‘I support it completely’: Israelis back attack on Iran even as retaliatory missiles hit Tel Aviv

At least three people killed in wave of Iranian attacks as handful of warheads slip through Israeli air defences

Live updates: Israel and Iran exchange missile strikes with explosions heard in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Tehran

Iranian missiles hit Israel as Netanyahu threatens Tehran with more ‘on the way’

At midnight on Friday Sveta’s four-year-old daughter was asleep on the floor outside their shattered apartment block, as the rest of the family weighed up where they should spend the night.

A missile from the firstIranian salvo fired at Tel Avivhad landed a couple of blocks away, killing at least one person, injuring at least 16 others and damaging hundreds of shops and homes in this quiet residential area.

The 37-year-old was sanguine about her own losses, and backed the government decision to attackIraneven though it had so quickly cost her family their home.

“I support it completely,” she said as her older daughter stroked their chihuahua. “This is nothing compared to what they will be able to do if they get their hand on the A-bomb [nuclear weapons]. We can’t afford for the Iranians to get them.

“We tell [our daughters] that as long as we go to the shelter together, everything is OK. The damage in the house is just material things.”

The family’s street, in a residential area of Ramat Gan town east of Tel Aviv, was busy with emergency services crunching over shattered glass and other wreckage to reach the building that took a direct hit.

It had been reduced to layers of concrete rubble and twisted steel, with an apparently undamaged cabinet hanging incongruously from the remains of the first floor.

Two hours after the explosion, rescue teams were still searching through the wreckage for survivors, as a drone buzzed overhead.

At the edge of the police cordon Bar, 31, begged to be let back into her building to pick up a few things for her children. It was still standing, beyond the crumpled remains of several cars, but emergency workers said it was too dangerous to enter.

The family escaped the bombing because they were staying with her parents. Bar recognised her home on the news as reporters arrived at the impact site, and after the all-clear came back to check on their apartment.

“They told me I can’t go in because of the damage,” she said. “I’m anxious and in shock, and the kids are very scared. We have nowhere to go, no home to go back to.”

Residents of nearby buildings walked past dragging suitcases and weighed down with backpacks. Most were leaving to stay with friends and relatives, because the city government had declared a mass casualty event and was only offering camp beds in a nearby school.

A few hundred metres down the road Orly, 27, was helping a friend sweep up shattered glass from the window of a friend’s beauty salon.

“You see what a ballistic missile does? We are hundreds of metres away here,” she said. “We were in the shelter when it hit and you felt it. I’ve been through a couple of wars now and I knew this was different.”

Two more waves of missiles followed before dawn, and both times a handful of Iran’s warheads slipped through layers of Israeli and allied air defences to hit across centralIsrael.

At least three people were killed across Israel and more than 40 injured, emergency services reported early on Saturday. It was the most intense and deadly few hours inside Israel since the Hamas cross-border attacks on 7 October 2023 that triggered the war in Gaza, but the toll was dwarfed by the damage that Israel inflicted on Iran.

Elia Digma, 18, lives near a high-rise residential building in central Tel Aviv that was hit in the first salvo. He felt the impact even in an underground shelter and had come to inspect the damage.

“It’s a miracle only five people were hurt here,” he said. “It was one hell of a boom, and everything shook.”

It was shocking to see the fallout of a missile hitting the heart of his city, Elia said, and he was braced for more attacks. But, like Sveta, he was confident the pre-emptive attack on Iran had been necessary.

“We are doing what we need to defend ourselves,” Elia said. “The Bible says if someone comes to kill you, you must kill them first. We are ready for anything and everything that will bring quiet.”

Israel and Iran exchange missile strikes with explosions heard in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Tehran – live

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the Middle East, where Iran has launched a wave of retaliatory attacks afterIsraelkilled scores of people and injured hundreds in a surprise attack on Friday morning that it claimed was aimed at preventing its arch enemy from developing a nuclear weapon.

Explosions were heard over Jerusalem and Tel Aviv early on Saturday. Two people were reported to have been killed, one in Tel Aviv in an attack on Friday night and one in central Israel on Saturday morning. InIran, fresh explosions were reported at an airport in Tehran that houses an air force base, and across the Hakimiyeh and Tehranpars neighbourhoods in the east of the capital.

The Israeli military said its air defence systems were operating. “In the last hour, dozens of missiles have been launched at the state of Israel from Iran, some of which were intercepted,” the Israeli military said.

Rescue teams were working at a number of locations across the country where fallen projectiles were reported, it said.

In Iran, several explosions were heard in the capital, Tehran, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. The Fars news agency said two projectiles hit Tehran’s Mehrabad airport, and Iranian media said flames were reported there. Close to key Iranian leadership sites, the airport hosts an air force base with fighter jets and transport aircraft.

Israeli media said a suspected missile came down in Tel Aviv, and a loud boom was reported in Jerusalem.

Iran’s envoy to the UN security council, Amir Saeid Iravani, said 78 people including senior officials had been killed in the Israeli attacks on Friday, and that more than 320 were injured, most of them civilians. He said the US was complicit in the attacks and accused Israel of seeking “to kill diplomacy, to sabotage negotiations and to drag the region into wider conflict”.

The US role in the attackremained murkywith President Donald Trump giving conflicting accounts as to his approval and foreknowledge. In the run-up to the Israeli 200-plane attack, Trump had publicly urged Israel to give diplomacy more of a chance, before US-Iranian talks that were planned for Sunday. But on Friday, the US president insisted he had been well informed of Israel’s plans and described the Israeli attack as “excellent”.

Iran launched a fresh wave of attacks on Israel early on Saturday, state media said, after Israel’s military reported it detected inbound missiles from Iran. “New round of Honest Promise 3 attacks,” state television reported, referring to the name of the Iranian military operation against Israel.

Israel’s ambulance service said 34 people were injured on Friday night in the Tel Aviv area, most with minor injuries. Police later said one person had died. On Saturday Israeli media quoted emergency services as saying one person had been killed and 19 injured by a direct Iranian strike on an area in central Israel.

A top-level UN conference on a two-state solution forIsraeland the Palestinians scheduled for next week has been postponed, French president Emmanuel Macron said on Friday.France and Saudi Arabia had been due to co-chair the conference hosted by the UN general assembly in New York on 17-20 June, and Macron had been among leaders scheduled to attend.

Dozens of Palestinians were killed and injured after Israeli forces opened fire on people waiting to receive aid near a checkpoint north of Nuseirat, Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif and Drop Site News reported, in thelatest such massacre. More Palestinians were killed when Israeli gunboats targets the tents of displaced people on a beach north-west of Gaza City, al-Sharif reported. It was impossible to independently verify the reports as Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering the territory. It has also cut off internet to Gaza since Thursday.

Israel closed all checkpoints to the Israeli-occupied West Bank as the country attacked Iran, a military official said Friday. The move sealed off entry and exit to the territory, meaning that Palestinians could not leave without special coordination.

‘The risk was worth it’: All Fours author Miranda July on sex, power and giving women permission to blow up their lives

The artist and author’s hit book had so much in common with her own life that even her friends forgot it wasn’t real. How did this revolutionary portrayal of midlife desire come to inspire a generation of women?

