Keyword – Books
Trefwoorden – Books, Science fiction books, Culture, Fiction
Title – M John Harrison: ‘If we met a real alien we’d have no clue what they thought’ | Books | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/chrispower
Link – M John Harrison: ‘If we met a real alien we’d have no clue what they thought’ | Books | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-21T11:00:29.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jun/21/m-john-harrison-if-we-met-a-real-alien-wed-have-no-clue-what-they-thought

T hree years ago, in a greasy spoon on the fringes of the City of London, M John Harrison – Mike to his friends – told me about the novel he was working on. Rather than describing its plot or characters, he spoke purely about the challenge the book presented to him as a writer. With this one, he said, he wanted to push things as far as they could go.

Now that book, The End of Everything – his 13th novel – is about to be published. It describes a disintegrating Britain in which the iGhetti – monstrously sized, extremely powerful and strange lifeforms that look like powdery, slow-motion explosions – rule the country and possibly the world. Or do they? In its unwillingness to divulge any more than its characters know, which isn’t much, the novel is more alien evasion than invasion.

No one knows where the iGhetti came from. Maybe the astral plane, or “out of the internet”. Their purpose is similarly obscure. What remains of the authorities treat them as hostile, sending ineffectual waves of bombers and attack helicopters, but the incomers might equally well be engaging in “spiritual tourism and gentrification” as in colonisation. “If we were to meet a real alien,” Harrison says, sitting on the sunny terrace of a riverside pub in Barnes, south-west London, where he used to live, “we would have no clue whatsoever what they quote ‘thought’, or why they did anything, or if they thought they were doing something.” Science fiction often pays lip service to that idea, he says, but “never passes that feeling on to the reader”.

Harrison is a slim, nimble 80-year-old, his full beard and long hair glowingly white. His skin has the nutty tone – unusual in writers – of someone who has spent plenty of their life outdoors. The planes of his face look austere in photographs but in person he is often laughing, and the eagerness with which he talks about meeting the demands of the new book underlines how much he’s enjoying himself.

This wasn’t always the case. In 1998, a year after Harrison published the bleak toxic waste-themed dystopia Signs of Life, Iain Banks took him out for a night of drinking in Soho with the aim of persuading him to return to the purer sci-fi realms where his career began. “I always keep in mind what Iain said to me,” Harrison admits, “which is that I don’t have enough fun on the page. That was hurtful.” The next day, he started writing the notes for Light, the first volume in his Kefahuchi Tract trilogy. Not the space opera Banks suggested but a parody of one, because nothing with Harrison is straightforward. “Nothing at all,” he happily agrees.

Harrison was born in Rugby, Warwickshire, in 1945. He had a difficult relationship with his father, an engineer, who died when Harrison was 13. He truanted a lot from school, spending part of each day in the local library. “The great thing about libraries then was there weren’t so many dust jackets about,” he tells me. “I would pick a book up, read the first two pages, think, ‘Oh wow, that’s weird’, and it would turn out to be a Robbe-Grillet, and it would open a door to the anti-novel. Or it would be Ballard, or another sci-fi book. You never knew what you were going to get.”

When Harrison began writing as a teenager in the 1950s, the genres of fantasy and sci-fi were supported by numerous monthly magazines. In 1966, one of them accepted a story of his. He moved to London and began writing obsessively through the night. He met Michael Moorcock, then the editor of New Worlds magazine, and became a regular contributor. “I had to be in New Worlds,” he says, “because it was Ballard’s main medium for short stories at that time. It was at the height of my interest in him as a kind of combination of a surrealist and an imagist. Especially in the short story form. And I wanted to be that. I really wanted to be that.”

On his blog, Harrison has described The End of Everything as the kind of book that might have been serialised in New Worlds circa 1967. I’m not so sure they would have accepted it. “I think it might have been too much even for them,” he agrees. “I wanted it to have the flavour of the novel that I would have submitted then if I’d had any technique, skill or talent, a book that on the surface looks like sci-fi but then, as you read it, gets depthier and depthier. That was what I wanted. My heroes could do that. And now, 60 years later, so can I.”

He laughs as he says this, but it’s taken Harrison a long time to arrive at a place where he’s happy both with his work and its reception. The 1970s saw him strain against the genre conventions of sci-fi and fantasy, which he tried to undermine in The Centauri Device (a book he now disparages) and his Viriconium sequence. A breakthrough occurred when he resolved to write a short story without allowing himself to plan it out beforehand or keep notes. The New Rays is “about Katherine Mansfield. And it’s for Katherine Mansfield.” He admired what she and Virginia Woolf had done with fragmented narrative back in the 1910s and 20s (Eliot’s The Waste Land was also formational) but didn’t know how to approach that way of working himself. “The only techniques I had were almost exactly opposite to what I needed. They were the techniques of genre fiction: making a narrative, making a synopsis, following the synopsis, making the causalities plain, following the causalities. And none of that would do.”

By the time The New Rays was published in 1982, Harrison had left London for “the boondocks outside Huddersfield” to pursue an obsessive interest in rock climbing. The next two decades, which saw the publication of the novels Climbers (1989), The Course of the Heart (1992) and Signs of Life (1997), were the most intensely creative of his life. “I let it take over,” he says now of writing. “And I produced, as a result, several short stories and three novels that had real depth and density of observation, and a deep, dense sense of place.”

This is an understatement when it comes to Climbers, which isn’t just one of Harrison’s masterpieces but one of the best English novels of the last 50 years. The book follows a group of climbing junkies around the Peak District, men and women who, like many of Harrison’s protagonists, are out of joint with the wider world. It is still criminally obscure despite the loud enthusiasm of, among others, Robert Macfarlane and Olivia Laing.

As we quit one pub for another, walking through the quiet Barnes streets, Harrison recalls the moment the book became possible. Leaving a quarry outside Sheffield at sundown one day, “I noticed that the way the sun related to the jagged top of the quarry, from my viewpoint, meant the shadows looked like the turned-down pages of a book. I stopped and scribbled that in one of my notebooks. I suddenly thought, I can do this. I’m the person to do this. It was really weird. What had stopped me from writing fiction about my own experience, or even nonfiction, was that I didn’t really feel I was the person to do it. I didn’t feel I had the authority. And then I wrote that sentence down, looked at it and thought, ‘Yeah, I can do this.’ It was amazing,” he says, still sounding as surprised as he was in that shadowed Yorkshire quarry decades ago. “You hunt for that your whole life.”

