• Southampton v Aston Villa, plus EFL and Bundesliga
• Live scoreboard | And you can contact Emillia on email

Other full-time scores from the early games:

Manchester City 5-2 Crystal Palace

Celtic 5-1 Kilmarnock

Leeds 2-1 Preston

Plymouth 2-1 Sheffield United

• Updates from Cork, 4.45pm (BST) kick-off
• Get in touch: contact Alex on email

Milestone watch: Abby Dow will earn her 50th cap today! The England wing has 43 tries in 49 appearances and counting. “She’s obviously a phenomenal athlete but she’s also extremely smart,” said the England attack coach, Lou Meadows, who definitely sounds like the kind of person we want writing our work appraisals going forward.

Fighting talk from Aoife Wafer. She told Sarah Rendell that “Ireland want to shake England up a bit” and shock the favourites in Cork. Well worth your pre-game perusal.

Government introduces measure to prevent spread of foot-and-mouth disease after rise in cases across Europe

Tourists from Great Britain who travel to the continent to satisfy their epicurean desires for cured meats and fragrant cheeses will be frustrated in their attempts to bring home some of their favourite foods after a ban on meat and dairy imports from EU countries came into force this weekend.

From Saturday, holidaymakers will no longer be able to bring meat from cattle, sheep, goats or pigs, or dairy products, from EU countries into Great Britain for personal use, in a move aimed at preventing the spread of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) after a rise in cases across Europe.

• Qualifying gets under way at 5pm (BST) in Bahrain
• Get in touch: you can contact Dom on email

A reminder that qualifying begins at 5pm. Stay tuned until then. Who fancies pole in Bahrain?

Practice: Oscar Piastri and McLaren were quickest in practice in Bahrain.

Petition calls for official recognition of the ‘historic and traditional serving method’ that is ‘unique to the UK’

It is one of Britain’s most historic drinks, still sold in thousands of pubs across the nation, but cask beer has long been in decline.

Besides suffering from a reputation as an “old man’s drink” and the divisive debate over the “cellar temperature” at which it is served, the number of establishments selling it, and the volume and value of sales, have all dropped dramatically in recent years.

The president’s gambit to bring the production of goods such as iPhones back to the US ignores huge supply chain complexities

Donald Trump’s tariff strategy has at least one biblical connection: like the peace of God, it “passeth all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). Rival attempts to extract a rationale from the chaos include the idea that he is trying to devalue the dollar, or that he is seeking to “reshore” the manufacturing capacity that the US lost through decades of globalisation. My own hunch is that he just wants to show who’s the big boss around here – or as British science fiction author Charles Stross puts it, that he “expects individual nations to come to him, hat in hand, like terrified shopkeepers pleading for mercy from a mafia don”.

Cue the UK’s very own Trump whisperer, Keir Starmer, who, according to Politico, plans “to put a review of online safety rules on the table in trade talks” with the US. Which, translated, means that things such as the Online Safety Act and copyright rules that hinder US AI companies from looting the intellectual property of the British creative sector may soon become history. The only remaining question is whether Starmer possesses a suitably distressed hat for his penitent journey to Washington.

Fifty-five years since Osaka last hosted, rocks from Mars, domestic androids and artificial hearts are part of showcase on ‘unloved’ island

As clunky as it sounds, “designing a future society for our lives” isn’t a bad ambition for the world in these troubled times. From this Sunday, organisers of the 2025 Exposition in Osaka will be hoping that appeal will put the event’s unsettled preparations in the shade for a six-month celebration of our common humanity.

The western Japan city is preparing to host its second World Expo, 55 years after the first was held in a country eager to capitalise on fading memories of the second world war as it embarked on its postwar journey to become an industrial and technological powerhouse.

Empire Polo Club, Indio, California

The pop superstar makes an electrifying return to the desert for a career-spanning two-hour show, one of the best the desert has ever seen

In 2017, Lady Gaga took on an unenviable task: filling in for Beyoncé, who dropped out of a Coachella headliner slot due to pregnancy. Gaga’s replacement performance, in her country-tinged Joanne era – as usual, she was years ahead of the pop curve – more than sufficed; perhaps only Beyoncé can hold a candle to her in terms of true-blue live performance ability, and she delivered the set of a consummate entertainer and generational talent. But Gaga felt that she had unfinished business. “I’ve had a vision I’ve never been able to fully realize at Coachella for reasons beyond our control,” she wrote in an Instagram post announcing her return to the desert for another headliner slot this spring. “I have been wanting to go back and do it right, and I am.”

