The news that Andrew Tate has been arrested on suspicion of human trafficking, rape and organised crime was met by many over-40s with a blank: “Who is Andrew Tate?” People learning about him for the first time can be shocked to discover he is one of the most famous men in the world. If you spend your time reading mainstream publications and listening to or watching the BBC, you are likely to have been blissfully unaware of Tate’s existence. But if you spend your time on TikTok, or scrolling through YouTube shorts, you certainly do know who he is. As a member of the generic breed of “internet personality”, Tate’s fame rests less on his previous career as a kick-boxer or ...

In clips from his forthcoming ITV interview with Tom Bradby, Prince Harry declares that he wants “to get my father back, I would like to have my brother back”. Yet today (5 January) the Guardian cites from Spare, Prince Harry’s memoir published on Tuesday, that during an argument over Prince Harry’s wife Meghan in 2019, his brother the Prince of Wales “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor”. While Prince Harry expresses a desire for reconciliation, his worldwide audience may wonder whether this is possible. Members of the royal family are mere mortals, but their lives play out on a gigantic stage. We weave what details we have into stories shaped by our own ...

It can feel almost like a bereavement when your favourite show gets cancelled – and with the way Netflix has been swinging the axe lately, fans are barely through the various stages of grief before another favourite is brutally offed and we have to start all over again. The latest victim is 1899, the ambitious, multi-language mystery box from the creators of the hit German show, Dark. “With a heavy heart we have to tell you that 1899 will not be renewed,” the showrunner Baran bo Odar announced via Instagram on Tuesday (3 January). “We would have loved to finish this incredible journey with a second and third season, as we did with Dark. But sometimes things don’t turn out the ...

Technically speaking the Republican Party won back the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections. The red wave that was supposed to sweep through Congress and put Republicans firmly into power, however, turned out to be more like a light pink ripple. Not only did the party manage to win back only a handful of seats in Congress, but on the night of Tuesday 3 January, during the roll-call to elect the presumptive Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, many Republican members erupted into open revolt. To become Speaker, a member of Congress needs to secure a majority of votes, which is 218. Normally this isn’t a problem. Since 1923 the Speaker has been confirmed in a single roll-call vote. But ...

Rishi Sunak is putting maths at the heart of the effort to make his time in office count. Under proposals announced today (4 January), he wants to extend compulsory maths education to those aged 16-18, effectively ensuring no one drops maths before university. But it’s unclear if the scheme adds up. Extending maths education to 18 isn’t an absurd plan. It is the norm in most European countries, where the baccalaureate exams have a compulsory mathematical element of varying difficulties, depending on aptitude and specialisation. Equally, Sunak is right that many modern career require data literacy built on a solid grasp of mathematics, and around 8 million adults in Britain indeed have the numeracy skills we expect of primary school children. ...

I finish dictating the letter on the last patient in my afternoon out-patient clinic. It is a quarter to five and I’m on call for emergency medicine this evening. The first thing I do is ring the medical registrar on call. I walk down to the A&E department. All of the rooms are full and all of the beds occupied – mostly by patients who were admitted the day before. In the waiting area patients and relatives are sitting desultorily in the metal chairs, some standing. The junior doctor identifies the cases that need review. The first is an elderly woman. She is slumped in her chair and is clearly confused. The junior explains that she is dehydrated and septic; she's been ...

I love London. It’s not really fashionable to say so these days – hating our capital has become something of a national pastime. It was inevitable, really, that London would itself become a front in the culture war: a synonym, like the liberal metropolitan elite, tofu-eating wokerati and anti-growth coalition, for everyone Tory politicians dislike and don’t think are worth listening to. And you know what? If some people really want to write off a city of nine million residents that accounts for nearly a quarter of the UK’s GDP because there are a couple of vegan noodle bars, fine. Part of the trade-off of big city life is accepting that the place you live will be demonised for no good ...

It is a sign of the times when a new idea of behaviour is described simultaneously as a pathological syndrome and as a character trait that separates the successful from the ordinary.  Main character syndrome (MCS) has become a pop culture phenomenon widely discussed among millennials, particularly on social media. While there is, of course, no formal diagnosis, it is generally considered to be when an individual believes they are the main protagonist in the fictional version of their own lives. A crucial characteristic of MCS is that rather than tucking intimate moments away into a private emotional memory bank, many such instances are recorded and shared on social media. While the term is not synonymous with narcissism, it shares some ...