Most metros use plastic or metal, but the distinctive fabrics on London’s network are full of clues to its history When I first came to London from Yorkshire in the late 1980s, I found the tube replete with bizarre novelties. Among them was the way most trains required me to sit sideways to the direction of travel, as on a fairground waltzer. Directly opposite me was another person or an empty seat, and while I knew not to stare at people, I did stare at the seats – at their woollen coverings, called moquette. I have since written two books about them, the first nonfiction, Seats of London, and now a crime novel, The Moquette Mystery. I was attracted to moquette firstly because it, like me, came from Yorkshire (most of it back then was woven in Halifax), and whereas many foreign metros have seats of plastic or steel, moquette made the tube cosy. Yet it seemed underappreciated. The index of the standard history of the tube, for instance, proceeds blithely from Moorgate to Morden. Continue reading...

No parent should worry about their child’s safety while they work. But a crisis in our early-years sector is shielding predators such as Vincent Chan I remember those initial heart-wrenching days and weeks leaving my daughter, aged nine months, at the nursery. She was distraught as I left, and I – like so many parents – headed off to work feeling guilty for leaving her, wondering if I was doing the right thing. Every parent does the research and nursery visits, reads the Ofsted reports and assumes that the staff in their chosen nursery will have the necessary qualifications and training to take care of their child. Obviously, there will be hiccups along the way, but never in your wildest nightmares do you think your child might be physically – or worse still, sexually – abused. Yet the harrowing case of Vincent Chan, a former nursery worker in Camden, north London, who pleaded guilty to nine counts of sexual assault and 17 counts of taking or making indecent photos of children, hit the headlines last week, leaving parents with young children across the country feeling physically sick and asking the question: How did this happen? Tragically, this is not an isolated case. Munira Wilson is Liberal Democrat MP for Twickenham Continue reading...

This Trinidadian family saga blurs the line between real and imagined to create a multilayered history of an island and its people Ever Since We Small opens in Bihar, India in 1899. Jayanti dreams of a woman offering her bracelets. Within days, her husband becomes sick and dies. Widowhood is not an option and Jayanti prepares for her own sati. Determined to apply the “godly might of English justice” and uphold a law banning the practice, an English doctor and magistrate muscle in to stop her. In an 11th-hour volte face, Jayanti, desiring life over the afterlife, allows herself to be saved. Triumphant, the magistrate suggests she become his mistress, but instead she opts to be shipped off to Trinidad. The island, she’s told, is a place where the shame of her choice will be forgotten. Ever Since We Small, Celeste Mohammed’s second novel-in-stories, is a more cohesive work than Pleasantview, which won the Bocas prize for Caribbean literature in 2022. The opening chapter follows on from an academic introduction and Mohammed’s style is more reverent, less ballsy and humorous, than the warts-and-all portraits drawn in Pleasantview; but casting characters from the distant past often has that effect on novelists. The tone is appropriate, however; Mohammed here is the sober observer taking in the fate of women like Jayanti, who if they have choices at all, they are between bad and worse. Continue reading...

Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare? Welcome back to the Thursday news quiz – a weekly exercise in trivia, triumph and asking: “How on earth did that make headlines in the Guardian?” As always, there are no prizes except the possibility of feeling unbearably smug when you get one right, and the knowledge that the official dog of the quiz, Willow, would be delivering you her very best side-eye every time you guess incorrectly. Let us know how you got on in the comments. Allons-y! The Thursday news quiz, No 227 Continue reading...

British government also rejects president’s claims on sovereignty over Falkland Islands as he suggests wanting to make Argentina a ‘world military power’ The British government has denied it is engaged in negotiations to lift a ban on selling arms to Argentina that has been in place since the Falklands war. Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, told the Daily Telegraph his government had begun speaking to the UK about the restrictions. Continue reading...

Harry and six other public figures will have their day in court in January. Plus: Celia Imrie investigates Hitchcock’s Psycho. Here’s what to watch this evening 8pm, Channel 4 Expect legal fireworks in January as the case launched by Prince Harry (along with six other public figures including Doreen Lawrence and Elton John) against Associated Newspapers gets under way. This documentary presented by Cathy Newman offers a primer to the case – which involves accusations of phone hacking and bugging. Phil Harrison Continue reading...

Wartime defences in Surrey and model boat club boathouse in Birmingham among this year’s unusual listings If Nazi tanks had ever attempted to invade Guildford, they surely would have been thwarted by concrete pyramid-shaped obstacles known as “dragon’s teeth”. Eight decades after the defences were installed in Surrey woodland, their history is being remembered by Historic England (HE), which has included them on its list of remarkable historic places granted protection in 2025. Continue reading...

Former chancellor also says Johnson was ‘least well briefed’ of the PMs he had served Sajid Javid told Boris Johnson he was a “puppet” of Dominic Cummings before he resigned as chancellor rather than accept a Cummings-led takeover of his Treasury, he has said in an interview about his experiences as a minister. Speaking to the Institute for Government (IfG), Javid also said that his other departure from Johnson’s government, shortly before it collapsed in 2022, was because he had lost confidence in the prime minister after being assured that allegations about lockdown-breaking parties in No 10 were “bullshit”. Continue reading...