Did she ever. Gaga, more than any other contemporary pop star, has approached pop as transmogrification, live performance like a hunter – the piercing gaze, transparent hunger and annihilating focus of an apex predator. And with Gagachella, as her fans have already termed a thesis statement of a set, she goes in for the kill. You knew from the minute she appeared in full deranged queen regalia, the head of a multi-story hoop skirt that opened to reveal a birdcage prison of backup dancers, that the vision was nigh. The nearly two-hour performance, covering 22 songs from her dance pop catalogue, joins Beyoncé’s postponed Homecoming in the pantheon of seminal Coachella headliner sets – a fully realized vision of a pop master, a testament to years of hard-earned experience at the highest level, and a banger dance party with production and delivery in a league above her peers.

• Juventus and USA midfielder named in probe, per reports
• Investigation focuses on poker and non-soccer betting

United States midfielder Weston McKennie is among 13 soccer players being investigated for illegal online betting in Italy, according to widespread media reports.

A new investigation by Milan prosecutors stems from evidence given by Sandro Tonali and Nicolò Fagioli in 2023. Both then served lengthy bans, ruling them out for most of last season, after agreeing plea bargains that also included therapy for a gambling addiction.

Video captured one person robbing corpse on idling train before another person robbed and sexually assaulted it

A man sexually violated a corpse on a New York City subway train after stealing from the body, becoming the second of two people to rob that particular dead person, authorities said recently.

One of the more grotesque US crime stories of late unfolded on a southbound R train near the Whitehall Street station in Manhattan at about 12.20am on Wednesday, when “an unidentified individual had sexual contact with an unconscious and unresponsive adult male” in plain view of surveillance cameras, according to a police statement.

A neuroscientist decided to study the addiction-like obsession of limerence, while overcoming it himself

I never really gave much thought to the nature of love until it became a problem.

Throughout adolescence I suffered through a series of intense, mostly unrequited crushes, but just assumed this was the exquisite agony of desire that poets and lyricists work so hard to capture in words.

The race car driver is drawing attention to the gender imbalance in motorsports – and auction houses – by teaming up with female artists on an ‘art car’ project

When the race car driver Aurora Straus first began competing professionally aged 16, she was the only female racer on the tracks in North America. Unsurprisingly, her entry into the male-dominated world of motorsports was not without its sexist challenges. In one incident, while she was being filmed for a documentary, she returned to her car with a camera crew in tow, to find a surprise.

“I was doing an interview for this movie,” Straus recalls, “and I went to show them my car. When I opened the door, there was a dildo in there.”

A largely nonprofessional cast shine in Louise Courvoisier’s gritty rural tale that feels satisfyingly real

Here’s something to tempt the appetites of fans of French cinema and artisan cheeses alike: Holy Cow, the first feature fim from French director Louise Courvoisier, has been a breakout success domestically (it won a prize at Cannes and a couple of Césars, and went on to win over French audiences in their droves). On paper, this tale of a rural teenage delinquent who dreams of glory in the annual comté cheesemaking competition sounds like any number of generic feelgood underdog tales. But there’s a knack to making great rural cinema, which boils down to capturing the grit and spit and personality of the place rather than some sun-dappled romantic projection of a simpler life.

It helps immeasurably that Courvoisier grew up in the same remote Jura farming community in eastern France where the film is set. It shows in every rough-edged, beer-drenched frame – this is earthy, sweaty, unvarnished film-making with dirt under its nails – and in particular it benefits the casting and direction of the phenomenal, largely nonprofessional actors.

In UK and Irish cinemas

A goal and an assist and a captain’s display that wrenched the contest from Crystal Palace: here was an afternoon to revel in the sublime talent of Kevin De Bruyne.

At 33, he is in the autumn of one of the great careers, but on a sun-dappled east Manchester afternoon De Bruyne illustrated, yet again, his peerlessness. The truism that the best have a crucial extra moment to work with runs through De Bruyne’s decade in a Manchester City shirt, and was displayed in the goal crafted for Mateo Kovacic.

