The findings, published in the European Journal of Political Research, were based on an automated text analysis of 520,408 articles from six German newspapers over the span of more than two decades.

Measures come amid concern generative AI characters are having inappropriate conversations with under-18s

Parents will be able to block their children’s interactions with Meta’s AI character chatbots, as the tech company addresses concerns over inappropriate conversations.

The social media company is adding new safeguards to its “teen accounts�, which are a default setting for under-18 users, by letting parents turn off their children’s chats with AI characters. These chatbots, which are created by users, are available on Facebook, Instagram and the Meta AI app.

From 007 to Elsa, Vermillio claims it can trace percentage of AI-generated image drawn from pre-existing material

Ask Google’s AI video tool to create a film of a time-travelling doctor who flies around in a blue British phone booth and the result, unsurprisingly, resembles Doctor Who.

And if you ask OpenAI’s technology to do the same, a similar thing happens. What’s wrong with that, you may think?

Layoffs follow $8.4bn merger between Skydance Media and Paramount Global in August

Paramount Skydance will begin mass layoffs the week of 27 October, eliminating about 2,000 US jobs as part of a $2bn cost-cutting plan under new chief executive David Ellison, Variety reported on Saturday.

The layoffs follow the $8.4bn merger between Skydance Media and Paramount Global, which closed in August.

The private Alpha School says its students can learn faster and better – but experts warn not all may benefit from an AI boom in schools

In the world’s tech innovation epicenter, an “AI-powered� private school has made headlines for unabashedly embracing the technology.

Alpha School San Francisco, which opened its doors to K-8 students this fall, is the newest outpost of a network of 14 nationwide private schools. Its learning model entails just two hours of focused academic work per day, during which the school says students can learn twice as fast as their counterparts in traditional schools – with the help of artificial intelligence.

When she died, the writer left behind a cache of notebooks and manuscripts. Her biographer reveals what they tell us about her unlikely rise to literary stardom

When To Kill a Mockingbird was published in the summer of 1960, it seemed to have sprung from nowhere, like an Alabamian Athena: a perfectly formed novel from an unknown southern writer without any evident precedent or antecedent. The book somehow managed to be both urgently of its time and instantly timeless, addressing the era’s most turbulent issues, from the civil rights movement to the sexual revolution, while also speaking in the register of the eternal, from the moral awakening of children and the abiding love of families to the frictions between the self and society.

But no writer is without influences and aspirations: Harper Lee had, of course, come from somewhere and worked tremendously hard to become someone. It was only because she did not like talking about herself that her origins seemed so mysterious, and inevitably, the better To Kill a Mockingbird did – becoming a bestseller and then winning a Pulitzer prize, selling 1m copies and then 10m and then 40m – the more theories and rumours rushed in to fill her silence. In the years after the book came out, the public image of Lee swung between two of her beloved characters: she was either the living incarnation of her feisty, tomboyish heroine Jean Louise “Scout� Finch or, in her seeming reclusiveness, a version of that shy shadow figure, Arthur “Boo� Radley.

£2,000-a-ticket event, where 800 guests will hobnob among world’s treasures, could herald new reality in desperate arts funding climate

There will be champagne, of course, and dancing, fine Indian food served alongside the Parthenon marbles and cocktails mixed in front of the Renaissance treasures of the Waddesdon bequest. And everywhere – from the lights illuminating the Greek revival architecture, to the carpet on which guests arrive, to the glamorous outfits they are requested to wear – a very particular shade of pink.

When the British Museum throws open its doors on Saturday evening for its first “pink ball�, it will not only be hosting an enormous and lavish party, but also inaugurating what its director, Nicholas Cullinan, has called a “flagship national event� that he hopes will become as important to his institution’s finances as it will to the London elite’s social calendar.

