2 hours ago The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie audiobook review – a starry whodunnit

Peter Dinklage’s resonant turn as Hercule Poirot gives the beloved writer’s debut a charismatic rebootWhen an army captain, on leave during the first world war, visits a family friend for the weekend at their country pile in Essex, he is hoping for some sunny respite from the frontline. Captain Hastings and John Cavendish are childhood friends, so Hastings is well acquainted with his family, who also include John’s brother Lawrence and their stepmother Emily.The widowed Emily, we learn, has recently married Alfred Inglethorp, an American 20 years her junior, much to the ire of her children who believe him to be a gold digger. One night, Emily is taken ill and cries out from her bed. By the time Hastings and Lawrence arrive on the scene – they are forced to break down the door, as it is locked from the inside – she is dead. The next morning Hastings announces he has called a friend to investigate: a moustached Belgian named Hercule Poirot. Continue reading...

Politics

29 hours ago Rutherglen family enjoy party where Royalty and Santa Claus are guests

The Duchess is patron of disability charity Cerebral Palsy Scotland

Society

98 minutes ago Offenders should be moved to open prisons to tackle overcrowding, says former justice secretary

Former justice secretary David Gauke, who is leading the government’s flagship review of sentencing, said we should make better use of open prisons

Events

32 hours ago ‘I get spotted in the M&S knicker department’: Lorraine Ashbourne on her 2024 TV takeover

From Bridgerton to Sherwood and Alma’s Not Normal, the actor has lit up our screens all year – and her ‘victory lap’ is only just starting Lorraine Ashbourne has had a massive year. “I know! People keep saying: oh God, Lorraine, get off the telly, we want somebody else,” she says. “But it has been extraordinary.” She kicked things off in January with ITV’s entertaining disaster thriller After the Flood, playing Sophie Rundle’s tough, grieving mother, Molly. As the year went on, she returned to two of her biggest and most significant roles yet, as the former secret spy cop Daphne Sparrow in Sherwood, and Grandma Joan in the wrenching, hilarious second series of Alma’s Not Normal. Has she ended up in such outstanding shows because she’s picky? “Absolutely not. I’ll do anything! I’m a cheap date. It’s just timing that these things have fallen into place.”Right now, Ashbourne is at home in north London. She grew up in Manchester, where she went to drama school. She met her husband, Andy...

Culture

4 hours ago Who is Dua Lipa's 'fiancé' Callum Turner? Inside the pop star's whirlwind romance with the Fantastic Beasts actor

Dua Lipa and Callum Turner took their relationship to the next level and reportedly got engaged after he 'got down on one knee for a romantic proposal' over Christmas.

Politics

5 hours ago Send more convicts to open prisons to ease overcrowding crisis in jails and reduce reoffending, urges Labour adviser

David Gauke, the ex-Tory justice secretary who is now leading Labour's sentencing review, claimed the current prisons crisis offered 'an opportunity' for change.

Events

6 hours ago Gavin & Stacey: The Finale review: We’ll miss these characters – Oh my Christ, they were lush

This Christmas special is about half an hour too long and the script recycles the least interesting elements of what’s gone before, but it still makes for lovely festive telly

Politics

5 hours ago Lockerbie: A Search for Justice on Sky – a meticulous and honourable dramatisation of the 1988 atrocity and what happened next

Colin Firth plays the father of one of the victim with careworn decency in this five-part drama about the boming of Pan Am flight 103 and its aftermath

Events

6 hours ago Hubris by Johannes Krause and Thomas Trappe review – learning from the Neanderthals

Why did we succeeded when other hominins didn’t, and can lessons from our evolutionary past help rein in our destructive impulses?In an institute in Germany, scientists are growing “Neanderthalised” human brain cells in a dish. These cells form synapses and spark as they would have done in a living Neanderthal as she (they are female cells) foraged or breastfed or gazed out of a cave mouth at dusk. That is the spine-tingling opening gambit of a book co-authored by one of the directors of the institute, Johannes Krause, and the information that sets it apart from a host of popular science books that attempt to predict humanity’s future based on our evolutionary past.A mere 90 genetic differences distinguish modern humans, Homo sapiens, from Neanderthals, Homo neanderthalensis. That’s paltry, given the roughly 20,000 genes that make up the human blueprint, and not all of them affect the brain. Yet those 90 differences could explain why Neanderthals died out, s...

Politics

6 hours ago Lockerbie drama is a punch to the gut with a stellar performance from Colin Firth

Controversial five-part series stars Firth as Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter died in the UK’s deadliest terror attack

Events

7 hours ago The Masked Singer Christmas special winner is revealed as Nutcracker and unmasked as 80s pop legend

The Masked Singer Christmas Special winner has been unmasked as a legendary 80s pop icon during Thursday's show. 

Politics

9 hours ago Squid Game season 2 is nowhere near as shocking as the first – but isn’t that the point?

