Keyword – Opinion
Trefwoorden – Communities, Volunteering, Voluntary sector, Society, UK news, Young people
Title – Youth clubs, trade unions, pubs: here’s how Burnham can fix Britain’s social recession | Gordon Brown | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/gordonbrown
Link – Youth clubs, trade unions, pubs: here’s how Burnham can fix Britain’s social recession | Gordon Brown | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-08T07:00:30.000Z
Category – Opinion
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/08/andy-burnham-britain-social-recession-youth-clubs-trade-unions-pubs

P rime minister Andy Burnham has hit the ground running, tackling head-on three of the public’s burning concerns: falling standards of living, failing public services and a remote, out-of-touch, over-centralised Whitehall. Now, this autumn, a fourth challenge, reversing the decades-long decline of civic engagement, is about to move centre stage to achieve his ambition to put citizens back in control of their communities.

For while there are tens of thousands of local champions bringing towns, cities and villages together, Britain is suffering a civic recession, a hollowing out of the associations, clubs and organisations that once were the beating hearts of our communities.

It is a sobering fact that almost 50% of British adults are not members of any community organisation of any kind, neither a civic association nor church nor faith group, nor even a sports club.

Trade union membership has halved from more than 13 million in 1979 to less than 7 million in 2025. Then there is the widespread collapse in religious adherence – the fall in Church of Scotland membership from 1.3 million in the 1950s to less than 300,000 today being one of the most dramatic indicators. The long-established Women’s Institute has seen its UK membership fall from a peak of 470,000 in the 1950s to about 170,000 today. Since 2000, the UK has lost about 1,200 youth centres . Working men’s clubs – which were once at the centre of industrial communities – have fallen from a peak of 4,000 in the 1970s to about 1,800 now, their membership dwindling from 4 million to under 1 million. And the number of pubs in the UK, the heart of many communities, has dropped from 75,000 in the 1960s to about 45,000 today . For a fleeting moment, the boost in volunteering during the pandemic obscured a drop from 27% of all adults a decade ago to just 17% now.

But the breakdown is not just in formal memberships, but in informal, everyday relationships too: young people in particular are vulnerable, with soaring numbers in England reporting having no close friends at all .

If our physical infrastructure – our roads, railways and airports – broke down, there would be a public outcry and a demand for their immediate repair. If our financial infrastructure collapsed – if cash machines shut down and bank transfers failed – there would be panic. But the breakdown of our civic infrastructure is happening in plain sight and it needs urgent remedy.

This change is not unique to Britain. A survey of more than 30,000 people in 20 countries provides compelling evidence that, in tandem with economic decline, civic decline helps explain the widespread loss of trust, nostalgia for the past and lower levels of tolerance that are the surface manifestations of what is a deep and widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo. It should not be a surprise that many now talk despairingly of a broken society as well as a broken economy.

This sense of decline, combined with social isolation and a feeling that “traditional values” have been lost, encourages a zero-sum view of the world: the belief that life is an endless struggle between “us” and “them” – whether “them” is defined as immigrants, foreigners or simply “others”. In this view, our very commitment to democracy and a rules-based international order becomes tenuous: widespread dissatisfaction means that people agitate for their government to exclusively pursue the interests of a narrowly defined population. The fact is that someone who is not involved in their local community and has little contact with people of different ethnicities or religious views is much more likely to support rightwing populist nationalist parties and to oppose cooperation between countries.

So No 10’s plans to transfer power from the centre to regions are best seen as what is called a “double devolution”; extending spending and decision-making power beyond local authorities downwards to local communities to empower a new generation of active citizens. But this must be complemented by a boom in civic participation. An opt-out national community service for young people, a remodelled Pride in Place programme to put local people and not politicians in control, legislating participatory budgeting to allocate funding for local services, and designing services to be much more accessible to people should all now be under consideration as part of a nationwide consultation on rebuilding community life.

Learning from a Danish law that requires municipalities to fund voluntary associations and provide venues for their activities, a UK civic capital fund could go further and guarantee support to all those who want to form or join clubs in their neighbourhoods, with only one stipulation: they are open to all and contribute to the common good. Such a fund could assist with travel, venue hire, membership fees and anything that constitutes a “participation tax”.

Promoting civic education and introducing volunteering hours to the school curriculum have proved to be effective, from Ontario, where pupil volunteering is mandatory , to Sweden, where school councils are given real decision-making powers. An Erasmus-style exchange – this time between the nations and regions of the UK – could help young people connect across religious, ethnic and ideological divides.

Recent evidence shows areas without quality local news see the least civic activity and are more prone to online misinformation. So support should be given to local newspapers and websites, including through an expansion of the BBC local democracy reporting service . Online community groups also have a role to play: in my own home town, the Facebook page Love Kirkcaldy has nearly 60,000 members – roughly as many as the population of the wider town itself. The page acts as a community noticeboard but also now brings people together face to face in clubs. Such forums help us to better get to know our neighbours, and restore faith and trust in democracy.

Between them, measures like these can rebuild an ethic of mutuality and civic obligation. The distinctive feature of a successful community organisation is not just that we belong to it but that it belongs to us. And while governments, local and national, can create the conditions for a stronger civic society, the most effective way to build one is the simple act of one person inviting another person to join in.

It is when neighbours no longer talk of “the school”, “the hospital”, “the library” and “the community centre”, or even “my school”, “my hospital”, “my library” and “my community centre”, but instead speak of “our school”, “our hospital”, “our library” and “our community centre”, that we will know a community has been reborn and there is a renewed sense that we are all part of a shared future.

Gordon Brown was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010

The future starts with us: Gordon Brown in conversation On Thursday 10 September, join Hugh Muir and Gordon Brown to discuss the intricate connections between global instability and civic decline, as explored in Brown’s new book, The Future Starts With Us . Book tickets here

Keyword – Sport
Trefwoorden – Darts, Sport
Title – ‘It was very hurtful’: darts cult hero Stephen Bunting on death threats, social media – and the new Luke Littlers | Darts | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/donaldmcrae
Link – ‘It was very hurtful’: darts cult hero Stephen Bunting on death threats, social media – and the new Luke Littlers | Darts | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-08T07:00:29.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/sep/08/darts-stephen-bunting-interview-social-media-luke-littler

“D efinitely,” Stephen Bunting says as he considers whether working so hard as a darts player on social media is like making a deal with the devil. After Luke Littler, the prodigiously gifted teenage world champion , Bunting is the most heavily marketed player in darts. But, over the past year, some of his success on and off the oche has been accompanied by vicious abuse.

