Keyword – Art and design
Trefwoorden – Art and design, Restaurants, Food and drink, Culture, Spain
Title – ‘The beauty of the useless’: Spain’s super-thin restaurant napkins are throwaway art treasures | Art and design | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/abbas-asaria
Link – ‘The beauty of the useless’: Spain’s super-thin restaurant napkins are throwaway art treasures | Art and design | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-18T04:00:02.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2026/jun/18/the-beauty-of-the-useless-spains-super-thin-restaurant-napkins-are-throwaway-art-treasures

I f you have ever eaten a meal in a bar, cafe or restaurant in Spain and grabbed a napkin from the ubiquitous small metal dispensers, you will be familiar with the most intriguing feature of the wafer-thin servilletas : how utterly functionally useless they are.

Don’t bother using them to mop up spilled liquid, as they are less likely to soak up the spillage than protect it with an impermeable barrier. Never make the mistake of blowing your nose in them when you have a cold or a hay fever attack: they’ll just spread the mess to your hands. Their papery texture – originally meant to keep your hands clean while picking up oily snacks – has somehow endured despite their most common purpose being to clean your fingers and lips. For this, they are far from effective, and you end up flying through half a dozen for every croqueta .

And yet these humble serviettes are a deeply cherished part of the Spanish way of life. Piling scrunched up servilletas on a plate after use may seem the logical choice, yet in some establishments patrons simply chuck them on the ground, along with olive pits and other detritus acquired from snacking. A floor littered with servilletas is a sign that you’ve entered a bar that is humble and authentic . “The servilletas are made of paper,” reads a sign on the wall in my go-to place for callos , Bar Alonso in Madrid’s Prosperidad neighbourhood, “and just like prawn shells, they’re to be thrown on to the floor.” (Don’t mistake it for a universally loved custom, though, other establishments have campaigned against it , and it’s now a less common habit.)

The serviettes’ useless papery texture has one great upshot: they’re easily printable with all kinds of text and monochrome imagery. Even your standard servilleta , which thanks you for your patronage with the phrase “ gracias por su visita ”, can be a source of juvenile amusement: in my university days, most students knew how to fold them so that the text instead read gracias puta .

The real joy, however, lies within the bars and restaurants that choose to pay a little extra to have personalised servilletas . Madrid-based photographer Felipe Hernandez has been collecting these little gastronomical mementoes from down-to-earth restaurants across the country since 2014. By 2017 he’d accumulated more than 150, which was when he decided to start photographing them on a white marble slab he had in his studio, and uploading them to a dedicated Instagram account . Last month he released the book Servilletas , containing 600 of the 1,000-plus in his collection.

Some of them use the Post-It sized space to boast of their prowess in the kitchen: “They say it’s the best roasted lamb and suckling pig in Madrid,” Restaurante El Senador tells us . Others match an illustration with their name, as with the doves on the napkins at Marisquería La Paloma . My favourites are the servilletas in Bilbao’s Melilla y Fez, which carry an illustration of their famed pintxos morunos (grilled lamb skewers), since cleaning your oily fingers with a picture of the dish that caused the mess in the first place is a lovely touch.

Such small visual quirks feel even more special when you consider the growing homogenisation of Spain’s gastronomic sector. “This book captures the resistance of our old-school bars against this trend, and the importance of supporting them given how our city centres are losing their identities,” Hernandez tells me.

“Since the graphic often relates to the food that a place serves, you can even see cultural and regional differences reflected in the serviettes,” he says. Newer restaurants are less likely to have their own personalised servilletas , and a number of the older establishments he visited have since ditched them to cut costs.

Like many local businesses in Spanish cities, some of the places featured in Hernandez’s book have been struggling to deal with the side-effects of gentrification and tourism. Mesón Planeta, a restaurant in Madrid whose serviette used to boast of its Galician meats and octopus, is one such example. It closed down four years ago after failing to keep up with rising rents, and for former regulars, this book would be one of the few physical remnants of the place.

While an individual establishment might perish, the servilleta lives on, with their enduring ineffectiveness a joyful defiance of the relentless “optimisation” that defines our era. What defines the appeal of the servilleta , Hernandez writes in the introduction to his book, is “the beauty of the useless”.

Servilletas: Spanish Napkins is published by Ojos de Buey

Keyword – Music
Trefwoorden – Pop and rock, Music, Culture
Title – Myles Smith: My Mess, My Heart, My Life review – faceless, formulaic mush of Mumfords, Sheeran and Coldplay | Pop and rock | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/alexispetridis
Link – Myles Smith: My Mess, My Heart, My Life review – faceless, formulaic mush of Mumfords, Sheeran and Coldplay | Pop and rock | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-18T11:00:03.000Z
Category – Culture
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/jun/18/myles-smith-my-mess-my-heart-my-life-review

Y ou know what you’re getting with Myles Smith, an artist who set his musical stall out early on. Before he was the winner of the rising star award at the 2025 Brits, he started out at open mic nights, performing selections from the oeuvres of Mumford & Sons, Coldplay and Ed Sheeran, still his avowed biggest influences today. The last in particular proved so impactful on the Luton-born singer that he even plays one of those funny small-scale acoustic guitars that have long been Sheeran’s trademark.

You could therefore deride Smith as someone who is intent on piloting his way to the middle of the road – and who is also a little passe. In 2026, even the world of the nice-guy pop-folk singer-songwriter seems to have moved on a bit, its big names either a touch grittier and more obviously rooted in Americana (Noah Kahan, Jelly Roll), or more flamboyant and knowing (Benson Boone), or, at the very least, bolstered by a traumatic backstory that underpins their lyrics (Alex Warren). But if Smith’s approach is a callback to a past era, nobody seems to have informed the public. His 2024 breakthrough, Stargazing, went platinum in 16 countries; it’s still in the UK Top 100 nearly two years after its release, and the follow-up Nice to Meet You is also a platinum seller. A Minute, a Moment – Smith’s 2025 EP that lasted as long as most albums – sold half a million copies in the US alone.

Playing his debut album proper, it’s hard not to be struck by how indebted Smith still is to the artists he started out covering. From Mumford & Sons, he borrows the stompy bass-drum rhythms that drove I Will Wait or Little Lion Man, and an unfailing devotion to rousing sung-en-masse choruses. From Coldplay comes both a penchant for wordless, sing along vocal hooks – the guy never stops woah-oh-ohing, or indeed woo-ooh-hooing – and echoey big-room ambience, as if the songs are already booming around a vast arena.

And from Ed Sheeran he takes pretty much everything else, up to and including some of the themes of his songs. Much in the style of The A Team, Mary’s Song depicts a drug-addicted but good-hearted sex worker (despite her travails, the listener is assured, “she sings her song and it goes like do-do-do-do”). Dublin Lights, meanwhile, is a frightful bit of faux-Irish fiddle-de-dee about meeting an attractive young lady in the titular city – uillean pipes, “one more Guinness and kiss so sweet” etc – that you would compare to Ed Sheeran’s Galway Girl were it not for the fact that it makes Galway Girl sound as edgy and feral as the Pogues in the era when Spider Stacy used to keep time on stage by repeatedly smashing himself over the head with a metal beer tray. It turns out to have been co-written by Ed Sheeran, information it’s a bit hard to know what to do with. It’s like going to see the Bootleg Beatles and discovering Paul McCartney’s taking the tickets.

