Keyword – Environment
Trefwoorden – Iceland, Europe, Whaling, Whales, Marine life, Cetaceans, Animal welfare, Animals, World news, Wildlife
Title – Iceland to submit bill that could ban whaling in its waters | Iceland | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/karenmcveigh
Link – Iceland to submit bill that could ban whaling in its waters | Iceland | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-11T05:00:01.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/sep/11/iceland-bill-commercial-whaling-ban-mounting-pressure

Iceland will submit a bill in February 2027 which could permanently ban whaling in its waters, a move that would leave Norway and Japan as the only two countries to permit commercial whaling.

Whaling in Iceland has been put under intense scrutiny since a government-commissioned report was published in 2023 that found harpooned whales took two hours to die. The report led to a temporary suspension of the hunt that year.

The bill, announced on the Icelandic government’s website , follows comments by Iceland’s minister of industries, Hanna Katrín Friðriksson , earlier this year calling for changes in the whaling laws she said were outdated and expressing support for an end to the whale hunt.

Wendy Higgins, of Humane World for Animals (HWA), an animal welfare group, said the bill was a “significant milestone” in efforts to end the practice.

“There is considerable political and public support for this bill to ban commercial whaling, and compelling ethical, veterinary, legal and conservation reasons to hope it succeeds,” said Higgins. “Every whale killed by exploding harpoon in Icelandic waters, is a tragic loss of life needlessly taken for an industry that has no purpose. A law to stop the killing can’t come soon enough.”

So far this year, up to 8 September, 80 fin whales were caught in Icelandic waters, according to HWA. The hunting season runs from June to the end of September and Iceland’s quota is up to 150 animals.

Fin whales are the second-largest animals on Earth, second to blue whales, and are classified as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, despite decades of recovery after the commercial whaling moratorium in 1986.

Iceland has only one remaining whaling company, Hvalur, run by Kristján Loftsson. A previous interim government in Iceland issued a five-year permit to Hvalur, which runs until 2029.

Higgins said: “Of course, campaigners want an immediate end to the killing of whales, but we also recognise that even if a ban is introduced, it’s likely that the current whaling permits, which expire in 2029, will be allowed to run their course.”

Sharon Livermore, the director of marine conservation at the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) said: “A proposal to update the laws that allow whaling in Icelandic waters would be a groundbreaking step towards modern day marine conservation and animal welfare, especially for a country so reliant on a healthy ocean.”

Just three countries – Iceland, Norway and Japan – have hunted for whales commercially in recent years. Norway resumed commercial whaling in 1993, and Iceland in 2006, despite a moratorium by the International Whaling Commission.

Japan left the IWC in 2019 and resumed commercial whaling in its waters.

Keyword – Art and design
Trefwoorden – Robert Capa, Venice film festival, Biopics, Photography, Spain, World news, Europe, France, Hungary, Germany, War films, Magnum, Festivals, Film, Culture
Title – ‘A fierce need to be independent’: Gerda Taro biopic pulls photographer out of lover Robert Capa’s shadow | Robert Capa | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/philip-oltermann,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/stephen-burgen
Link – ‘A fierce need to be independent’: Gerda Taro biopic pulls photographer out of lover Robert Capa’s shadow | Robert Capa | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-11T05:00:01.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/sep/11/gerda-taro-biopic-robert-capa-spain-photography-venice-film-festival

She was one of the most fearless female photojournalists of the 20th century, and the first known to have been killed while covering a war. But in life and in death, the work of Gerda Taro has often been overshadowed by the collaborator and lover whose alias she invented and sometimes shared: Robert Capa .

That may be about to change with a new biopic that seeks to pull the pioneering photographer from out of Capa’s shadow, which is premiering at the Venice film festival just as researchers claim to have proof that his most famous and controversial picture was actually taken by her.

Taro and Capa were both from middle-class Jewish families – she born in 1910 in Stuttgart under the name Gerta Pohorylle, he three years later in Budapest as Endré Friedmann.

Terrified by the rise of Nazism, the two aspiring photojournalists fled to Paris, where their paths crossed and they mingled with other luminaries including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn and Willy Brandt, who would later become Germany’s first postwar social democrat chancellor.

It was Taro who came up with a brand name redolent of a seasoned, hard-drinking American war reporter, which they hoped would command respect ( cápa also meaning “shark” in Hungarian) and higher fees.

Between 1936 and 1937, the pair covered the Spanish civil war, with pictures taken by both of them published under their alias in the Life and Picture Post magazines.

“Gerda Taro both captured the early phase of the Spanish civil war that was still full of optimism and hope, and the tragic final stages,” said Alina Marazzi, the Italian director of the new film La Ragazza Con la Leica (“The Girl With the Leica”), based on Helena Janeczek’s novel of the same name. “She was one of the first women to take pictures from the battlefront, but she also captured the consequences the war had for ordinary people, for women and for children.”

Taro’s most widely known series of photographs depicts female militias on a shooting range, one of them shown in iconic profile: kneeling on one knee while steadying a pistol, wearing an overall but also high heels. “It’s such an incredible picture, clearly showing the influence of the Soviet avant garde,” said Marazzi.

The showcasing of the feature film in the Venice Lido is taking place amid fresh questions over the most famous photograph to be credited to the Robert Capa alias, which researchers claim may have been taken by Taro and not Capa, as hitherto thought.

The Death of a Militiaman gained fame when Life magazine published it in July 1937, with a caption stating that it showed the moment a Republican fighter was shot in the head by Francisco Franco’s forces near Córdoba – a claim that has since been contested.

Fernando Penco Valenzuela, a Spanish historian, archaeologist and archivist in the city of Córdoba who has spent years studying Capa’s work, said a technical analysis of the photo – also known as The Falling Soldier – suggests it was in fact shot by Taro’s square-format Reflex-Korelle rather than Friedmann’s rectangular-format 35mm Leica.

A 2025 Madrid retrospective curated by Magnum , the agency Capa co-founded in 1947, stated in a caption that although some prints of The Falling Soldier were rectangular, the dimension of others suggested the negative “came from a 6×6 camera”.

Penco’s research pins down the location where the picture was taken to the village of Espejo in the Cerro Muriano mountain range, on the front near Córdoba in southern Spain on 5 September 1936, at the beginning of the Spanish civil war.

In a photograph of Taro the day the couple arrived at Espejo, she is seen wearing the Reflex-Korelle, the camera she bought with her first pay cheque as a photographer.

An analysis of the pictures taken by both photographers in Espejo attributes all of the square-format photos to Taro and the rectangular ones to Friedmann. As the militiaman picture is square, Penco argues that it is therefore logical to assume it, too, was taken by Taro.

“How is it possible that she didn’t take the photo?” he told the Guardian. “I have no doubt about it whatsoever.”

Penco’s findings also fuel speculation that the famous picture may have been staged. “As there was no fighting in the area when it was taken, in my opinion the photo was staged,” he said.