Sorry seems to be the hardest word – and there is a public appetite for watching high-profile feuds

Madonna and Elton John have kissed and made up. After decades of high-octane feuding (more of which anon), Madonna recently turned up impromptu backstage when John was appearing on late-night television sketch show, Saturday Night Live in New York to “confront” him. Her ensuing Instagram post, liked 420,605 times and counting, said: “Over the decades it hurt me to know that someone I admired so much shared his dislike of me publicly as an artist”.

Madonna continued: “When I met him, the first thing out of his mouth was ‘Forgive me’, and the walls between us fell down.”

A bill in the US state would allow public schools to deny undocumented children the chance to enroll

You’ve probably seen this quote from an Alabama pastor called Dave Barnhart. It goes viral all the time. But I’m resurfacing the quote because it is another day that ends with “y” in America, which means it is relevant once again.

(Inkle; Nintendo Switch, iPhone/iPad, Mac, PC)
Prove that Verity Amersham is innocent of trying to bump off the head girl in this ingenious whodunnit from the makers of Overboard!

There’s been a murder – or an attempted one, at least. At sunrise someone shoved Louisa Hardcastle, soon to be crowned head girl of Miss Mulligatawney’s School for Promising Girls, through the school’s stained-glass window. Your character, Verity Amersham, stands accused, and must present an account of her day that proves her innocence. This is achieved via a Groundhog Day structure: you repeatedly play through the hours leading up to Verity’s expulsion as an interactive flashback, from the moment she woke, through to attending chapel and classes, and the accusation on which the story pivots. There’s no magic involved: you’re simply recounting the day’s events to your concerned father as you construct your alibi, establish whether Verity committed the crime – or if not, by whom she has been framed.

Developed by British studio Inkle, Expelled! has many of the hallmarks of the developer’s magnificent previous title, Overboard! There’s a witty script, memorable Agatha Christie-esque characters (Verity’s roommate, the conflict-scarred Russian expat Nattie, provides a standout turn) and a lightness of touch that offsets the grisly act upon which the story rests. There are hefty themes behind the cartoonish presentation too. Set in 1922 after the first world war and a global pandemic, the setting trembles with interwar trauma and the sense that the world might again collapse at any moment into chaos.

The chef and restaurateur, 76, shares his boyhood inspiration, losing everything in a fire, and saying no to Robert De Niro

My father died in a car accident when I was seven. Whenever I missed him, I would look in the family photo album at this picture of when he had gone to Palau. He was an architect and had gone to source lumber for his work. It made me dream of going abroad someday and making him proud.

My older brother took me to sushi restaurants as a kid. They were very expensive; not the kinds of places kids would go. I was so impressed by the energy of the sushi chefs, the smells, the choice of fish. From then on, I knew that’s what I wanted to be. After graduating from high school at 18, I trained to be a sushi chef in Tokyo.

Palladium, London
The singer and actor hints at an outre new synth-heavy sound, drawn largely from latest album Polari. He stops short, though, of scaring his daytime TV fans

“I’m all about playful subversion,” declares Olly Alexander with a grin on the final night of his UK tour. Clad in a series of outfits whose shiny buttons nod towards London’s pearly kings and queens and the dressing-up box – there’s one handily located on the left side of the stage – he is outlining the essence of Polari, the slang once used by the LGBTQ+ community, showfolk and the denizens of London’s Soho, as was.

Evolving out of the vocabularies of Italian immigrants and Travellers to evade the understanding of law enforcement and mainstream society in the 19th and early-mid 20th centuries, Polari also doubles as the title of Alexander’s latest, queer-club pop-themed album. Released two months ago, it was the first under his own name; previously, he had traded as Years & Years, first as a band, then as a solo project.

From unauthorised species releases to small groups buying up land, ‘guerrilla rewilding’ is going mainstream. But experts worry that these rogue efforts could do more harm than good

Visions of habitats teeming with nature are powerful, particularly so in an age of extinction. Rewilding, which offers the promise of such transformations, was once something most would have imagined happening far away, carried out by people unlike them, but times are changing. The wilderness is getting closer to home and more personal.

In the past few months, there have been two suspected lynx releases and one of feral pigs in a small area of the Cairngorms, along with reports of a rise in “beaver bombing” on England’s rivers, and wild boar roaming Dartmoor.

It is a simple and powerful way to help them feel calmer and happier, say the experts. So how do you teach kindness to kids?

