theguardian

No they don’t cook from scratch, sometimes forget the sunscreen and often miss work deadlines, but at least their kids are wearing secondhand clothes … Meet the new gen of radically normal mums

The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.Learn more.

Most mornings, I’m woken at 6am by my alarm (the baby crawling on to my head). I stretch, go downstairs, fill a bowl with iced water and, the theme of Transformers playing in the background, write my journal (a list of emails-I-forgot-to-reply-to). I drink hot water with cider vinegar to regulate my blood sugar levels, followed by tea using the baby’s leftover milk. Dragging a chilled jade gua sha spoon across my face in an attempt to reverse the ageing process, I then make my young sons’ porridge. While they eat, I plunge my face into the iced water until I can’t breathe, and begin my three-step routine (two La Roche-Posay serums followed by SPF). Some mornings, I run. Others, I cry into a coffee, albeit one made with organic milk, before taking amushroom gummyto take the edge off the day. My partner and I divide childcare dropoffs – we’re late for both and broadly OK with that – and each have one day a week with the youngest.

The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link.Learn more.

This is my routine. You might think it’s elaborate and weirdly specific, and you’d be right. Yet we live in an age of routines shared online, often in pursuit of some sort of personal optimisation – I’m aiming for somewhere between writing 2,500 words before breakfast (Anthony Trollope) and 5am cold plunge (fitness guru Ashton Hall). And however elaborate my morning seems to you, to me, it isnothingcompared with the pernicious routine of the tradwife.

For the uninitiated:the tradwifeis a married woman, usually conservative and/or Christian, usually white (though not always), of the belief that her place is in the home. She is feminine, usually kempt, often dressed likeBetty Draper, but increasingly workout gear in neutral tones too. Though at home, she is not a stay-at-home mother, rather someone who performs as if she is, documenting her life in dizzying, up-close fashion for us to wonder: who’s doing the potty training?

The tradwife is not new: in 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft described these sorts of women as birds “confined to their cages [with] nothing to do but plume themselves and stalk with mock majesty”. But in recent years she has rebranded, growing from traditional role to niche subculture, to full-blown digital movement (her current incarnation is theMaha – Make America Healthy Again – mom, who wangs on about her distrust of vaccines and suncream to camera in head-to-toe florals). Historically, tradwives earned nothing. These days some out-earn their husband through shilling products, presumably to pay for a small team of helpers to do the actual childcare.

Last week, I watched Nara Smith, a 25-year-old, South African-German mother-of-threemakepannacotta from scratch in a Ferragamo dress. It would be impressive were she and her peers not so clearly sidestepping a traditional career for one that involved packaging their cookie-baking for the algorithm.

I am not the first wrung-out mother to take umbrage with this sort of performance. Yet as the cost of living crisis squeezes us ever tighter, the fantasy of escaping into being a wife and mother becomes more vivid. I am, after all, a hard worker, a mediocre baker and a realistic mother whose life is a delicate balance between task and failure, app-reliance and guilt. One colleague describes me as “frazzled but focused”. So I prefer the term radwife.

To be a radwife, you don’t need to be married. I’m not. Perhaps you saw children as a choice, not a mandate, or came to them slightly late (mid to late 30s), like me. You’re not afraid of giving them plain pasta four nights in a row provided they brush their teeth. You batch cook where possible, bribe your children when possible, and buy fish locally (though largely to offset the amount of parcels coming through the door). You miss deadlines for work, lose sleep overultra-processed food (UPF),and are overly familiar with the unsung heroics involved in “leaving the office early” to get the kids. But you can also use a drill, a lawnmower and always finish the veg box. Of course, this is often in tandem with a rad dad or partner, who shares the same tensions, childcare and anxieties.

What else? The radwife is aware of trends, would never wear an elasticated waist (unless it’s her Adidas Firebird tracksuit – she burned her Lucy & Yak dungarees once the youngest started nursery), but always, always chooses comfort. Her heels are a bridge to her former life, and though she rarely wears them now, she’ll never get rid. Other radwife-ish things: baseball caps, a fringe (it’s that or botox), one wildly unsensible coat on principle. To unwind, she reads cookbooks like novels,Graziaat the doctor’s andthe LRBon the loo. She reads the Booker shortlist, though she’s a sucker for covers with interesting typefaces. For her holiday, she has packedOcean Vuong, but will quietly leaf through self-help book of the momentThe Let Them Theorywhen no one is looking. It’s with some discomfort that she watched a version of herself in Amandaland (Amanda) and The White Lotus 3 (Laurie)–it’s not uncommon for the radwife to be divorced.

The tradwife caused a major stir globally; not surprising, perhaps, given that it is largely a fantasy role which hinges on personal wealth, and is almost totally removed from the maternal ideal it promotes (it’s also, in part, why Meghan Markle’sWith Love Netflix series, with its unnecessary pretzel decanting, feels so ill-timed). I’m not bothered by the perfectionism this movement peddles – wake up, it’s Instagram! – but I am by the way it impinges on normal life. When did making fish pie from scratch once a week become trad-coded? The difference is, tradwives idealise this stuff – the radwife strives to go beyond it.

