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Health, mind and body books
Art Cure by Daisy Fancourt review – is culture the best medicine?
Jo Marchant
Wed 20 May 2026 13.00 CESTLast modified on Wed 20 May 2026 15.14 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/20/art-cure-by-daisy-fancourt-review-is-culture-the-best-medicine

A fter Daisy Fancourt’s daughter Daphne was born prematurely, she was confined to an incubator, fighting for her life against a series of infections. Unable to touch her baby or even properly enter the room, Fancourt kept vigil just inside the door, dressed head to toe in PPE, singing lullabies over the whir of instruments and alarms. The songs calmed her, and may have been crucial for Daphne too. Studies show that singing to babies in intensive care reduces their heart rate, improves their breathing, and encourages them to feed.

It was a moment when Fancourt’s professional and personal lives collided. A professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at University College London, she researches how social connections and behaviours affect our health. In Art Cure, her first book for a popular audience, she aims to make a scientific case that the arts – from playing music to theatre-going to painting – aren’t a merely aesthetic aspect of life. Instead, they are deeply entwined with our mental and physical wellbeing at every level – from the workings of our cells and molecules to cognition, memory and mood. In an era of shrinking arts funding and overstretched healthcare systems, her message is urgent. But how to compile rigorous evidence for something as holistic, indefinable – and, perhaps, resolutely unscientific – as art?

Fancourt’s answer is to dissect artistic interventions and practices into their component parts. She argues that every arts experience can be broken down into “active ingredients”; could even – if we had the processing power – be converted into binary code. Singing to sick babies becomes a mix of noise buffering, neurological stimulation, human contact and stress reduction. These ingredients trigger biological mechanisms that lead to health outcomes, she explains, and we can test, refine and prescribe them just as we might any cocktail of drugs. With this approach in mind, she surveys the evidence for medical benefits, from wellbeing to brain health, chronic pain and even how long we live.

Fancourt avoids any suggestion of miracle cures: she debunks a claim that exposure to classical music kills cancer cells. But she shows that creative engagement, offered alongside conventional treatment, can have significant effects: reducing stress and pain, improving balance and coordination in Parkinson’s disease; helping patients on ventilators to breathe on their own. Different practices work through different pathways, from boosting self-esteem to triggering gene expression. By stimulating the vagus nerve, for example, art reaches the heart, facial muscles and gut, working simultaneously “as a form of beta blocker, Botox and antispasmodic”.

Human stories illustrate the trial results. We meet a depressed mother whose life turns around when she picks up a leaflet for an “art for wellbeing” class; and a 94-year-old with dementia, briefly transformed by a recording of Singin’ in the Rain into his former animated, lucid self. The key in each case, says Fancourt, is broadening the medical focus from “What’s the matter with them?” to “What matters to them”.

The case for regular arts engagement is economic as well as clinical: the improvements in wellbeing are worth a £1,500 pay rise; delaying the onset of dementia could save the NHS and social care £1.5bn a year. Yet despite this, we’re increasingly treating art as expendable. In 2022, arts funding in UK schools was just £9.40 per pupil per year; in 2021, government funding for creative degrees was halved. When adults in the US were asked how many minutes they spent engaging in the arts the day before, the most popular answer (given by 95% of people) was zero. “We’re lapsing into a state of artistic passivity,” says Fancourt. She calls for a “seatbelt moment”, a collective recognition that arts deprivation carries major consequences for public health.

The book prompts some uneasy questions. Art is not a set of fixed ingredients administered from outside, but an open-ended interaction, experienced differently by every person who encounters it and with a power that transcends the sum of its parts. Do we lose something when we treat art as a means rather than an end – assessing its value through physical mechanisms and countable outcomes? And what does it mean for society that we have to justify it in this way?

Art Cure cannot provide answers. But it does make a compelling, compassionate case for broadening how we think about medicine – to encompass people and communities, not just physical bodies, and to recognise that creativity, identity and purpose shape our biology as much as any drug.

Jo Marchant is author of Cure: A Journey Into the Science of Mind Over Body (Canongate, £10.99). Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health by Daisy Fancourt is published by Cornerstone (£22). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

Canada
Canadian prime minster Mark Carney is not the climate guy you thought

Thu 21 May 2026 12.00 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 12.06 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/21/mark-carney-climate-canada

C asual international observers would be forgiven for assuming Canada is in the comforting hands of a climate champ. After all, while climate policy rollbacks reign supreme in Donald Trump’s America, Canada is now led by a man who, while serving as governor of the Bank of England, delivered a celebrated 2015 speech, “ Breaking the tragedy of the horizon ”, warning the global investment community of the financial risks of climate change; who went on to serve as UN special envoy for climate action and finance ; and whose 2022 book Value(s) had much to say about the “existential threat” of climate change. A man who recently dazzled the world with his Davos speech on how middle powers can stand up to global bullies.

Look, we get it. Next to the US president, Carney seems so debonair, thoughtful and calm – a lifeline of stability in a volatile new world.

Many within Canada were only recently of the same view. Indeed, only a little over a year ago, hundreds if not thousands of climate activists joined the Liberal party of Canada to help elect Carney as Justin Trudeau’s successor. Months later, hundreds of thousands of climate-concerned voters cast ballots in support of Carney as prime minister.

Sadly, however, a very different reality is coming into focus. As plank after plank of Canada’s climate strategy is dismantled, more and more of those climate-anxious voters are feeling a major case of buyer’s remorse, disoriented by the dissonance between who they thought they were supporting and a climate plan that is now a complete shambles.

Carney almost never talks about the climate crisis any more, contributing to the virtual disappearance of the topic from mainstream conversation, and reinforcing the sense of isolation harbored by the silent majority of climate-anxious people (a troubling dynamic about which the Guardian has previously written ). But the rupture goes well beyond Carney’s radio silence.

