24 m. ago Shaun of the Dead was right! Survival psychologist explains why the PUB really is the safest place to hide out in an apocalypse

A survival psychologist has revealed the pub really is the safest place to ride out impending disaster - in echoes of hit film Shaun of the Dead.

Events

91 m. ago London 'will avoid worst of Angela Rayner's council funding raid' after fears of huge tax rises and service cuts

Former deputy prime minister had proposed to channel funding away from the capital into more deprived areas of the country

Economics

2 h. ago It: Welcome to Derry fans rejoice as episode 2 gets special early release for Halloween

Prequel to Stephen King’s popular ‘It’ franchise debuted Sunday and is already being hailed by fans for its gore and fright

Politics

3 h. ago Consumers: tell us how you feel about large quantities of emails from brands

Whether it’s transactional confirmation messages, special offer alerts, abandoned cart reminders or newsletters, we’d like to hear what people make of the steady influx of emails from brandsA single online purchase can leave a dozen emails in a consumer’s inbox: order confirmations, processing confirmations, courier handover conformations, dispatch, transit and delivery confirmations as well as multiple prompts to review a purchase are now being sent out by many retailers for every online transaction.Many companies also send out regular emails with marketing communications such as welcome emails, newsletters, special offer alerts, abandoned cart reminders and other unsolicited spam. Continue reading...

Politics

3 h. ago The Séance of Blake Manor review – gripping gothic detective game steeped in mystery and menace

Raw Fury/Spooky Doorway; PCAn atmospheric folk-horror adventure combines colonial guilt, spiritualism and supernatural chills in a tale of secrets and seances on Ireland’s haunted west coastA remote manor house on the west coast of Ireland, an eccentric cast of misfits and ne’er-do-wells, a dapper investigator with secrets of his own. The Séance of Blake Manor sounds like the stuff of cosy Sunday evening gaming. Thankfully, this folk-horror drama has much more to offer than a bit of fun for Agatha Christie fans.It’s October 1897, and you play as private investigator Declan Ward, sent to the aforementioned manor – now a grand hotel – to discover the whereabouts of one of its guests, Evelyn Deane, who has gone missing in mysterious circumstances. What you discover is a gothic mansion filled with eccentrics: from a psychic researcher wielding a spirit camera to a vodouist oungan and a Brazilian woman tracing her family roots. They are here to attend a grand seance that will take place ...

Politics

5 h. ago Blue Has No Borders review – hunt for British identity in British seaside town maps the national psyche

Director Jessi Gutch shadows seven Folkestonians from a Syrian refugee, to a drag artist and a Brexiter‘Make invisible people visible,” reads a banner at Folkestone Pride in this woolly docu-hunt for that most mythical of beasts: British identity. Among many other elements, fretting about invisibility seems to be a recently acquired national trait. Virtually every group featured here, from the LGBTQ+ crowd, to uprooted Syrian refugees to local fishers and diehard Brexiters, complains of being overlooked, neglected or misunderstood in some way.Director Jessi Gutch shadows seven Folkestonians, the better to map the faultlines in the national psyche: Syrian exile Heba, not quite as fully integrated into UK culture as her younger brother and sister; barber and Only Fools and Horses proselytiser Nathan, who holds a torch for the British working class; black artist Josie, whose work explores the relationship between land and identity; Dan, the son of a fisher who as drag performer Dita ad...

Politics

5 h. ago Erykah Badu at Royal Albert Hall: 'An Afrofuturistic universe of cosmic wisdom'

The multi-Grammy winner takes the Royal Albert Hall to the stars and back

Politics

6 h. ago Simon Amstell at The Arches: 'Nobody takes unfiltered confession so far'

Amstell is in top unfiltered form in a show taking in Hollywood parties, drugs and a musical twist

Politics

6 h. ago New State Pension age review urged to allow people to claim retirement payments early

Retirement experts are also calling for at least 12 years’ notice before any further State Pension age rises.

Economics

6 h. ago The Rose Field review: Immerse yourself in Philip Pullman’s dark imagination

It’s a story about growing up. But it’s really about Pullman’s nostalgia for the world in which he grew up

Politics

6 h. ago BBC could let staff work from home if they are worried about its policy that allows biological males into women's toilets

The broadcast corporation's review of its policy comes as the Government prepares new policies following the Supreme Court's ruling on the Equality Act earlier this year.

Events

7 h. ago The Four Spent the Day Together by Chris Kraus review – a cult writer tries something new

The I Love Dick author combines autofiction with memoir and true crimeThe Four Spent the Day Together is full of people seeking fresh starts, attempting to give up drugs or abusive marriages, only to find hope curdling into violence. Chris Kraus uses the phrase a lot, making it wilfully jaded in its repetitions. “He could make a fresh start.” “They decided to make a fresh start.” And all along, here she is, making her own fresh start, because this seems a new kind of book – documentarian, genuinely novelistic. But then it turns out to be packed with the same dilemmas and styles as the old ones.Kraus is an artist who became a writer almost accidentally with her 1997 cult classic I Love Dick, comprised of letters to an unreceptive lover, turning confessional female writing from abjection into assassination. She carried on writing, but the three subsequent fascinating and rebarbative novels lacked the shock and immediacy the letter form brought to the voic...