Marazzi said it was plausible that Taro took The Falling Soldier picture, which is shown in her film. “We know that around the time the picture was taken, Capa and Taro were often taking pictures in the same places.”

Penco said that while it was commonplace at the time for photographers to file in the name of their group or cooperative, the fact that Friedmann and Taro were a couple may have further complicated their attribution.

The Girl With the Leica opens at a point where Taro (played by the German actor Emilia Schüle) and Friedmann (played by Aaron Altaras) have retreated back to Paris because the civil war in Spain has become too dangerous. But Taro is restless.

“Even though it was her who invented the entire Robert Capa persona, there was a point where she developed a fierce need to be independent,” said Marazzi.

“The world sees only Capa, and I’m disappearing behind him,” the actor playing Taro says in the film, before deciding to return to the Iberian peninsula to take more pictures.

In July 1937, Taro was photographing fighting in the Brunete region near Madrid for the French communist newspaper Ce Soir when she was run over and crushed by a reversing Republican tank. She died at El Goloso hospital in El Escorial and was later buried at Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris.

Keyword – US news
Trefwoorden – Donald Trump, US midterm elections 2026, JD Vance, Ted Cruz, Robert F Kennedy Jr, Mike Johnson, Donald Trump Jr, US politics, Dallas, Texas, Republicans, US news
Title – ‘I’m on the ticket’: Trump implores Republicans to vote in November at unusual midterm convention | Donald Trump | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/davidsmith
Link – ‘I’m on the ticket’: Trump implores Republicans to vote in November at unusual midterm convention | Donald Trump | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-11T04:24:57.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/11/donald-trump-republican-midterm-convention

With his approval rating at a historic low, Donald Trump has brought down the curtain on the Republicans ’ first ever midterm convention by pleading with supporters to do him “the biggest favour” and “pretend” they are voting for him in November’s US elections .

The president is facing a growing backlash over rising prices and the war in Iran. Sweeping losses for the Republican party could effectively turn Trump into a lame duck for his final two years in the White House.

Sensing political danger, Trump wrapped up the novel two-day event in Dallas , Texas, on Thursday with a pitch that critics are likely to say smacked of desperation: “You gotta do me the biggest favour you’ve ever done me. You’ve gotta do this for me. You’ve got to pretend I’m on the ticket. I’m on the ticket! I’m on the ticket! He’s on the ticket! Pretend I’m on the ticket because this is going to turn out to be one of the most important elections.”

In an improvised pledge of allegiance to himself, Trump directed the crowd of about 20,000 to raise their right hands and repeat: “I pledge to the greatest president in the history of the United States, that loves us so much he can’t even breathe, that I will go out with my family, my friends, I’ll do it any way – I don’t care if I’m registered or not, I’m going to try to cheat like hell like they do. ”

The convention had been aimed at turning around Republicans’ fortunes. Opinion polls suggest they are on course to lose the US House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate.

In what was effectively an abridged version of his rambling keynote address on Wednesday , the president reiterated his promise of “Trump dividend” of $5,000 for every US adult if Republicans win both chambers of Congress. Democrats have dismissed the pledge as a bribe while economists have warned it would cost more than $1tn.

Trump also hammered the theme of the convention: drawing a contrast between his own accomplishments and what he argues amounts to a threat posed by Democrats.

“Less than two years ago, the American people gave us a mandate to save America – and in 19 months, I’ve delivered on every single promise I made,” he claimed. “They gave us wide open borders with 25 million people pouring in from all over the globe. They turned our cities into scenes of death and misery, murder, poverty and destruction, and made America a laughingstock all over world.

“ But we took that dark age of America and turned it into the golden age of America. ”

The reduction of prescription drug prices alone “should get us a big victory in our midterms”, he suggested, before he turned the microphone over to the opera performer Christopher Macchio, who belted out a soaring rendition of America the Beautiful as red, white, blue and golden balloons cascaded down from the ceiling of the basketball arena.

The convention resembled a Trump mega-rally more than a traditional party meeting, with no nominations or formal business and more than 50 speakers or presentations each night. Supporters wore “Make America Great Again” regalia and waved signs displaying the Stars and Stripes. Republicans believe it has been successful in galvanising the party’s base in the face of stiff electoral headwinds.

Earlier on Thursday, speaker after speaker sought to champion Trump’s accomplishments while constantly branding the Democratic party as extremist and communist.

The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr , delivered a fiery address setting Republican “common sense” against a “dystopian hellscape” of leftwing ideology.

“As we speak, Democrat candidates across the country are openly embracing the radical ideology of democratic socialism,” suggested Trump Jr. “They claim that their socialism is for the people, but that’s the exact same story we’ve heard from every communist in human history.”

Describing childhood memories of his grandparents in communist Czechoslovakia, he warned of bread lines and rationing. “Communism is on the march and it’s up to us to stop it in its tracks,” he said.

Trump Jr framed the Republican platform, including pledges to end taxes on tips, overtime and social security, as a direct response to a “war on the working people” by Democrats. “The choice is clear,” he said. “Don’t let these radicals gaslight you into thinking common sense is extreme, and extreme is somehow common sense. Don’t let them convince you that caring about this country makes you a villain.”

Senator Ted Cruz meanwhile warned of a “red-green alliance” between “communists and Islamists” who “hate Christians, hate Jews and hate capitalism”. Invoking his father’s escape from Cuban communism, Cruz declared that “sharia law has no place in America” and was “fundamentally inconsistent with the constitution”.

The House speaker, Mike Johnson , echoed the conspiratorial tone, suggesting the nation was being “attacked from within”. The Democratic party is now beholden to radicals, he claimed, warning: “They’re the ones who have let the barbarians inside the gate, and next year the communists will be in Congress. That’s what’s so frightening.”

Johnson added that , while big names like Zohran Mamdani and Abdul El-Sayed are known entities, the bigger threat comes from “Democrats in the swing seats who say one thing, and then join forces and vote with the socialists that they’re afraid of”.

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr , took the stage to champion the “Make America Healthy Again” (Maha) platform. The son of a former US attorney general and nephew of John F Kennedy said the “irony of my presence here is inescapable”.

He continued: “The Democrats of that era stood with labour and working people and the American middle class. Nearly every cop and firefighter was a Democrat … The Democratic party, in short, lost its way.”

Speaking less than a mile from the spot where his uncle was assassinated in 1963, Kennedy claimed it was a “fact” that “neither my father, nor my uncle, would recognise the Democratic party of today”.

JD Vance, the vice-president, gave the keynote address of the night. He said: “The Democrats are the party of hatred. They’re the party that despises America and the people who built it … America belongs to those who love it – not those who hate it.”

The political attacks were briefly paused for two sombre interludes.

A tribute marked one year since the assassination of the rightwing provocateur and organiser Charlie Kirk. Lucas Miles, a Turning Point USA vice-president, said that while “they could take the man, they could not take the mission”. Chants of “Charlie, Charlie” filled the air.