When Miranda July’sAll Fourswas published in May last year, it triggered what felt like both a spontaneous resistance movement and the sort of mania last experienced when the final Twilight book dropped, except this time for women in midlife rather than teenage girls. Two friends separately brought it to my house, like contraband dropped out of a biplane. Book groups hastily convened, strategically timed for when the men were out of the picture.

The story opens with a 45-year-old woman about to take a road trip, a break from her husband and child and general domestic noise. She’s intending to drive from LA to New York, but is derailed in the first half hour by a young guy, Davey, in a car hire place, to whom she is passionately attracted. The next several weeks pass in a lust so intense, so overpowering, so lusciously drawn, it’s like a cross between ayahuasca and encephalitis. The narrator is subsumed by her obsession, and disappears her normal life. The road trip is a bust from the start, but the effort of breaking the spell and going home looks, for a long time, like way too much for the narrator, and when she finally does, to borrow from Leonard Cohen (perhaps describing a similar situation), she’s somebody’s mother but nobody’s wife.

The New York Times called it “the first great perimenopause novel”, which is incorrect – not because you could easily name 10 others, rather because what it ignited was not an honest heart-to-heart about hormones, but something far more radical. What if a woman just told the truth, about sex, monogamy, marriage, mortality, domesticity, friendship, the life of the mind? The disruption of norms would be so immense that you wouldn’t, as a reader, necessarily need your circumstances or feelings to correspond to the author’s for that to upend your life. One woman who nearly divorced her husband after reading it said: “I think what I felt, which I think is what a lot of us feel, is permission to be undone.”

All Fourswas an immediate success. It spent nearly a year on the Indie Bestseller list. It was afinalist in the National Book Awardsin the US, as well as being named on the best books lists, 2024, by the New York Times, the New Yorker, Time, the Washington Post, PBS, Oprah, Vogue and Vulture.

Now, a year on, the paperback is coming out, and I’m talking to July as she waits to find out whether she has won the Women’s prize . Our conversation, which would normally be part-retrospective – there’s a funny bit in All Fours when she talks about the female artist’s lifecycle: first “hot young thing”, then wilderness years, and a final spurt of attention before you die – is instead all about the reaction to this book. “I wrote it as if it was OK – as if everyone knew what I was talking about,” July says, looking bluestockingy in round glasses, from her home in Echo Park, Los Angeles. “As if you could make a joke about something shameful, as if we had all already talked about that thing. Even though we hadn’t. So it was skipping a few steps, even to have humour about it. I was building on an internal world that I believed existed, not just in me.”

Miranda July is 51, was born in Vermont to two writer parents, and has the ultimate boho CV – she said once that her last shitty job was at the age of 23, as a car-door-unlocker at Pop-A-Lock, a US chain of locksmiths, which makes her ability to make a living as, variously, a performance artist, a film-maker, a writer, almost mythical. She came to indie prominence withMe and You and Everyone We Know,her first full-length film, in 2005 – it won the best first feature at Cannes that year. It has the most endearing, infuriating sequence: someone buys a goldfish and ­accidentally drives off, having left it on top of his car. July, starring in the film because, realistically, she was the only person who could have, decides from inside her own car that the fish will certainly perish, and delivers an ode: “I didn’t know you, but I want you to know that you were loved.” Her voice was incredibly distinctive – she nailed all those universal feelings such as awkwardness, futility, delight, yet was as far as you could imagine from being an everywoman. There followed an exquisite book of short stories –No One Belongs Here More Than You– in 2007, and her first full-length novel,The First Bad Man, in 2015.

Certainly, she always blurred the lines between herself and her protagonists. But When All Fours was published, it couldn’t escape anyone’s notice that July herself has a child, roughly the same age as the narrator’s, and separated from her husband two years before the book’s publication. Of course, it’s always assumed that authors borrow from life, but this seemed like a different order of autobiographical fiction. Being honest about feelings, even destructive, primitive, contradictory, overwhelming ones, is daring enough, but marrying them to real-life events felt cataclysmic, which almost created a feedback loop. Readers felt the story was so audacious it had to be true.

They were invested in the truth of it, to the extent that, during a Q&A after a reading, “someone asked about Davey being a dancer, why was he?” says July. “And I went through the whole thing of my process, why I came up with that, and I could just feel the room kind of deflate. They wanted him to be a real dancer.”

“My actual friends,” July says, her voice rising in mock outrage, “they know that so much of this didn’t happen. It definitely didn’t happen the way it’s written in the book. But even as I was talking to a writer friend, she said, ‘I keep forgetting that you didn’t just do what you did in the book. You had years of couples therapy and this long conversation with your husband, it’s totally different.’ And I was, like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ You have to hold that in your head. How is anyone else going to believe this isn’t real, if my friends can’t even remember?”

What about her ex, though – Mike Mills, also a film-maker, Oscar-nominated in 2017 for his movie20th Century Women? Did he mind, or was he fine with it? July looks at me sardonically. “I don’t think those are the only two conceivable feelings.”

The pair met at Sundance film festival in 2005, both there with their first movies. “So we met as artists, and we always talked about how there’s this bubble that’s sacred for each of us, you keep the bubbles separate. You know, you each get your own world, and you have your freedom within that. And so it’s not like it’s always easy, and for sure, there were parts of this that were hard. There’s a part of it that was very personal for him – this is the mother of my child, we’ll know each other for ever. And then there’s the part that’s a fellow artist. I remember him saying to me, ‘I think you’re at your best when you’re closest to the bone as a writer.’ So it’s not great, it’s not safe, but that was helpful to me to hear. I felt like the risk was worth it. The reward for not risking it seemed too modest.”

A couple of months in from the publication of All Fours, everyone had a story about a woman who’d read it and blown her life up. But if you took a stroll through Goodreads, which is a kind of all-comers citizen book review site, something else stuck out: the people who one-starred it (about 5% of almost 140,000) didn’t just hate it, there were actively angry with it. The rage was fascinating. It was as if they’d been slapped. Many were angry at how graphic it was (there’s a famous, sexy scene with a tampon that would probably be a spoiler to describe). Commenters took umbrage. “It would be great if I could read a book by a well-known female author who wasn’t under the impression that descriptions of cutting matted hair from a dog’s ass or running her hands under her lover’s pee was ‘original’, ‘sharp’, or ‘illuminating’ writing,” wrote one. Many prefaced their scorn with the belief that women’s bodies were brilliant territory for a writer – uncharted, tumultuous, mysterious – just not like this. This gave them the ick.

More than that, though, they were angry with the narrator, and nowhere was the conflation of fiction and fact more complete; if she was narcissistic, self-involved, “immature” then so was July. “Yeah, I need to talk about that with someone,” July says, “probably not you.” (I wish it could be me, but it sounds like she means a therapist.)

Sometimes, it’s just that they weren’t expecting it – “They thought it was going to be a beach read.” But more importantly, “They’re very sympathetic to the husband.” Of course, it’s that – no question, he is betrayed by the narrator, not just with this brain fever emotional infidelity, but on an even more basic level; it’s that he’s so nice, so personable, so thoughtful, so empathetic, and yet … he’s not enough. “And I’m thinking, ‘I created the husband, too! So he’s also me!’” she says, laughing. This is possibly the most radical act of the book: not a woman getting divorced, but a woman leaving a Good Guy.

