The Dutch-Israeli author on a demonic club hit, her fish fixation, and her love of furniture restoration videos

Born in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1987, Yael van der Wouden is a writer and teacher who lectures in creative writing and comparative literature in the Netherlands. Her work has appeared in publications including LitHub, Electric Literature and Elle.com, and she has a David Attenborough-themed advice column, Dear David, in the online literary journal Longleaf Review. Her essay on Dutch identity and Jewishness, On (Not) Reading Anne Frank, received a notable mention in the 2018 Best American Essays collection. The Safekeep , published by Viking earlier this year, is Van der Wouden’s debut novel and is shortlisted for the Booker prize.

As Howard University celebrates 100 years of alumni coming home to honor their beloved alma mater and each other, Kamala Harris, a Howard alum, is possibly on the verge of becoming the first Black woman president. The historically Black university’s homecoming marks a century of Black achievement, a familiar celebration for some of the most influential people in the nation. Below are decades of photographs that illustrate the prideful and jubilant atmosphere of homecoming through the years.

The actor, 78, talks about the thrill of performing, becoming a mother, and why hers is the luckiest generation of women

Panto was my chance to perform somewhere other than on the sideboard as a child. I’d be on the edge of my seat when they said, “Are there any little children in the audience?”

I still have a school exercise book where I wrote what I wanted to be when I grew up. It went: a) air hostess b) dress designer and c) actress. But as soon as everybody started applying for university, I’d done the musical festivals and elocution lessons and, in 1965, Lamda accepted me.

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Kylie Minogue’s follow-up to 2023’s euphoric Tension – and smash hit Padam Padam – fluctuates between sparkle and self-doubt, generic pap and two stone-cold bangers

It is impossibly easy to root for Kylie Minogue. The Australian pop princess is funny in interviews – see her dry, casual dismissal of the idea that Kylie Jenner could trademark their shared first name . She is also remarkably private – rarely, if ever, whipping up hokey, pseudo-emotional backstories for her records or trying to claim that she is some kind of pop auteur. In this sense, she is a rarity in the modern pop landscape, in which bleeding-heart confessionalism and grand posturing are de rigueur. Her wine brand is pretty good , and while her 2010s and 2020s output rarely holds a candle to her unimpeachable 90s and 00s run, she has continually released enough great singles, and mounted enough fantastic tours, to keep fans interested (and stay in high rotation at drag bars).

This surfeit of goodwill meant that when her career began to genuinely reignite on a mainstream level last year – after the single Padam Padam took on a life of its own thanks to its kooky lyrics and insistent hook – many were swept up in the “Padamic”. That song’s associated album, Tension , also had the huge benefit of being Minogue’s best full-length in many years: a euphoric EDM-pop record that also indulged her long-established love of glittery French touch and hazily remembered 80s nostalgia. Songs such as Hold on to Now, with its Robyn-esque slow build, and the robotic sex jam Tension are among Minogue’s best tracks in ages – capturing, perfectly, the heightened mix of cheekiness and steeliness that wasn’t even totally nailed on, say, Padam Padam, which, despite its success, also felt a little bit anonymous.

Film festival organisers make ‘heartbreaking’ decision not to show Undercover: Exposing the Far Right amid concerns over staff welfare

A documentary that lifts the lid on a “race science” network of far-right activists in Britain and its links to a rich American funder of eugenics research has been pulled from the London Film Festival (LFF) at the last minute due to safety concerns.

The organisers have taken the “heartbreaking decision” to cancel the planned screening of the “exceptional” Undercover: Exposing the Far Right this weekend due to fears about the welfare of the staff and security working in the festival venues.

Unique experiment in German-language public broadcasting 3sat faces pressure from populist right

In many countries around the world, breakfast TV means cele­brity interviews, soap operas and last night’s football highlights. On the German-language channel 3sat this Sunday morning, it means a one-hour philosophical discussion on trauma psychology, followed by a book review programme and a classical concert by the Munich Radio Orchestra.

The collaboration between public broadcasters in Austria, Germany and Switzerland is a unique experi­ment in pan-European broadcasting that has defied doubters for almost four decades: highbrow television.

The TV presenter on pet lions and monkeys, moving to the UK from Sudan, and his love for the Scottish Highlands

Born in Sudan in 1990, Hamza Yassin is a wildlife cameraman and TV presenter. With a BA in zoology with conservation, and a master’s in biological imaging and photography, Hamza had his first presenting experience on The One Show, and went on to front Countryfile and CBBC’s Ranger Hamza’s Eco Quest. The champion of 2022’s Strictly Come Dancing, he lives on the west coast of Scotland. His book, Hamza’s Wild World, is out now.

My neighbour had a few animals that he kept as pets, and one of them was a lioness who had just given birth. I was super-excited to meet the cub. Shortly after this photo was taken, my neighbour asked: “Do you want to go in and say hello to the lioness too?” I said: “No, um, thank you. I think I’m OK!”

When I started looking at how the superhero movie sausage gets made for a new HBO comedy, I found a world of dysfunction, missed deadlines and utterly frazzled film-makers

When the wheels are coming off, there is no more exquisite humiliation that can be visited upon an adult human than being the director of a big-budget superhero franchise movie. Not even working as the guy who had to wipe a medieval king’s arse. “Groom of the Stool” is sometimes a more covetable credit than “Directed by”. And as even the most fearsome talent agent will tell you, both guarantee you get shit on the back end.

But that’s confusing, you might think, because aren’t directors supposed to be god tier? That’s definitely what I thought, back when I started as one of the writers on The Franchise, a new HBO comedy set behind the scenes in the world of superhero movies. Except the more we talked to people inside the comic-book movie machines of Marvel and DC – and we talked to huge numbers of people – the more dysfunctional the picture that emerged became.

An act of resistance in 1920s Sicily was one of the inspirations for Ali Smith’s latest novel. The author describes her chance encounter with the Sacco family and why their story still resonates

Last December. Five days after Christmas. England under a louring sky. Beyond, immediate, invisible, pressing down on every single person on the planet, the current international constellation of authoritarians, beneath them the tens of thousands of the dead.

In a liberal democratic time.