It should be pointed out that, frightful fiddle-de-dee notwithstanding, Smith does what he does pretty well. The melody of Dying Days is lovely and so is that of Heaven – even if it takes no imagination whatsoever to picture the latter sung by Chris Martin – and if you’re in the market for a rousing en-masse chorus, Hold Me in the Dark features a doozy. His lyrics, meanwhile, occasionally flicker into life when he moves away from the Sheeranisms and the boilerplate nice-guy pop-folk stuff (“follow your heart wherever it takes you”, “I need you like the air that I breathe”) and delves into his own background: the generational trauma resulting from growing up “in a fractured family” on My Mess; depression and medication on Sertraline. Grandma’s Place might be the best thing here, a sweetly affectionate portrait filled with nice details: the “smell of Dettol and oxtail soup”, the fear of spilling a J2O on his nan’s sofa.

You just wish a little more of him had worked its way into the music. As it is, it’s hard to see what Smith is actually bringing to the party, beyond an amalgamation of his favourite artists: not a note here suggests a man with an original idea in his head, or at the very least, a man capable of stepping out from under the shadow of his influences. Maybe he will one day. Until then, what you’re getting with Myles Smith is more of the same: music that might have been tailor-made for a world of algorithms, forever suggesting you listen to something that sounds like stuff you already know.

This week Alexis listened to

The Velvet Underground and Rico – Sunday Morning A mysterious 7in that obviously isn’t by who it purports to be by, but that nevertheless offers a trombone-led ska take on the banana album’s opening track that’s entirely delightful.

Keyword – World news
Trefwoorden – Russia, Ukraine, Europe, World news
Title – Moscow oil refinery struck in Ukraine’s biggest air raid on city since start of war | Russia | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/peterbeaumont,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/pjotr-sauer
Link – Moscow oil refinery struck in Ukraine’s biggest air raid on city since start of war | Russia | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-18T13:42:00.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/18/moscow-oil-refinery-on-fire-ukraine-drone-stikes

Ukrainian drones have hit several locations across Moscow in Kyiv’s biggest air raid on the city since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, setting a major ⁠oil refinery on fire and forcing evacuations at the country’s largest airport.

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, described the attack as a response to Russia’s striking of a historic Kyiv monastery complex earlier this week.

“We do not want this war and never did,” Zelenskyy said in a voice message to journalists. “But if Ukraine is going to burn, your Moscow will burn too … It is time to end the aggression, time to end this war.”

The scale of the long-range attack, apparently designed to shut down operations at the key oil refinery in the Kapotno area, caught most people by surprise in a city that does not typically warn residents with air raid alarms, and prompted panicked messages on social media.

Footage posted online showed three plumes of smoke rising from the Kapotno refinery. The strike was the second in two days on the facility.

The refinery, one of Moscow’s most important energy facilities, supplies up to 40% of the capital’s petrol and about 50% of its diesel fuel.

Russia said its ⁠air defence systems ​intercepted and ⁠destroyed 555 Ukrainian drones over ⁠multiple ​regions ‌overnight. The number actually shot down could not be independently confirmed.

Vladimir Putin is in Kazan, 430 miles (700km) east of Moscow, hosting leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations as Russia seeks to bolster business and other ties.

Kyiv was hit this week by a major strike of ballistic missiles and drones in a marked escalation of the air war. Putin had warned of impending “systemic strikes” on Ukraine.

The Moscow attack came hours after Zelenskyy said he had held “an important coordination call” with the presidents of the US and France and had won vital pledges of further support from this week’s international G7 summit.

Zelenskyy was expected to hold talks in Brussels on Thursday with Nato and EU leaders, including about the possibility of a system to defend against ballistic missiles. Russia has repeatedly struck Ukraine with those types of missiles, which air defences struggle to counter.

The British defence secretary, Dan Jarvis, announced on Thursday at a meeting of western allies in Brussels that the UK would pay £750m to supply Kyiv with a further 150,000 Ukrainian-made drones and more than 350 air defence missiles.

The funding comes from a £2.26bn loan taken out against the interest generated by Russian central bank assets frozen since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022.

Footage of the Moscow strikes appeared to show the use of Ukrainian Bars hybrid drone-cruise missiles, first used last year. They had been believed to have a range of 600-800km, designed for precision targeting, but their use against Moscow would suggest a longer range.

Ukraine is rapidly catching up with Russia in its ability to mass-produce long-range strike weapons. Kyiv has stepped up its drone strikes on Russia in recent months, hitting oil refineries that fund Moscow’s war chest, as diplomatic talks on ending the conflict remain stalled.

Sergei Sobyanin, Moscow’s mayor, said: “Air defence forces are continuing to repel a large-scale attack. Several drones managed to reach the [Moscow oil refinery].” He claimed ‌about 180 drones heading for the capital were downed.

Sobyanin said emergency crews were working at the site and he also reported damage to Sadovod shopping centre in the south-eastern part of the city. At least seven drones appear to have beaten Russia’s air defences to strike targets in the city.

Footage online appeared to show a Russian portable air defence system operator attempting to shoot down a Ukrainian strike drone moments before it struck the Moscow oil refinery.

Traffic was halted ​on Moscow’s ring road near ⁠the refinery, the broadcaster RIA ​cited ‌the ​interior ministry ​as saying, while air traffic was disrupted at Vnukovo, Sheremetyevo and Zhukovsky airports.

Footage on social media appeared to show a strike on a high-rise building in Zhukovsky district. Sheremetyevo, Moscow’s busiest airport, suspended flights and carried out evacuations. Some people sought shelter in the parking area, the airport said.

In the surrounding ‌Moscow region, a high-rise residential building, an industrial facility and a number of private houses were damaged in the drone attack, the regional governor said.

A strike on Tuesday was understood to have already halted operations at the Kapotno refinery, adding to widespread damage to Russian energy facilities and extending a ​fuel crisis deeper into the country.

Russia, the world’s third biggest oil producer and ‌a major oil and fuel exporter, is to import fuel by sea this month as it seeks to manage a shortage after extensive Ukrainian drone attacks on its refineries.

Russian hardliners called for Moscow to retaliate, with some urging the Kremlin to consider using nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

“What else has to happen before we start fighting for real?” wrote the ultraconservative billionaire Konstantin Malofeev on Telegram. “Why aren’t we using the nuclear weapons that our ancestors created and stockpiled through the efforts of the entire country precisely for moments like this?”

Andrey Gurulyov, a retired lieutenant general and state duma deputy, called for Russia to “strike the enemy mercilessly” in response to the attack. “We need to strengthen our air defence system, but most importantly, we need to hit the enemy,” he told RTVI. “Hit the enemy mercilessly, without overthinking it.”

Kyiv came under air attack this week as Russia launched ballistic missiles at the Ukrainian capital, city officials said, with residents urged to take shelter. Authorities in the north-eastern Ukrainian city of Sumy said one person was killed in a drone attack there. Airstrike alerts were issued for most of Ukraine’s territory.

One person was killed in the Ukrainian ​city of Enerhodar, where most of ‌the staff of the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia ​nuclear power plant live, said the Russian-installed mayor, Maksim ​Pukhov. In Russia’s Belgorod border region, officials said a Ukrainian drone strike killed one man in his car.

On Wednesday, Moscow accused Ukraine of attacking a bus carrying Belarusian children , an accusation Kyiv said was false. In the southern Russian region of Rostov, a Ukrainian drone attack killed one person and caused a fire at two commercial facilities, officials said. Russia and Ukraine deny deliberately targeting civilians.

