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Billie Jean King
Billie Jean King graduates from college at age 82 after leaving for tennis: ‘Yeah baby, only 61 years!’
Roque Planas
Tue 19 May 2026 20.15 CESTFirst published on Tue 19 May 2026 04.01 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/may/18/billie-jean-king-college-graduation

When Billie Jean King left college in 1964, she had a purpose. Within a few years, she had become the top-ranked tennis professional in the world. Over a trailblazing career, she won 39 championships, a Presidential Medal of Freedom and a Congressional Gold Medal – all while pushing publicly for gender and pay equality.

Last year, she finally returned to finish the degree in history she started more than six decades ago. On Monday, she graduated at 82 years old.

“It is a privilege for me to be here as a member of your graduating class,” King said at her commencement. “Yeah baby, only 61 years!”

King recalled growing up in a working-class family, the daughter of a firefighter father and homemaker mother.

“Like so many of my fellow graduates, I am the first member of my immediate family to graduate college, like many of you,” King said.

She chose Cal State Los Angeles, then known as Los Angeles State College, because the tennis coach, Scotty Deeds, trained men and women together. He said it would help give her the level of competition she needed to excel.

“Their approach to winning in tennis was revolutionary at the time,” King said of Deeds and the women’s coach Dr Joan Johnson. “Even today, most collegiate D-1 and D-2 tennis teams do not have the women and men practice together. Scotty and Dr Johnson had it right and they took the extra step for their student athletes.”

King distinguished herself as a tennis champ in college, winning Wimbledon doubles while enrolled. King was 18 and her partner, Karen Hantze, was 17, making them the youngest team to win at the time.

But King told the crowd that her true motivation since childhood had been to fight discrimination, a calling she first remembered feeling at age 12, when she realized that virtually everyone at the tennis clubs where she trained was white.

“I asked myself, where is everybody else?” King said. “From that day forward, I committed my life to equality and inclusion for all. Tennis is a global sport and it became my platform, but equality was my dream – to make the world a better place.”

She added: “We can never understand inclusion unless we’ve been excluded.”

King, one of the first openly gay professional athletes, founded the Women’s Tennis Association in 1973 and successfully campaigned to get the US Open to pay equal purses at the US Open. That same year, she defeated Bobby Riggs in a historic match billed “The Battle of the Sexes” – a feat later dramatized in a Hollywood film staring Emma Stone and Steve Carell.

King ended her speech with words of advice for her fellow graduates.

“Have fun,” King said. “Be fearless. And make history.”

Television
‘A lot happened in my 50s’ – Daniela Nardini played Anna in This Life. Now she’s a therapist
Anita Chaudhuri
Tue 19 May 2026 11.00 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 11.58 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/may/19/daniela-nardini-interview-anna-this-life-now-therapist

A lmost 30 years ago, not long after the final episode of This Life, the BBC series that launched Daniela Nardini’s career, I interviewed her at a swanky hotel in Covent Garden, London. I had expected her to be exactly like her This Life character, Anna Forbes, the provocatively sharp and messy woman now being credited by critics as the prototype for Fleabag. She did not disappoint. My memory of that encounter remains vivid: a giddy hour covering love, ambition, sex and fame. She wore a pink lily in her hair, and wine might have been consumed.

Nardini now lives and works as a therapist in the West End of Glasgow. As I stroll through the tenement-lined streets to interview her, there are other reasons I’m ruminating on the past. In the short walk from the subway, I pass my first home, my nursery and my primary school (now inevitably repurposed as luxury flats). I am getting timewarp vibes at every turn, but the sensation evaporates when Nardini comes to the door. The woman on the threshold has a very different demeanour from the one inhabiting my memory. She remains striking, with the same soft, dark gaze. But what is most compelling is her unsmiling stillness.

There is an awkward formality as she ushers me into her consulting room. The space is filled with plants and zen art. Gesturing for me to sit in what is presumably the therapy armchair, she offers coffee and within moments is deftly extracting my life story. For one stricken moment I wonder if she thinks I am her next patient. In an attempt to wrest back control, I blurt out a question I had been intending to leave until much later. “Do your therapy clients ever seek you out because of This Life?”

A look of astonishment flits across her face. “That just hasn’t happened!”

I tell her that I’m surprised, particularly when she mentions that most of her clients are women, many in midlife.

“Well, in a therapeutic environment, you’re having a conversation about real stuff, and some of it’s dark and some of it’s difficult, and it’s about helping a person to find the best way through it. A couple of people have mentioned that they’ve maybe seen me in something, but I downplay it.”

At its peak, when people would rush home from the pub to catch the next episode of This Life on BBC Two, the show had 3.5 million viewers. Nardini’s character resonated with a generation of young women who found themselves floundering while trying to make their way in the work-hard, play-hard professional milieu of late-90s Britain. Her bravado, her swearing, her wildly confident sexuality all chimed perfectly with those Cool Britannia times.

Nardini had discovered acting at school, before going to drama school in Glasgow and getting parts in the Scottish soap Take the High Road, the TV adaptation of John Byrne’s Your Cheatin’ Heart and, inevitably, Taggart, in which she played a detective. She also acted in several fringe theatre productions, including the title role in the Liz Lochhead play Mary Queen of Scots Got Her Head Chopped Off. The following year, 1995, she heard a rumour that This Life was seeking a Scottish actor to play Anna. She didn’t think she stood a chance. But, as fate would have it, Lochhead was asked if she could recommend anyone and Nardini was called for audition.

“It was crazy, really, because This Life was such an instant success,” says Nardini, beaming at the memory. “It provided me with lots of opportunities. But at the time, I had moved down [to London] from Scotland and I found it all quite overwhelming. I’m a family girl and I missed everyone back home.”

When the series was abruptly cancelled after two seasons, Nardini found it hard to shake off the character, for which she earned a Bafta in 1998. “Casting directors kept asking: ‘Can you do her again, but in a different way?’ The only way to really break out was to do theatre. Then slowly, as I got older, things changed anyway. I started playing mothers and different kinds of parts.” As well as numerous theatre roles, she went on to win a Scottish Bafta for her role as a ruthless estate agent in Annie Griffin’s New Town in 2009.