More murder and suspicion in Anthony Horowitz’s gripping series. Plus: moreish French drama The Intruder concludes. Here’s what to watch this evening

9.20pm, BBC One

Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear thriller is dazzling and almost unbearably tense, and Roald Dahl’s wicked couple come to life … with plenty of fart gags

A missile of unknown origin has been launched from the Pacific – and it’s heading for the US. From that hook, Kathryn Bigelow has fashioned an almost unbearably tense thriller out of the American response. As government agencies and armed forces kick into “defcon� mode, the subsequent 15 minutes or so are seen several times from multiple points of view – a missile defence battalion in Alaska, White House politicians and advisers (including Rebecca Ferguson), the military high command, the president himself (Idris Elba). It’s a dazzling, skilful piece of cinema, laser-focused despite the huge (yet utterly believable) cast, with Bigelow’s fascination with the nuts and bolts of statecraft to the fore. Simon Wardell
Friday 24 October, Netflix

To celebrate the return of charming hit Nobody Wants This, romcom superfans like Russell T Davies and Jack Rooke pick their favourite shows. Prepare to be swept off your feet!

It’s perfect, that’s all. It’s got the perfect meet-cute (boob, crashed car, injured dog); the perfect combination of realism and romance (especially for non-romantics like me); the perfect heroine (neither the hot mess nor the manic pixie dream girl we are so often forced to accept); the perfect hero (laid-back but not lazy, older but not creepy, patient, not a pillock) and perfect writing.

Alex Lawther and Jamie-Lee O’Donnell star in this adaptation of Rónán Hession’s understated 2019 novel. Its quiet celebration of the gentle life is the opposite of today’s frantic TV – even if it does feature a Hollywood megastar’s voice

On a well-maintained driveway in an unremarkable suburb of Dublin, a small man in a sleeveless jumper is professing a desire to expand his horizons. “I feel myself getting quieter. More invisible,� says Leonard, blinking up at the night sky. “One thing’s led to another and now I feel like if I don’t do something I’ll just carry on in this …� – he searches for a fitting encapsulation of his life – “… minor, harmless existence.� Hungry Paul – Leonard’s best and, indeed, only friend – considers the implications of this announcement. “Nothing wrong with that, though,� he replies, bathrobe flapping thoughtfully in the breeze. “Better than trying to make a mark on the world only to wind up defacing it.�

For those exhausted by the bluster and rat-tat-tat of today’s TV terrain, here is Leonard and Hungry Paul with a foil blanket and warming mug of Ribena.

After several people close to me died I became obsessed with fitness and gripped by panic attacks. But then a ska cover taught me life doesn’t have to be serious all the time

My anxious disposition means I think about death a lot. But a cluster of people I loved dying in 2023, and most of them unexpectedly and within a few months of each other, was enough to shake my nervous system up pretty significantly. Five funerals is too many. The first was my nan: she was the family matriarch. The oldest person in the family, so there was a level of acceptance among the sadness. But soon after it was her son, and then her granddaughter (my cousin). The latter two were shocks, completely upending my nervous system, one compounding the other. From there, two more followed. Death was all around. It wasn’t just a part of life by that point – it was something to expect soon and often.

At first I seemed fine. Despite concerned friends and partners asking if I was hiding anything, I didn’t think I was. But soon I retreated from fun, becoming very fixated on things like my resting heart rate and body fat percentage. I skipped social events for high-intensity interval training sessions followed by the sauna followed by meditation – not a bad thing, but not a balance, either. I cut out caffeine, including dark chocolate. When I didn’t stick to my new routine, I would have a panic attack, which I’d assume was a heart attack, which would lead to more frequent episodes of panic.

With 600,000 people attending, Hull Fair is the UK’s biggest – and has a thrilling but overlooked musical subculture. We follow the blaring soundsystems to meet the DJs and MCs facing off in waltzer battles

The smell of fried onions wafts across the pink glare of candy floss, as lights pop, smoke billows and songs play simultaneously at deafening volume: walking through Hull Fair is a sensory overload.

Stretching across 16 acres and more than 300 attractions, it is one of the largest travelling fairs in Europe and will pull in around 600,000 people during a week-long run that ends on Sunday. However, despite the myriad thrills, including the UK’s tallest fairground ride, there’s one attraction that remains king: the waltzers. When this year’s event was officially opened by the lord mayor, it was via a ceremonial bell ringing on one of these rides.

Co-Op Live, Manchester
Switching from full-arena singalongs to horn-blaring funk to sweaty Detroit techno club vibes, the rapper is at the very top of her game

Pop stars often stumble along the fine line between confidence and arrogance (see Taylor Swift’s latest opus), but north London’s rap visionary Little Simz appears to be in perfect balance. Should anyone decide to challenge the songwriter’s self belief – or as she names it in the hit single Selfish, “heritage ego� – this week’s back-to-back arena gigs prove her hard-earned place at the forefront of Black British music is warranted.