The husband gets annoyed just once: when the narrator posts a photo of herself on Instagram, dancing suggestively. This section, which follows a period where the narrator works out in the gym and strives for a perfect physique, surprised me – it’s such a mainstream thing to do. It’s not a thousand miles from real life, either, as July also likes to uploads videos of herself shaking her insanely perfect, pretty much unshakeable ass (though fair play, the dances themselves are anything but mainstream). Today, July bristles a bit at the suggestion her character is in thrall to a beauty ideal when admiring her ass. “No, she’s been taking nude selfies, and then she’s surprised to see, ‘Hold on, it does look a little different down there.’ I think that’s what I was trying to capture.” Then she elaborates: “If ever I have something to do with fashion, or frankly, even if I just get quite dressed up and I’m photographed because I enjoy that, I do have conversations with other prominent women writers that are like, ‘I make sure that no one sees me having too good a time.’ I think, for women, the measurement of what seriousness looks like is still masculine.”

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In November last year, July launched herSubstack. It became a muster point for people who relished talking about the book, but an unusual number had also made a great change in their lives after reading it. What was interesting, when Iinterviewed some of them, was the sheer range of situations. There were readers who didn’t need an LA literary novelist and performance artist to tell them they were allowed their own feelings – readers who were already queer or polyamorous or non-binary, who nevertheless found a new permission to just get out of whatever situation they were in, forgo the security of a relationship for something more authentic and exploratory. There were readers who were from incredibly conservative backgrounds. There were women who didn’t leave their relationship, who simply left a job in which they felt no appreciation. There were women who changed the way they had sex. There were women who changed the way they related to their children, changed the time or attention they gave to friendships. We weren’t looking at a divorce manual, in other words, but “permission to be undone”. No wonder some people were angry. That is an incredibly dangerous licence, socially. A lot of things really rely on women who’ll hold it together for others, regardless of their own feelings.

July says that the scale of readers’ responses has felt like more than an unusual wave of appreciation for a previously respected but niche artist and writer. “I had this movie [Me and You and Everyone We Know], that was the big change for me,” she says. “That experience was really about me, a new voice. All Fours is really about women. Reading and hearing about other people’s stories – the sense of isolation, the shame that I had while I was writing the book, it’s all been completely inverted.”

This is one of the reasons “perimenopause novel” irks, as a thumbnail – situating these explosive feelings hormonally is just another way to say these feelings will pass, so don’t matter. But July is relaxed about that. “There have been different phases of shame and fear while I’m writing – there was more shame when I was younger. Then I got to the perimenopause and that was the last thing I wanted to be associated with. All the time I was writing, I was just thinking, ‘Why am I doing this? I can’t stop myself.’” The menopause conversation is much more developed in the UK than the US, she says, where nobody talks about it. “You could have a whole relationship with your gynaecologist and really not have it come up. Or you could say, ‘I have these symptoms,’ and they’d say, ‘If you’re suicidal, you can take hormones, but otherwise just ride it out.’ And that’s in LA!” It makes me think of all the other ways in which women in the US are peculiarly under-emancipated – not the recent, terrifying anti-abortion legislation, but the bread-and-butter stuff, such as the lack of significant maternity leave; does that feel connected? “I think it’s very intertwined with the healthcare system. We just don’t have reliable healthcare, period. So menopause is a luxury problem.”

She notes, wryly, that “we don’t actually have a problem with rich, aspirational women” as protagonists, they just can’t be dissatisfied. It’s funny: on a Zoom she looks younger than her age, but not artificially so, or massively groomed; but in public, I’ve always found her stunning appearance incongruous, like, how can this woman feel out of place?

July’s The First Bad Man is 10 years old now, and even though it is mainly powered by sexual fantasies, they are so extravagantly weird that, when I read it, I didn’t even realise it was meant to be erotic. (That was partly context – literary erotic fiction wasn’t really a thing, then. You were either a Fifty Shades reader or you read grown-up stuff.) It wasn’t until July spoke at a book festival and described how she was masturbating so much while working on the book that her writer-friend said she had to sublimate, the way athletes do, or she was never going to finish it. Which was news to the audience just because, you know, who’s ever heard “I was masturbating … ” at a book festival?

Technically, All Fours is a work of erotic fiction, which has a definition: that the sex doesn’t just happen, the characters are advanced by it. At the same time, it’s not a sex-beach-read, because that’s not July’s style. “Sometimes I pick up a book at the top of the bestseller lists, just to understand what’s going on,” she says. “I’m reading a romcom called Funny Story. I was shocked by how graphic it is … I don’t think I’m prudish, I was a sex worker at times in my life.”

All Fours aims to do something different. “The joy of it, for me, was writing a thing I hadn’t seen written about sex, either because what constituted sex was new, or because nobody had ever described, like, a woman who takes a long time to come; the thoughts of the other person: is this a fool’s errand? Will I be able to do this? It was just really funny to me: ‘Tell me if you need a vibrator, tell me if I’m just gonna keep going at this. You know, if it’s humanly possible.’”

Yet this definitely isn’t slapstick sex; it’s meant, and felt. The narrator and her friend make a rigid distinction between mind-rooted fuckers and body-rooted fuckers – mind-fuckers are imagining a scene as they have sex (in one memorable description between the narrator and her husband, she says it’s like she stuck a giant TV to his head); body-fuckers are absolutely engrossed in the sensations of the body, their mind is nowhere – and there’s a memorable scene for that, too.

What was the reason, creatively, that the narrator and Davey never have sex? “The point was to build it to this place where you felt like those were the only two options: she’s either going to have sex or she’s going to go home. I wanted to use all that built-up energy, that obsessive loop, so another way of thinking would present itself. That playing field, while it’s completely addictive to read about – and to live, frankly – is ultimately quite small. But it can be transformative, it can push you into the next area of your life. If the end result is that you fuck Davey, you might not get that birth of complexity.” Then she says the most surprisingly romantic thing. “When someone sees you, in a particular way, and that part of your soul that hasn’t really been seen is seen, it won’t go back into the box. And that’s a big problem, because your life isn’t built for it to come out of the box.”

We speak before July travels to the UK for the Women’s prize. “Sometimes people will tip you off that you’re not gonna win. I’ve been looking for that email, and haven’t had it yet. But the important thing about this book is what it’s done to the conversation, for the culture. I don’t know if that’s the thing literary prizes are for.” ( In the end,she lost out toDutch debut novelist Yael van der Wouden.)

It must feel strange and vulnerable, at this moment, to be an author who stands for – maybe not everything, but a huge amount of things that the US government absolutely cannot tolerate, whether that’s female emancipation or sexual and gender fluidity. “I tend to think the people who are most vulnerable to this are not so visible. What’s the deal with my neighbours? I’ve known them for 20 years, but I don’t know who’s here legally, why would I know their business? Who’s gonna notice if two of the people in that house are gone?” But it does touch her personally, and not just as a neighbour. “It’s really hard to get a grip on,” she says sadly. “Whether the most extreme takes are actually the most clear-eyed. Whether the people who are moving [abroad] have it right. I’m trying to figure that out right now.”

Unlike her narrator, July did make it to New York, last week, where she entertained her friends in her hotel room (which will, if you’ve read it, remind you a lot of All Fours). This is how she described the experience on her Substack: “Two of my visiting friends were my age and both of them, in different ways, spoke about looking older, the hardness of that … One friend and I showed each other our thighs in the light to make sure the other one really saw our cellulite. I told her the truth: I had assumed hers was much more extreme because of how she had spoken about it over the years. For years, I had placed her in a different category from myself, cellulite-wise.” And that’s July – the political, the personal, the public, the intimate, the things you’re not supposed to think about if you want to be taken seriously or thought of as truthful, all with a voice that’s entirely relatable yet completely idiosyncratic.