She expresses surprise when I tell her about the comparisons to Phoebe Waller-Bridge. “Really? I’ve never watched Fleabag.”

Seven years ago, Nardini made the decision to retrain as a therapist. However, you couldn’t call it anything as simple as a “pivot”.

“Therapy has always been something I’ve been interested in, and, well …,” she breaks off, looking sheepish. “Actors always lie about their age. My younger brother says he gets confused about what age he is, because I’ve always taken a couple of years off mine. I’m having a big birthday next weekend, and I’m glad to just admit I’m going to be 60, and leave the past decade behind. Quite a lot happened in my 50s.”

This is something of an understatement. Not long before her 50th birthday, Nardini’s beloved father, Aldo, died. She has previously said that her family could have been in The Godfather – not because of any crime links but because of all the internal feuding.

“Did I really say that? Well, my dad was definitely the don.”

Aldo was the co-founder of Nardini’s ice-cream palace, a white art deco cafe on the seafront at Largs in Ayrshire. I can still recall its monumental knickerbocker glories, the highlight of summer day trips.

In the aftermath of grief, her marriage to the restaurateur Ivan Stein ended. The couple had moved back to Glasgow from London in 2009 with their young daughter, Claudia. “My husband was retraining to be a chef and I wanted to be close to my family,” she says.

Stein went on to launch The Gannet, one of the most stellar Glasgow restaurant successes of recent years. I suggest it must have been great fun to have had a ringside seat during its glory years.

“Well, I had a little child, so I was in the house most of the time.”

It was ironic that she married someone who was in the same business as her family. “Yes, my father had really long hours as well. So, I understood it.”

There is a significant pause. “A chef and an actress … perhaps it’s just not a good idea.”

She says it in such a deadpan way that I start to laugh, and then so does she.

“We’re fine. Sometimes, things don’t work out and you just have to get on with it.”

Then, summoned for her first post-50 NHS mammogram, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which had spread to one lymph node. She underwent a mastectomy and breast reconstruction.

“When I was diagnosed, I felt that it had happened because my heart was broken. It felt it was connected to what I had gone through in my life. And I’ve talked to quite a few people who have felt the same thing about their cancer. I felt it came from an emotional place.”

She considers herself “very lucky” because the cancer was caught early and she didn’t need to have chemotherapy.

“I knew quite quickly that it wasn’t going to kill me and I was going to be OK. And once it was done and I’d been through this treatment, I felt it had been dealt with physically, but not emotionally.”

How did it affect her? She leaves the room and returns with a beautiful canvas , one of a series of colourful portraits of women she painted during lockdown. The woman has had her breast removed and the space is adorned with red roses.

“As a woman, to lose your breast is a very profound thing. The way I’d previously been recognised by the public, it was very sexualised. Then suddenly to lose that part of yourself is very challenging. It changes your relationship with yourself, and not in a negative way.”

She says she has a new appreciation for what the human body can withstand. “The narrative becomes: ‘I was ill; now I’m healthy. I have survived this. A different strength has come through. My sexuality is still here, but it’s different because of that experience.’”

All these events would test anyone’s emotional resources and, in the midst of it, Nardini realised that she needed help. “There was just so much happening. My marriage, my dad, both things kind of dissolved at a similar time. I was very close to my dad – he was a massive character, and that was mixed in with the grief of a marriage failing, ending. And then the breast cancer. It was just too much for me to process.”

After seeing a therapist and experiencing first-hand the difference it could make, she started her own training – but negative things kept on happening. First came lockdown, then her mother died in 2022, and then her aunt, to whom she was very close. “Because I’d been hit with a further emotional onslaught, training took me a while.” She finally qualified in 2024.

“If you’ve lived a life and you’ve been through stuff yourself, you are going to have more empathy for people who are going through similar things. Sometimes, I think if you are a therapist and you’ve never experienced low mood or anxiety, how can you share about it or talk about it with someone who’s going through it?”

Nardini tells me that as a therapist, she has a supervisor to enhance her practice, which has helped her greatly. “Mine has been teaching me about schema, the self-defeating patterns of your life. Once you understand where those are coming from, it’s inspiring, and you can say: ‘OK, now I know that’s not my stuff any more.’”

So, what was her stuff?

“My stuff was probably being the only girl in quite a strong male family. I also lost my brother Pietro in a car accident when I was in my teens. I think I was just numb for several years.”

When she was 21, Nardini started having panic attacks. “I remember standing outside the drama school building in Glasgow and suddenly my heart was beating really fast and the sky went really big and I felt this overwhelming fear. And I believe it was because I hadn’t allowed myself to fully experience my grief.”

Learning the impact of unexpressed emotions first-hand has had a big impact on her therapeutic approach. “Clients will come to me and say: ‘Oh, I just block that out’; or, ‘It just all goes over my head.’ I tell them: ‘No, you have got to bring it into the light because that’s the stuff that stopping you from living a happy and healthy life.’”

Is being a therapist so very different from being an actor, in the sense that you are drawing on your own experience? “To be a therapist, you’re listening to a person talking about their challenges. Being an actor, you go on a kind of psychological journey. So, yes, there are similarities.”

Did she enjoy being famous? “Well, for all of us on the cast, it was our first big job. We were all making money so we had great fun. We got invited everywhere and had a fantastic time. We all got on great.”

However, she did not enjoy being recognised by the public. “I’d be out with my mum and someone would come barging up and ignore her, just focusing on me. I found that disconcerting. I don’t miss that. Also, if you’ve been in the public eye, people think they can ask you questions about stuff that’s really private.”

Now that Nardini is single, this has added an unwelcome dimension to the prospect of dating. “I’ve been on two online dates in 10 years. One was with a psychiatrist, and we just didn’t fancy each other. The other was with a guy who had Googled the hell out of me. He was bringing up all this stuff about my family. I asked him: ‘Exactly how long did you spend researching me?!’ After that, I was like: I don’t know about this.”

It made her wary. “Right now, I’m glad that I don’t have a partner, but it has taken a long time to get to this point. A lot of your identity is wrapped up in who you’re married to.”