Politics

7 h. ago Canuto’s Transformation review – did a man really turn into a jaguar in Brazil’s remote forest?

Ariel Kuaray Ortega’s complex docufiction sifts through the mysterious story of a man who, during the military tyranny, is said to have become a big catHere is a complex, mysterious docufictional mediation which unfolds at an unhurried walking pace, co-authored by the Indigenous Brazilian film-maker Ariel Kuaray Ortega, a member of the Mbyá-Guarani movie collective; it’s evidently been a personal project, many years in the making, and a prizewinner at the 2023 IDFA festival in Amsterdam. Ortega returns to his home town in a remote forested region on the border with Argentina, on a mission to investigate a local legend that a man called Canuto, from his grandfather’s generation, was transformed into a jaguar.The film is at once a documentary on this subject and a record of the fictional re-enactment that Ortega is staging using local people – and, in a way, it is a film about itself. He speaks to his aged grandfather and to villagers about their customs and beliefs and their fraught ...

Politics

8 h. ago The Land of Sweet Forever review: How to kill Harper Lee’s reputation

Harper Lee’s third book is a shameful scraping of the barrel by her publishers

Events

8 h. ago Book of Dust review: Immerse yourself in Philip Pullman’s dark imagination

It’s a story about growing up. But it’s really about Pullman’s nostalgia for the world in which he grew up

Politics

9 h. ago Family's bizarre $200,000 legal saga takes yet another turn after 26 dirty mattresses were dumped on their driveway as payback for a bad review

An Aussie family's fight against a rubbish company has turned into their worst nightmare.

Economics

9 h. ago The Anthony Bourdain Reader review – undiscovered gems from the charismatic chef

A new collection brings essays, fiction and fragments together in a wild if uneven portrait of a restless mindThink Anthony Bourdain and a whole rush of TV memories flood back. There he is – in shows such as Parts Unknown and No Reservations – a gonzo gourmand trekking to backstreet nooks and favela hideouts in parts of the world where celebrity chefs fear to tread. In Beirut and Congo; savouring calamari and checking out graffiti in Tripoli; slurping rice noodles and necking bottles of cold beer with Barack Obama in Hanoi, Vietnam. One course follows another, evenings drift past midnight and he’s still chewing the fat with locals, hungry for stories – about drugs, dissidence, gristly local politics.But Bourdain, who killed himself aged just 61 in 2018, had always seen himself as a writer. His mother was an editor at the New York Times, and his youthful crushes were mostly beatniks and outlaws – Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Lester Bangs, Hunter S Thompson. (Orwell too – especial...

Politics

9 h. ago The Anthony Bourdain Reader review – undiscovered gems from the charismatic chef turned writer

A new collection brings essays, fiction and fragments together in a wild if uneven portrait of a restless mindThink Anthony Bourdain and a whole rush of TV memories flood back. There he is – in shows such as Parts Unknown and No Reservations – a gonzo gourmand trekking to backstreet nooks and favela hideouts in parts of the world where celebrity chefs fear to tread. In Beirut and Congo; savouring calamari and checking out graffiti in Tripoli; slurping rice noodles and necking bottles of cold beer with Barack Obama in Hanoi, Vietnam. One course follows another, evenings drift past midnight and he’s still chewing the fat with locals, hungry for stories – about drugs, dissidence, gristly local politics.But Bourdain, who killed himself aged just 61 in 2018, had always seen himself as a writer. His mother was an editor at the New York Times, and his youthful crushes were mostly beatniks and outlaws – Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Lester Bangs, Hunter S Thompson. (Orwell too – especial...

Politics

9 h. ago Writing Hawa review – Afghan woman fights for freedom as the Taliban close in

Najiba Noori’s thought-provoking documentary follows her mother, finally getting her chance at autonomy just as the Taliban retake the countryShot in Afghanistan shortly before the 2021 Taliban takeover, Najiba Noori’s thought-provoking debut juxtaposes the private transformation of a woman with the public unravelling of the nation. At age 13, Noori’s mother, Hawa, was married off to a man 30 years her senior. Now with grownup children, she can finally embark on her own mission: to learn how to read and write, and to open her own textile business. Even though supported by her family, Hawa’s hopes and dreams are suffused with melancholy; soon, even more draconian laws will be imposed on Afghan women.During the calm before the storm, Noori’s roving camera serves as a facilitator for intergenerational dialogue. With stunning candour, Hawa speaks of her unhappy married life, and her past desire to elope with another man. In a painful twist of fate, the cycle continues with Zahra, Hawa’s...

Politics

9 h. ago Apple Watch Ultra 3 review: the biggest and best smartwatch for an iPhone

Third-gen watch adds 5G, satellite SOS and messaging, a bigger screen and longer battery life in same rugged designThe biggest, baddest and boldest Apple Watch is back for its third generation, adding a bigger screen, longer battery life and satellite messaging for when lost in the wilderness.The Ultra 3 is Apple’s answer to adventure watches such as Garmin’s Fenix 8 Pro while being a full smartwatch for the iPhone with all the trimmings. As such, it is not cheap, costing from £749 (€899/$799/A$1,399) – £50 less than 2023’s model – sitting above the £369-plus Series 11 and £219 Watch SE 3. Continue reading...

Politics