Characters who challenge stereotypes, stories that stimulate little ones’ vocabulary, endless laughter … and moments guaranteed to make any dad cry. Here are your takes on the work of a beloved children’s author • Julia Donaldson’s best books – ranked! Last week, Stuart Heritage ranked his 15 favourite books by Julia Donaldson, and readers have responded with their own opinions, along with memories of reading her beloved stories to their children. Here are some of the most popular picks from the Gruffalo author’s gigantic oeuvre. *** Continue reading...

Ang takes the reins in Westminster, as the prime minister gets a quizzing at Nato summit There are worse days for a prime minister to be otherwise engaged at a Nato summit and miss his weekly midday clash with the leader of the opposition in the Commons. In fact, Keir Starmer will have been thrilled with the timing. OK, he may have to swallow his pride and indulge in the by now obligatory Sunbed God idolatry to which every Nato leader has now signed up. But at least he didn’t have to face the embarrassment of a 120-and-growing rebellion by his own backbenchers over reforms to the welfare bill. Weirdly, cutting benefits to people unable to wash themselves wasn’t the reason why many Labour MPs went into politics. So, for the second week running, Starmer’s duties were transferred to the more than capable hands of Angela Rayner. Though she may feel that the prime minister must now owe her a favour or three given the circumstances. Ange might have known exactly what was coming at her but that didn’t mean she had to enjoy it, even if she could allow herself one of her favourite pleasures of taking the piss out of the Tories. Although it is a bit like stealing sweets from children given the current state of the Conservative party. Continue reading...

Updates from the tie in Bratislava; kick-off 5pm BST Email Michael | Sign up for Football Daily England: Beadle, Livramento, Quansah, Cresswell, Hinshelwood, Hutchinson, McAtee, Anderson, Stansfield, Elliott, Scott. Subs: Sharman-Lowe, Simkin, Edwards, Egan-Riley, Norton-Cuffy, Hackney, Fellows, Gray, Nwaneri, Rowe, Iling-Junior. Netherlands: Roefs, Kasanwirjo, Maatsen, van den Berg, Hato, Flamingo, Valente, Milambo, van Bergen, Manhoef, Poku. Subs: Raatsie, van den Heuvel, Saleh-Eddine, Meijer, Goes, Regeer, Banzuzi, van Brederode, Ohio. Continue reading...

A recent survey found almost a quarter of people in the US would like to stop having sex for a while. They should be careful what they wish for ... Name: The sex break. Age: Perennial. Continue reading...

Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes’s side have developed clarity in the final innings and never seem to give up Sports writers love a Churchillian speech that precedes a mind-bending feat. Take three years ago, when word got back that Brendon McCullum had told his England players to “run towards the danger” at Trent Bridge before Jonny Bairstow vaporised a target of 299 against New Zealand. It was like ruddy catnip for the press corps. And this time, after reeling in 371 at Headingley at a breezy 4.5 runs per over and with 14 overs to spare? Apparently very little was said in the dressing room beforehand beyond “bat the day, win the game” or Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett deciding between them to ignore the target and just “play like it was day one”. Continue reading...

More than 200,000 people expected at Worthy Farm for lineup including Olivia Rodrigo and Irish band Kneecap The gates to Glastonbury festival have opened for 2025 with more than 200,000 ticket-holders set to descend for a long weekend of performing arts and music. In what promises to be a politically charged gathering at Worthy Farm in Pilton, Somerset, campers can expect a mixed bag of sunshine and rain throughout the week. Continue reading...

About the mass of Saturn and 110m light years from Earth, TWA 7 b provides insights into an infant planetary system The James Webb space telescope has captured unprecedented direct images of a planet beyond our own solar system in its first exoplanet discovery. The observations reveal a planet, called TWA 7 b, carving its way through a disc of glowing dust and rocky debris in orbit around a star 110m light years from Earth. About the mass of Saturn, the planet is10 times less massive than any previous exoplanet to be directly observed with a telescope and provides fresh insights into a planetary system in its infancy. Continue reading...

In the absence of federal oversight, Black communities band together to stave off development on historic resting places A large puddle of water and thickets of weeds cover a vacant lot in Bethesda, Maryland. A towering apartment complex overshadows the cracked asphalt, but Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is most concerned about what – and who – lies beneath. The nearly two-acre site in the Washington DC suburb covers the historic Moses Macedonia African Cemetery and another burial ground for enslaved people, with the oldest portion dating back to at least the mid-1800s. Hundreds of bones found there may be the remains of enslaved people and their descendants, while more bodies may lie under the parking lot of the Westwood Tower apartment complex. Continue reading...