Bunting has had death threats and he recently moved his eldest son to a private school to end the bullying which had hounded 14‑year‑old Toby, who often shares his social media space. But Bunting remains amiable and happy to reflect on his Faustian pact during a lucrative rollercoaster ride through darts.

On a quiet Thursday afternoon in St Helens, in a friendly little bookshop, we’re not about to go Bunting Mental, as one of the famous chants associated with him always promises. His trademark walk-on song, Titanium , is also briefly on pause as Bunting reflects on the downside of being so widely known.

“We found that out more from X. It’s a very toxic platform, and it doesn’t take long for one dart to go wrong and people are saying: ‘Oh, I want my £50 back for my bet.’ So we came off X. I’m still there as a presence but I’m not messaging. Instagram and TikTok have been brilliant and you very rarely see any toxicity there.”

As he promotes his new book, Bulletproof: From Pub to Palace, My Life in Darts , Bunting is being tracked by Jack, a young man with a video camera. They ask if I am happy to be filmed for Bunting’s YouTube channel and I decline, politely, as I’d prefer to focus on our interview.

A consequence of the relentless exposure is that Bunting is increasingly famous. “We did a book signing in Blackpool yesterday,” the 41-year-old from Merseyside says. “By the time we got out of the car, three or four people were saying: ‘It’s Stephen Bunting. What are you doing here?’ It was crazy. We went to New York and a policeman stopped me and said: ‘Oh, you’re the guy with the walk‑on.’ Not: ‘You’re the dart player.’ You can feel darts is getting bigger worldwide. With ESPN signing a five-year deal in America, that’s only going to increase the profile of the sport over there. It’s the same in China and Japan. So it’s important to showcase our sport across the world and I’d love to be part of that.”

Life has changed radically. “I definitely get stopped quite a bit. When I go round the Trafford Centre [in Manchester] with my family I’ve got 10 or 15 kids following me. The missus and the lads don’t mind as long as we’re not eating. If you’re in a restaurant, and people come over to you, it can be quite annoying. Apart from that, I embrace it all. It shows I’m doing something right and, yes, the socials are part of that. I do this for the fans as well as my family.”

In today’s online world, some of those fans are capricious and cruel, as Bunting discovered when, during the world championship last December, he described himself as the people’s champion. “After I won my first-round match,” Bunting says of his narrow victory against Sebastian Bialecki , “you get dragged into the back where the press are and I was asked how I was going to cope with my next opponent, [India’s] Nitin Kumar, as he’s got a big fanbase. I said: ‘Well, I’m the people’s champion’ as I’ve been called that by Sky, ITV and other channels. That was a tongue‑in‑cheek comment but my socials blew up.”

That vitriol darkened when, after beating Kumar, he endured a shock third-round defeat against the then world No 63 James Hurrell. Raging gamblers piled in on Bunting, who had been seeded fourth. “We had death threats being inboxed,” he says. “It was horrendous. Still to this day, we can’t understand how it all came to that.”

The online attacks were also directed against his son, who looks so like him, and Bunting says: “It was very hurtful because people were saying so many nasty things about Toby. With me not doing so well he was also being bullied at school. So I ended up putting him in private school and he’s flourishing now. But I’ll never mention the people’s champion again.”

Bunting laughs ruefully but he still believes in the power of social media. “Toby takes things to heart but he’s a lovely kid. When I was playing in Australia a few weeks ago, people were saying: ‘Oh, have you brought your son with you? We’re big fans.’ I don’t think Toby realises how many fans he’s got for doing YouTube stuff with me. I tell him to be more social on socials, but obviously we keep an eye on the comments, or turn them off.”

Toby is showing considerable promise in darts and Bunting says: “I would like him to become [a professional] but I won’t push him. I’ll be a mentor.”

The threat of hostility remains. I ask Bunting how he will cope if online abuse spills over into the booing which often stalks Gerwyn Price . “There hasn’t been too much hostility,” Bunting replies, “but it’s not nice. I remember a match years ago in the Premier League in Glasgow against Peter Wright. He was wearing a Scotland shirt and I ended up drawing the game six-all after I’d been 6-1 up. I’ve never heard anything like it. My chest was literally beating with the boos and it was horrendous. I just wanted to get off the stage.”

Bunting feels confident that “everything has calmed down” since his people’s champion comment and he won’t ease off on his merchandising opportunities. “Most of my merchandise, like my darts and my shirt, is through Target. But we do little bits ourselves. Obviously I’ll be selling the book on my website, and then I’ve got cups and T-shirts and these little plushies.”

He and his manager, Mark Dean, show me the new Bunting toy which is, he says, “a plush little teddy whose face looks like mine”, adding: “I got 600 last year and we sold them so fast.”

Dean says “they went in an hour and crashed the website, adding: “This year we’re trying to use pre-orders to avoid that.”

Bunting adds: “The merchandise keeps the missus busy because we do everything from home. I’m also bringing a new channel out on YouTube for my football cards. Toby’s going to be involved with that as well. I’ve got quite a big collection of football cards and I think that channel will do well.”

Amid the hustling, Bunting maintains a relentless playing schedule. He is often away on the European Tour and spent the past two weekends playing in Budapest and Prague. But it’s rather endearing that, when he can, the world No 10 still plays local league darts on Tuesday nights. “I’ve not played a league game for at least a month-and-a-half,” Bunting concedes, “because at the end of the Premier League I’ve been so busy with the book, exhibitions and other commitments.”

The lowest moment of Bunting’s darts career happened in the humble surroundings of a local league match when he was so bereft of form and confidence that he lost 3-0 against an amateur. “It was five and a half years ago. I remember being in the pub and when I get nervous I get really cold hands. This particular night my hands were freezing. I couldn’t hit nothing and as soon as it was over I rang my manager at the time and said: ‘If I don’t get help I’m going to walk away from the sport.’”

Bunting writes that, in despair, he would return from an event and: “I’d head straight up to my bedroom. I’d get into bed and lock the door. I felt completely useless. I was in my own dark world.”