Among his first acts as prime minister, Carney – who in his previous life was all about market-based solutions – scrapped Canada’s consumer carbon price.

Carney’s new Climate Competitiveness Strategy embraces an approach “based on driving investment, not on prohibitions”. In keeping with that orientation, his government has set about repealing or weakening virtually every climate mandate introduced by his predecessor. Methane regulations have been weakened and delayed. Canada’s clean electricity regulations (originally designed to make our grid fully fossil free by 2035) have been significantly delayed (to 2050) and have reopened the door to new gas-powered electricity plants .

A planned oil and gas emissions cap (on which the climate movement spent years consulting) has now been scrapped. Anti-greenwashing legislation has been flagged for rollback. And zero-emission vehicles (ZEV) mandates have been significantly delayed and weakened, contributing to a dramatic drop-off in EV sales in Canada .

Carney has also gone all-in on supporting new fossil fuel infrastructure. The prime minister is bent on environmental deregulation , exempting projects deemed “nation-building” from some environmental laws. Major new LNG facilities and pipeline projects have been fast-tracked and will probably be federally subsidized (LNG has already been granted new tax credits).

He has doubled down on tax credits for carbon capture and storage projects, and has now extending the subsidy for “enhanced oil recovery” – meaning, making the credit available to projects that use captured carbon to frack yet more oil. And a new federal “sovereign wealth fund” has been announced , which will probably use public money to subsidize new fossil fuel infrastructure projects (basically a mirror opposite of Norway’s successful fund).

All while steadfastly refusing to entertain a windfall profits tax on oil and gas companies that, in the wake of the Iran war, are poised to earn record profits at the expense of most of the public.

Earlier this month, all the pent-up feelings of grief and betrayal came bursting to the surface when Carney and the Alberta premier, Danielle Smith, announced a new energy agreement to further pave the way for yet another bitumen pipeline and, more pointedly, for Alberta – home to Canada’s largest source of emissions, the oil sands – to dramatically weakened its industrial carbon price. Climate Action Network Canada called the deal “ a sledgehammer to one of the last remaining pillars of Canada’s climate plan ”.

While Canada’s industrial carbon price was to reach $170 a tonne by 2030, under this latest capitulation, Alberta’s price will now reach only $130 by 2040, consigning this climate tool to virtual irrelevance. When Carney eliminated the consumer carbon price immediately after becoming prime minister, he promised to strengthen the industrial (and more consequential) carbon price. He’s chosen to do the opposite.

Even for the staid Canadian Climate Institute, which normally demonstrates frustratingly high patience for federal government incrementalism, this was a bridge too far, declaring that the new federal-Alberta agreement “ puts Canada’s commitment to net zero emissions by 2050 firmly out of reach ”.

Some remain willing to give our prime minister a pass on all this, contending as he is with a sizable separatist movement in Alberta. This Trump-backed movement remains a minority of roughly a quarter of Albertans , but they are noisy. Carney’s defenders claim all the above concessions are necessary to appease Alberta and “make the case for a united Canada”.

But the track-record of this rationale reinforces all the usual risks of appeasement. The same logic justified the previous prime minister’s decision to spend $34bn building the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion to carry more bitumen from Alberta to the Pacific coast, with no political reward to show for it.

Surely, some still hold, Carney is engaged in some deeply clever game of four-dimensional chess, confounding the oil patch and its political backers while laying the groundwork for a great transition, absent Trudeau’s performative nonsense.

But one year in, we’re letting go. There is no scenario in which these policy shifts do not increase both Canada’s domestic emissions and, even more, downstream carbon pollution elsewhere through the expansion of oil and gas exports.

Apologies to be the bearer of bad news. Shed a little tear for us. Then back to the fight. The Canadian climate movement is getting its bearings back. There is no assurance that these new fossil fuel projects in Canada will find the investors and buyers they need to proceed. Numerous Indigenous nations insist they will do everything they can to block their fruition. And while Canada may be clinging to fossil fuels, much of the world is moving on.

Seth Klein is a Canadian climate writer and activist, author of the book A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency , and former team lead of the Climate Emergency Unit . His newsletter can be found here .

Film
Hen review – plucky chicken beats the odds in weirdly uplifting survival story
Leslie Felperin
Thu 21 May 2026 10.00 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/may/21/hen-review-plucky-chicken-beats-the-odds-in-weirdly-uplifting-survival-story

H ungarian film director György Pálfi has long been a one-off talent: a surrealist-formalist of sorts who is equally comfortable making a romantic film comprised of hundreds of clips from other movies (Final Cut: Ladies and Gentlemen), a sick-puppy black comedy about a taxidermist who adores cats ( Taxidermia ), and a near-silent, portrait of sinister village life in which one character has permanent hiccups ( Hukkle ). By comparison, his latest, Hen is practically mainstream. That is really saying something given it’s a film whose main character is a black-brown hen (played by about eight poultry thespians and not CGI) who quizzically observes a world where humans treat each other like, well, animals. Comparisons have inevitably been made to a couple of recent features with animal protagonists, such as Andrea Arnold’s Cow and Jerzy Skolimowski’s donkey-centric EO, but Hen is lighter and more amusing, if one can say that of a film that features an extended subplot about human trafficking with deadly consequences.

How Pálfi manages to pull this off is a cinematic mystery, but it probably has to do with his light tonal touch and his ability to truly empathise with his avian heroine without resorting to anthropomorphic sentimentalism. This hen acts much like a real chicken in that she combines shrewd survival instincts and utter gormlessness to a winning degree. For example, after surviving the Greek battery farm where she hatches (a wee black speck in a sea of yellow chicks), she manages to escape the clutches of a trucker who plans to make dinner out of her. Just when you think she has found safety, a fox (amazingly well trained, and also not CGI as far as I can tell) starts stalking her, chasing her into a busy road where the chicken literally crosses the road with the blithe idiocy that makes chickens so adorable. The fox isn’t so lucky. Incidentally, the film does have a disclaimer at the end averring that no animals were harmed during the making of the movie, which is a relief.