The arena was plunged into darkness as Macchio performed Ave Maria on the eve of the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. Two beams of light stretched upward from the arena floor, reminiscent of the twin towers in New York, as the crowd held up mobile phone lights. A video narration accompanying the tribute urged the audience to: “Say their names. Honour their sacrifice. Defend Freedom. Never forget September 11.”

Democrats have dismissed the Republican event as a stunt. At a press conference in Dallas, Robert Garcia, a California congressman, told reporters: “What’s happening right now is Donald Trump is throwing a two-day party to celebrate himself, so that JD Vance can give a speech, and so his donors, some of whom have paid $800,000 a pop for these ticket packages, can spend two days celebrating themselves.

“This is happening as the American public is struggling. So as Donald Trump and JD Vance party away for two days, the average American family can’t afford groceries, the cost of the rent’s going up, they’re looking at their gas prices skyrocketing and they’re making difficult choices at the dinner table. But Donald Trump does not care about the average American family or about affordability. ”

Keyword – Stage
Trefwoorden – Theatre, Dominic Dromgoole, Stage, Culture, Henrik Ibsen
Title – In support of the fourth wall: proscenium arch theatre’s surprisingly radical history | Theatre | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/michaelbillington
Link – In support of the fourth wall: proscenium arch theatre’s surprisingly radical history | Theatre | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-11T04:00:06.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2026/sep/11/in-support-of-the-fourth-wall-proscenium-arch-theatres-surprisingly-radical-history

H ow do you make theatre history come alive? One way is through creating lists backed up by quirky essays. I tried that myself in The 101 Greatest Plays , which is one reason why I’m in awe of Dominic Dromgoole who, in Time Frames extends the possibilities of the format and comes up with a book that is passionate, personal, informative and argumentative. It just seems unfair that a director should outperform most of us critics.

He starts with the advantage of a strong framework. His book covers the years from 1865 to 1965, when the proscenium theatre was dominant, and deals with more than 70 playwrights. Today we celebrate the limitless possibilities of theatre with open, apron, traverse and circular stages but Dromgoole enthuses over a time when plays were mainly enclosed behind a proscenium arch. He describes the form as “liberatingly restrictive” like the 14-line sonnet or the 12-bar blues and he has a point.

We associate the proscenium with the good-mannered, well-made play but it also gave birth to Chekhov’s work for the Moscow Art theatre, Brecht’s revolutionary ideas in East Berlin and, closer to home, Joan Littlewood’s radical populism at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and the explosion of energy at the Royal Court. Seizing on the closely crafted, socially critical plays of John Galsworthy, Dromgoole says they are perfect examples of the proscenium paradox: “entertainment encasing dysfunction”.

While charting the proscenium century Dromgoole also forces us to question existing assumptions. One of his great discoveries, initially unearthed in a book by Maggie Gale, is that between the wars 21% of West End plays were written by women: a considerably better ratio than later times. This leads Dromgoole to examine a whole host of neglected female writers. He shows how Clemence Dane’s A Bill of Divorcement dealt seriously with the problem of men returning from war still saturated in violence. He makes a strong case for Dodie Smith whose Dear Octopus was recently revived at the National but whose Call It a Day, with its “shamelessness about unbridled female desire”, sounds even more fascinating. He suggests that sex was also at the heart of Daphne du Maurier’s achievement in rarely seen plays such as September Tide and The Years Between. He also rediscovers Alice Childress, an American playwright who was a big influence on Lorraine Hansberry and whose 1955 play, Trouble in Mind , dealt with the tension between a black female actor and a white male director.

Inevitably there are moments when one wants to argue with Dromgoole. For me that came when he attacks Ibsen for his lack of humour and, having trawled through the plays, says there is “a fatal lack of jokes”. I agree there are few one-line zingers in Ibsen but his plays are permeated by comic irony. I even laugh aloud towards the end of The Wild Duck when Hjalmar says he can’t stay a moment longer in a house poisoned by lies but is persuaded by his wife to have some breakfast before he goes. What of Pastor Manders in Ghosts whose unworldly naivety provokes the giggles in Mrs Alving? And even though An Enemy of the People is about the fatal compromises in a spa town whose wealth depends on toxic water, there is something comic about Dr Stockmann’s advice about what trousers to wear before addressing a public meeting. If modern Ibsen productions have shown us anything it is that he is one of theatre’s hidden humorists.

But I don’t want to cavil at a book that re-assesses the work of familiar writers such as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw and Brendan Behan, draws attention to neglected ones including Gerhart Hauptmann, Arthur Schnitzler and Susan Glaspell and makes use of Dromgoole’s experience as a director. There is a particularly poignant passage where he sees Harold Pinter downing a quiet, solitary pint at the Bush theatre in the 1990s before being forced to resume his public persona. But, although Dromgoole is by profession a director he is passionate in his advocacy of the dramatist. When he says of devised texts “there remains something flavourless without a writer, some lack of texture and the music of heard life” I wanted to fling my hat in the air and cheer.

Time Frames is published by Faber (£25). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

Keyword – Opinion
Trefwoorden – Sweden, The far right, Europe, World news
Title – How Sweden lost its soul – and stopped being Sweden | Martin Gelin | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/martin-gelin
Link – How Sweden lost its soul – and stopped being Sweden | Martin Gelin | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-11T04:00:06.000Z
Category – Opinion
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/11/how-sweden-lost-its-soul-and-stopped-being-sweden

L ast year, a baby named Emanuel was born in Sweden. Before his first birthday, his parents were told that Emanuel could no longer stay in the country. The department of migration ordered his removal, alone, to Iran – despite the ongoing war.

Emanuel’s parents were legally in the country. They had Swedish residency permits, but the laws that allowed them to stay were tightened after the baby’s birth, and the family got sucked into a Kafkaesque maze of official hurdles, designed to limit migration to Sweden .

Raif is a four-year-old boy with autism, who still wears nappies and is unable to talk. This spring, he was informed that he would be deported alone. Raif’s case attracted significant media coverage and the authorities eventually reversed the decision.

But the number of absurd, hardline calls from the migration department just keeps piling up. A 74-year-old British man with dementia was told to leave the country after 25 years. Another British man , on a generous World Bank retirement pension, was also told he was not welcome to reside permanently in Sweden because retirement money does not count as salary for the purposes of new income thresholds for migrants.

The young, the old, vulnerable people, the wealthy: all are the target of harsh and often aggressive immigration policies. And Sweden’s leaders remain unyielding. “We cannot adjust the law based on each and every personal fate,” Ulf Kristersson, the prime minister, said, commenting on a series of hardline immigration decisions involving children.