Nardini says she is not entirely against the idea of meeting someone new. “But he’d have to be quite some guy. Because right now I am really happy. I have a social life. I have a professional life and I feel pretty content. I don’t want any problems coming into my life. I don’t want anyone coming in and telling me what to do, what to eat, what to watch on the telly. You become very contented in your own space. You know, sometimes I think I’d kind of like it, but I’d like it to be with someone amazing.”

Recently, she asked one of her clients if they would give up their job if they won the lottery. The client said they would. “See, that’s the thing. I wouldn’t stop working. I would want to keep doing what I’m doing now. Being a therapist. My acting life is quieter now, but people still come to me with small parts. So I’d like to keep doing that too. Doing it all is what makes me tick. It’s been a good move for me.”

Despite everything, Nardini still feels lucky.

This Life is available now on BBC iPlayer for its 30th anniversary

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here

Spain
Son of Mango fashion chain founder arrested in Spain over father’s death
Sam Jones
Tue 19 May 2026 19.14 CESTFirst published on Tue 19 May 2026 12.20 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/19/jonathan-andic-son-mango-isak-andic-arrested-death-father-spain

The son of Isak Andic, the founder of the fashion chain Mango, has been released on bail of €1m (£866,000) after being arrested and questioned in connection with his father’s death in Catalonia almost 18 months ago.

Andic died in December 2024 after apparently falling 100 metres down a ravine while hiking in Montserrat, near Barcelona, with his son, Jonathan. His death aged 71 prompted tributes to him from politicians, journalists and the fashion world .

An initial investigation by the Catalan police, the Mossos d’Esquadra, concluded the death was an accident, but officers and judicial sources told El País and La Vanguardia last year that the case was being treated as a possible homicide.

On Tuesday the Mossos d’Esquadra said Jonathan Andic, who is now vice-chair of the Mango board, had been arrested and taken to appear before a judge in the Catalan city of Martorell. The 45-year-old was released after posting the €1m bail.

The court said the case was being “investigated as a charge of homicide” and ordered him to remain in Spain, surrender his passport and appear weekly before the judge.

A spokesperson for the family said they were confident of Andic’s innocence and they would continue to offer investigators their “total cooperation”.

El País reported last year that police had found no direct or definitive evidence to explain what happened in the ravine but had “come across a series of clues which, when taken together, had led them to move away from the idea of a mere accident and toward the possibility of a homicide”.

La Vanguardia reported that the judge overseeing the case changed Jonathan Andic’s official status from witness to possible suspect in September last year.

The family issued a statement to the media at the time saying: “The Andic family has not and will not comment on Isak Andic’s death in all these months. However, they wish to show their respect for the ongoing investigations and will continue to cooperate with the relevant authorities, as they have done so far. They are also confident that this process will be concluded as soon as possible and that Jonathan Andic’s innocence will be proved.”

Isak Andic was born to a Sephardic Jewish family in Istanbul in 1953, emigrated to Catalonia with his relatives in the late 1960s and started selling T-shirts to fellow high school pupils. He progressed to running a wholesale business and sold clothes in street markets before opening his first Mango store in 1984.

“He saw that we needed colour, style,” Mango’s global retail director, César de Vicente, told Agence France-Presse in March last year. Andic soon opened dozens more stores around Europe and “realised that having the same name, having the same brand, in all the shops, would make the concept much stronger”, De Vicente said.

Family
My mum demands I take her on holiday – but favours my brother in her will
Annalisa Barbieri
Sun 17 May 2026 07.00 CESTLast modified on Sun 17 May 2026 20.23 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/may/17/taken-for-fool-by-family-over-mum-annalisa-barbieri

For years , it has fallen to me and my sister to take my mother on holiday . Now, she has a big birthday coming up and wants me to arrange a trip abroad. I have three other siblings, who have never taken her on holiday , so to prod them into action I spoke with one of my brothers, who expressed disbelief at my mum’s request and told me I was a fool for going along with it.

I can’t decide if he’s being mean (our father died a few years ago and she doesn’t have friends to go with) or if I am the fool in the family . I have young kids and a tight budget, but our holiday has to be arranged to suit “ Granny”, so it ends up being a less adventurous , more expensive trip than my siblings take with their kids.

A little part of me is wondering if my mum is playing me for a softie and not making demands on my siblings because she knows I’ll cave.

Related to all this, t here’s a wild inequality to the inheritance that’s being left, with the lion’s share going to my eldest brother . M um has also helped out with his children over the years, but always refused to look after mine even for an evening .

I try to accept this , as I don’t want a schism in the family and I know if I complain, my siblings and my mother will get angry . But I’m starting to think my brother is right : I am a fool and I need to come up with some excuse to get out of this latest holiday demand .

I don’t think there’s anything foolish about being kind, but it has to be with boundaries. Clearly, these, and a sense of fairness, are lacking in your family.

You’re right to be angry with your mother, who doesn’t seem to treat you all fairly. But your brothers/siblings would be in for the lion’s share of my rage. Instead of being grateful for all you do for the woman who is, after all, their mother too, and perhaps even offering to pitch in, they berate you as a “fool”? Not on.

You say you don’t want a schism in the family, but there already is one and you are the bridge that is stopping it widening. Before you snap, it’s time to take stock.

I went to UK Council for Psychotherapy-registered psychotherapist Prof Hannah Sherbersky, who noted societal expectations of daughters v sons, before adding: “But you do have agency and you’re making a choice about being there with your mum, and this is a wonderful thing. Your siblings are missing out on that connection, but you talk as if you’re being fooled. I wonder if you can lean into it … What if you are not being hoodwinked, rather it’s a wonderful act of generosity on your part, providing some special memories for your mum?”

That said, for your own mental and physical health you should set boundaries. If you could change one thing about this scenario, what might that be? Is it the financial burden, the unfairness, being more appreciated? How much of a “fool” did you feel before your brother said something?

There’s nothing wrong with asserting your needs and letting others deal with the fallout, so long as you can deal with it yourself. The key here is to find the sweet spot that assuages any guilt, addresses a sense of duty, but also takes into account what you want to do. So it may be missing this year’s holiday, but planning the next with a firm, “I can’t this year, but let’s look at 2027.”