It’s precisely this tension that makes the radwife a perfectly imperfect parent, what developmental psychologist Donald Winnicott called a “good enough mother”. So you might forget to put sunscreen on your children sometimes – at least they’re wearing secondhand clothes fromVinted. You make socially conscious non-judgmental parenting decisions which prioritise your sanity over their sugar intake. We need conflicts “in order to survive painful choices”, says Ora Dresner, president of the British Psychoanalytic Association. There will not be a perfect decision and parenthood is defined – just like life – by ambivalence. We will see, inevitably, the good and the bad in every choice we make, “but we should not see conflict as a negative concept; that unless you are absolutely certain about your choice, you are failing”.

“On the contrary,” Dresner says, “the ability to be aware of these often painful feelings is essential if the mother is to find the way that works best for her.” The reality is, it’s OK to feel bored by your children, but utterly lost without them. It’s OK to want to go to work, to drinks – but also OK to want to rush home to do phonics. “We as partners, friends and society must be aware of this and support mothers to feel validated as they try to find their way,” adds Dresner.

Rad is short for radical. But maybe it’s about being radically normal. Most mothers I know suffer from what I call “churnout”: burnout from trying to shift back and forth at speed between modes (partner, worker, mother). Writer Frankie Graddon of the Mumish substack talks about the ambient threat of “The Call” at work (a sick child) and the guilt of “beige dinners”. This might sound a little obvious. But we live in delicate times. Only the bravest among us are off social media, despite the fact that we know, on some level, that it is full of “false messages that others are doing far better”, says Dresner. “I don’t think it’s possible to find the perfect balance or perfect choice. But to be able to observe our conflicts, and to some extent tolerate them, might offer a degree of freedom from internal and societal pressures, and what social media drives in us,” she says.

Ideally, we wouldn’t shapeshift so much. Ideally, we would live in a world in which there were time and resources to allow for parents to work less, or more flexibly, without barely scraping together the nursery fees. Four-day weeks. Cheaper, subsidised childcare. Instead, capitalism has taken the notion of empowerment and turned it into a world in which all hands must be on deck for the profit motive.

Forsomewomen, it’s a form of feminism that means that if you’re not a high-flying earner, then who are you really? As Rosanna, a 35-year-old film producer and mother of two, tells me: “As much as I value the role of mother, I would feel ‘less than’ if I didn’t work – and I’ve certainly struggled with that feeling when out of work or looking for work.”

Certainly, many tradwives are more interested in marketing than mothering. But if big business is responsible for the idea of putting a career first (see Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In and “girl bossing”, a mid-2010s movement that became a byword for pseudo-woke corporate feminism) and trad-wifing feels like a cop-out, something in the middle seems like a reasonable reaction. Rosanna loves parenting and loves working, but still feels that “capitalism sucks and rams this idea that unless you’re earning a living and acquiring status, you are not quite valued”.

The other day, I was chatting to my friend Jo, who is a parent of two. She said that, initially, “motherhood shook me apart, identity wise, and I clung on to work as something to define me. But now I work to provide – and fulfil myself. I don’tneedthe workplace in the same way I once did.”

Taking this metaphorical step away from work – from the churn of the machine – is not a betrayal of the 1970s feminist fantasy. That dream was co-opted, used to sell a life that only meant something if it was dedicated to corporations. When I’m scraping porridge off the pan, and I’m late for work, I think about the tradwife and wonder if she too burnt the porridge. Probably. But at least I’m OK with it.

Lighting assistant: Declan Slattery. Styling assistant: Sam Deaman. Hair and makeup: Natalie Stokes at Carol Hayes Management using Tatcha

Main photoRed gingham dress: £200,Anthropologie. Sandals, £109,Dune London. Necklace, £118,Astley Clarke. Bow earrings, £38,Anthropologie. Trug, £37.95,The Worm That Turned. Aprons and gloves, stylist’s own

Above photosPink floral dress: £49.99,New Look. Aprons and gloves: stylist’s own.Green quilted jacket: £155,Whistles. All other clothes writer’s own. Cycle helmet loan:cyclespirit.com

Unpredictable questions from neurodivergent audience have created perfect interview format for social media age

It is an interview like no other. One which has seen Emmanuel Macron confronted over whether it was right to marry his former teacher and Danny Dyer probed about whether he has ajoint bank account with his wife. Celebrities have been caught off guard, or left sobbing and laughing in equal measure.

The Assembly, in which an audience of autistic, neurodivergent and learning disabled people ask unpredictable, probing and often remarkably direct questions of a celebrity, has won plaudits and rave reviews since launching in 2022. It has now become an international phenomenon.

The show, which originated in France, had more international commissions than the all-conquering reality hit The Traitors last year. The format has already been commissioned across 19 countries, according to an industry report by K7 Media. Ten new versions have already been confirmed.

Unusually for a new European format, The Assembly is already making its mark in Asia: it will launch in Singapore in January. It is heading into its fourth series in France and has been a hit in Norway, Australia and Denmark – succeeding on public and private broadcasters.

Its producers say the authenticity of the show has created its universal appeal – while the clippable content is perfect for a social media age in which broadcasters are desperate to reach younger audiences glued to their feeds.