Study on skull of Altamura Man could be blow to adaptation theories about Neanderthals and their extinction One sign of a really cold day is the sharp sting of freezing air in your nose. It was believed that the noses of Neanderthals were better adapted to breathing the cold air of the Ice Age and that when the climate became warmer they were outcompeted by modern humans. This is now being questioned. The opening in the Neanderthal skull is bigger than ours, with a larger nasal cavity behind it. This was thought to have bony convolutions to warm and moisten the incoming air, similar to those seen on some arctic mammals. These delicate structures would only survive in an exceptionally well-preserved skull though, so it was never clear whether they were actually present. Continue reading...

Young Vic theatre, London A powerful blend of VR, testimony and theatre exposes the human toll of benefit cuts – and asks what justice looks like in a new political era David Cameron did not just leave us the gift of Brexit before fleeing his premiership. There is also the toxic legacy of his “age of austerity” policies. Here is an excoriating production that examines what austerity meant for those targeted by it. They include some of the most vulnerable members of society – people who were abused, destitute, disabled, mentally ill and jobless (what was it that Pearl Buck said about the test of a civilisation?). The show is based on the lives of people who were denied welfare benefits and died. Directed by Sacha Wares, it is an installation that combines promenade theatre with holograms. Wearing a VR headset, you enter a room where eight static figures emerge (played by actors). They lie on gurneys, bare mattresses, park benches, pavements and soiled duvets, and make for a woeful army of “invisibles” who have, for this time, come into our line of vision. We hear their stories, told by relatives (interviews co-edited by Wares and special advisor John Pring) and the accounts bring tears to your eyes. Continue reading...

Wildlife smuggling is serious organised crime that ‘fuels corruption and drives species to extinction’, Home Office says More than 250 endangered species and illegal wildlife products were seized at the UK border in a single month, new figures have revealed, including spiders, snakes and birds. The illicit cargo was uncovered as part of an annual crackdown on wildlife smuggling known as Operation Thunder, which is led by Interpol and the World Customs Organisation. Continue reading...

Some businesses still waiting for final EHRC guidance while firms that moved early to exclude trans people show no sign of backtracking On Monday, a Dundee employment tribunal ruled a narrow win for Sandie Peggie, the nurse who complained about sharing a changing room with a transgender doctor. But the lengthy judgment also takes on the pivotal question that has been challenging employers, lawyers and campaign groups since April – does a supreme court judgment mean that transgender people must now be excluded from same-sex facilities that align with their chosen gender? Does it amount to a bathroom ban or not? The supreme court ruled earlier this year that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. Interim advice released by the Equality and Human Rights Commission soon after the judgment in effect banned trans people from using facilities according to their lived gender, and its official guidance is expected to closely reflect that advice. Continue reading...

Unfettered love for late photographer in France and elsewhere stands in contrast to occasional reservations in UK The death of Martin Parr, the photographer whose work chronicled the rituals and customs of British life, was front-page news in France and his life and work were celebrated as far afield as the US and Japan. If his native England had to shake off concerns about the role of class in Parr’s satirical gaze before it could fully embrace him, countries like France have long revered the Epsom-born artist “like a rock or a movie star”, said the curator Quentin Bajac. Continue reading...

More than £3bn that could have been used for UK patients will go to big pharma for its branded products – money for care siphoned off for profit Of Arthur Scargill it was said that he began each day with two newspapers. The miners’ leader read the Morning Star of course, but only after consulting the Financial Times. Why did a class warrior from Yorkshire accord such importance to the house journal of pinstriped Londoners? Before imbibing views, he told a journalist, he wanted “to get the facts”. In that spirit, let us parse a deal just struck by the governments of Donald Trump and Keir Starmer. You may not have heard much about this agreement on medicine, but it is huge in both financial and political significance – and Downing Street could not be more proud. A “world-beating deal,” boasts the science minister, Patrick Vallance. It “paves the way for the UK to become a global hub for life sciences,” claims the business secretary, Peter Kyle, with the government press release adding: “Tens of thousands of NHS patients will benefit.” Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Every day he broadcasts a marathon Twitch stream, airing his views to his three million subscribers. It has led to fame – and some fear – in a country ever more politically divided Hasan Piker calls it the bus driver test: “You get on a bus and you have 30 seconds to explain whatever online phenomena took place to the bus driver without them looking at you and going, ‘Get off the fucking bus.’” Most online discourse, no matter how heated, fails the test, he says – not least an incident last weekend, when someone on a Dublin street asked to take a picture with Piker, then held up a picture of his dog and shouted “Free Kaya!” Never mind the bus driver; trying to explain the significance of this particular event might well take the rest of this article, but the wider point is that there is a jarring overlap, or more often disconnect, between the online and offline worlds. Piker finds himself in this in-between space more and more these days. Until fairly recently, the 34-year-old was familiar only to the very online, especially Americans in their 20s and 30s, largely thanks to his presence on the streaming channel Twitch, where he has three million subscribers. But since Donald Trump’s election, Piker has become an in-demand voice in “the real world” for his views on the beleaguered political left, and especially that inordinately fretted-over demographic, young men. Continue reading...