Harrison, “utterly determined to stop apologising for not being an SF writer”, now began producing work he fully believed in. But he had – and still has – an uneasy relationship with his creativity. “It was like discovering a different voice inside you,” he explains. “And it was better than me. I’m going to tell you this,” he says, lowering his voice as if this other presence might hear us. “He knows more than I do, he’s more mature than I am, he’s a better writer than I am, and he has very considerable contempt for me. But every so often he’ll look at something and think, yeah, that’s OK, and he’ll step in and take over and produce something like Climbers.”

At times, Harrison says, he feels he is the impostor. “There are two of us and one of us knows he’s the real me, and it isn’t me.” Then, thankfully, he laughs, dispelling the eerie sense of having slipped into one of his own fictions, where terrible things are revealed in the most pedestrian surroundings: a Pizza Express, a drab provincial courtroom, or a pub in Barnes after the lunchtime rush.

Having moved back to London after realising he was too old to continue climbing (and perhaps because some in that community “were offended by the clarity of the portrait”), in 2012 Harrison found himself suddenly overcome with anger at a publishing party in Covent Garden. “I got outside,” he says, “and the rain was pissing down and I flashed back to 1968: same street, same rain, same sense of failure, same sense of not getting on with the industry.” He remembers thinking: “I’ve wasted 30 years of my life in London and I’m no further forward. I’ve learned all this stuff and I can do all these things and it’s still not been recognised.” The solution, he thought, was to “be even more uncompromising in the provinces”.

He moved to Shropshire with his partner, the editor and writer Cath Phillips, and started to write The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. That book won the Goldsmiths prize in 2020. Frances Wilson, the chair of judges (of which I was one), called it “a literary masterpiece”. Harrison remembers the ceremony, an online affair due to Covid restrictions. “I felt so relieved. I had a drink or two and fell asleep. I relaxed for the first time in about 40 years. I thought: ‘I won a proper prize. I can go to sleep now.’”

The work of most writers who publish into their 70s and 80s tends to decline in quality. With Sunken Land and The End of Everything, and his “anti-memoir” Wish I Was Here, Harrison has produced some of his best work. One reason climbing was such a perfect subject is that he is motivated by problems, and climbers view a rock face as a sequence of problems.

The problem presented by The End of Everything, the one he talked about in that greasy spoon in 2023, was how to leave so much out while still exploring how “human beings are working with broken epistemologies to try and understand the world that we’ve made. The enigmas of reality,” he explains, “as in, say, quantum mechanics, aren’t the real mysteries any more. The real mysteries are what the fuck we’ve done to the world, why we did it, and what epistemology we used to perform this act of vandalism.”

Conveying bafflement without sacrificing readability is Harrison’s recurring problem, one he’s faced “for 30 or 40 years. You’ve got to be so careful with explanation,” he says, sounding almost pained. “If you help the reader too much, you lose that inexplicability. You’ve got to commit.” The End of Everything is the result of that commitment, thrilling to experience because, not in spite of, its resistance to disclosure.

The book is dizzying in its invention – not only in Harrison’s creation of a post-invasion world of semi-abandoned seaside towns, crashed airliners and repurposed polytunnels, but also at the granular level of moments you want to return to, sometimes for the sake of comprehension, sometimes just to re-experience their strange power: the “clean arch of brand new stars” revealed after the iGhetti’s arrival; the “rich surf of objects” – alien detritus – his characters scavenge from the sea. It is also a continuation of that late-night Soho conversation from nearly 30 years ago. “I thought: OK, here you go, Iain,” says Harrison. “I’m having fun but I’m also gonna commit. This is gonna be the one that is written without any compromise.”

And if the title sounds ominously final, we shouldn’t read into it. “I’ve got two or three short stories which,” he says with relish, “are being very intractable.” On to the next problem then? He laughs. “Yeah, what’s the next problem? What impossible thing can I try and do now?”

The End of Everything by M John Harrison is published by Serpent’s Tail. To support the Guardian order your copy from guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

Keyword – Fashion
Trefwoorden – Fashion, Life and style, Retail industry, Business
Title – ‘How am I supposed to know if it’s cute on me?’ The strange death of the changing room | Fashion | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/chloe-mac-donnell
Link – ‘How am I supposed to know if it’s cute on me?’ The strange death of the changing room | Fashion | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-19T09:06:36.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2026/jun/19/changing-rooms-high-street-shops

I s the changing room dead? According to the teenage fashion mecca, Brandy Melville, it is. The brand has closed all its fitting rooms across stores in the UK, US and Canada, with shoppers taking to social media lamenting the change.

“Why does Brandy hate [its] customers?” one TikTok user questioned. “How am I supposed to know if it’s cute on me???!” another exclaimed.

The closure follows similar moves by retailers, including Sainsbury’s in the UK, which permanently closed all of its changing rooms in 2025, and the charity shop chain Goodwill in the US that shuttered its rooms in 2023.

While Sainsbury’s said the decision was motivated by the need to “simplify tasks in stores”and Goodwill cited unmanageable staffing expenses, Brandy Melville has yet to confirm its rationale. Online, there are reports of employees blaming an uptick in shoplifting, while others credit “the gum issue” – a well-documented trend on TikTok of customers using chewing gum to hold its flimsy changing room curtains together for privacy. Genius but grim.

The decision to remove the option of trying clothes on instore comes at a time when the British high street is in crisis. Everything from inflation and geopolitical events to online shopping has left many shops struggling. In April British retailers reported the highest year-on-year decline in sales in more than 40 years. Boarded up buildings have quickly become commonplace in towns and cities, while shoplifting figures in the UK are at an all-time high . Removing a changing room often means brands can reduce the number of staff they need, including security, while also increasing the availability of floor space to flog stock.

