3 d. ago Is the Nintendo Switch the best console of its generation – or just the most meaningful to me?

For years, the Switch has been a companion through life’s changes , gaming milestones and a lifeline to fun in chaotic timesThe lifespan of a games console has extended a lot since I was a child. In the 1990s, this kind of technology would be out of date after just a couple of years. There would be some tantalising new machine out before you knew it, everybody competing to be on the cutting edge: the Game Boy and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive in 1989 were followed by the Game Gear in 1990 and the Super NES in 1991. Five years was a long life for a gaming machine.Now, it’s more like 10. The Nintendo Switch 2 will be released in a couple of weeks, more than eight years since I first picked an original Switch up off its dock and marvelled at the instant transition to portable play. Games consoles often feel like they mark off particular eras in my life: the Nintendo 64 was the defining console of my childhood, the PlayStation 2 of my adolescence, and the Xbox 360 of the first years of my car...

Politics

3 d. ago Man United coach Ruben Amorim rules one player out of Europa League final but hints at three returns

Manchester United face Tottenham in the Europa League final on Wednesday and Ruben Amorim's squad is boosted by three players returning to fitness.

Sport

5 d. ago Tucci in Italy review – Stanley works his magic yet again. Tutta bella!

This foodie tour is a love fest between everyone he meets – and everything he eats. It would be perfect television if only the script weren’t so laughably repetitiousIn my next life I am definitely coming back as Stanley Tucci. Or Francesco da Mosto (that Venetian count with the exuberant hair who was all over the schedules a few years ago, do you remember?), or Steve Coogan or Rob Brydon or any celebrity, really, who is sent off to foreign parts on jollies disguised as work.I am never going to be a world traveller. But if I were, I would, like most of the above, stop at Italy. Why, honestly, would you go further? Why would you not stay in the place that breaks your heart with its beauty everywhere you look? That is suffused with the confidence and style that screams “We owned the Renaissance! We proved ourselves once and for all. No need to sweat the small stuff now! Sit down, chill, and eat penne al’arrabiata until it’s time to prostrate yourself in awe before some ancient frescoe...

Economics

5 d. ago David Strelec drops fresh Celtic transfer hint as forgotten star vows to return 'a complete player'

The Hoops saw a £7.5million bid rejected for the Slovakian striker back in January

Sport

5 d. ago Echo of You review – expressive documentary hears from grieving life partners

Zara Zerny’s lucid and compassionate study gathers moving, candid interviews with bereaved partners remembering their lost loves The Marvel bromide about “What is grief, if not love persevering?” comes to mind watching this metaphysically charged Danish documentary in which nine senior citizens discuss their departed life partners. Director Zara Zerny works hard in defining the miracle of lifelong companionship, and the ineffable essence of that significant other which persists after death. So much so that, in one final, oddly encouraging section, some of the interviewees here suggest that their loved one still watches over them, Patrick Swayze-style.Awkward beginnings and lovestruck thunderclaps: it’s all here. Finn-Erik recalls his first sighting of Kirsten as a 17-year-old with ballet-dancer grace. Ove was rescued from a hotel-room orgy with multiple Norwegians by strapping six-footer Bent, who tells him: “You’re coming home with me.” Then there’s Elly, the trauma of whose first ...

Politics

7 d. ago 'Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll? We were too exhausted': Spandau Ballet singer TONY HADLEY relives Live Aid 40 years on

From the biggest charity concert ever staged to powerful women bosses on national newspapers - the 80s defined life as we know it. The people who were there remember

Events

1 week ago Teen drove into football fan leaving him needing part of skull removed

The victim was left with life-changing injuries after the incident which happened after a Swansea City v Cardiff City match

Sport

1 week ago I’m obsessed with protecting seals: ‘The flying ring toy was deeply embedded in her neck’

It broke my heart to see a seal so injured by a £1 plastic toy. Now I campaign to ban them – and it has changed my lifeThere was an incident seven years ago that changed my life. I saw an adult grey seal with a plastic pink flying ring toy so deeply embedded in her neck that she was practically dead. It was stopping her from feeding because it was digging into her and she couldn’t extend her neck – the wounds were horrific.It broke my heart. From that moment on, I became obsessed with seals and protecting them from the dangers of plastic flying rings. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Riefenstahl review – nauseating yet gripping story of Nazi poster woman