Swedes vote in a general election on Sunday 13 September and, according to opinion polls, the centre-left opposition has a slight lead. But even if there is a change of government, many previously unthinkable far-right ideas are now comfortably embedded in the mainstream of Swedish politics. The past four years have been characterised by an astonishing acceptance of ethnonationalist views, xenophobic rhetoric and authoritarian policies, increasingly targeting children. And many of these ideas have been absorbed and appropriated by the centre-left opposition Social Democrats.

Not even the deportation of toddlers or the alarming new shift in judicial policy to build prisons for teenagers as young as 14, are too much of a moral red line, it seems.

T he story of the transformation that now blights Sweden goes back to 2022, when the conservative bloc won that year’s Swedish general election, but only with a tiny margin. The Tidö agreement struck that December, between the three conservative parties (Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals) and the far-right Sweden Democrats meant a minority government could be formed. But this formal pact breached the mainstream’s cordon sanitaire against cooperating with the radical right. It also launched an attempt to redefine modern Sweden, marking profound policy shifts on immigration, crime, climate and energy, schools and healthcare.

Establishment conservatives defended the accord on the grounds that it would blunt the impact of the Sweden Democrats, whose support had been growing since 2015. Instead, it in effect passed the torch of conservative leadership to the far right, giving the Sweden Democrats no ministerial jobs but extraordinary power to shape policy.

As a Swede who lived in the US for two decades, I was reluctant to admit that my birth country had changed. I brushed away alarming anecdotes as isolated cases, or a brief departure from the status quo. Surely, Sweden would remain itself, guided by the progressive, egalitarian and humanitarian ideals that defined the country and its public life – at least on the surface – when I was growing up.

But in the last four years the Overton window of acceptable debate has shifted radically to the right.

A new Sweden has emerged, cruel and cold for migrants, including highly skilled employees of research institutions, universities, tech and medical companies – who have been stunned to learn that they are no longer welcome to work in a country where they have lived for years, sometimes decades.

Only 15% of Swedes approve of Donald Trump . And yet ideas quite similar to Trump’s ethnonationalism now define much of contemporary Swedish politics, and are challenging our democratic foundations. The Swedish Institute for Human Rights, an independent government agency, claims that Sweden is increasingly shaped by growing acceptance of xenophobic views, hate crimes and by punitive policies directed at children. In its 2026 annual report it expresses “serious concern” over an erosion of human rights in Sweden.

The legal watchdog Civil Rights Defenders also claims that a shift has taken place, where the government no longer talks about rights, but about control. Ministers have entwined migration with crime, and increasingly depict citizens, even children, as problems, risks and costs.

If this authoritarian turn can be widely accepted so quickly in Sweden, where the democratic and humanitarian foundations were until recently solid, it can happen anywhere.

A string of scandals in the final sprint of the election campaign has not been kind to the far right. Expo, a Swedish magazine that monitors far-right extremism, reported that one of the most influential ideologues in the Sweden Democrats, Gustav Gellerbrant, lives with a partner – who also works for the party – and is alleged to have deep ties to Russian influence operations. Gellerbrant was one of the architects of the Tidö agreement and sits in the Sweden Democrats’ coordinating office within the government. He has been placed on paid leave following the reports but Peter Hultqvist, a Social Democrat former defence minister, called the matter a “security crisis” for Sweden that “goes right into the prime minister’s own office”.

Gellerbrant himself was unapologetic, denouncing what he called a media “witch-hunt” – a Trumpian strategy that has also become the new default whenever scandals envelop the Swedish far right.

If the rightwing coalition loses the election, it is also prepared to find a scapegoat: Muslim voters. Over the past few months, influential rightwing pundits have lined up to suggest that the left is mobilising Muslims to vote them out. A writer for the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet recently referred elsewhere to a reported increase in early voting in immigrant-majority suburbs as “the cattle” being herded by leftwing parties.

In just a few years, conservatives have distanced themselves from their two most recent prime ministers, Fredrik Reinfeldt and Carl Bildt, who advocated a more inclusive, centre-right liberalism. In the government’s “cultural canon ” – originally a strange nationalist initiative promoted by the far right – the authors mock Reinfeldt for his pro-immigration views and blame his “internationalist” agenda for most of Sweden’s contemporary problems. The cultural canon, a list of the references and ideas that supposedly define Swedishness excludes all works from the multicultural Sweden that has emerged since 1975 – meaning we get Ingmar Bergman, Ikea, Pippi Longstocking and the Viggen fighter jet, but nothing made by my generation, the most diverse in Swedish history.

The conservatives have imported the most toxic tropes of the US culture wars in a populist performance of such intensity that it has become internalised on the right, and normalised by the media. Now when a conservative politician in Lidingö, the wealthiest suburb of Stockholm, calls for a ban on “strange Peruvian fish stews” in the school cafeterias, it barely makes the headlines.

This embrace of rightwing populism has also led to a departure from Sweden’s ambitious climate politics and a general turn away from scientific consensus. Johan Rockström, a climate scientist, last year told me that he had been invited by every government in Sweden in the past few decades, left or right, to share his research on planetary boundaries , but the current government was the exception – they have not reached out a single time.

The government increasingly ignores advisory bodies that are supposed to weigh in on any legislation or proposals. This is most evident when it comes to authoritarian crime policies. New bills have repeatedly been passed against the advice of experts, criminologists and social scientists, who warn against imposing ever-harsher punishments on children.

What we are seeing is a fundamental challenge to the Swedish tradition of pragmatism.

The small but persistent lead for the opposition in election polls may suggest that the tide is turning, and that there is still an underpinning of humanitarian ideals grounding Swedish voters. Recently, the billionaire Roger Akelius, who used to vote conservative, said he would not vote for the rightwing coalition in this election. “Sweden can’t build a future on isolation and prisons,” he said.

But the opposition struggles to articulate a clear ideological alternative, preferring a painfully cautious campaign similar to Denmark’s Social Democrats or the UK Labour party as it was under Keir Starmer. There is a clear risk in taking no risks. Relying only on carefully poll-tested centrist positions has not worked for European progressives as the political landscape shifts towards anti-establishment ideas and fury at the status quo. The tight polls suggest that millions of Swedes still consider prisons and isolation the future.

Eight years ago, the conservative prime minister Ulf Kristersson promised a Holocaust survivor he would never form a government with the far right.

“My values are not those of the Sweden Democrats,” he said in an interview . “I will not cooperate, engage in dialogue, collaborate, or form a coalition government with the Sweden Democrats.”

Now Kristersson is promising the far right cabinet positions.

The Sweden Democrats have not changed in those years. But Sweden certainly has.

Martin Gelin writes for the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter

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 .

Keyword – Food
Trefwoorden – Food, Dessert, Life and style, Chocolate, Coffee, Wine
Title – The age of tiramisu: a runaway dessert trend – and what it reveals about nostalgia and decadence | Food | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/lucy-knight
Link – The age of tiramisu: a runaway dessert trend – and what it reveals about nostalgia and decadence | Food | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-11T04:00:05.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/sep/11/age-of-tiramisu-runaway-dessert-trend-nostalgia-and-decadence

W hen Giancarlo Fanigliulo opened Marrone, a cafe dedicated to tiramisu in London’s Soho in August, he hadn’t anticipated he would sell out within two and a half hours. “I was expecting a buzz, but I wasn’t expecting queues around the corner,” he tells me. “It was insane.”