In fact, the cinematic universe where this story unfolds is just as ruthless to homo sapiens. The hen ends up living at a rundown disused restaurant with a view of the seaside, owned by an elderly man (Yannis Kokiasmenos) who takes a bit of a shine to her after she keeps managing to escape the mangy coop where he puts her. It’s no surprise she longs to get out: she is bullied by the other hens while the cockerel, a wretched-looking creature who, like the rest of the flock, has lost most of his neck feathers due to chicken-on-chicken violence, copulates violently with her every day. Behaviour-wise the humans are no better, especially the old man’s daughter’s boyfriend, who is in cahoots with gangsters trafficking refugees that they hide at the restaurant, packed in dark rooms with water if they’re lucky – just like the chickens we saw at the beginning. And while it all doesn’t end well for any of the people, there’s some tiny solace in seeing that at least life goes on for other creatures. The film is an amazing feat of animal training and deft editing, and it’s all so weirdly cheering.

Hen is in UK and Irish cinemas from 22 May.

Ireland
Dublin gangland figure brings extremist views to Irish mainstream on campaign trail
Rory Carroll
Thu 21 May 2026 08.00 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 09.29 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/21/gerry-hutch-dublin-byelection-campaign-extremist-views-irish-mainstream

Elaine Roe, 61, a cafe worker, has no doubt what is the most important issue in this week’s byelection for Dublin ’s north inner city. “The government is wrecking our country, they’re bringing in rapists and murderers and kidnappers. It’s a shame. I might vote Hutch, he seems a normal person.”

That would be Gerry “the monk” Hutch, a prominent gangland figure who is running as an independent in an election that is far from normal. The 63-year-old – who was jailed for robbery convictions in his youth – is a celebrity candidate in a contest for a parliamentary seat that has been dominated by xenophobia and immigration.

Voters in the Dublin Central constituency will cast ballots on Friday, with results on Saturday, but one outcome is already clear: hostility to newcomers, especially Black immigrants and Muslims, has entered Ireland ’s political mainstream.

Hutch has called for “illegal immigrants” to be detained in camps. “They should be all interned,” he said, and singled out east Africans. “The ones that are Somalians and them type of people, no way. Interned.”

When the Guardian accompanied Hutch on a recent canvas, soundtracked by a flatbed truck blasting pop songs, he said 99% of Irish people wanted stronger rules on immigration. “But you’re not allowed to say that. Even when people have nowhere to live, because of the housing disaster, you can’t say that,” he said.

In fact, what was once a fringe view – that immigrants are to blame for crime and a housing shortage – has in some areas become a refrain. Residents in Dublin Central, which spans working-class neighbourhoods, hostels, asylum shelters and wealthy districts, had urged him to run, Hutch said. “I’m gonna use the platform to help the people who voted me in and they’ll tell me what to do.”

People in the street and on doorsteps requested selfies with Hutch. “You’re my number one, pal. I love everything you’ve done,” said one man. Hutch handed him a flyer that promised “leadership” and “honesty” to shake up the status quo. “We need change and I’m your man,” it said.

Hutch has been a notorious figure for decades. A court named him as the leader of an organised crime group and he has admitted to committing crimes. “Some of them I got away with,” he told RTÉ in 2008.

He shocked the political establishment by almost winning a seat in the 2024 general election and is now running to fill the vacancy left by Paschal Donohoe, a finance minister with the ruling Fine Gael party , who quit the Dáil for a World Bank job.

An opinion poll ranked Hutch third, with 14% of first preference votes, which gives him a slender chance of prevailing against 13 other candidates in an election that will be decided on transfers from eliminated candidates.

Opinion polls also say the most important issue for voters is the cost of living (33%), followed by house prices (24%) and immigration (12%). Yet for many voters the issues are linked.

“I’m not racist but we should be looking after our own instead of bringing people in,” said John Clarke, 45, a butcher. “I have two kids – both had to go to Sydney because they couldn’t afford to buy homes here. I’m especially against Muslims coming in, they want to take over.”

Mainstream parties all disavow racism but have toughened rhetoric on immigration and asylum.

Mary Lou McDonald , the leader of Sinn Féin , a progressive opposition party, sidestepped responding to Hutch’s call for internment. “We can’t comment on other people’s comments,” she said. Sinn Féin’s candidate, Janice Boylan, leads the field but analysts say she will need transfers, including from Hutch voters, to fend off Daniel Ennis of the Social Democrats.

Bertie Ahern , a former taoiseach and leader of the ruling Fianna Fáil party, was secretly recorded telling a voter: “The ones I worry about are the Africans. We can’t be taking in people from the Congo and all these places.” He also expressed concern about the next generation of Muslims.

The current taoiseach, Micheál Martin , said the comments were “not appropriate” and did not reflect the views of Fianna Fáil. Ahern later said he had no problem with people entering through visa and asylum systems.

The death of a Congolese man in the city centre on 15 May has put added scrutiny on race relations. Yves Sakila, 35, died after being restrained by security guards who suspected him of shoplifting. Police are investigating.

With coffers swelled by corporate tax revenues, the centrist Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael coalition has ramped up public spending, but rising prices and a housing shortage have created a sour mood.

“The country is falling to bits. There’s no jobs, no housing. If you do have a job the wages are crap. My son is 36 and still living at home,” said a charity shop worker, who withheld her name.

Jimmy McDaid, 77, said he would vote for Hutch to clean up drug dealing. Asked about Hutch’s criminal record, McDaid said that was in the past. “Everyone is entitled to a second chance. Look at the government – they’re the gangsters, saying one thing and doing another.”