The only important woman in the Nazi movement entranced Hitler, directed Triumph of the Will – and spent the rest of her life alternately fearful and defiantAndres Veiel’s sombre documentary tells the gripping, incrementally nauseating story of Helene “Leni” Riefenstahl, the brilliant and pioneering German film-maker of the 20th century who isn’t getting her name on a Girls on Tops T-shirt any time soon.Riefenstahl was a dancer and actor in prewar movies by Arnold Fanck and GW Pabst, whose performance in 1932 in The Blue Light, her own Aryan romantic fantasy as director-star, entranced the Führer and secured her two historic directing commissions: Triumph of the Will in 1935, a monumentally euphoric and grandiose account of the Nazi party congress in Nuremberg, and Olympia, about the 1936 Berlin Games, with whose undoubtedly stunning images and choreography Riefenstahl effectively invented the modern-day Olympics with its opening and closing ceremonies and media coverage. Continue r...

Politics

2 w. ago Ignore streaming on Spotify, the cassette player returns and is way better than before

The cassette is making a comeback.

Sport

2 w. ago Horror moment Spitfire 'practising flypast for VE Day celebrations' crashes into field

Fire crews and paramedics were rushed to the scene after the historic aircraft plummeted from the sky and into crops in West Hythe, Kent.

Events

2 w. ago Horror moment Spitfire 'practicing flypast for VE Day celebrations' crashes into field

Fire crews and paramedics were rushed to the scene after the historic aircraft plummeted from the sky and into crops in West Hythe, Kent.

Events

3 w. ago Mourners at controversial bishop’s funeral told one moment cannot define a life

Brendan Comiskey, who died this week at the age of 89, resigned as bishop of the Ferns dioceses in 2002 over his handling of clerical abuse claims.

Politics

3 w. ago David Beckham and Prince Harry's 'bitter fallout' and how Becks got ultimate revenge

David and Harry were once really good mates until one incident changed things between them.

Politics

3 w. ago The Four Seasons review – Tina Fey’s midlife comedy is properly funny and heartbreaking

Like The White Lotus without deaths, this brilliant tale of old college friends holidaying together is Fey’s finest work in years. Steve Carell and Colman Domingo are revelatoryIn my next life I am definitely coming back as an affluent American. Whatever the risk of being murdered in a White Lotus hotel complex or a beachfront property by Nicole Kidman, the benefits far outweigh it.The Four Seasons follows a year’s worth of the can-we-really-call-them-travails of three well off, beautifully clad couples in their 50s. They have been friends since their college days and now go for weekends away together four times a year, as we all would if we had the money, time and wardrobes. The eight-episode series is a remake and update of the 1981 Alan Alda film of the same name, by Tina Fey, Tracey Wigfield and Lang Fisher. It’s a creative triumvirate that promises much and – to the delight of Fey fans, who may feel it’s been a long wait since anything approaching the joy and genius of her Unbr...

Culture

3 w. ago Paul Hollywood rushes to pilot's aid after horror plane crash in field

A pilot has revealed that Bake Off star Paul Hollywood helped to rescue him from a plane crash in Thorne Hill Minster after plummeting his aircraft into a field

Events

3 w. ago Luis Suarez's reason for being 'so sad' over Liverpool issue

Former Liverpool striker Luis Suarez joined Barcelona in 2014, and felt his bond with a section of fans changed because of an incident after leaving Anfield

Politics

4 w. ago ‘It feels empty’: is Hollywood film and TV production in a death spiral?

Filming in Los Angeles is at a historic low, with some suggesting the city might go the way of DetroitWhen screenwriter David Scarpa visits the great Hollywood studios these days, he is struck by what is missing. “It used to be you’d walk around those back lots and you’d see many people and they were very busy,” Scarpa muses. “They were like small cities. Now often you’ll walk around and have nobody else there. It feels empty. You definitely feel the absence of life on those lots.”Like the once proud industrial factories of the midwest, the dream factories of southern California are in decline. Last year was the worst for on-location filming in Los Angeles since tracking began 30 years ago apart from pandemic-hit 2020. Of all the TV shows and feature films that North American audiences watch, only one-fifth are now made in California. Continue reading...

Culture

last month Paralysed rugby player returns to the field where horror incident changed his life forever and defies the odds by completing a heroic act

Exactly three years after a horror injury on the footy pitch changed his life forever, the 38-year-old has returned to the site of the accident and has defied the odds.

Sport