Director of After the Rain, set in animal therapy retreat, says she aimed to portray ‘children as children, not as a statistic’ Sasha Mezhevoy was five years old when she, her older brother and sister were sent to an orphanage in Moscow. They were told they were going to be adopted by a Russian family. But they were not orphans. They were Ukrainian children who had been forcibly removed from their father. Sasha grew up in Mariupol, the port city that endured more than 80 days of bombardment in one of the bloodiest and most destructive chapters of the early months of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Continue reading...

Crowborough on edge as unconfirmed plan to house asylum seekers in training camp spurs street patrols and pre-emptive protests Among the crowded shelves of Sacred Heart hardware store in Crowborough, there is a gap on the wall where the kitchen knives used to be displayed. As the local rumour of recent days goes, that space is linked to the news story of the moment in the East Sussex town: the imminent arrival of hundreds of asylum seekers at a nearby military training camp. Continue reading...

Among the many people I met, there was a pervasive feeling of hopelessness and a sense that resistance is slowly becoming a memory In November, Israeli flags suddenly appeared beside a highway in the Palestinian West Bank. More than 1,000, placed about 30 yards apart on both sides of the road, stretching for roughly 10 miles. They were planted south of Nablus, close to Palestinian villages regularly targeted by extremist Israeli settlers. I saw the flags on my way to visit those villages, the morning after they were put up. Their message echoed the ubiquitous graffiti painted by settlers across the West Bank: “You have no future in Palestine.” Compared with the 70,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza and more than 1,000 in the West Bank since October 2023, the flags amount to no more than a minor provocation. But they reflect how dominant Israel has become in the West Bank, land recognised under international law as belonging to the Palestinians. During the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising from 2000 to 2005, Israeli settlers would not have risked planting such flags, for fear of coming under fire from Palestinians. Not now. Continue reading...

Ecologically important Diadema africanum almost eliminated by unknown disease in Canary Islands A marine pandemic is bringing some species of sea urchin to the brink of extinction, and some populations have disappeared altogether, a study has found. Since 2021, Diadema africanum urchins in the Canary Island archipelago have almost entirely been killed by an unknown disease. There has been a 99.7% population decrease in Tenerife, and a 90% decrease off the islands of the Madeira archipelago. Continue reading...

Exclusive: letters with deepfake images of Carmen Lau in UK and targeting of Ted Hui in Australia part of growing harassment Sexually explicit letters and “lonely housewife” posters about high-profile pro-democracy Hong Kong exiles have been sent to people in the UK and Australia, marking a ratcheting up in the transnational harassment faced by critics of the Chinese Communist party’s rule in the former British colony. Letters purporting to be from Carmen Lau, an exiled pro-democracy activist and former district councillor, showing digitally faked images of her as a sex worker were sent to her former neighbours in Maidenhead in the UK in recent weeks. Continue reading...

Cyclones like those in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Malaysia that killed 1,750 are ‘alarming new reality’ The climate crisis supercharged the deadly storms that killed more than 1,750 people in Asia by making downpours more intense and flooding worse, scientists have reported. Monsoon rains often bring some flooding but the scientists were clear: this was “not normal”. In Sri Lanka, some floods reached the second floor of buildings, while in Sumatra, in Indonesia, the floods were worsened by the destruction of forests, which in the past slowed rainwater running off hillsides. Continue reading...

Third sea drone strike in two weeks on Russian vessels; ‘coalition of the willing’ convenes as US continues chaotic peace efforts. What we know on day 1,387 Continue reading...

María Corina Machado climbs over barriers to meet chanting supporters gathered outside the Grand Hotel in early hours of Thursday Venezuela’s best-known opposition leader, the Nobel peace prize winner María Corina Machado, has made a dramatic appearance in Norway after slipping out of her authoritarian homeland by boat. The Venezuelan politician and pro-democracy activist stepped out on to the balcony of Oslo’s iconic Grand Hotel at just before 2.30am local time, after spending the past 11 months in hiding in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. Continue reading...

The 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) carries $8bn more than the funding Trump requested in May The US House has approved a sweeping defence bill that bolsters Europe’s security, in what appears to be sharp rebuke to Donald Trump’s mounting threats to downgrade Washington’s ties to traditional allies and Nato. The bipartisan vote came just days after the publication of a White House national security strategy that said Europe faced “civilisational erasure” and made explicit Washington’s support for Europe’s nationalist far-right parties – rattling EU leaders and opening up a seismic shift in transatlantic relations. Continue reading...

At least 15 people killed, while more than 500,000 people have fled border areas near where jets, tanks and drones were waging battle Half a million evacuees in Cambodia and Thailand were sheltering in pagodas, schools and other safe havens on Wednesday after fleeing fresh border clashes while US president Donald Trump vowed to intercede to stop the fighting. At least 15 people, including Thai soldiers and Cambodian civilians, have been killed in the latest hostilities, officials said, while more than 500,000 people have fled border areas near where jets, tanks and drones were waging battle. Continue reading...