If you can find this spot, you can minimise criticism (because it won’t bother you so much) and then you won’t need excuses because you’ll be leading from the front.

Every week, Annalisa Barbieri addresses a personal problem sent in by a reader. If you would like advice from Annalisa, please send your problem to ask.annalisa@theguardian.com . Annalisa regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions . The latest series of Annalisa’s podcast is available here .

Comments on this piece are pre-moderated to ensure the discussion remains on the topics raised by the article. Please be aware that there may be a short delay in comments appearing on the site.

Premier League
Bournemouth 1-1 Manchester City: draw hands Premier League title to Arsenal – live reaction
Rob Smyth
Tue 19 May 2026 23.00 CESTFirst published on Tue 19 May 2026 19.00 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2026/may/19/bournemouth-v-manchester-city-premier-league-live-pep-guardiola-arsenal

Pep Guardiola was expected to confirm his departure tonight , which may well be the reason didn’t. Football matches aren’t the only things Pep loves to control. You wouldn’t blame him if he was pretty hacked off at the timing of the story, 24 hours before such a big game. Now he will get to announce or at least confirm it on his terms, maybe on the pitch at the Etihad after Sunday’s game.

Guardiola to decide future at the end of the season

I have one more year of my contract. I will talk to the chairman at the end of the season. I will not tell you here – I have to talk to my chairman, my players and my staff.

I’m the happiest man in the world to be at this extraordinary club.

Pep Guardiola’s reaction

It was a tough game – we knew it would be. They had 10 days to prepare and they have a lot of energy. We fought and found a goal at the end but it was too late.

We could have played tomorrow or Thursday, but [the schedule] is what it is. We put a lot of midfield players to try control their transitions. The players have given everything all season in difficult circumstances.

We were close. On behalf of everyone at Manchester City, we congratulate Mikel and all the staff, players and fans on winning the Premier League. They deserve it.

In other news, Spurs are hunting a late goal at Stamford Bridge that would effectively keep them in the Premier League and relegate West Ham.

I’m going to hang around for Pep Guardiola’s post-match interview , but we have a separate blog for all the reaction to Arsenal’s triumph. They’ve only bloody done it!

Declan Rice was right: it wasn’t done. Hats off to Mikel Arteta, his staff, his players – and the board, who held their nerve when Arsenal were 15th at Christmas in 2020. That 3-1 win over Chelsea on Boxing Day, inspired by two teenagers and a 20-year-old*, was the little acorn that grew into a 14th Premier League title.

* Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli and Emile Smith Rowe

Here is where the story ends. Congratulations, Arsenal, champions of England after 22 years. Farewell then, Pep Guardiola, 10 years of dominance ending in anticlimax. Two domestic cups counts as a disappointment in Pep terms. There will be no treble celebration at Manchester’s Co-op Arena leaving party on Monday. Eli Junior Kroupi wrote his name in north London legend for ever, as the title race reached its conclusion on the south coast. Erling Haaland’s late equaliser was nowhere near enough.

Andoni Iraola has been able to keep his future movements secret and he received a post-match send-off from a club grateful for three seasons of progressive, exiting football, capped off by reaching European football for the first time. A point was enough to claim that. His team’s determination to complete the job was too much for opponents who cracked under the pressure of their situation, perhaps distracted by overnight news of the huge change coming their way.

Strictly speaking City lost the title tonight, but it was a mad 15 minutes at Everton that really cost them. And Arsenal reuniting with an old friend, the 1-0 victory, when it really mattered.

Arsenal’s Premier League finishes under Mikel Arteta: 8th, 8th, 5th, 2nd, 2nd, 2nd, 1st. How’s that for a journey?

Arsenal’s title is the biggest story , but it’s far from the only one: Bournemouth have qualified for Europe for the first time in their history . They are now unbeaten in 17 Premier League games, an outrageous achievement, and will play in either the Europa League or the Champions League.

Bournemouth were fabulous tonight, particularly Adrien Truffert, Eli Junior Kroupi and Marcus Tavernier. If anything, the draw flattered City.

Pep Guardiola goes straight to the fourth official , presumably to query the amount of added time. City’s players are on their haunches, processing the fact it’s all over.

Full time: Bournemouth 1-1 Man City

Arsenal are champions of England for the first time in 22 years!

90+7 min Rodri’s shot is desperately blocked. Or was it Cherki’s? I DON’T KNOW.

90+6 min Truffert is booked for a hack at Marmoush. This is City’s last, last, last, last chance. Maybe even the last one.

City have 90 seconds to get another. After a penalty area scramble, Rodri’s shot hit the post and Haaland smoked the rebound into the top corner. Cracking finish.

GOAL! Bournemouth 1-1 Man City (Haaland 90+5)

Yep.

90+4 min Marmoush’s free-kick hits the wall, then Foden misses his kick on the rebound.

90+3 min Now Kluivert fouls Rodri on the edge of the area. No second yellow card, but a chance for City to give Bournemouth and Arsenal a scare…

90+3 min Kluivert and Rodri have a row, then Khusanov and Scott do likewise. It settles down pretty quickly, after which Kluivert and Rodri are booked.

90+2 min This result, lest we forget, clinches a European place for Bournemouth , and they are still in with a serious chance of qualifying for the Champions League.

90+1 min Six minutes of added time.

90 min: Brooks hits the post!

David Brooks gallops through on goal after a perfectly timed pass from Unal. Donnarumma comes to meet him and Brooks curls a shot from 20 yards that thumps the right-hand post!

90 min: Double substitution Enes Unal and Lewis Cook replace Evanilson, who had run himself into the ground, and Adam Smith.

88 min: Great chance for Brooks! That could have been it. Brooks, who had loads of time at the far post, screwed a shot too close to Donnarumma from 15 yards after great play from Tavernier on the left. Evanilson then curled not far wide from distance.

87 min “I started following Arsenal in the 2010-11 season, and I’ve never had any expectations of them winning trophies, outside of an FA Cup at least 2-3 times every decade, so I’m largely removed from the rancour that Arsenal’s recent title challenges have elicited,” writes Russell Eberts. “If this result holds, will the narrative be that Arsenal didn’t earn their Premier League trophy, but that City ‘bottled it’ in the end?”