Stu Richards, creative director of the programme’s UK producers Rockerdale Studios, said it was crucial the show was billed as having broad appeal, rather than as a programme highlighting neurodiversity. “It’s not just representation for the sake of it – it’s not tokenistic,” he said. “We see this as mainstream entertainment.”

The stripped-back look of the show – shot over three hours in natural light with the camera crew in full view – adds to the sense that viewers are getting an unfiltered experience. “There’s an honesty that you just don’t get in other TV shows,” said Richards.

“It has non-culturally specific values like honesty and by extension, empathy. In shows with disabled people, you as a viewer are almost always asked to be sympathetic towards the people you’re seeing. You’re rarely asked to empathise. In this show, our cast have the authorship, they have the agency.”

Richards said he was sold on the idea immediately after seeing Macron asked bluntly about the propriety of his marital relationship. “When I saw that question, I thought: this is something unlike any interview format I’ve seen,” he said. “We’ve had interview formats in the past, like Ali G, where people have tried to ask comedically funny questions. But the president of France asked about the age gap with his older wife? Boom, yes. I’m completely in.”

For broadcasters desperate to reach new audiences to be found on social media, the format also lends itself to short clips, as an unsuspecting celebrity responds to a left-field question. Several of such clips, featuring Macron,Michael Sheenand the Game of Thrones actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in the Danish edition, have gone viral.

“That’s the mother load for so many commissioners and broadcasters at the moment,” said Michelle Singer, Rockerdale’s director of production.

Coster-Waldau broke down when talking about the death of his alcoholic father. In the Australian edition, the Jurassic Park actor Sam Neill was similarly floored when asked about the best lesson he had learned from his parents.

Get the best TV reviews, news and features in your inbox every Monday

The team distributing the show had a queue of potential takers after it aired in France. They said the dynamic between the cast and the interviewee meant it was unlike other chatshows or political programmes. “It’s the authenticity,” said Arnaud Renard, co-founder of Can’t Stop Media, the programme’s distributor. “Everybody gets it. Everybody understands it’s a show where we have people that are going to ask unexpected questions – but without bad feelings. We’re not trying to trick people.”

Despite the show’s international success, it has had an unusual journey in the UK. A pilot featuring Sheen was made for the BBC, but the corporation is said to have concluded it did not have the funds to make a series. It has since found success on ITV, where the first series featured David Tennant, Jade Thirlwall, Gary Lineker and Dyer – who, among other things, was asked how much he was paid for presenting the Saturday night gameshow The Wall (about £100,000).

Bigger names have been booked for follow-up series overseas, though producers are sworn to secrecy. To take it to the next level in the UK, fans are hoping a British politician might be brave enough to enter The Assembly should a second series materialise.

“It’s interesting that the idea for this programme grew from the grilling ofEmmanuel Macron.” said Tim Nicholls, assistant director of policy, research and strategy at the National Autistic Society. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could see British politicians subjected to the same scrutiny by autistic interviewers?”

Northern Ireland faces stark questions over the racism, xenophobia and intolerance that has forced families from abroad to flee

First came the shouts as the crowd worked its way through narrow terraced streets, proclaiming its mission to rid the town of “scum”. Then came the shattered glass as rocks exploded through windows. Then the flames, licking up curtains and spreading to sofas, carpets, books and framed pictures until smoke billowed into the summer night.

They might have been scenes from another century, another country, but they played out inNorthern Irelandthis week in the glare of rolling news and social media, which recorded a soundtrack of glee and hate. “Where are the foreigners?” the mob shouted.

The targets werefamilies that were different– different nationality, different ethnicity, different skin tone, different language. The goal was expulsion – or immolation. “There’s someone in that room inside,” said a voice caught on video. “Aye, but are they local?” responded a comrade. “If they’re local, they need out. If they’re not local, let them stay there.”

No one died in Ballymena, the County Antrim town that erupted on Monday andflared for the rest of the week, or in other towns with smaller, copycat mayhem, but families fled, dozens of police were injured and Northern Ireland faced stark questions about racism, xenophobia and intolerance.

Three decades ago, the Good Friday agreement drew a line under the Troubles. Republican paramilitaries that wanted a united Ireland, and loyalist paramilitaries that wanted the region to remain in the UK, wound down the killing.

Peace brought the novelty of immigration and diversity. In the 2001 census just 14,300 people, or 0.8% of the overall population, belonged to a minority ethnic group. By 2021 it was 65,600 people, or 3.4%. Compared with England (18%), or Scotland (11%), Northern Ireland remains very white.

Despite this, many residents in Ballymena, a mainly working-class, Protestant town 25 miles north of Belfast, believe foreigners have “invaded”, “infested” and “ruined” their community.

It was not only the hundreds of young men in hoods and masks who hurled missiles: older residents, during lulls in violence, endorsed the disturbances. “We want our voices to be heard. If this is the only way, so be it,” said one woman in her 30s, who declined to be named.

The Police Federation of Northern Ireland said its members, by drawing the wrath of mobs, had averted a pogrom.

