34 h. ago Britpop battle between Blur and Oasis revisited in ‘punchy’ new comedy

John Niven’s debut play explores rivalry between the two British bands who vied for the No 1 spot in the charts in 1995It was the great Britpop showdown in the summer of 1995, billed as a contest between cheeky chaps and lairy lads. Thirty years on, a new play is to revisit the fierce rivalry between Blur and Oasis when both British bands put out a new single in the same week and competed to grab the No 1 spot in the charts. Some purchased both releases, many couldn’t care less, but for a few days it was a decision that defined you: whether to spend £2.99 on Oasis’s Roll With It or Blur’s Country House?The Battle is the debut stage play of novelist and screenwriter John Niven who said of the era: “Music was so central to the culture that two pop groups could dominate the entire summer, the evening news and the front page of every newspaper in the country. We’re going to take you back there.” Continue reading...

Events

42 h. ago Will there be any play at the Madrid Open 2025 today after Spain power outages?

Play was halted on Monday after widespread power outages affected the entire Iberian Peninsula

Politics

62 h. ago Capital Summertime Ball 2025 lineup: Huge 90s pop icon to play her first UK show in SIX YEARS as she leads the star performers confirmed

The event will return to Wembley Stadium on June 16, with 80,000 music lovers set to attend, and some of the lineup has been announced ahead of the London festival.

Politics

6 d. ago Premier League Darts 2025 in Liverpool: Order of Play, full schedule and start times including Van Gerwen vs Littler

It's night 12 of the BetMGM Premier League as Liverpool takes centre stage

Politics

7 d. ago Forgotten Manchester United academy graduate will play for Leeds in 2025/26 Premier League

Leeds have been promoted to the Premier League and a United academy graduate plays for Man Utd's historic rivals.

Politics

8 d. ago Playwright Asif Khan: ‘When people think about theatre, they think white people and Shakespeare’

Sisters 360, Khan’s new play for children, tells the story of two hijab-wearing skateboarding sisters in Bradford. He hopes it will upend lazy ideas around Muslim girls – and bring new audiences to the theatreAsif Khan first heard about Lena, Maysa and Ameya – the three Muslim skateboarding sisters from Hull who became social media stars in 2022 with their skills – from his mother-in-law. “She does this a lot. She’ll send me an article and say: ‘You could write a play about this,’” laughs Khan. But there was something about this particular story that piqued his interest. “They all wore the hijab, lived with their mum and had an Instagram account where they did their own raps and filmed skateboarding tricks I immediately thought: Oh OK, this is a good premise for a play.”So, he set about adapting it for the stage. He contacted the girls’ parents and had a “good, long hour’s chat”. “They were excited that someone was interested in doing a play about them,” says Kha...

Events

8 d. ago Paradise Logic by Sophie Kemp review – a TikTok Stepford Wives for the Pornhub era

This startling debut follows a young woman on a surreal and bluntly graphic quest to be the perfect girlfriendSet in upstate New York, Sophie Kemp’s surreal satirical debut puts us in the uneasy company of a part-time model who calls herself Reality as she sets out on a crazed quest to become the perfect girlfriend. The chief beneficiary of her self-education is a crack-smoking postgrad and wannabe musician named Ariel, who cheats openly, gives her an infection and – in the reader’s eye – sees her as little more than a sex toy able to fetch snacks. But Reality is besotted, ignoring her own doomsaying conscience – what she refers to with typical idiosyncrasy as “the familiar voice” – as well as her best friend, Soon-jin, who thinks Ariel looks like a “school shooter”: “I think what she was saying was: Ariel is a unique bad boy who often wore a leather jacket.” What ensues is akin to a TikTok Stepford Wives for the Pornhub era. Taking tips from a magazine, Girlfriend Weekly, which mag...

Politics

1 week ago Now Play This 2025 review – the end of an era of experimental game design

Somerset House, LondonAfter 10 fun-packed years, it’s a wrap for the UK’s biggest celebration of indie, communal gameplay. But the folk games at the heart of this year’s edition have now filtered into the mainstream, from Taskmaster to The TraitorsWhen she was a child growing up in Adelaide, Australia, Holly Gramazio made up a game with her friend Summer. The two girls would lie back on swings with their eyes closed. When someone made too much noise nearby, they’d sit to attention and yell as loudly as they could: “Don’t wake me up!” The game captured a child’s view of grownups and their irksome inconsistencies – the self-defeating idea, or perhaps threat, that an adult could scream themselves awake amid their stated efforts to remain asleep. It was a co-operative game: the two girls “won” if they shouted in unison. If only one yelled, they lost. “This is the first game I remember playing,” records Gramazio in the printed guide (which also doubles as a delicious compendium of folk g...

Politics

1 week ago When does Ronnie O'Sullivan play first match in 2025 World Snooker Championship?

The seven-time world champion will break off his latest charge for Crucible glory against a familiar foe.

Politics

1 week ago Amorim to play youngsters in Premier League as United focus on Europe

Semi-final against Athletic Bilbao now the priority Amass, Obi and Heaven in line to get more game timeRuben Amorim will use younger players in Manchester United’s next three Premier League fixtures as he prioritises the Europa League semi-final against Athletic Bilbao.United play at Athletic on 1 May and host the return a week later. Matches against Wolves and Bournemouth precede the first leg and United go to Brentford in between the European fixtures. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Karla Sofía Gascón to play psychiatrist who ‘embodies God and the devil’ in next film

Actor to follow Oscar-nominated role in Emilia Pérez with Italian drama described as ‘perturbing, livid and hypnotic’, co-starring Vincent GalloKarla Sofía Gascón, the actor who made history earlier this year as the first trans performer to be nominated for an acting Oscar, has signalled her next project.Gascón, whose hopes of securing the leading actress award (which eventually went to Anora’s Mikey Madison) were dashed after offensive social media posts were unearthed, will star as a psychiatrist who “embodies God and the devil” in Italian drama The Life Lift, reports Variety. Continue reading...