No, no chance. Arsenal are worthy champions; anyone who says otherwise needs a banter transplant. They’ll be called boring champions by some, and I’m sure that will take the gloss off the celebrations that are about to begin in the Gunners pub and elsewhere.

84 min: Bournemouth substitution David Brooks comes on for Rayan.

82 min I think City are cooked. They’ve looked leggy all night, and if he had his time again Pep Guardiola might make more than just one outfield change from the FA Cup final team. Then again, the fresher players have made little impact from the bench.

79 min When the mini-title race began a month ago, we all thought that three away games would be crucial: Arsenal at West Ham, Manchester City at Everton and Bournemouth. How right we were.

78 min A moment of fortune for Petrovic, who spills a dropping ball and grabs it at the second attempt. That could easily have fallen for O’Reilly in front of goal.

76 min: Man City substitution Omar Marmoush comes on for Jeremy Doku.

76 min: Bournemouth substitution Justin Kluivert replaces Arsenal legend Eli Junior Kroupi.

74 min Cherki wins a corner for City, who appear to have found a second wind. They need a second goal, but they have to score the first first.

The corner pinballs around before Tavernier calmly clears.

73 min If it stays like this, Pep Guardiola will have failed to win the league in consecutive seasons for the first time in his career. Failure gets us all in the end, if you can call a two-trophy season a failure.

71 min Doku tries to run Rayan, who ushers the ball behind for a goalkick and celebrates in front of the home fans. This Bournemouth team really are wonderful.

69 min Donnarumma reacts well to punch Rayan’s deflected cross round the post. Bournemouth aren’t just keeping City at bay, they’ve been on top in the last 10 minutes.

68 min After 22 years, Arsenal are now 22 minutes* away from their 14th league title.

* Plus added time, I know.

67 min Truffert busts his lungs yet again to win a corner for Bournemouth . He’s been magnificent tonight.

Scott’s corner is poor and headed away by Nunes.

66 min “So, next season,” begins Zach Neeley, “the managers of the supposed big six a will be an (either way) even more Arteta’d Arteta, Maresca not only in Pep’s shadow but fired by Chelsea this season in weird circumstances, Chelsea with the also recently fired Alonso who Liverpool always wanted, Liverpool w/ a shouldn’t have been fired but still itching to fire him Slot, and Carrick trying to avoid the “Manchester United manager entropy field” and being the next Ole. So the one with the most chill managerial situation would be, Tottenham? What a world.”

The words ‘chill’ and ‘Tottenham’ have just appeared in the same sentence, and life may never be the same again.

65 min Bournemouth weathered the storm at the start of the second half. Long way to go, obviously, but right now they are pretty comfortable.

Fashion
All in the mind: are exercise slides the next ugly shoe?
Lauren Cochrane
Fri 15 May 2026 07.00 CESTLast modified on Fri 15 May 2026 19.08 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026/may/14/are-exercise-slides-the-next-ugly-shoe-nike-mind-hoka

W hen the much-hyped Nike Mind shoes were released in January, I bought a pair. I was grabbed by the idea that the orange nodules on the sole could , supposedly, focus the mind. The futuristic look of the shoe also appeals. If walking on knobbly things took a bit of getting used to, it was worth it – if only for that irresistible fashion smugness of having something rare. In the last week, I have been stopped in the street and asked where I got the shoes. It turns out they are now out of stock and have sold for over £300 on resale site Goat.

The Mind is part of a wider trend in “exercise slides”, a pre-game shoe designed to ground you ahead of your chosen activity. Nike claim that the 22 nodules on the sole stimulate the mechanoreceptors on your feet, engaging the sensory area of your brain, meaning focus is heightened. Meanwhile, recovery slides made by brands such as Hoka and Oofos use cushioned soles and a shape that cradles the foot to helpfight foot fatigue after a lot of exercise. The Mind are worn by footballers including Erling Haaland and Reece James, runner Keely Hodgkinson and basketball players Victor Wembanyama and A’ja Wilson, while ballerina Francesca Hayward namechecks Hoka’s slides as part of her daily routine.

Of course, the connection between footwear and sport isn’t always purely about function. This month, Crocs partnered with Umbro on a pair of slides that combine the clog shape with the look of a football boot – just because. And Canadian brand Literary Sport have previously styled their design-led activewear with what look like recovery shoes. So: in a world where the ugly shoe is now an established category , could the exercise slide be next in line?

Tom Barker, style editor at Highsnobiety, thinks they have stiff competition in the world of ugly shoes. Consider the Vibram FiveFingers barefoot shoes – originally created for hikers, with a “pocket” for each toe – that are now being worn with cult brands Damson Madder and Peachy Den by people in south-east London drinking skin-contact wine.

“In a time when people are wearing toe shoes, these kind of shoes don’t actually feel that out there,” he says. The Mind 002 collaboration with the brand Fragment – the same sole but with a sneaker upper-covered in cross-hatched lacing – has a chance, though. “That version has the right amount of freaky and weird that it could catch on,” he says. “The normal Nike Mind, as futuristic as it is, looks a little bit like something someone’s made in the lab. It’s very tech oriented.”

There’s little doubt that shoe trends have leaned towards the absurd this century, moving from the relative calm of so-called dad trainers to Martine Rose’s mule Nike Shox , Balenciaga’s oversized 10XL sneakers , and surprising hit hybrids like the snoafer (a mix of sneaker and loafer) and the sneakerina . While some of this might be down to designers’ desire to create the latest viral item, it also reflects the foregrounding of footwear in what most of us wear. Shoes are far from the afterthought of an outfit now – they’re becoming a main character.

If the exercise slide might not win the ugly shoe competition, it could still take off this summer thanks to the boom in running – and its impact on our wardrobes. Whether that’s through a Harry Styles-approved pair of running shorts reworked with a band T-shirt , or run club merch worn way beyond parks , this is a case of lifestyle influencing fashion. “People are wearing [exercise slides] as casual shoes a little bit, but the flip side of that is everyone’s running, it’s not just a pure style thing,” says Barker. “There’s a niche there of people who want nice-looking recovery shoes because everyone and their nan is doing a half marathon.” Put simply, they appeal equally to those still suffering from runner’s toe from the London Marathon, those gearing up for Sunday’s Hackney Half and non-runners concerned with aesthetics, like me.