This kind of excitement about the Italian dessert is not a one-off – we are, it seems, living in an age of tiramisu-mania. Nearly all of the high street coffee chains have offered some kind of tiramisu coffee as a seasonal special (in the US, Dunkin’ currently has four different tiramisu-flavoured drinks on its menu). Meanwhile, Haagen-Dazs and Carte D’or now sell tiramisu ice-cream, London chain Buns from Home offers a tiramisu-flavoured croissant-dough bun and social media is awash with tiramisu recipes and videos of “tiramisu drawers” – trays of the dessert ready to serve out of drawers in chefs’ kitchens – as popularised by the viral one at Manchester pasta restaurant Onda.

Marrone is not the first “just tiramisu” vendor to pop up in recent years: Sheffield’s Paradiso – which, along with classic tiramisu, will sell you a “latte-misù” (an iced coffee topped with a slab of tiramisu) – opened in 2023; while the TikTok viral Secret Layers , where you can buy the dessert from a tiny hatch in a wall, opened in Paddington, London, last year. In March, the Guinness World Record for the world’s longest tiramisu was broken when chefs assembled a 440.6 metre portion of the pudding (although there was some discussion, among my friends at least, about whether it should actually count as the longest, since it appeared to be a series of smaller portions of tiramisu joined together).

Supermarkets are also noticing an uptick in tiramisu purchases. “Sales of our own brand tiramisu range have grown by 5% over the last year, with our Tesco Finest Coffee & Amaretto Tiramisu Dessert , proving particularly popular, selling nearly 10% more,” says Peter Wood, Tesco’s category buying manager for desserts. M&S, which is currently stocking “creamy tiramisu brownies” and, at Easter, sold tiramisu hot cross buns, says tiramisu sales are up 27% compared with last year.

The tiramisu trend has reached weddings, too, sometimes as a replacement for a wedding cake. The dessert “is probably one of the main trends of 2026,” says Cotswolds-based wedding planner Oliver Stanton – when we speak, he has just finished working on a wedding where tiramisu featured. “A lot of couples are having tiramisu served in coupe glasses and arranged in a tower like you would with a champagne tower. It serves as an extra photo opportunity as well as dessert for the guests.”

Tiramisu has always been a beloved pudding, but Lisa Harris, co-founder of Harris and Hayes food and drink consultancy , can see why it is enjoying a spike in popularity at the moment: social media algorithms reward nostalgia and anything that symbolises decadence – and tiramisu does both: “A good tiramisu is actually an exercise of this balance of the coffee, the cream and the sponge. There’s sort of not that much to it,” says Harris. “And yet it’s also this shorthand for indulgence.”

The proliferation of tiramisu-flavoured products, she adds, is probably in part due to the word “tiramisu” itself: “It sort of says elegance without really needing to try too hard.” It’s also an easy way to describe a specific flavour profile: “I could say tiramisu latte, tiramisu cookie, tiramisu doughnut, and you would know that I mean it has got cream and coffee in it.”

The emergence of “Little Treat Culture” – the concept of giving yourself small rewards amid trying political and economic times – has also aided the success of tiramisu and tiramisu-flavoured products. At a time “when people are perhaps eating out less, in the current economic climate,” indulgence becomes more coveted. Someone “just thinking about what dessert they’re going to have” is a bigger deal, Harris says.

It was partly because tiramisu has become “such a culture” that Fanigliulo decided to open Marrone. The 30-year-old doesn’t have a background in hospitality – he previously worked in tech sales – but he was struck that “when you think of tiramisu, there’s never been a brand associated with it”. His family is Italian on his father’s side, and his tiramisu is inspired by his grandmother’s recipe. All three of the tiramisus on Marrone’s menu (original classic, dark chocolate and sea salt, and pistachio, each sold for £10 a pot) are light and glossy in style – as opposed to a block that retains its shape when cut into – which is how Fanigliulo prefers his tiramisu. He is hoping that Marrone will become a go-to spot for people after this style of tiramisu (which, I can confirm, is absolutely delicious).

Fanigliulo’s enthusiasm for good tiramisu is infectious, and reminds me that I do actually really love this beautiful, creamy, caffeine-and-booze-filled pudding. And I’m all for there being more places to get great tiramisu. But whenever I see a new modification of this beautiful dessert into yet another drink or snack, I can’t help but think we might be overdoing it a little. Perhaps it’s time to make it tirami-stop?

Keyword – Life and style
Trefwoorden – Life and style, Road transport, Travel & leisure, Travel
Title – Experience: I’ve visited every motorway service station in Britain | Life and style | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/heather-main
Link – Experience: I’ve visited every motorway service station in Britain | Life and style | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-11T04:00:05.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/sep/11/experience-ive-visited-every-motorway-service-station-in-britain

W hen I was 10 years old, the highlight of my summer holidays was going to work with my dad, who is a lorry driver. For a couple of years in the mid-2000s, I’d excitedly climb into the cab next to him and we’d set off on a 10-hour trip. My job was to follow the AA Road Atlas, and I’d joyfully track the services marked on the map as we thundered along.

My dad thought stopping was a waste of time, but his designated rest stops were my favourite part of the trip. Depending on the journey, we might stop for two or three meals. I always hoped at least one would be at a Little Chef. I loved their Olympic Breakfast, a massive full English, and every meal was rounded off with a lollipop – what more could a 10-year-old want?

As I got older, motorway services retained their air of magic. In 2012, when I was 14, I found the website motorwayservices.uk , which reviewed lots of major service stations. Any time my family visited one, I’d take pictures and contribute to the site.

I learned to drive as soon as I turned 17 and bought myself a two-door Smart car, which I still drive today. After I passed my test, I’d drive out to services near my home in Bristol.

After leaving school, I got a job as a bus driver, but I soon realised that, while I loved the driving, there wasn’t enough time for stopping. I carried on visiting as many services as I could on my days off, just as a hobby, but soon I decided to try to make this my job.

I left the bus company and started posting more reviews to the site and my own social media channels under the name The Services King . Now it’s my full-time job. Alongside reviews, I write articles for industry publications and do sponsored posts on social media.

I love the history connected to service stations, how they chart the growth of Britain’s road network and our changing tastes in food. In my view, the services are the destination, not just part of the journey. There’s an underlying sense of occasion connected to them.

I hit the milestone of visiting every one of the UK’s 97 motorway service stations in 2019. I revisit them all periodically to review and post updates on their facilities, as well as visiting smaller rest stops on A roads. I work away from home four days a week and can visit up to five service stations a day, although I don’t always stop for something to eat and drink. I see what’s new since my last visit and photograph the facilities so drivers can plan their stops.

