Month: March 2025

In 2016, an adaptation of David Peace’s The Damned United was staged in Leeds and Derby where its pugnacious subject, Brian Clough, is still viewed as villain and hero respectively. Peace’s next football novel was Red or Dead, a 700-page opus about Liverpool FC’s eternally beloved manager Bill Shankly. It is similarly adapted on home […]

Britain’s aviation watchdog will review the rules on “resilience” after Heathrow was closed because of a fire at an electricity substation. Europe’s largest airport was closed in the early hours of Friday last week after the blaze at the Hayes substation in west London hit electricity supplies. No planes were allowed to take off or […]

Key events Show key events only Please turn on JavaScript to use this feature Martin Pengelly Top aides to Joe Biden “aggressively” warned Democratic donors last summer that if the then president was forced out of the 2024 election over concerns about his age and fitness, the party would inevitably make the “mistake” of running […]

Poorer households to lose around £500 per year by end of decade, thinktank says – and why Reeves is saying the opposite In her Today programme interview Rachel Reeves was asked about the Resolution Foundation’s spring statement analysis published this morning. (See 8.33am.) This is what it says in its summary about how the government’s […]

Morning opening: Bienvenue à Paris Jakub Krupa Leaders from some 30 countries – not just from Europe, but beyond, including Turkey and Canada – are meeting in Paris to firm up their previous discussions about what “the coalition of the willing” could do to help Ukraine in case of a US-negotiated ceasefire or peace agreement. […]

The Maga-fication of American political discourse, which started, arguably, with Donald Trump mocking a disabled reporter in 2015, peaked this week with news of Pete Hegseth referring to European countries in the leaked Signal chat as “PATHETIC”, and enjoyed a detour last Tuesday when Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and former running mate of […]

Whenever this town-focused series includes a city, prideful hollering ensues. The English distinction – not tied to a cathedral, a certain form of local government, nor population size – is whimsical, even if signed off by royalty. This selection of destinations is not about alpha cities. The smallest is ancient; the other two newly minted. […]

After more than 170 years at a Scottish university, the remains of a young Aboriginal man killed on his traditional land have returned home. The skull of the unknown man was taken from Tasmania in the 1830s and had been held by the University of Aberdeen since the early 1850s. It is understood he was […]

On a blustery March day in Wellington, a group of would-be whale rescuers wearing wetsuits and hi-vis vests are waist deep in the chilly waters of Scorching Bay. Between them, a two-tonne replica of a pilot whale gently rocks in the swell. On the sand, another group pours buckets of water over a replica dolphin, […]

Rachel Reeves had said that her government was all about growth. But as she stood up to give her spring statement it was clear that green shoots could not yet be seen. The UK’s growth forecast for this year had been halved, leaving the chancellor with a problem. It was a new world of global […]