Fiction
The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson review – indie debut on the Women’s prize shortlist
Catherine Taylor
Thu 21 May 2026 10.00 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/may/21/the-mercy-step-by-marcia-hutchinson-review-indie-debut-on-the-womens-prize-shortlist

‘I remember growing up and smelling lanolin everywhere and the wisps of wool just floating around,” debut novelist Marcia Hutchinson has said of her home city of Bradford, then a traditional Yorkshire mill town, where she was born to Jamaican parents in late 1962. From 1948, Bradford became a destination for several thousand Windrush migrants from the Caribbean, encouraged to come to the UK as part of postwar reconstruction. What they found was frequent racism and hostility as well as cold, damp weather and inadequate housing. Hutchinson has been open about using her own difficult childhood as the inspiration for The Mercy Step, a novel that does not stint on accounts of poverty, systemic abuse and violence, yet is pungent with wit and colour. For sheer vivacity and determination, it deserves its place on the shortlist of this year’s Women’s prize for fiction .

Hutchinson’s alter ego, Mercy Hanson, makes her stubborn, lively presence known “during the coldest winter of the 20th century”, speaking to us directly from her mother’s womb. “Mummy” is a God-fearing and often terrifyingly God-invoking character, “five foot nothing” with a tiny waist despite her many pregnancies. Four older children have been left “Back Home”, some adopted by white families. Mercy is the third girl to be born to Mummy and Daddy in England; another daughter and a longed for, spoiled only son soon follow.

Mercy is born prematurely, at home; Mummy cuts the umbilical cord herself. The light of that first winter is “cold and anaemic”, the paraffin heater disperses fumes; before long Mercy is admitted to hospital with pneumonia, referred to as “New Monya”. Hutchinson blends beautifully a mix of Jamaican patois and Yorkshire dialect throughout, as well as the “Speaky-Spokey” RP that her mother adopts when talking to the “Hinglish”.

Mercy spends her first year away from the family in hospital, and ever after feels apart from her siblings, a separateness emphasised by her habit of sitting on the hall stairs observing daily goings-on from her “Mercy Step”. She is mischievous and bold, jealous of her mother’s time and attention. Daddy is “tall, very tall, a proper giant” puffing on Capstan Full Strength, watching horse racing on the “Tee Vee”, rarely without a hat: “the Trilby makes him go on for ever”. The red glow of his cigarettes increasingly seem to Mercy a sign of “the Devil” and he is a threat to her from the off, even knocking the tiny baby about in her crib. “This isn’t right,” the infant consciousness informs us. Beatings are dispensed casually on the children by both parents, but the domestic abuse and coercive control wielded by Daddy over Mummy is complete.

Hutchinson depicts Mercy’s reaction to sustained abuse as akin to entering a dissociative fugue state; but despite the home horrors the novel is by no means depressing. For every dodgy pastor or unsympathetic teacher there is encouragement – from a kindly librarian or from Mona, Mercy’s big sister, an afro-sporting free spirit.

The novel ends with Mercy’s acceptance to grammar school aged 11. Though it drifts dangerously into vignette in places and there are some odd similes – a family dog is compared to both a cat and a rabbit, for instance – keeping to a tight timeframe smooths out some rookie errors of composition. It is through reading and sport that Mercy strives to get on and out. There is a wonderful moment of early political consciousness when she and her classmates inform their PE teacher that they are not “coloured” but “Black”, inspired by the recent 1968 Olympics black power salute undertaken on the podium by three athletes. As it concludes, The Mercy Step echoes and amplifies that moment of empowerment.

The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson is published by Cassava Republic (£10.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

Global health
Hard hats, AI and a fake pandemic: the group of former world leaders practising to save the world
Carlos Mureithi
Thu 21 May 2026 11.00 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 11.14 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/may/21/pandemic-group-of-former-world-leaders-elders-practising-health-emergency-planning

A bout a dozen people sat around a boardroom table at the emergency hub of the World Health Organization (WHO) just outside Nairobi last Thursday, their eyes glued to an animated presentation on a screen.

Health workers in eastern Chad have reported several deaths among patients with respiratory failure, they are told. Initial samples suggest a novel variant of bird flu, but confirmation requires sending samples to a foreign laboratory. International health regulations require notification within 24 hours of assessment, but Chad’s government is hesitant to notify the WHO, fearing economic repercussions and stigma.

It is a hypothetical pandemic outbreak, and the people at the table include some of the continent’s most revered figures: members of the Elders, a group of former presidents and world leaders founded in 2007 by Nelson Mandela, the idea being to use their collective wisdom to tackle global crises .

This group of the Elders are, alongside WHO representatives, taking part in the simulation to better understand how Africa is preparing for the next pandemic, to counter emerging infectious diseases and health security threats, and enable them to advocate for greater readiness and a better response.

The prompt for the first scenario is direct: if you were Chad’s head of state, how would you ensure that the country’s health minister complied with international health regulations to report the development, and what assurances would you need from partners that timely notification would be supported?

Ernesto Zedillo, a former Mexican president, fires off the first response. He thinks incentives for governments “to do the right thing” are needed. “What will the international community do to reassure governments that this is not only their duty but that they will be acknowledged as being compliant?” he asks, citing South Africa’s feeling of being punished with travel bans and restrictions for detecting a new Covid-19 variant during the pandemic in 2021.

On the opposite side of the table, Zeid bin Ra’ad bin Zeid al-Hussein, a former UN high commissioner for human rights, says that health policymakers should model their response on what is working in other sectors. “What I think we need to do,” he says, “is look at the stronger systems that we have – where you have really strong verification – and say, ‘Why don’t we bring up the rest of these systems to meet them?’”