I like to include a bit of history or trivia about each service station. My most popular posts are usually new site openings, and my followers come from all walks of life, but lots are industry professionals.

My dad struggles to understand my obsession. Sometimes people don’t believe me when I tell them what I do for a living, but it’s always a conversation starter. Everyone has something to say about services. I think of them as one of life’s great levellers; no matter who you are, or where you’re from, everybody has the shared experience of visiting one.

There are a few key factors that make an exemplary service station; bonus points if it has a notable landmark and looks unusual – for instance, the Pennine Tower at Lancaster services on the M6, or a bridge where you can sit and have a coffee watching the cars go by underneath you. Some stations now have lovely outdoor features; Rugby services has gardens and a fountain. Most people prefer it if they’re easy to get to – straight off the motorway is better than having to come off at a junction and navigate roundabouts.

I’m always asked what my favourite station is. I don’t have one, but I do favour those that have a proper sit-down area to eat a meal and relax. As so many of them are full of chains these days, independently owned Tebay, on the M6, and Gloucester, on the M5, which have farm shops and a proper restaurant, are high on my list.

I really enjoy my job, but it’s a lot of travel. I can easily cover 25,000 miles in a year. When I take time off, I like to holiday in the UK, so wherever I go, I can’t escape the services. Not that I’d want to. To me, they will always be the best part of any holiday.

As told to Heather Main

Do you have an experience to share? Email experience@theguardian.com

Keyword – Film
Trefwoorden – Film, Culture, Jarvis Cocker, Documentary films, Pulp, Music
Title – ‘People think fame is a magic wand’: Jarvis Cocker on old songs, young fans and his granny’s verdict on Pulp | Film | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/rebeccanicholson
Link – ‘People think fame is a magic wand’: Jarvis Cocker on old songs, young fans and his granny’s verdict on Pulp | Film | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-11T04:00:05.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/sep/11/people-think-fame-is-a-magic-wand-jarvis-cocker-on-old-songs-young-fans-and-his-grannys-verdict-on-pulp

W hen the director Garth Jennings first moved to Paris, Jarvis Cocker , who was living there, dropped in on his old friend. “And I nearly got you arrested,” the Pulp frontman recalls. It was bonfire night, and Cocker had taken some welcoming fireworks over to Jennings’ place. “It turned out Garth’s apartment was quite near to the – not an army base, but what’s it called?”

“The École Militaire ,” says Jennings.

“So obviously they didn’t like explosives,” says Cocker. “We got told off for that. The best welcome to Paris.”

“It was lovely,” adds Jennings, fondly. “I remember it very well.”

The men had first met in the late 1990s, when Jennings directed two gorgeous music videos for Pulp, for the singles Help the Aged and A Little Soul . Now, almost 30 years later, they are working together again, on Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore? This joyful, funny, celebratory film is a hybrid beast: part concert movie and part documentary on the long history of the band. The live show was filmed at London’s O2 Arena in the summer of 2025, on the night that Pulp were told that More, their eighth studio album and first album in 24 years, had gone to No 1 in the British album charts. You can see Cocker waving around the trophy on stage.

Jennings, director of Son of Rambow and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy , has lived in Paris for the past 13 years, where the animation for Sing, his wildly successful kids’ musical film franchise, is made. He is working on a short Christmas special, and the third and final film in the series. “It’s a slow process,” he says, from the studio, “but we’re getting there.” Cocker moved back to London a few years ago, and today he is at home, getting ready to headline the End of the Road festival . It will be Pulp’s last show for a while.

You can blame Instagram and Abba Voyage for the existence of What Do You Do for an Encore? Pulp, formed by Cocker in Sheffield in 1978, split up in 2002. They got back together for a reunion tour between 2011 and 2013, the final date of which was captured for another idiosyncratic documentary, Florian Habicht’s Pulp: A Film About Life, Death & Supermarkets . Cocker had considered those shows to be a fitting – and final – farewell.

“When Pulp got together that time, I had this idea that things had ended in a not-nice way, and I wanted it to have a happy ending,” Cocker says. “I thought the way to do that would be to play concerts, and we invited Russell Senior back” – the violinist and guitarist had quit in 1997 – “and I just thought it would be like: we’re all friends, everything’s good, and then we’d all retire,” says Cocker. “And to be honest, that tour did seem to do that.”

So when a promoter got in touch years later, to ask if Pulp would be interested in playing again, Cocker had to think about it. “Because the worst thing to do would have been to spoil the happy ending.” How did he decide to say yes? “I confessed my fear that people wouldn’t come, or that people weren’t that bothered, and why would they be?” The promoter assured him that people would most definitely be bothered. “He told me about a few times when he’d been to shows and a Pulp song had come on before a band went on, and everybody sang along. You know, I don’t go to shows any more. I’m an old bloke.” (Cocker is about to turn 63.) “I just said: ‘All right, I hope you’re right, let’s do it.’ But I wanted to make sure that it would be a good thing for us to do as well.”

Cocker teased the news of a second Pulp reunion on Instagram in 2022. Jennings messaged him to tell him how excited he was, and to offer his help. It is obvious, when chatting to Jennings, that as well as being Cocker’s friend, he is a huge Pulp fan. As they started to work on the creative direction of the live show together, Jennings remembers, “I’d be in some other room working on a graphics thing, and then I’d suddenly hear you lot playing, and I’d have to just drop it and come outside. Especially a song like Razzmatazz, which was my first Pulp song. I found you through that. You started playing that at one point, and it was just the best thing ever. I had this wonderful little secret window into this world.”

When it became obvious that the live show was going to be a spectacle, they started to wonder about turning it into a film. “Some of my favourite films are concert films, and they don’t need to be anything more. But this felt like an opportunity to go a bit further,” says Jennings.

Which is where Abba Voyage comes in. Both Jennings and Cocker had seen – and loved – the theatrical experience, which blends live music with giant holograms of Abba in their prime. “That was something that was very inspiring. Just the sheer joy of it,” says Jennings, who has seen it three times. As well as performing the hits, Abba Voyage tells the story of Abba, just as What Do You Do for an Encore? tells the story of Pulp, giving each song context.

“I was so glad when Garth got in touch, because it felt as if he could help make it something that people hadn’t seen before,” Cocker says. “I am very familiar with Pulp’s backstory because I’ve lived through it. But I’m always flabbergasted at how long the band has gone on.” It is clear from the footage of the crowd, showing people losing their minds and singing every word, that some of the audience were not even born when Pulp split up for the first time. “That’s something amazing, really. And something I can’t explain – why young people have latched on to it.” They played in Manchester recently. “A lot of young people,” Cocker laughs. “But I’m happy about it.”