The surge in online shopping but also secondhand platforms such as Vinted also means we have become more accustomed to buying without trying, in the latter case, sometimes without even the hope/expectation of sending back if something doesn’t fit. Technology is also a factor. Retailers such as Uniqlo offer tools that let you input your measurements to determine what size you are in each garment, while AI-driven 3D body scans and virtual try-on services are also being deployed by the likes of Asos .

The retail consultant Catherine Shuttleworth credits the decline to the changing behaviour of consumers. Traditionally a user would try on a piece in a changing room and then buy it in-store. But now Shuttleworth points out shoppers are using changing rooms with a sort of try now, buy online later approach, a method some brands are not keen to indulge.

Then there’s also the experience of the actual room/cubby hole, many of which are so small you can barely outstretch your arms. Add to the mix glaring overhead lights that seem designed to highlight every insecurity, plus the fact you often have to get redressed to fetch an alternative size yourself – it’s enough to leave you wishing you’d just splurged on next day delivery instead. “Why squeeze into a hot and sweaty space when you can try on in the comfort of your own room?” asks Shuttleworth.

But while Brandy Melville fans bid farewell to the changing room, some stores are championing them. While designer stores have always made changing rooms part of the luxury journey – on London’s Bond Street complimentary flutes of champagne and tiny biscuits are regularly doled out – more mid-tier brands are now following suit. At Rixo’s flagship store in west London, you’ll find a coffee kiosk and cocktail bar. Plus, individual pods feature lots of flattering natural light. Elevated changing rooms are also part of Zara’s plan as it attempts to shift its image from fast-fashion brand to a more premium destination. At its new revamped store on Oxford Street the changing room section has been widened and features individual wood panelled rooms while sensory tags alert staff to what items are being tried on, meaning they can aid shoppers and replenish stock quicker.

After-all, a changing room isn’t just about seeing how an item of clothing fits. The fictional world has regularly riffed on this. In Pretty Woman, after originally being snubbed by a luxury store’s sales assistants, Vivian (Julia Roberts) returns laden down with designer bags to deliver the memorable line “You work on commission, right? Big mistake. Big. Huge!” In Sex and The City, Carrie emerges from a changing room in her underwear to ask for a different size only to be greeted by Natasha who has just married Carrie’s ex Mr Big. Plus, who doesn’t have that scene from Bridesmaids burned into their memory.

As anyone who has ever grappled with an insubstantial curtain will tell you, it’s a space to experiment with your style, to try on something you can’t even afford “just for fun” and most of importantly, especially for teenagers, an excuse to hang out with friends in front of a mirror rather than behind a screen.

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

Keyword – Food
Trefwoorden – Cocktails, Spirits, Food, Herbs and spices, Summer food and drink, Japanese food and drink
Title – Cocktail of the week: Osteria Angelina’s riso & rosmarino – recipe | Cocktails | The Guardian
Author – Joshua Owens-Baigler
Link – Cocktail of the week: Osteria Angelina’s riso & rosmarino – recipe | Cocktails | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-19T12:00:32.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/jun/19/cocktail-of-the-week-riso-rosmarino-recipe-osteria-angelina

This is very light, refreshing and goes down a little too easily, which makes it perfect for early summer.

Riso & rosmarino

Serves 1

50ml sake – a light-bodied honjozo will do here 25ml Cynar 25ml Aperol 25ml fresh lemon juice 12½ml simple sugar syrup Soda water , to top 1 thin slice cucumber , to garnish 1 sprig fresh rosemary , to garnish

Measure the first five liquids into a highball filled with ice, top with soda, garnish and serve.

Joshua Owens-Baigler, co-founder, Osteria Angelina , London E1

Keyword – Culture
Trefwoorden – Australian television, Australian theatre, Culture, Stan, Television, Stage
Title – Heather Mitchell: ‘I got the biggest reaction for playing Donald Trump – but I really enjoyed playing Bill Clinton’ | Australian television | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/emma-joyce
Link – Heather Mitchell: ‘I got the biggest reaction for playing Donald Trump – but I really enjoyed playing Bill Clinton’ | Australian television | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-20T20:00:14.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/jun/21/heather-mitchell-interview-australian-actor-stage-screen

You’re in a new TV show called The Killings at Parrish Station, playing a detective who is plagued by an unsolved mystery. What do you think is life’s greatest mystery?

I don’t want to say anything too obvious, like death, but it is such a mystery. It’s hard not to sound like a cliche, [but] the greatest mystery is: how does it all end?

Speaking of death, and it’s a bit morbid, but what song would you like played at your funeral?

Oh, that’s not morbid. My dear friend James Valentine died recently, through voluntary assisted dying; knowing his family so well, joy is the word that kept coming up, so I do not find the idea of death morbid.

But the music I’d like? Oh, far out, I have thought about this, but I’ve never really come to a … I am drawn to songs that my sons love rather than what I love, and one son loves Teeks, the Māori singer. But my father used to play the steel guitar and sing American folk songs; I’ve got a recording of one of his. I’d like that played, I think.

You’ve just finished touring RBG: Of Many, One, in which you play not only Ruth Bader Ginsburg but three US presidents – along with 29 other characters. Which president did you enjoy being the most?

I certainly got the biggest audience reaction for Trump, but I must say I really enjoyed Clinton. Because of the way Suzie [Miller ]’s written it, there’s humour in his conversation and that southern drawl. It’s a lot of fun, and I suppose it’s the longest scene I’ve got with any of the presidents; Clinton and Ruth are sort of getting to know each other before she’s chosen to be on the court. Also, people react so much to what they believe his relationship with Hillary was all about.

Is it true you found yourself brushing your teeth like Ruth ?

In the first season, yes, but not any more. We’ve done more than 300 shows, and in the first season I found it very hard to stop speaking like Ruth, because I was still trying to get the language and the voices, so even in my non-theatrical hours I was practising her movements. I found myself driving like an old lady, for example, but I am now completely able to switch her off.

You met your husband, Martin McGrath, shortly after a seeing a tarot reader, who told you you’d meet a man . Have you returned to a tarot reader since?