Ali Ball, the e-commerce director at Runner’s World, sees the shoes as part of a wider trend, with consumers buying into all aspects of their run. “People are investing more in running kit these days, so may be more willing to spend money on extra accessories,” she says. While she has seen a growth of recovery slides for post-race, those who run the races regularly tend to use more tried and tested options: “A lot of [marathon runners] wear Crocs, general sliders, Birkenstocks etc – anything that feels more comfortable and cushioned than a regular shoe.”

But do they even work? And could they be doing more harm than good? Dr Helen Branthwaite, chief clinical adviser at the Royal College of Podiatry, says there’s little evidence either way as yet, but one rule of thumb remains: don’t wear any shoe for an extended period of time. “We know through research [that] if you have a varied choice of footwear, you’ve got a much healthier foot,” she says.

Experts are not convinced by the Mind shoes. Branthwaite says nodules on the sole are not new – she points to similar ones on shoes from Japan, and the Arena pool slides popular in the 70s – but they do have some logic. “If you stimulate the mechanoreceptors in patients with diseases like Parkinson’s [who have lost sensation in their feet] it does bring back some better function.” However, she is skeptical that the bumpy texture will mean more mental focus in the long-term: “If you think of having a pebble in your shoe, after a period of time you get used to it.”

Ball agrees. “Everyone is looking at ways they can improve or get faster,” she says. “I would just urge people to remember that there are other things you can focus on to improve your time – pre- and mid-race fuelling, strength training, for example. Slides won’t magically make you a faster runner.” Or, if you’re like me, clock in a personal best on your next stroll to the pub.

To read the complete version of this newsletter – complete with this week’s trending topics in The Measure and your wardrobe dilemmas solved – subscribe to receive Fashion Statement in your inbox every Thursday.

This article was amended on 15 May 2026. Literary Sport is a Canadian brand, not American as an earlier version said.

Cannes film festival
The Unknown review – Léa Seydoux gets invaded in uncanny and bizarre body-swap horror
Peter Bradshaw
Mon 18 May 2026 17.50 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 06.09 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/may/18/the-unknown-review-lea-seydoux-arthur-harari

A rthur Harari’s film is adapted from a graphic novel he wrote with his brother Lucas called The Case of David Zimmerman. It is a doomy, murky and intriguing supernatural noir mystery, hardly visible within the dark toxic cloud of its own strangeness, populated by people bearing stricken expressions of misery and fear. There are some genuinely uncanny and disquieting moments. Maybe it is a parable for the crisis of gender identity – or just identity, and everyone’s occasional experience of the profound, unreconcilable unknowability of our own bodies. There is also something of the mood of Blow-Up , or Basil Dearden’s Brit pulp chiller The Man Who Haunted Himself , or indeed David Robert Mitchell’s modern classic It Follows . But this one, sadly, is flawed by that perennial problem of how to end a story with a great premise.

Niels Schneider plays David Zimmerman, a photographer in his late 30s documenting the way in which his home town has changed over the past century – a project inherited from his photographer dad. (He has an old photo of them both seated on the pavement, apparently mimicking Chaplin and the Kid.) David is overworked, dishevelled and depressed, but is just about persuaded to go along to a raucous New Year’s Eve party where he is stunned to glimpse a woman staring at him, played by Léa Seydoux , whom he realises he photographed a few months’ previously.

She is apparently called Eve, a would-be actor who had a temp catering job at an anniversary party where David was taking pictures. She angrily quit after being yelled at for dropping a tray of glasses and, entranced by her moody defiance, David neglected his official duties to snap her as she stalked off. They have sex in an impossibly squalid basement, and David wakes up the next day to find he is now in Eve’s body.

He is terrified and fascinated by female anatomy (though a more comical film might have scenes with David/Eve getting to grips with novel problems like doing up a bra). Almost paralysed with horror at the waking nightmare of this situation, he finds a way of getting into Eve’s apartment (which, importantly, has a picture of Bob Dylan on the wall), and then he seeks out his own walking, talking male body, which he assumes Eve’s consciousness now inhabits. But it is not as simple as that. Before their meeting, Eve had been animated by an evil invader, with her authentic consciousness long since discarded, and the invader, having taken over David’s body during the sex act, went on to have sex with another woman, Malia (Lilith Grasmug), whose consciousness is now imprisoned in David’s body. A succubus is going around instigating a chain-letter sequence of metempsychotic hookups, which results in a male consciousness within a pregnant female body.

It really is very bizarre. Not-Eve and not-David are faced with a deeply peculiar challenge: could they somehow partly rectify this situation by having sex, which might restore David to his real body and at least give the third woman an actual female form? Finally, having stumbled around in the wilderness of physio-psychological mirrors, our troubled hero and heroine give us to understand that they (and we) have pretty much run out of narrative road. Seydoux, with dark circles under her eyes, is now almost catatonic, having gazed into that abyss which, in Nietzsche’s words, has been gazing back for almost two hours. It is a distinctly disquieting and baffling experience.

The Unknown screened at the Cannes film festival .

Scotland holidays
A new off-grid cabin stay in Scotland – on a farm where kids can run wild

Tue 19 May 2026 08.00 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 12.15 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2026/may/19/family-farm-holiday-eco-cabins-perthshire-scotland

O n a January morning in 1938, Pitmiddle’s last resident, James Gillies, closed the door to his cottage for the final time and walked away through the snow. High on the south-facing slopes of the Sidlaw Hills in Perthshire, the village is now little more than a jumble of half-ruined walls gradually being reclaimed by the land.

My children pick around the overgrown stones like explorers discovering a lost civilisation, before scampering back through the gate and over the grass to our cabin in a neighbouring field. Called the Pitmiddle Hut, it’s the latest addition to Guardswell Farm, which spans 81 hectares (200 acres) of countryside halfway between Perth and Dundee (an hour and a half from Glasgow or Edinburgh). “People gradually moved away from Pitmiddle’s way of life,” says Anna Lamotte, who runs Guardswell with her husband, Digby Legge, often aided by their four-year-old daughter and a smiley 10-month-old in a vintage pram. “Villagers each had a pendicle, the small area they could farm, a system of outfields, infields and ‘kailyards’ – a Scots word for a kitchen garden.” Anna and Digby grew up on farms and small-holdings nearby, and today they rear cattle, sheep, goats and chickens and tend to the vegetable gardens, alongside welcoming guests to stay.