The spark was an alleged sexual assault on a teenage girl by two 14-year-old boys, who appeared in court with a Romanian interpreter and were charged with attempted rape. Loyalist groups in other areas took that as their cue to protest. “It’s time to take a stand and stop welcoming these illegal migrant gangs flocking into our town, paedophiles, drug pushers, human traffickers, prostitutes,” said a group in Portadown, exhorting people to march on a hostel.

Such hostility has a blunt, facile explanation: some communities do not like outsiders – a broad, evolving category known occasionally in Northern Ireland as “them ’uns”. Protestant loyalist mobs in Belfast burned Catholics from their homes at the outset of the Troubles in 1969. Ballymena earned notoriety in the 1990s and mid-2000s with sectarian attacks on Catholic schools and churches.

Loyalists in nearby towns have been blamed for a sporadic campaign of paint bombs, smashed windows, graffiti and threatening posters targeting non-white residents. Last year at leasteight African families– half of them including nurses – were forced toflee an estate in Antrim town.

“There is fundamental racism in some places that, to put it nicely, have a proud sense of social and cultural cohesion,” said Malachi O’Doherty, a commentator and author of How to Fix Northern Ireland. Communities that are accustomed to living on the same estate can bristle when outsiders take houses that might otherwise have gone to friends or relatives, he said. “Whether it’s Catholics or Roma, it’s seen as a dilution of that community.”

Just 4.9% of Ballymena’s population is non-white, according to the 2021 census, and very few of the new arrivals are asylum seekers, yet there is widespread belief in proliferating “scrounging refugees”, and scepticism about official statistics. “What we’re reading is completely different from what the government is telling us,” said one resident in his 50s. The riots were welcome and overdue, although, he said, the noise was disturbing his sleep.

The current strife has a seasonal aspect: summer is when loyalists – and to a lesser extent republicans – assert their identity by parading with drums and flutes and lighting bonfires, traditions that fuel tension and confrontation.

Catholics have joined Protestants in anti-immigrant actions and staged their own protests in Catholic areas, but those eruptions tend to be smaller and less frequent. “Catholics almost take a sectarian pride in not being racist. ‘Oh, we’re not like them,’” said O’Doherty.

Despite a gritty reputation, Northern Irelandscores betterfor housing, unemployment and poverty than many parts of England, Wales and Scotland. However, it has some of the worst education attainment rates in the UK and the highest rate of economically inactive people, metrics that hint at the alienation and hopelessness felt in some Catholic and Protestant working-class areas.

An education system that largely segregates the two main blocs also tends to silo minority ethnic pupils, said Rebecca Loader, a social science researcher at Queen’s University Belfast. “You have schools that have no diversity and schools with high levels, perhaps just separated by a few miles. Certain classes of people are never meeting. It’s not conducive to meeting and learning about the other.” Also, very little in Northern Ireland’s curriculum addresses racism, unlike curriculums in Britain, especially Wales, she said.

Two factors, neither unique to Northern Ireland, have aggravated the tension. One is politics. Leaders from across the political spectrum have condemned the violence and appealed for calm, as they did last August during asimilar flare-up. However, critics say some unionist parties – which represent loyalism – give mixed signals by defending “legitimate protest” and amplifying immigration myths.

Political unityfractured on Thursdayafter Gordon Lyons, the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) communities minister, complained on social media that he had not been consulted about a leisure centre in Larne hosting families evacuated from Ballymena. A short time later, a mob set the centre on fire. Hilary Benn, the Northern Ireland secretary, called on Lyons to reflect on his comments. Michelle O’Neill, the Sinn Féin first minister, suggested he should resign.

Paul Sceeny, an interim manager at the North West Migrants Forum in Derry, said growing internationalantipathy to immigrantswas affecting Northern Ireland. “People are becoming emboldened to use racist tropes. It’s part of a wider pattern,” he said.

The other factor is social media. Protest organisers use Facebook, TikTok and other platforms to rally support and broadcast the results. In Ballymena, rioters reportedly requested likes, follows and gifts from viewers while livestreaming the destruction of a house.

During the daytime calm this week, while authorities cleared debris from streets and foreign families packed up and left, youths huddled over phones and analysed clips, like actors reviewing a performance, seeking ways to improve before the next show.

Trump claims they signify a ‘foreign invasion’ but experts say they are flown by US citizens proud of their heritage

At the White House on Wednesday, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt,told reportersDonald Trump’s decision to dispatch the military to Los Angeles had been triggered by something he had seen: “images of foreign flags being waved” during protests over federal immigration raids.

Leavitt did not specify which images the president had been so disturbed by, but the fact that some protesters denouncing his immigration crackdown have waved Mexican, Guatemalan and Salvadorian flags, orhybrid flagsthat combine those banners with the American flag, has been taken as an affront by supporters of his mass deportation campaign.

The architect of that policy, Stephen Miller, has complained bitterly about flag-waving protesters on the streets of his Los Angeles home town, andsharedvideo of demonstrators on social media with the comment: “Look at all the foreign flags. Los Angeles is occupied territory.”

Trump himself even claimed, during his deeply partisan speech to soldiers at Fort Bragg on Tuesday, that his deployment of active-duty marines to the city was justified because of the protesters he called “rioters bearing foreign flags with the aim of continuing a foreign invasion”.

