
Margot Robbie busts her corset in Wuthering Heights, the Devil Wears Prada sequel goes fashionably to war, and Christopher Nolan brings us a Greek epic. Plus much more in our pick of the best films coming to UK cinemas this year
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Jessie Buckley may need to hire a carpenter for the silverware-cabinet she is expected to need for her hugely admired performance in the film based on the Maggie O’Farrell novel. She plays Anne (or Agnes) Hathaway, wife of William Shakespeare, grieving the terrible loss of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet, in 1596, which the story imagines to be a spur to the creation of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Paul Mescal plays Shakespeare and Emily Watson his mother, Mary.
• 9 January.
Having a routine but not overplanning, getting them involved with chores and making sure you have time just for you can all help you stop being overwhelmed
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My four-year-old is in the living room playing with a dinosaur, a pig and Jessie the cowgirl from Toy Story. I’m trying to cook dinner. “Mama, mama, pllleeease can you play with me?” I hear a pot lid rattle. The broccoli is starting to smell burned; I dash back to the kitchen. “Help! Quickly come! I’m falling!” I rush through. She’s dangling from the sofa pretending to fall off the side of a volcano. “HEEELP!” The broccoli is definitely burning. And there goes the door. “Muuuuuum, I need a poo!”
This wild ride of five minutes is one most parents will recognise. Getting through the day is to feel like you’re being pulled in a solar system’s worth of directions, and by turns defeated, happier than you’ve ever felt before, like a husk, in control and like you’re careening off a cliff. It throws up a need to get very good at planning, and prioritising what demands to acquiesce to, when to say no; when to sit down and play, when to say: “Sorry, I need to sit down, or go for a run.”
Continue reading...It was assumed that Reform would sweep all before it – but locals rejected the party’s campaign of ‘lies and hate’
Yuliia Bond works two jobs, raises two children and is studying at university. In the autumn, she also found time to take on Reform UK when it tried to win the Caerphilly byelection.
Bond, a Ukrainian refugee who has settled in south Wales, said she could not remain silent as Reform tried to win the seat in the Senedd (Welsh parliament ).
Continue reading...A DNA test showed me that theoretically I have links to a long list of countries – and that the way we look at belonging makes little sense
While accepting that David Lammy, the deputy prime minister and justice secretary is, for many, the human embodiment of Marmite – loved or hated, with not much in between – one can still question whether, for all his faults, he should “go home to the Caribbean”. Whether you agree with him over this or that utterance or the broad sweep of government policy, he has, unquestionably made his contribution to Tottenham, in north London, whose people he has represented for a quarter of a century, to parliament, as a senior MP, as foreign secretary and now as an important figure with several key portfolios.
So when a lieutenant of Nigel Farage, admittedly no fan of Lammy’s, suggests, without notable contradiction or condemnation from Reform, that Lammy “should go home to the Caribbean”, one is tempted to look at that askance. But then, in the year just past, when bigotry in frontline politics took off its training wheels and othering became the sport that everyone can play, the notion that someone who clearly belongs here should not belong here ceased to shock.
Hugh Muir is executive editor, Opinion
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Continue reading...From Jill’s flung flapjack to Nigel’s tragic fall, the Great Flood, Helen’s acquittal and a priceless cameo from Dame Judi, here’s an anniversary feast of epic Ambridge moments
The Archers, Radio 4’s “everyday story of countryfolk” – which the BBC now bills, rather more aspirationally, as a “contemporary drama in a rural setting” – celebrates its diamond anniversary this month. Like many British institutions (Marmite, PMQs, fruit cake) the serial, which launched in 1951, occupies a curious place in the national psyche; the first notes of that determinedly jolly maypole dance will either send you lurching for the power button, or shouting for silence. There is, I’m afraid, no middle ground.
Stranger still, you can switch Ambridge off any time you like, but you can never leave. Indeed, online discussion forums are littered with people sneering that they stopped tuning in when the storylines became too sensational, silly or depressing … yet somehow they’re still there, moaning about the show.
Continue reading...Audrey thinks Noah doesn’t take bathing seriously enough. He says he’s a ‘quick-shower kind of guy’ but keeps himself clean. You decide whose argument scrubs up best
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Noah doesn’t wash himself thoroughly enough – he just rubs a bit of gel around his body
I smell nice and I’m not unclean, so why does showering have to be like a full military operation?
Continue reading...About 100 people were injured in the bar early on Thursday morning, but police have ruled out an act of terrorism
Officials at the press conference are asking for “prudence” from those in the town, reminding them not to make unnecessary demands on hospitals, which are overwhelmed.
Please leave investigators to do their work, they say.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Pilot scheme launches as one in five start primary school with no protection against deadly diseases
Health visitors will be sent door-to-door to deliver vaccines to children in England amid alarm that one in five start primary school with no protection against deadly diseases, the Guardian can reveal.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that at least 95% of children should receive vaccine doses for each illness to achieve herd immunity. However, not a single one of the main childhood vaccines in England hit the target in 2024-25. There were also sharp differences in uptake across the country.
Continue reading...Up to 400 homes face demolition under a £90m regeneration scheme that promises only 230 replacement properties
Hundreds of families in one of England’s poorest neighbourhoods will be evicted under a £90m plan described by critics as a “mass dispersion” of vulnerable people.
Four hundred homes in Blackpool will be bulldozed this summer and replaced with 230 new properties under levelling up proposals signed off by Rishi Sunak’s government. The area has more than 800 people – about 250 of them children – who are in the poorest 10th of the population of England, according to official documents.
Continue reading...PM to highlight energy bill and interest rate cuts, plus end to two-child benefit cap, and to invite his MPs to Chequers
Keir Starmer will attempt to rescue his relationship with disillusioned voters and his own fractious MPs in a new year push to reduce the cost of living.
The prime minister will give a speech in the coming days focusing on how his government is bringing down living costs, highlighting recent cuts to energy bills and interest rates and the end of the two-child benefit cap.
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