It was the height of Covid when Nadine Shah lost her beloved mother, Heather – “the most beautiful person in the world” – to lung cancer. Unable to mourn properly or even have a normal funeral due to the strict restrictions in place, her world starte

Featuring work by young Scottish artists aged 30 and under, Sensation is a new exhibition staged by Project Ability – a Glasgow-based visual arts charity and gallery supporting people with learning disabilities and mental ill-health. It takes inspira

Israel is still, at time of writing, expected to compete at this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. There had been some suggestion that Eden Golan’s entry October Rain was, with its references to the 7 October terror attacks, in breach of the contest’s

MICHAEL HADLEY, 33 I start selling the magazine at five in the morning. I just like to keep busy! I eat loads of food to keep up the stamina, loads of breakfast, milk, eggs, stuff like that. I used to sell the magazine on Lower Temple Street but now

A pilot programme has started in Venice, charging day trippers €5 (£4.27) to visit the historic but fragile and sinking city. Mass tourism sees up to 30 million visitors getting lost along the alleys and plying the canals each year. Meanwhile, last y

British workers must reject Tory “politics of envy”, union boss Mick Whelan has urged, as a long-running dispute over train drivers’ pay continues to cripple the UK’s transport network. The Aslef union, representing 96% of Britain’s train drivers, ha

10-11 MayEdinburgh£31 per day This pop-up arts festival in the Scottish capital is celebrating its 10th birthday with two nights of partying in an underground car park. Driving an ambitious programme of music, visual art and performance are Maranta a

These Letters End in Tears by Musih Tedji Xaviere is a tremendous debut novel, engaging with the realities of LGBT+ life in Cameroon, where, in the shadow of the violent legacy of colonialism, existing as a queer person is punishable by law. Through

Ardavan and Navid used to play in underground bands in Iran. They didn’t know each other back then – Navid’s band played folk and pop, while Ardavan played illicit metalcore gigs, sometimes in friends’ gardens. As hobbies go, this isn’t particularly

By 16 I had been packed off to a boarding school and was fairly badly bullied because I didn’t really fit in. I was this kid from Worksop. My parents worked their fingers to the bone doing two or three jobs so they could send their kids to a place th

5. Keep in place below deck (4)7. Princess taken round one Egyptian city (10)8. Mad king said to have a lecherous look (4)9. Staying away while remaining out of form (7,3)12. In the photograph a rose-coloured beacon can be seen (6)13. Poured hard? (6

POLLSTAR, the live music business publication that tracks concert revenues, had already hailed Eras as the first billion-dollar tour for its US leg (running intermittently from March to August last year) where she sold 4.3 million tickets, with an av

Were you ever tempted by the once-ubiquitous online ads for Masterclass or BBC Maestro? The gimmick is essentially deluxe YouTube tutorials. Stumping up enough cash gets you access to video courses with celebrity teachers staring right down the lens

For council house kids of the 1980s like me, Our House by Madness was an anthem and an affirmation. The Conservative government was flogging off social housing and celebrating ownership – slowly, paying rent to the local authority became something to

A group of Liverpudlians sit in a circle, discussing their experiences of addiction. Then the camera zooms out. This is not a therapy session, but a read-through. The scene captures the essence of Stephen, the new feature film by Melanie Manchot. Its

Star Trek is back, with the fifth and final season of Discovery on Paramount+. There will be plenty of people who will revel in its dark and gritty take, light years away from the goofy coloured jerseys and computers which explode when you ask them a

Earlier this year, Southwark resident Aysen Dennis’s one-woman crusade against the demolition of her council estate successfully thwarted plans for the Aylesbury estate to be levelled – for now. That high court ruling also lit a fire almost 200 miles

A disability activist has been granted permission to take the government to court over its controversial plans to tighten a key disability benefit test. Following an eight-week public consultation last autumn, the Department for Work and Pensions (DW

Inequality is widening faster than ever before. According to the World Economic Forum, the world’s five richest men have doubled their combined wealth since 2020. In the same timespan, 60% of the world’s population have become poorer. And it’s not ju

Seeking respite from the destruction wreaked by missiles on Kharkiv, Jen Stout snatches a few moments by the river. The author of Night Train to Odesa has already borne witness to the blown-out windows of the Derzhprom (the city’s avant-garde Soviet