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In a hostile world, many parents might be anxious about how to raise a kinder generation – and if so, science backs you. Children who are more empathetic “tend to have more positive interactions and more satisfying relationships with friends and family,” says Jessica Rolph, co-founder of early childhood development company Lovevery. Studies show that kids who can form strong relationships do better in school, she adds.

• Lewis holds off teenager Leah O’Brien in photo-finish
• Browning pips Lachie Kennedy in men’s national final

Rohan Browning and Torrie Lewis upstaged the flashy upstarts of Australian sprinting, claiming their respective 100m national titles in two split-second victories in Perth on Saturday.

The women’s final was decided by a three-way photo finish between Lewis, Bree Rizzo and Leah O’Brien. The national record-holder stopped the clock at 11.24s, edging 17-year-old O’Brien by just four thousandths of a second, with Rizzo one hundredth of a second back.

Abbas Araghchi says ‘initial understanding’ could be reached in Oman and lead to ‘path of negotiations’

Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has arrived in Oman for mediated talks with the US special envoy Steve Witkoff, saying there is a chance the two sides can reach an initial understanding that leads to a timetable for negotiations on Iran’s nuclear programme.

The aim is to agree a format and parameters for talks that in months could lead to some US economic sanctions on Tehran being lifted and a recasting of Iran’s civil nuclear programme.

The US could breach the debt ceiling even sooner than predicted without action from Republicans

“Trump backs down on tariffs, again. And it doesn’t look strategic,” a headline blared on Wednesday afternoon.

At the end of trading, equities had recovered a portion of their losses. But plenty of damage had been done. Markets were thrown into turmoil, interest rates jumped and business activity took a hit. Beyond that, the possibility of a recession grew – and the possibility of a default by the US inched up to 6%, according to prediction markets.

Researchers have catalogued the British words and phrases most used in US conversation, sparking delight and frustration

The Americani(s)zation of British English is often described as a linguistic disaster – frustrations over imported words or usages, from “awesome” to “ATM”, are well documented.

But in recent years, there’s been growing interest in the opposite phenomenon: Britishisms that have made their way into American English. These days, it’s not uncommon to hear Americans describing a single event as a “one-off” or noting that a perfect assessment is “spot-on”.

Amongst (rather than “among”), whose use has nearly quadrupled in the US over the past four decades

Queue, whose frequent use on tech platforms such as Netflix has given its British meaning – what Americans would generally call a “line” – new life in the US

Wonky, meaning a bit off

Cheeky, meaning a bit naughty or indulgent, as frequently used by Mike Myers (a Canadian with English parents) on Saturday Night Live in the 1990s

Snarky, often used to describe early internet discourse and sites such as Gawker

Cheers, which has long been used while clinking glasses in the US but has started to mean “thanks” in some contexts

Keen, meaning enthusiastic

Maths, rather than just math, which has become more familiar in the US due to international academic work and social media

Nil, meaning zero, which is turning up in online gaming

Amir Makled says immigration officials questioned him about his phone’s contents. Experts warn fourth amendment rights have been weakened at the border

Amir Makled thought he was being racially profiled. A Lebanese American who was born and raised in Detroit, the attorney was returning home from a family vacation in the Dominican Republic when he said an immigration official at the Detroit Metro airport asked for a “TTRT” agent after scanning his passport on Sunday. Makled said the expression on the agent’s face changed. He felt something “odd” was happening.

“So I Googled what TTRT meant. I didn’t know,” Makled said. “And what I found out was it meant Tactical Terrorism Response Team. So immediately I knew they’re gonna take me in for questioning. And that’s when I felt like I was being racially profiled or targeted because I am Arab.”

Contact from the Observer prompts withdrawal as dealers urged to do more to stop illicit trade in antiquities

A London antiquities dealer has withdrawn an ancient Greek amphora from sale after evidence arose that links it to a notorious smuggler.

The Kallos Gallery in Mayfair, London, has removed a black-figure amphora – a jar with two handles and a narrow neck made around 550BC – from sale after the Observer contacted it about concerns raised by an expert in the illegal trade of antiquities.

New biography tells story of operative who directed coups in Iran and Guatemala and grappled with mental illness

Frank Wisner was a leading light of the early CIA, a director of clandestine operations who came of age in the second world war then fought the cold war by fair means or foul, from funding American cultural outreach to orchestrating coups in Iran and Guatemala.