Additional reporting by Dan Sabbagh; Reuters and AP contributed to this report

Keyword – Science
Trefwoorden – Science, Environment, Climate aid, Plants, World news
Title – Plantwatch: Russian dandelion offers solution to global rubber shortage | Science | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/paulsimons
Link – Plantwatch: Russian dandelion offers solution to global rubber shortage | Science | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-17T05:00:24.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/science/2026/jun/17/plantwatch-russian-dandelion-solution-global-rubber-shortage

T here is a global shortage of natural rubber and dandelions may be coming to the rescue. In the second world war there was such a severe shortage of rubber that the Allies used the Russian dandelion, Taraxacum koksaghyz , from Kazakhstan. Soviet scientists found the dandelion roots produced enough white milky latex to make natural rubber, but when the war ended producers returned to the traditional rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis .

But the demand for rubber is now increasing, with rubber trees suffering from a fungal disease and the impacts of extreme weather caused by the climate crisis. So, scientists are looking again at using dandelions, with the added benefit that they grow in temperate climates, are a sustainable crop that do not need pesticides and lots of water, and don’t lead to the deforestation common in tropical rubber tree plantations.

A biotech partnership in Norwich is now developing a high-yielding Russian dandelion with large, fast-growing roots, housed in glasshouses and grown without soil using a misty air system. The aim is to produce about 3,000 tonnes of rubber a year. And in Germany bicycle tyres have already been made from rubber using dandelions bred for increased latex.

Keyword – World news
Trefwoorden – Germany, Opera, Culture, Women, Music, UK news, Judith Kerr, Europe, World news
Title – Lost for years, the music of The Tiger Who Came to Tea author’s mother is heard again | Germany | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/kateconnolly
Link – Lost for years, the music of The Tiger Who Came to Tea author’s mother is heard again | Germany | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-17T07:00:26.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/17/julia-kerr-music-mother-tiger-who-came-to-tea-author-judith

Albert Einstein throws a party at his lakeside house at which he presents to his guests his latest invention: a time machine.

So opens the opera Chronoplan, started in the late 1920s by the composer Julia Kerr, who took the score with her when she fled Nazi Germany with her family in early 1933, its planned premiere having been halted following Hitler’s takeover.

The wider family story was chronicled in When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, an autobiographical novel by Kerr’s late daughter, Judith, in which passing references are made to her mother playing the piano. But Kerr’s reputation as one of the most gifted musicians of her time was widely forgotten after the family’s dramatic escape, which brought her composing career to an end.

Until now. On a recent blustery afternoon, descendants who had travelled from London gathered in the garden of Einstein’s former summer house in Caputh, south-west of Berlin, in the location where Chronoplan was set, to celebrate the life and works of Julia Kerr. Compositions which had been found wrongly catalogued and gathering dust in archives were performed by the singer-actor Ruth Rosenfeld and pianist Norbert Biermann, who has spent much time reconstructing them.

Julia and her husband, Alfred, who was considered the leading theatre critic in Weimar-era Berlin, were occasional guests at Einstein’s house, along with other cultural figureheads of the day, such as the composer Richard Strauss and the authors George Bernard Shaw and Arthur Schnitzler, all of whom feature in the opera.

The wooden house, financed by the prize money from Einstein’s Nobel prize, was where friends enjoyed intimate intellectual soirees and boat trips on the nearby lake before Einstein, who like the Kerrs was Jewish, and many others in their circle were forced into exile.

Christian Leitmeir, a historical musicologist from the University of Oxford, first came up with the idea of looking into Julia Kerr’s musical life after reading When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit to his son. “There were fleeting descriptions of her playing the piano and composing. I was intrigued, but I could find no reference to her in the encyclopedia of female composers,” he said.

After searching in the archives of the Academy of Arts in Berlin he discovered Kerr’s handwritten scores, which had been incorrectly catalogued under her husband’s name, in the literature and drama section.

Meanwhile, Sonja Westerbeck, dramatic adviser to the State theatre in Mainz, rediscovered Chronoplan, which was given its world stage premiere earlier this year, almost a century after it was written.

Westerbeck, who was at the Caputh gathering, said: “Julia Kerr has spent too long as the sub-clause in the story – it’s time to bring her back to the fore”.

The Kerr family was invited to Berlin by the curators of a new Exile Museum due to open in early 2028 which will bring together Julia, Alfred and Judith’s stories, alongside those of others forced to flee.

The rediscovery of Kerr’s work comes amid a surge in scholarly and public interest in forgotten female composers, many of whom have been unjustly expunged from the history of classical music.

George Kerr, a civil servant who is Julia’s great-grandson, said he had only recently become aware of Julia’s artistic life.

“I’m very inspired to learn of how immensely talented and creative she was,” he said. “Yet she was compelled by circumstances to put the composing aside in order to provide for her family. She’d have been delighted I’m sure that such a keen interest is now being shown in her work when she was so overlooked in life.”

As readers of her novel will know, Judith’s stuffed pink rabbit was left behind in Berlin, but Julia managed to take the score of her incomplete opera with her, across half of Europe . But on arriving in England, she had to put her ambitions aside to become the family’s breadwinner, working as a secretary and translator, as Alfred spoke no English.

After his death in 1948, she returned to Berlin and worked as an interpreter at the Nuremberg Trials and for the US president John F Kennedy when he visited Berlin in 1963.

In 1952, Chronoplan was recorded by Bavarian Broadcasting, becoming the first opera to have a radio premiere, in what Leitmeir said was a reflection of how visionary the work was. “Her music was very eclectic,” he said. “She was like a magpie absorbing all the influences around her from a range of different genres.”

Corresponding with her family, Julia called the six days spent recording it “the most wonderful of my life. Darlings, practically everything sounded exactly as I have heard it in my head for 20 years. Nobody can take that away from me ever and I know now that I can write music,” she wrote. Julia Kerr died in 1965.

Her grandson Tim Kerr, a retired high court judge, remembered her as a “powerful figure, very single-minded”. He added: “She’d play lovely little tunes she had written on the piano and I’d play the same melodies on the recorder. But I really knew nothing about her music, or that she had been or would be taken seriously as a composer. As is often the case, her life has been filtered through that of her husband, and perhaps to an even larger extent overshadowed by that of her daughter, Aunt Judy, who was more famous than all of them put together.”

Best known in the UK for her picture book The Tiger Who Came to Tea , Judith Kerr, who died aged 95 in 2019, is most famous in Germany for When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, where it appears consistently in the school curriculum.

In a letter to her mother in 1952, Judith Kerr recalled how unhappy Julia had been at not being able to have her works performed.

Keyword – Global development
Trefwoorden – Taliban, Afghanistan, Internet, Smartphones, World news, Human rights, South and central Asia, Technology
Title – Taliban order ban on smartphones as officials shown destroying devices | Taliban | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/aisha-down
Link – Taliban order ban on smartphones as officials shown destroying devices | Taliban | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-18T05:00:01.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/jun/18/taliban-ban-smartphones-officials-shown-destroying-devices

The Taliban have ordered a sweeping ban on the use of smartphones by government officials – in what some analysts say could foreshadow broader, population-level restrictions.

In a directive issued by the Taliban’s military courts and reviewed by the Guardian, the ban was to take effect this week and prohibits “high rank, low rank, general mujahideen, or service staff” from using mobile phones.

