British Museum, London
The greatest battle ever depicted in art is here at last – and it hurtles along, making your heart pound with its sense of doom and destiny, culminating in fires and corpses on a battlefield full of pathos

It should not work. It should not even exist. Nothing about the Bayeux tapestry makes sense according to any norms of art: its creators couldn’t do proper portraits or pictorial depth or landscapes or any of the sophisticated things we associate with timeless masterpieces. When they depict a church, they have to write what it is: Ecclesia. But these artists – or who knows, perhaps she was a single artist – created something so stupefying and delightful, so abundant in visual thrills, horrors and humour, it beats almost everything else ever painted or carved – let alone embroidered on a strip of linen.

And now here it is, in front of my eyes, close enough to touch if it wasn’t behind a glass screen of such high quality you never catch a reflection. The British Museum’s display of this wonder is perfect. It’s laid out in its case, the length of a gallery, which you reach after some archaeological foreplay involving armour, quotes from chronicles and info screens. Then you see the colours of the tapestry below you from a parapet – russets, greens, yellows – after which you simply start at the beginning and follow the story rightwards. Surrounded by darkness and picked out by finely adjusted lighting, the Bayeux tapestry shines. My only quibble is the ethereal soundtrack – shouldn’t there be drums, oliphants, troubadours?

Tory leader scents Labour weakness on defence spending and declares it’s 2030 or bust

• UK politics live – latest updates

There’s something about Kemi Badenoch making a keynote speech – everything she does comes billed as keynote these days – about defence that makes most normal people a little nervous. Because when Kemi talks about defence, what’s really on her mind is war. Starting one, if possible.

Kemi is never happier than when picking a fight. With herself, if no one else is around. You get the feeling that, left on a desert island she would be dreaming of Apocalypse Now. Flying low over the Mekong delta in a helicopter gunship, the Ride of the Valkyries playing through her earphones while she yelled: “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Amelia Dimoldenberg’s series helped turn YouTube into a world-beating phenomenon. As it bows out, we remember its best bits – from mocking MC Ghetts to that sizzling tension with Billie Eilish and Andrew Garfield

When Amelia Dimoldenberg posted a video to social media this week, telling an unknown companion “we need to talk”, it felt like a monumental announcement was on the horizon. And so it came to pass. Chicken Shop Date, Dimoldenberg’s YouTube series, is coming to an end.

The press release covering the announcement came packed with superlatives. Chicken Shop Date has generated 34m hours of views over the years, and has reached 97% of all countries on the planet. What it didn’t mention is that Chicken Shop Date helped to legitimise YouTube as a platform that has taken on – and perhaps beaten – television. The very fact that the Guardian is covering the end of a YouTube video series in the first place is, in part, down to Chicken Shop Date.

Experts say that the smell comes from a chemical compound called 2-nonenal, and it can show up much earlier than one expects

Last week, my mom complained that she’s starting to smell “like an old person”.

She had grabbed her favorite sweater and draped it over herself at the movie theater. “It smelled like my grandmother,” she said, almost whispering. “I thought someone must have borrowed the jacket. But it was just me.”

On the 300th anniversary of Gulliver’s Travels, we celebrate the biggest film stars of them all – from a stone colossus to a metal-munching alien and a 50ft woman on the rampage

Not a first-person-shooter BFG, alas, but one of Steven Spielberg’s worst films, reducing Roald Dahl’s story to digital pap. Mo-cap Mark Rylance, whose cutesy ungrammatical babbling should have been left on the printed page, is the 24ft Big Friendly Giant who kidnaps an orphan girl, Sophie. Ugh. Big Creepy Giant, more like.

The groundbreaking feminist and acclaimed writer has died aged 92 and leaves behind her a wealth of wit and wisdom

• Gloria Steinem, groundbreaking feminist campaigner, dies aged 92

• Hillary Clinton leads tributes to Gloria Steinem: ‘Her activism was rooted in optimism’

Gloria Steinem, the boundary-pushing campaigner and author who spent her life fighting for greater rights for women, has died at the age of 92.

Throughout her career, she was known for her unfiltered honesty and from the 1960s forward, used her words to inspire and bring together women who also wanted to see a change in their lives.

Prolific author campaigned against domestic violence, female genital mutilation, pornography and the Vietnam and Gulf wars

• ‘We badly need to raise our boys more like our girls’: Gloria Steinem – a life in quotes

• Hillary Clinton leads tributes to Gloria Steinem: ‘Her activism was rooted in optimism’

Gloria Steinem, the American feminist and journalist whose activism helped push through greater rights for women around the world has died, aged 92.

Steinem “passed away peacefully at her home in New York City, surrounded by some of the many who loved her”, a statement shared to her Instagram page said.

Event is likely to be largest in at least 1,000 years and will pile extra heat into a world already in a climate crisis

The El Niño climate phenomenon is “supersizing before our eyes”, the UN has said. The event is near certain to shatter temperature records, according to the latest forecasts.

The El Niño is likely to be the largest in at least 1,000 years and will pile extra heat into an atmosphere where temperatures are already rising rapidly due to global heating. The combination means 2027 is set to “blow apart” the record and be the hottest year ever recorded.

Party podcast and social media host Ray Addison fronted films about province where China is accused of genocide

Reform UK’s top media presenter has worked for a Chinese state propaganda channel within the past year, the Guardian can reveal.

Ray Addison, who presents the political party’s in-house podcast and social media campaigns, fronted films about Xinjiang province – where the Chinese government is accused of committing genocide – for state media in September 2025.

Government lawyers tell coroner disclosing intelligence would pose serious risk to national security

Ministers are seeking to block intelligence material from being heard at an inquest into the death of two men killed in the 2025 Manchester synagogue attack.

Lawyers for Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, told a coroner on Thursday that disclosing the MI5 files would pose a serious risk to national security.