All Fours is out now in paperback (Canongate Books). To support the Guardian, order your copy fromguardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

Brian Wilson was a musical genius. Are there any left?

In pop, which equates genius with innovation, recent artists have not pioneered new forms like those from the 60s. Has the digital age sidelined invention and promoted the derivative for ever?

By all accounts, Brian Wilson was a genius. His fellow greats Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney both used the word in their tributes to the creative force behind the Beach Boys, whodied this weekaged 82. So did John Cale, Mick Fleetwood and Elton John. And so did Wilson’s bandmates, who wrote in a joint statement: “The world mourns a genius today.”

You may imagine Wilson gradually accrued such a vaunted standing. Artistic legacy is largely dependent on the longevity of mass appeal, and the fact that the Beach Boys’ opusPet Soundsremains one of the most celebrated and beloved records of all time almost 60 years since its release is proof enough of his incredible talent.

Wilson’s claim to genius status began with a 1966 PR campaign masterminded by the ex-Beatles publicist Derek Taylor. Fortunately, Wilson’s output justified it, and after spreading like wildfire through the British music press the “Brian Wilson is a genius” rhetoric quickly caught on, “especially with the UK public”, says Wilson’s biographer, David Leaf. It has been the consensus ever since.

Do we just imagine musical geniuses are anointed in retrospect because we no longer have any? It is extremely difficult to argue that any artist of the last 30 years has reached the trailblazing standard of Wilson, Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Joni Mitchell and David Bowie. The remaining members of those acts are all over 80 (with the sole exception of Ronnie Wood at 78); Stevie Wonder is 75, Brian Eno is 77, Ralf Hütter, the surviving founder of Kraftwerk, is 78.

The most recent claimants to the musical genius title are generally considered to have been Michael Jackson and Prince, both of whom died relatively young. Soon, the very idea of a living legend will be a thing of the past.

In pop music, which reveres the new, genius is synonymous with innovation. Obviously, it is no coincidence that all of our unique and innovative musical minds were of a similar generation, starting work in the 1970s – at the very latest – when all the new drum, guitar and keyboard sounds and most resonant, memorable melodies were there for the taking. Such was the virgin territory before them, theBeach Boyseven had the opportunity to sonically codify California, one of the most culturally significant places on the planet.

“I guess I just wasn’t made for these times,” Wilson once sang. But if he hadn’t been operating in those lonely years, would he have been considered a genius at all?

What is also quite clear is that musical progress didn’t abruptly end half a century ago. There is still as-yet-unheard music to be made – and made it is, all the time. Generic fusions, formal variations and experimental production techniques are not infinite but they are definitely not exhausted, and some have even coalesced into era-defining movements, as 21st-century genres such as grime, trap and hyperpop prove.

Some genres – including grime, which can be convincingly traced back to the British producer Wiley and his turn-of-the-millennium experiments; and hyperpop, the brainchild of the London producer AG Cook and his PC Music collective – even have specific originators. Yet they still haven’t produced any bona fide musical geniuses.

First, the entirely explicable part. The demise of the monoculture – due to technology’s fracturing of the media and cultural landscape – means only the most aggressively mainstream and inoffensively palatable acts (Adele, Ed Sheeran, Taylor Swift) are able to command the same level of fame and musical familiarity as their 1960s counterparts.

Meanwhile, invention has remained staunchly at the cultural fringes – and if it does get anywhere near the zeitgeist, the journey is leisurely. Grime took off a full decade after its creation, thanks to Skepta and Stormzy; so did hyperpop, which reached the masses last summer in the guise of Charli xcx’s Brat.

This is another reason why musical genius is so thin on the ground: the people who do the actual innovating rarely end up in the spotlight themselves. This seems especially so in comparison with the 1960s; it is impossible to separate personal achievement from the decade’s goldrush – a manic crusade to push pop and rock to its absolute limits.

The famous rivalry between Wilson and the Beatles – healthy competition for the latter, says Leaf, if not so much for the former – accelerated progress and incentivised change. The pressure is also thought to have contributed to the decline in Wilson’s mental health later in the decade.

But then comes the more mysterious part. What is so astonishing about Wilson is how many different groundbreaking things he did simultaneously. In the studio, “he was inventing a new way of making popular music,” Leaf says. “What he called modular recording – recording bits and pieces of a song and then piecing it together.” He also pioneered the idea of one person helming all elements of a recorded song: composition, arrangement, performance, mixing, production.

On top of that, he did something lyrically radical. He transformed pop into an “emotional autobiography,” says Leaf. “He was determined to put his feelings on to the recording tape and share it with the world,” which at that time was very much not the norm. Many of pop’s canonical artists were similar: Dylan didn’t just single-handedly make popular music a vessel for poetry, he also infused it with an all-new attitude and emotional palette (cynicism, disgust, rebellion), while conflating his previous folk fare with rock to create an entirely new sound.

Dylan’s decision to go electric has become emblematic of the musical genius’s requirement to shock. Even Pet Sounds, an onslaught of loveliness, disturbed the band’s record label with its leaps of progress, says Leaf.

Nowadays, pop music is only really controversial where it overlaps with sex and violence; it is practically impossible to sonically surprise the listening public.

The prospect of the end of musical innovation is something students and lovers of guitar music have already had to make peace with – at this point, nostalgia is inherent to the genre. “I’m aware it’s impossible to make genuinely new, novel guitar music, and so I tend to lean into anachronism,” was how Owen Williams, frontman of my new favourite old-sounding band, the Tubs, once put it.

Just as selling out became a respected career move, explicit derivation is now an artform in itself; in recent years Beyoncé has stayed at the forefront of pop by essentially becoming a kind of musical historian.

There is one thing that does feel jarring about the slowed pace of musical progress. Technological advancement has always been woven into sonic novelty – the advent of synths (which Wilson also anticipated), for example, or sampling. Considering technology has accelerated in unimaginable, terrifying ways over the past 20 years, you’d think that might be reflected in the pop zeitgeist.

Instead, we have a chart stuffed with tracks that essentially could have been made at any point in the past 50 years. Perhaps the late 20th century – and particularly the 1960s – created a sort of natural selection of music: we found the combinations of notes and rhythms that appealed most to the western human ear and that is what we have continued to rehash.

Surely, then, this is a problem artificial intelligence may be able to solve. This is technology determined to get to know us more intimately than we know ourselves. What better way to continue the quest for novel pop perfection that Wilson embarked on 60 years ago?

In theory, it could supplant human creativity. In actuality, AI is unlikely to wrest control of pop’s soul from humans. That’s because musical innovation, and even catchy melodies, have ceded importance to the branding of people. If Swift’s gargantuan success is anything to go by – which it probably is – pop’s future depends on the carefully honed appeal of an individual human personalities, not what they can do on a keyboard (the musical kind).

Swift’s approach to her public image and the music business in general is groundbreaking in its own way, even if her music isn’t. We will be mourning her as a cultural figure at some point, but a musical genius? That would take some real cognitive dissonance.

