Today's Headlines — GB

(Reprise) The crossover star’s introspective sixth album is full of memories of his mother, who died in 2025, bringing his dextrous guitar to songs rooted in tradition and yearning On the face of it, 2025 was a landmark year for Billy Strings. His fifth album, Highway Prayers, won him his third…

The author of The Adversary and Yoga unearths a history that includes the Nazis, Russia, and the Académie Française When Emmanuel Carrère’s mother, Hélène, died in 2023, at the age of 94, President Macron spoke at her memorial. She had been “perpetual secretary” of the Académie Française, in effect…

A terminally ill woman makes a final trip to Egypt in an exquisitely wrought portrait of end-of-life reckoning Virginia Woolf said of Middlemarch that it is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people. In the shallow and infantilising age through which we are living, Colin Thubron…

A writer and activist links the climate crisis to battles for justice around the world in this vital book It has become increasingly difficult to change our minds, to question our own views or to find common ground with people we disagree with, all of which makes Natasha Walter’s new book both…

A brilliant new biography that does its subject the favour of taking her seriously – even if few else did Barbara Cartland was famous for dictating her novels. With a pekingese clamped to her hot pink bosom she would lie back on a library couch and exhale a story about virginal girls taming wayward…

A Guardian correspondent’s sobering account of the US betrayal of Ukraine – and the possible reasons behind it American presidents have struggled to get the measure of Vladimir Putin. When George W Bush met him in 2001, he reported that he had “looked the man in the eye”, got a “sense of his soul”…

Latest attack happened amid Islamophobic blowback against Arab and Muslim Americans running for office Nashid Shakir describes how assailants used wire cutters to break into the Westwood Islamic Community Center in the early hours of 3 August. “They cut the wire and broke the window to get in. They…

Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some wonderful new paperbacks, from a short story collection by a literary great to razor-sharp criticism *** Continue reading...

Channel 4’s programme wastes a chance to ask important questions about how ADHD is diagnosed and treated, instead indulging in unscientific methods and conspiracy theories Prof Gina Rippon is emeritus professor of cognitive neuroimaging at the Aston Brain Centre, Aston University When Channel 4…

Despite the recent hearings in Congress, we seem to be even further from the goal of understanding Covid-19’s origin’s than we have ever been As a microbiologist and infectious disease clinician, it has been tough to watch the recent devolution of public discourse on Covid-19 origins. It has been…

Israeli PM criticised by political rival for attacking an international ally and overseeing ‘horrific diplomatic failure’ The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the UK “the Islamic republic of Britain” in a podcast interview, where he also described the country as the “first Islamic…

Attending a Nick Jonas show with my kids was an invitation to ‘collective effervescence’. We need these shared experiences now more than ever Three years ago, I agreed to accompany my children to a Nick Jonas concert. The appeal of the Jonas Brothers, and in this case only one of them, was…

Chequered Flag's Harry Benjamin and Becky Evans discuss what benefits could come from an increased number of sprint weekends in the Formula 1 calendar, both for drivers and fans.

My colleague and friend Sadru Visram, who has died aged 81, was a pioneering figure in social housing, a devoted family man and a pillar of his Ismaili Muslim community. His compassionate nature meant he gave generously of his time. He was a school governor, a treasurer of Age Concern Newham and a…

In today’s newsletter: ​Jerusalem’s most volatile site has again become a flashpoint, with Arab states and former Israeli officials sounding the alarm over Benjamin Netanyahu’s complicity Good morning. In late July, Itamar Ben-Gvir, West Bank settler and far-right extremist minister of security in…