Before she walks on to the stage, 90s baby pictures of an even littler Simz flash on the drop down screens, before we flick through the years to an awkward yet adorable teenager with her first guitar. It all leads to the present, where tonight she is an honorary Manc in a khaki overcoat, swinging her arms behind her lower back with plentiful Gallagher swagger: “Missed you!� She radiates joy and gratitude, but the live show does not shy away from her life’s trials, and she confronts the fallout of a messy public financial dispute with menacing metaphors and a slick vengeance that slips readily from her tongue.

Compelling guitarist with the rock band Kiss whose ‘Spaceman’ persona matched his otherworldly performances

In May 1983, the guitarist Ace Frehley was driving his DeLorean sports car along the Bronx River Parkway in New York when he was asked to pull over by a police officer. In an intoxicated state, Frehley “sped off�, as the charge sheet later phrased it, reaching 90mph and colliding with four other cars. He was caught, arrested and charged with drunk and reckless driving.

“My licence was revoked, I had to pay a large fine, and I received a bunch of negative publicity,� he recalled, adding: “The other consequence was a court-ordered two-week stint in a hospital detox unit, and some mandatory AA meetings.�

Ahead of the BBBF this weekend, authors who’ll be in attendance explain the crisis in publishing of Black writing, and why coming together is the solution

On Sunday morning, the Barbican’s vast concrete foyer will swap its usual quiet for a buzz of conversation and excitement, and a particular kind of cultural energy: Black British storytelling in all its multiplicity.

Now in its fifth year, the Black British book festival (BBBF) has become Europe’s largest celebration of Black literature. What began as a small, intimate gathering has grown into a national institution attracting thousands of attendees and some of the biggest names in publishing.

An indie-pop darling details his rise to fame and subsequent public humiliations with appealing frankness

Evan Dando’s autobiography opens in early 2021. The singer is living in a mouldering trailer on Martha’s Vineyard. He has a $200-a-day drug habit and is subsisting off a diet of cigarettes and cheeseburgers that he can’t chew because the heroin, cocaine and amphetamine he’s injecting have caused his teeth to fall out.

It’s all a very long way from Dando’s brief burst of fame as frontman and solitary longstanding member of the Lemonheads: two big albums in 1992’s It’s a Shame About Ray, and 1993’s Come on Feel the Lemonheads, a huge hit cover of Simon and Garfunkel’s Mrs Robinson, an era with Dando’s face taking its place alongside the Betty Blue and magic eye posters on halls of residence walls, the Docs-shod female student’s pin-up of choice. But it’s also not totally unexpected, at least if you have even a glancing knowledge of the singer’s subsequent travails. Mainstream success was short-lived: Dando succeeds in sabotaging his own career in a blaze of hard drugs and wildly unpredictable behaviour. For the last 35 years, drugs and unpredictability – rather than music – is what Dando has become known for. The book’s blurb mentions “heroin chic�, but in truth, Dando’s dissipation is almost impossible to put any kind of romantic gloss on. To his credit, he doesn’t bother, instead recounting one public humiliation after another with a what-can-you-do? shrug.

A cocktail of heroin and cocaine puts paid to a show designed to impress investors who’ve just bought a share of Dando’s song publishing for $300,000, but it’s just one of many gigs that collapse into chaos: he falls offstage, or the police are called and he’s led away from the venue in handcuffs. The Lemonheads miss their slot at Glastonbury because Dando is holed up in a hotel, doing heroin: when he does eventually turn up, he performs an unscheduled solo set, but the crowd throw bottles and boo him offstage. He hangs around Oasis in their pomp, even writing a song with Noel Gallagher: it has to be removed from a Lemonheads album at the last minute, because Gallagher deems it an “embarrassment�.

Quantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan; The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves; The Long Shoe by Bob Mortimer; Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet; The Winter Warriors by Olivier Norek

Quantum of Menace by Vaseem Khan (Zaffre, £20)
Dismissed from his role as a back-room boffin in the British secret service, Major Boothroyd, AKA Q, returns to his market-town roots in Khan’s excellent James Bond spin-off. This Q is currently in his 50s; his backstory includes a fling with Miss Moneypenny, and emotional baggage in the form of his retired history don father. What’s drawn him home is the mysterious drowning of his old friend, quantum scientist Peter Napier, who has left him an encrypted note; although the coroner has ruled the death to be accidental and Q’s old flame, DCI Kathy Burnham, is not minded to reopen the case. The stakes here are worthy of the Fleming canon – Napier’s revolutionary work may have terrible consequences – and even if you’re not a Bond fan, you can’t fail to enjoy this solidly plotted and unexpectedly funny blend of nostalgia and new technology.

The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves (Macmillan, £22)
Bestseller Cleeves’s latest novel is billed as the return of Jimmy Perez, as Perez and his life partner DI Willow Reeves, now living on the Orkney Islands with their young son, team up to solve a murder. It’s nearly Christmas when Jimmy’s old friend Archie Stout is found dead at the site of an archeological dig, felled by a Neolithic stone purloined from the local heritage centre. Suspects soon proliferate: the artist with whom roving-eyed Archie may have been having an affair; teacher and local history enthusiast George Riley; mediagenic archeology professor Tony Johnson, and even the deceased’s wife. With an evocation of place that is second to none, Cleeves keeps the narrative plates spinning beautifully to create a complex plot that takes in both the thorny issue of who controls heritage and the pernicious effects of online misogyny.

Poet who wrote with originality, warmth and mischief about his home city of Hull, after turning to writing later in life

The work of the poet Maurice Rutherford, who has died aged 103, ranges from love poems and elegies for his late wife to friendly, witty, but sometimes politically trenchant responses to poems by Philip Larkin, and demonstrates that a poet can be a master of language and form without compromising the authentic voice of working-class experience.

It was not until he was in his 50s that, during a 10-year period of voluntary service with the Samaritans, Maurice first tried his hand at verse. As a branch publicity officer, one of his tasks was the monthly production of an in-house newsletter, and he decided to print, anonymously, a comic anecdote in verse form. When he asked a colleague who was a grammar school teacher what he thought of the contributor’s effort, the answer was dismissive: it did not rhyme or scan! Maurice decided to take up the challenge.

Forty years ago today, the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in the US – and a generation of kids were sucked into video games for life

The Nintendo Entertainment System was released in the United States on 18 October 1985: about a year after I was born, and 40 years ago today. It’s as if the company sensed that a sucker who’d spend thousands of dollars on plastic toys and electronic games had just entered the world. Actually, it’s as if the company had sensed that an entire generation of fools like me was about to enter the world. Which is true. That was the time to strike. We were about to be drained of every dollar we received for birthdays, Christmases and all those times our dad didn’t want us to tell our mom about something. (Maybe that last one’s just me.)

Despite being slightly older than the NES, a horror I’m only now forced to face as I write this, it felt like that console had always existed in my life. I don’t have many memories from my baby years because I was too busy learning how to use my hands and eyes, but as far back as I can actually remember, “Nintendo� was a word synonymous with video games. Friends would ask if you had Nintendo (no “the�, no “a�) at your house the same way they might ask if you had Coca-Cola in the fridge.

This whimsical action-adventure game sees you stomping through nature as a life-giving lighthouse – and it only gets weirder from there

The world of Keeper looms from the screen like a dream coloured by psilocybin. Here is a gnarled landmass of bubblegum blues, powder pinks and strange, luminous beasts, where evolution seems to occur at light speed. This world’s considerable beauty is amplified by how it is rendered: like a 1980s fantasy movie filled with charmingly handmade practical effects. Keeper is the latest title from Double Fine, maker of trippy platformer Psychonauts 2, Kickstarter sensation Broken Age and many other idiosyncratic titles. It is an action-adventure resplendent with the lumps and bumps of life’s imperfections, as if its 3D modellers had sculpted the setting from papier-mache rather than using computer software.

Even stranger than the setting is the protagonist: you play as a lighthouse, coming to appreciate this gleaming ecological fantasia by shining its beacon about the environment. Long shadows stretch behind illuminated objects, making the outlines of spectacularly supersized plants and tiny critters all the more pronounced. The casting of light is how you interact with the world: it often causes vegetation to grow before your eyes, and sometimes unusual inhabitants will feast upon it. As you lumber through this environment – calm lagoons and sun-baked canyons filled with prickly cacti – there is joy to be found in simply looking, taking the weirdness in, and then bringing it to even greater life.

