My reduced vision badly affected my ability to appreciate films and art, but the stripped-back staging and immediacy of the play gave me back my sense of self

I began to notice my sight deteriorating in my 40s, but not just in the way that you expect it to with age. I had night blindness and blind spots in my field of view. At 44, I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic eye condition that causes the retina cells to die. I had always been a very visually oriented person: I was a practising architect, and someone who loved to read, draw, go to the cinema and visit art exhibitions. So when black text disappeared on a glaring white page, films became impossible to follow and artworks only took shape once explained to me, I questioned who I would be without my vision.

Around the age of 50, I had a particularly stressful year: I got divorced; dissolved my business; started a new job; moved house; and my dad died. As my life fell off a cliff, so did my eyesight, so that by 2015 my field of vision had decreased to only 5-10 degrees (a healthy average person’s is about 200 degrees). I was registered blind, but for a long time I lived in denial, not telling anyone how much vision I had lost. At work, feeling vulnerable and like I could lose my job, I presented as fully sighted, a daily performance that became exhausting. I was in survival mode, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other, hoping I wouldn’t get found out. I refused to see myself as disabled, and resisted using a white stick, but once I eventually did, I found people saw my disability before they saw me. I felt a total loss of identity. And I stopped doing the cultural things that once brought me joy.

Release of 43-second video comes as senior church figures speak out against dangers of Christian nationalism

The Church of England has released a video in response to a Christmas carols event on Saturday being organised by the far-right activist Tommy Robinson amid calls from a growing number of senior church figures to challenge Christian nationalism.

In the 43-second video, Christmas Isn’t Cancelled, posted on the church’s YouTube channel, more than 20 people from the archbishop of York to schoolchildren speak about the “joy, love and hope” of Christmas. The message is “a simple reminder that Christmas belongs to all of us, and everyone is welcome to celebrate”, the C of E said.

From demon, equal and encyclopedia to The Tour of Life and Before the Dawn, test your knowledge with the Saturday quiz

1 Inflation adjusted, what is the highest-grossing film of all time?
2 What was revamped in 1279, 1560, 1696, 1816 and 1971?
3 Dorothy Parker “fwowed up” in a 1928 review of which children’s classic?
4 Native to South America, what is the world’s largest bird of prey?
5 Which fabric is protected by the orb certification mark?
6 The Almanach de Gotha is a directory of what?
7 Which amusement park was opened in Vienna in 1766?
8 What British term for rare US R&B 45s was coined by Dave Godin?
What links:
9 Năstase; Connors twice; Tanner; McEnroe twice?
10 Menevia, c600; County Down, c460; Lydda, c303; Patras, c60?
11 Choral by Beethoven; The Great by Schubert; From the New World by Dvořák?
12 Reverend Joy Carroll Wallis; hotelier Donald Sinclair; US military surgeon Richard Hornberger?
13 Demon; equal; encyclopedia; eon; fairy; medieval; primeval?
14 The Tour of Life in 1979 and Before the Dawn in 2014?
15 Charles X’s sword; Corot’s The Road from Sèvres; Empress Eugénie’s tiara; Mona Lisa?

Palestinians who have worked the ‘breadbasket’ area for generations face being replaced by Israeli settlers

The death knell for the Palestinian village of Atouf, on the western slopes of the Jordan valley, arrived in the form of a trail of paper, a series of eviction notices taped to homes, greenhouses and wells, marking a straight line across the open fields.

The notices, which appeared overnight, informed the local farmers that their land would be confiscated and that they had seven days from the date of their delivery, 4 December, to vacate their properties. A military road and accompanying barrier was to be built by Israel right through the area.