The former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf offers a different take, saying the problem is often caused by weak healthcare systems in the reporting countries that lack the capability to identify and report pandemics properly and are therefore unable to put pressure on governments to report their findings. “Most times, it is not a lack of political will as much as it is a failure of the systemic capability,” she says.

For about an hour, the Elders go through scenarios and exercises demonstrating real-time decision-making on how geopolitical, climate and conflict risks can worsen response to outbreaks. They draw on their collective experience and wisdom from past outbreaks during their times as leaders.

The session is preceded by a presentation from WHO personnel about how the organisation supports African countries in preparing, detecting and responding to health emergencies, and another about a new AI-enabled system to support decision-making on health threats.

The simulation happens amid the hantavirus outbreak and – coincidentally but as proof of the growing global threat of disease emergencies – just a day before health officials announce an Ebola outbreak in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo that has so far killed at least 139 people.

It is also on the minds of everyone in the room that negotiators missed this month’s deadline to finalise a global pandemic treaty announced during Covid in 2021. The agreement was supposed to lay out how nations should share information on pathogens that could cause pandemics and on the access they should be guaranteed in return in the form of vaccines, tests and treatments.

The delay in agreeing such a treaty highlights the lack of trust between richer and poorer countries, especially in Africa, which experienced vaccine inequity and received few doses during the pandemic. Many believe the continent was in effect abandoned as wealthier countries stockpiled vaccines.

At the simulation, the Elders are presented with another scenario. Chad has finally notified WHO, but only after two weeks when the situation has deteriorated sharply, with cases starting to appear in northern Cameroon and severe flooding cutting off transport routes and causing further delays in sending pathogens to an international laboratory. How can WHO and its international partners better prepare for health and climate crises that will increasingly be hitting at the same time?

To get “a complete picture”, Hussein urges collaboration between science and climate experts to integrate and synthesise knowledge. “Many of us work both in the climate space and even climate science space,” he says. “And I don’t see too many health experts in that space, and I don’t see it vice versa either.”

Sirleaf agrees: “The international integrated system or integrated response is not there yet.”

Speaking afterwards, Denis Mukwege , a Congolese gynaecological surgeon and Nobel laureate, points to his country’s response to outbreaks of Ebola and mpox . He says the simulation stresses the importance of multilateralism, reacting quickly to outbreaks, and the political will for countries to collaborate.

“We need to work together because we never know where it will happen. And we need to get all the people to be ready when it happens,” he says. “We need really to understand that when we have the outbreak, it can go far and sometimes it can go beyond our borders.”

Dr Mohamed Janabi, WHO’s regional director for Africa, says the exercise has offered a window on the frontline reality in Africa, where the organisation recorded 146 emergency disease outbreaks last year. “You have seen what we face here,” he tells the Elders. “Outbreaks will continue; how we manage them, that’s the issue.”

Art and design
Wiggy stardust! The mind-blowing hair artist who astonished Rihanna and Cate Blanchett
Micha Frazer-Carroll
Thu 21 May 2026 06.00 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/may/21/taiba-akhuetie-hair-artist-rihanna-cate-blanchett

T aiba Akhuetie’s art is uncomfortable to look at. This is mostly because you’re not sure whether you’re in the presence of something alive or dead. She uses hair as her medium, constructing mundane items out of synthetic and human locks. Handbags, mirrors, rocking chairs and umbrellas are adorned with long, chunky braids and loose, pin-straight strands. The result is that these inanimate objects take on the eerie quality of taxidermy.

Akhuetie, whose work is about to go on show at the Sarabande Foundation in London, has memories of being fascinated by hair in her childhood. “We used to go to my mum’s friend’s house …” She stops and quickly corrects herself. “My auntie’s – she would be called auntie, obviously.” Akhuetie would watch her “auntie” braiding her sister’s hair, taken aback by how quickly her fingers moved. She also remembers doing plaits for her friends at school in Kingston, Surrey, and feeling that she was naturally good at it.

Yet for much of her childhood, Akhuetie didn’t like having her hair in braids. “I grew up in a white, middle-class area and wasn’t from money,” she says. “I started to realise that my insecurities were due to comparing myself to people that weren’t like me – and wanting to be like them.” When made to feel different due to her Blackness, she felt “gaslit” and dismissed. She decided to surround herself with people who made her feel secure in her identity.

A shift in her perception of braids ensued. “I really started looking at them as something incredibly beautiful and therapeutic,” says the 34-year-old. In 2014, she launched Keash Braids with her schoolfriend Jessy Linton: part pop-up braiding service, part creative brand. Akhuetie “ hustled my ass off” to build up clients, eventually establishing a permanent salon in Peckham, London. This was when braids were having a renaissance among Black women, in part sparked by the natural hair movement of the 2010s, when we put down our straighteners in favour of different, less damaging styles.

Then, when lockdown hit, Akhuetie had to find a new way to earn a living from braiding, with human contact not allowed. Was this even possible? “I was like, ‘You know what? I’m just going to do an installation out of these scraps of hair in my house and this random stool.’” The metal stool was wrapped in braids and teased hair, embellished with flowers and a bee. “That’s when I realised I could really use this as a medium ‘off the head’. I knew that was my path. I was like, ‘This is it. This is what I’m meant to do.’”

Akhuetie, who is based in Hackney, made her name with one piece in particular: a large umbrella affixed with abundant wefts of dirty-blond hair. She’d got inspiration when heading out one rainy day and looking for a brolly . The creation notched up 100,000 views on TikTok. And the world of couture has naturally taken interest in her wearable art, with Vogue praising her “super textural and avant-garde garments”, saying they give new meaning to the term “body hair”.

Akhuetie has been a stylist and now works with brands, happy to construct custom-made, wearable pieces to order. But she is adamant that she is not a fashion designer. Her work connects with a wide range of people and, while Black hair is clearly a direct inspiration, she describes her work as being “for everyone”.