Yes, in fact, because of that. Once our relationship began and we were definitely going to be together, I said, “let’s go and see someone, it was really fun”. We went to a woman in Melbourne, who had turquoise eyeshadow on. She was scary, and I’ll never forget it. She did Martin first and said all these amazing things about him – and I was kicking him under the table, going, See? Isn’t this great?

Then she turned to me and said, “Why don’t you go out for a walk, Martin, I’ll talk to Heather now.” She put her arm around me and said, “There’s not much to her, is there?” and then said to Martin, “Never mind, where did she go wrong?” I just panicked and looked at him, like Don’t leave me, don’t leave me .

He did go for a walk, and she said one terrible thing after another – telling me that I was going to ruin his life – and, anyway, that was my last time.

You made your professional acting debut aged 22 in Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Henry IV, Part 1. What’s the most overrated Shakespeare play?

Oh, I don’t know if any of them are overrated. I mean, I think the ones which are usually held in the greatest esteem, or seen the most and produced the most, are pretty magnificent plays – the Scottish play, Hamlet. Overrated? I mean, this will be controversial: I’m not as crazy about Twelfth Night.

If you could be any animal, what would it be?

I’ve always identified with a giraffe. That long neck, their head being so far and small compared to their body; it’s hard for them to get down on the ground, but they can. They seem to overcome their extraordinary physical challenge in order to reach the high leaves and yet still be able to get down. I just find something about giraffes so magical and wonderful.

Are you still making toast art for your co-stars and is there a superior bread for your canvas?

Yes I am. I did 65 toasts of every crew member on a show called Dalliance, that I’ve just co-produced and will be coming out later in the year through Paramount. I stayed up all night for a week [to complete them].

I won’t mention the label, but the whitest, most sugary, oldest fashioned bread is excellent for a portrait because you don’t want to get too many pockmarks – you don’t want raisins in it, for instance. But for a landscape, I love nothing more than a rough sourdough.

A Vegemite gallery in Victoria asked if I could do some Vegemite on toast for their gallery, and that was a lovely reaction. I’m hoping some bread company just offers me free bread!

What film do you always return to, and why?

I return to films that are sometimes connected to my childhood, or are the first films I’ve seen – things like It’s a Wonderful Life, which we watch at Christmas. Citizen Kane.

We watched Muriel’s Wedding again recently, which I had forgotten what an amazing film that is – how wonderful and joyous and fabulous.

Hugo Weaving is a friend of yours, but also your most notable on-screen lover, in the recent Love Me and in the 1984 series Bodyline. What’s Hugo’s most annoying habit as a co-star?

Oh darling, as if he has one! He’s so nice to everyone. He’s so lovely to the crew, so lovely to everybody. He’s annoyingly nice. He’s annoyingly lovely, which is why he’s so beautiful to work with too. He’s just annoyingly pleasant and present and lovely. He’s such a wonderful actor, but he’s such a wonderful person. It’s almost annoying how fabulous he is.

Heather Mitchell appears in The Killings at Parrish Station, which premieres on Stan on 24 June

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – World Cup 2026, Germany, Côte d’Ivoire football team, World Cup, Football, Sport
Title – Deniz Undav’s double earns Germany dramatic late win against Côte d’Ivoire | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/leanderschaerlaeckens
Link – Deniz Undav’s double earns Germany dramatic late win against Côte d’Ivoire | World Cup 2026 | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-20T22:17:44.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/20/germany-cote-divoire-group-e-match-report

Some footballing stereotypes just will not fade away. Germany may no longer be the mirthless, methodical winning machine who would slowly maul their opponents until they inevitably engineered victory, but, evidently, they still know how to fashion match-winners from final moments.

Consequently, the Germans will play in the World Cup knockout stages for the first time in 12 years after another victory at the death. Côte d’Ivoire had gone ahead in a lively encounter on Saturday through Franck Kessié’s 30th-minute goal for Les Éléphants . But it was cancelled out by Deniz Undav’s 68th-minute equaliser and 94th-minute winner for Die Mannschaft .

The victory put the four-time world champions on six points, although the youngest team at this tournament gave the Germans a far tougher test than Curaçao had six days ago in a 7-1 crunching . “We deservedly won it,” said Germany’s manager, Julian Nagelsmann. “The boys invested a lot.”

Before 2018, Germany had never been eliminated in a World Cup group stage. No other nation has reached as many semi-finals, with 13 – only Brazil are close at 11. And yet, they went home after the first round in Russia and again four years later, in Qatar.

An edition expanded to 48 teams, with 32 going through to the knockout stages, never seemed likely to trip them up for a third time running. But then there were also plenty of concerns around this non-vintage edition of a storied side.

Among the issues the Germans fretted about before travelling to the United States were the absence of an obvious choice for striker; the form of Jamal Musiala and Florian Wirtz; injuries to two other creative players in Serge Gnabry and Lennart Karl; a 40-year-old Manuel Neuer, who had to be coaxed back from almost two years of international retirement in order solve the goalkeeper problem; and Nagelsmann, who has never entirely convinced the critics as Germany manager, or indeed as the Bayern Munich head coach before that.

Then there was the concern that Germany have not produced the sort of world-class player who will take a game by the scruff of the neck and bend it to his nation’s will. Oh, and also: the German people just don’t seem terribly bothered about this team or this tournament.

Plainly, an entirely unchanged Germany team had quite enjoyed the sensation of putting seven past an opponent and very nearly got another one just 15 seconds in, when Kai Havertz had a pop that whizzed high. More would follow as Joshua Kimmich swung in a cross for Havertz, whose well-placed header was majestically saved by Yahia Fofana. Musiala, meanwhile, found a crack of space in the tightly packed Ivorian lines at the edge of the box but curled his effort wide.

But no, protested the Paraguayan referee Juan Gabriel Benítez, this was not the appropriate moment for hydration. That would come just a minute or so later when he whistled for the drinks break and the sellout-ish crowd showered the proceedings in well-deserved jeers. This was, after all, a farcical sight on a pleasant lakeside afternoon that was, if anything, a tad brisk – absolutely optimal soccer weather, in other words – screaming at any rate that no special accommodations need be made for player wellbeing.