The film uses animation, old TV clips and grainy VHS footage, as well as documents and objects that fans may recognise from Cocker’s 2023 book Good Pop Bad Pop . It was a “huge job” to pull it together, says Jennings, who credits the archivist Tess McNally-Watson with some serious hard work. “Because it’s not all in one place. It’s in people’s bedrooms and attics, and someone’s friend’s brother’s still got a cassette, so it’s a lot of Raiders of the Lost Ark-style gathering and then transferring.” At one point, there is a funny, fond interview with Cocker’s mother and grandmother, who crack jokes about his newfound fame. “That’s a bit embarrassing for me,” says Cocker. “My grandma’s been dead ages, and my mum died only three or four years ago, so it was quite a thing.”

During the live show, Pulp pay a moving tribute to Steve Mackey, who joined the band as bassist in 1989, and who died in 2023 aged 56. Mackey was not going to play on this tour, though he had wished his old bandmates luck. It was important that he was included in the film, and Cocker says that they were able to show it to Mackey’s family before it was signed off. “Just to make sure that they were happy with it. But I think you did a very good job there, Garth. It’s a hard thing to express in the right way.”

What Do You Do for an Encore? does not shy away from the more complicated times in Pulp’s story. Around the release of their then-divisive album This Is Hardcore in 1998, Cocker describes “going down a dark tunnel”. Jennings was making videos for the band back then. Had he noticed that things seemed off?

“I didn’t notice Jarvis going down a dark tunnel, and maybe you were, Jarvis, and I apologise if I wasn’t there to help you,” he says, sincerely. “But no, because the actual act of making these things was always lovely. I never noticed you being tricky, or anything.”

“It was probably because I’d decided to be in a band when I was seven,” Cocker reflects. “Like a lot of people, you think that if you achieve fame, that will be the magic wand that makes everything in your life work, and obviously that’s not the case. You still have to make an effort in your life. You can’t just lie in a bed and say: ‘Right, OK, that’s it, job done.’ But I didn’t realise that, so that’s why I had issues with it.” Over time, he says, “I went back into real life and appreciated it. That was probably another reason why it took me a while to decide to do Pulp again. I was thinking: ‘Well, what’s the motivation? What will you get from it?’”

In the film, Cocker describes Pulp as “scaling Mount Pop”, but it sounds as if he didn’t much like what he found at the summit. “It’s like seeing videos of your wedding. Your wedding is a magical thing, but then somebody shows you a video, and you think: ‘Oh God, what’s that ?’” He prefers fantasy to reality, he says, “but sometimes you have to look at reality. And that’s what happened.” Fame, he says, “is an exciting thing, but you just have to keep your wits about you, and make sure you’re doing things for the right reason, and try not to get too up your own arse.”

When he was still at school, in one of his exercise books, Cocker wrote out a “Pulp master plan”. It makes an appearance in the film. But really, he says, they’ve never had one. “I’m glad things that things didn’t go according to a plan. That’s the great thing about groups. You know that you have to work with other people, and everybody adds something to it, and then you get something that you can’t really say exactly where it came from.”

Pulp’s End of the Road set last week marked the end of a tour that started in 2023, though the band are planning to meet up again in October, to celebrate it all. They’re going to see Abba Voyage together. Will there be another encore? “You know, it’s like a tree,” says Cocker, philosophically. “A tree doesn’t decide it’s going to grow. If the weather’s right, it’ll grow a branch. And if the intellectual weather is right in the next couple of years, maybe we’ll sprout another record.” He said it himself: there has never been a master plan.

Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore? is on Mubi from 25 September, with special one night only preview screenings at UK and Irish cinemas on 18 September and in US cinemas on 24 September

Keyword – Life and style
Trefwoorden – Surrogacy, UK news, Mexico, Pregnancy, Parents and parenting
Title – Customers of UK-owned surrogacy firm in Mexico allegedly face huge bills after insurance denied | Surrogacy | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/helena-horton,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jessica-murray
Link – Customers of UK-owned surrogacy firm in Mexico allegedly face huge bills after insurance denied | Surrogacy | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-11T04:00:03.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/sep/11/uk-owned-surrogacy-service-mexico-investigation-complaints-health-complications-my-surrogacy-journey

The UK government has said it is reviewing allegations about a British-owned surrogacy service after surrogates in Mexico who faced health complications including a hysterectomy had their insurance claims rejected.

The Department of Health and Social Care is considering whether the UK-based provider My Surrogacy Journey should remain listed on gov.uk as one of four domestic surrogacy agencies available to intended parents, after its Mexican sister company received complaints.

Emails sent by the chief executive of My Surrogacy Journey seen by the Guardian suggest multiple surrogate women had their insurance claims rejected in Mexico, where the surrogates are based. The emails suggest 300 couples going through a “surrogacy journey” with the company have been moved to a new insurance provider due to the increased risk of claims being rejected.

In the UK, commercial surrogacy is banned and only altruistic surrogacy arrangements are permitted. My Surrogacy Journey has a UK branch which is not-for-profit, and also has for-profit sister companies operating in Mexico and the US, where commercial surrogacy is legal in some states. All three companies have the same owners and chief executives. It is My Surrogacy Journey’s Mexico-based surrogacies which have had insurance issues.

One couple the Guardian spoke to said they paid tens of thousands of pounds to cover the medical costs of their surrogate who had a hysterectomy during birth after her insurance claim was refused.

My Surrogacy Journey was founded in 2021 by the couple Michael and Wes Johnson-Ellis, both from Birmingham, who set it up after having their own children via surrogacy.

The couple, now based in the Cayman Islands, say their company is a “UK surrogacy organisation like no other” with “one of the most enviable advisory boards for a surrogacy not-for-profit organisation” and that it is the “new face of surrogacy”.

The Guardian understands at least five sets of parents say they had to foot the bill for medical costs after insurance claims were refused.

An email seen by the Guardian sent by Michael Johnson-Ellis to the couple whose surrogate had a hysterectomy said: “We have already told you that the insurance companies have been declining some of the claims and we are actively working with the broker to get this issue resolved but you should also consider that they may not be paid out and there is nothing we are able to do to change this … We appreciate this is not an insignificant sum but this genuinely is out of our control.”

Johnson-Ellis added in the email that the company had switched to a new insurance provider, explaining: “We’re also managing this for 300 other journeys, which is a complex position to be in.”

Lawyers acting for My Surrogacy Journey said the company did not comment on individual cases, but that existing insurance policies were in place and claims continued to be accepted and processed. They said the company was of the understanding that a small number of claims were rejected and was supporting those seeking to resolve claims with an insurer.

It is understood that as part of the surrogacy arrangement intended parents are contractually required to cover any medical costs that may not be covered by an insurer.

The couple who spoke to the Guardian reported being recommended to take the “Mexico option”. The website advertises that those who go to Mexico can have a baby in “under 18 months”. The parents say they were told the UK option can take up to five years, and that the US route is much more expensive. Lawyers acting for My Surrogacy Journey said that intended or prospective parents were provided with information about what the surrogacy process entails, including typical timelines, cost, legal frameworks and practical considerations in a transparent and understandable way, and that the 18-month period is indicative only.