In 2021, Akhuetie received an Instagram message from Rihanna asking for a bespoke piece and had to reassure herself that it wasn’t some kind of prank. The result – a braided Louis Vuitton handbag – is so intricate that, at first, it just looks like a handbag. Akhuetie has also dressed the Nigerian singer Tems for a Met Gala afterparty, as well as the film star Cate Blanchett.

Yet Akhuetie, who comes across as familiar and relaxed as we chat by phone, is careful to avoid getting too swept up by high-profile collaborations. “I don’t think you should fixate on celebrities,” she says. “It can be easy to be like, ‘Oh my God, a famous person really likes my work! I want to do something with them.’ But you have to ask yourself, ‘Would it really make sense if I made something for this person? Or am I just doing it to get two steps ahead faster?’” She pauses and adds: “‘If someone is wearing my pieces, it has to be someone that embodies my work as art.”

When I ask where Akhuetie sources her hair, I expect her to mention one of the emerging upmarket braiding hair brands that few women can afford. But I’m surprised to find it’s my local, Pak’s in Dalston, which gives her a discount because of how much she buys. The brands she lists – Impression, X-Pression – are all products that have recently been in my own hair, too.

This brings a groundedness, an authenticity, to Akhuetie’s creations, as well as a mirroring between the work and any potential viewer – a sort of cannibalistic gaze. “It’s the same hair I use on my own head,” says Akhuetie, who has also adorned a number of actual mirrors with braiding hair – perhaps playing on, and deconstructing, the idea of looking at one’s own hair in the mirror.

Potentially, there are many elaborate and theoretical interpretations of Akhuetie’s work. As we talk, I proffer a few, but notice she leaves things very open. How does she want people to feel when they look at her work? “A bit confused,” she says. “I want them to be like, ‘What? I don’t really understand how that’s hair.’ I also want people to be intrigued as to why I’m doing it. But actually, I just really love the beauty in what I’m doing.”

The exhibition will contain what she describes as her most ambitious work to date: a large, cylindrical patchwork of different types of hair stitched together. The show’s centrepiece, it’s composed of numerous colours and textures, speaking to the exhibition title: The Tone. But this has numerous alternative meanings, not least various racialised “undertones”, which Akhuetie describes. “As a Black person, people say the tone of my voice is aggressive. I have to tone myself down for people to relate to me. Then there’s my skin tone.”

Another work in the show is a table studded with resin beads on its underside. “I was reminded of a really beautiful glamorous Black girl with braids and beads,” says Akhuetie. “People who aren’t Black are normally so intrigued they want to touch it and almost treat you like you’re an alien. You wouldn’t ask to touch anybody else’s hair. I named it Don’t Touch My Table.” This is a nod to a phrase “Don’t touch my hair”, which became a slogan of the natural hair movement. “I want people to look at it and go, ‘Why do I want to touch somebody’s hair? What’s making me do that?’”

The exhibition marks a personal milestone for Akhuetie. “The reason I didn’t study art was because I was so insecure about being a Black person studying art. I didn’t think it made sense. I didn’t think I could do that. So it’s almost to say, ‘I can do this.’”

She thinks the art world is still very backward, in terms of what it considers to be true art. I think of Akhuetie’s auntie, how quickly she braided, and the deftness, skill and creativity that is so central to styling Black women’s hair. “I hope,” says Akhuetie, “I can show people who think this isn’t art that it actually is.”

Taiba Akhuetie: The Tone: Taiba’s World of Hair is at Sarabande Foundation, London , 22-24 May

Bournemouth
Bournemouth race to upgrade Vitality Stadium before first season in Europe
Matt Hughes
Wed 20 May 2026 16.27 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 06.12 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/may/20/bournemouth-race-to-upgrade-vitality-stadium-before-first-season-in-europe

Bournemouth are facing a race to complete upgrades to the Vitality Stadium to enable it to stage European football next season. Uefa has granted Bournemouth a provisional stadium licence after meeting club officials in April to review their redevelopment project, but improvements are required owing to the limited size of the hospitality areas and broadcasting facilities.

A visit from Uefa’s stadium inspection and commercial operations team will take place in June after Bournemouth secured European qualification for the first time courtesy of a 1-1 draw with Manchester City on Tuesday.

Club sources said their plan was to use the Vitality for next season’s European fixtures. Bournemouth have submitted plans for a phased expansion that would almost double the 11,286 capacity to more than 20,000, with the Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council planning committee due to discuss their proposal on Friday.

That meeting, which will focus on the proposed demolition and replacement of the South Stand, was due to take place on 11 May, leading to concern about the potential for further delays.

Bournemouth do not have to increase their capacity to meet Uefa requirements – Bodø/Glimt competed in the Champions League this season with a stadium holding 8,000 spectators – but infrastructure improvements are needed to gain a Uefa category rating.

Planned work this summer includes creating a permanent outside broadcast compound, the installation of new perimeter fencing and turnstiles and resurfacing the pitch. They have been forced to scale back planned work, though. The club had intended to add about 1,500 seats to the ground before next season by filling in gaps in all four corners but that figure was reduced to 800, with only the north-west and south-east corners to be completed.

Bournemouth are guaranteed at least a Europa League place, but also have two possible routes to Champions League qualification. If Aston Villa win the Europa League final against Freiburg and finish fifth in the Premier League, the sixth-placed side would qualify for next season’s Champions League. Bournemouth will seal sixth if they avoid defeat at Nottingham Forest or if Brighton fail to beat Manchester United.

Bournemouth could also finish fifth on goal difference if they win and Liverpool lose at home to Brentford, though Liverpool’s goal difference is better by six.

The Premier League’s Champions League and Europa League qualifiers will go into the league stage next season, giving Bournemouth additional time to complete the work.