He tells me how he also racked up £90,000 in gambling debts. “It was crazy. I was playing these online fruit machines and obviously you don’t realise what you’re doing. It’s only £1 a spin – but there were a lot of £1 spins. When [his partner] Keila received the bank statement I thought: ‘Oh no!’ But I didn’t realise how bad it was until she actually showed me. I was devastated. I’ve never, ever done that again.”

Bunting had plummeted to the point “where I seriously considered giving up darts and getting a proper job”. He says: “I was on the internet and looking in job centres. I could work in retail or go and work back at the council. I couldn’t cope any more.”

During his previous job at the council he had, in his early 20s, distributed incontinence pads to care homes. “I jokingly said it was a shit job but it was good. I was surrounded by nice people.”

Five years ago a sports psychologist and a hypnotherapist helped to rebuild Bunting’s shattered confidence and, slowly, he began to play well again. He still uses hypnotherapy – “sometimes twice a week if I’m going into a big tournament, or if things have not gone my way”.

Life is very different now but those past experiences help to ground Bunting. He also pays tribute to his best friend, Drew, who works in a morgue. “He’s been a real support but I don’t think I could do what he does. Being around dead people is not my idea of fun.”

Do they talk much about Drew’s work? “Very rarely. He’ll just say how cold it is in the room or how many dead people are in it.”

Littler is another good friend and, with Michael Owen, they own a racehorse together. It’s yet to make its debut but the name of the horse, Bunting Mental, prompts me to ask if he is just a little sick of his walk‑on routine to Titanium, that ubiquitous song by Sia and David Guetta ? “I hear it at least 20 times a day because it’s my ringtone and my alarm. So it goes off a lot when I snooze in the morning. But it’s still one of my favourite songs. Sometimes, when you’re at the darts and you feel a bit flat, as soon as that music hits you’re straight up for the match. You get on stage, do your orchestrating and the crowd sing it back to you. There’s no better feeling in darts.”

Will he always walk out into the heaving throng with Titanium booming around him? “Oh, 100%.”

But, as Bunting admits: “Darts is getting harder now. The calibre of play is better every year. You’ve got young kids coming through these academies, averaging 100 already and they’re only 15. We’re going to see a wave of Luke Littlers and it’s going to be challenging.”

Bunting still feels hopeful that he can play elite-level darts for another 10 years. “People don’t want to just watch a load of robots with their back to the board. Obviously, everyone wants to see the big scores but it’s really important to have a bit of character and personality about you. I think that’s definitely why, over the last few years, I’ve gained so many fans.”

Bulletproof: From Pub to Palace, My Life in Darts by Stephen Bunting is publishe d on 10 September (HarperNorth)

Keyword – World news
Trefwoorden – Germany, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Europe, The far right, Migration, World news
Title – ‘It breaks my heart’: far-right’s big election victory sparks dismay in German state capital | Germany | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/kateconnolly
Link – ‘It breaks my heart’: far-right’s big election victory sparks dismay in German state capital | Germany | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-08T06:13:28.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/08/germany-afd-far-right-election-victory-saxony-anhalt

Maryam and her best friend were ambling through Magdeburg toward the railway station, talking over the dramatic events of the previous evening and the surge by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland to a historically high vote in the Saxony-Anhalt elections .

“Don’t laugh at me,” she said, “but I wish we could go back to the days of Angela Merkel, when things were OK in Germany”.

The teenagers, from nearby Wolmirstedt, said they were shocked by the AfD’s landslide win. But they felt powerless to do much about it and felt afraid about where it might take their home state.

“We talk about it all the time,” said Maryam, whose name has been changed. “It’s on my mind constantly. My dad came to Germany from Syria in 2015. My mum and I joined him two years later.”

The first clause of the anti-immigrant AfD’s 100-day programme says that – “from the first moment” of being in power – the party will deport people it deems “irregular migrants”. Maryam believes her family could well face deportation.

“We have to renew our residency permits every three years as it is. We’ve always lived in a state of uncertainty. Now after these election results we face going back to Syria which we don’t think is safe, and I can’t even read or write Arabic.”

The AfD won almost 44% of the vote in Sunday’s election, more than even it had hoped for. Doreen, 54, did not immediately admit to having supported the party, but said later in an interview she had put her faith in what she termed “the blues” “out of a sense of desperation”.

When challenged about the human impact the party’s policies could have, for example on immigrant families, she shrugged: “It is what it is.”

“If they [refugees] hadn’t turned up here in such large numbers in the first place, they wouldn’t have to go through such heart-breaking situations now,” she said.

Doreen, a cleaner, said she hoped the pro-Russia AfD would be able to take power and act on promises to end refugee status for Ukrainians (as well as aid to Kyiv). “The winners will hopefully straighten up a few things right away,” she said. “They [Ukrainians] come here in their fancy cars, pretending they’re escaping devastation, but most of them have far more resources and designer clothes than I do.”

Doreen is speaking close to a stolperstein , or stumbling stone – a brass plaque embedded in the concrete – commemorating Ernst Fliess , a Jewish lawyer. Born in 1877, he lived on the spot where a glass-fronted fitness club now stands until he was “humiliated, disenfranchised … (and) took flight in death” (a euphemism for suicide).

But she angrily rejected any parallel between the AfD’s rise in popularity and the Weimar era rise of the Nazis. “Don’t tar me with that brush,” she said. “We are in a different age, with different problems.”

Returning from their daily stroll to the Elbe river, 88-year-olds Ernst and Judith, a retired boiler maker and a design engineer who have been married for 64 years, said they did not want to talk about the election result. But it soon became clear that they were shattered by the news. Voting data has shown a stark drop-off in support for the far-right party among the over-70s.

“It’s not like we didn’t see it coming,” said Judith. “But we don’t quite know what to do with the information. The reality of it hasn’t quite kicked in.”

The couple said they had voted for the far-left Die Linke. Judith said she was “devastated that a party that has so little regard for refugees” had won, and by such a large margin.

Her own life story – she was forced to flee her home in Silesia in 1945 and spent years in temporary accommodation before settling in Magdeburg – has greatly sensitised her to the plight of refugees, she said.