It seems unlikely we will do so with anyone by the end of this century; we have no currently minted visionaries, although time will tell if anyone retroactively earns the title. What is certain is that as the pop canon continues to splinter into thousands of smaller, personal rosters, we will be losing musicians who mean everything to some people, but not – like Wilson – something to almost everyone.

‘On a peak under a blue sky’: the joy of summer in Europe’s mountains

Our writer recalls his favourite mountain experiences, from hard-won views to splendid isolation and the comforts of simple refuges

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After a tough scramble to the summit of Rhinog Fach, we look down into the deep valley holding the chilly waters of Llyn Hywel, then west across several miles of heather, bilberry and bare rock to the Welsh coast. Turning my gaze north, there is the entire Llyn peninsula leading east to the peak of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon), no doubt weighed down by thousands of visitors. Up here there are just two of us in an utterly peaceful landscape. No clouds on the horizon. No surprises.

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I lie down for a few minutes and feel myself drift off. There are no human voices to be heard, only birds. Summer has come early to these mountains and I wouldn’t be anywhere else, drinking in that particular kind of tranquillity to be found on a peak under a blue sky.

Mountains were not always seen as appropriate places to relax on a summer’s day. Those lofty, mist-wreathed realms held surprises, most of them nasty, such as trolls and demons. Maybe a few ancient folk knew perfectly well that mountains in summer were wonderful, but they weren’t the sort to publicise the fact: the solitary shepherd, gold prospectors not yet consumed by gold fever, and the workers who put up drystone walls – they all must have known the joy of lazing on a summit, perhaps seeing shapes in clouds.

Changing culture and taste took a revolution led by artists and poets, men such asNicolas Poussin, who in the 17th century tried to win people over with paintings of mysterious peaks and epic landscapes. Unfortunately, he couldn’t resist adding a fallen Grecian column and a nymph draped in wispy stuff. It took another 150 years before the German artistCaspar David Friedrichrelocated the wispy bits to the mountain tops, evicted the nymphs, and added one rugged poetic type, gazing out over the towering tors with a vaguely proprietorial air. His Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog(1818, now in Hamburg at the Kunsthalle) remains the most evocative depiction of the romantic ideal.

After that painting, summer in the mountains wasde rigueur,but it turned out that Friedrich’s sturdy 19th-century mountaineer was actually looking for a place to build a man-shed. All over the continent, wealthy romantics started funding simple dormitory accommodation, often precariously balanced on vertiginous crags. These mountain refuges were vital in allowing people to access the peaks, and became a huge part of my own enjoyment of the mountains.

The first to be built wasRefuge des Grands Muletson Mont Blanc in 1853. There is still a hut there, rebuilt a couple of times, perched at 3,051 metres (10,009ft), overlooking the Bossons glacier. My own favourite,Rifugio Nuvolau, is a period classic in the Dolomites, built in 1883 and a haven of stout carpentry, hearty food and astonishing sunsets. Not all are antiques:Monte Rosanear Zermatt is an aluminium solar-powered box that sits above the Gorner glacier and requires ropes and crampons in order to reach it.

Some huts are very high indeed: theMargheritaon the Italian Monte Rosa is, at 4,554 metres, the highest building in Europe. Sweden’sLåktatjåkko(1,228 metres) is both high in altitude and latitude: it’s 155 miles (250km) inside the Arctic Circle and often buried in snow, even in summer. Digging to the front door is worth the effort: they serve fantastic waffles with cloudberry jam.

The staff in these huts are usually charming and helpful. Not all guests, however, are so wonderful. “There was one British visitor who, during the course of the night, pushed all the other sleepers along the dormitory bench,” complained one French guest after staying inRefuge de Ciottulu di i Moriin Corsica. “He left a huge empty space behind him and we were all squashed up in one corner.” (I’ve no idea why I rolled like that. I was fast asleep.)

Making a reservation in one of these treasures can require persistence. The famous ones are often booked out, but many of the huts I’ve mentioned have alternatives nearby.

Where there are no mountain huts available, a tent is not always needed. In Romania’s Carpathians, I’ve slept in hay ricks after jolly evenings drinking plum brandy with farmers. Sadly, the hay rick is disappearing as agriculture modernises, but the Carpathians remain a fine mountain destination.

Oncea local hunter persuaded me to go on a bear hunt(no guns involved). We climbed through shady pine forest and golden flower-sprinkled meadows to warm rock and vast vistas. The hunter described a recent incident when he was chased up a tree by a bear. He proved it by showing his rucksack, complete with claw marks. On our descent, we stumbled on a fresh bear track and, for a second, the idyllic evening was shot through by lightning bolts of adrenaline.

An undeniable fact of mountain life is that moments of arcadian bliss can be abruptly ended. You go up in sun, and descend in a wild storm. The unpredictable must be expected. Helm Crag in the Lake District was a favourite of Romantic poet William Wordsworth and for that reason many go to commune with nature.

One blustery lunchtime, I was sitting a little below the craggy summit about to enjoy a picnic when a group on the top suddenly flung their grandmother into the air. Caught by the wind, the old lady was whipped sideways and down, straight into the sandwich that was about to go in my mouth. Ash-scattering ceremonies really should be more careful. The ancestor went to her final resting place tainted with Branston pickle.

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British mountains aren’t enlivened by European-style huts, but we do havebothies,camping barns, the Youth Hostels Association (YHA), and a number of goodcottagesfor hire. To climb the Rhinogydd (often anglicised to Rhinogs), I based myself at the off-grid retreat of Garth Gell farm, all lovely hand-worn woodwork, flagstone floors and dusty books.

The Rhinogydd are often touted as the most rugged mountain chain south of Hadrian’s Wall, which is a bit hard on the North Pennines and Cheviots, but the paths are certainly steep and challenging, deterring many visitors. The chain stretches for about 13 miles, with the highest point at Y Llethr (756 metres) where the 360-degree panorama is really special. The view is, of course, a big part of the attraction. We go up because we can see further.

My snooze on Rhinog Fach is interrupted by my companion. “Look!” he says. The best summer mountain experiences always have that unexpected moment: the bear jumps out and claws your rucksack, human remains land in your picnic … that kind of thing. I sit up, suddenly alert.

There’s a bird, its pale chest striped with grey, its tail fanned out in annoyance as a horde of smaller birds are mobbing it. And then it calls.

I have never considered the cuckoo to be a mountain bird, but there it is at 600 metres on a Welsh hill. And at the same time, away to the west, the haze lifts a little and the blue horizon puckers behind the last bit of Wales. The Blackstairs Mountains of Ireland have appeared. A summer’s day in the mountains is complete.

Accommodation was provided byGarth Gell, aKip hideaway, which sleeps six from £240 a night

Raids and fear cast a large shadow over Club World Cup’s big launch

Governing body cannot avoid the dark political backdrop to its tournament opening as Trump’s authorities flex their muscles

“When Donald Trump came in the laws just changed and it’s hard for immigrants now … you’ve got a lot of people being deported, people who have been in the United States for two decades. It’s not nice, it’s not right when someone who hasn’t committed a crime has to go back somewhere.

“I just don’t respect somebody like [Trump] that deports so many people and hurts so many families … this country was built on immigrants. Nobody’s from here.”