Israel
Israeli security minister stirs diplomatic outrage with flotilla activist abuse video
Emma Graham-Harrison
Thu 21 May 2026 01.45 CESTFirst published on Wed 20 May 2026 20.15 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/20/israeli-security-minister-itamar-ben-gvir-stirs-diplomatic-outrage-with-flotilla-activist-abuse-video

Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has sparked a diplomatic crisis by publishing footage of Israeli security forces abusing international activists who were detained as they tried to sail to Gaza with aid.

Three activists were taken to hospital as result of Israeli violence, lawyers representing the group said. They were subsequently discharged. Dozens of others have suspected broken ribs, resulting in breathing problems.

“The team reports systemic violations of due process, and widespread physical and psychological abuse by Israeli authorities,” the rights group Adalah said in a statement. There were “a large number of complaints of extreme violence”.

Ben-Gvir’s video drew a rapid and furious response from countries whose citizens were onboard the boats, including the UK, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, in many cases from the top of government.

The US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, one of the country’s staunchest allies, described Ben-Gvir’s behaviour as “despicable” and said the minister had “betrayed the dignity of his nation”.

The video includes images of dozens of men and women kneeling in rows, with their foreheads to the ground and their hands zip-tied behind their back. Ben-Gvir posted it on his social media account with the caption “Welcome to Israel” in English. He appears waving an Israeli flag, mocking and taunting the detainees, including shouting: “The people of Israel live” in the face of one bound man.

Italy’s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, said the images were “unacceptable”, and demanded the release of all Italian citizens involved, along with an apology for the mistreatment and the display of “total contempt” toward the Italian government.

“It is inadmissible that these demonstrators, including many Italian citizens, are subjected to this treatment that violates human dignity,” Meloni said in a long statement posted on social media.

The Spanish foreign minister called the treatment “monstrous, disgraceful and inhumane”. His British counterpart, Yvette Cooper, said on social media she was “truly appalled” by the video, which “violates the most basic standards of respect and dignity in the way people should be treated”, and added that she was in touch with some of the families of British citizens held by Israel.

European Council president Antonio Costa said he was “appalled by the treatment of flotilla members,” and called for their immediate release.

Australian foreign minister Penny Wong joined international condemnation of the footage, saying: “The images we have seen are shocking and unacceptable.

“We condemn the actions of Israeli minister Ben-Gvir – who Australia has sanctioned – and the degrading actions of Israeli authorities towards those detained.” New Zealand’s foreign affairs minister, Winston Peters, instructed the ministry to call in the Israeli ambassador so his “grave concerns” could be directly passed on.

Peters said New Zealand had placed a travel ban on Ben-Gvir in 2025 for “severely and deliberately undermining peace and security, and removing prospects for a two-state solution”. He added: “His latest conduct with respect to the Gaza flotilla, which has been seriously criticised by his own prime minister, is further vindication of that position.”

Israel detained three New Zealanders – Mousa Taher, Hāhona Ormsby and Julien Blondel – after their boats were intercepted while taking part in a flotilla to Gaza, the Global Sumud Flotilla said. Peters said he expected Israel to adhere to its international legal obligations, including in its treatment of the New Zealanders participating in the flotilla.

More than 400 activists from 40 countries, travelling on 50 vessels, took part in the flotilla, organisers said. It set off from Turkey carrying food and other aid, in the latest high-profile attempt to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

Seven months after a ceasefire came into force in Gaza, hunger is widespread , most Palestinians live in tents or overcrowded shelters without adequate sanitation or access to clean water, and Israeli attacks are still a near-daily occurrence.

Israeli forces intercepted the flotilla in international waters on Tuesday and brought everyone onboard to Israel.

The South Korean president, Lee Jae Myung, also denounced Israel’s actions, describing them as “way out of line”, and questioned the legal basis for the arrests outside Israeli territorial waters.

Adalah attorneys and volunteer lawyers working with them met hundreds of the activists at Ashdod port, but “severe access restrictions” meant they were not able to see everyone who had been detained.

Detained flotilla members told lawyers they faced violence when their boats were intercepted, on Israeli military boats and during transfer to the port, Adalah said. This included the use of rubber bullets and tasers. Israeli authorities forced the activists into stress positions, forced them to sit on their knees for prolonged periods and forced them to bend double and when being moved around the port.

In addition to physical abuse, detainees “were subjected to severe degradation and sexual harassment and humiliation”, Adalah said. Several women reported that their hijabs were ripped off.

The Israeli military referred requests for comment about the violence detailed by Adalah to the Israeli prison service and the foreign ministry, which did not immediately respond when contacted on Wednesday evening.

The global outrage at the activists’ treatment prompted the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to condemn Ben-Gvir within hours of the video being published online.

“The way that minister Ben-Gvir dealt with the flotilla activists is not in line with Israel’s values and norms,” he said, adding that he had ordered the deportation of the group “as soon as possible”.

The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Saar, launched a more scathing personal attack on the minister. “You knowingly caused harm to our state in this disgraceful display – and not for the first time,” he said in a statement on X. “You are not the face of Israel.”

Ben-Gvir appeared to relish the censure. “Israel has stopped being a pushover,” he replied to Saar.

Rights groups documented widespread , systemic torture and abuse of Palestinians in Israeli prisons and detention centres during Israel’s war in Gaza, sparked by the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October 2023.

Sari Bashi, director of the rights group Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, said Ben-Gvir’s video reflected a broader culture of impunity.

“To me it’s just an indication of how badly the rights and welfare of detainees have suffered under [Ben-Gvir’s] leadership,” Bashi said. “A prison guard who sees his boss’s boss express pride in the mistreatment of foreign detainees will have no qualms about abusing Palestinian detainees and he won’t even have to be afraid to get caught.

“Ben-Gvir is saying that this behaviour is welcomed and encouraged at the highest level.”