“I see the look in their eyes, it doesn’t matter where they come from, who they are, and I am so empathetic to their situation,” she said. “It breaks my heart to think that almost half of the population has voted for a party that is so anti-immigrant, particularly after all Germany has gone through as a nation in the last century.”

Sitting on a heart-shaped rainbow-coloured bench in front of Magdeburg’s gothic cathedral, Christiane and Franz Josef Jäker, 67 and 71, on holiday from North Rhine-Westphalia, were also digesting the news.

“The populists are ruining everything,” said Franz Josef. “Everything that Germany has built up again after world war two. They promise a lot that they can’t deliver, and they also suppress a lot – such as what is going on in Ukraine – so that they can argue for the resumption of Russian gas imports to Germany.”

Eric, a paramedic cheerily drumming up funds for a hospice, said he was kicking himself for not having voted. The 21-year-old son of a German mother and a Guinean father who spent 10 years applying for a German passport, said: “I try not to think about what the installation of the AfD in government might mean for me as a dark-skinned man.”

Most of all he is worried about “the constitutional changes they might make, and the domino effect that might have across Germany”.

Luisa, a bank teller who says she voted for Die Linke, fears for the image of her state.

“It’s really bad for the reputation of Saxony-Anhalt. A lot of people have said that foreigners here will now choose to leave, but I know enough low-paid foreign workers who won’t be able to afford to do so, and will just have to put up with being badly treated.

“I saw some interviews with Holocaust survivors and they drew parallels with the mood around what’s happening now and the rise of the Nazis. We have to pay attention to this similar sense they say they have – they’re not making it up.”

Keyword – Football
Trefwoorden – Newcastle United, Eddie Howe, Football, Sport
Title – Newcastle admit they started planning for Eddie Howe’s exit at start of year | Newcastle United | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/louisetaylor
Link – Newcastle admit they started planning for Eddie Howe’s exit at start of year | Newcastle United | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-08T06:00:30.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/sep/08/eddie-howe-newcastle-exit-timing-matthias-jaissle-bruno-guimaraes-ross-wilson

Newcastle’s sporting director, Ross Wilson, has revealed he began planning at the start of this year for Eddie Howe’s departure . Howe stepped down as manager in late July and the club turned to Matthias Jaissle, who had been identified as the preferred successor.

Wilson, who arrived on Tyneside from Nottingham Forest, said: “Eddie leaving didn’t feel chaotic and it didn’t feel painful. Eddie would be the first to tell you that. I came here 10 or 11 months ago and I’ve been planning in the background for a managerial change over eight or nine of those months. That doesn’t mean we were always going to go to Matthias, but he was always part of our planning.”

When Wilson began making contingency plans, Howe seemed more likely to be poached than to resign or be dismissed. Yet Newcastle’s 12th-placed finish last season raised questions about his future and, after the sales of Anthony Gordon and Sandro Tonali, Howe decided he wanted out .

“Big respect to Eddie for the job he did for us over a long period of time,” Wilson said. “He did a wonderful job bringing that trophy [the 2025 Carabao Cup]. He’s a club legend, for sure.”

No one had envisaged parting with Howe three weeks before the season. “Clearly the timing wasn’t planned,” Wilson said. “But the reason we could move so quickly was because we’d been preparing for a number of months.

“Eddie’s an exceptionally talented coach and that meant he was probably going to do something else at some point. We had to be prepared for that.”

With Newcastle having entered a settlement agreement with Uefa after breaching European spending rules last season, selling Gordon and Tonali for almost £170m proved essential but Wilson admitted that offloading Bruno Guimarães to Arsenal for £75m was one sale he never wanted to complete.

“There’s no point pretending otherwise: we did not want to lose Bruno Guimarães. That was really disappointing. But everything else that happened during the window was planned. That doesn’t mean every single player [who signed] was the No 1 name on our list. Clearly we were disappointed a couple of times but that’s normal. No club reaches the end of a window getting every target they wanted.”

Wilson has presided over the acquisition of eight players aged 24 and younger this summer including Guimarães’s replacement, the £52m midfielder Nico González, signed from Manchester City. They have in common a suitability for the high-intensity pressing game choreographed, in different forms, by Howe and Jaissle.

“I cannot imagine Newcastle United playing a style of football that isn’t aggressive, vertical and attacking,” Wilson said. “For this club to be successful we have to play an attacking, high-press, proactive style and we had to find a coach to do that.”

Ultimately all roads led to Jaissle, for whom Newcastle paid £10m to Al-Ahli. “We used our [data] models to identify those coaches who played the type of football we wanted,” Wilson said. “Matthias was the No 1 choice. It was really, really clear.”

Cue what Wilson described as a “busy” summer. “We had the situation with the manager which we dealt with in complete secrecy for two weeks as well as trying to run a transfer window. So it was really, really busy. But good fun as well.”

Until this summer Newcastle had resisted selling established players but that stance has changed. “If you want to be successful in the Premier League you have to trade players,” Wilson said. “If you don’t trade you’re going to get stuck.”

Although Jaissle has not been set targets this season, Newcastle’s chief executive, David Hopkinson, remains confident they can disrupt the dominance of the traditional “big six” by 2030.

“We’re going to be consistently and credibly competing for those top prizes,” Hopkinson said. “If we’re compliant with the regulatory regime [spending rules] we can compete consistently.”

Keyword – Books
Trefwoorden – Fiction, Books, Culture, Sebastian Barry
Title – The Newer World by Sebastian Barry review – a near-miracle of storytelling | Fiction | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/sara-collins
Link – The Newer World by Sebastian Barry review – a near-miracle of storytelling | Fiction | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-08T06:00:29.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/sep/08/the-newer-world-by-sebastian-barry-review-a-near-miracle-of-storytelling

B ut is not the story as good as the truth?” asks Tennyson Bouguereau, the narrator of Sebastian Barry’s The Newer World. Tennyson, a formerly enslaved man in post-civil war America, recounts his life story in ways that call to mind the age-old debate about whether it’s better to get our history from novelists or historians. While historians might argue that there is no contest, the question hints knowingly at the novelist’s counter-argument. It sent me searching for a line from Barry’s 2008 Costa-award winning novel, The Secret Scripture , in which the narrator describes history as “a fabulous arrangement of surmises and guesses held up as a banner against the assault of withering truth”.