Authorities cracking down on culture sector in run-up to anti-government protests planned for this weekend Artists in Serbia have criticised the appointment of a nationalist ex-paramilitary chief as the head of the National Theatre board, as the authorities crack down on the culture sector days before an expected new wave of anti-government protests. Dragoslav Bokan, who was announced as the new president of the National Theatre’s board of directors last Thursday, was one of the founding commanders of the White Eagles, one of the most feared militia units during the Yugoslavia wars of the 1990s. Continue reading...

Dane would compete with Zubimendi as Partey nears exit Arsenal agree to pay keeper’s £5m Chelsea release clause Arsenal have offered an initial £9.3m for Brentford’s captain Christian Nørgaard as they attempt to secure a replacement for Thomas Partey and are poised to sign Kepa Arrizabalaga from Chelsea this week. Partey, whose contract expires next week, has yet to decide on his future having been offered a new deal on slightly reduced terms but looks increasingly likely to leave. It is understood that Arsenal have identified Nørgaard as a player who could add experience to Mikel Arteta’s squad after the departure of Jorginho for Flamengo. Continue reading...

Lairy, drunk, fighting, laughing … five photographers who shot Oasis recall what it was like capturing them in depressing pre-fame hotels – and at their Champagne Supernova heights I didn’t really know the Gallaghers then. I had only shot Oasis at the Q awards and live shows. In 2001, I was commissioned by a US publication for a feature about The US tour of Brotherly Love, with Oasis, the Black Crowes and Spacehog. All the bands had two brothers in them, and I had been asked to photograph the Gallaghers and the Robinsons from the Black Crowes together. Continue reading...

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! Welcome to Football Daily’s TED talk on what makes a good shirt sponsor. While it is not an exact science, there are three basic rules to follow. The first and most important one is that, with the exception of gambling companies that make up the vast majority of filth on the front of most tops these days, the worse the product is for you, the better the sponsor. Tin (Guinness at QPR, McEwans lager at Blackburn, Holsten at Tottenham Hotspur, etc), video games (Sega and Dreamcast at Arsenal, Nintendo at Fiorentina, Playstation at Auxerre), fast food and snacks (Chupa Chups at Sheffield Wednesday, Pizza Hut at Fulham, Mars at Napoli) are all iconic in their own right, despite those companies not having ties to their respective clubs. The next rule is a fairly obvious one: design. Nothing too big, nothing too small, not too many (South American Dept, we’re looking at you). Something that stands out but also complements the colours of the shirt is ideal. It’s a fine balance in truth, which is why Football Daily generally leaves design stuff to the Big Website nerds at Guardian Towers. The last rule is: keep it local, and if that includes the categories above, all the better. Tin-wise, Newcastle Brown Ale at, you guessed it, Newcastle United and Quilmes beer at Boca Juniors are prime examples of Grade A local Tin sponsorship. Food and drink: Ginsters at Plymouth Argyle, Walkers Crisps at Leicester City, Colman’s at Norwich City all hit the spot. As long as you are hitting two of the three rules – bad for you, good design, local – it’s normally a good year to buy the shirt. All of which is a long-winded way of introducing the new shirt sponsors for Preston North End, Spud Bros, which sounds like a barber shop owned by Bart Simpson but is actually a Preston-based jacket potato company started by two siblings, Jacob and Harley Nelson. The pair have somehow sold thousands of spuds out of the back of a van and amassed millions of Social Media Disgrace followers in the process, with free jacket potato vouchers given out to the first 2,000 fans to buy the new shirt at the launch event at Deepdale this weekend. That sounds like a good deal and if there’s one man that knows about business and commercial enterprise, it is Peter Ridsdale, current North End CEO and former Leeds chief suit who nearly steered the Yorkshire club to the brink of insolvency. “SpudBros are one of the fastest growing brands in the UK and their phenomenal worldwide media exposure and international recognition teaming up with the original Invincibles football club feels like a perfect match,” roared Ridsdale. “We are excited to be working with individuals with such enthusiasm, excitement and innovative media awareness. Preston North End and SpudBros – a partnership to savour.” Even if we hate that pun, Football Daily very much approves of this sponsorship, with it being a local venture (tick, 1/3), an eyecatching design on that famous white shirt (tick 2/3) and gloriously unhealthy (tick, 3/3!), so long as the locals maintain their delicious fondness of adding mountains of cheese and rivers of gravy to their nearby carbohydrates. Preston North End’s 2025-26 season is already shaping up to be a banger, we’ll see you down the front at Deepdale on Saturday for that voucher. I’m proud of the playing career I’ve had and have no regrets about any of it. I embrace all the highs and all the lows as they’ve shaped me into who I am. To everyone who made the journey so special, the staff at each club and organisation, the managers and coaches, my teammates, and of course the supporters — thank you” – Adam Lallana calls time on a playing career, in which he won the Premier League and Big Cup with Liverpool, by thanking pretty much everyone in football apart from this tea-timely email, alas. Even if we lose Bryan Mbeumo and his brilliant beard to Manchester United (yesterday’s News, Bits and Bobs – full email edition), his Brazilian teammate Igor Thiago is not so dusty in the facial hair stakes. Maybe Brentford could replace their current sponsors with Gillette” – Tim Taylor. Continue reading...