The legal rights group Adalah, which represents some of those detained, said it had “documented similar patterns of ill-treatment against activists in previous flotilla missions, for which Israel faced zero accountability”, and called for the international community to take urgent action to protect activists held by Israel.

The video was released the day after another far-right member of the Israeli cabinet – the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich – announced that he had ordered the ethnic cleansing of a Palestinian village in response to reports that the international criminal court (ICC) was seeking a warrant for his arrest.

Smotrich called a press conference to attack the ICC and publish an order for the eviction of all residents of Khan al-Ahmar, home to more than 700 people. It lies in the heart of the occupied West Bank, about 6 miles (10km) east of the Old City of Jerusalem, ringed by Israeli settlements.

The ICC’s top prosecutor has requested arrest warrants for Smotrich, Ben-Gvir, Orit Strook, the minister of settlements and national missions, and two Israeli military officials, Haaretz newspaper reported this week.

Cannes film festival
Notre Salut review – a novelistic telling of day-to-day life in Nazi-occupied France
Peter Bradshaw
Thu 21 May 2026 08.44 CESTLast modified on Thu 21 May 2026 08.46 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/may/21/notre-salut-review-a-novelistic-telling-of-day-to-day-life-in-nazi-occupied-france

T his, oddly, is the second film in the Cannes competition about the Nazi occupation of France, and it is more interesting than László Nemes’s rather mainstream drama Moulin – a complex, ambiguous study of national humiliation from writer-director Emmanuel Marre. He has created an absorbingly intimate, novelistically detailed procedural about the day-to-day, moment-by-moment lives of the Vichy administrators after the fall of France, mostly shot conventionally, sometimes jolting into an anachronistic dreamlike scenario on video.

It is centred on the director’s own great-grandfather Henri Marre, who held a minor but important post in the Vichy ministry of labour. The film is in fact unsparing of this conceited, petty, but weirdly sensitive and vulnerable man: Swann Arlaud plays him as a sociopathic mixture of haughty idealist, salon intellectual and conman predator, a man who doesn’t really believe in anything but his own survival and has only the vaguest idea about what such survival could mean.

The film follows Marre and the Vichy pen-pushers in almost real time as they busy themselves with what appear to them innocuous administrative tasks. But at frog-boiling speed, they gradually realise that what they are required to do is organise the transportation of the Jews, a project originally called ramassage (or “roundup”) but coyly renamed by Marre and the Vichy ministers rassemblement (or “collective relocation”). We witness a bureaucratic row about the excessive cost involved in providing Jews on cattle trucks with straw and chamber pots.

The Vichy apparatchiks are delusional and avoidant, grimly seizing on the idea of salvaging some martyred patriotic survival from the catastrophe of the Nazi invasion, building a new France as reactionary and antisemitic as the Germans. This is partly to cauterise the mortification and partly to appease the Nazis into continuing to allow this supposed “free zone” in the south under the poignantly defanged leadership of first world war hero Marshal Pétain.

Marre is shown appearing in this Vichy France out of nowhere, all but penniless, a slippery but plausible entrepreneur who has already squandered almost all of his wife’s family fortune and that of his trusting investors in his various doomed schemes. He has his left his wife and children behind and the film quotes his wife’s angry – and presumably genuine – letters to him in voiceover. Now he sees France’s catastrophe as a way of reinventing himself as a national visionary, brandishing copies of his self-published manifesto for national renewal, paid for by his wife, entitled Notre Salut (or Our Salvation).

Marre wheedles his way into Vichy soirees and embarrasses his hosts with his indiscreet contempt for the Nazis and the misjudged excess of his Pétain hero-worship. Like a petitioner in tsarist Russia, Marre hangs around ministerial offices hoping for a job, and sycophantically endears himself to one senior figure by rescuing the man’s beloved cat from behind the demarcation zone – a farcically undignified and dangerous task.

But once in employment, Marre instantly demonstrates his instinctive flair for the middle-management leadership style and maudlin patriotic Pétain-worship, supervising the hanging of a huge mural about France’s new mission. He busies himself with all manner of little tasks, ostensibly to see how costs can be cut, but really because this kind of immersion is how he imposes his own power and curates his own undistinguished career. He schools members of the public in how to shout pro-Pétain slogans, and auditions secretaries from the dozens of applicants, whimsically choosing the laziest and least competent, perhaps so that this personal assistant will never get above herself or show him up. His elegant wife Paulette (Sandrine Blancke) joins him with their children in a handsome new apartment which used to belong to a Jewish family.

But with a terrible inevitability, he realises that Vichy France’s supposed independence is a sham, and his notional responsibility for forced labour is overruled by the Germans’ chilling Organisation Todt. The Germans become more and more insistent on the antisemitic roundups and Marre’s own superiors become increasingly panicky and shrill in their demands that he simply gets on with the business of obeying. Finally, as D-day dawns, we are to see Marre reverting to type, buying up abandoned businesses with government cash and keeping back for himself a larcenous “commission”, a pathetic and lonely figure, deserted by his family and everyone else.

Marre’s film gives a very shrewd, painful account of what Marcel Ophüls’ film called the sorrow and the pity: what the Vichy administrators felt was self-pity and a kind of doomy sorrow at their own misfortune. Arlaud gives an excellent performance as an intelligent, talented man who almost, but not quite, realises the terrible swamp into which he has descended.

Notre Salut screened at the Cannes film festival .

Lithuania
Lithuanian leaders rushed to bunkers as drone violates country’s airspace
Jon Henley
Wed 20 May 2026 15.43 CESTLast modified on Wed 20 May 2026 15.58 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/20/lithuania-vilnius-drone-alert-leaders-bunkers

Lithuania’s president and prime minister were rushed to underground bunkers and residents of the capital, Vilnius, urged to take shelter during a warning issued after a drone violated the country’s airspace.