In her Reith Lectures, Hilary Mantel suggested that history is “what’s left in the sieve when the centuries have run through it”, but I tend to think of it as more of a butterfly net. Historians chase after and capture the things they deem significant. They leave things out, often deliberately. Barry’s entire body of work is a prime example of fiction’s ability to fill history’s gaps, merging personal tragedies with national ones in ways that (dare I say) demonstrate the supremacy of the form – especially for those of us descended from people for whom history never cared one whit. I was therefore intrigued to learn that he had set out to write the story of a man like Tennyson. Barry’s earlier novels refracted Irish history through the lens of two fictional Irish families, the Dunnes and the McNultys. His first foray into this period of American history in Days Without End , for which he won his second Costa award, also followed one of the McNultys – Thomas McNulty flees the Irish famine for America, where he finds himself drawn into the genocidal work of clearing Native Americans off their land, and then, together with his lover and fellow soldier, John Cole, adopts a Lakota girl, Winona, whose family they have helped slaughter. Barry picked up Winona’s story in A Thousand Moons , published in 2020, which follows her fortunes as she, Thomas and John settle on the same farm outside Paris, Tennessee that is occupied by Tennyson and his twin sister Rosalee among others.

With the publication of The Newer World, it seems a loose trilogy has taken shape, hinting at possibilities for future expansion: the authorial hand nudging Tennyson from the background into centre stage and for the time being leaving the McNultys behind. This passing of the storytelling baton – an Irish refugee ceding the floor to a Native American woman, who then does the same in favour of a formerly enslaved man – feels as urgently contemporary as the best historical fiction always does, relevant to “the writer’s now”, to borrow John Fowles’s phrase. So too does the description of a postbellum Tennessee landscape in which the Confederates may have been defeated but their ideologies are still virulently alive: “All their intent was to shove us back into the hog pen and put the hasp on tight as they could, against any further straying”.

Part Bildungsroman, part picaresque, Tennyson’s account of himself moves from the American civil war, when “the end of the world had come”, to its immediate aftermath, “a time of guns and watchfulness”. He describes himself and Rosalee, enslaved orphans in childhood, “freed but not free” in adulthood, as “nothing people”. It’s reminiscent of Winona’s description of herself as “just the cinders of an Indian fire”, and Thomas’s of the ships bringing “ruined people” from Ireland to Canada: “The point is, we were nothing. No one wanted us.” The thing I like best about a Barry novel is how he gives a voice to the “nothing people” of history. It’s like pulling up a rocking chair on a shaded porch and listening as the narrator, usually in retrospective mode, attempts to reckon with what they did and what was done to them. It’s an astonishing effect, especially when you consider the near-miracles Barry performs with language. In his hands it attains registers that can only be described as soaring; a vertiginous high wire of prose. Here, for example, is Tennyson describing a reunion with his sister at sunset, after many years: “The harbour of my brave sister. The darkness growing in courage and, since it met no enemy, having its little victory everywhere. Pleasing darkness, in its way. There was bliss in those long moments”.

Putting this kind of arresting language into the mouths of “nothing people” makes it impossible to overlook them, as if only in fiction can they be given their due. And there is also a compelling point in using language from the poetic realm to reveal rather than cloak atrocities, its rhythms building to an unrelenting lyricism, a juggernaut that gains power precisely because it is not just set alongside brutality but entwined with it. Here is a siege, after Tennyson has enlisted in the army: “Men cried out as the life was lifted from them. All in the cruel dark.” Cruelty is endured and inflicted by the same people. In Days Without End, Thomas McNulty, an Irish famine victim, takes part in slaughtering Indigenous Americans; in The Newer World, Tennyson, an African American victim of enslavement, does the same. It is “never enough for Americans to live in their American paradise. There had to be blood and chaos all the while too.” What does it mean to be part of a “killing machine” where “[e]ven one death was a personal matter”?

I can think of no other writer who could, as Barry does, describe blood and chaos in language that reaches for such a high register, as if at the same time invoking paradise, in an attempt to answer that question. I can also think of few whose natural writerly empathy, evidenced by such an impressive body of work, pre-empts the otherwise inevitable discussion about cultural appropriation. Any writer has the right to imagine any point of view, but few truly earn it.

The Newer World by Sebastian Barry is published by Faber (£20). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com . Delivery charges may apply.

Keyword – Art and design
Trefwoorden – Les Rencontres d’Arles, Art and design, Photography, Culture, Exhibitions
Title – Scarves, hijabs and a grand boubou: unmasking identity – in pictures | Les Rencontres d'Arles | The Guardian
Author –
Link – Scarves, hijabs and a grand boubou: unmasking identity – in pictures | Les Rencontres d'Arles | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-08T06:00:28.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2026/sep/08/scarves-hijabs-and-a-grand-boubou-unmasking-identity-in-pictures-souleymane-bachir-diaw

Souleymane Bachir Diaw’s photographs of textiles and bodies carry messages around patriarchy, domestic violence and the rituals of manhood

Self-Portrait Resting on Rabbal, Earth Tone, 2021

Self-Portrait, Hand on Arrow on Rabbal, 2021

White Cotton Headpieces on Clothes Line, 2022

Worn Striped Olive Green Jam-puut and White Cotton Headpiece, Earth Tone, 2022

Worn White Grand Boubou with Gold Embroidery and Green Headscarf, Grey Area, 2022

Worn Light Green Jam-puut, Grey Area, 2022

Rabal and Threads Wrapping Scissors, Grey Area, 2021

Worn Navy Blue Hijab, Blue Note, 2022

Worn Light Blue Lace Boubou and Striped White Jam-puut, Grey Area, 2021

Diég Ñáata?, Red Line, 2022

Performing the Transmission, Red Line, 2025

Self-Portrait in a Black Suit and Brown Silky Fabric, Black Belt, 2025

Self-Portrait in Black Tank Top and Brown Leather Belt, Black Belt, 2025

Self-Portrait in Black Suit Pants and Brown Leather Belt, Black Belt, 2025

Keyword – Travel
Trefwoorden – Spain holidays, Europe holidays, Travel, Wildlife holidays, Wildlife
Title – ‘So big and so close’: spotting endangered bears on a trip to northern Spain | Spain holidays | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/stephen-phelan
Link – ‘So big and so close’: spotting endangered bears on a trip to northern Spain | Spain holidays | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-08T06:00:28.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2026/sep/08/brown-bear-conservation-tourism-northern-spain-asturias

O nce upon a time, in the woods outside Pola de Somiedo, lived a family of Cantabrian brown bears. The villagers reported sightings of a mother bear who had lost a leg to a hunter’s trap, her two cubs and two adult males, either of which might have been the father. In those days, at the end of the 1980s, they seemed to be the last of their kind in this part of Asturias. Meanwhile, the wider population dropped to about 60 bears across the surrounding Cantabrian mountain range that gave the species its name.