In one video published online, a Taliban official appears to be shown reading the banning order from his phone while the other person is shown breaking phones.

The order states: “If anyone uses one, their mobile phone will be smashed and legal and sharia punishment will be imposed on the violator.” It adds that any exemptions require a written decree from the Taliban supreme leader, Hibatullah Akhundzada. The Guardian was unable to reach a Taliban spokesperson.

Reports and sources inside Afghanistan say that the bans are being implemented in an “ad-hoc” way – in some areas targeting only government officials, in some cities and provinces extending to women, civilians, medical workers, schoolteachers and students.

“A lot of things happen at the local level, because of what someone local has decided. But also, it could be a prelude to a blanket ban and they are just testing the waters,” said an analyst who works on Afghanistan.

The bans come after escalating efforts by the Taliban to completely cut Afghanistan off from the global internet. In September, authorities ordered an internet blackout which lasted two days and was vaguely justified by concerns over pornography; the order said the cutoff was to “prevent immorality”.

The Afghanistan analyst said that cutoff was done hastily and with a lack of foresight. It froze commerce across the country and affected emergency services and aviation.

“The private sector was freaking out, the banking sector was freaking out, even their own people – the security sector and the supreme leader’s office – and they realised ‘OK guys, we didn’t really think this through’, so they put it back on,” the analyst said.

There are probably several factors driving the latest ban. First, the street demonstrations that broke out in the western city of Herat after the Taliban arrested women and girls for “improper hijab”. In the course of the protests, Taliban forces appeared to fire into a crowd and killed at least two people.

This event may have provided some impetus for the restrictions, said the analyst. “The videos that came out of the protests in Herat raised a lot of alarms. The emirate was trying to contain it. In the beginning, they denied it. They said, no, no, this didn’t happen. Then the videos started coming out.”

However, the Taliban were pushing smartphone bans before the protests – for reasons including fear of internal leaks, and worries that they were eroding productivity among officials.

In the province of Herat, in western Afghanistan, two government employees said that bans on smartphones had been in place for months.

“About two months ago they said not to bring your mobile phones to the office,” said one. “Me and a few colleagues didn’t take it seriously. They confiscated them, and after we made a fuss about it, they smashed our phones” – a loss he estimated at about 8,000 afghanis (£95).

The Taliban worry that “people are just on their phones all the time and they’re not working. And, you know, smartphones shouldn’t belong at work,” said the analyst.

Then there is the problem of leaks: there are a lot of them, said the analyst, because government officials are using their smartphones to photograph documents – and record the occasional meeting – and then allowing these, one way or another, to make it out into the public before the supreme leader signs it off.

Employees wasting time online and leaking information may be part of the usual challenges of governance. The difference, said the analyst, is the Taliban’s approach to it.

“Smartphones and being online affecting productivity to a certain extent is universal. The difference here is that I haven’t seen any other countries legislating against it.”

Zahra Nader is editor-in-chief at Zan Times

Keyword – Travel
Trefwoorden – Camping holidays, Oxford holidays, Cycling holidays, England holidays, United Kingdom holidays, Travel, Cycling, Life and style
Title – Cycling in the tracks of Britain’s camping pioneers from Oxford to Surrey | Camping holidays | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/phoebe-smith
Link – Cycling in the tracks of Britain’s camping pioneers from Oxford to Surrey | Camping holidays | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-17T06:00:25.000Z
Category – Lifestyle
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2026/jun/17/camping-and-caravanning-club-bike-ride-oxford-to-surrey

S kylarks call out a cascading trill as I pedal between the pink and white hawthorn blossoms that make my path look like a May Day parade. I’m on the outskirts of Oxford, a city I thought I knew well, yet as I follow the National Cycle Route 57 on the e-bike I’d picked up in Jericho, it feels as though I’ve discovered a secret passageway.

This year the Camping and Caravanning Club (CCC) turns 125 – and I’m celebrating with a 60-mile cycling and camping trip, leaving from the city where the organisation was born and heading to Walton-on-Thames to stay at one of the oldest campsites in the CCC network.

The CCC began life as the Association of Cycle Campers before becoming the club it is today. It all started when founder Thomas Hiram Holding, already a keen camper, was visiting his friend Rev EC Pitt-Johnson’s Oxford home in 1901 and they decided there was enough demand and interest in the hobby to form a club. They elected each other president and secretary respectively and the rest, as they say, is history.

Back then, Holding had a “safety cycle” – not dissimilar to a modern-day bike, which replaced the tricky-to-master penny farthing. He proudly invented much camping gear, too, from early lightweight tents and folding poles to cycle touring bags. “Holding understood the health and wellbeing benefits people gained from camping,” explains Jo Cartwright, archivist at the CCC, when I tell her my e-bike plan, “so I think he would’ve embraced any new form of transport.”

While all-singing, all-dancing motorhomes and caravans are ubiquitous these days, and along with pre-pitched glamping options are squeezing the space left for regular campers, the CCC assure me that humble tents are very much still welcomed on its sites. So with mine firmly stowed on my e-bike, I set off, deciding to break my journey with an overnight stop at Bella Vista Camping in Radnage, a family-run club site that sits on the Chiltern Cycleway.

Quiet roads lead me east from Oxford toward Wheatley and Thame, where I stop at the Old Fisherman to grab a sandwich and coffee, before continuing on the Phoenix Trail (part of Route 57), its straight lines a nod to its former life as the disused railway track to Princes Risborough. Red kites replace skylarks as I glide on the easy track away from any road traffic, passing the old station building at Bledlow and going under the former railway bridge and past the abandoned platform where Towersey Halt stop, closed since 1963, would have been.

Before he started the Association of Cycle Campers, Holding’s method of camping – after a childhood wagon trek on the prairies of North America had him hooked – was by canoe in Ireland. That was until a friend of his in England announced that he and his wife were planning to spend a week camping by tandem bike in Britain, and asked him to come to help with attaching his kit to the frame – after which he wrote, “We succeeded,” and declared in his book, Cycle and Camp, published in 1897, “There was something in it.”

While more people arrive in motorhomes than by bike these days, I’m pleased to see that Bella Vista Camping still has a huge field for tents, next to a paddock of Soay sheep and alpacas, and there are hot showers and proper toilets in a big mess tent.

After dinner at the Crown Pub , just a five-minute walk away, and a quiet night’s sleep while my bike battery charged, I am ready for the next part of my cycle tour to Walton-on-Thames. Opened in 1913, the Walton CCC campsite was described in a Golden Jubilee Souvenir booklet from 1963 as a place full of “homemade tents, bamboo poles, hurricane lamps and wood fires”.

Curious at what I’d encounter now, I leave the highs of the Chilterns and Route 57 to bear south on country lanes that skirt the edge of High Wycombe, through the busy streets of the Thames-side towns of Marlow and Cookham, and on narrow cycle paths between Maidenhead and Eton. When I stop for lunch at the Crocus cafe in Dorney, I’m amazed at how curious people are about my set-up. I feel a little like Holding, showcasing another way of holidaying in Britain.

Windsor Great Park is an unexpected highlight – its easy roads contrasting starkly with the quite hairy gravel tracks I descend into Egham. But then designated bike lanes through Staines and Chertsey see me ticking off my remaining miles with ease.

A final treat is a ferry crossing over the Thames at Shepperton to Weybridge – fitting given that the very first campsite in the CCC network used to sit on one of the islands here (it closed in 1909).