Before becoming a biographer, Douglas Waller reported for Newsweek and Time. His new book, The Determined Spy, is about Wisner, a man who lived an extraordinary life but came to be buried at Arlington national cemetery, under a simple headstone, identified merely as a commander in the US naval reserve.

Prolific Canadian director also made one of the country’s first internationally successful films, The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, starring Richard Dreyfuss

Ted Kotcheff, the prolific Canadian director of films including First Blood, Weekend at Bernie’s, Wake in Fright and The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, has died aged 94. His daughter Kate Kotcheff told the Canadian Press that he had died of heart failure on Thursday in Nuevo Vallarta, Mexico, where he lived. His son Thomas said: “He died of old age, peacefully, and surrounded by loved ones.”

In an amazingly varied career, Kotcheff’s work ranged from hardhitting TV plays and low-budget features in the UK, to hit Hollywood comedies and prestige-laden award-winners and cult films. Kate Kotcheff said: “He was an amazing storyteller. He was an incredible, larger than life character [and] he was a director who could turn his hand to anything.”

Luxury companies need greater protection from imitators gaining the approval of social media influencers, as trademarking scent is almost impossible, experts say

One perfume smells suspiciously like a £355 bottle of Baccarat Rouge 540 eau de parfum. Another, which has notes of grapefruit, rose and Levantine spice, is reminiscent of a £215 bottle of Penhaligon’s Halfeti. But unlike those luxury brands, these “dupe scents” can cost as little as a fiver.

As many as half of UK consumers are now thought to have succumbed to the social media craze for cheap perfumes “inspired by” well-known luxury fragrances. And lawyers now say perfume brands and beauty companies need greater legal protection from rivals who imitate their products.

Casual attitude as markets fall suggests man detached from anxieties of ordinary voters – and surrounded by yes men

After lighting a fuse under global financial markets, Donald Trump stepped back – all the way to a Florida golf course. A week later, having just caved to pressure to ease his trade tariffs, the US president defended the retreat while hosting racing car champions at the White House.

Trump had spent the time in between golfing, dining with donors and making insouciant declarations such as “this is a great time to get rich”, even as the US economy melted down.

• Updates from Etihad Stadium, 12.30pm BST kick-off
• Get in touch: email Barry with your thoughts

Ahead of this game, the Crystal Palace manager could not lavish enough praise on Manchester City striker Omar Marmoush, who he previously worked with at Wolfsburg. “He has the skills and what I loved was he was two and a half years in Germany and he spoken German perfectly and this is quite unusual,” he said of the Egyptian.

“He is a great guy, has all the skills and in the football career you may not have to make a straight direction to come to the top but he had a loan at St Pauli, Stuttgart, then performing for Wolfsburg, then an outstanding season for Frankfurt. Immediately he shows Manchester [City] what kind of striker he is. I’m really pleased for him but not tomorrow.”

As ex-prisoners sue over claims that high levels of radon gas have led to serious illnesses, taxpayers continue to foot the rental bill

The village of Princetown sits surrounded by the desolate beauty of Dartmoor national park. It should, in theory, be a hub for the more than 2 million people a year who come to explore the bogs, granite tors and windswept moorland that in part inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to write The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Today it more closely resembles a mining community after the pits closed. Dartmoor prison, which provided jobs for many residents, has been closed since last summer after the discovery of dangerous levels of radon gas. The prison museum, a former tourist attraction, is also closed, and the prison officers’ club is derelict. Quiet streets bear testimony to the ghostly finger of financial fate.

When it emerged that a fertility clinic had made one woman pregnant with another’s baby, Renée Ballou and Carole LieberWilkins were advised to ‘lawyer up’. Instead they did something extraordinary – even as one raised the other’s biological child

Renée Ballou thought she was a lucky person. In the 1980s, she was living in a beautiful home an hour’s drive from Los Angeles, with a job she loved, a happy marriage and a young son. Everything had always felt so easy for Renée – until she began trying for a second child. Two years on, she still wasn’t pregnant. “I was pretty much used to getting what I wanted,” Renée, now 67, tells me with a sad smile. “It was very stressful.”