They have since clawed their way back from the edge of extinction here in northern Spain, and nature guide Luis Frechilla believes their numbers may now be upwards of 500 again. “They’re still classed as endangered,” he tells me, until the official count hits 1,000. But relative abundance makes them much easier to see today in Somiedo natural park – one of Spain’s first such protected areas, established in 1988.

Setting his scope on a tripod in a steep-angled pasture, Frechilla spots a bear almost as soon as we start looking. A juvenile, apparently, which means the animal is old enough to be foraging alone, but it’s still too small, and too far away, for him to tell if it’s a male or female. Another bear-spotter standing near us seems more willing to take a guess.

“Ooh, look at his little ears,” she says delightedly, beaming behind binoculars. No expert myself, I watch that distant fuzzy shape move across the viewfinder and along the sharp ridges opposite, blinking in and out of sight like a cursor on the trend line of a graph. I’m not sure that we are close enough to call this an encounter, but it is an experience.

The sun drops behind the peaks; the birds sing a dusk chorus in the birches and oaks; cowbells ring through the valley from the dairy herds that help this region of so-called “Green Spain” look and sound like the Swiss Alps. It gets cold at night up here, and it’s been known to snow in summer, though my own visit in late spring sees the mountaintops looking whiter than anyone around here can remember so deep into May.

That weather, and the sheer calorific spend of living and working at a median altitude of 1,300 metres, has made the traditional cuisine much sturdier here than elsewhere in Spain.

Down at the village inn, Casa Miño , we share a bottle of regional cider and a cachopo (beef fillet topped with serrano ham, peppers and goat cheese, and pounded into a single solid unit the size of a solar panel). I want fabada , too, the famous Asturian stew of white beans, pork belly and blood sausage. Frechilla says it’s a winter dish, customarily eaten for lunch – too heavy for the body to process later in the day. But I would order fabada at midnight in a heatwave, and keep eating it even while they loaded me into the ambulance.

The bears, meanwhile, don’t have much to feed on at the moment. They only woke from hibernation a few weeks ago, explains Alicia Madrid the next day, on a forest trail above the century-old hydroelectric power station at La Malva. A biologist with the conservation group Fundación Oso Pardo , Madrid tells me that Cantabrian bears don’t hibernate as long or deeply as other brown bears and are generally smaller and lighter than American grizzlies.

“They’re adapted to this terrain, and they can’t be too heavy because they have to climb a lot,” she says. Their paw prints in the mud look big enough to me, and the bite marks where they chewed clumps of long grasses, and the hairs shed where they scratched their backs against trees. Madrid shows us, too, the hefty rocks they overturned looking for insects. Further into the summer, there’ll be plenty of berries, acorns, chestnuts and maybe some meaty carrion to fatten them up.

The foundation has played a major role in the regrowth of bear populations, building bio-corridors with strategic placements of trees and bushes full of all the things they like to eat. Another key factor is the hunting ban, introduced in 1973. The trick now, says Madrid, is coaxing isolated cohorts to breed with other groups and boost genetic diversity.

Also: managing the tourists who come to see them, and balancing ecological imperatives against financial incentives. Later, after a long hike through the Valley of the Lake to reach the aptly named Lake of the Valley, I overhear Frechilla fielding the related concerns of two local women. Against a backdrop of blue sky, bright wildflowers and silver waters, the women seem to argue that conservation efforts amount to commercial exploitation. Frechilla gently insists that Somiedo natural park is a model of good practice in Spain. Much of the bears’ territory is closed to the public, and spotting expeditions are only permitted in the company of licensed guides. Nature tourism, he says, keeps villagers in jobs where farming culture cannot, and is proving vastly more sustainable than hunting bears for sport. As for protecting humans, there has been only one bear attack in recent memory, on an elderly lady whose evening stroll led her between a mother and cubs. She survived.

For now, at least, most residents seem willing to share the bears with outsiders. That evening, a small crowd gather by the side of a winding back road near Saliencia, some sitting comfortably on camping chairs with spotting scopes in their hands. Everyone is watching a large male bear – so big and so close that they don’t need the viewing equipment – as he lopes across a meadow to take a quick splash in the river. Another male is spotted in the treeline above, and the two circle each other at a distance for a while. There is some speculation that they might fight for this turf, and a man with two leashed greyhounds seems ready to take bets on it. Frechilla shakes his head.

“Maybe later in the season, when they’ve gained enough weight.”

These bears are doing better now, but it’s still a tough life. The reality of their ongoing baby boom is that only 30% of juveniles will survive on their own, after a year of maternal supervision. This is surely why I find it so moving when we follow reports of another sighting in the twilight: a mother and her two young cubs have been seen climbing a slope called El Diente , or “The Tooth”.

It’s getting dark and cold, but we can see them through the scopes, about a mile away from us across the high mountain pass at La Peral. I watch the mother bear waiting and cajoling as needed while the siblings struggle up the vertical planes of rock like toddlers trying to climb a baby gate. On the ridgeline, they turn to silhouettes, play-fighting against a white sky.

They disappear over the far side, but then a little one comes back, seeming to wave goodbye with both front paws in the air. I remember a story I read to my daughter once, which put a poignant time limit on the usual fairytale ending: “And they all lived happily together, for as long as they could.”