PC, PS5, Xbox; Konami
After an apocalyptic supernatural fog descends, school girl Hinako wakes up in a town populated by psychosexual beasts and gaslighting men in masks

There are some horror games you can finish in a couple of days of intense play; they almost invite that sort of frenzied consumption. But there are others that need to be savoured, and sometimes even suffered. Silent Hill f is in the latter category, which is why our review is somewhat delayed. This slowburn descent into psychological horror is set in 1960s Japan, but it also has pertinent things to say about the modern era and the tendrils of misogyny crawling out of the basement of the culture wars.

Lead character Hinako Shimizu is a school girl in the small conservative town of Ebisugaoka. Her father is a bully who treats his wife like a servant and his daughter like an inconvenience, and her best friend is Shu, a boy who may harbour deeper feelings for her – much to the frustration of another friend Rinko, who has a serious crush on him. It reads like a teen drama, which in a way it is, until an apocalyptic supernatural fog descends on the town and almost everyone goes missing.

Xbox’s portable console combines the openness of PC gaming and Microsoft’s desire for you to play its titles anywhere – but it doesn’t come cheap or without hitches

The ROG Xbox Ally X, the handheld console collaboration from Asus and Microsoft, is an impressive, yet expensive, piece of gaming tech. The pricier of the two portable gaming devices dropping on 16 October, the all-black ROG Xbox Ally X will cost you a cool £799 (€899/$999/A$1599) to sample its splendour. (The less powerful ROG Xbox Ally, which comes in white, will run you £499/€599/$599/A$999.) Thankfully, the pricier option has said splendour in spades.

I’ve put the ROG Xbox Ally X through its paces for the last few weeks, playing indie darlings and massive role-playing games throughout my apartment. Though the price tag is certainly a shocker (the Steam Deck OLED, a direct competitor, costs £479/€569/$549/A$899 for its cheaper model), the power packed into this comparatively smaller frame (291 x 122 x 51mm) is like nothing the portable gaming market has seen before.

Morgan Library & Museum, New York

Famed impressionist painter’s lesser-seen drawings are the focus of a major new exhibition that invites us into the stages of his artistic process

His luminous colours and sensual brushwork adorn countless mugs, posters and tote bags as well as blockbuster exhibitions. But the commodification of Pierre-Auguste Renoir and his fellow impressionist painters has been missing something.

Renoir was an accomplished draftsman who produced a distinguished but largely unheralded collection of drawings, pastels, watercolours and prints.

Fashion and art are familiar bedfellows but relevance of fashion at London contemporary art showcase has grown in past decade

“When you are at the art fair, you push the fashion to be bold and experiment – no black allowed,� says Belma Gaudio, at the opening of Frieze art fair in London.

Gaudio is the founder of fashion boutique Koibird and an art collector, and carries a bright green Hermès bag, and her own knitted co-ords with pictures of insects to make her point.

Barbican, London
Amala Dianor Company and baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants combine for an occasionally exquisite yet oddly dispassionate show

The marrying of music and dance is an indefatigable exploration. There are countless ways to fuse the two or play them off against one another, especially when musicians and dancers are physically sharing the stage.

In a UK premiere for Dance Umbrella festival, here is a 400-year-old piece of music, Carlos Gesualdo’s Tenebrae Responsoria, and six singers from baroque ensemble Les Arts Florissants entwined with four dancers choreographed by Senegal-born, France-based Amala Dianor. They are not obvious bedfellows – a Muslim choreographer who started out in hip-hop, alongside sacred vocal music on the Passion of Jesus from 1611 – and the unexpected coupling brings consonance and dissonance.

