32 h. ago The Next Day by Melinda French Gates review – Melinda on life, before and after Bill

The philanthropist offers sensible advice about moving on and ditching perfectionism, but you get the impression she is struggling to take it herselfMelinda French Gates is a woman who seemingly leaves little to chance. From girlhood she would write down goals for herself to reach, and she was just as driven at college and in her early career at Microsoft, where she famously met and married its billionaire co-founder Bill Gates. The couple divorced in 2021.There is a small, sad moment in her memoir The Next Day where she writes of happily gaining weight in pregnancy because it was the first time she’d felt so free “from perfectionism the crushing relentless societal pressure to look a certain way”. Only well into middle age, when a friend gently questions her constant self-improvement projects, does she wonder whether in her conscientiousness she had “missed opportunities to embrace spontaneity, lean into the unexpected”. Continue reading...

Politics

3 d. ago Newcastle United boss Eddie Howe has been diagnosed with pneumonia. What are the symptoms?

What may start as a mild cough or general fatigue can quickly escalate if left unchecked.

Events

3 d. ago What are the symptoms of pneumonia and can you get it in middle age?

What may start as a mild cough or general fatigue can quickly escalate if left unchecked.

Politics

3 d. ago Pneumonia symptoms to never ignore as an adult as Eddie Howe hospitalised

As Newcastle United manager Eddie Howe is hospitalised with pneumonia, we take a look at the key symptoms to keep an eye out for - from wheezing to loss of appetite

Events

4 d. ago Good news at last: just a little exercise can reduce the risk of dementia | Devi Sridhar

A recent study shows the benefit of being a middle-aged ‘weekend warrior’ who only exercises once or twice a weekIn these bleak times, glimmers of hope often seem to come out of the pages of scientific research. Take what we know about exercise. Just in the past few months, we’ve learned that moderate exercise may almost halve the risk of postpartum depression for new mothers, and that even five minutes of exercise a day could help lower blood pressure.But what really caught my eye recently was a study from Latin America that included roughly 10,000 people who were assessed over two decades using the Mexico City prospective study. The research, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, examined cognitive function with the aim of understanding the impact of exercise on mental ability, including mild dementia. The researchers took account of confounding variables such as age, diet, smoking and alcohol intake, nightly sleep and educational attainment, which have all been sho...

Events

1 week ago Streaming: Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy and the best older women age

The recent Bridget Jones sequel, a big hit at the UK box office, celebrates the romance between its middle-aged star and her gen-Z lover, but from Babygirl to The Mother, how do women on screen with younger partners usually fare?At this admittedly early stage of 2025, with all the noisy blockbusters of summer still ahead of us, the UK’s box-office report tells a nostalgic story. The year’s highest-grossing new release, raking in more than double its nearest rival, Captain America, is Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy – a sequel in which its American distributors had so little confidence that they booted it straight to streaming. Brits who missed it in cinemas can finally access it on VOD this week. The film itself is something of a pleasant surprise too: a tender-hearted, flannel-cosy romcom – easily the best in the series since the first, 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary – now suffused with the gentle melancholy of middle age.Age, of course, is a critical concern of this instalment, whi...

Politics

2 w. ago My life in class limbo: am I working class or insufferably bourgeois?

I have two degrees, two books to my name and I write for the Guardian. Yet I spent time in care, live at home and struggle for money. Can Karl Marx help me make sense of myself?I have been obsessed with and confused by social class all my life. Both of my grandparents grew up in Liverpool in the 1930s in traditionally working-class households. They were clever and conscientious and managed to earn scholarships to university, eventually becoming teachers. My parents have university degrees and own property; one of them is now a judge. To most people, all these things place me squarely and categorically in the middle class. But I was in special educational schools from the age of nine, spent part of my childhood in care, left education altogether at 14 and collected the dole until getting my first job in a cotton mill. All these things make me a dyed-in-the-wool prole.And yet I have two degrees, I have written two books and I freelance for the Guardian – you can’t get m...

Politics

3 w. ago Dig! XX review – amazing film of battling 90s psych rockers revisited two decades on

Rereleased documentary study of the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre is an epic story of success and failureAfter 20 years, Ondi Timoner has rereleased her riveting and colossal documentary study of two psych rock bands, the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and their epic dual story of success and failure. There is about 40 minutes of extra material and a present-day coda that reveals, among other things, that each band has a member who now sells real estate. That ending, brutally and suddenly visiting grey-haired middle age on these gorgeous rock’n’roll exquisites, reminded me of the Fellini-esque dream opening to Woody Allen’s Stardust Memories in which two trains, one carrying life’s winners and the other with hapless losers, wind up at the same dusty rubbish heap.Dig! XX, which took years to shoot, is alternately narrated by the Warhols’ frontman, Courtney Taylor-Taylor, and the BJM’s relentlessly goofy tambourine player, Joel Gion, and it shows the ...

Events

3 w. ago Pneumonia: What are the main symptoms and how dangerous is it?

As Pope Francis leaves hospital, what is pneumonia, the condition he has beaten?

Politics