It seems unlikely this is the kind of hard political messaging Gianni Infantino was hoping to associate himself with when Fifa booked the New York rapper French Montana as its headline act at Saturday’sClub World Cupopening ceremony, a global spectacular taking place against a background of unrest over Trump’s immigration and repatriation policies.

French Montana moved to New York from Morocco aged 13 and has been outspoken in his support for the rights of undocumented US immigrants, although his place on the political spectrum has been muddied a little this year by an unexpected appearance on the Lara Trump track No Days Off.

His comments in interviews in2019and2018, and his presence at the centre of Fifa’s publicity for the launch night of its $1bn show, will provide a deeply uncomfortable reminder of the perils of fawning over divisive political leaders. Infantino has spent the past year energetically cosying up to the US president, attending his inauguration in a state of high excitement and even delaying Fifa’s annual meeting in order to follow Trump around a little longer on his visit to Qatar.

French Montana is at least in tune with the Fifa zeitgeist. Already this week the news that officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) will be part of the security operation for Saturday’s game between Al Ahly and Inter Miami has sparked widespread disquiet.

A year out from the World Cup that the US is sharing with Canada and Mexico, there is concern not only that supporters may stay away over fear of document checks and status wrangles, but that Fifa’s showpiece men’s club event is in danger of being piggybacked on as a political event by the Trump administration.

CBP has been openly promoting its role at Fifa’s tournament for the past few months under the hashtag #CBPxFIFA. This came to a head this week as it ended up deleting a Facebook post that stated its agents would be “suited and booted and ready to provide security for the first round of games”.

The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that Ice and CBP officers will be present at Club World Cup fixtures, saying: “All non-American citizens need to carry proof of their legal status.” This is not without recent precedent. CBP often operates at big sporting events, including February’s Super Bowl in New Orleans.

But it isn’t hard to see how this might be interpreted as containing an element of threat. Ice officers are being escorted around Los Angeles by the US national guard, a hugely controversial move that has contributed to the current unrest in the city.

CBP has also declined so far to address the reasons for the removal of its post about Fifa’s grand jamboree, which fuelled fears the event may be rolled into the aggressive enforcement of Trump’s immigration policy.

A glance at CBP’s X feed makes plain this is by no means a politically neutral entity. One post reads: “The alarming riots in L.A. which have put hundreds of law enforcement officers at risk, are precisely why the Big Beautiful Bill is so important.” Another states: “While rioters wave foreign flags and burn ours, our officers will always raise the stars and stripes with pride.” Approving references to Trump’s policies are intercut with remarks about “lies” from “the mainstream media and sanctuary politicians”. Questions will naturally be asked about whether this constitutes an appropriate hashtag partner for football’s apolitical governing body.

Infantino was asked this week about the presence of immigration agencies at Fifa’s launch party. His answer was characteristically vague, focusing instead on security issues. But there is concern on that front in Miami, fuelled by the chaos of the Copa América final between Argentina and Colombia at the same venue last year, which led to arrests, barriers rushed and a one-hour kick-off delay.

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The Hard Rock has warned of “multiple security and ticket check points”, and the Miami Herald has unearthed a police video used as a training tool for the tournament in which a sergeant is heard saying: “If things go south, we get prepared, we get ready. For civil unrest and unruly fans, this will get us ready for those events.”

And Fifa is dipping its toe into some overheated waters here. Only this week the Trump administration explicitly instructed anything up to half a million Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came legally to the United States under a Biden-era programme to “leave immediately” if they have yet to make the step from “parole” to full status.

The state of heightened security has affected Fifa’s party. On Wednesday a luxury pleasure flotilla chartered by the TV station Telemundo and containing Fifa officials and the Miami-Dade mayor, Daniella Levine Cava, was boarded by CBP officials in Biscayne Bay off the Miami coast. The event, staged to celebrate the approach of the World Cup, was abruptly cancelled.

Officials later stated the raid was a routine inspection that uncovered some safety violations. But the mayor has since described the incident as “deeply troubling” and told local media: “Ensuring that all community members feel safe and included is crucial to maintaining our county’s reputation as a welcoming destination for both residents and visitors.”

Saturday’s opening game (8pm EST, 1am BST on Sunday in the UK) is now a source of multiple migraines for Infantino. Trump will be absent, required instead to oversee his own Grand Military Parade in Washington. While this is no doubt a bone-deep personal disappointment for Infantino, it will at least spare him the embarrassment of marrying up his headline act’s political statements with the capricious and easily offended commander-in-chief in the seat next to him.

The game also coincides with a day ofnationwide anti-Trump protests. Styled as the No Kings movement, a warning against the exercise of extreme executive power in the first year of Trump’s second term, the protests will elide naturally with unrest over the actions of Ice and CBP.

The wider Miami area will stage at least 10 No Kings events, including one half an hour’s drive from Infantino’s coronational seat at the Hard Rock Stadium, although it is unlikely Republican Miami-Dade will see anything like the scale of unrest in Los Angeles. As one Aventura man put it on Thursday morning: “This is Florida. We don’t truck with that shit here.”

This appears to be the politically sanctioned position. The state governor, Ron DeSantis, speaking on the Rubin Report this week, took the extraordinary step of encouraging members of the public who feel threatened by protests on Club World Cup matchday one to drive through the crowds, an apparent extension of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law. As DeSantis put it: “If you drive off and you hit one of these people, that’s their fault for impinging on you.”

The tagline for the opening night of Fifa’s US mission is A New Era Begins. As things stand that new era will kick off against a rolling background of spot-check fear, off-message headline acts and an opening game shadowed by the prospect of governor-approved assault with a motor vehicle a few miles down the road. Over to you, Gianni.

Out of the shadows: drone-op claims show Israel’s Mossad leaning in to its legend

Footage purported to show spy agents launching missiles inside Iran is marked contrast to the intelligence service’s history of secrecy

Israelis were celebrating on Friday what many see as a stunning new success by their country’s foreign intelligence service, the Mossad.

Hours after launching 200 warplanes in a wave of strikes against Iran, Israeli officialsreleased footagethey said showed the Mossad agents deep inside Iranassembling missiles and explosive drones aimed at targets near Tehran.

According to unnamed security officials who briefed Israeli media, similar precision weapons were launched from trucks smuggled into the country and a “drone base” hidden somewhere near Tehran. This was established well in advance of Friday’s attack and used to destroy Iran’s air defences, the officials said.

The Mossad, an abbreviation of the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations in Hebrew, has scored many such victories in almost 80 years of undercover operations, earning a unique reputation for audacious espionage, technological innovation and ruthless violence.

The new operation in Iran comes just 10 months after the service managed tosabotage thousands of pagers and walkie-talkies used by Hezbollah operativesin Lebanon, an attack that killed 37 people and injured about 3,000 others while crippling the militant Islamist organisation.

The service then contributed to the air offensive thatwiped out Hezbollah’s leadershipin a matter of days.

Over decades, the Mossad has built up deep networks of informants, agents and logistics in Iran. This has allowed a series of operations includingthe assassination with a remote-controlled automatic machine gunof a top Iranian nuclear scientist travelling at speed in a car on a remote road,the infection with malware of computers running key parts of Iran’s nuclear programmeand the theft of an archive of nuclear documents. Last year, Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, wasassassinated with a bomb placed in his favourite roomin a government guesthouse in Tehran.