Playing on party boats, recreating Chili Peppers videos: the experimental pair are committed to the bit – with a new album influenced by lockdown, recovery and Stonehenge On a breezy May evening, the New York-based art rock duo Water From Your Eyes are several hours into their annual boat show. It’s a delightful jaunt down the East River that raises questions such as: who from your local music scene would you save in a Titanic scenario? Tipsy people totter across the Liberty Belle’s promenade decks, some partaking in the loosie cigarettes and poppers available for purchase. A magician is somewhere on board, blowing minds with sleight of hand tricks. Below deck, the band’s Rachel Brown and Nate Amos seem to have found their sea legs: a mosh pit erupts as they rip into Life Signs, the playfully proggy lead single from their forthcoming album, It’s a Beautiful Place. The band treat the annual excursion began a bit of a joke, albeit one they have actively participated in for three years. Sometimes it feels as if WFYE is all about pulling off harebrained ideas. “Nothing is more of a letdown in a creative scenario than achieving exactly what you set out to make,” says Amos. “Where’s the fun in that?” So, the next day, we head to the woods upstate. The band are noted Red Hot Chili Peppers fans and Brown, who studied film-making in college and makes videos for peers such as dance punks Model/Actriz, is directing a video for new song Playing Classics – a dance track inspired by Life Without Buildings and Charli xcx – that pays homage to the By the Way video. After following a long dirt road plastered with “do not enter” signs, we end up talking to a confused shopkeeper in a trailer filled with fireworks. “Do you know the Red Hot Chili Peppers? Not, like, personally,” Brown asks earnestly. “Can I show you a video and you tell me the best way to recreate it?” Continue reading...

Company is cutting 30% of its global workforce as part of an effort to return to a ‘start-up mentality’ Dating app Bumble announced plans to lay off almost a third of its workforce as part of a bid to return to a “start-up mentality” as it fights to revive growth. The Austin, Texas-based company is cutting about 240 roles, or 30% of its global staff, amid a turnaround effort. Its stock has tumbled since the firm went public in 2021. Continue reading...

Keep your coffee machine and grinder in tip-top condition with our experts’ tips for cleaning, maintenance and brilliant brews • The best coffee machines for your home, tested If you want your coffee machine and grinder to perform their best, morning, noon and (very ill-advisedly) night, you need to give them the care they deserve. Get into a routine of basic cleaning and low-cost maintenance, and they will run better and last longer, meaning fewer emails to the manufacturer’s help desk or trips to a repair cafe – or worse, buying a new machine altogether. I’ve consulted two experts: Radu Bria at espressorepairshop.co.uk, a man who’s repaired more coffee machines than I’ve had flat whites. And Ben Young, a manager at Craft House Coffee. Continue reading...

In Kojima’s latest epic, the Australian outback becomes a shifting, spectral landscape that you can get lost in As a teenager in the late 1980s, I became obsessed with Australian new wave cinema, thanks partly to the Mad Max trilogy, and partly to an English teacher at my high school, who rolled out the TV trolley one afternoon and showed us Nicolas Roeg’s masterpiece Walkabout. We were mesmerised. Forty years later, I am playing Death Stranding 2, Hideo Kojima’s sprawling apocalyptic adventure, and there are times I feel as if I’m back in that classroom. Most of the game takes place in a ruined Australia, the cities gone, the landscape as stark, beautiful and foreboding as it was in Roeg’s film. I’ve been playing for 45 hours and have barely made an impact on the story. Instead, I have wandered the wilderness, delivering packages to the game’s isolated communities. The game is set after a catastrophic event has decimated humanity and scarred the landscape with supernatural explosions. Now you pass through vast ochre deserts and on toward the coast, watching the sun set behind glowing mountains, the tide rolling in on empty bays. Usually in open-world games, the landscape is permanent and unchanging, apart from day/night cycles and seasonal rotations. But the Australia of Death Stranding 2 is mysterious and amorphous. Earthquakes bring rocks tumbling down hillsides, vast dust storms blow up and avalanches bury you in snow. As you go, you are able to build roads, electricity generators and even jump-ramps for cars. These can be found and used by other players, so each time you visit a place you may find new ways to traverse. Nothing is ever really still. Continue reading...