However, in a byelection in Galway – to fill a Dáil seat vacated by the president, Catherine Connolly – the Fine Gael candidate, Seán Kyne, narrowly leads opinion polls. His main rivals are Noel Thomas, an independent who has condemned Ireland’s “reckless open border policies”, and Labour’s Helen Ogbu, who was born in Nigeria and in 2024 became the first person of colour to be elected to Galway city council.

United Kingdom holidays
Weird Britain: 10 glorious oddities to visit and marvel at

Thu 21 May 2026 08.00 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 08.02 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2026/may/21/weird-britain-10-oddities-to-visit

O ne thing unites the British more than anything else. It stands there in plain sight but is rarely spoken about. We may try to hide it; we may not admit it to ourselves; but under the surface, deep down, in the nicest possible way, we are all a little odd. Not in a sinister way, just eccentric, weird, unpredictable and downright wonderful. As a nation we have an artistic and creative zest and boffin-like inventiveness. In fields of innovation, we led the tech world with some of our brave and crazy inventions. Even our landscapes are damn weird, with some of the oldest, most mysterious and diverse geological oddities in Europe, and plentiful legends too. I spent years exploring the enchanting strangeness of Britain, discovering follies, eccentric public art, strange buildings, mysterious ruins and eerie landscapes for my Weird Guide, which features about 300 of these curiosities. Here are some of my favourites.

The Yoxman, Suffolk

In a field not far from the A12 in Yoxford, Suffolk, stands the Yoxman , an artwork of colossal proportions. At 8m (26ft) high and made from bronze, it took creator Laurence Edwards and his team four years to make. The figure is a personal tribute to Suffolk, the artist describing it as a visitor from the past, both from the land and of the land. The result, finished in 2021, is astounding – a fully grown adult barely makes it to the top of his shin, as the Yoxman dwarfs even some of the surrounding trees. From Yoxford village, take the path opposite the shop and follow it through the grounds of the hall to the statue.

Little Italy, Gwynedd

The late Mark Bourne, a chicken farmer, was obsessed by Italy, visiting as often as he could, filling notebooks with sketches of buildings and architecture. When he returned to his remote cottage on the Corris hillside in Gwynedd, Wales, he and his wife aimed to recreate what he had seen in their garden. Both worked on the creation, named Little Italy , well into their 80s, with models of everything from the Leaning Tower of Pisa to Florence’s Duomo. Although Bourne’s old garden is strictly off-limits to passersby, the surrounding wall is relatively low and the buildings are large enough to see from the path. From the Corris Institute, turn left up the hill along the lane then follow a footpath on the right after the youth hostel for about 100m.

Mannakin, Lincolnshire

Mannakin Hall near Grantham feels like an eerie plastic graveyard. Situated down a narrow Lincolnshire lane, it was set up by Roz Edwards in 2008 when she realised that most mannequins were discarded after no more than five years of service, and began to acquire those destined for landfill. Once repaired or cleaned up, they are hired out and at any given time there are about 15,000 mannequins on site; most are unclothed, but some are dressed up in Halloween costumes or strange outfits. As a working business, Mannakin Hall isn’t open to the public on a walk-in basis but you can prebook and visit as a group, attend one of the regular open days or even stay overnight in your camper van!

White Scar, Yorkshire Dales

On the west side of the Ingleborough summit in North Yorkshire, just south of the ancient Roman road, lies one of the country’s most remarkable areas of limestone pavement, known as White Scar . This extraordinary landscape formed during and after the last ice age, as massive glaciers scraped away the surface. Millennia of weathering broke down the soft alkaline stone, revealing intricate miniature canyons, or grykes. These deep fissures have become like terrariums, providing a habitat for rare plants that are normally at home in dark woodlands.

Library, Isle of Arran

The woodland Library near Levencorroch on the Isle of Arran, Scotland, is a unique tourist attraction, a cabin with an interior resembling a 3D giant visitors’ book. Built by the woodland’s owner, Albert Holmes, using trees blown down in a storm, the cabin is covered with drawings, poems, messages, words of wisdom and notes from all over the world. Ranging from playful to profound, the papers, which are now about 25 layers deep, are stuck in every conceivable space, including the ceiling. It feels like entering something from a Michel Gondry film, or a strange nest left by a literary woodland creature. Pick up a map at the Eas Mor Ecology cafe , east of Levencorroch, and follow a steep gravel path to the waterfall and on to the library. It’s a 25-minute walk.

Sultan the Pit Pony, Mid-Glamorgan

Measuring close to 200 metres from his nose to the end of his tail, Sultan the Pit Pony , on the site of the old Penallta colliery north of Caerphilly, is the largest earth sculpture in the UK. Mike Petts used 60,000 tons of coal shale rock to create the sculpture, which he built in the late 1990s to honour the thousands of ponies put to work in British mines throughout the Industrial Revolution. It’s close to Parc Penallta Ponds , with its wonderful wildlife and walking trails.

Painshill Follies, Surrey

Inspired by the culture, paintings and architecture he experienced during his grand tour of Europe, aristocrat Charles Hamilton began transforming his country estate – Painshill in Cobham, Surrey – into something between a work of art and a garden in 1738. Alongside a temple, gothic tower and lake, he created one of the most spectacular follies in the country, employing grotto builder Joseph Lane to construct a semi-naturalistic cavern with sparkling stalactites made of minerals such as feldspar and quartz. The park fell into ruin in the 1940s, but the local authority acquired it in the late 1970s and though much has been restored, work continues. The crystal grotto was completed in 2013, with builders making every effort to make it look like the original, using paintings of the grotto.

Rock-cut tombs, Lancashire

There is a local legend that, after being shipwrecked, Saint Patrick was washed ashore and set up a chapel at Heysham, Lancashire, sometime in the fifth century. Considering Saint Patrick was also supposed to have been shipwrecked on Ynys Môn (Anglesey), there may be some doubt about this story! Regardless, during the eighth century a chapel was built in honour of the saint. The remains of this chapel still stand, along with eight rock-cut tombs in one group of six and another of two.

