Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire: So much to admire in these creatures, from their resilience over summer, to the detailed pattern of their trailsHere’s a lovely word: aestivate. It’s what my garden snails did through the parched weeks of our summer drought, pulling their bodies high up into their shells and closing…

Trump is not popular in Australia, even if the prime minister views close ties with the US as a key pillar of foreign policyWhen Anthony Albanese arrived at the United Nations general assembly in September last year, he was desperate for face time with Donald Trump.The prime minister had been due to hold his first…

The children’s author remembers his friend and collaborator of 35 years, whose ‘seemingly inexhaustible flow of nonsense’ drove their bestselling Treehouse booksTerry was assigned to me as my illustrator when I wrote an educational book called Swinging on the Clothesline, back in 1991. The publisher said, “We…

The new prime minister has declared he wants to end 40 years of neoliberalism. But is he really prepared to be that radical?In May 2025, when Keir Starmer was still prime minister, Labour politicians, campaigners and journalists gathered at the Ministry of Sound in London to watch a series of panel talks and…

Die Linke candidate, a lawyer affected by her experiences as the child of political migrants from Turkey, poised to head Berlin coalition governmentElif Eralp launched her election bid last autumn with the blunt statement: “People like me are actually not supposed to become mayor in this country.” So the fact that…