The trip was provided by the Spanish Tourist Office , Turismo Asturias and Casa Miño in Pola de Somiedo . Bear-spotting tours with nature guide Luis Frechilla can be organised through Wild Spain Travel . For more information on the Cantabrian brown bear and related conservation efforts, visit Fundación Oso Pardo

Keyword – Opinion
Trefwoorden – Byelections, Local politics, Keir Starmer, Labour, Zack Polanski, Politics, UK news, Green party, Andy Burnham, London
Title – The byelection here in Holborn and St Pancras is Labour’s to lose. But lose it might | Polly Toynbee | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/pollytoynbee
Link – The byelection here in Holborn and St Pancras is Labour’s to lose. But lose it might | Polly Toynbee | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-08T05:00:28.000Z
Category – Opinion
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/sep/08/byelection-holborn-st-pancras-labour-green-party-defence-rent-north-sea-oil-burnham

Y ou might think a byelection showdown between two progressive parties is unimportant when the deep struggle for the national heart is between the right bloc and the left – but the result in Holborn and St Pancras matters. It matters for Andy Burnham and Labour because this is a test of the Burnham bounce: he saw off the right in Makerfield – can he win over the left too? Can he show he has enthusiastic approval from voters in southern constituencies as well as those in the north?

For the Greens it matters almost existentially because failing here could send them and their leader, Zack Polanski, back to the political fringes. Holborn and St Pancras, neighbouring Westminster, was vacated (vengefully) by Keir Starmer last week. This plum forever-Labour constituency has attracted 96 Labour applications for selection day on Wednesday, though not, it seems, nationally recognised names.

This is Labour’s to lose. And it might. The constituency was comfortably won in 2024 by Starmer; in May’s local elections the Greens took extra council seats, though Labour kept control and remained ahead by 10 percentage points . But byelections are idiosyncratic beasts in which voters risk nothing, electing neither council nor government. Few bother to turn out. For those who do, a byelection offers a free hit for whimsical preferences, “sending messages” on maverick issues or an urge to biff the government of the day.

A Labour loss would dent Burnham’s bounce, letting air out of his optimistic bubble. But frankly, losing here would be no great surprise. Peter Kellner, former president of YouGov and a leading psephologist, lives in this constituency, as do I. While most early opinion makes Labour the frontrunner , Kellner thinks that underestimates the byelection effect. He expects a Green win in a close call: “This is just the kind of seat a Labour government loses,” he tells me. In a metropolitan district with disproportionately young voters, the left is liberated to protest against anything disappointing in a Labour government.

Demographics favour rebellion for a rainbow of reasons in an extraordinarily socially mixed seat. You see vox-poppers choosing its picturesquely famous spots – the pastel houses in Primrose Hill where Paddington Bear lives in the films, the bars and cafes of Camden and Kentish Town – as photogenic backdrops to their reports. But, such elegant streets may be deceptive given that only a quarter of residents are homeowners, compared with 62.5% across England and Wales .

Here 43% live in social housing: Camden has a decades-long tradition of good housebuilding, thanks to a well-run council under great social pressure. The constituency is home to both deprivation and high numbers of graduates; many ABC1 voters and 45% born abroad.

Leaflets saying only the Greens, or only Labour , can win here are arriving through letterboxes – and it’s true, no one else is likely to. That Polanski is seeking the nomination boosts the Greens. Tot up issues where they challenge Labour, and many resonate with the student population. They oppose nuclear weapons and seem divided over increased defence spending. They back rent controls that Burnham has rejected. They oppose Jackdaw and Rosebank North Sea oil and gas drilling, which may both be approved any day now. They want rapid nationalisation of utilities, where Labour hesitates. Locally they campaign on crime, mobile phone thefts and housing.

But it’s Gaza that may shift votes from Labour to Green: in the 2024 election, Starmer’s vote share was slashed and a pro-Palestinian, independent candidate came second with 18.9% of the vote . Arresting thousands for terrorism for silently holding placards supporting Palestine Action is another gift to the Greens. Labour instead points to impossible promises in the party’s £160bn tax, spend and borrowing pledges .

The Green campaign asks: “Why elect just another Labour MP, when a Green MP in parliament will challenge the government?” But this week Labour looks set to select not just “another Labour MP” but Sagal Abdi-Wali, Camden council’s leader and community organiser, popular with her party and a well-known dynamic force locally. Green criticism of Labour over Gaza comes up against a hijab-wearing Muslim woman who has spent years calming racial and religions tensions, and building relationships with many Jewish voters here, too. “If Greens stir up community antagonisms over Gaza,” she says to me, “that would be disgraceful”.

Reform has no foothold here but its attacks on her from afar may galvanise Labour people to come out and vote. Its poisonous home affairs spokesperson Zia Yusuf spits out Reform’s usual ethno-nativist bile, pointing out on X that Abdi-Wali “was born in Somalia. Do you understand what’s happening?” Georgia Gould MP, former Camden council leader, ripostes on X that she “has dedicated her life to public service” and is “the elected leader of Camden council, a community where she grew up and has lived for 35 years” who “embodies the best of our values … an outstanding example of British success”. Telegraph headlines similarly define her primarily as a “Somali refugee”. All this will remind Labour voters that fighting off the racist right is Labour’s great cause.

On the doorstep with Abdi-Wali, in a social housing estate, I saw how she is known and liked for her community work. She takes notes of people’s problems, from housing repairs to e-bikes blocking the road, her local campaign matching Burnham’s localism. But we also meet a college lecturer, who had a run-in with their employer over Gaza, who will “never vote Labour again”. Not for Abdi-Wali? It’s all about Palestine.

Nonetheless, Polanski takes a big risk here after sliding in the polls. For Labour, the challenge is to show how Burnham’s raft of positive policies can ward off hopeless wishes and still reach the left with his hopefulness.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

Keyword – Food
Trefwoorden – Food, Fish, Fruit, Seafood, Autumn food and drink, Spanish food and drink, Main course
Title – José Pizarro’s recipe for grilled sardines with blackberry escabeche | Food | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jose-pizarro
Link – José Pizarro’s recipe for grilled sardines with blackberry escabeche | Food | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-08T05:00:27.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/food/2026/sep/08/grilled-sardines-blackberry-escabeche-recipe-jose-pizarro

O ne of my favourite summer memories is making collares de moras as a child in Extremadura, which involved threading wild blackberries on to a piece of straw to make little necklaces. We’d always eat some too, of course, as well as wearing them, and we’d always come home with stained hands and big smiles. At the time, I never imagined that one day I’d be cooking sardines and pairing them with those same wild berries, but that’s the magic of food. The ingredients that filled my childhood with such simple joy have become part of the dishes I love creating today. Every time I make this recipe, it takes me straight back to those carefree summer days.