Blackchurch Rock, Devon

Around 320 million years ago, the great continent of Gondwana collided with Laurasia (present-day Europe, Russia, North America and parts of Asia). The force of the impact was so great that it pushed up the rocks of Blackchurch Rock near Clovelly, Devon, into its present formation (we know the date thanks to fossils found in the stone, including Goniatites). Over time, tidal seas shaped Blackchurch further, carving out the great arch. It’s a 30-minute walk north west along the coast path from Clovelly village.

The Tilted Globe, Highlands

Joe Smith, creator of The Tilted Globe at Knockan Crag in Assynt, north of Ullapool, first learned how to dry stone in 1961, at the tender age of 11. By the time he was 19, dry-stone walling had become his means of earning a living. Over time, he stopped seeing walls as only functional and instead recognised how the stacking of stones could be beautiful, appreciating their potential for creating artworks. He has collaborated with Andy Goldsworthy on a number of projects around the world, including Slate, Hole, Wall at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh. The Tilted Globe is an independent work made from moine schist local to Knockan Crag. The area is of geological importance, as the ancient rock has been moved through tectonic action about 43 miles (70km) west to remain above the line of the younger rocks. It’s a short walk on marked trails from the turf-roofed hexagonal visitor centre.

This is an edited extract from Weird Guide by Dave Hamilton, published by Wild Things Publishing (£18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy from guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply. Follow @davewildish

Migration
Voters across parties believe UK net migration is rising despite sharp drop
Geneva Abdul
Thu 21 May 2026 01.01 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 06.12 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/21/voters-across-parties-believe-uk-net-migration-is-rising-despite-sharp-drop

People mistakenly believe net migration is rising in Britain despite figures dropping to their lowest level in years, a leading thinktank has found.

New research from British Future, published ahead of latest government figures on migration, has revealed a chasm between reality and public perception of net migration, with a substantial portion of the public believing it has increased, despite figures showing a sharp fall.

Net migration dropped from a peak of 944,000 in the year to March 2023 to 204,000 in the year to June 2025, according to government figures.

The latest figures will be published on Thursday morning, and are expected to show a further decrease in net migration.

According to British Future’s research, 67% of people with sceptical views on immigration believe net migration increased in 2025, compared with 37% of those with more liberal views. It also found six in 10 people who would like to see immigration reduced also believe numbers are still rising. Only 15% of people expect net migration to be lower in the next year.

The researchers found that people believe individuals seeking asylum account for 33% of immigration, when in reality it is about 9%. They also believe people travelling to the UK for study account for 24% of immigration, when it is in fact just over half.

The perception gap is not just shaping the immigration debate but also politics more broadly, British Future’s director, Sunder Katwala, said.

“It’s little wonder voters think net migration is going up when the only debate we have is about how to bring it down,” he said. “We should be having a conversation about how to manage the pressures and gains of migration to Britain.”

Conversation surrounding immigration has become increasingly polarised, particularly since the Brexit referendum. A decade on, “stop the boats” rhetoric and numerous pledges across the political spectrum to thwart an increase in unauthorised crossings of the Channel have shaped attitudes on immigration.

While net immigration figures have dropped, Labour and Conservative MPs have spoken in the past five years with increasing hostility about immigration more than at almost any other time in the last century, Guardian analysis has shown . Mistrust on immigration is shared across all parties, British Future found.

In November, the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, whose Labour party has proposed changes to settlement and citizenship, acknowledged a 69% drop in net migration in the 12 months to June 2025, to the lowest annual figure since 2021, but said: “We are going further because the pace and scale of migration has placed immense pressure on local communities.”

The shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, said in response to the fall: “We need to go much further.” Reform UK , meanwhile, has pledged to reach “net zero” immigration. The party’s leader, Nigel Farage, has falsely claimed the drop in net migration was largely the result of British emigration – not the fall in overseas arrivals.

Immigration ranks as the third most important issue in public opinion, just the behind cost of living and the NHS. Sophie Stowers, a research manager at More in Common, believes the misconception is partly because pictures and videos of people arriving on small boats, and asylum hotels opening in towns, draw a more visceral response than official figures.

“We know there’s not always a really clear tie between net migration levels and how the public feels about immigration,” Stowers said. “Net migration or legal migration is only part of the story, and ultimately it’s not the story most voters are concerned with.”

British Future used Number Cruncher Politics for the research, which surveyed a national sample of 3,003 adults across Great Britain at the end of March.

If current trends continue, all parties “may be looking at a very different immigration context” over the next three years as they prepare for the 2029 general election campaign, the report said.

Stowers said concerns about immigration and small boats were rooted in wider issues, including security and stability in an increasingly uncertain world.

“It’s not even just about immigration any more; it’s a whole proxy for whether the system we have is working or not,” she said. “I think that’s why it’s so difficult to have these conversations and why just talking about net migration going down doesn’t shift the dial.”

Lyme disease
Lyme disease cases in England rise by more than 20% in a year
Nicola Davis
Thu 21 May 2026 11.13 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 11.19 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/21/lyme-disease-cases-england-rise-tick-vaccines

Cases of Lyme disease have risen more than 20% in England in the past year, public health experts have revealed, as pharmaceutical companies work to create new vaccines and drugs to tackle the tick-borne illness.

According to data from the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), published as part of its One Health vector-borne disease surveillance report , there were 1,168 laboratory-confirmed cases of Lyme disease in 2025, up from 959 in 2024 – an increase of 22%. However, the figure is similar to that recorded in 2023, when there were 1,151 confirmed cases.

Two probable cases of tick-borne encephalitis complex were also identified in 2025, bringing the total number of locally acquired cases to six since 2019, when the virus was first identified in the UK.