The Pitmiddle Hut sits in the old village’s pendicle field and the slim volume Pitmiddle Village and Elcho Nunnery in our cabin inspired the names of Guardswell’s huts: the Pendicle with its wildflower roof, the Infield with a stargazing window above the bed and shepherd’s hut the Kailyard. They can be rented alongside two cottages and a large farmhouse, all clustered around the Steading, once a dilapidated barn that is now a smart events space for weddings, craft and cuisine classes including cheese-making, and a popular monthly market. It’s also home to a small shop (stocked with the farm’s meat, eggs and Diggers cider), smart washrooms and a cosy room filled with games and wellies.

All the existing cabins were made for two, but as Anna and Digby’s family grew, and couples who married at Guardswell returned with first a dog then a baby, a bigger hideout made sense. The Pitmiddle Hut is a 10-minute stomp uphill and has a mezzanine bed up above the kitchen for grownups and a second bedroom for children to pile into the set of bunks and a double bed. The two are linked by a central indoor-outdoor space, with sliding doors for sunnier days. It’s the end of March when we stay, and the thick blankets (made with wool from Digby’s parents’ farm) and douglas fir planks lining the cabin give it a deep cosiness.

As a somewhat reluctant camper in a tent-loving family, it’s an ideal balance. We build fires in the Esse Bakeheart stove to cook dinner and keep the wool-insulated cabin toasty (there’ll soon be an outside kitchen and a firepit for toasting marshmallows too). My son dashes in and out fetching ingredients from the giant coolbox on the deck. The hut is off-grid, but uses solar-power for lights and the single induction hob. There’s a proper loo, but it’s a walk down to the Steading in the morning for a shower. It quickly becomes our favourite part of the day, saying good morning to fluffy Shetland cows, dinky Hebridean sheep, donkeys Ollie and Hugo, and cheeky pygmy goat Jimmy, who once escaped his pen and crashed a wedding. It feels as though we have the farm to ourselves.

There’s no wifi, no TV and, on my phone at least, blissfully little phone signal. Instead, a basket beside the kindling is filled with Uno, playing cards, drawing pencils and a watercolour set. My daughter washes a page with streaks of blue sky and green fields that are framed by the hut’s huge picture window, before taking a nature scavenger hunt sheet around the farm, checking off pine cones and primroses.

It would be easy to simply roam here for a couple of days, foraging for wild garlic, helping feed the animals and exploring the Big Wood at the bottom of the farm, counting the 198 steps cut into the hillside among the trees. But with all of Perthshire on the other side of the Sidlaws and Fife across the River Tay there’s plenty to get stuck into, from sandy beaches at East Neuk to Highlands hills just beyond the foodie town of Dunkeld , where the Taybank pub and Aran Bakery make a delicious detour. We swerve the Munros and instead stride out on the nearby Scone circular , starting at Old Scone Church, rebuilt stone by stone in 1805 when the village moved a couple of miles east from its original site next to Scone Palace, and climbing through gorse-thick moorland to MacDuff’s Monument and the Lynedoch Obelisk with their sweeping views to Perth beyond.

We get back to the farm just as some wet weather blows in and hole up in the boat-turned-bothy called Girl Linda’s cabin at the top of a field. Scooping up a bottle of Diggers cider and apple juice from the hut, we run for it, the kids screaming into the wind. We light candles and the tiniest wood-burning stove – the valley below now so lost in mist that it feels like the River Tay might rise up and sweep us out to sea. We play Monopoly Deal as the rain whips against the portholes, before rousing a sing-song with the boat’s motley crew of instruments – bongos, guitar, glockenspiel and a giant metal triangle. “Let it go, let it go, I am one with the wind and sky …” My daughter’s favourite, suddenly apt.

We wake on the final morning to milk-glass skies and the rhythmic whirl of two woodpeckers in the trees as the sun rises through a fringe of woodland below us. There are recorded Guardswell morning meditations to start the day, a gentle prompt to pause. But stillness is low on my children’s agenda, so we throw on boots and fleeces over pyjamas and head for the swings on the hill above the hut. Pitmiddle’s simple way of life might not have survived against the advances of the modern world, but for a few days its slower rhythm feels within reach.

Accommodation was provided by Guardswell Farm. The Pitmiddle Hut sleeps six (two adults and up to four children) from £2 20 a night (two-night minimum), guardswell.co.uk

International criminal court
The ICC’s investigation of its chief prosecutor has been a failure
Kenneth Roth
Tue 19 May 2026 17.00 CESTLast modified on Tue 19 May 2026 17.59 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/19/icc-karim-khan-investigation

T he international criminal court’s chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, has been on an exoneration tour, with stops including an interview with Mehdi Hasan and an appearance at the Oxford Union. Accused by a lawyer in his office of repeated sexual misconduct, which he denies, he claims that an internal review of the allegations has vindicated him but the situation is more complex than that.

It has been a year since Khan took a leave of absence while the claims against him were investigated as an internal employment matter. That absence has left the ICC under the control of his deputies, with important decisions to be taken in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and elsewhere. Yet the ICC member states, which have ultimate authority over whether Khan stays or goes, have dawdled, acting as if they had all the time in the world. And the procedure that they relied on to resolve the matter turned out to be a travesty.

They assigned fact-finding to the UN’s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS). It interviewed the complainant as well as Khan and other people in the prosecutor’s office. Yet shockingly, it did not decide what had happened. It detailed the complainant’s testimony and Khan’s denials but refused to make the assessments of credibility that were needed to decide who was telling the truth. On the key matters in dispute, it made no findings of fact at all.

For example, the complainant, who is married and has a child, alleged a pattern of coercive sexual behavior by Khan that occurred in hotel rooms during work trips, in Khan’s office at the ICC, and at his home. The OIOS reported her detailed testimony but never opined whether she was credible in revealing alleging these humiliating and painful encounters, ones that reportedly led to “ suicidal thoughts ” and placement on a “ suicide watch ”.

