41 h. ago Kenji Morimoto’s recipe for miso leek custard tart with fennel slaw

Jammy leeks, savoury sweet chawanmushi and toasted sesame seeds make this flaky pastry dish feel decadent and specialThis savoury custard tart celebrates some of my favourite flavours (and dishes): jammy miso leeks, savoury-sweet chawanmushi (a Japanese steamed custard flavoured with dashi) and toasty sesame seeds, all enveloped in flaky pastry. It feels decadent, so it’s best served with a simple fennel salad, zingy with apple cider vinegar and mustard. It’s excellent eaten while still warm from the oven (be patient!), but even better as leftovers, because I have a soft spot for cold eggy tarts.Ferment: Simple Ferments and Pickles, and How to Eat Them, by Kenji Morimoto, is published by Pan Macmillan at £22. To order a copy for £19.80, visit the guardianbookshop.com Continue reading...

Society

8 d. ago The best celebrity ski outfits to copy if you’re hitting the slopes this January

If you’ve got a ski holiday booked for the coming weeks but don’t know what to wear on the piste, we’ve rounded up some of our favourite celebrity styles on the slopes to copy

Events

8 d. ago We reveal the 9 most popular Hols From £9.50 holiday parks of last year – as booking opens for 2026

THINKING of heading on a UK staycation this year? Here's some inspiration: we've rounded up our most popular holiday parks booked via Sun £9.50 Holidays in 2025. There's truly something for everyone in these parks, from families with water babies and adrenaline junkies, to resorts with beachy cocktail lounges and poolside saunas. Seal Bay Resort...

Economics

8 d. ago 'I tested the beauty brand loved by Kate Middleton and Lady Gaga in a secret sale'

Shopping writer Lauren breaks down her favourite beauty products from the celebrity-approved brand

Politics

9 d. ago ‘A celebration of the carefree’: why Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is my feelgood movie

The latest in our series of writers celebrating their favourite comfort watches is an ode to John Hughes’s 1980s classicIt’s hard to ignore a film’s message when the main character is addressing you directly down the barrel of the camera. Granted, the first time I watched the 1986 teen comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I was the impressionable age of 11 and “Look people in the eyes when they’re talking to you” was on constant rotation in my household. So my green eyes met Ferris’s brown ones and I took it all in.Centred around Matthew Broderick’s playful turn as Ferris Bueller, a high school senior faking illness to skip school, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is certainly a celebration of the carefree, though the story is by no means languid. Made frantic by doing the thing you’re not supposed to do with the aid of a red Ferrari, the day speeds by in comparison to the fictional days of other American teen films, such as American Graffiti and Dazed & Confused – which, to be fair, featur...

Culture

1 week ago ‘It’s younger people seeking some sort of spirituality’: UK Bible sales reach record high

Surge in 2025 sales correlates with the growth in church attendances in England and Wales, research showsFor Christian booksellers, the good news about Bible sales has been few and far between. But in recent retail figures, there was a revelation.Sales of the good book reached a record high in the UK in 2025, increasing by 134% since 2019 – the highest since records began – according to industry research. Last year, the total sales of Bibles in the UK reached £6.3m in 2025, £3.61mup on 2019 sales. Continue reading...

Politics

1 week ago Our favourite celebrities and authors pick their favourite books of 2025

2025 was a bumper year for fiction and non fiction. From the book that toppled a prince to top tier thrillers, our favourite authors pick their best books of 2025.

Culture

2 w. ago David Squires on Amorim and Maresca being thrown overboard in power struggles

Our cartoonist on a typically sedate start to 2026 at two of the Premier League’s biggest football ‘projects’David’s favourite cartoons of 2025 | Buy one hereAnd his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Owen Cooper, 16, celebrates his record breaking Critics Choice Awards win by snapping selfies with his favourite A

Owen Cooper had another night to remember at the Critics Choice Awards, winning a record breaking accolade and celebrating by rubbing shoulders with the A-list crowd.

Culture

2 w. ago Scottish mill that is favourite of Taylor Swift celebrates 200 years of tweed

It has also made clothes for King Charles and Madonna.

