64 minutes ago Environment minister confronted over accepting football tickets linked to water pollution company

Environment secretary Steve Reed has been confronted over accepting football tickets linked to a water pollution company.

Politics

84 minutes ago She Speaks! by Harriet Walter review – new words for Shakespeare’s women

An actor’s collection of supplementary speeches for Shakespeare’s female characters offers fresh insights into his workHarriet Walter takes the title of her book from Romeo and Juliet. Spying Juliet at her window after the Capulet ball, Romeo fervently describes her expressive form: “she speaks”. The next phrase is, however, the more telling: “yet she says nothing”. It’s not literally true: Juliet does speak, famously, of her impatient desire and her willingness to submit herself to near-death for her love, but like almost all other Shakespeare heroines, she does it less than her male counterparts.Only in Rosalind, the spirited heroine of As You Like It, striding around the Forest of Arden in doublet and hose and flirting with men and women alike, is there a Shakespearean fema...

Politics

84 minutes ago Watership Down review – charming rabbit animation still has power to terrify

A band of rabbits must leave their warren to find safety in a film that, even in a digital age, still has the bloody force to scare young minds‘The field it’s covered in blood!” This is the young visionary rabbit Fiver, voiced by Richard Briers, in the British animation from 1978 by Michael Rosen, based on Richard Adams’s classic children’s book. The rabbits’ warren, quite as important as Tolkien’s shire, is about to be destroyed by a property development, announced by the humans’ heartless wooden sign, which of course none of the rabbits can read, but twitchy, squirming Fiver can sense the disaster it represents.So his brother Hazel (voiced by John Hurt) leads Fiver and a breakaway gang on a quest for safety to far-off Watership Down, a rumoured place of sanctuary foreseen by Fiver; th...

Events

86 minutes ago Outlander fans 'feel bad' for character after 'meh' bedroom scenes with new husband

Outlander fans have been discussing one particular couple that appears to be lacking in passion following their wedding day.

Culture

88 minutes ago Feline clever! Cats are smarter than BABIES and can even beat infants at word association games, study finds

A small team of animal scientists at Azabu University in Japan have found that common house cats are capable of linking human words with images without prompting.

Sport

2 hours ago Family speak out in desperate search for missing postman who vanished three weeks ago

"We just want to express how much we miss Steven."

Events

2 hours ago Arne Slot admits he feels 'sorry' for Liverpool star after latest setback

Liverpool boss Arne Slot has offered an update on new signing Federico Chiesa, who has been limited to just three appearances so far this season due to fitness problems

Politics

2 hours ago My friends have ditched my 40th celebrations at the last minute and it's made me feel unimportant

The woman took to British parenting platform Mumsnet to explain that she booked a venue for 28 friends but now eight have dropped out last minute and she is stuck with the bill.

Politics

3 hours ago My beautiful daughter was killed after monster repeatedly raped her on a park bench... I will never speak his name

Dr Cas Shotter Weetman said she will never speak the name of the "despicable, deviant monster" who killed her daughter Natalie

Events

4 hours ago Edinburgh city centre to get first major new public gardens for 200 years

First look at green spaces planned for home of National Music Centre

Politics