But observers with a more nuanced understanding of theLos Angelescommunities being targeted in these raids, and of the nation’s history as a refuge for immigrants, suggest that the flags are not intended to signal allegiance to any foreign government but rather to signal solidarity with immigrants from those places and, for Americans with roots in those countries, to express pride in their heritage.

Lalo Alcaraz, a Mexican American satirist and editorial cartoonist, who coined the term “self-deportation” in the 1990sas part of an elaborate prankin response to the anti-immigrant policies of the then California governor, Pete Wilson, said that the protesters carrying those flags in LA were not immigrants themselves, but “the younger generation that are American citizens and that have pride in their immigrant parents”. Their parents, he said, “are hard-working good people who come from other countries – Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador. This is why they proudly wave those flags.”

“Of course they’re proud of their roots, and honestly, what has the American flag done for them but persecute their families?” Alcaraz added. “They are promised that there is a right way to immigrate, that there will be a pathway to citizenship, but this promise has been ignored because corporations make profits off the low wages and hard work of these immigrants, and want to keep them in limbo because it’s easier to control them.”

That sentiment was echoed by a protester named Jesus, whotold NPRduring a protest this week that he waved the Mexican flag because “I’m proud of my Mexican heritage, you know? Even though it was several generations ago, my family members were immigrants.”

As NPR’s Adrian Florido pointed out, the large number of flags from other parts of the Americas at these protests contrasted sharply with what was seen in the same place two decades ago.

In 2006, when huge marches brought hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of LA to protest against Republicans in Congress introducing a restrictive immigration bill that would close off paths to citizenship and build fences along the border, organizers urged the demonstrators to wave American flags.

“Apparently taking stock of complaints about the number of Mexican flags in previous demonstrations, organizers made sure that the vast majority of marchers Monday carried American flags,” the Los Angeles Timesreported in 2006on the massive May Day march that year. Images from that rally showed that Mexican flags were vastly outnumbered in a sea of American flags.

Others have pointed out that, for Americans with European roots, waving the flags of their ancestors, from Ireland or Italy, for example, is considered uncontroversial.

“The reason Mexicans and Mexican Americans wave the Mexican flag is the same reason the Irish wave the Irish flag,” David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute,wroteon Friday. “Not because they want to go back there, but because they are proud of their Heritage and want to stand up for people with their ancestry.”

“When you persecute a minority, it makes them more aware of their identity and differences from the majority, slowing assimilation,” he added. “In other words, the Trump agenda is bad for the very thing Trumpists claim to want.”

In that light, it is worth recalling that charges of dual loyalty were once hurled at Irish and Italian immigrants, too. Less than a century ago, in fact, American citizens from Irish and Italian families were viewed with hatred and suspicion by native-born, white Protestants.

To take one example, when 1,000 robed members of the Ku Klux Klanriotedat the 1927 Memorial Day parade in Queens, and seven men were arrested, one of their chief targets was New York’s Irish American-led police force, which tried to prevent them from marching. One of those menwas the current president’s father, Fred Trump. (A report from the time in a Brooklyn newspaper said that “a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so” against Trump was quickly dismissed.)

The deep vein of hatred Italian immigrants faced was even a motivating factor in the the first Columbus Day proclamation,issued byBenjamin Harrison in 1892. The then US president hoped to gain support from new Italian American voters, but he was also trying to absolve the country of the stain from a deadly anti-Italian riot the year before in New Orleans, in which 11 Italian immigrants had been falsely accused of murder and were lynched by a mob.

One of Trump’s first acts on returning to office this year was to issue a proclamation that Columbus Day would be celebrated during his administration without any acknowledgment of the Indigenous people who suffered so much in the centuries after his voyage to this hemisphere.

Exclusive: Pass to be presented to playwright’s grandson after original cancelled over conviction for gross indecency

TheBritish Libraryis to symbolically reinstate Oscar Wilde’s reader pass, 130 years after its trustees cancelled it following his conviction for gross indecency.

A contemporary pass bearing the name of the Irish author and playwright will be officially presented to his grandson, Merlin Holland, at an event in October, it will be announced on Sunday.

Rupert Everett, who wrote, directed and starred as Wilde in The Happy Prince – the acclaimed 2018 film about the writer’s tragic final years in exile – will play a part in the ceremony.

Holland is an expert on Wilde whose publications include The Complete Letters ofOscar Wilde. Asked how his grandfather might have reacted to the pass being reinstated, he said: “He’d probably say ‘about time too’.”

The decision to revoke the pass is recorded in board minutes in 1895, when homosexuality was illegal: “The Trustees directed that Mr Oscar Wilde, admitted as a reader in 1879 and sentenced at the Central Criminal Court on 25th May to two years’ imprisonment with hard labour, be excluded from future use of the Museum’s Reading Room.”

Wilde’s downfall followed his decision to sue Lord Queensberry, who had accused him of being a “sodomite” after discovering that his son, Lord Alfred “Bosie” Douglas, was Wilde’s lover. It led to Wilde being sentenced to two years of hard labour.