Given that the Walton campsite has no facilities, it’s primarily frequented by motorhomes and caravans that have their own chemical toilets. I’ve brought my own eco-friendly option, though, in the form of a Poopaloo dry-powder toilet. My pitch was next to a small hut filled with sepia photographs of tents from 100 years ago.

That night I read Holding’s The Campers Handbook, published in 1908, and chuckle at the description of the correct attire for female cycle campers including a skirt “that finishes three inches off the ground, with no slippery lining to avoid catching on the knickerbockers”.

The next day, without a knickerbocker (or skirt) in sight, I undertake one of Holding’s favoured activities: canoeing. Swapping pedals for oars, thanks to owner Andy of Hampton Court Paddle Sports , which is located just a 10-minute (3-mile) cycle from my tent, I spend most of the day on the water, sightseeing at a slow pace, stopping for falafel at Mezzet Box (beats the fried herring and boiled trout of Holding’s day), and ending with a drink at the Anglers , built on these banks in 1870, my canoe tied up beside my table.

Things have undoubtedly changed for campers over the past 125 years. The tents – A-frames and “wigwams” made of silk – have been swapped for nylon tunnels with inflatable poles, campervans have overtaken bicycles, and even, at Walton, the Thames itself has been rerouted so that it no longer sweeps by the pitches. But not all change is bad. Back then, strict gender rules meant that, as a lone woman, I wouldn’t have been permitted to do this trip, never mind in leggings. And an e-bike made the whole experience (and hills) much more enjoyable.

Holding called cycle camping a “power” that helped popularise camping – and the CCC’s membership reflects that, having grown from its initial 150 to more than 300,000 households. And though camping using a bicycle is now a minority pursuit, after my weekend tracing old routes and visiting the first campsite, I like to think that within the secret passageways of towns and cities, there are those of us who realise that the best journeys are still powered by pedals and curiosity. eBike hire was provided by Bainton Bikes in Oxford ( e-bikes from £65 for 3 days ). A pitch was given by Bella Vista Radnage (from £19 a night) and Walton-on-Thames campsite (from £20 for two nights members, £35 non-members). Annual CCC membership from £56.95

Keyword – World news
Trefwoorden – US-Israel war on Iran, World news, Trump administration, Donald Trump, US politics, US news, Iran, Israel, Middle East and north Africa, Nuclear weapons
Title – Trump’s Iran deal is result of unrealistic ambitions for an untenable war | US-Israel war on Iran | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/roth-andrew
Link – Trump’s Iran deal is result of unrealistic ambitions for an untenable war | US-Israel war on Iran | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-17T22:17:12.000Z
Category – News
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jun/17/trumps-iran-deal-is-result-of-unrealistic-ambitions-for-an-untenable-war

As the adage goes: no plan of battle survives first contact with the enemy.

Donald Trump entered the war with Iran with maximalist goals: eliminating the country’s nuclear programme, destroying its ballistic missile programme and ending its support for regional military groups including Hezbollah and Hamas.

He exits it with Iran’s word not to build a bomb and to hold further nuclear discussions, no mention in writing of the ballistic missile programme and with Hezbollah celebrating a “victory” as the memorandum of understanding (MOU) instituted a ceasefire in Lebanon, where Israel has seized a swath of the country as a “buffer zone”.

Iran’s key asset ended up being the strait of Hormuz, the waterway that almost every previous simulation of the war predicated would be quickly cut off by Iran . To reopen the strait, the administration was forced to fold on its broader goals or face what Trump called a “worldwide depression”.

Barbara Leaf, a distinguished diplomatic fellow at the Middle East Institute and a former US assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs, said the US had started the war with “disastrously unrealistic assessments of the regime’s resilience”, as well as Iran’s readiness to seize the strait of Hormuz and attack US and foreign facilities in the Gulf.

“The US rapidly found that overmatching an adversary that has spent four decades honing its asymmetrical warfighting doctrine and skills would not be the war it had prepared for,” she said. “And the rapid escalation of economic pain globally that eventually came to American consumers made the war all the more untenable.”

Now, she added, Trump faced a conundrum: “He doesn’t want to go back to warfighting. But he’s tossed away so much of the leverage he might have had if the war had ended in the first or second week.”

It has been clear for days that the Trump administration was skittish about putting out the text of its MOU . It was only finally read out by a senior administration official on a briefing call on Wednesday, and the White House still has not published a copy online.

The reasoning is clear: many in Trump’s own party will hate this deal. The outgoing US senator Bill Cassidy, of Louisiana, called it the “worst foreign policy blunder in decades”.

“Reagan is rolling over in his grave,” he wrote. “Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future. Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal.”

Thom Tillis, Republican senator for North Carolina, said the 14 points published on Wednesday were “not sufficient for me to say it’s a good deal”.

Trump has for years attacked the Obama-era joint comprehensive plan of action (JCPOA), saying that the former president had sent over “pallets of cash” to bribe Iran into not making a bomb. But when it came time for Trump to make his own peace with Iran, he found himself justifying the potential turnover of a far larger set of assets – as well as other financial incentives, backing a ceasefire in Lebanon between Israel and Hezbollah, and allowing Iran and Oman to discuss the future of the strait.

“It’s not our money, it’s their money, and we froze it at a certain point in time,” Trump said of the frozen Iranian assets. “I guess we’re going to have to give it back.”

At moments on Wednesday, it almost seemed that Trump was echoing Iranian talking points, saying that if US ally Saudi Arabia has ballistic missiles then Iran had a point that it should too. As to the potential for Iran’s uranium enrichment, he said: “It’s a little hard when other people have it, other adjoining states have it, and you’re not letting them have it for purposes of electricity and things like that. You have to use a little common sense.”

The MOU was ultimately a pragmatic decision by the Trump administration that the conflict must end as quickly as possible despite the political cost. Leaf said she was “deeply relieved that this ill-conceived war appears to be ending”, but added that there was “little to ensure that the administration won’t find itself slipping back into conflict”.

Robert Malley, a former state department official and negotiator on the JCPOA , wrote that there is not much value in comparing the two agreements, which were “fundamentally different agreements that emerged from starkly different contexts”.

“The bottom line is that the MOU is far preferable to any of the alternatives on offer,” he wrote. “Period.”

Keyword – Sport
Trefwoorden – Royal Ascot, Horse racing, Horse racing tips, Ascot, Sport
Title – Royal Ascot 2026, day three: news, tips and more on Gold Cup day – live | Royal Ascot | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/gregwood,https://www.theguardian.com/profile/tonypaley
Link – Royal Ascot 2026, day three: news, tips and more on Gold Cup day – live | Royal Ascot | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-18T14:25:44.000Z
Category – Sport
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2026/jun/18/royal-ascot-2026-day-three-news-tips-and-more-on-gold-cup-day-live-horse-racing

3.40 RIBBLESDALE STAKES betting

Legacy Link – 7/4

Gilded Prize – 4/1

Earth Shot – 4/1

Composing – 9/1

Johanna Walsh – 11/1

Brilliant Star – 25/1

Warriors Whisper – 28/1

Golden Orbit – 33/1

BAR 33/1

Betting via Oddschecker

3.40 RIBBLESDALE STAKES preview

Sound the stat klaxon, it’s time for the one about Oaks runners in the Ribblesdale as Legacy Link attempts to win Ascot’s Group Two for three-year-old fillies having run in the Epsom Classic last time out. A total of 33 fillies have lined up for this race after running in the Oaks since 2010 and just two have won, with the list of beaten runners including three favourites and seven more that set off at 5-1 or shorter. It is a big ask, in other words, and Legacy Link , the Epsom runner-up behind impressive winner Thundering On, will deserve huge credit if she can pull it off on what will be her third start in just over a month. Earth Shot and French challenger Gilded Prize are the likeliest opponents to give her something to think about, and while neither managed to win last time out, both look sure to blossom over this trip. And there is a royal runner to look out for too, although Golden Orbit, a home-bred daughter of Sea The Stars who was a beaten favourite last time, is friendless in the market at 33-1 and the first-time blinkers will need to spark serious improvement.