It is impossible to replicate the shock of the first season, and writer Hwang Dong Hyuk does well not to try

Events

12 hours ago The Masked Singer Christmas special winner revealed as Nutcracker is unmasked as 80s pop legend

The Masked Singer Christmas Special winner has been unmasked as a legendary 80s pop icon during Thursday's show. 

Politics

12 hours ago Yoon Suk Yeol impeachment: court hearings to begin in South Korea over president’s martial law crisis

Yoon’s legal team will attend the first hearing in impeachment review on Friday, the same day that the acting president also faces an impeachment voteSouth Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol’s legal team are set to attend court on Friday as the constitutional court begins hearings into his impeachment by parliament over his short-lived imposition of martial law,The court has 180 days to decide whether to reinstate Yoon or remove him. In the latter scenario, a new presidential election would be held within 60 days. Continue reading...

Events

13 hours ago Rachel Reeves spending review ‘set to be next big challenge’ for government as growth flatlines

Rachel Reeves has ordered a line-by-line review of spending, with departments ordered to find savings of 5 per cent of their budgets

Politics

12 hours ago Maya Jama wows in bold silver jumpsuit as she replaces Rita Ora as a judge on The Masked Singer with fiery Love Island

The pop star, 34, stepped down from the judging panel of the ITV game show and was replaced by the Love Island host, 30, in a fiery announcement teaser.

Events

14 hours ago Wildlife faces ‘blurring seasons’ as 2024’s weather brings mixed fortunes

The National Trust’s review of the year’s wildlife and weather sees past drought give way to wet, mild conditions in 2024.

Politics

24 hours ago Katt Williams, crypto and cat ladies: 2024 was the year of unexpected second chances

From comedy to courtroom drama, if you thought you’d seen it all before, that’s because this year you hadIf 2024 was defined by anything, it was a distinct feeling of deja vu. Donald Trump ran and won, Death Cab and Janet Jackson headlined music festivals, and aesthetes on social media lusted after Windows Vista design language circa 2007. Same old, same old – almost. Because 2024 was also the year of unexpected second chances: in some very special cases, those who suffered a fall from grace or otherwise unfortunate first run in the spotlight got another shot at glory. Call it a comeback, a redemption, or deja vu all over again for better or worse, it was their year once more. . Continue reading...

Events

15 hours ago Dua Lipa 'engaged' to actor Callum Turner after one year as she flashes huge ring

Pop star Dua Lipa is reportedly tying the knot with her famous actor boyfriend Callum Turner after the singer hinted she'd gotten engaged with snaps on Instagram

Politics

26 hours ago Squid Game season two is nowhere near as shocking as the first – but isn’t that the point?

It is impossible to replicate the shock of the first season, and writer Hwang Dong Hyuk does well not to try

Events

15 hours ago Outnumbered on BBC One review: a welcome return to form for the chaotic Brockmans

The family is back for the first time in eight years, and they’ve swapped whimsical charm for bleak gallows humour

Politics

27 hours ago The 2010s are glorified by gen Z. But the ‘indie music’ of that era was unoriginal | Jamie Peck

So much of early 2000s ‘indie’ music was nothing but a backward-looking rerun of movements pastYou’ve probably noticed it by now: the smeared makeup in fashion editorials, the “messy girl” style of gen Z celebrities like Olivia Rodrigo, and the dance-y, LCD Soundsystem-esque sound of artists like the Dare and well, LCD Soundsystem, whose reunited lineup seems to be playing shows every night now.The no-longer-so-niche pop star Charli xcx further foregrounded it with her breakout hit Brat this past summer, an album whose inescapable promotional cycle improbably combined an embrace by the Harris/Walz presidential campaign – cue Jake Tapper trying to explain “brat summer” to your parents – and a birthday party photographed by none other than aughts-era shutter bug the Cobrasnake in his trademark high-flash, low-res style.Each artist fits the mold of a bygone trope. Ryan Adams was the self-professed ‘wannabe beat poet guy,’ fitting the chain-smoking mold of folk predecessors like Bob Dyl...

Events

16 hours ago Hugh Dennis is a master of dry British comedy in Outnumbered, but the kids have lost their comedic instinct

Middle-class family life is back under a microscope as the BBC One sitcom returns after eight years

Politics

27 hours ago Squid Game season two is nowhere near as shocking as the first – that’s the whole point

It is impossible to replicate the shock of the first season, and writer Hwang Dong Hyuk does well not to try

Events

16 hours ago Dua Lipa 'engaged' to boyfriend Callum Turner after less than a year of dating

Pop star Dua Lipa is reportedly engaged to her actor boyfriend Callum Turner after less than a year of dating, with a source claiming that the pair 'couldn't be happier'.

