20 h. ago ‘I feel as though I’ve been in chains’: the bittersweet life of lovers rock legend Mari’ Pierre

The British-Guyanese singer topped the reggae chart with 1978’s Walk Away, but despite work with Robert Plant and others, she’s rarely returned to the studio. This interview might change that In December 1978, Marie Pierre was at No 1 in the UK reggae chart with the lovers rock classic Walk Away, a beautiful tearstained lament on a troubled relationship. Her 1979 debut album Love Affair, powered by another enduring scene song in Choose Me, remained one of Trojan’s best-selling albums well into the 1980s; Pierre, with her crystalline multi-octave voice, seemed destined to follow her contemporary, Silly Games singer Janet Kay, into mainstream pop-reggae success.But in the 46 years since, Pierre has never released another album. A career that promised so much has – despite TV work and successful backing singing gigs with Robert Plant, Donna Summer and Chaka Khan – been one of frustration and thwarted ambition. Misfortune, mistrust and mistreatment, personal and professional, have sidel...

Politics

5 d. ago Prison officer's affair with lag unravelled after police scour burned love letters

Supervisors of prison officer Niamh Lloyd raised concerns about her behaviour whilst she was working in the prison, uncovering a letter which wrote of her sordid affair with an inmate.

Events

6 d. ago Dave Grohl's wife Jordyn Blum makes huge decision over marriage after affair and love child

Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl has reportedly been given another chance by wife of 22 years Jordyn Blum after admitting he fathered a love child with a fan

Society

6 d. ago London’s Design Museum takes a deep dive into our love affair with swimming | Cultural trips

London’s Design Museum takes a deep dive into our love affair with swimming | Cultural trips  The Guardian

Culture

6 d. ago London’s Design Museum takes a deep dive into our love affair with swimming

From art deco lidos to 1980s Speedos, the curator of a new exhibition on swimming and style talks about the inspiration behind it‘The first thing to say is that I’m a terrible swimmer,” says Amber Butchart, curator of a new exhibition on swimming that opens at the Design Museum in London this week. Growing up, school swimming lessons were “horrible, traumatic” – the cold water, the humiliation, the scrutiny from teenage boys. But something shifted when she moved to Margate 10 years ago and discovered the joy of swimming in the resort’s huge tidal pool, which was built in the 1930s. “This sounds quite pretentious, but it’s this idea of becoming one with the horizon,” says Butchart. “It’s almost like an existential feeling of the vastness of the world and being physically a part of that when you’re immersed in water. It’s transformational.”Splash! A Century of Swimming and Style explores our enduring love affair with swimming, from Britain’s lido boom of the 1920s and 30s to the Merma...

Politics

7 d. ago CM Punk continues Celtic love affair as WWE superstar revels in VIP Parkhead treatment

The Best in the World paid a visit to the Glasgow ground - and it is not his first Hoops nod

Politics

7 d. ago I’ve got a new secret weapon against insomnia: a £20 strip of padded fabric

My wireless sleep headphones let me enter a one-woman sensory deprivation chamber every night. HeavenI’m having a night-time love affair. A blinding, unwashed, entirely distracting relationship that I turn to when everyone else in my house is asleep. My new bedmate whispers in my ear when I’m supposed to be sleeping and leaves imprints on my neck in the morning. That’s right: I’m talking about my new sleep mask with built-in wireless speakers.When I got pregnant last year, my body appeared to forget, entirely, how to sleep. Which was fun, as everyone around me started to joke rather grimly about precisely how tired I was about to make myself for the next 18 years. But then my husband presented me with a small, padded strip of grey velvet fabric, through which I can play precisely the sort of soporific audio that quells even my most brutal insomnia. Continue reading...

Economics

8 d. ago Tell us: did you end a relationship after being inspired by a certain song, book, TV show or film?

We would like to hear from people who have uprooted their life for a piece of artThe Guardian’s Saturday magazine is looking for people who filed for divorce after being inspired by a certain song, book, TV show or film. Did Taylor Swift make you realise it was time to leave a disappointing partner? Has watching a really great sex scene ever made you realise that the passion in your relationship was dead?We are interested in hearing stories about how a particular piece of culture gave you the strength to end a relationship. Whether you came out as gay after watching Brokeback Mountain, or confronted your cheating spouse after watching The Affair, we would love to hear from you about what it’s like to uproot your life in response to a piece of art. Continue reading...

Culture

9 d. ago Stephen Graham revels in a Celtic love affair as Adolescence star bang on the money over Brendan Rodgers claim

The amiable Scouser is anything but on the small screen as his love for the green and white resurfaces.

Politics

1 week ago 6 poetry collections to spark a new love affair with reading this World Poetry Day

Poetry should be celebrated every day of the year, but this World Poetry Day, we'd like to take a moment to introduce you to the world of contemporary poetry - and it's fizzing with new voices

Politics

1 week ago Eddie Jordan and his Celtic love affair – from iconic F1 owners 'first love' to Hoops in Tehran

The Dublin-born Formula 1 team owner sadly passed away aged 76 as Celtic paid an emotional tribute

Events

1 week ago Expert reveals Britain's 50 best afternoon teas you MUST try: From high tea with dainty china and champagne to modest tearoom scones

In the 1840s, when Queen Victoria's close friend suggested tea and a little bread and butter to stave off 3pm hunger pangs, she unwittingly lit the flame on a national love affair with afternoon tea.