The goofy star of Mary Poppins becomes a centenarian on Saturday. And what a precocious performer he has proved, sustaining scrappy mischief through seven decades of mainstream entertainment

All Hollywood stars grow old and die except perhaps one - Dick Van Dyke - who turns 100 today. The real world Peter Pan who used to trip over the ottoman on The Dick Van Dyke Show is still standing. The man who impersonated a wind-up toy in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang hasn’t wound down just yet. He has outlived mentors, co-stars, romantic partners and several studios. He’s even outlived the jokes about his performance in Mary Poppins. These days his mangled cockney accent is regarded with more fondness than contempt. It’s seen as one of the great charms of the 1964 classic, along with the carousel chase or the cartoon dancing penguins.

Charm is the magic ingredient of every popular entertainer and few have possessed it in such abundance as Van Dyke, the impoverished son of a travelling cookie salesman who dropped out of high school and educated himself at the movies. “His job in this life is to make a happier world,” his Broadway co-star Chita Rivera once said - and this may explain his stubborn refusal to quit, not while times are tough and he feels that audiences still need cheering up.

As Paramount, with close ties to the Trump administration, entered the bidding, experts predict any merger will ‘raise red flags’ among regulators

Over the first 10 months of his second presidency, Donald Trump has not hidden his desire to control the US media industry – from encouraging TV networks to fire journalists, comedians and critics he dislikes to pushing regulators to revoke broadcast licences. Now he seems determined to set the terms for one of the biggest media deals in history.

It’s a deal that could have repercussions not just in the US, but across the world, with not just the future of Hollywood at stake but also the landscape of news.

The watershed summit in 2015 was far from perfect, but its impact so far has been significant and measurable

Ten years on from the historic Paris climate summit, which ended with the world’s first and only global agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions, it is easy to dwell on its failures. But the successes go less remarked.

Renewable energy smashed records last year, growing by 15% and accounting for more than 90% of all new power generation capacity. Investment in clean energy topped $2tn, outstripping that into fossil fuels by two to one.

Rita, 35, a travel agent, meets Tom, 40, a social media manager

What were you hoping for?
To have a refreshing new experience. I was curious to see who the Guardian would match me with.

Hobnobs, ricotta, chocolate and amaretto – what’s not to like?

I believe in divine communion, especially when it comes to food; an alliance of ingredients that come together as though they were meant to feed spirit and body. It might be too lofty to say that this semifreddo is divine, but the combination of Hobnobs, ricotta, chocolate and amaretto really does it for me. That said, there are many alliances that can be formed in the Christmas store-cupboard, so use this as a base for any biscuits, dried fruit and chocolate to which you feel most spiritually aligned.

Three months after Hatton’s death, his bereft former trainer Billy Graham, friend Jane Couch and his brother Matthew are all trying to find a hopeful future amid the grief

“Of course I remember,” Billy Graham says quietly as he pushes back his straw trilby to show me his wounded expression. “I can remember everything.”

Graham, who trained Ricky Hatton for all but the last three of his 48 fights, used to sit with his fighter on the grimy steps outside their first boxing gym in Salford in the late 1990s. It was a more innocent time and, rather than being called The Preacher and The Hitman, they were just Billy and Ricky then.

From pie-and-mash to the swank of a Michelin star, everyone has their own idea of what’s ‘best’. What’s yours?

• Jonathan Nunn is the author of London Feeds Itself

Almost 24 years ago, a small British food magazine called Restaurant assembled an all-star panel – made up of Gordon Ramsay, John Torode, Aldo Zilli and 65 other food guys – to adjudicate on the world’s most stupid question: what is the best restaurant on the planet? It didn’t matter that no judge had been to all the restaurants on the shortlist, or that two of the judges happened to be Jeremy Clarkson and Roger Moore – what the editors of Restaurant understood is that people love a list, and if you order a group of restaurants from 50-1 and throw a party, people might take it seriously.

“This could run and run,” the editors wrote in their intro, half hoping. They were right. Within two decades, The World’s 50 Best Restaurants had gone from what critic Jay Rayner described as a “terribly successful marketing exercise” to an insurgent alternative to the ossified Michelin Guide, solidifying the reputations of El Bulli, the Fat Duck and then Noma as the “world’s best restaurant”.

