4 d. ago Kevin McCloud: ‘I never get enraged, though inside I might be seething’

As he gears up for the annual Grand Designs Live event, the Channel 4 stalwart speaks to Adam White about Margaret Thatcher, Rachel Reeves and Britain’s ‘shameful and appalling’ housing standards, his eagerness to keep his private life private, and how he wishes people didn’t fancy him

Politics

6 d. ago Review: Flying British Airways Business Class from Los Angeles to London

Review: Flying British Airways Business Class from Los Angeles to London  Business Traveler USA

Transport

2 w. ago In Trumpland, ‘defending free speech’ means one thing: submission to the president | Rafael Behr

By claiming that any regulation is censorship, the White House is bullying Britain to abandon online safety laws and digital taxesCompared with many countries around the world, the US is still a great democracy, but a much lesser one than it was four months ago. The constitution has not been rewritten. Checks and balances have not been dissolved. The difference is a president who ignores those constraints, and the impotence of the institutions that should enforce them.Which is the true US, the one enshrined in law or the one that smirks in contempt of law? If the latter, should Britain welcome its embrace as a kindred nation? That is an existential question lurking in the technical folds of a potential transatlantic trade agreement.Rafael Behr is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago Underdogs: The Truth About Britain’s White Working Class review – a complicated class portrait

Journalist Joel Budd travels around Britain demolishing Brexit myths in a nuanced study of a social group too often reduced to a cartoon by politiciansOn 13 November 1968, a 35-year-old Labour politician got to his feet in the House of Commons and had a go at the ranks of Conservative members who faced him. Six or so months after Enoch Powell had delivered his infamously racist “rivers of blood” speech in Birmingham, David Winnick – who was then the MP for Croydon South – had decided to attack the Tory fashion for bemoaning immigration to the UK from such countries as India and Pakistan and expressing faux sympathy with deprived communities in British cities. “Many of those who act as the champions of the white person against immigrants,” he said, “have not in the past gone out of their way to defend the interests of the white working class.”As the Economist journalist Joel Budd points out in this nuanced, enlightening book about the people and places Winnick was referring to, this ...

Events

2 w. ago FLIGHT REVIEW: Virgin Atlantic Business Class From London to Atlanta

FLIGHT REVIEW: Virgin Atlantic Business Class From London to Atlanta - "I Was Wrong"  Turning left for less

Transport

2 w. ago Britain is warned NO special deals: Strong words from the White House as Keir Starmer says he is 'very pleased' at Trump's 90

The Prime Minister has repeatedly stressed that Britain is uniquely placed to strike an economic agreement that could soften the impact of Donald Trump's global levies war.

Events

3 w. ago The Return review – Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes bring fierce class to elemental Odyssey adaptation

Uberto Pasolini’s raw and urgent drama, from a draft by Edward Bond, sees a traumatised Odysseus face the shameful aftermath of warThe film world is on tenterhooks for Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming Imax-epic treatment of Homer’s Odyssey, but Uberto Pasolini’s fierce, raw drama of the poem’s final sections, describing Odysseus’s traumatised return to Ithaca after the sack of Troy, may well give Nolan something to live up to. Pasolini collaborated on the script with screenwriter John Collee, evidently developed from a draft playwright Edward Bond wrote in the 90s; among other things, this film deserves attention as the final work from Bond (who died in 2024).The Return is an elementally violent movie about PTSD, survivor guilt, abandonment, Freudian dysfunction and ruined masculinity. Juliette Binoche is the deserted queen Penelope, enigmatically reserving her opinions and dignity, refusing to believe the absent king is dead and declining to remarry as the island descends into lawle...

Politics

3 w. ago Trump declares 'war with the world' as his 'explosive' tariffs take effect and send FTSE down 2% amid global stock plunge triggered by 104% rate on China

The FTSE opened down 2 per cent after the President's latest round of tariffs, which have shaken a global trading order that has persisted for decades and raised fears of recession.

Events

3 w. ago Trump declares 'war with the world' as his 'explosive' tariffs take effect and send global stocks plunging again

Asian shares slipped further today as the latest set of Donald Trump's tariffs took effect including a massive 104 per cent levy on Chinese imports.

Events

3 w. ago Is Donald Trump trying to bully Britain into taking chlorinated chicken? White House swipes at 'non

The US President last night slapped a 10 per cent tariff on American imports of UK goods as part of blizzard of global levies on what he dubbed 'Liberation Day'.

Politics