Timeform top-rated: Legacy Link

SELECTION: EARTH SHOT

3.05 KING GEORGE V STAKES HANDICAP result

1 Enceladus (R L Moore) 7-1 2 Al Azd (Cieren Fallon) 11-1 3 Believed (Oisin Murphy) 14-1 4 Heyzoom (Saffie Osborne) 6-1

3.05 KING GEORGE V STAKES HANDICAP And they’re off … in the early stages Blue Hercules takes the field along … Guildmaster is also prominent. … Golden Knight is last … Birgham Dub had a good spot … and they turn for home … Heyzoom tries … Enceladus comes up the inside to win for Ryan Moore and that man, Joseph O’Brien! Another winner for the son of Aidan – he’s had four already this week.

3.05 KING GEORGE V STAKES HANDICAP betting

Cannes – 4/1

Into The Light – 5/1

Heyzoom – 6/1

Enceladus – 8/1

Tierra Del Torro – 10/1

Golden Knight – 11/1

Al Azd – 11/1

Waterford Castle – 14/1

BAR 14/1

Betting via Oddschecker

3.05 KING GEORGE V STAKES HANDICAP preview

Plenty of future Group-race winners have won this handicap for three-year-olds in the past, and plenty have been beaten in it too, as it is a race that generally throws up a hard luck story or three. All but a handful of the 19 runners have shown enough promise already to be credible winners if they continue to progress, with Charlie Appleby’s Into the Light,Heyzoom (Owen Burrows) and Tierra Del Toro (Ralph Beckett) probably the most obvious names to note, alongside Joseph O’Brien’s Enceladus, with Ryan Moore booked to ride in the absence of a runner from the trainer’s dad’s stable. O’Brien jnr is having a stormer of a meeting so far, and was tied with O’Brien snr on three winners at the top of the trainers’ table after day two, and Enceladus is one of four from the stable in this race, including Cannes, the favourite, who got off the mark at the third attempt at Leopardstown in May. Heyzoom posted an excellent winning time when successful over 10 furlongs at Newbury last time, while Into The Light has been narrowly beaten on his last two starts but was given a lot to do by William Buick over a two-furlong shorter trip last time.

Timeform top-rated: Heyzoom.

SELECTION: HEYZOOM

2.30 CHESHAM STAKES result

1 Nola Soul (Seamie Heffernan) 11-2 2 On Just Terms (Dylan Browne McMonagle) 28-1 3 Aperoll (P J Dobbs) 12-1 14 ran Also: Non Runner: 1 No 1 Aix La Chapelle (11-4) was withdrawn not under orders. Rule 4 applies to all bets. Deduct 25p in the £.

2.30 CHESHAM STAKES The favourite Aix La Chapelle is OUT of the race after rearing up and getting his leg stuck on the next stall … And they’re off … and Aperoll has the early lead … Sword Salute is prominent … South Dakota comes with a run … Nola Soul has gor the lead and fights them off for victory.

Ombudsman tops with Timeform Ombudsman is the new highest-rated Flat horse in Europe with Timeform, following the successful defence of his Prince of Wales’s Stakes crown at Royal Ascot on Wednesday.

John and Thady Gosden’s son of Night Of Thunder powered clear of some high-class rivals, including Arc winner Daryz, whose rating drops 1lb to 131, to win by four lengths, earning a Timeform rating of 134 (from 130).

A rise of 4lb means Ombudsman usurps French star Calandagan (133) at the head of Timeform’s top Flat horses in Europe ratings, while he rates just 3lb behind the highest-rated horse in the world, Hong Kong sprinter Ka Ying Rising (137).

Timeform’s middle-distance handicapper, Rory King said: “It has been decided to award a rating of 134 to Ombudsman for his emphatic repeat win in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, the highest achieved by a horse in Europe since Baaeed.

“That puts him just ahead of his Champion Stakes conqueror Calandagan which required plenty of deliberation, but, on balance it’s a decision that looks justified given the time and closing sectionals of Wednesday’s success.

“What’s more, Buick appeared to have learnt from that Champion Stakes and, in a race that panned out very similarly, bided his time for longer to deploy Ombudsman’s scintillating turn of foot to best effect.

“Being ridden like that could help him turn the tables on Calandagan when they meet again, for all there’s clearly very little between those two top-class five-year-olds.” Hoofnote: Ka Ying Rising, the great Hong Kong sprinter, is rated 137 so still best in the world!

2.30 CHESHAM STAKES betting

Aix La Chapelle – 11/4

Nola Soul – 4/1

Sea Venture – 7/1

South Dakota – 8/1

Revels – 10/1

Aperoll – 11/1

On Just Terms – 14/1

Time For The Moon – 16/1

BAR – 16/1

Betting via Oddschecker

2.30 CHESHAM STAKES preview

Aidan O’Brien’s first chance of the afternoon to get the one winner he needs to be the first trainer to a century at Royal Ascot comes via his colts Aix La Chapelle and second-string South Dakota, in a race that he has won five times in the last decade. Aix La Chapelle looked very rough around the edges on his debut at the Curragh just a fortnight ago but still ran out an easy winner and should find plenty for the experience. He is drawn in stall five, though, which is less than ideal on the evidence from the straight course over the first two days. Another leading Irish-trained runner, Fozzy Stack’s Nola Soul, also overcame greenness to win on debut and could give the favourite plenty to think about, while George Scott’s Sea Venture found all the trouble going on her first start over six furlongs before showing a smart turn of foot to win with plenty to spare. As a daughter of the Derby winner, Sea The Stars, she looks certain to improve for the extra furlong today.

Timeform top-rated: Aix La Chapelle

SELECTION: SEA VENTURE

Haslam in focus at Royal meeting

The 86-year-old Nicky Haslam, who is presenting one of the prizes today at Royal Ascot, has led a full life. He was (accurately) described as “legendary interior designer, writer, social arbiter, partygoer, magazine editor, cabaret singer, art director, and indefatigable man-about-town” in one profile this year. Haslam has a reputation for being the “best-connected man in Britain” and “every Christmas since 2018, he has produced a tea towel that lists 40 things, people and sayings ‘Nicky Haslam finds common’, the unifying theme being that they tend to be middlebrow.”

His latest list, a viral tongue-in-cheek guide to what the society interior designer deems terribly unchic, revealed at the end of 2025 includes: Technology & Hobbies: Air fryers, locking your car in your drive, playing Sudoku, and the Nobel Prize. Slang & Catchphrases: “What’s not to like?”, “Bums on seats,” saying “the countryside” (instead of just “the country”), and saying “The Speccie” for The Spectator . People & Aesthetics: Stephen Fry, Antony Gormley sculptures, Beefeaters, and couture trainers. Etiquette: Clapping the chef in a restaurant, owning a Roberts radio, and referring to Stonehenge. So now you know. I reckon he would be an excellent lunch companion at the meeting. He also looks very dapper on arrival at the track this morning.