“This most recent operation is impressive, of course, but Iran has been an open book for Israeli intelligence for a decade or more,” said Yossi Melman, a veteran Israeli security reporter and author.

Melman said those pictured setting up missile launches in the grainy videos released by the Mossad were likely to be Iranians. “The boots on the ground inside Iran are not Israeli, so they have to be recruited, trained, equipped, and deployed. Then all the components of the weapons have to be smuggled in. It all needs a lot of professionalism and skill.”

Unusually, Israeli officials have highlighted the role of Aman, the military intelligence service, in building up targeting information for the Israeli offensive.

Though Aman and the Mossad often work closely, it is the foreign service, much smaller, that gets most of the attention. Even then, most of the Mossad’s work is never known outside tightly restricted circles.

For decades, few had even heard of the Mossad, which was formally established in 1949. Former agents were ordered not to tell even their family or their previous employment and the service never admitted its involvement in any operation.

Yossi Alpher, who took part in some of the service’s best-known operations in the 1970s, told the Guardian last year: “Everything the Mossad did was quiet, no one knew. It was a totally different era. The Mossad was just not mentioned. When I joined, you had to know someone to be brought in. Now, there is a website.”

The Mossad’s senior officials have long been more likely to spend their time on sensitive diplomatic missions, briefing senior Israeli decision-makers on regional political dynamics or building relationships abroad than recruiting spies or running operations such as that targeting Iran this week.

For decades, the Mossad oversaw years-long clandestine efforts to build up “enemies of Israel’s enemies”, such as Kurds in Iran, Iraq and Syria, and Christians in what is now South Sudan. As with many of its efforts, this had mixed success.

The Mossad is blamed by some for ignoring warnings about the reputation of Maronite Christian militia in Lebanon for brutality and ethnic hatred, and encouraging Israel’s disastrous invasion of that country in 1982, in which thousands of civilians were killed.

The Mossad also played a significant, though still little-known, role in the covert supply of arms to Ayatollah Khomeini’s Iran to help fight Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, as part of the Iran-Contra scandal during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

The mythical reputation of the Mossad has been bolstered by films and TV series, with screenwriters attracted to some of the service’s best-known exploits.

One of the most famous isthe 1960 capture in Argentina of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi officer who was a key organiser of the Holocaust. Others includestealing warships from the French navy in 1969, warning of impending attack by Egypt and Syria in 1973 and providing key intelligence for the famousraid on Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976 that freed Jewish and Israeli passengershijacked by Palestinian and German extremists.

In 1980, the service set up and rana diving resort on Sudan’s Red Sea coastas a cover for the clandestine transport of thousands of members of Ethiopia’s Jewish community to Israel. The Mossad spies lived among tourists before being forced to close down the operation after five years.

After a deadly attack by Palestinian extremists on Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, the Mossad led a campaign to disrupt the networks and groups responsible. The effort ended when a Mossad team shot dead a Moroccan waiter in Norway in the mistaken belief he was a Palestinian Liberation Organization security official, and then made further errors leading to their arrest and trial by local authorities.

In 1997, an effort to kill Khaled Meshaal, a powerful Hamas leader, went badly wrong when the Mossad team was caught in Amman by local security forces. Israel was forced to hand over an antidote and relations with Jordan were badly damaged. In 2010,agents were caught on CCTV camera in Dubaiduring another assassination.

Then there is thefailure to learn anything that might have warned of the Hamas raids into southern Israel on 7 Octoberthat killed 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and led to the abduction of 251. The attack prompted the Israeli offensive in Gaza, the current war with Hezbollah and, indirectly, the new confrontation with Iran.

Former Mossad officials say the service only gets noticed when things go wrong. This is not quite true, though – as the release of the Iran videos shows.

Melman said one of the Mossad’s aims – particularly with the publicity – is to sow fear among Iranians. “The aim is psychological. The Mossad is telling the Iranian regime: we know everything about you, we can wander into your home when we like, we are an omnipotent force,” said Melman. “It’s also a very good way to boost the morale of the Israeli public.”

Blind date: ‘It felt more like two people having a friendly conversation at a conference’

Matthew, 48, an international English teacher, meets Emma, 40, a lecturer

What were you hoping for?A serious-minded woman with a great backstory and fine taste in food who could share thoughts and opinions. All of those things happened.

First impressions?Emma was very composed and friendly from the beginning; elegant, organised and her sense of comfort made me feel comfortable.

What did you talk about?Our linguistic and cultural experiences living abroad. A discussion of literature and media revealed that Emma is aware of my favourite ever film, Manon des Sources, even though it’s in French.

Blind date is Saturday’s dating column: every week, two
strangers are paired up for dinner and drinks, and then spill the beans
to us, answering a set of questions. This runs, with a photograph we
take of each dater before the date, in Saturday magazine (in the
UK) and online attheguardian.comevery Saturday. It’s been running since 2009 – you canread all about how we put it together here.What questions will I be asked?We
ask about age, location, occupation, hobbies, interests and the type of
person you are looking to meet. If you do not think these questions
cover everything you would like to know, tell us what’s on your mind.

Can I choose who I match with?No,
it’s a blind date! But we do ask you a bit about your interests,
preferences, etc – the more you tell us, the better the match is likely
to be.

Can I pick the photograph?No, but don't worry: we'll choose the nicest ones.

What personal details will appear?Your first name, job and age.

How should I answer?Honestly
but respectfully. Be mindful of how it will read to your date, and that
Blind date reaches a large audience, in print and online.

Will I see the other person’s answers?No. We may edit yours and theirs for a range of reasons, including length, and we may ask you for more details.

Will you find me The One?We’ll try! Marriage! Babies!

Can I do it in my home town?Only if it’s in the UK. Many of our applicants live in London, but we would love to hear from people living elsewhere.

How to applyEmailblind.date@theguardian.com

Most awkward moment?The decision as to who was going to choose the wine; politeness meant neither of us wanted to impress an opinion at that early stage.

Best thing about Emma?Emma is principled, articulate, well read and clearly has a great interest in people and their wellbeing.

Would you introduce Emma to your friends?Most certainly, she would be a success in any room.

Describe Emma in three wordsIntelligent, generous and self-aware.

What do you think Emma made of you?I hope she saw a person who was interested in all that she had to say.

Did you go on somewhere?No, Emma had a train to catch.

If you could change one thing about the evening what would it be?If the weather had been better and there had been an option to sit outside.

Would you meet again?Definitely. I feel that there is so much more to know about her.

What were you hoping for?My friends and I made a bet on New Year’s Day that we would aim to do something unexpected before the summer. I think I might have won.

First impressions?The waitress who greeted me was gorgeous, and it was a great place.

What did you talk about?His life in Italy and Poland. Politics. AI. Brexit. Sting. Living by the sea.

Most awkward moment?I never know the pouring etiquette (who, when, how much, what level etc).

Good table manners?I accidentally held the fork like a scalpel – but to be fair, I was pretty hungry and the food was delicious!

Best thing about Matthew?He speaks Italian and had some really interesting experiences working abroad.

Would you introduce Matthew to your friends?Our senses of humour would be wildly out of kilter.

Describe Matthew in three wordsReserved, shy and family-oriented.

What do you think he made of you?Maybe that I asked too many questions.

Did you go on somewhere?To the train station. But I did bump into someone I hadn’t seen for years and we had a gin and tonic on the way home.