Grilled sardines with blackberry escabeche

Prep 10 min Cook 25 min Marinate 1 hr+ Serves 4

3 tbsp olive oil 2 banana shallots , peeled and finely sliced 1 red or orange bell pepper , pith and seeds removed, flesh finely sliced 4-5 fresh thyme sprigs 2 tsp coriander seeds 1 tsp black peppercorns 1 small pinch chilli flakes (optional) 200ml white-wine vinegar , or cider vinegar 200ml white wine 150g blackberries , washed Sea salt and black pepper 8 good-sized fresh sardines , butterflied (ask the fishmonger to do this for you, if need be)

Heat a tablespoon of the oil, then gently fry the shallots and bell pepper for six or seven minutes, until lovely and tender. Add the thyme and spices, fry for a minute more, then add the vinegar, wine and 100ml water, bring to a simmer and cook until the liquid has reduced by about half. Stir in the blackberries, then take off the heat and leave to cool slightly.

Meanwhile, put the rest of the oil in a large nonstick frying pan on a high heat. Season the butterflied sardines inside and out, then fry them skin-side down for three or four minutes, until golden and crisp. Flip over and fry for just a minute longer on the flesh side.

Arrange the cooked sardines skin-side up and side by side in a suitable deep-sided dish, pour the warm escabeche all over the top, then leave to marinate and cool down for at least an hour. Serve at once, or cover and chill in the fridge until you’re ready to eat.

Keyword – Sport
Trefwoorden – US Open Tennis 2026, Sport, Tennis, US Open tennis, Coco Gauff, US sports
Title – Coco Gauff dismantles Iva Jovic to reach quarter-finals in confident US Open run | US Open Tennis 2026 | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/bryan-armen-graham
Link – Coco Gauff dismantles Iva Jovic to reach quarter-finals in confident US Open run | US Open Tennis 2026 | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-09-08T04:00:41.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/sep/08/coco-gauff-iva-jovic-us-open-quarter-finals-mirra-andreeva

Coco Gauff continued her serene march through the US Open women’s draw with her most complete performance yet on Monday night, seeing off fellow American Iva Jovic 6-1, 6-4 to reach the last eight in New York for the first time since winning it all in her grand slam breakthrough three years ago.

The fourth-seeded Gauff overwhelmed Jovic with the depth of her returns and an assured blend of aggression and defense, finishing with twice as many winners (18 to nine) and half as many unforced errors (15 to 30). The 1hr 20min clinic was the latest statement in a late-summer win streak that has transformed her from a player searching for answers this time last year into perhaps the most dangerous woman in the field right now.

Next comes a delicious quarter-final clash with Mirra Andreeva, the reigning French Open champion and fifth seed, after the 19-year-old Russian came from behind to defeat Anastasia Potapova 5-7, 6-4, 6-3 in Monday’s day session.

“The biggest difference in the way I’ve been playing is just trying to play with no regrets,” Gauff said afterwards. “I think I have a lot more fun and success playing like this.”

The 22-year-old arrived in New York fresh off her first title of the year in Cincinnati and had yet to drop a set throughout the first week, but Monday’s task with barely an empty seat inside Arthur Ashe Stadium represented her stiffest examination yet.

Jovic, the 18-year-old 14th seed from Los Angeles, has been tabbed as one of the brightest prospects in US tennis since crashing the Australian Open quarter-finals in January ahead of fourth-round runs at both Roland Garros and Wimbledon, which made her the youngest American to reach the second week at three majors in a season since Venus Williams in 1998. She had punched her ticket to the last 16 after a gruelling three-hour win over breakout star Alexandra Eala in a Saturday night blockbuster, fighting back from 2-4 down in the deciding set to prevail 7-5, 3-6, 7-5.

Gauff knew first-hand what sort of resistance to expect. Their only previous meeting on tour, at the Rome Open in May, required nearly three hours and a comeback from a set down before Gauff escaped 5-7, 7-5, 6-2 after saving a match point. “I think that experience helped me for today,” Gauff said. “I knew to expect that she was going to be at 100 from the first point to the last.”

This time there was considerably less drama. After opening with a tense 11-minute exchange of breaks, Gauff never let Jovic get comfortable, taking the ball early off both wings and peeling off six straight games to take the opening set in 33 minutes.

Jovic finally interrupted Gauff’s momentum in the middle of the second set, breaking for 3-2, but the fightback proved brief. Gauff broke back immediately and soon after produced her cleanest return game of the night in racing to love-40 before Jovic sent a forehand long for 5-4. Serving for the match, she rattled off four straight points from love-30, sealing the match when Jovic sent a backhand into the net.

“I think I’m doing a good job of when I maybe miss opportunities or lose some games, just keeping it in the past and focusing on the present,” said Gauff, who extended streaks of nine straight victories and 20 consecutive sets won. “I don’t view it as opportunities lost sometimes. I try to just view it as what to do better and just trusting that I’ll be in the same position again.”

For Gauff, the self-belief lifting her game is less about any one stroke than the range of solutions at her disposal. “I think that gives me confidence knowing that I have probably, up to this point, like, a plan D,” she said. “There’s comfortability in having options. If plan A doesn’t work, there’s B, there’s C and there’s D.”

The contrast with Gauff’s position 12 months ago remains night and day. She entered last year’s US Open amid an emergency reconstruction of her serve before bowing out quietly against Naomi Osaka in the fourth round. Since then, her work with biomechanics expert Gavin MacMillan has gradually taken hold, including personal-best runs to the semi-finals at Wimbledon and in Canada before her Cincinnati triumph.

The stakes extend beyond a second US Open crown and third major title. Gauff also remains in the hunt to reach the world No 1 ranking for the first time if she wins the tournament and Elena Rybakina, who overpowered Osaka to reach the quarter-finals earlier Monday, fails to win her next match. For now, the immediate order of business is Andreeva and a place in the last four. Gauff has won all five of their previous meetings, though she insisted the head-to-head ledger belies what little separates them on the court.

“Mirra is someone that I always have tough matches with,” Gauff said. “They’ve leaned my way, but I think every match could have almost gone either way. She’s obviously in a different mindset now, at the top of the game coming off of a grand slam win. I think it’s going to be a really athletic, tough match. Hopefully I can take my opportunities when I get them.”