Once more, the break tilted the momentum of the game. And in the 30th minute, Yan Diomande, the 19-year-old breakout Ivorian star, received the ball up the left. He had been involved frequently to that point, but little had come off. This time, he got himself clear of Kimmich and found Amad Diallo with his low cross. But the Manchester United man struggled to get the ball out of his feet and, when he finally did, saw his effort blocked by the lunging Nathaniel Brown. But Kessié was right there to sweep the rebound home.

If Germany and the estimated 12,000 fans who had joined them here had looked stunned after conceding, a second disallowed goal reanimated them. In the 39th minute, Musiala was found guilty of bundling over Odilon Kossounou before Havertz set off with the ball and beat Fofana. Côte d’Ivoire invited pressure, luring 10 Germans into their third and Neuer almost halfway up the field, and then scampered away on the break. The imprecision of those forays kept the Ivorians from putting the game away.

Nagelsmann finally found solutions through a triple substitution at the hour, which gave the Germans more thrust and bite. “I’m very happy for the whole team because every player who came into the match was important,” he said. “During the second half we were a lot more active and took more risks because we really wanted to win.”

The dam finally broke when one substitute, Nadiem Amiri, found another in the box in Undav, who volleyed home from close range. It was mostly one-way traffic from there on, as Emerse Faé’s men in their luminous orange no longer looked so fit or frightful in the press.

In a frantic, wide-open ending, Côte d’Ivoire very nearly made off with the points on a late breakaway, but Simon Adingra dawdled on the ball. At the other end, Brown and Amiri were denied by Fofana before Undav, fed by Nmecha, spun and fired home the winner.

“There’s some frustration after this defeat,” said Faé. “But with the frustration, there is also a lot of pride in my players and how we played against one of the big favourites for this tournament. I think this defeat will serve us well for the rest of this tournament.” Côte d’Ivoire face Curaçao on Thursday with the chance to advance past the groups for the first time in their history.

Germany, meanwhile, pride themselves on being a “ Turniermannschaft ”. A team that specialise in tournament football. It’s just as well, then, that they have reached the knockout stage of this event for the first time since winning it in 2014.

Keyword – Wellness
Trefwoorden – Well actually, Swimming, Fitness, Life and style
Title – Why do you always feel like you have to pee when swimming? | Well actually | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/marlene-cimons
Link – Why do you always feel like you have to pee when swimming? | Well actually | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-16T16:00:07.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/global/2026/jun/16/why-swimming-makes-you-feel-like-peeing

I’m midway into my hour-long swim when it hits: I really have to pee. This always happens. It doesn’t help to curb my morning coffee or use the restroom beforehand. My bladder doesn’t care.

Why does this happen? “It’s a normal physiological response by the body to being immersed in water,” says Dr Stavros Kavouras , assistant dean, professor of nutrition and director of the Hydration Science Lab at Arizona State University. And it’s not just me: “It’s something that happens to all swimmers.”

Here’s what experts have to say about that inexplicable urge to pee when you’re surrounded by water.

What causes the urge to pee when you’re in the water?

The strong sudden need to urinate when submerged in water results from a process called immersion diuresis.

Diuresis is a medical term that refers to the increased production and excretion of urine by the kidneys. During this process, the body filters excess bodily fluid, water and waste products from the bloodstream and expels them through urination, according to Dr Scott Trappe, director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University.

Immersion diuresis is annoying, inconvenient and uncomfortable – but not usually dangerous, although sometimes it can lead to dehydration, he says.

Why does immersion diuresis occur?

Contrary to common misconception, you aren’t absorbing water from the pool through your skin while swimming.

When your body enters the water, “the relatively cooler water will cause the [blood] vessels in the skin to constrict to conserve core body temperature,” Trappe says. “This sends more fluid centrally.” (Most pools are heated to about 78-82F (25.5-27.7C), according to the US Department of Energy ; lakes and other bodies of water can be even cooler.)

After the blood moves to the chest, special cardiopulmonary receptors detect the volume increase, interpreting it as fluid overload. They signal the brain to halt production of antidiuretic hormone (ADH), a substance that tells the kidneys to retain urine, Kavouras says.

Almost simultaneously, your heart muscle cells also secrete a hormone called atrial natriuretic factor (ANF) in response to high blood volume. ANF widens blood vessels to reduce blood pressure, which then increases water excretion in an effort to restore fluid balance.

Put simply: your body thinks it has too much fluid. “The kidneys sense an increased fluid volume and balance this out by pulling some of the water from the blood – and you [then] have to pee,” says Trappe.

“Both of these factors make the kidneys produce more urine,” says Dr Michael Joyner , an anesthesiologist and researcher at the Mayo Clinic, who studies how the nervous system regulates blood pressure, heart rate and metabolism in response to stress. “This is a natural reflex that keeps the heart from getting overfilled with fluid.”

In addition to water pressure and water temperature, being prone in the water also plays a role, Kavouras says: “The blood more easily goes to your heart.”

Is that why the urge to pee happens far less often when, say, I go running? Yes, says Kavouras, but you also sweat less in the water, so you don’t lose as much fluid that way when swimming. Running causes more sweating, so the body doesn’t feel like it’s holding too much fluid.

So, is there any way to prevent immersion diuresis? “Not really,” Trappe says. “It’s all part of being a swimmer.”

So are people just peeing in the pool all the time?

When I get the urge, I am annoyed. I could quit my workout early or take a break and risk losing my pool lane while I’m gone. I could hold it, or give in to my inner toddler and pee in the pool – probably not a good idea if I want to keep swimming here. So I just hold on until my laps are done.

Other swimmers apparently have no such inhibitions. They just let go in the water. “Nobody talks about it, but everybody does it,” Trappe says.

Kavouras, a former competitive swimmer, agrees. “It’s long been part of swimming culture that swimmers pee in the pool,” he says. “But I’m not going to answer the question of whether or not I ever did it.”