Events

1 week ago Premier League Darts 2025 in Rotterdam: Order of Play, full schedule and start times as Van Gerwen hunts home glory

The Rotterdam Ahoy will play host to Night 11 of this year’s roadshow as the Dutch superstar prepares to take centre stage

Politics

2 w. ago The Masters 2025 LIVE: Rory McIlroy dramatically beats Justin Rose in play

Rory McIlroy missed a five-foot putt for the title in regulation play before beating Justin Rose in a play-off to finally complete the career grand slam

Events

2 w. ago Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter review – a headlong rush through the turbulent Aids era

Porter’s urgent prose propels the reader into the gay scene of the 1980s and early 90s as his protagonist’s life is torn apart by the HIV crisisThe humble comma, normally so easily overlooked within a page of text, is clearly Charlie Porter’s weapon of choice for his debut novel. Here, he wields it to propel his narrative forward in the kind of urgent, endless staccato rush that sometimes requires the reader to look briefly up and away, if only to gulp at some fresh air.Nova Scotia House, the 51-year-old journalist’s first work of fiction after two books on fashion, tells the story of living through the Aids crisis of the 1980s and early 90s, and how those who survived it will be forever accompanied by the ghostly presence of those who didn’t.Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter is published by Particular Books (£18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Music is sadly now a numbers game – Ed Sheeran’s Persian pop experiment proves he’s too big to fail

His adorably beta everyman demeanour has allowed him to duck and dive through styles and genres as culture trends have dictated, argues Mark Beaumont. The success of ‘Azizam’ is merely the latest evidence of a working musician who is too big to fail

Events

2 w. ago Indigenous Australian shell dolls let out for children’s play at UK museum

Twelve dadikwakwa-kwa given to Manchester Museum on condition they are not permanently kept behind glassThey represent a “beautiful friendship” that defies preconceptions, spanning 9,000 miles with a complicated, 70-year history. The 12 dadikwakwa-kwa shell dolls, traditionally used to teach kinship, literacy, numeracy and about women’s health – have been given by the Indigenous Australian Anindilyakwa community to a UK museum on one condition – that children play with them once a year.The relationship between Europe’s museums and the countries and communities where items were taken from has been replete with controversy in recent years. But Manchester Museum cemented a bond with the Anindilyakwa community, the traditional owners of the land and seas of the Groote archipelago in the Gulf of Carpentaria, off the northern coast of Australia, by returning 174 objects in 2023. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Premier League Darts 2025 Manchester order of play: full schedule and start times including Littler and Bunting

It's night 10 and the event returns to the UK after a dramatic night in Berlin last time out

Politics

3 w. ago ‘The cabbage seemed isolated and alien’: Ieva Gaile’s best phone picture

A lone vegetable stranded in a world of plastic transformed a trip to the supermarket into a photo opportunityIeva Gaile didn’t expect to take a photo on her trip to the supermarket. The lawyer, who lives in Vilnius, Lithuania, was working from home on the day and had popped next door for some lunch. When she spotted the errant cabbage placed atop a towering stack of water-bottle pallets, her reaction was instant.“Since I began photography I’ve developed a habit of always observing my environment for interesting shots, andI thought it was beautiful visually,” Gaile says of this image, shortlisted in the Object category at the Sony World Photography awards 2025. “I liked the play of colours and repetition of green, and the contrast of textures: the wrinkled and imperfect surface of the cabbage against the synthetic shine of the plastic bottles.” Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago When the Going Was Good by Graydon Carter review – juicy stories from the heydey of magazines

From Anna Wintour’s table manners to Oscar party hijinks, the former editor of Vanity Fair tells all There are lines in When the Going Was Good, Graydon Carter’s memoir of his swashbuckling career as an editor during the heyday of magazines, that will make any journalist laugh (bitterly) out loud. “There was a bar at the end of each corridor,” writes Carter of his first job at Time magazine in the mid-1970s, where expense accounts were huge, oversight relaxed and, “I went five years without ever turning on my oven”. At Vanity Fair, where Carter took over the editorship in 1992, “the budget had no ceiling. I could send anybody anywhere for as long as I wanted.” For a commission on the collapse of Lloyd’s of London, one Vanity Fair hack ran up expenses of $180,000 – and the piece didn’t run.These are the details most readers will come for and Carter, who at 75 remains a symbol of magazine glamour and excess – a fact somehow vested in the whimsy and extravagance of his comic-book hair ...

Politics

3 w. ago Meryl Streep in talks to play Aslan in Greta Gerwig’s Narnia movie

Oscar-winner set to take on role as godlike lion usually perceived to be male in upcoming adaption of The Magician’s NephewMeryl Streep is in talks to play Aslan in Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Narnia film, according to reports. According to Nexus Point News, and confirmed by Deadline Streep, 79, is being lined up to star in Netflix’s film, which will be adapted from The Magician’s Nephew – the sixth of CS Lewis Narnia series of novels, but the first in chronological terms.In the Narnia books, Aslan is a dignified and quasi-omniscient lion, generally seen to be male and usually interpreted as an allegory for Jesus. The Magician’s Nephew centres on two children, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, who discover the magical world through Digory’s uncle Andrew. Daniel Craig is also in talks for the film, with speculation rising that he will play the uncle. Charli XCX is also in line for a role, rumoured to be Jadis, the White Witch. Continue reading...

Politics