When the OIOS asked Khan whether he had had a sexual relationship with the complainant, he gave a prepared statement that he had never engaged in any prohibited conduct with her that “could be construed as inappropriate, unwelcome or abusive”. He reinforced this in his recent interview with Mehdi Hassan once again stating that he did not have a “sexual relationship” with her and denying allegations of sexual misconduct.

Instead of making the credibility determinations needed to resolve this differing testimony, the OIOS delivered a 150-page “he said, she said” account.

That, in turn, was handed to a panel of three judges who had been tasked to advise the ICC’s member states by assessing the findings under the relevant standard of law – in this case, whether the allegations had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

But there were no findings to assess. When it came to the heart of the matter, the OIOS had not made any .

Given that factual void, the three-judge panel had no choice but to conclude that the burden of proof had not been met. The panel chastised the OIOS for not making judgments of credibility or resolving the contradictory testimony, but the panel’s mandate precluded it from conducting its own fact-finding, so all it could do was to assess the non-existent fact-finding of the OIOS. The panel noted that this incomplete record does “not disprove the allegations of misconduct”, yet Khan claims , “the process exonerated me”.

The matter has now gone before the 21-member executive bureau of the Assembly of States Parties. The bureau is composed of states chosen from among the 125 ICC members. Khan argues that it should defer to the judges. But since the judges had no factual findings before them, a better approach would be to recognize that the OIOS utterly failed in its fact-finding responsibilities and rectify it.

One option would be to return the matter to the OIOS with explicit instructions to make credibility assessments and determine what happened between Khan and the complainant.

But unless the OIOS is ordered to act with a dispatch that it so far has lacked, that would lengthen a process that has already gone on far too long. Even though the ICC prosecutorial team continues to do important work, there is no substitute for having an active chief prosecutor.

The other option would be for the bureau to make its own credibility judgments, as reportedly 15 of the 21 bureau member states seem inclined to do. Normally credibility is assessed by hearing witnesses testify in person, but it may be possible to make adequate credibility determinations from the extensive, detailed written record, especially because this is not a criminal prosecution but a review of alleged workplace misconduct.

The judges did that to some extent, noting adversely, for example, that the complainant kept traveling with Khan on court business and often maintained a facade of cordiality with him. That struck me as insensitive to the realities of some workplace hierarchies and how sexual misconduct often plays out . It would have been better to ask the complainant rather than assume the answers.

As the Wall Street Journal reported, “The woman, a lawyer from Malaysia, stayed at the job because she didn’t want to leave one of the most important offices in human-rights law and worried she wouldn’t be able to pay the medical bills of her mother, who was dying of cancer, according to her testimony and ICC officials. She also came to fear retaliation from Khan, according to interviews with current and former ICC officials.” Khan has described the allegations as an effort to undermine the ICC.

If the bureau decides to make credibility assessments itself, it could ask: why would the complainant have subjected herself to the ordeal of having filed a complaint – the pall it has cast over her legal career, the apparent disruption to her family life, the mental anguish she has reportedly endured? Would Khan have endangered his position by behaving in the way she alleges?

If the bureau finds serious misconduct on Khan’s part, the decision on his fate goes to the full Assembly of States Parties. If the bureau finds lesser or no misconduct, it can resolve the matter on its own. Either way, another obstacle stands in the way of a just resolution.

The complaint has become caught up in the issue of Israel and Palestine. As soon as the allegations against Khan became public, supporters of the Israeli government sought to instrumentalize them. The Wall Street Journal suggested that Khan might have accelerated his war-crime charges against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and former defense minister Yoav Gallant to change the subject from the accusations against him. The investigation of Israeli conduct in Palestine had long preceded the complainant’s allegations. And a different three-judge panel upheld the charges against Netanyahu and Gallant (They have rejected those charges as false and absurd). Khan has denied any link between the Israeli warrants and the sexual assault claims.

Some suggest that the complainant is acting at the behest of the Israeli government or its Mossad spy agency. Mossad did threaten the prior ICC chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, to try to forestall an investigation of Israeli conduct, but a private investigation found no evidence to support the allegation that the complainant had anything to do with the Israeli government. She had undergone numerous security reviews while working at the court, and a Qatari-financed investigation failed to unearth any such link.

Indeed, the complainant reportedly was reluctant to complain about Khan’s behavior in part because she strongly supported the investigation of Israeli leaders. In her testimony, according to the account given in the Wall Street Journal, she claimed that Khan cited the negative consequences for the case as an argument for why she should not make any complaint. Khan has denied this, saying that from the beginning, while he denied the allegations, he encouraged the complainant to report them following the normal process and he called for an investigation.

But the biggest threat to justice is that governments seem to be lining up for or against Khan not on the basis of the case brought by the complainant but according to their views on the Israel-Palestine case. Some governments , mostly western, apparently want to see Khan ousted because he had the audacity to charge Israeli officials; they hope a successor will be more restrained. Many other governments evidently want to see Khan stay because he did ultimately charge Israeli officials, even if before 7 October 2023 he had been slow-walking the investigation (he never advanced a case on Israel’s war-crime settlements) and while still on active duty, never publicly charged Israeli officials for anything involving indiscriminate bombing , executions , torture or genocide in Gaza.

Personally, I want to see the Israel-Palestine case advance, but that is no reason to ignore the claims against Khan. If he did what he is alleged to have done, he should not stay on as chief prosecutor. And the complainant deserves real consideration of her claims, not an investigation with no meaningful fact-finding and a legal review of that evidentiary void. If he did not do as she alleges, then he should be properly cleared.

It is appalling that so much time has been wasted. The ICC bureau should ignore Khan’s exoneration tour and take matters into its own hands. It should either make the credibility judgments itself that the OIOS was unwilling to make or press the OIOS to expeditiously fulfill the responsibility that it disappointingly shirked.

Kenneth Roth is a Guardian US columnist, visiting professor at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, and former executive director of Human Rights Watch. He is the author of Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments . Before joining Human Rights Watch, he served as a federal prosecutor in New York and Washington