Having been the toast of London society, Wilde died in abject poverty in Paris in 1900, aged 46. After his disgrace and imprisonment, his wife, Constance, fled to Europe with their two sons, Cyril and Vyvyan, and changed their surname to Holland, an ancestral family name.

Holland said: “Oscar had been in Pentonville prison for three weeks when his [pass] to theBritish MuseumReading Room [now the British Library] was cancelled, so he wouldn’t have known about it, which was probably as well … It would have just added to his misery to feel that one of the world’s great libraries had banned him from books just as the law had banned him from daily life. But the restitution of his ticket is a lovely gesture of forgiveness and I’m sure his spirit will be touched.”

In 2017, Wilde was assumed to be among more than 50,000 gay and bisexual men who were posthumously pardoned, although the Ministry of Justice said no individuals would be named.

Holland said: “Oscar didn’t think there was anything wrong in same-sex love … I’m not absolutely certain he has been pardoned … If I had to ask for a pardon, I wouldn’t, because all it would do is make the British establishment feel better about itself … History’s history, and you can’t start rewriting it.”

The British Library boasts arguably the world’s most significant collection of Wilde manuscripts, including drafts of his major plays, Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest.

Laura Walker, the British Library’s lead curator of modern archives and manuscripts, said this extraordinary collection makes Wilde’s pass all the more meaningful: “We really want to honour Wilde now and acknowledge what happened to him. Section 11 of the law, which related to the criminalisation of homosexuality, was unjust.”

Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you

In 1973, the British Library officially separated from the British Museum, although it continued to be housed in the Reading Room until 1997, when the new British Library building opened in St Pancras.

Wilde’s long relationship with the British Museum started while he was still a student and, after moving to London in 1879, he applied for a reader pass. But he was not afraid to criticise the institution. When he published his long poem The Sphinx, he was asked why he had printed only a few copies. He replied: “My first idea was to print only three copies: one for myself, one for the British Museum, and one for Heaven. I had some doubt about the British Museum.”

Holland joked that Wilde was “setting heaven and himself above the British Museum in a teasingly arrogant way” – a “slightly naughty throwaway remark about a very august institute, exactly the sort of thing that he would have regarded as being slightly stuffy and conventional”.

He added: “He probably would [be] obliged now to make an apology … on … his rude remark … once they’d given him his pass back.”

The British Library event – on 16 October, Wilde’s birthday – will include a public talk by Everett and Holland, launching the latter’s new book,After Oscar: The Legacy of a Scandal, an account of Wilde’s posthumous life.

Accord comes as Mark Carney seeks shift in Ottawa’s relationship with New Delhi after long diplomatic spat

CanadaandIndiaplan to share intelligence in an effort to combat the rising threat of international crime and extremism, according to a new report from Bloomberg, days before a meeting between the two countries’ leaders.

Canadian officials declined to comment on the report, which, if confirmed, would represent a dramatic shift in relations between the two countries which for nearly two years have been locked in a bitter diplomatic spat after Canada’s federal police agency concluded that Indiaplanned and ordered the murder a prominent Sikh activist on Canadian soil.

Under the intelligence-sharing deal, which is expected to be announced during the G7 summit inCanadalater this week, police from both countries will increase cooperation on transnational crime, terrorism and extremist activities. Canada has reportedly pushed for more work on investigations into extrajudicial killings.

Earlier this month, Canada’s prime minister, Mark Carney, was forced to defend his decision to invite the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, to the G7 summit in Alberta after Canada’s federal police said the shooting death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar wasorchestrated by the “highest levels” of the Indian government.

Carney said there was a “legal process that is literally under way and quite advanced inCanada”, following questions over his decision to invite Modi. Four Indian nationals living in Canada have been charged with Nijjar’s murder.

Carney also cited India’s status as the “fifth largest economy in the world, the most populous country in the world and central to supply chains”. But the decision did not sit well with lawmakers from British Columbia. A member of Carney’s Liberal caucus, Sukh Dhaliwal, met with the prime minister earlier this the week to express concern over the invitation.

“We as Canadians take pride to be a champion on human rights. We are the country of law and justice,” Dhaliwal, who represents the electoral district where Nijjar was killed, told the Canadian Press. “When it comes to protecting fundamental rights and serving justice for the victim, it is non-negotiable.”

Dhaliwal said that the prime minister was “alarmed about the issue” and would be “very strong in dealing” with the issue when speaking to his Indian counterpart.

Ever since former prime minister Justin Trudeau accused India of orchestrating the high-profile assassination of Nijjar, Ottawa and New Delhi have been locked in a worsening feud over the issue.

India temporarily stopped issuing in visas in Canada and, soon after, Canada expelled six senior diplomats, including the high commissioner, Sanjay Verma. India retaliated by ordering the expulsion of six high-ranking Canadian diplomats, including the acting high commissioner.

“The Indian government made a horrific mistake in thinking that they could interfere as aggressively as they did in the safety and sovereignty of Canada,” Trudeau told a public inquiry into foreign interference, adding that Canada had not wanted to “blow up” its valuable relationship with India. But he said afterNijjarwas killed, “we had clear and certainly now ever clearer indications that India had violated Canada’s sovereignty”.