Jonathan Nunn is a food and city writer based in London who co-edits the magazine Vittles. He is the author of London Feeds Itself

Rehearsals for a live broadcast at short notice reduce us to silence then swearing. This does not bode well

On Wednesday afternoon I receive a text that seems to suggest the band I’m in has been invited to play live on national radio. Twenty minutes later, the guitarist rings me.

“Did you get my text?” he says.

As 27 European countries urge changes to laws forged after second world war, human rights chief says politicians are playing into hands of populists

The battle had been brewing for months. But this week it came to a head in a flurry of meetings, calls and one heady statement. Twenty-seven European countries urged a rethink of the human rights laws forged after the second world war, describing them as an impediment when it came to addressing migration.

Amnesty International has called it “a moral retreat”. Europe’s most senior human rights official said the approach risked creating a “hierarchy of people” where some are seen as more deserving of protection than others.

Women’s football is booming – but the bigger it’s got, the messier it’s become for players. Through it all, the hot tip for Sports Personality of the Year has kept a cool head

At the end of last year, Chloe Kelly was seriously considering stepping away from football. She was deeply unhappy at Manchester City, her team since 2020, where it seemed as if they wouldn’t let her play, nor let her leave. She wasn’t getting enough time on the pitch, so wasn’t sure that she would be selected for England, who were preparing to defend the title she had helped win in 2022 in the Euros tournament. She was 26, about to turn 27. She had been a professional footballer since she was 18, but her mother was starting to get concerned. She desperately wanted her daughter to be happy again. “I remember my mum coming up to see me and she was meant to go home, but she didn’t go home, because she was so worried,” recalls Kelly.

Less than a year later, and things are very different. At the time of writing, Kelly is favourite to win Sports Personality of the Year after a history-making comeback. At the end of January, she was loaned to Arsenal and in May she lifted the Champions League trophy with the team, very much the underdogs in the final against Barcelona, whom they defeated 1-0. At the end of July, she scored that penalty for England, securing them a second Euros title, against arch-rivals Spain. She was fifth in the Ballon D’or Féminin, and named in the Fifpro World 11 squad for the first time – a peer-voted list of the best footballers in the world. Against the odds, then, 2025 has turned out to be a great year. “For sure,” Kelly smiles. “To bounce back, that’s what makes it the best year of my career.”

Nigel Farage’s party is gunning for power – so what is it like in the places where they’ve already got it? We embedded with Lancashire county council to find out what happens when rhetoric meets reality

22 May 2025: a new dawn for Lancashire. Outside Preston’s grand old county hall, 53 brand new Reform UK councillors in turquoise ties – and one petite woman with an enormous turquoise hair bow – are hot-footing it past a gaggle of protesters for their first full council meeting. Most keep their heads down and get into the building as quickly as possible. But Joel Tetlow, a first-time politician who has made a few unfortunate headlines before even taking his seat, is intrigued. He stands in the doorway, vaping, as a demonstrator bellows: “Reform is a far right party and Nigel Farage is a racist and a fascist!”

Tetlow – late 40s with a full head of vertiginous hair, wearing a powder-blue three-piece suit – insists he isn’t bothered. “They don’t know us as people,” he shrugs. “It’s a word that’s slung around now so much, to be a racist. You know, what is it to be a racist? All we want to do is stand for our country, look after the people within it. So we’re not racist. None of us are racist.” (Farage, too, has denied accusations of racism, and Reform dispute that they are a far right party.)

Citizens told to stay at home while ELN guerrillas carry out exercises in response to US president’s cocaine warning

Colombia’s ELN guerrilla group has ordered civilians in areas under its control to stay home for three days starting on Sunday, while it carries out military exercises in response to “intervention” threats from Donald Trump.

Trump said earlier this month any country that produces cocaine and sells it to the United States was “subject to attack”.