Along with her husband, Wesley, Renée went through a battery of tests, followed by years of surgeries, supplements and hormones. Her gynaecologist referred them to Dr Sergio Stone, a fertility specialist at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) in Orange County, for more treatment. They tried artificial insemination – first with Wesley’s sperm, then with a donor – without success. Their son, Matthew, was four when they started trying for a sibling for him; by 1987 he was 10. It was lonely and emotionally and physically gruelling. But Renée refused to give up. “I wanted that baby more than anything.”

For Lise and Patrick, the possibility of sex with other people has allowed their own love life to blossom – providing it’s within limits
How do you do it? Share the story of your sex life, anonymously

Once, Patrick had really nice oral sex with someone and told me what she did, and suggested we try that

Spring on a plate – Easter Sunday lunch is served

Nothing feels more like spring to me than roast lamb, and we know that season is coming the moment we start putting it on our restaurant menu. We buy the whole animal and use every part of it, but my favourite cut is definitely the chops. When I was growing up, my mum would always roast lamb on Easter Sunday and serve it with potatoes and a tangy green sauce, so we usually do something similar at Cafe Cecilia.

Max Rocha is chef-owner of Cafe Cecilia, London E8

Four senior officers say more controls needed, amid claims platforms are ‘fuelling and enabling’ crime

Senior UK police officers have called for the government to ban children under 16 from social media, amid claims the platforms are “fuelling and enabling” crime.

In the most recent development in the moral panic that has gripped the media since Netflix’s Adolescence was released, four of the most senior policing figures in the country told the Times that further controls on social media platforms were necessary for public safety, national security and young people’s mental health.

The standup’s new animated series #1 Happy Family USA mixes South Park-style humour with a bracing account of Muslim life in America in the wake of the September 11 attacks. It feels like history is repeating itself, he says

Ramy Youssef has this theory: “The more fucked up the climate, the stupider television must be.” Granted, he came up with it barely 10 seconds ago, but the 34-year-old is committing. “You need something dumb,” he’s newly certain, “to cut through the tension for relief.” Now he’s frantically tapping away on his phone, searching for facts to prove it. Bingo. “You see, [MTV celebrity prank show] Punk’d premiered on 17 March 2003. Know what happened three days later? The US invaded Iraq. Maybe my stupid new show is perfect for how fucked everything is right now.”

In particular, Youssef is pointing to Palestine: his 2024 heartfelt SNL monologue calling for an end to the violence one of a litany of interventions he’s made in recent years. “I’ve sat down with too many people who’ve just lost entire sections of their families.” Does he feel speaking out could come at a cost to his career? “If I was constantly waiting to be cast,” he says, “I might not be so busy. We make TV like immigrants: not waiting around for someone else. We’re trying to speak to something human, even if we do it while people are trying to dehumanise us, our culture, where we come from and who we are.”

With new translations, a film starring Ralph Fiennes and a Christopher Nolan blockbuster on the way, Homer’s saga about a soldier’s return from battle speaks to our times in unexpected ways

We live in an Odyssey time. The Greek epic about Odysseus’s tortuous, adventure-filled journey home after the end of the Trojan war, composed probably between the late eighth and late seventh century BC, is surfacing in our culture right now. Great artworks from the past, ones that are read and reread across centuries, have a way of doing that. You examine them on a particular day, and their intricacies look suddenly singular, different from how they seemed 20 years ago, 50 years ago, yesterday; they offer something new, something that illuminates the world afresh. It is the Odyssey’s moment to catch the light.

Homer’s epic has resurfaced most obviously through two major recent translations and two major films. British classicist Emily Wilson’s translation was published at the height of the #MeToo movement in 2017, and not long before the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. Her alertness to the poem’s interest in structural power dynamics, including gender dynamics – themes she drew out in her introductory essay and public conversations about the translation – seemed to hit the political moment directly, and her version has become a cultural phenomenon in its own right. Another, by American literary scholar, writer and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn, is due out this month; it will be the new Penguin Classics edition, a successor to the now 30-year-old Robert Fagles translation and, before that, to EV Rieu’s version, which he worked on during the second world war, while bombs fell on London.

Inmates in several prisons given chance to study ethics and rhetoric ‘to inform contemporary life’ and skills

A classical education, once the preserve of Eton, Oxbridge and the likes of Boris Johnson, is being made available to inmates serving time in prisons.

In a break from the kind of curriculum usually on offer inside – lessons in literacy, numeracy, tiling and decorating – a small number of prisoners are being offered the opportunity to learn life skills from the ancient philosophers.