Gosden and O’Brien rivalry crackles in Gold Cup

The rivalry between top trainers John Gosden and Aidan O’Brien is a long way short of a feud – “Aidan and I are big rivals”, Gosden said on Wednesday, “but we get on and we tease each other a lot. There’s no harm in that and it’s a little bit of banter.”

But it still makes for an interesting undercurrent as Gosden’s Trawlerman, bidding to become only the second eight-year-old winner since 1900, takes on the up-and-coming Scandinavia, last year’s St Leger winner, in the feature event of the week.

Gosden’s “teasing” has included frequent references to the big teams of runners that Ballydoyle sends to many Group Ones, and when O’Brien suggested last autumn that he would love to see Ombudsman, the winner of Wednesday’s Prince of Wales’s Stakes, line up for the Irish Champion Stakes, Gosden responded that his stable star would not “appreciate running against multiple entries from one stable on a track with a short straight.”

The possibility that Ballydoyle was employing “team tactics” with its runners was also highlighted after Tuesday’s St James’s Palace Stakes, when Christophe Soumillon, on the O’Brien second-string, Puerto Rico, picked up an eight-day ban for riding “in a manner to benefit” his stable companion and second-favourite, Gstaad.

There is little chance of a dust-up over tactics in the Gold Cup, however, as Scandinavia is O’Brien’s only runner in the race and Trawlerman is likely to make his own running. The regular to-and-fro between the two trainers, though, will add extra spice to the closing stages if Trawlerman and Scandinavia are duking it out in the final furlong.

6.10 BUCKINGHAM PALACE STAKES HANDICAP preview

The money is all for runners in high-numbered stalls in the finale, and that’s hardly surprising given the way that races on the straight course have been unfolding this week. Jack Channon’s Mezcala, in stall 30, is currently a narrow favourite and remains feasibly handicapped dropping back to seven furlongs from a mile, while Cosi Bello (26) was a bit better than his narrow winning margin might imply at Haydock last time and also has form in a big field on this course. Elerak, highest of all in 31, is also attracting support to give Billy Loughnane another winner at the meeting, while Blue Brother, unraced since suffering all manner of bad luck when fancied for the Hunt Cup here last summer, is another fascinating contender from stall 28.

Timeform top-rated: Dance In The Storm

SELECTION: BLUE BROTHER

5.35 HAMPTON COURT STAKES preview

Not the loftiest event on the Royal Ascot schedule by any means, but still an interesting contest for three-year-olds that are just below the top rung, for the moment at least, and it occasionally highlights a colt on the way to better things. Endorsement, the Aidan O’Brien-trained favourite, was still engaged in the Derby until quite late in the day, and drops back to 10 furlongs having skated up in a Listed race over a mile-and-a-half just a fortnight ago. Maho Bay too was seen as a possible for a run in the Derby until blotting his copy book by finishing fourth behind Maltese Cross in the Lingfield Derby Trial, but the winner there went on to finish second at Epsom and so the form may well be better than it seems. The list of Derby trial disappointments also includes Morshdi, fifth in the Dante, while Oxagon, the Craven Stakes winner in April, has failed to build on that in two runs since, though the latest was admittedly a Classic as he finished 12 th of 16 in the French Derby at Chantilly. Generic, meanwhile, was seven lengths behind Constitution River – surely the best three-year-old colt seen out this year – in the Dee Stakes at Chester, having only started his racing career in March, and will also be bang there on that form with only marginal improvement.

Timeform top-rated: Endorsement.

SELECTION: GENERIC

4.50 BRITANNIA STAKES preview

This straight-mile handicap for three-year-olds is, for me at least, the toughest Royal Ascot test of them all from a betting point of view – looking down the list of previous winners, I’m fairly sure that Perotto, in 2021, is the only winner I’ve had this century – and this year’s renewal looks as competitive as always. It looks as though I’ve managed to find the favourite, though, as David Marnane’s Jamestown has attracted plenty of support this morning, and has both the high draw and the run style that you need to be looking for on the straight course this week. A list of dangerous opponents is effectively everything else – even the 80-1 shot Winding Stream is within 7lb of the top-rated horse on Timeform’s numbers and was racing in Group company last time – but We’re Goosers is sure to be popular as a result of his nine-and-a-half length win last time, and so too Organise, from the John & Thady Gosden yard, who was touched off in a well-run race last time and sports first-time cheekpieces today. Moonfall, an eye-catcher at Chester in May, and Exclusive Code, the winner of a big-field maiden at Newbury, are also on the short-list, but frankly, your guess is as good as mine.

Timeform top-rated: We’re Goosers.

SELECTION: JAMESTOWN

An inaugural “Royal Ascot colour of the year” has been introduced this year, and on Gold Cup day guests were encouraged to wear their best “bright tomato” shade as part of the dress code. This chap got the memo.

Oddschecker market movers

Trawlerman – 9/4 from 3/1

Cannes – 4/1 from 7/1

Gilded Prize – 7/2 from 9/2

4.15 GOLD CUP preview

The staying division is currently missing a truly “public” horse like the three-time winner, Stradivarius, but Trawlerman, last year’s winner, will be a stern test for the posse of four-year-olds in this year’s Gold Cup field that could conceivably run up a sequence over the next few years if all goes well. The list is headed by Aidan O’Brien’s Scandinavia, last year’s St Leger winner , who arrives in Berkshire looking for a sixth straight success, while Rahiebb and Carmers, second and fifth at Doncaster, are also looking to establish themselves as Cup horses with a win in the most prestigious staying event of them all. Other live runners include Al Riffa, last season’s Irish St Leger winner, for the Joseph O’Brien stable, and George Scott’s Caballo De Mar, a Group One winner over two miles in France last time out. My idea of the best bet in the race, though, is Carmers, on the basis that Trawlerman missed his intended prep race in May and may be slightly short of his best, while Paddy Twomey’s runner – who beat both Scandinavia and Rahiebb in the Queen’s Vase here last summer – has as much chance as either of his fellow four-year-olds of finding the necessary improvement stepping up to two-and-a-half miles.

Timeform top-rated: Trawlerman

SELECTION: CARMERS

Royal Ascot Procession List

1st Carriage The King The Queen The Earl of Snowdon Ms Isabelle de la Bruyère

2nd Carriage The Princess Royal Vice Admiral Sir Tim Laurence The Duke of Edinburgh The Duchess of Edinburgh

3rd Carriage Princess Zahra Aga Khan HH Sheikh Hamad bin Abdullah al-Thani Mrs Zara Tindall Mr Willie Mullins

4th Carriage Lord Cavendish Lady Cavendish Mr Stanley Tucci Ms Felicity Blunt Stanley Tucci is in the carriages today. An acclaimed actor, of course, he’s also well known for his cooking so perhaps he helped with luncheon at Windsor Castle to which the carriage guests are invited before their trip down the track. Now you know why the racing doesn’t start till 2.30pm!

Andrew is innocent!

