In less than a decade, surrounded by screens, I lost my ability to read some of the best books ever written. But, inspired by the Guardian’s 100 best novels list, I was determined to get it back

It is a privilege to be surrounded by books. My parents hail from the literary working class, a subsection of society that believes great works lead to a richer life. Reading for them was an inverted form of class snobbery. My dad could read as well as anyone. He’d prove it on package holidays, sitting on the balcony the entire time, head bowed, cigarette in hand, flicking through the pages of Jane Austen or Herman Melville. The only difference between my old man and an old Etonian was the drudgery of employment. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde: work is the bane of the reading class.

As for my own reading life, my mum wore me down, shouting “Read a book!” any time I dared say I was bored. I soon capitulated. I was nudged towards the classics, defined by Italo Calvino as books people say they should “reread” because they’ve either read them or do not want to admit they have not. In my late teens and 20s, I worked my way through the greats. I fell in love with a woman called George and thought Middlemarch was magic. I was a smart lad, prone to bad decisions, unsure of my place in the world. It is perhaps no surprise that I identified with Dorothea.

For tens of thousands of years, these Palaeolithic artworks were unseen. When they were rediscovered, onlookers marvelled at their vivid beauty. One of the world’s leading experts took me up close

The aurochs, the mammoth and the steppe bison are long extinct, but their painted likenesses still look relatively fresh across the walls and roofs of Altamira. Or so said Diego Garate Maidagan, who is one of the very few humans allowed to enter that exalted cave in northern Spain.

I met Garate last summer in a small Basque village called Gautegiz Arteaga. A professor of prehistory and Palaeolithic art at the University of Cantabria, he told me he’d been inside Altamira as recently as the week before, furthering his lifelong investigations of the prep work, tools and methodologies developed by early Homo sapiens painters.

Austerity has benefitted bond traders but impoverished British society and led to the rise of populism. Is it right that we carry on adhering to their interests?

Should politics always be dominated by economics? Should questions about how governments and voters pay for things – whether by earnings, taxes or borrowing – be settled before we consider the wider consequences?

In an anxious capitalist democracy such as Britain, with a modern history of patchy economic success and intermittent but recurring crises over public debt, the answer may seem obvious: governments and voters always need to behave in ways that fit with the market forces that shape our economy.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

Conquering of Beaufort Castle for first time in 26 years brings back memories of occupation of south

When Hussain Alawieh used to take tourists to Beaufort Castle, they would marvel at the view. The ancient hilltop fort, captured nearly 1,000 years earlier by Crusaders, still offered the same sweeping panoramic views of south Lebanon and the Litani River that empires fought over for a millennia.

On Sunday, the view from the castle was obscured by white phosphorus smoke, the toxic incendiary munition providing a smoke screen for advancing Israeli soldiers. Out of the fog rose an Israeli flag, and the castle, for the first time in 26 years, was once again conquered.

For the star’s 100th anniversary, Lawrence Schiller relives the nude photoshoot that showed, far from being a ‘messy’ blond bombshell, Monroe was a shrewd controller of her image

A few days after doing a nude swimming pool shoot on the set of the 1962 comedy Something’s Got to Give, Marilyn Monroe jumped into her raven black T-Bird and drove her photographer, Lawrence Schiller, to Schwab’s Pharmacy on Sunset Boulevard. Schiller had brought his negatives, now ready to be turned into prints. And in her purse Monroe had brought her scissors, which she now reached for – and, under the glow of the now legendary Hollywood hangout’s streetlights, began to cut the colour film into pieces.

“Ziiiiiip – the ones she didn’t like,” says Schiller, animating the sound. “Ziiiiiip.” She destroyed them? “Oh yeah, but that came with the territory,” laughs the now 89-year-old, the last living photographer of Monroe, as he recalls his 25-year-old self bending down to pick up the debris and thinking: “Well, I would’ve killed that one, too.” In fact, he speaks of her editing with nothing but admiration: “There wasn’t a picture she destroyed that I would’ve published.”

It’s natural to focus on breakthroughs, but there are many challenges in Britain and around the world. There is no magic bullet, but there’s room for optimism

Cancer causes nearly one in six deaths worldwide every year, some 10 million all told. That is a stunning number, but it also masks the reality that some cancers are more deadly than others. We have become remarkably good at detecting and treating melanoma and prostate cancer, for example, and today five-year survival rates for those cancers are well over 90% in most rich countries. Others, such as pancreatic cancer, are more difficult. In the UK, just over one in 20 people with pancreatic cancer are still alive five years after diagnosis.

That is why a new drug for pancreatic cancer, called daraxonrasib and announced at the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s (Asco) annual meeting in Chicago at the weekend, has been met with such jubilation. The drug – taken as a pill once a day – doubled the survival time of those enrolled in a 500-person trial, with fewer side effects compared to traditional chemotherapy. The drug works by shutting down a protein, Kras, that causes cancer cells to grow and divide. One longtime cancer researcher reported that she cried reading the results. With so few effective treatments for this cancer available, the drug is likely to be a real game-changer.

Documents also reveal internal Labour criticism of Keir Starmer in embarrassing detail

Peter Mandelson was receiving sensitive security briefings about the Foreign Office’s work, and was in discussions with the head of MI6, before he had completed the developed vetting process, newly released documents reveal.

Declassified emails show the ambassador designate and Richard Moore, the former chief of MI6 – a role known as “C” – had agreed to meet in early January 2025 before Mandelson went to Washington.

Documents were published to reveal what ministers knew about his links to Epstein, but instead exposed government rifts

• What is new in the latest release of Peter Mandelson documents?

Peter Mandelson wrote to David Lammy on 18 November 2024, making a simple promise to the foreign secretary: “If you were minded to appoint me [as ambassador to Washington],” he said, “I would make sure you never regret it.”

Since then, senior government figures, including Lammy and the prime minister, Keir Starmer, have had reason to look back at that appointment with almost nothing but regret.

Emails and WhatsApp messages reveal string of exchanges with ministers when he was president of Global Counsel

Peter Mandelson, as president of his then advisory firm Global Counsel, lobbied hard for ministers to attend his events and to meet his firm’s staff in the months after Labour’s general election win, newly released documents reveal.

Emails and WhatsApp exchanges show how active the Labour peer was after the election to work his contacts within government to the potential advantage of both his company and his then campaign to be chancellor of Oxford University.

Worries over AI and loan debt mean 34% of people think degrees are usually not worth the time and money

There was a time when going to university seemed a no-brainer. Better qualifications opened doors to better jobs with greater earning potential.

But with the graduate premium shrinking, mounting anger about spiralling student debt and growing fears about AI eating into the graduate jobs market, it is not surprising that attitudes are shifting.