Out of curiosity, I raised the issue with my son. Now in his 30s, he was a serious competitive swimmer starting at age five until he was in his 20s. I wanted to know if he had ever done it.

“Sure, all the time,” he says. “After a few laps I was always peeing on the swimmer behind me.”

The swimmer behind him could not be reached for comment.

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – Czechia, Czechoslovakia, European Championship, Football, Sport
Title – ‘That penalty changed my life’: Panenka’s pride 50 years on from special spot-kick | Czechia | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/gavinnewsham
Link – ‘That penalty changed my life’: Panenka’s pride 50 years on from special spot-kick | Czechia | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-20T04:00:53.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/20/antonin-panenka-penalty-50-years-on-czechoslovakia-west-germany-1976

A ntonin Panenka laughs like a bear might, a low rumble, suggesting mischief among the memories. He is sat in an office at Bohemians football club in Prague, recounting the story of his impudent, revolutionary penalty that not only won the 1976 European Championship for Czechoslovakia against West Germany but soured his relationship with the goalkeeper his spot-kick humiliated, Sepp Maier. “He went 35 years without uttering a single word to me,” he smiles.

But the feud went much deeper. “I read some articles that he even had a shooting target in his garage with my face on it that he used to fire darts at. We get on well enough now though.”

Saturday marks 50 years since that moment in Belgrade’s Red Star Stadium slipped into football folklore. With the final locked at 2-2 after extra time, Czechoslovakia and the reigning world champions found themselves in uncharted territory: the first penalty shootout to decide a major international tournament.

It nearly didn’t happen at all. The plan had been for a replay, until a request from the German FA pushed organisers towards penalties, a decision influenced, Panenka believes, by the fact Die Mannschaft had already booked their holidays.

By the time Bayern Munich’s Uli Hoeness blazed Germany’s fourth kick over the bar, the stage was set. Panenka stepped forward with the chance to win it. Then it happened. A brisk run-up, a momentary pause and the most delicate of stabbed touches. The ball floated, dead centre, as Maier hurled himself aside. For a heartbeat, it seemed to hang in the Belgrade air before dropping into the net. The Panenka was born.

In the decades since, many have tried it and succeeded. Zinedine Zidane clipped his against the crossbar and in at the 2006 World Cup final while Andrea Pirlo embarrassed a gurning Joe Hart at Euro 2012. Others have been less successful.

In 1992, Gary Lineker, one goal away from equalling Bobby Charlton’s record of 49 goals for England, duffed his against Brazil at Wembley. More recently, Morocco’s Brahim Díaz dinked his penalty into the waiting arms of the Senegal keeper Édouard Mendy in the Africa Cup of Nations final.

Panenka watches them all with pride and amusement. “It’s pure happiness to see these players using my penalty,” he says. “The only disadvantage is that I don’t get any royalties from it.”

It’s not for want of trying. “I used to think that every time someone takes one, they should have to pay me. Actually, back during the Communist days in Czechoslovakia, I spoke to some friends who worked at a patent office and tried to get it registered but they said it wasn’t possible which was a shame.”

Panenka’s penalty in the final wasn’t the first time he tried it. Two years before Belgrade, Panenka, a creative midfielder with Bohemians 1905, had started a friendly penalty competition with club goalkeeper, Zdenek Hruska.

Each day, the pair would stay behind after training and practise penalties. Ever the competitor, Panenka suggested a bet. He would take penalties and if he scored all five then Hruska would have to buy him some beers or some chocolate. If the keeper saved just one then Panenka would return the favour. But Panenka found himself losing badly and increasingly out of pocket.

Then came his brainwave. “I started to think about how the goalies always tend to dive towards one post or the other and I came up with the idea of just chipping the ball right down the middle instead. And it worked immediately,” he recalls.

Soon, the competition with Hruska tilted in Panenka’s favour. “I started winning our bets all the time which meant that I got all the beers and the chocolate. But that also meant I started to get fat.”

While Panenka attempted his penalty occasionally in friendlies and domestic games, it was still unknown outside Czechoslovakia as they headed into the European Championship in Yugoslavia , and that convinced Panenka to take it on to the international stage.

“I always knew that there was only one way I was ever going to take it, purely because nobody had done it before and nobody would ever think I would do it, especially in a final,” he says. “But I wasn’t 100% confident I would score – I was 1,000% confident.”

For Panenka, his penalty is more than just another opportunity to score. On one hand, he says, you have to have the personality to come up with the original idea itself but energy and work ethic is also needed to ensure having the right technique when the time arrives to take the penalty. “You can’t have one without the other,” he says.

Watch footage of Panenka’s penalty now and it’s unlike many of the versions you might see today. There is no theatrical meandering run-up and no staring down of the goalkeeper. It’s just a straight, aggressive run-up that persuades Maier that what is about to come is a shot struck with pace. Only at the last moment does Panenka kill his run-up, floating the ball into the air and leaving Maier diving helplessly to his left as the ball takes an eternity to drift and dive into the net.

It is, says Panenka, a thing of rare beauty. “I have seen it described as the ‘falling leaf’ penalty and I like that,” he reflects. “It works so beautifully.”

After the final, Panenka and his Czech teammates returned home to anything but a heroes’ welcome. “We expected at least some celebration or recognition but there was very little,” he recalls. “We said: ‘We are European champions!’ And they said: ‘So what? The league starts again tomorrow, so get back to work.’”

As Panenka returned to domestic football with Bohemians, however, his pioneering penalty had now become a weapon to employ sparingly. After Belgrade, he estimates he took another 15 penalties in his playing career, but used the Panenka only three more times, most notably in a European Championship qualifying victory over France in Bratislava in April 1979.

“The only time I ever missed was in a friendly against a small club in southern Bohemia. There had been a lot of heavy rain and the goalie was just stood in a big puddle so I don’t think he actually wanted to dive anyway,” he recalls. “He just stood there and caught it.”

Today, the 77-year-old Panenka and his penalty are known across the world, the result, he believes, of parents passing on this unique piece of footballing vocabulary – noun and verb – through YouTube and social media. But his popularity still surprises him.