Leader praises his soldiers for turning ‘danger zone into a safe one’ during ceremony in Pyongyang welcoming them back from Ukraine war

North Korea sent troops to clear mines in Russia’s Kursk region earlier this year, leader Kim Jong-un said in a speech carried on Saturday by state media, a rare acknowledgement by Pyongyang of the deadly tasks assigned to its deployed soldiers.

According to South Korean and western intelligence agencies, North Korea has sent thousands of troops to support Russia’s nearly four-year invasion of Ukraine.

The writer’s former partner and her co-star Ruby Ashbourne Serkis describe the bittersweet nature of remounting his 90s play so soon after his death

• ‘We were swimming in the mind pool of Tom Stoppard!’ – actors salute the great playwright

I won’t, I promise, refer to Felicity Kendal as Tom Stoppard’s muse. “No,” she says firmly. “Not this week.” Speaking to Stoppard’s former partner and longtime leading lady is delicate in the immediate aftermath of the writer’s death. But she is previewing a revival of his Indian Ink, so he shimmers through the conversation. The way Kendal refers to Stoppard in the present tense tells its own poignant story.

Settling into a squishy brown sofa at Hampstead theatre, Kendal describes revisiting the 1995 work, developed from a 1991 radio play. “It’s a play that I always thought I’d like to go back to.” Previously starring as Flora Crewe, a provocative British poet visiting 1930s India, she now plays Eleanor Swan, Flora’s sister. We meet Eleanor in the 1980s, fending off an intrusive biographer but uncovering her sister’s rapt and nuanced relationships in India.

The former X Factor judge is back, auditioning boyband wannabes for his latest talent show – but gen Z doesn’t seem to care very much, or even know who he is

Have we gone back in time to 2010? If only! No, Simon Cowell is just back in the headlines, reasserting his svengali status for his new Netflix show. Reviews suggest that Cowell’s attempted comeback, 15 years since his celebrity peak, highlights less his particular star power than how totally the world has moved on. But is there anything to learn from SyCo now, and will his new boyband work? Let’s see!

1. Cowell is chasing a new direction

Several European nations are already planning similar moves while Britain has said ‘nothing is off the table’

Australia is taking on powerful tech companies with its under-16 social media ban, but will the rest of the world follow? The country’s enactment of the policy is being watched closely by politicians, safety campaigners and parents. A number of other countries are not far behind, with Europe in particular hoping to replicate Australia, while the UK is keeping more of a watchful interest.

The seizure of the Skipper on Wednesday marked the first US capture of Venezuelan oil cargo since sanctions were imposed in 2019

Venezuelan oil exports have reportedly fallen sharply since the US seized a tanker this week and imposed fresh sanctions on shipping companies and vessels doing business with Caracas, according to shipping data, documents and maritime sources.

The US seizure of the Skipper tanker off Venezuela’s coast on Wednesday was the first US capture of Venezuelan oil cargo since sanctions were imposed in 2019 and marked a sharp escalation in rising tensions between the Trump administration and the government of Nicolás Maduro.

Mike Waltz warns ‘spoilers’ will be held to account as rebel fighters escalate offensive in South Kivu province

The US has accused Rwanda of violating a US-brokered peace agreement by backing a deadly new rebel offensive in the mineral-rich eastern Congo, and warned action will be taken against “spoilers”.

The remarks by the US ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, came as more than 400 civilians have been killed since the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels escalated their offensive in eastern Congo’s South Kivu province, according to officials who also say Rwandan special forces were in the strategic city of Uvira.

California jury finds company knew its talc-based products were dangerous but failed to warn consumers

A California jury on Friday awarded $40m to two women who said Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder was to blame for their ovarian cancer.

The jury in Los Angeles superior court awarded $18m to Monica Kent and $22m to Deborah Schultz and her husband after finding that Johnson & Johnson knew for years its talc-based products were dangerous but failed to warn consumers.