Boards agree to deny players No Objection Certificates ICC yet to declare formal position on new league The England and Wales Cricket Board has joined forces with the Board of Control for Cricket in India to try to thwart a new global Twenty20 league backed by Saudi Arabia. Under plans that emerged in Australia this year, Saudi’s SRJ Sports Investments has pledged to inject £400m to set up the new league, which would have eight teams playing four tournaments in different locations each year in a set-up that has been compared to tennis’s grand slams. Continue reading...

Marcus Monzo convicted of killing schoolboy in Hainault, north-east London last year Marcus Monzo, 37, has been found guilty of murdering a 14-year-old schoolboy, Daniel Anjorin, with a samurai sword last year. He was also been found guilty of three counts of attempted murder, wounding with intent and possession of an offensive weapon. Continue reading...

No blackout because Premier League has not started Championship begins a week after League One and Two Sky Sports will broadcast every match from the opening rounds of the Championship, League One and League Two live next season, with most kicking off at 3pm on Saturday. With the EFL starting a fortnight before the Premier League, the 3pm Saturday blackout is not in place and Sky has opted to take advantage. The EFL has introduced a split start, with League One and Two kicking off on Friday 1 August and the Championship seven days later. Continue reading...

From repressive military regimes in I’m Still Here to funny French teenage delinquents in Holy Cow, readers pick films that have moved them this year • Read more of the best culture of 2025 so far Sebastian is about an aspiring writer, Max, who lives a double life as a sex worker. It’s gritty and somewhat shocking, insofar as it’s not a highly discussed topic in film, yet it is also very tender. I watched it on a rainy Saturday afternoon without knowing anything about it. I was immediately hooked by how normal Max’s life was and intrigued by his decision to set up an online escort profile under the name of his alter ego, Sebastian, for the purpose of his novel, in which he details his varied sexual experiences. The film addresses issues such as shame, authenticity in fiction and consent with a refreshing lack of judgment on the topic of sex work. Ruaridh Mollica is fantastic as Max/Sebastian and I can’t wait to see him in more films. Ann-Marie, Glasgow Continue reading...

The Guardian’s picture editors select photographs from around the world Continue reading...

Attraction at site of former brickworks in Bedford expected to bring £50bn boost to Britain’s economy and create jobs The deal to build Universal’s new theme park in Bedford was secured with a package of support that included £500m of public investment in rail and road infrastructure, it has emerged. Comcast, the parent company of Universal, is in negotiations over the final scale of the overall government assistance, which could be expanded beyond infrastructure investment. Continue reading...

If you were born after 2000, or know someone who is, the chances are you’ve come across this ludicrous AI-generated meme. If not, be reassured that its chaotic, nonsensical banality is the point When one of Tim’s year 8 pupils asked him about his “favourite Italian brain rot animal”, he thought he’d misheard. “My hearing is not great at the best of times – I had to ask her to repeat this probably four or five times,” he says. Tim (not his real name) was familiar with the term “brain rot”, used to describe the sense of mental decline after too much time spent mindlessly scrolling online (and voted Oxford University Press’s word of the year for 2024). But what was this about it being Italian? Continue reading...

A conference in Cambridge this week will explore a raft of geoengineering ideas to cool the region down – and attempt to address the fears of those who argue the risks outweigh the benefits When the glaciologist John Moore began studying the Arctic in the 1980s there was an abundance of suitable sites for him to carry out his climate research. The region’s relentless warming means many of those no longer exist. With the Arctic heating up four times faster than the global average, they have simply melted away. Forty years on, Moore’s research network, the University of the Arctic, has identified 61 potential interventions to slow, stop and reverse the effects of the changing climate in the region. These concepts are constantly being updated and some will be assessed at a conference in Cambridge this week, where scientists and engineers will meet to consider if radical, technological solutions can buy time and stem the loss of polar ice caps. Continue reading...

Smart casual’s comfier cousin lets you glide seamlessly from a long plane journey and into a work meeting Forget smart casual. These days it’s smart comfy that I want. Smart casual was about making smart clothes look more relaxed; smart comfy is about making them feel more relaxed. Smart comfy might not sound all that different to smart casual, but it is nothing short of a whole new perspective on getting dressed. Smart casual was about how to look smart, without looking stuffy. It was about how you looked to other people, more than how you felt in yourself. The goal was to appear chill, not to feel chill. Continue reading...