Politics

29 hours ago And the Walls Became the World All Around by Johanna Ekström and Sigrid Rausing review – a dying writer’s journal

There is exquisite detail and piercing clarity in these observations from a writer’s notebooks as she faces terminal cancerAnd the Walls Became the World All Around, its title taken from a line in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are, is gashed, keening, forensic. It has been finessed from 13 notebooks kept by the Swedish poet and artist Johanna Ekström who, just a week before she died of cancer in spring 2022, asked her friend Sigrid Rausing to transcribe them with a view to publication. Such an unusual – perhaps even onerous – request. Then again, Ekström’s parents were writers and literary grandees; Rausing is the publisher and former editor of Granta: no life without books.And the Walls is less about cancer than it is about winter. Early sections take place during the slowdown and muteness of the pandemic. Ekström’s mother Margareta is mute – unable to speak, or even read or write, after suffering a huge stroke in the mid-1990s. “N”, a translator with w...

Events

16 hours ago Dua Lipa engaged to actor Callum Turner as she flashes huge diamond ring

Pop singer Dua Lipa is set to marry actor and model Callum Turner after they became engaged over the festive season - less than a year after they were first linked together

Politics

33 hours ago Squid Game season two review – TV that will make you uncomfortably bloodthirsty indeed

When we get into the actual games, the smash-kit K-drama finds its feet. But it spends far too many episodes dragging its heels extremely painfully. Series three must do betterOne of Hollywood’s many bad habits is the bloat caused by splitting a story in half in a bid to double the profits (cough, cough, Dune and Wicked). Squid Game was always a perfect one-series story. Gambling addict Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) became Player 456, a desperate man who attempts to pay off his debts by taking part in a twisted underground fight-to-the-death competition. He beats the odds by surviving every one of its potentially fatal playground games. When it first appeared, it was horrifying, it was thrilling, and its satirical edge – which examined capitalism and class in South Korea – was clever and acidic. The world took to it in vast numbers.That it became one of Netflix’s most successful, and therefore most profitable, series of all time placed it in a creative bind. Inevitably, it was renewed...

Events

16 hours ago Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage go to war over Reform's membership numbers: Tory leader accuses Brexiteer of 'fakery' after his party claimed they had surpassed Conservatives

Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch became embroiled in an extraordinary public row last night over whose party had the most support.

Politics

22 hours ago People urged to do at least 150 minutes of aerobic exercise a week to lose weight

Review of 116 clinical trials finds less than 30 minutes a day, five days a week only results in minor reductionsPeople who want to lose meaningful amounts of weight through exercise may need to devote more than two-and-a-half hours a week to aerobic training such as running, walking or cycling, researchers say.The finding emerged from a review of 116 published clinical trials that explored the impact of physical exercise on weight loss, waist size and body fat. In total, the trials reported data for nearly 7,000 adults who were overweight or obese, meaning their body mass index (BMI) was more than 25. Continue reading...

Politics

22 hours ago ‘Wherever he sends us, we’re willing to go’: Annie and the Caldwells on God, gospel and a debut album 40 years in the making

Fearing pop would lead them to the devil, Annie Caldwell recruited her daughters into her band. They’re now sending audiences into ecstasy with disco-tinged soul gospelFrom West Point, MississippiRecommended if you like The Harlem Gospel Travelers, DJ Greg Belson’s Divine Disco compilationsUp next Single, Wrong, on 28 January. As-yet untitled debut album to followOn Instagram, you can find a clip of Annie and the Caldwells’ recent appearance at Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht: one of the band’s first performances outside America’s deep south. The Dutch festival is admirably eclectic and boundary-pushing – the bill this year ranged from Japanese noise-rockers Bo Ningen re-imagining the soundtrack of Jodorowsky’s 1973 surrealist classic The Holy Mountain to the self-styled “putrid, drug-filled gutter rock” of New York quintet Couch Slut – but even so, Annie and the Caldwells’ appearance looks extraordinary: a mother and her three middle-aged daughters, clad in matchin...

Politics

23 hours ago Miranda Hart admits it was love at first sight with husband Richard Fairs as she details their unorthodox meeting

In a candid new interview wth Charlie Stayt on BBC Breakfast on Thursday, the actress and comedian, 52, opened up about their 'extraordinary' first meeting.

Politics

23 hours ago Beyoncé at the Super Bowl: A look back at her unforgettable performances

Pop star brought out her 12-year-old daughter during her special halftime show on Christmas Day

Politics

26 hours ago Miranda Hart sweetly says she 'fell in love there and then' with her new husband

Miranda Hart has opened up about her 'extraordinary' first meeting with her new husband Richard Fairs after the couple tied the knot in a secret ceremony this summer

Politics

27 hours ago Raging Rangers fan board blast SFA chiefs over 'mocking disdain' in VAR row and call for independent refs review

The group backed the Ibrox club's hardline stance as the Cup final fury continues

Politics