The Bloomberg report, which underscores Carney’s attempts to mend relations with powerful nations, follows revelations that a suspected Indian government agent was surveilling former New Democratic party leader Jagmeet Singh as part of its network of coercion and intimidation.

According to Global News, the person, with suspected ties to both the Indian government andthe Lawrence Bishnoi gang implicated in Nijjar’s death, knew Singh’s daily routines, travel plans and family. When the RCMP realized there was a credible thread to this life, they placed the federal party leader under police protection.

“India targeted a Canadian politician on Canadian soil. That’s absolutely unprecedented. As far as we’re concerned, that’s an act of war,” Balpreet Singh, a spokesperson for the World Sikh Organization, said after of the Global News report. “If Jagmeet Singh isn’t safe … what does it mean for the rest of us?”

Setback for former student held since March as lawyers condemn government’s ‘cruel, transparent delay tactics’

A federal judge declined to order the release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a setback for the former Columbia University student days after amajor rulingagainst the Trump administration’s efforts to keep him detained.

Khalil, a green-card holder who has not been charged with a crime, is one of the most high-profile people targeted by the US government’s crackdown on pro-Palestinian campus activism. Despite keyrulingsin his favor, Khalil has been detained since March,missing the birth of his son.

His advocates were hopeful earlier in the week that he was close to walking free. On Wednesday, Judge Michael E Farbiarzruledthe Trump administration could no longer detain Khalil on the basis of claims that he posed a threat to US foreign policy. The federal judge in New Jersey said efforts to deport him based on those grounds were likely unconstitutional.

Farbiarz had given the US government until Friday morning to appeal against the order, which the Trump administration did not do. Khalil’s lawyers thenarguedhe must be released immediately, but the government said it would keep him detained in aremote detention facility in Louisiana. The administration argued it was authorized to continue detaining him based on alternative grounds – its allegations that he lied on his green-card application.

On Friday, Farbiarz said Khalil’s lawyers had failed to present enough evidence that detention based on the green-card claims was unlawful, suggesting attorneys for the 30-year-old activist could seek bail from a Louisiana immigration judge.

Khalil’s have strongly rejected the government’s assertions about problems with his green-card application, arguing the claims were a pretext to keep him detained.

“Mahmoud Khalil was detained in retaliation for his advocacy for Palestinian rights,” Amy Greer, one of his attorneys, said in a statement on Friday evening.

“The government is now using cruel, transparent delay tactics to keep him away from his wife and newborn son ahead of their first Father’s Day as a family. Instead of celebrating together, he is languishing in [immigration] detention as punishment for his advocacy on behalf of his fellow Palestinians. It is unjust, it is shocking, and it is disgraceful.”

Khalil has previously disputed the notion that he omitted information on his application.

In a filing last week, he maintained he was never employed by or served as an “officer” of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, as the administration claims, but completed an internship approved by the university as part of his graduate studies.

Khalil said he also stopped working for the British embassy in Beirut in December 2022, when he moved to the US, despite the administration’s claims that he had worked in the embassy’s Syria office longer.

The Friday ruling prolonging his detention came the same day agroup of celebrity fathersfilmed avideoreading Khalil’s letter to his newborn son. The Father’s Day campaign, published by the American Civil Liberties Union,called for Khalil’s freedomand included actorsMark Ruffalo,Mahershala Ali, Arian Moayed and Alex Winter.

Earlier in the week, when there was a ruling in Khalil’s favor, Dr Noor Abdalla, his wife, released a statement, saying: “True justice would mean Mahmoud was never taken away from us in the first place, that no Palestinian father, from New York to Gaza, would have to endure the painful separation of prison walls like Mahmoud has. I will not rest until Mahmoud is free.”

Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, has previously claimed Khalil must be expelled because his continued presence would harm American foreign policy, an effort that civil rights advocates said was a blatant crackdown on lawful free speech.

Wrongfully deported man expected to contest US prosecutors’ attempt to have him detained pending trial

Kilmar Ábrego García, the man returned to the US last week after being wrongfully deported to his nativeEl Salvador, pleaded not guilty on Friday to criminal charges of taking part in a conspiracy to smuggle migrants into the United States.

The Maryland man, 29, entered the plea at a hearing before US magistrate judge Barbara Holmes inNashville, Tennessee.

At the hearing, Ábrego García was also expected to contest an attempt by federal prosecutors to have him detained pending trial.

TheTrump administrationinitially removed him, alongside more than 200 Venezuelansheld as undocumentedin the US, without any due process. He was flown to anotorious prisonfor suspected gangsters and terroristsin El Salvador, where Salvadorian men can disappear indefinitely, now followed by peoplerounded upfrom the US by the Trump administration. Ábrego García was later moved to another prison there, as US campaignersbattledto get him back and have him afforded due process.

Despite admitting in court that it had wrongly removed him against a court’s order for protection against deportation to El Salvador, specifically, the Trump administration refused to facilitate his return to the US for a fair legal process. This comes in face ofjudicial objectionsall the way up to the US supreme court that precipitated a significant constitutional battle between the executive and judicial co-equal branches of government.