Recently, he was on a plane in Madrid waiting to take off when another passenger recognised him. “Suddenly there was this long chain of people all wanting a selfie with me,” he smiles. “Our flight was even delayed.”

It’s possible to count on one hand those players whose names have become shorthand for invention, for a moment that bends the logic of the game itself. Some labels flatter, others fade, but the Panenka endures alongside the Cruyff Turn as something both daring and definitive.

Panenka shrugs at the idea of an ordinary alternative. Yes, a more conventional spot-kick might still have delivered a European title for Czechoslovakia, but it would not have rewritten his life, nor carved his name into football history.

Half a century on, what lingers is not just his medal or the trophy, but that choice – a split-second show of nerve that turned risk into immortality, and a footballer into folklore.

“The penalty I took really changed my life and the fact I’m still here 50 years later talking about it is absolutely amazing,” he adds. “I’m so happy I did it.”

Keyword – Television & radio
Trefwoorden – Podcasts, Television & radio
Title – Tell us your favourite new podcasts of 2026 so far | Podcasts | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/guardian-community-team
Link – Tell us your favourite new podcasts of 2026 so far | Podcasts | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-18T07:31:32.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/jun/18/tell-us-your-favourite-new-podcasts-of-2026-so-far

Guardian writers have compiled the best podcasts of the year so far – and we’d like to hear about yours too.

Is there a podcast from this year that has you rapt? Are there any new releases that you would recommend?

Tell us your nomination and why you like it below.

If you’re having trouble using the form click here . Read terms of service here and privacy policy here .

Keyword – World news
Trefwoorden – China, Women, Comedy, Asia Pacific
Title – For women in China frustrated by sexism, female comics are offering a release | China | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/amy-hawkins,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/lillian-yang
Link – For women in China frustrated by sexism, female comics are offering a release | China | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-19T01:33:00.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/19/china-sexism-female-comics-standup-comedy-women-feminism

P acked into the upstairs theatre of a small performing arts space in east Beijing, more than 100 people, mostly women, are giddy with anticipation. “Who did you come to see?” asks the MC, fashionably dressed in a faded denim two-piece suit. The answer is bellowed in unison back to him: “Fang Zhuren!”

Fang Shaoli, AKA Director Fang ( Fang Zhuren ), has built a cult following in China in the past two years. Decidedly less fashionable than the evening’s host, Fang is dressed in a yellow hoodie and dark blue jeans. Her everywoman attire is part of the appeal. With a stout frame and short, sensible haircut, Fang, who was born in 1975, hails from rural part of east China’s Shandong province. Before discovering the art of standup comedy she worked in factories and on construction sites, but mainly lived as a housewife to a difficult husband. Her jokes riff on the deep sexism that permeates Chinese culture, particularly away from the big urban centres like Beijing and Shanghai.

Joking about her two daughters’ marriage prospects, Fang says: “If you don’t get married, then you won’t have to suffer the way I did.” Every joke prompts a ripple or a roar of appreciation from the crowd.

Fang’s success – she was a contestant on the hit reality television show The King of Comedy last year – comes as standup comedy as a genre has taken off in China. In the first half of 2025, the number of shows increased by more than 50% compared with 2024, while box office revenues increased by 135%.

There is a long history of comedy in China, from slapstick skits to cross-talk , a two-person performance based on rapid banter and wordplay. But the western style of observational wisecracks has only recently caught on in the mainstream. For women frustrated with everyday sexism, it has provided a useful release valve in a society where official censorship makes complaining openly fraught with difficulty.

“Women’s perspectives have long been overlooked, and now there’s finally space for them to really shine on stage,” says Su, 25, one of the throngs of people queueing to get a selfie with Fang after the show.

In a four-part series , the Guardian analysed the changing status of women across Chinese society. The series examines how women are responding to government restrictions and shifting social and economic conditions, in different aspects of their lives.

Navigating the minefield of political topics

Fang is one of several female comics to have emerged in recent years. There is also Wang Xiaoli, a 45-year-old woman from Chengdu who makes jokes about being single and childless .

Xi Ha, a former flight attendant, mocks the impractical dress codes for female flight attendants; some airlines have since abandoned the requirement for female staff to wear high heels.

Riffing on everyday observations about the hurdles faced by women, their jokes about daily life have resonated with millions of women across the country, from urban, educated millennials to frustrated rural housewives like Fang.

According to Rose Luqiu, a professor of journalism at Hong Kong Baptist University, standup comedy gives women a space to talk about certain topics that have become more sensitive in the past three years. “Nobody clearly talks about needing to be single, or not wanting to have a baby, but [female comedians] do have some narratives which echo the individualism or independence of women,” Luqiu says.

But although comedy can disguise social commentary as lighthearted jokes, sometimes the authorities have a sense of humour failure. Officials have warned comedians against stirring up discord between the genders “for the sake of being funny”.

In the run-up to International Women’s Day, amid a clean-up of online feminist content, a Uyghur standup comedian called Paziliyaer Paerhati, was banned from Weibo after posting a joke about having to cook for a fictional husband over lunar new year.

In 2024, the e-commerce giant JD.com dropped the popular female comedian Yang Li from an advertising campaign after a backlash from male customers who were outraged at one of her viral jokes about how men can “look so average, yet be so confident”.

And when it comes to explicitly political topics – or anything that criticises the state rather than social attitudes – comedians steer well clear.

Vickie Wang, a Taiwanese standup comedian who lived in Shanghai for nearly a decade, says that before she performed at her first open mic night in 2017, she was warned by the organisers not to joke about politics, LGBTQ+ issues or anything relating to Tibet, Taiwan or the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

“There’s this understanding that you can’t talk politics, you can’t criticise the government. So instead of talking about systemic issues, you go very granular, you go very personal,” Wang says.

But the line of what is acceptable to censors shifts frequently. Wang, who left China in 2022, used to joke about dating. Now the government is sensitive about anything that might promote “ gender antagonism ”.

“In standup comedy in the west, the expectation is that you push the envelope”, Wang says. In China, it’s about telling jokes that resonate with your audience without attracting so much attention that the authorities scrutinise your jokes.