If you could change one thing about the evening what would it be?I would’ve lingered longer on the train.

Marks out of 10?5. The restaurant was great, but it felt like two people having a friendly conversation at a conference.

Emma and Matthew ate atBlackfriars Restaurantin Newcastle. Fancy a blind date? Emailblind.date@theguardian.com

Passion remains at Derby but empty spaces among Epsom spectators are growing

Lambourn’s victory lacked the atmosphere of previous years which are unlikely to return to the glory days of early century

Ayellow weather warning put a lid on the walk-up attendance on the Hill at Epsom on Saturday, and though the Derby itself avoided the worst of the rain, when it did finally arrive, about half an hour after the big race, it sent many spectators scurrying for an early exit. At the end of a three‑month period with historically low rainfall, it was horribly bad luck.

But there was still something else missing throughout the afternoon at what was once Britain’s greatest public sporting event. Aidan O’Brien put his finger on it, albeit obliquely, afterLambourn’s all-the-way victory in the Classic. “Chester [where Lambourn trialled for Epsom in the Chester Vase] is a great place for putting an edge on a horse,” he said. “It wakes them up, there’s a great atmosphere there.”

He’s right. There is. But the buzz that gave Lambourn his first taste of a big-race atmosphere in the tight confines of the Roodee was sadly lacking when he arrived at the much broader expanse of Epsom. There were simply not enough people there to generate the background hum of noise and excitement that, even a decade ago and whatever the weather, was there from the moment you parked your car or walked out of Tattenham Corner station.

The paid attendance at Epsom on Saturday was 22,312 – a 17% drop from the 26,838 on Derby day in 2024 and nearly 60% lower than the 53,177 record attendance for Galileo’s victory in 2001, which seems likely to remain the century’s highwater mark until the turn of the next one. From 2002 to 2006, the average was a respectable 47,000, but the crowd of 40,694 in 2007 was the last to reach 40,000, and the underlying rate of decline has accelerated since Covid.

The attendance on the Hill and against the inside rail has mirrored the decline in the stands. When I made my first trip to Epsom in 1987 to seeReference Point make all the runningunder Steve Cauthen, it was scarcely possible to see a blade of grass on the infield. The scattering of punters there on Saturday was pitiful by comparison, while just 11 double-deckers were lined up on the rail, where there would once have been dozens, from early in the home straight.

It looks and feels very much like a generational shift in the appetite for a day out at Epsom. The days when the east end of London would move, en masse,to Epsom on Derby day, including tens of thousands who made the journey on foot in the days before rail, are never coming back, but all across the capital Londoners have simply lost the habit too. The past three attendances at the Derby have all been below the 30,000 tickets that Leyton Orient soldfor the League One playoff finala couple of weeks ago.

Turning things around promises to be a gargantuan task, though it is one that Jim Allen, Epsom’s new general manager, is approaching with gusto. The aim is to start at a local level, reintroduce the tens of thousands of people living within a few miles of the track to the unique piece of sporting heritage on their doorstep, and then spread the message further afield.

Newbury1.30 Dawn Of Liberation 2.05 Cape Orator 2.40 Time To Turn 3.15 Something Splendid 3.50 Consecrated 4.25 Grand Karat 5.00 Mesaafi (nap) 5.33 San Munoz

Nottingham1.40 Lil Brother 2.15 Mrs Trump 2.50 Sea Force 3.25 Temper Trap 4.00 Triple Force 4.33 Deep Water Bay (nb) 5.08 Timebar

Yarmouth1.52 Hinitsa Bay 2.27 Spy Chief 3.02 Kranjcar 3.37 Gorgeous Mr George 4.12 Maid In Chelsea 4.47 Dovey Moon 5.22 Crowd Quake

Worcester5.40 McGregors Charge 6.10 Music Of Tara 6.40 Woodland Adventure 7.10 Earth King 7.40 Portetta 8.10 Janworth 8.40 Prince Quattro

Chelmsford6.00 Champion Island 6.30 Somebody 7.00 Cheeky Stanley 7.30 Explode 8.00 Harryella 8.30 Beaming Light 9.00 Dutch Finale

Allen has first-hand experience of the build-up to the Kentucky Derby, from the clock at Louisville airport that starts counting down to post time for the next one as soon as the winner crosses the line, to the parades, firework displays and gala events in the week running up to the first Saturday in May.

Louisville, admittedly, has a population of more than 600,000 and every last one of them will be aware from infancy that something out of the ordinary takes place at the city’s racetrack on the first Saturday in May. There are 10 times as many within 30 miles of Epsom, but the percentage of Londoners who even realised that it was Derby day this weekend, never mind that it is possible to watch it for free, will have been tiny.

The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend’s action

Sandown1.00 Rising Power 1.30 Bang On The Bell 2.05 Saba Desert 2.40 Charming Whisper 3.15  Miss Justice 3.50 Antelope (nap) 4.25 Brave Byreflection 5.00 Hi Ya Mal

Chester1.40 Profit Refused 2.15 Top Juggler 2.50 Reception 3.25 Topteam 4.00 Mayo County 4.35 Vixey 5.10 Impartiality

York1.50 Little Empire 2.25 Willowinghurn 3.00 Raneenn 3.35 Bleep Test 4.10 Burrito 4.45 Dothan 5.20 Yokohama

Goodwood5.30 Mystic Moment 6.05 Telecommunication (nb) 6.40 Al Khawaneej River 7.15 Rinky Tinky Tinky 7.50 Priapos 8.20 Drifts Away

Newton Abbot5.35 Seeyouinmydreams 6.10 Belle Le Grand 6.45 Hugos New Horse 7.20 Miss Popalong 7.55 Centara 8.25 Hill Station 9.00 Three Pikes

Market Rasen5.50 Spot On Soph 6.25 It’s Only Fun 7.00 Smugglers Haven 7.35 Max Of Stars 8.10 Greenrock Abbey 8.45 Casting Aspersions

Even in the gathering gloom ahead of the storm on Saturday, however, there were brighter moments when it was possible to appreciate how much the Derby still means to the sport. Most obviously, it was in the delighted astonishment of the 24 owners of Lazy Griff, the 50-1 runner-up, who had all paid less than £5,000 for their share. Their investment has already been repaid several times over, but the achievement, the simple fact that their horsehad finished second in the Derby, was all that mattered on Saturday.

It will be a long, hard road back even to reach the attendance and buzz of the early years of the century, but for as long as that sense of passion and reverence for the Derby remains alive somewhere, there is still hope.

Is football ready for the Club World Cup? Football Weekly Extra – podcast

Max Rushden is joined by Barry Glendenning, Nick Ames and Paul Watson to look ahead to the Club World Cup which kicks off this weekend in the USA

Rate, review, share onApple Podcasts,Soundcloud,Audioboom,Mixcloud,AcastandStitcher, and join the conversation onFacebook,Twitterandemail.

On the podcast today: the panel set the scene for the Club World Cup. There are serious issues, ICE providing security at games, troops on the streets in LA and a travel ban. There are also concerns about player welfare, ticket sales and – alarmingly – the potential toexpand the tournament to 48 teamsnext time around.

Elsewhere, what does the tournament mean to sides outside the European bubble? There’s Thomas Tuchel’s mum on Jude Bellingham and the stories you might have missed from the international break.

All that, plus your questions answered.

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