Dr Claire Gordon, the head of the rare and imported pathogens laboratory at UKHSA, said: “While the number of laboratory-confirmed acute cases of Lyme disease in 2025 is an increase on numbers reported in 2024, we expect overall case rates to vary year to year depending on awareness, testing rates and factors that impact outdoor activities such as weather. Broader trends in 2025 remain consistent.”

Lyme disease is caused by a type of bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi , which lives in the gut of ticks – tiny spider-like creatures found in grassy and wooded areas that feed on the blood of birds and mammals, including humans.

“In recent years, we have seen an increasing geographical distribution of ticks across the UK,” Gordon said. “But tick numbers continue to vary due to changes in weather conditions, climate trends, habitat changes and shifting host populations.”

Symptoms of Lyme can include a bullseye-like rash, fever, muscle and joint pain, and lethargy. Left untreated, the condition can become chronic and, even among those who receive antibiotics, some report ongoing symptoms.

Not all ticks carry Lyme bacteria, and it is thought rapid removal of ticks reduces the risk of infection after a bite. But while there are various medications available to protect pets from Lyme disease – including monthly oral tablets and vaccinations – advice for humans centres on prevention, such as using repellants, covering exposed skin outdoors and wearing light-coloured clothing to make ticks easier to spot.

Linden Hu, a professor of immunology at Tufts medical school, said there were a number of reasons veterinary and human approaches differed, noting that pet owners were often more willing to medicate their dogs than themselves or family members, while clinical trials in humans were harder to conduct.

“It’s easier to do studies in animals because you can control the situation. You can put infected ticks on them to test if it’s going to work, which you really can’t do with humans,” he said, adding real-world studies, or “field trials”, were expensive and risky, given that it was unclear how many cases of Lyme would occur.

A vaccine against Lyme for humans, known as LYMErix, was previously available in the US, with trials suggesting it had an efficacy of 76% after a third dose . However, it was withdrawn from the market in 2002 after poor uptake.

“There were a couple of things that coalesced to cause the low sales,” Hu said, noting this included the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommending it only for people at high risk of Lyme disease. There were also concerns the vaccine may be linked to arthritis . While evidence remained lacking , the negative media coverage and lack of trust in the vaccine contributed to low demand.

Several new treatments are in the works, including an mRNA vaccine from Moderna – a jab Hu has worked on that is in phase 2 of its clinical development – as well as a different vaccine from Pfizer and Valneva .

Crucially, Hu said, both approaches aimed to avoid activating the immune pathway some researchers suspected caused arthritis in certain recipients of LYMErix.

Not that it has been plain sailing. In the case of the Pfizer/Valneva vaccine, there were fewer-than-expected cases of Lyme among participants in a phase 3 trial , meaning that while the vaccine appeared to have an efficacy of more than 70%, the results were not as statistically robust as hoped. Despite this, the vaccine is to be submitted to regulatory authorities.

Other approaches are also being explored. Among them is monoclonal antibody from Tonix Pharmaceuticals that could be given before exposure to ticks, while Hu is working on a drug with Tarsus Pharmaceuticals that is already used to protect dogs and cats. Unlike the vaccines, this drug – known as lotilaner – kills the ticks, rather than the bacteria they carry.

According to Hu, lotilaner works rapidly by killing the ticks before they have a chance to transmit Lyme or, potentially, other diseases.

Julia Knight, of the charity Lyme Disease UK, said it was unclear whether a vaccine would be adopted in the UK, given that figures for Lyme disease appeared to be low, although were likely higher – not least because they do not include the roughly 70% of people with Lyme who develop the telltale rash, as these patients are treated immediately without laboratory tests, and Lyme disease can be missed or misdiagnosed.

“Obviously any advances in science that prevents Lyme disease is always welcome, but whether people will welcome a vaccine or not in the current climate of vaccine hesitancy remains to be seen,” she said.

Life and style
Thursday news quiz: Eurovision winners, Tesla swimmers and Strictly zingers
Martin Belam
Thu 21 May 2026 07.00 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 07.08 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/may/21/the-guardian-thursday-quiz-general-knowledge-topical-news-trivia-248

Welcome to the Thursday news quiz, where once again, thanks to our winsome illustration by Anaïs Mims , you are being challenged by the swan of knowledge. Will you give the impression of serenely gliding through 15 questions on topical news, general knowledge and pop culture? Or will it charge out of the lake at you and break your arm? There are no prizes, but let us know how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 248

If you really do think there has been an egregious error in one of the questions or answers – and can show your working and are absolutely 100% positive you aren’t attempting to fact-check a joke – you can complain about it in the comments below. Why not watch Celluloid by Gum instead?

Race
Have no doubt: the campaign to sack Misan Harriman is part of an assault on black figures in public life
Afua Hirsch
Thu 21 May 2026 07.00 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 09.06 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/21/misan-harriman-black-figures-public-life-london-southbank-centre-uk-culture

I met Tommy Robinson once. It was 10 years ago exactly, during one of his many failed attempts to mainstream Islamophobia in British politics with a new “movement” called Pegida – a copycat of Germany’s far-right Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West.

There was little memorable about this “launch”, which as a social affairs editor for Sky News I was sent to cover , only to discover a pitiful gathering of a few blokes at a pub near Luton. The thing that does stand out in my memory is what Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, said to me. “It’s the Muslims that are a problem,” he said. “But you’re all right. You speak English. You’re like us.”

Never has something intended as a compliment been so utterly offensive.

Pegida died quickly. But the sentiment stayed with me – the idea that rightwing men are the arbiters of whether black and brown British people are an acceptable presence in our own country. That is a notion that has only gained strength in the decade since, culminating this weekend when Robinson and his followers gathered to launch an attack of unprecedented viciousness against British Muslims, calling for “re-migration” – an idea otherwise known as ethnic cleansing.

Meanwhile, a more rarefied, superficially respectable group is launching a gentrified version of a similar sort of assault. Unlikely to be found fraternising with union-jack clad Robinson fans, their weapon of choice is the rightwing media – and their current target is Misan Harriman.