The need for Chinese performers to stay somewhat below the radar to avoid censorship limits the reach of their message. But in small theatres across the country, female comics are subtly expanding the boundaries of public speech.

For Fang, the unexpected success of her comedy career has even brought her an unlikely fan: her ex-husband, who she supports with the earnings from her newfound fame.

“I used to rant about the world and my ex-husband to anyone who’d listen,” Fang says. “Now when I get attacked online, he secretly jumps in to help me fight the haters”.

Additional research by Lillian Yang

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – Mary Earps, London City Lionesses, Women’s Super League, Women’s football, Paris Saint-Germain Women, Football, Sport
Title – ‘People think I’ve vanished’: Mary Earps on signing for London City and feeling forgotten | Mary Earps | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/tom-garry
Link – ‘People think I’ve vanished’: Mary Earps on signing for London City and feeling forgotten | Mary Earps | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-19T12:30:32.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/jun/19/mary-earps-london-city-lionesses-signing-interview

W hen Mary Earps signed for Wolfsburg eight years ago, shortly after they had played in the Women’s Champions League final, there was no club photographer available for her unveiling, meaning her agent popped out to buy a scarf from the club shop before taking a makeshift announcement image. So when the former England goalkeeper’s latest club, London City Lionesses , announced her Women’s Super League return with a glamorous photoshoot on a boat on the Thames in front of landmarks such as Tower Bridge, she was struck not only by how much the women’s game and her life have been transformed, but by the bold scale of her new team’s ambitions.

“The energy and effort put into the shoot, I would never have imagined this even five years ago,” says Earps, whose move to London City from Paris Saint-Germain was confirmed on Friday. “All I keep saying is ‘I’m so excited,’ but that shoot just poured petrol on the excitement fire. Wow, if that’s what they do just to say ‘Hey, by the way, Mary’s arrived,’ then imagine hopefully what we can do [in the future].”

The 33-year-old has signed a two-year contract with the club that recently finished sixth in their debut WSL season, having chosen to return to the league where she has spent most of her career, including five years at Manchester United.

“I had an amazing time in Paris for two years, in a really special city, but last year I was sort of swaying more and more towards coming home,” the 2023 BBC Sports Personality of the Year says. “Every contract now, with where I’m at in my career, it’s just about maxing out with whatever I’ve got left in the tank, and I wanted to do that at home.

“It felt like being back home in the WSL, scrapping it out every week, playing in front of the fans, being in those incredible English stadiums, being a part of English football culture again.”

When it came to choosing London City, a video call with the club’s owner, the American businesswoman Michele Kang , helped Earps feel valued: “She showed a real energy for me to join. I found it really impressive that she even made the time for me in [among] the crazy amount of business ventures that she’s got going on and how successful she is. She never made me feel like she had to leave. She was really, really open. She really believes in women’s football. I really respect her.”

The independently run club, who play home games in Bromley and train in Kent, will be hoping Earps’s fame can help them build a fanbase off the pitch as well as succeed on it. Work to build their new training centre at Cobdown Park in Ditton was also a pull for Earps. “I had the pleasure of playing at world-class facilities last year [at PSG],” she says. “In women’s football, I’ll be brutally honest, when you’ve experienced everything, you don’t expect perfection. But [London City’s] intention and the plan of: ‘This is when it’s going to happen, by this date,’ it feels tangible and more real. Whereas I think there’s a lot of broken promises that can be made in women’s sports sometimes because just of where it’s at in its timeline. It’s not always sunshine and rainbows. But their vision and the way they’re actively working towards it, it’s not just words, it feels very much like action.

“The main thing was really feeling like our values really aligned in terms of what the club wants to achieve, their ambition, my ambition. The fact that it’s a woman-owned football club, independent, can really go about its business in its own way was really exciting for me.”

Earps says she has no regrets about moving to PSG: “The facilities are the best facilities I’ve ever trained at in my whole entire life. You could eat dinner off the pitches. And, it sounds stupid, but even having your own [women’s team] places to park when you come in. These things, I’d not experienced prior to that. The league was maybe not as competitive as I would have liked and that’s just the nature of football sometimes.

“When I joined they were Champions League semi-finalists so I probably had hoped we’d be a little bit more competitive on the pitch than we turned out to be, but that’s football. I think a lot of people don’t take those jumps [in life] and I’m just one of those people – I’d rather give it a go and look back with no regrets. I loved it, the city especially was incredible.”

Can the fans expect to see a slightly different goalkeeper, on a technical skills level, from the one who left United after lifting the 2024 Women’s FA Cup at Wembley? “I’ll let the people decide, because I feel like for two years I know people think like I’ve vanished off the face of the earth,” Earps says. “People ask me if I’m still playing, which is sometimes a bit hard to hear because I’m like: ‘Guys, still here, I’m still around, I’m still alive and kicking.’ But I understand that’s how football is and obviously here it’s very WSL-focused.”

London City will be the sixth WSL side Earps has played for and she appears to have no desire to slow down or contemplate retiring. “It will be a challenge for myself to come back and to come to a new team [but] there’s still some fight in the old dog,” she says. “There’s still a lot to come, and still many years to come, hopefully. I think when you retire internationally, you accept that you’re not going to be in those conversations about being the ‘top goalkeeper’ any more, because that’s just how it goes when you’re not playing for your country.

“You do fall down the pecking order. So maybe people don’t expect that much of me any more, but hopefully I can show a good level and really contribute to the team. I felt really good for the last two years in PSG.

“I’m one of those people that always believe that better days are coming. I still want to be the best version of myself every day. I still think I can learn. If I didn’t think I could better myself, I would have hung my boots and gloves up already. Hopefully I can continue to grow as a player and peak. I don’t know if I’ll reach the 40s, but maybe a few more years.

“The 40s seems so far away. It does get a little bit harder as every season that you play, there’s a few more cracks in the back and the neck and the knees as you wake up in the morning. But I love this game and I will play it for as long as I love it … I want to play until the wheels fall off a little bit. I want to avoid going into the real world for as long as possible because football is a pretty good job.”