Air and train traffic in and around the city was suspended after the mobile phone “take shelter” alert, the first issued in an EU and Nato country since the start of Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine .

“Air raid alert! Go immediately to a shelter or a safe place, take care of your family members and wait for further instructions,” read the defence ministry’s warning, which was sent at about 10.20am on Wednesday and lasted for about an hour.

Schools brought children to designated shelters, people in office and apartment buildings went down to basements, and Lithuania’s president, Gitanas Nausėda, and prime minister, Inga Ruginienė, were rushed to bunkers along with cabinet members and MPs.

The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said after the alert that Russia and Belarus had been directly responsible for a spate of drone incursions into EU and Nato countries’ airspace during recent weeks.

Russian electronic jamming has been blamed for the Ukrainian drones crossing into Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all of which border Russia. A Nato jet shot down a drone over Estonia on Tuesday, while Latvia’s prime minister resigned last week over the incursions.

“Russia’s public threats against our Baltic states are completely unacceptable,” von der Leyen said on social media. “Russia and Belarus bear direct responsibility for drones endangering the lives and security of people on our eastern flank.”

Nato’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, said on Wednesday that even if drones crash-landing in the Baltic states had been launched by Ukraine, they were “not there because Ukraine wants to send a drone to Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia. They are there because of the reckless, illegal, full-scale attack of Russia.”

Some EU and Nato members said a more forceful response might be necessary. Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Wednesday: “The Ukrainian-Russian war may soon lead to a situation where we will have to react firmly.”

Lithuania’s army said a radar signal “typical of an unmanned aerial vehicle” had been detected in Belarusian airspace. Vilmantas Vitkauskas, the head of the National Crisis Management Centre, said a drone had been spotted in the Vilnius area.

“Based on the parameters we saw, it’s most likely either a combat drone or a drone designed to deceive systems and lure targets,” Vitkauskas said. “The electronic countermeasures here can’t tell us whether an explosive device detonated or not.”

Lithuania’s defence minister, Robertas Kaunas, said the drone had come from Latvia and that it was not known whether it had crashed or left Lithuania’s airspace. Nato fighter jets had been unable to locate it, authorities said.

Russia’s ambassador to the UN caused outrage on Tuesday by claiming Kyiv would soon launch drones at Russia from the Baltic states and telling Latvia that Nato membership would “not protect you from retaliation” .

Lithuania’s foreign minister, Kęstutis Budrys, on Tuesday accused Moscow of “deliberately redirecting Ukrainian drones into Baltic airspace while waging smear campaigns” against all three Baltic states.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, said on Wednesday that Russia’s military was “closely monitoring the situation” regarding drones flying through the Baltic states’ airspace, and was formulating an appropriate response.

Nvidia
Nvidia’s revenue blows past Wall Street expectations as AI boom accelerates
Sanya Mansoor
Thu 21 May 2026 00.45 CESTFirst published on Wed 20 May 2026 23.50 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/20/nvidia-revenue-ai-boom

Nvidia continued its years-long streak of beating Wall Street’s expectations for growth on Wednesday, reassuring most investors that the AI boom, particularly the global explosion of datacenters, will continue apace.

“The buildout of AI factories – the largest infrastructure expansion in human history – is accelerating at extraordinary speed,” said Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, in a statement . “Agentic AI has arrived, doing productive work, generating real value, and scaling rapidly across companies and industries.”

Many analysts view Nvidia’s financial performance as a broader referendum on the AI buildout. The most valuable company in the world, Nvidia, with a $5.4tn market cap, reigns supreme in the semiconductor chip market and has cashed in on big tech’s AI aspirations by providing key components, software and infrastructure to fuel that expansion. US tech giants are collectively planning to spend some $750bn this year on AI infrastructure , a significant portion of which will go towards chips for datacenters. Huang said on Wednesday that he expected Nvidia would grow faster than the capital expenditure of hyper-scaled datacenters.

A major portion of Nvidia’s revenue comes from its datacenter business. On Wednesday, the chip maker reported 92% year-over-year growth of this vertical to a record $75.2bn. The company is facing some competition in producing chips from other tech giants, though, such as Amazon and Google.

Still, Nvidia blew past analysts’ expectations of $78.86bn in revenue for the first quarter of 2026, securing $81.62bn for the quarter. The chip maker also exceeded Wall Street expectations of $1.76 per share and reported earnings of $1.87 per share.

Huang joined Elon Musk and Donald Trump on Air Force One for a trip to China last week. Huang has expressed some hope that Nvidia will be able to expand into China, although it was unclear whether Chinese officials will agree to use American technology. In December, the Trump administration allowed Nvidia to export H200 AI chips to China, with the US collecting a 25% fee on these sales. “The Chinese government has to decide: how much of their local market do they want to protect?” Huang said in an interview last week with Bloomberg Television. “My sense is that over time the market will open.” Nvidia said in its outlook on Wednesday that it was not currently expecting datacenter compute revenue from China.

Nvidia’s CFO, Colette Kress, reiterated on Wednesday’s earnings call that Nvidia has not generated any revenue from sales of these chips to China and that it is unclear whether any imports will be allowed into the country. Sales of the company’s chips there have been in limbo. Trump has approved sales of Nvidia’s chips in China but said that Xi Jinping had blocked them .

Nvidia was also trying to expand its footprint in south-east Asia. On Wednesday, Singapore announced that Nvidia will be launching a research hub in the country, focused on increasing the efficiency of AI infrastructure.

Nvidia announced a new AI system earlier this year, which is expected to roll out in the second half of 2026. The chip maker has claimed that the Vera Rubin platform will be a “generational leap” that’s going to be “kicking off the greatest infrastructure buildout in history”.

“My sense is we will be supply-constrained throughout the entire life of Vera Rubin,” Huang said on Wednesday.