Politics

2 w. ago Love Island favourites announce engagement as Maya Jama hails 'perfect match'

Love Island host Maya Jama was among the first to congratulate the couple

Politics

2 w. ago Actor and writer Paterson Joseph: ‘Tilda Swinton asked me a question that changed everything that came next’

Joseph on sussing the school system at the age of four, an awkward audition for the National Youth Theatre, and why he loves his ‘horrible’ Peep Show characterBorn in Willesden, north-west London, in 1964, Paterson Joseph is an actor and writer. A graduate of Lamda, he worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company before moving into TV and film, with roles including Alan Johnson in Peep Show and Keaty in The Beach. He published his award-winning debut novel, The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho, in 2022. His children’s book, Ten Children Who Changed the World, is out now. Joseph is a judge for the debut fiction category of the 2025 Nero Book Awards. The winners will be announced on 13 January.This was taken by my sister Glenda, who had decided she wanted to get into hair and makeup. She was pulling together a portfolio and used me as a guinea pig, something my sisters had done since I was small. I was going for that slightly curmudgeonly old man express...

Politics

2 w. ago Love Island favourites get engaged three years after meeting on ITV dating show

Two stars of ITV dating series Love Island have revealed they are engaged after he secretly popped the question before Christmas

Culture

2 w. ago From tracking apps to quit lit — this is your Dry January 2026 survival guide

If you plan on cutting out the booze this month, here's how to do it right, from delicious alcohol-free alternatives to the influencers providing a guiding light

Events

2 w. ago Five of the best books of 2025 that deserve a spot on your 2026 TBR list

2025 was a big year for books, and here are five of the best new releases that you won't want to miss out on

Politics

3 w. ago The Master of Contradictions by Morten Høi Jensen review – how Thomas Mann wrote The Magic Mountain

A vivid account of the creation of one of literary modernism’s greatest achievementsIn a 1924 letter to André Gide, Thomas Mann said he would soon be sending along a copy of his new novel, The Magic Mountain. “But I assure you that I do not in the least expect you to read it,” he wrote. “It is a highly problematical and ‘German’ work, and of such monstrous dimensions that I know perfectly well it won’t do for the rest of Europe.”Morten Høi Jensen’s approachable and informative study of The Magic Mountain positions Mann as a writer who was contradictory to his core: an artist who dressed and behaved like a businessman; a homosexual in a conventional marriage with six children; an upstanding burgher obsessed with death and corruption. Very much the kind of man who would send someone a book and tell them not to read it. Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago The Dead Don’t Bleed by Neil Rollinson review – a gripping tale of family and forbidden love

Two brothers attempt to escape their father’s gangland past in a tense, tender debut that moves between Thatcher-era Northumberland and southern SpainAndalucía is famous for its variety: high alpine mountains and snow-capped peaks, river plains and rolling olive groves, sun-baked coastlines and arid deserts. It is the perfect setting for Neil Rollinson’s debut novel, which is its own kind of spectacular mosaic. Built from short, seemingly discrete chapters that take us between Spain in 2003 and the coalfields of Northumberland in the 70s and 80s, The Dead Don’t Bleed coheres into an extraordinarily tense and tender portrait of two brothers trying to escape their father’s gangland past.Until now, Rollinson has been known as a poet; his collection Talking Dead was shortlisted for the 2015 Costa poetry prize. Here he brings his talent for compressed evocation to an exploration of fraternal rivalry and the enduring impact of a violent patriarchy. If you took Frank and his...

Events

3 w. ago David Squires on football’s notable people and big moments from 2025

Our cartoonist looks back at the big stories and memorable moments as we wave farewell to another year in football David’s favourite cartoons of 2025 | Buy one hereAnd his latest book, Chaos in the Box: get it now Continue reading...

Politics

3 w. ago The Zorg by Siddharth Kara review – scarcely imaginable horrors at sea

A vivid and chilling account of the deadly voyage that triggered the abolition of the Atlantic slave tradeOver the nearly four centuries during which the transatlantic slave trade operated, 12.5 million Africans were trafficked by Europeans to the Americas. 1.8 million of them perished on the voyage under scarcely imaginable conditions of overcrowding, filth and disease. Some threw themselves overboard. And others were thrown into the sea.In The Zorg, Siddharth Kara tells two stories. The first is of a harrowing incident aboard the eponymous slave ship – the murder of 132 Africans by the British crew. The second relates how that event came to play a role in the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade in 1807, in large part through the work of a dazzling array of committed campaigners. One of these was Olaudah Equiano, author of one of the few surviving accounts of the Middle Passage from the perspective of an enslaved person, in which he described it as “a scene of horror almost&...

Events

3 w. ago I'm a food writer who ate at 14 brilliant Welsh restaurants in 2025 you must book for 2026

Picking a place to eat can be a real faff sometimes, so here's a round-up of the best places I've dined at in 2025 for you to consider in 2026

Society