Dance Umbrella festival continues until 31 October

As Sámi culture is threatened by the climate emergency and hostility from Nordic nations, the artist has built a structure of resistance: a labyrinthine artwork of animal pelts and bones based on a reindeer’s nasal passages

Visitors to Tate Modern are used to unusual encounters in its vast Turbine Hall. They’ve sunbathed before an artificial sun, slid down helter skelters and witnessed AI-powered robotic jellyfish floating through the air. But this is the first time they will be taking a deep dive into a reindeer’s nose. The latest artist commission for the cavernous space – by the Indigenous Sámi artist Máret �nne Sara – invites gallerygoers into a labyrinthine structure based on the scaled-up interior of a reindeer’s nasal passages. Once inside they can meander round or chill out on reindeer hides, listening on headphones to Sámi elders telling stories and imparting knowledge.

Why the nose? It might sound whimsical but the installation pays tribute to a little-known natural marvel: scientists have discovered that in under a second, the reindeer’s nose can heat the surrounding air it inhales by 80 degrees celsius, enabling the animal to survive in inhospitable Arctic temperatures. Scaling the nose up to larger than human size, Sara says, “creates a sense of inferiority that you as a human being are not dominant over nature�. The artist is a former journalist, children’s author and land defender, who comes from a reindeer-herding family in northern Norway. “Maybe that creates the potential to shift your perspective or trigger some humbleness,� she adds.

AmfAR, set up by Elizabeth Taylor, is known for hosting lavish parties and raising huge sums for HIV and Aids research

It’s recognised for its pomp, the celebrity supporters and the fabulously glamorous locations, but for the man behind the amfAR gala, an A-list charity roadshow that rolled into London for the first time this weekend, the event is deeply personal.

AmfAR – the American Foundation for Aids Research – is a nonprofit group that emerged in the 1980s to support research into HIV and Aids.

Actor who played the mild-mannered car dealer Roy Evans in more than 600 episodes of the BBC TV soap EastEnders

Tony Caunter, who has died aged 88, spent more than 30 years as a jobbing actor before finding fame in EastEnders as the mild-mannered Roy Evans, a car dealer who married Pat Butcher. The couple met on Boxing Day 1994 when the bombastic Pat (played by Pam St Clement) stormed into Roy’s office to tear him off a strip for selling a faulty vehicle to her son, David Wicks (Michael French).

The gentle Roy apologised by sending her flowers and a car wrapped in a large red ribbon. Pat eventually gave in to his requests for a date and was surprised that, for months, he showed no interest in consummating their relationship. It emerged that Roy was impotent

The world’s largest free-to-the-public sculpture exhibition is on again along Sydney’s Bondi to Tamarama coastal walk after surviving a funding shortfall

In this week’s newsletter: As they chase the streamers, our national broadcasters’ once-distinct identities have melded into faceless programming punchbowls

For seasoned tea-leaf readers of the future of TV in the UK, two stories will have stood out this week, swirling around at the bottom of their cups. There was the news that MTV is shutting down its music channels – sad for those of us who misspent their youth watching them, though hardly surprising either, given MTV’s decades-long shift away from music and towards rolling repeats of Teen Mom and shows about tattooists. And there was a media piece in the Guardian about the demise of British TV’s once-gold plated 9pm slot, which for the first time last month failed to achieve a rating of 1m or more among any of the major broadcasters.

That second story was a little surprising. Overnight viewing figures are in constant decline in the streaming age, but even by those standards, not one solitary rating over 1m is eye-catching.

Unsportsmanlike conduct in grassroots football and on the sidelines at school events is on the rise. How can parents support their child in the right way?

Pushy and shouty parents are the “biggest problem in sports performance�, sports psychologists have said, amid growing concern that pressure and abuse is hampering competitive sport in the UK.

This week parents were banned from attending sports events at a number of south London primary schools due to “concerning behaviours�, including abuse towards officials and children and creating “too much pressure around performance and winning at all costs�.

The actor on an elevator encounter with Helen Mirren, an apology to a teacher and the lie he told to see Arsenal

Born in London, David Ajala, 39, trained at the Anna Scher Theatre School. He joined the RSC in 2008, went on to work at the National Theatre and this year appeared in the West End with Ewan McGregor in My Master Builder. He has had roles in the films Kidulthood, Adulthood and Brotherhood, The Dark Knight, Fast & Furious 6 and Jupiter Ascending. Currently he is in Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue on BBC One and The Woman in Cabin 10 on Netflix. He lives in Essex with his wife and two children.

When were you happiest?
When I was naive to the complexities of life.