The CEOs of OpenAI and Anthropic have said Nvidia’s infrastructure – and ability to keep pace – was key for their ability to run powerful models safely and at scale.

“The world is rebuilding computing for agentic AI and robotic physical AI. Nvidia sits at the center of these transitions,” Huang said.

Retail industry
‘Give every item a long life’: Vinted boss on how the site is moving beyond fashion
Sarah Butler
Thu 21 May 2026 07.00 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/may/21/vinted-boss-adam-jay-fashion-uk-clothes-retail

O nce the preserve of jumble sales and charity shops, “preloved” fashion and homewares are now leading style and shopping trends in the UK. After the rapid growth of online retail, Britain is now witnessing “the normalisation of secondhand”, according to Adam Jay, the chief executive of Vinted’s main marketplace arm – a key driver of the trend in recent years.

The UK is at the forefront of an international revolution, jostling for position with France to be Vinted’s biggest market, and is also one of its fastest growing markets, as the online marketplace moves beyond just selling clothes and into everything from smartphones and books to rugs.

“I see a deep and sustained change in how people buy and how people think about things that they own,” says Jay, who has been in the job since 2022.

“We’re a very meaningful part, now, of UK fashion, and we’re becoming a very meaningful part of the retail scene in other categories as well,” he says.

He says in the last five to 10 years Britons have embraced secondhand buying to a far greater degree, boosting not only Vinted but eBay – the subject of a recent $55.5bn (£41bn) takeover bid – and the UK startup Depop, Facebook Marketplace as well as numerous other smaller rivals. Preloved items now make up about a tenth of global fashion sales and Jay believes there is much further to go.

Together with the cut-price marketplaces Shein and Temu, Vinted has shaken up the UK retail scene, putting pressure on established online sellers including Asos and Boohoo, the budget high street chain Primark and even retailers such as John Lewis, Currys and Argos.

While Vinted’s green-tinged ambition to make secondhand the first choice may seem a world away from Shein, which sells cheap stuff direct from factories based mostly in China, Jay says both are benefiting from shoppers’ hunt for value as their spare cash is squeezed by rising energy and food costs .

He says Vinted, Shein and Temu are all growing for “fundamentally the same reason”, which is “because it’s cheap and easy. Our main competitor is new [products].” Vinted shoppers save an average 72% on the price of buying an equivalent new item, according to the company’s impact report published this week. Almost a third of the marketplace’s users say they use the savings to cover essential household expenses.

Vinted was founded in Lithuania in 2008 by then 22-year-old Milda Mitkuté, who came up with a plan – at a party with an old friend, Justas Janauskas – to clear out her wardrobe when moving house. Two weeks later, they launched a website to sell 100 items of Mitkuté’s clothing. So inexperienced were they in online retail, they forgot to include a “buy” button.

By 2014, the business had grown and launched in the UK. After a few false starts, it began to gain traction in 2021 as the nation cleaned out its wardrobe while stuck at home during the Covid pandemic.

By 2022, Vinted was being used by 8 million Britons, most of whom were women between 18 and 35. The following year that number doubled to 16 million. Now, Vinted refuses to disclose user numbers but says it is used by “millions” globally, is still growing and attracts a very broad demographic, from pensioners to parents and teens.

“My 84-year-old mother is selling on Vinted,” says Jay, a former executive at the travel company Expedia, who admits he is completely on-brand, making most of his personal purchases via the site. “Pretty much everything in our family is secondhand. The last two Christmases we had secondhand only Christmas or Vinted-only Christmas.”

The marketplace, which operates in more than 25 countries and now operates its own delivery service and financial services, was valued at €8bn (£7bn) in April when it sold €880m in shares to provide income for some longstanding investors. Sales through the site hit €10.8bn last year, putting it almost on a par with Primark on a global scale. Vinted, which takes a commission on each sale, generated €1.1bn in revenue, with net profits of €62m in 2025, down 19% on the previous year after a spending drive to expand.

In Britain, sales rose 47% last year, growing “significantly ahead” of other markets. “The UK has been incredible,” Jay says. Sales have been spurred by the company delving into new categories beyond fashion, to a total of 3,000 types of goods from phones and cameras to books.

Most have gone extremely well, except large furniture, where the difficulties and higher costs involved in handling larger items have put a dampener on sales.

Jay says Vinted is prepared to try lots of categories – even if some might not work straight away. “We want people to be thinking about how they can give every item as long as possible life. Don’t allow things to sit in the back of the cupboard for years and years untouched. Get them to someone who’s going to love them, wear them, use them.”

Games
Driving sims were once all the rage – will Forza Horizon 6 get them back on track?
Keith Stuart
Wed 20 May 2026 16.00 CESTLast modified on Wed 20 May 2026 16.03 CEST
News
https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/may/20/pushing-buttons-forza-horizon-6

I have spent the last week careening around Japan in a Porsche 911, seeing the sights, racing other cars and occasionally veering off the road to plummet through an ancient bamboo forest. You all know what’s coming next … this wasn’t in real life, folks – it was in Forza Horizon 6 , the latest instalment in Microsoft’s series of open world driving games set in authentic-looking, real-world locations.

Reviewing this game (which is out now on Xbox and PC, and coming to PS5 later in the year) has reminded me of the sheer fun and exhilaration that driving games can provide. It’s easy to forget, but this was the biggest genre in town from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Consoles were sold on how good their racing games were: the original PlayStation had Ridge Racer, the Sega Saturn had Daytona USA. Later came the dirt-track thrills of Colin McRae Rally, the chaotic destruction of Burnout, the sophisticated realism of Gran Turismo. They were the bestsellers of the era, showcasing the future of real-time 3D visuals.

