40 h. ago ‘A bit like a new era’: Lauren James on England’s Euro 2025 ambitions

Chelsea forward on the way her brothers sharpened her skills and how the country can get behind the Lionesses‘I think it was in me from when I was young,” says Lauren James of the fierce competitive drive that has taken her from playing football with her brothers, Josh and Reece, in a park behind their house in Mortlake, south-west London, to England’s opening match of Euro 2025 against France in Zurich on 5 July. The 23-year-old returns from injury as the most likely catalyst for England’s hopes of remaining European champions because she has the skill and tenacity to be one of the tournament’s standout players.“It helped playing with my brothers all the time,” James says as she reflects on a footballing journey when her prodigious talent has blossomed with Chelsea and England while being tested by insidious abuse and racism. We need two interviews to get a little closer to the tangled heart of her story, but her natural reticence and reluctance to open up deserves respect. Co...

Politics

1 week ago England: Lauren James 'never doubted' fitness after Euro 2025 injury scare

Chelsea winger will play in her second major tournament for the Lionesses

Events

1 week ago Lauren James ‘feeling good’ after injury and ready for ‘pressure’ of Euro 2025

The forward has not played since the end of March due to a hamstring injury but is ready to feature at the Euros after taking her game to a another level

Events

2 w. ago Saraswati by Gurnaik Johal review – an ambitious Indian panorama

In the first novel from the author of We Move, descendants of a proscribed intercaste marriage are connected across continents and centuriesGurnaik Johal’s first book, 2022’s We Move, demonstrated how rewarding it can be for a gifted young writer to ignore conventional wisdom. Writers who land in agents’ inboxes with collections of stories are invariably told to come back when they have a novel, and to write about what they know. Johal’s stories were set in a world he knows intimately – the immigrant communities of west London – but they moved between professions and generations with thrilling confidence.Saraswati is also populated by a large cast of diaspora Punjabis. But where Johal’s collection stood apart from the landscape it was published into, his first novel is a representative example of a ubiquitous 21st-century genre. That genre lacks a name – in 2012, Douglas Coupland proposed “translit”, which didn’t catch on then and certainly won’t now – but its features are all ...

Politics

3 w. ago England confirm Lionesses squad for Euro 2025 as Lauren James decision made

England’s 23-player squad has been confirmed as they try to defend their European title

Politics

3 w. ago Britain's Got Talent fans work out how Harry Moulding did winning magic trick

Fans and viewers of ITV's Britain's Got Talent have shared their theories as to how 2025 winner Harry Moulding pulled off an ambitious card trick that included sky diving

Politics