Before Ábrego García’s indictment was unsealed on 5 June,officials allegedhe was a member of the MS-13 gang and said they would not bring him back. The justice department’s decision to return him to the US to face criminal charges is a potential off-ramp for Trump’s administration from its escalating confrontation with the judiciary over the case.

The Republican president’s critics say his swift removal without a hearing showed the administration prioritized increased deportations over due process as part of its growinganti-immigration crackdown.

The criminal proceeding will provide Ábrego García with due process by giving him the right to contest the charges contained in a grand jury indictment returned in secret on 21 May.He was charged with working with at least five co-conspirators as part of a smuggling ring to bring immigrants to the United States illegally, then transport them from theUS-Mexico borderto destinations across the country.

He is also accused of transporting firearms and drugs.

Ye, as he is now known, was asked if he was at the courthouse to support Combs, to which he responded ‘yes’

Ye, the rapper formerly known asKanye West, briefly came to the New York sex-trafficking trial ofSean “Diddy” Combson Friday to support the hip-hop mogul, a longtime friend.

Ye, dressed in white, arrived at Manhattan federal court before noon while the trial was on a break.

Asked if he was at the courthouse to support Combs, he responded “yes” and nodded. He then hustled to an elevator and did not appear to respond when a reporter asked if he might testify on Combs’s behalf when the defense begins presenting its case as early as next week.

West did not stay long. He was reportedly directed to the overflow room, and about 40 minutes after he first entered, left the courthouse via the front entrance, perCNN. He was then seen getting into a car and driving away.

Combs, 55, has pleaded not guilty to sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges alleging that he used his fame, fortune and violence to commit crimes over a 20-year period.

Ye’s appearance at the courthouse came a day after a woman identified in court only by the pseudonym “Jane”finished six days of testimony.

She testified that during a relationship with Combs that stretched from 2021 until his arrest last September at a Manhattan hotel, she felt coerced into having sex with male sex workers while Combs watched.

Defense attorneys have argued that Combs committed no crimes and that federal prosecutors were trying to police consensual sex that occurred between adults.

On Thursday, Jane testified that during a three-month break in her relationship with Combs, she flew to Las Vegas in January 2023 with a famous rapper who was close friends with Combs.

Before Jane’s testimony on the subject, lawyers and the judge conducted a lengthy hearing out of public view to discuss what could be divulged about the January trip.

Jane was asked if the rapper she accompanied along with the rapper’s girlfriend was “an individual at the top of the music industry as well … an icon in the music industry”.

Once in Las Vegas, Jane testified, she went with a group including the rapper to dinner, a strip club and a hotel room party, where a sex worker had sex with a woman while a half-dozen others watched.

She said there was dancing and the rapper said, “hey beautiful,” and told her he had always wanted to have sex with her in crude terms. Jane said she did not recall exactly when, but she flashed her breasts while dancing.

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organizations. In the US,Rainnoffers support on 800-656-4673. In the UK,Rape Crisisoffers support on 0808 500 2222. In Australia, support is available at1800Respect(1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found atibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

Ukraine says return in line with deal reached in Turkey while Russia hands over 1,200 bodies; Moscow claims capture of another Sumy village. What we know on day 1,207

Ukraine has repatriated more bodies of fallen soldiersin accordance with an agreement reached during peace talks in Istanbul, Ukrainian officials said Friday. Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said Russia had returned 1,200 bodies, and “according to the Russian side, the bodies belong to Ukrainian citizens, in particular military personnel”. The repatriation of the bodies was carried out with the help of Ukraine’s armed forces, the country’s security service, the interior ministry and other government agencies, its statement said. Forensic experts would now work to identify the remains. The repatriation marks one of the war’s largest returns of remains.

Russia says its forces have captured another village in Ukraine’s north-eastern Sumy regionamid its ramped-up offensive there. Moscow’s defence ministry said on Friday it had taken control of the village of Yablunivka, about 9km (five miles) from the Russian border. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Ukrainian forces are“gradually pushing back the occupiers”in the border region but prevailing assessments have shown Russian gains.

Russia’s defence ministry said Russian forces had also taken control of two other Ukrainian villages– Koptevo and Komar in the eastern Donetsk region, Russia’s Tass news agency reported. The ministry said Russian troops had captured six Ukrainian villages over the past week. The battlefield reports could not be independently verified.

A 73-year-old American jailed by Russia as a mercenary for Ukraine protested his innocence when his US-based legal team and family finally tracked him downin April, months after he vanished into the vast Russian prison system, they said. Stephen Hubbard, a retired schoolteacher, was sentenced last October to almost seven years in a penal colony and Russian state media reported that he had entered a guilty plea in the closed-door trial. His US-based lawyer, who made his first public comments on the case to the New York Times this week, said: “The first thing Hubbard wanted to talk about when he was able to make contact with the outside world was: ‘It’s not true.’” US officials have requested his immediate release.

Ukraine’s air force said on Friday that Russia fired 55 Shahed and decoy drones and four ballistic missiles at Ukraine overnight. The air force said air defences had neutralised 43 drones. There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage. Russia’s defence ministry, meanwhile, said its air defences had downed 125 Ukrainian drones over several Russian regions and the annexed region of Crimea into early Friday.