Harriman is a popular figure on social media and in British cultural life. Oscar-nominated for his film The After , he became the first black man to shoot the cover of British Vogue , and his images of the Black Lives Matter protests went viral and then global, becoming the starting point for a documentary film Shoot the People.

Some of his most moving images are his photographs of Jewish people, including Holocaust survivors. Many of them interpret their trauma, including the ongoing trauma of a rise in antisemitism, as an imperative to stand together with all those who denounce hate – including towards Palestinians in Gaza and Muslims in Britain, as well as members of their own British Jewish community. If you were to seek a visual reference for what rejecting division and seeking unity looks like in 2026, Harriman’s photographs would be it .

Since 2021, Harriman has been chair of the Southbank Centre , one of Europe’s largest cultural centres, a role that is by definition focused on protecting inclusive spaces for creativity and free expression. Given his high profile, his own enjoyment of free expression is deployed with incredible care.

A small group of rightwing white men would like to see Harriman removed from this role and have issued an astonishing range of attacks across the establishment media in a concerted campaign to achieve this. Like Robinson, they seem interested not so much in his track record, but whether he is the right sort of ethnic minority to be permitted in their milieu.

He is being assailed from many directions, in many and varied ways. Despite being “educated at English private schools”, he “seems to have developed little interest or expertise in classical music or any other performing art form – something of a hindrance, one may think, for a man chairing an organisation with three concert halls and six resident orchestras,” writes the Times chief culture writer, Richard Morrison , for example. Apparently being an Oscar-nominated director pales in comparison to his failure to play the cello. He also “has a well-documented friendship with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex”, laments the Telegraph arts correspondent Craig Simpson – surely a disqualifying feature in itself. He is, Telegraph readers are told by way of description, a “Nigerian born British photographer”, the “pro Palestinian arts boss”.

Harriman is also the son of a billionaire, these commentators frequently remind us. So I was particularly tickled to see none other than Lord Roberts of Belgravia – the historian and notoriously underprivileged grandee of rightwing life – endorse Morrison’s piece as one of the signatories of a letter to the Times saying that Morrison was right to voice “growing concerns for the Southbank Centre”.

Roberts’ intervention hints, perhaps, to a darker agenda – the broader campaign to discipline cultural institutions that give expression to different perspectives and values in British public life. Roberts has been a vocal opponent of efforts by the National Trust to recognise the scars of slavery and colonialism across its historical properties – a measure he called “foul”. He is a defender of empire in general – “ a noble endeavour that for the vast majority of time brought great benefits for most of its native inhabitants” – and, hilariously in this regard, a great critic of cancel culture .

Harriman no doubt presents the uncomfortable spectre of those “native inhabitants” stepping into the great and high profile institutions of British life.

And then there is the fact that Harriman’s detractors dislike his critique of Israel and have consistently attempted to confuse this with antisemitism – and this is the focus of the concerted move against him. Some have alleged that comments by Harriman compared Reform UK’s electoral success to the Holocaust . But what Harriman actually did was quote the philosopher Susan Sontag, using the context of pre-war Germany to describe how the majority of people are persuadable, and can be swayed towards or away from extremism. The campaign against Harriman also perpetuates another cynical allegation, that he shared a “conspiracy theory” about last month’s Golders Green attacks.

In fact, Harriman’s first response to the attack was an unambiguous post expressing “ solidarity to the Jewish community ”. When Harriman correctly discovered that there had been a third, Muslim victim of the same attacker on the same day, he – like many of us – asked why many news headlines, in news organisations including HuffPost and Sky, and why the Metropolitan police itself, did not immediately give this victim the same status and prominence. This seems to speak to an unwritten rule in the British media – that a zero-sum game exists between recognising Jewish victims and Muslim victims, between recognising antisemitism and equally recognising Islamophobia.

It’s a toxic idea, one correctly identified by Amnesty, which also posted denouncing these smear-like attempts against Harriman: “when we allow one community’s trauma to be played off against another’s, we weaken the foundation of safety for everyone.” A campaign supporting a complaint to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) about the Telegraph’s coverage has now garnered over 100,000 signatures.

As anyone concerned by the Tommy Robinson march will discover, for the British establishment – our political leaders, police forces and rightwing media – violent Islamophobia is not a priority. All black British people are expected to take note, for fear of equally stepping out of line. As Britain’s oldest black newspaper, The Voice , noted with concern , “this is not accountability culture, it’s more reputational warfare”. The effect of the message could not be more clear: the experiment with “allowing” black figures into positions like Harriman’s could all be over in a heartbeat, if we dare to step out of line.

Afua Hirsch is a writer and film-maker

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 .

Biography books
Stephen Sondheim by Daniel Okrent review – a superb biography of the musical master
Emma Brockes
Thu 21 May 2026 08.01 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/21/stephen-sondheim-by-daniel-okrent-review-a-superb-biography-of-the-musical-master

A mong the many great pleasures of Daniel Okrent’s new biography of Stephen Sondheim – a book perfectly weighted between the gossipy and erudite – is its rendering of the milieu beyond its immediate subject. You come for the biography and stay for the world of mid-20th-century New York, in which Leonard Bernstein says terrible things about Sweeney Todd (“disgusting”), Sondheim says terrible things about Barbra Streisand (“doesn’t have one sincere moment left inside her”), and Arthur Laurents says terrible things about everyone. In the early 2000s, during a particularly poisonous exchange of letters between Laurents and Sondheim, the latter told his old collaborator, “you’re just good enough to know you’re mediocre”.

The entire book is sheer delight and Okrent, formerly an editor at the New York Times and a baseball fanatic who effectively invented the modern fantasy baseball league, does a terrific job of telling Sondheim’s life story alongside shrewd analysis of his body of work. We meet Sondheim’s mother, known as Foxy, whom the writer and composer made an elaborate play of hating his entire life and who Okrent brings to life in order to get behind that particular performance.

