Files reveal a world of flattery and fratboy tones, where rich men are cultivated and women provide services

Pluck an email at random from the millions in the Department of Justice’s Epstein Library. It is a Saturday evening in February 2013, and Jeffrey Epstein is messaging Bill Gates’s assistant about guests for a dinner he wants to organise.

“People for Bill,” the email begins. Epstein starts listing possible candidates: the UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, the film director Woody Allen, the prime minister of Qatar, a couple of Harvard academics, the billionaire CEO of Hyatt hotels, a White House communications director, a former US secretary of defence.

Jack Thorne takes on William Golding – and you’ll never have felt so grateful to live under the rule of law, that ultimate dweeb’s charter

Castaway stories, from Cast Away to The Martian, often make for feelgood classics. They are tales about an ingenious individual overcoming huge odds, a triumphant metaphor for the human spirit. Here’s a funny thing: castaway stories featuring large groups of people lead to the exact opposite. Forced to self-organise, they end up eating each other. The exception is Lost; I don’t know what that was about. Polar bears?

Needless to say, I like them all. So it’s exciting to see a new kid on the block – or rather an old boy. William Golding’s novel Lord of the Flies, about a group of British schoolboys who crash-land on a desert island, has been part of the UK curriculum for more than 60 years. I wonder if we forget the books we’re forced to study, and are obliged to rediscover them in later life. I know this story well, but am not sure I can say I fully experienced it until this striking new BBC version (Sunday, 9pm, BBC One).

Really, what is the point of this endless conversational back and forth? Step out of the loop, and change your life

You get a coffee. The barista tells you how much you need to pay. You say thank you. They take your card for payment. They say thank you. They give you the coffee. You say thank you. They say thank you for your thank you. Then you say thank you for their thank you. By this point, the words “thank you” have lost all meaning, and both parties are exhausted by the pointless stream of politeness.

Growing up in India, I learned that thank yous are only for distant strangers, and that close friends and family get offended if you thank them. I would say thank you to a speaker delivering a formal talk but never to a friend helping during a crisis or a family member making me dinner. But living in the UK for two decades has forced me to adopt our incessant “thank you” culture. I now find myself saying thank you at least 10 times a day and sometimes many more. Nevertheless, there are some British “thank yous” that I would ban completely, if I could.

Sangeeta Pillai is a south Asian feminist activist, author of Bad Daughter and the creator of Masala Podcast

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The actor on a disastrous speech, his rules for how people should get around cities and an embarrassing encounter with a doorman

Born in New York state, Billy Crudup, 57, made his film debut in Sleepers in 1996. His subsequent movies include Almost Famous (2000), Big Fish (2003), Mission: Impossible III (2006), Spotlight (2015), Alien: Covenant (2017) and most recently Jay Kelly. On TV he has a long-running role in The Morning Show, for which he has won two Emmys. He stars in High Noon at London’s Harold Pinter Theatre until 6 March. He has a son and is married to Naomi Watts. He lives in New York City.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Flashes of hubris.

With polls and membership at an all-time high, the Green party are having a moment – and it’s largely down to their charismatic (if slightly cheesy) new leader. Can he really pull off a socialist revolution?

17 JANUARY 2026

They offer independence, reduce emissions and congestion. But they are also endangering lives

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After the Sydney Harbour Bridge was swarmed by 40 or so ebikes and e-motorcycles on Wednesday, the Australian government said the country faced a “real emergency”.

“[Illegal ebikes] are a total menace on the road,” the health minister, Mark Butler, said on Friday.

Gordon Brown says he believes current prime minister is a man of ‘integrity’ who was ‘misled and betrayed’ by Peter Mandelson

Here are some images from the newswires last night showing police searching two properties connected to Mandelson:

A Labour minister commissioned and reviewed a report in 2023 on journalists investigating the thinktank that would help propel Keir Starmer to power, the Guardian has learned.

Disclosures show figures cited by authority’s leader rested on unfunded ideas listed briefly in budget papers

Reform UK’s flagship council has been accused of telling a “blatant lie” after its claim of nearly £40m in savings on net zero were found to be based on hypothetical projects for which there was no documentation.

Kent county council, which has a £2.5bn annual budget, is one of 10 where Nigel Farage’s party has outright control and is seen as a test case for whether the insurgent party can govern competently.

Exclusive: Material gathered was personally given to Josh Simons when director of pro-Starmer thinktank, say sources

A Labour minister commissioned and reviewed a report in 2023 on journalists investigating the thinktank that would help propel Keir Starmer to power, the Guardian has learned.

The research was paid for and subsequently reviewed by Josh Simons, now a minister in the Cabinet Office, when he was director of Labour Together, according to sources and documents seen by the Guardian.

Only a smattering of Republicans spoke out about clip in which Obamas’ faces were superimposed on bodies of apes

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Donald Trump said on Friday evening, after a racist video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes had been posted to his social media account and then deleted, that he had directed aides to post the offensive video but that he hadn’t seen that portion of the clip and he refused to apologize for it.

The clip appeared during one of the 79-year-old US president’s increasingly frequent late-night posting sprees to his Truth Social account, and shows the laughing faces of the former president and first lady superimposed on the bodies of primates in a jungle setting, bobbing to the song The Lion Sleeps Tonight.