Politics

2 w. ago Liz Truss affair partner Mark Field reveals bombshell details of 18 month sordid love affair

Mark Field and Liz Truss embarked on an 18 month love affair starting in 2002, the 60-year-old politician served as the MP for Cities of London and Westminster from 2001 - 2019

Events

2 w. ago Prince William's Aston Villa love affair: The reason future King became Midlands club's most famous fan... and the secret names he uses to follow them online

To judge from his glum expression, Prince William was not amused. With a place in the quarter-finals of the Champions League at stake, his beloved Aston Villa had been toiling against Club Bruges.

Politics

2 w. ago Nova Scotia House by Charlie Porter review – radical visions of gay 90s London

Memories of love and heartbreak during the Aids epidemic are brought vividly to life in this exhilarating, risk-taking debutHalfway through his debut novel, Charlie Porter has a character ask the question that still haunts generations of British gay men: “What am I to do with this anger?” The book is Porter’s answer. The starting point is simple. Johnny is 19, and on the run from a small-town childhood; arriving in London, he falls in love with Jerry, who is 45 and HIV positive. Their affair coincides exactly with the last four years in which the virus was untreatable; Jerry dies of an Aids-related illness in the summer of 1995, just months before effective combination therapies began to be prescribed.Twenty-six years later, Johnny is still living in Jerry’s flat. This is in the Nova Scotia House of the title, an oasis of public housing in one of the last pockets of unredeveloped land in London’s East End. Inevitably, a tower of flats is now being built right nex...

Politics

2 w. ago I saw what Manchester United fan favourite did to reignite Old Trafford love affair

Man Utd are into the Europa League quarter-finals after an impressive performance saw them beat Real Sociedad 4-1 at Old Trafford.

Sport

2 w. ago New parents Michelle and Mark's love affair with 'heavenly' Mallorca: How family weddings, swanky eateries, work and holiday home dreams led to couple naming their daughter PALMA

Michelle Keegan and Mark Wright sent the showbiz world into a spin on Wednesday when they announced the birth of their first born child

Society

3 w. ago ‘We swept into Moscow in Gorbachev’s limousine’: Neil Tennant’s love affair with Russia – before the ‘cancer of Putin’

They played Red Square, launched MTV Russia and got driven home from a gay club by the police. But the freedoms witnessed by Pet Shop Boys have been crushed. Singer Neil Tennant relives those heady days – and calls for a revolutionThe journalist Andrey Sapozhnikov of Novaya Gazeta Europe, the independent Russian newspaper that now operates from Latvia in order to avoid censorship by Putin’s regime, recently asked Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys: “You have been actively commenting on Russian politics since 2013 and the Pussy Riot case, and you are arguably one of the most engaged western artists in relation to the Russian context today. Why do you care so deeply about what is happening specifically in Russia?” Here is his reply, which the Guardian is publishing in English. I have been interested in Russia since reading a book when I was a young boy about the 1917 revolutions. It fascinated me that the Russian empire was replaced by another empire, the Soviet Union, which unleashed ...

Politics

3 w. ago The trauma plot: how did culture get addicted to tragic backstories? | Diana Reid

Again and again, audiences have been spoon-fed the same story: a character can only be explained by a past trauma, tantalisingly revealed in the last episode. Has the trope reached a tipping point?Get our weekend culture and lifestyle emailYou only need to look at some of the biggest stories of the past decade to realise popular culture from the late 2010s had a love affair with trauma. Online there was the personal essay boom that kept websitesincluding BuzzFeed, Jezebel and Australia’s own Mamamia afloat. In publishing, memoirs that explored the gamut of human suffering – everything from the pampered (Prince Harry’s Spare) to the impoverished (Tara Westover’s Educated) – broke sales records. And memoirs found their fictional counterpoint in novels including Gail Honeyman’s Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Miranda Cowley Heller’s The Paper Palace. Even television and film were trauma-obsessed. Cue the detective who must face his own trauma before he can crack the case (True ...

Events

3 w. ago ‘The dumbest thing I’ve ever done’: spy trial’s tales of scheming, bluster and a love triangle

Trial of three ‘minions’ in spy ring for Russia heard of chaotic errors, tangled relationships, a cancer lie and a red buttonThree UK-based Bulgarians found guilty of spying for RussiaThe spymaster, the ringleader and the ‘minions’: who’s who of the spy ring trialIt began with a simple request, though it was written by one of the world’s most wanted men. “We’d be interested in a Bulgarian guy working for Bellingcat: Christo Grozev,” the author wrote at 7.46pm on 14 December 2020. Another message followed on Telegram: “Can we look into this guy or would it raise too many questions?” And so a spy ring of Bulgarians based in Britain but working for Russia began to form.The author was Jan Marsalek, a fugitive businessman accused of involvement in a €1.9bn fraud on the German payments company Wirecard – and an agent for Russia. Earlier that year he had fled to Moscow, and now he had time on his hands. The message’s recipient was Orlin Roussev, 47, an IT specialist and private investigato...

Politics