We see the young Sondheim taken under the wing of Oscar Hammerstein, the great man of musical theatre, who called out the young Stevie, as he knew him, for early missteps: “You’re writing like me,” said Hammerstein. “You’re imitating me, you’re talking about nature and things like that. You don’t believe in those things.” He then gave Sondheim a piece of advice the younger man would carry close to his chest throughout his career: “Write what you believe, and you’ll be 99% ahead of the game.”

The early chapters are a fascinating study in the gestation of genius. Sondheim attended Williams College, Massachusetts, where he switched from studying maths to music once he understood the latter could have the same “exactitude and rigor”. This shift was largely down to his tutor, Robert Barrow, an unpopular figure among students for being dry and doctrinaire but a perfect fit for Sondheim. Barrow’s instruction was pivotal; on Claude Debussy’s La Mer, Barrow said, “Anybody here hear the sea? Well, even if you do, that’s not what it’s about. What the piece is about is the whole tone scale.” Music to Sondheim’s ears, who later credited that moment for teaching him “that music is a thought-out process, that it is craft, not inspiration”. (Forty years later, he would make the hero of Sunday in the Park With George have similar insights.)

In those early years of his career, we see Sondheim at the mercy of the big beasts of musical theatre – in 1958, Ethel Merman rejects him as a potential composer for Gypsy because, as she sees it, he is “a beginner” (Sondheim later referred to her as a “loud, vulgar, cheap, small-eyed lady”). Instead, he was relegated to writing the lyrics, a job Sondheim considered far inferior to composing. This story made me laugh: when Sondheim shared his lyrics for Everything’s Coming Up Roses with Jerome Robbins, the show’s director, Robbins asked: “Everything’s coming up Rose’s what ?”

Throughout these episodes we see Sondheim struggling to emerge from the generation of theatre composers before him – to get out from under the influence of the Jule Stynes and Leonard Bernsteins and find his own style. A note on his abilities: as Okrent writes, during a cast recording, “Sondheim would sit in the control room, seemingly not engaged, idly reading the New Yorker. Then he’d look up and say, ‘The French horn just played an E instead of an E-flat.’

At the same time, he was struggling to settle into his sexuality. For many years, Sondheim tried his hardest to date women, most convincingly Mary Rodgers, daughter of Richard Rodgers, and the actor Lee Remick, before throwing in the towel in the late 1960s. As Arthur Laurents, a more open gay man in that impossible era, believed, Sondheim had been involved with women, “because he hoped”.

It was this ambivalence and instability – “I’m ambivalent about most things,” said Sondheim in 1976 – that fed his work and would eventually result in some of the greatest musicals of the late 20th century. But in the 60s, the legend was still building. After the film rights for Gypsy delivered a cash windfall, Sondheim bought the five-storey townhouse on 246 East 49th Street, next door to Katharine Hepburn, where he would live for the next six decades. He went to parties featuring the A-list New York crowd of the day, including Mike Nichols, Lauren Bacall and Richard Avedon, whose pretensions he gently sent up. Among them, Sondheim remained idiosyncratic. Okrent writes, “in their social circle, the unattached, unemotional, sexually unresolved Sondheim was the magnetic core”.

In the early 1960s, Sondheim was busy writing Anyone Can Whistle, the show Frank Rich described as his “cult flop” and a genre in which Sondheim would excel. “On his 40th birthday,” writes Okrent, “his entire body of recorded music consisted of twenty-eight songs from the cast albums of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Anyone Can Whistle. Then came the first preview of Company, and Sondheim’s life changed utterly and forever. So did the history of the American musical.”

As in most biographies, the successful years are slightly less enjoyable than the slog to the top. But even after his greatest hits – Company, A Little Night Music, Sunday in the Park and Into the Woods – turned him into an icon, the dynamics around Sondheim were still dynamite. Bernstein never recovered from the younger man eclipsing him. (As the playwright John Guare says, “as Steve got more famous, Lenny became more hostile.”) There are moments in the book that capture the precise moment of Broadway’s changing of the guards. In 1970, after Company opened to critical adulation, Okrent writes, “Alan Jay Lerner, the lyricist of Brigadoon, My Fair Lady, and Camelot … came home from the opening night performance, broke into tears and told his wife, ‘My way of writing musicals is over.’”

In his art, Sondheim was precise, exacting, and in his life, not so much. “His personal habits were deplorable,” writes Okrent. “[Mary] Rodgers said ‘he was a pig’ who ‘never washed, never shaved’.” He was also, writes Okrent, “by any definition of the word, an alcoholic”. Sondheim left everything, including writing, to the last minute then let anxiety and adrenaline carry him through. This is how, in the early 1970s, he wrote one of his most famous songs, Send in the Clowns, from A Little Night Music – in 36 hours of total panic just days before the show previewed. He would pull off a similar trick with Children and Art, and Lesson #8, two extremely late additions to Sunday in the Park With George, which Sondheim wrote days before the show went into its off-Broadway trial in 1983, while Mandy Patinkin, the star, tore out his hair.

I could go on. The book is brimming with delicious incident. Towards the end, we see Sondheim offer himself as a mentor to younger writers including Jonathan Larson (Rent) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (Hamilton). He remained generous, and extremely cranky, well into his 70s, when he settled into a relationship and lived with someone for the first time – Jeff Romley, a man 50 years his junior who, to Sondheim’s amazement, brought an Xbox and Facebook-scrolling into his life. By all accounts, he was happier in this period than he had ever been and the pair were still together when Sondheim died in 2021 at the age of 91. One of his great regrets, he said towards the end of his life, was the absence of children. “I really do miss not having had a family.” But, he added, ambivalent to the end, “I suppose if I had one I wouldn’t have had anything to write about.”

Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn’t Easy by Daniel Okrent is published by Yale (£22). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.