I know you would miss the regular royal spot ahead of the Royal Procession list announcement at noon if we didn’t share some and today’s concerns Lady Victoria Hervey who has arrived at the races today. For those unawarer she’s a British socialite and former model who dated Prince Andrew (now Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor) briefly in 1999. Throughout the fallout from his associations with Jeffrey Epstein, she has remained one of the prince’s most vocal defenders. In an interview with LBC in February , not only did she admit to being named in the Epstein files herself, but branded anyone who wasn’t as a “loser”. With friends like this …

3.40 RIBBLESDALE STAKES preview

Sound the stat klaxon, it’s time for the one about Oaks runners in the Ribblesdale as Legacy Link attempts to win Ascot’s Group Two for three-year-old fillies having run in the Epsom Classic last time out. A total of 33 fillies have lined up for this race after running in the Oaks since 2010 and just two have won, with the list of beaten runners including three favourites and seven more that set off at 5-1 or shorter. It is a big ask, in other words, and Legacy Link , the Epsom runner-up behind impressive winner Thundering On, will deserve huge credit if she can pull it off on what will be her third start in just over a month. Earth Shot and French challenger Gilded Prize are the likeliest opponents to give her something to think about, and while neither managed to win last time out, both look sure to blossom over this trip. And there is a royal runner to look out for too, although Golden Orbit, a home-bred daughter of Sea The Stars who was a beaten favourite last time, is friendless in the market at 33-1 and the first-time blinkers will need to spark serious improvement.

Timeform top-rated: Legacy Link

SELECTION: EARTH SHOT

3.05 KING GEORGE V STAKES HANDICAP preview

Plenty of future Group-race winners have won this handicap for three-year-olds in the past, and plenty have been beaten in it too, as it is a race that generally throws up a hard luck story or three. All but a handful of the 19 runners have shown enough promise already to be credible winners if they continue to progress, with Charlie Appleby’s Into the Light,Heyzoom (Owen Burrows) and Tierra Del Toro (Ralph Beckett) probably the most obvious names to note, alongside Joseph O’Brien’s Enceladus, with Ryan Moore booked to ride in the absence of a runner from the trainer’s dad’s stable. O’Brien jnr is having a stormer of a meeting so far, and was tied with O’Brien snr on three winners at the top of the trainers’ table after day two, and Enceladus is one of four from the stable in this race, including Cannes, the favourite, who got off the mark at the third attempt at Leopardstown in May. Heyzoom posted an excellent winning time when successful over 10 furlongs at Newbury last time, while Into The Light has been narrowly beaten on his last two starts but was given a lot to do by William Buick over a two-furlong shorter trip last time.

Timeform top-rated: Heyzoom.

SELECTION: HEYZOOM

2.30 CHESHAM STAKES preview

Aidan O’Brien’s first chance of the afternoon to get the one winner he needs to be the first trainer to a century at Royal Ascot comes via his colts Aix La Chapelle and second-string South Dakota, in a race that he has won five times in the last decade. Aix La Chapelle looked very rough around the edges on his debut at the Curragh just a fortnight ago but still ran out an easy winner and should find plenty for the experience. He is drawn in stall five, though, which is less than ideal on the evidence from the straight course over the first two days. Another leading Irish-trained runner, Fozzy Stack’s Nola Soul, also overcame greenness to win on debut and could give the favourite plenty to think about, while George Scott’s Sea Venture found all the trouble going on her first start over six furlongs before showing a smart turn of foot to win with plenty to spare. As a daughter of the Derby winner, Sea The Stars, she looks certain to improve for the extra furlong today.

Timeform top-rated: Aix La Chapelle

SELECTION: SEA VENTURE

Going to start putting up some previews of the day’s action from our racing correspondent and tipster Greg Wood, who is currently leading the national press challenge in the Racing Post.

Good morning. It was overcast this morning but no precipitation so the going for day three of Royal Ascot is: Good to Firm and there’s very little between the different sides of the track.

GoingStick readings at 8.30am:

Stands’ side: 8.8 Centre: 8.7 Far side: 8.7 Round course: 7.5

We have one non-runners so far so cross this off your list of possible wagers … 4.50pm Britannia Stakes: 16 Bobby McGee (vet’s certificate – temperature)

Preamble

Good morning from Ascot on the third morning of the Royal meeting 2026 – Gold Cup day – where Aidan O’Brien is poised to become the first trainer to saddle a century of winners at Flat racing’s showpiece event, having moved to 99 with a winner in the first race on Wednesday.

There are more races to aim at these days than there were in the era when the late Sir Henry Cecil racked up what was, at the time, a record 75 winners, and while the Sir Michael Stoute was active well into the five-day Ascot era and had saddled 82 by the time of his recent retirement, O’Brien’s record is still an astonishing achievement, even by the standards of the pre-eminent trainer of the last 25 years.

He has a total of seven runners on today’s card as he looks to reach three figures, including Scandinavia, the somewhat uneasy favourite, in the Gold Cup at 4.15 and opening up with Aix La Chapelle in the Chesham Stakes at 2.30.

Scandinavia’s main Gold Cup rival, according to the betting at least, is last year’s winner, Trawlerman, and there is now less than a point between them in the betting. Elsewhere on the day three card, the Oaks form gets an early test as Legacy Link, the Epsom runner-up, lines up for the Ribblesdale Stakes (3.40) just two weeks on from her big run in the Classic, while the Britannia Handicap at 4.50 could well turn out to be the most competitive event of the entire meeting – just two of the 30 runners are currently on offer at single-figure odds.

Another 5mm of water was applied overnight to maintain the going at good-to-firm, thoughts on possible winners are here , and the action is underway at 2.30 on what could be a historic day at Royal Ascot. One hundred is only a number, but it’s an impressive number all the same.

Keyword – Opinion
Trefwoorden – Life and style, Beauty
Title – I have decided to stop using a mirror – and I know it will change my life | Polly Hudson | The Guardian
Author – https://www.theguardian.com/profile/polly-hudson
Link – I have decided to stop using a mirror – and I know it will change my life | Polly Hudson | The Guardian
Publish date – 2026-06-18T10:00:04.000Z
Category – Opinion
URL – https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/18/i-decided-to-stop-using-a-mirror-i-know-it-will-change-my-life

R ats in labs eventually work out which behaviour stops the electric shocks, but I had to be taught by a podcast. Comedian Hannah Berner was a recent guest on Armchair Expert, and revealed she hardly ever looks in the mirror.

“It has information you don’t need about you,” she explained.

Host Dax Shepard immediately leapt on board with the revelatory theory: “I’d say over the course of my life, the amount of times I looked in the mirror and was pumped is certainly under 1%. I’ve never looked and been like: ‘Let’s do this, man!’”

So simple, so true. And yet opting out has never occurred to me. Looking in the mirror – checking, monitoring, surveilling – is just what you do, right?

Not Berner. Instead, she consults the mirror within .

“I am delusional,” she admitted. “I think I know what I look like and it’s the best photo I’ve ever taken. And when you walk into a room like that, even if you have stuff in your teeth, it helps.”

This is a potentially life-changing mindset. Mirrors are foe, not friend, and blissful ignorance is the key to confidence.

Berner is not the first to bring this stance to the mainstream: in 2017, Claudia Winkleman supplied unimaginative people with a punchline about her eyeliner by disclosing that she never looks in the mirror. When she was growing up, her mum banned them from the house – “She wanted to teach us that appearance is a waste of time, it’s not in the least bit important. Read books, be funny, be clever, be chatty, this is how you make an omelette …” – and now she only has one mirror, for teeth-brushing.

That’s it. I’m going cold turkey, which is, coincidentally, not a million miles away from what I resembled the last time I glanced at my reflection. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, turns out you’re the unfairest of them all.

Polly Hudson is a freelance writer

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