The couple described their dream of having a baby turning into a nightmare when their surrogate developed a serious condition known as placenta accreta, which is when the placenta grows too deeply in the wall of the uterus.

The emails from Johnson-Ellis acknowledge that the insurance provider investigated the birth after the woman’s health complications. One email reads: “As your surrogate’s care took an unexpected turn, this later led to even more scrutiny by the hospital and insurance provider – which we have no control over.”

The parents are considering legal action, and the Guardian understands at least four other couples are reviewing their options.

Phil Brickell, the MP for Bolton West, raised the concerns of a separate couple who had used My Surrogacy Journey. He told parliament during a debate regarding surrogacy on Monday: “Two of my constituents recently travelled to Mexico, where their children were born by surrogacy. Those births were facilitated by a company called My Surrogacy Journey, which is listed on gov.uk. While in Mexico, they had repeated traumatic experiences with the company relating to issues including insurance for their children, accusations of bullying towards staff and repeated efforts to silence any constructive criticism. I understand that other members of this house have received similar complaints.”

Brickell is calling for the government to “take My Surrogacy Journey down from gov.uk pending a review by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority”.

The health minister Diana Johnson said the government was reviewing allegations made regarding My Surrogacy Journey. She said: “The department is looking into the allegations about My Surrogacy Journey. As part of that assessment, the department will consider whether it is appropriate for that company to remain on the gov.uk list of agencies”. A DHSC spokesperson confirmed to the Guardian that the government was reviewing allegations about My Surrogacy Journey. Lawyers acting for My Surrogacy Journey said the company was in communication with DHSC and it was confident any issues could be resolved.

Dr Bianca Jackson, a surrogacy law expert at Coram Chambers, said the case highlighted by the Guardian seemed “incredibly worrying”. She said: “For the past 13 years, I have acted for intended parents applying for parental orders for children born in many different countries. Though I have come across a plethora of issues with agencies abroad, I have never come across this problem in practice. My experience suggests that this is not a wide or prevalent issue with surrogacy abroad and it is limited to Mexico/the organisation you are investigating, but it is still incredibly worrying.”

The London-based surrogacy consultant Shaun Thomas, who founded The Surrogacy Father after his own experience having children via surrogate, said insurance could get “very complicated”, especially when it involved third-party reproduction like IVF and navigating healthcare systems abroad.

He said intended parents needed to make sure their insurance covered both the surrogate and the baby, adding that some policies did not always include neonatal intensive care unit admission or may exclude certain hospitals.

Lawyers acting for My Surrogacy Journey said the health and wellbeing of surrogates and babies as well as that of intended parents was at the core of its values.

This article was amended on 11 September 2026. An earlier version said placenta accreta is when the placenta attaches to the uterine wall; in fact, it is when the placenta grows too deeply in the wall of the uterus.

Keyword – Television & radio
Trefwoorden – Television, Documentary, Television & radio, Culture, HBO
Title – A Killer Story review – this tale of two relentless armchair detectives is prestige true crime | Television | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/hannah-j-davies
Link – A Killer Story review – this tale of two relentless armchair detectives is prestige true crime | Television | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-11T04:00:02.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/sep/11/a-killer-story-review-dana-chandler

H BO is no stranger to true crime, though its offerings tend to be more prestige than your average, with documentaries such as the unrelenting sex cult nightmare The Vow and The Yogurt Shop Murders , a measured reinvestigation into the deaths of four teenage girls in Texas in the 90s. They have form, too, in drily funny sagas, such as McMillions , about a high-stakes conspiracy to fix the McDonald’s Monopoly promotion. Rarely are their documentaries both solemn and bizarro, with the exception perhaps of The Jinx. An unnerving tale of millionaire real estate heir turned convicted murderer Robert Durst, it occasionally lingered on the stranger points of his story, like the time he shoplifted a $6 sandwich for kicks.

All this makes sense, really: it’s not like most homicides lend themselves to a deadpan retelling. A Killer Story is not laugh-out-loud funny, either. But this very meta three-parter manages to tell not one but two killer stories, one disturbing and the other absurd. The first concerns a woman, Dana Chandler, who is sentenced to life in prison for the murder of her ex-husband and his new girlfriend. The second is about a true crime-obsessed stranger, Eileen Umbehr, who becomes fixated on the case, spamming a journalist with tips. The emails from Umbehr were, says Joe Sexton – previously of the New York Times and investigative newsroom ProPublica – “a crazy assortment of shit … I [didn’t] know whether to call the cops on her or fucking hire her!”

Sexton – an editor on multiple Pulitzer-winning projects – swears a lot, and his account of the email campaign from “pyjama lady in Kansas” overflows with profanity. Her 2,714th email changes his mind, however; Chandler has had her state conviction overturned, writes Umbehr. It was time for Sexton go to Kansas, to meet the couple he describes – with more than a hint of fatigue – as “the most earnest fucking people you [could] ever meet in your life”.

We flash back to 2002, when Karen Harkness and Mike Sisco were found dead in their home. The couple had visited a casino that night, but there was no indication that this was a burglary gone wrong, with money and jewellery left untouched. Rather, says Ray Lundin, formerly of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, “whoever did the killing was motivated by emotion” – in other words, somebody known to the couple. Chandler becomes the main suspect, but there isn’t enough evidence in the view of the district attorney to press charges. That is until a TV crime special about her airs on CBS, and a new prosecutor decides to proceed with a legal case. Her eventual arrest was also caught on television cameras.

This is a story about a very public murder case, then, but it’s also about Umbehr and her husband, Keen, a former waste collector who moonlighted as a local newspaper columnist and later qualified as a lawyer (at one point, hysterically, Sexton refers to him as “fuckin’ Bob Woodward”). The Umbehrs’ preoccupation with the case is clear, with Chandler not only dominating conversation at home but also becoming the subject of their prayers. They don’t only believe that she is innocent, however – they also believe they know who killed Harkness and Sisco. Roll credits!

This could, of course, be a regular documentary about a miscarriage of justice but of course it’s not. In episode two we meet the person the Umbehrs are convinced is the real killer – but is their apparent evidence enough to justify involving every single law enforcement body in Kansas? Do the Umbehrs worry, asks Sexton, that they’re doing to this new “person of interest”, as they call him, exactly what was done to Chandler?

There are some serious flaws in that initial case put forward against Chandler. But A Killer Story isn’t about that, ultimately. Rather, it’s about the pull of true crime, and the power of armchair detectives – not just posting on Reddit, but reaching into a real-life murder case and deciding that they know what’s best for the accused. “Certainty is a dangerous notion,” says Sexton, who had expected to blow the case wide open, but instead ends up entangled in something far messier. A Killer Story is a sideways proposition, but it is rather compelling – a rare true crime story that’s as much about the viewers as it is the victims.

A Killer Story is on HBO Max now