But then came time-sucking open-world fantasy adventures, mega-hit first-person shooters and the live-service behemoths Fortnite and Minecraft. The mainstream drifted away. Mario Kart hung about, of course, and there are still annual F1 and MotoGP titles, as well as hardcore sims such as Assetto Corsa Competizione and iRacing. But big-budget blockbuster racers have largely driven off into the, well, horizon.

It’s a shame because, as Forza Horizon 6 shows, there is so much joy in this genre. Driving sims are rare because they are, at their best, aspirational and relatable. Most adults who play games have driven a real car, so the experience is familiar – this is why from the late 1960s on, driving games were a staple feature of amusement arcades. At first that meant electromechanical oddities such as Kasco’s 1968 classic Indy 500, which used a rear projection system to display a simple road on the screen, but later came video games from Atari’s minimalist classic Night Driver to the 1980s legend OutRun. You put a machine with a steering wheel, a gear stick and an accelerator pedal in a seaside arcade and almost everyone would have a go.

Yet, racing games also provide a fantasy element. All drivers hold in our heads an idealised vision – an open-road, a glorious sunset, a fast convertible – that is often beyond reach. When Sega game designer Yu Suzuki designed OutRun, this is exactly what he set out to capture: you’re driving a Ferrari along coastal roads, listening to cool music on the radio, a beautiful girl by your side. It’s not about racing, it’s about living.

It’s tempting to say that gamers moved on because the technology allowed it. Circuit racing games became open world racing games (Test Drive Unlimited, Burnout Paradise), which became open world adventures such as Grand Theft Auto, where you could drive and shoot people. But I wonder if there were also deeper cultural, and even sociopolitical, elements at play. Driving in real life these days is about rapidly inflating fuel costs, traffic jams, pot holes and the growing sense that a car is like a white good: you should get something as functional, economical and environmentally responsible as possible. Perhaps driving games are like road movies – they spoke to a generation which saw the car as a source of freedom and excitement rather than expense, drudgery and environmental collapse.

All I know is that Forza Horizon 6 is incredible fun, and the chance to explore a compacted version of Japan has been wonderful. Perhaps it will spark a mainstream revival of the non-specialist driving game. Grand Theft Auto VI is also on the way later this year , and it will surely feature races and driving quests as part of its campaign and multiplayer offerings. I’m also hoping that the independent developer scene, currently drawing a lot of inspiration from the 1990s era of low-polygon 3D visuals, will come up with some crossover hit that exhumes the spirit of Ridge Racer and Daytona USA. Earlier this year, the Italian developer Milestone revived its Screamer title, a neon-drenched retro arcade racer, with some success. I think there will be more.

The escapist fast-car game is not dead – it’s just in a layby, revving up.

What to play

I am very into the trend of games that remix one or more genres into weird new experiences – à la Mythmatch , Titanium Court and Forbidden Solitaire – so I had to download Amberspire , by Lunar Division. It’s a sort of city building game, except you’re building the city on top of a giant mausoleum dedicated to a long-dead civilisation, and also, you get resources by rolling giant dice across the landscape and seeing what comes up.

In this way, urban planning becomes a chance-filled endeavour, rather than a purely intellectual task, and this sense of precariousness is amplified by the fact that in each turn, there is also an event dice roll that may suddenly inflict some ruinous storm on your brittle community. It’s an intriguing concept with an eerie mythology and ecological elements. If you enjoyed SimCity, but were frustrated by your inability to roll dice in order to decide the fate of your population like some sort of crazed deity, this one is for you.

Available on: PC Estimated playtime: 10-plus hours

What to read

Haters of gratuitous caps lock abuse, look away now. Microsoft has rebranded Xbox : from now on it will be XBOX . On 13 May, incoming CEO Asha Sharma put this vitally important change to fans via the democratically reliable medium of the Twitter poll, and 64% of voters were onboard, so here we are. XBOX!

Writer and academic Cameron Kunzelman considers the particular form and meaning of nostalgia found in the coming-of-age adventure, Mixtape, over on his blog, a question of machines .

Is the games-as-a-service era over? Gamesindustry.biz looks at the latest earnings figures and wonders whether the industry can learn anything from Capcom’s spate of successful (and sensibly budgeted) single-player titles.

What to click

How Forza Horizon took on Japan with deep research – and 360-degree cameras

Gotta catch an MP! Players ‘debate’ UK politicians in Pokémon-style game

From Smashing Pumpkins to Ferris Bueller: new Australian indie video game Mixtape is a blast of nostalgia

Question Block

A question from reader Jamie :

“I was telling my children about the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 games I used to love and I wondered if there are any museums where they could see and perhaps even play these glorious old machines?”

There are plenty of museums around Britain dedicated to computers. The largest are the National Museum of Computing in Bletchley, the Centre for Computing History in Cambridge (soon hosting a special event for the 50th anniversary of the Z80 processor, which powered the ZX Spectrum) and the Museum of Computing in Swindon. These all house a range of machines from the very first electronic computers to more recent models, including classic 8-bit micros such as the Speccy and Commodore. They also hold regular events and workshop sessions, so your kids could try programming in Basic or building little robots. There are plenty of smaller local museums too, including the Cave in Stroud and the Micro Museum in Ramsgate. I’d also recommend the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield, which always has playable exhibits. Oh, and watch out for occasional computing exhibitions and events at the National Museum of Scotland and the Science Museum in London.

Alternatively, you could just go wild and buy an old computer? You can get a ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 in reasonable condition for around £50-75 on eBay or at a retro computing fair ( RetroFest an annual event dedicated to old home computers, is in Swindon from 30-31 May), although make sure it comes with all the leads and a compatible cassette player or disc drive. You’ll also need a TV with an RF cable port, or an adaptor that will convert the RF output to modern HDMI so you can plug it into an LED monitor. Although admittedly, this is quite a lot of expense and effort to go to just to show your kids Horace Goes Skiing.

If you’ve got a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@theguardian.com .