This fascinating portrait of a complex man’s attempt to solve an impossible problem is packed with amazing archive footage – from George Michael singing to Thatcher being berated

On the evening of 23 October 1984, Bob Geldof, singer with the waning pop act the Boomtown Rats, had a social engagement. He had been invited to Mayfair for the launch of a book by Peter York, profiler of London’s most privileged bons vivants. But before he left the house, Geldof watched the BBC television news and a report by Michael Buerk about a hellish famine in Ethiopia.

Among the many startling, blackly comic archive clips in Live Aid at 40: When Rock ’n’ Roll Took on the World is footage of Geldof at that glitzy party, reeling from what he had seen on TV and remarking to a fellow guest that it was “gross” for them to be enjoying champagne and canapes. That tension between glamour and guilt is at the heart of this three-part retrospective that doesn’t ignore the flaws in Geldof’s grand plan to use music to feed the world. It’s a fascinating portrait of a complex man’s imperfect attempt to solve an impossible problem.

Votre valise déborde déjà, mais vous voulez quand même emporter un jeu en vacances ? Parfait : voici une sélection de petits formats malins, aussi compacts que faciles à glisser entre deux maillots.

Votre valise déborde déjà, mais vous voulez quand même emporter un jeu en vacances ? Parfait : voici une sélection de petits formats malins, aussi compacts que faciles à glisser entre deux maillots.

Drake released the new tune, ‘What Did I Miss?’ on Friday

[Deal du jour] Lego propose de plus en plus de sets liés à la pop culture, que ce soit le cinéma ou les jeux vidéo. Pour vous aider à choisir les plus beaux Lego, voici une petite sélection de produits en promotion qui valent le coup d'œil.

[Deal du jour] Lego propose de plus en plus de sets liés à la pop culture, que ce soit le cinéma ou les jeux vidéo. Pour vous aider à choisir les plus beaux Lego, voici une petite sélection de produits en promotion qui valent le coup d'œil.

Not only is nuclear essential if we want to reach net zero – it’s the key to tackling poverty, too

Money can buy comfort, but energy makes comfort possible in the first place. Energy is the great enabler of the modern world. It connects the globe by moving people and hauling goods. It loosens the grip of the weather by warming our homes in winter and cooling them in summer. It forges the steel that raises our cities and synthesises the fertilisers that keep half the world’s population from starvation. It increasingly empowers us by electrifying the technologies we rely on daily.

It is also the great enabler of socioeconomic development. Monetary wealth and energy abundance move in lockstep: plot a graph of GDP per capita against energy consumption per capita, and you’ll draw a straight line. Low-energy, high-income nations do not exist. Prosperity and energy are inseparable; you cannot have one without the other.

From the site of the failed assassination comes a sharp-eyed account of Trump’s political gains – and Democrats’ failings

The Democrats’ famed blue wall is more the stuff of nostalgia than reality. On election day 2024, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin voted for Donald Trump for the second time in three elections. Barack Obama’s upstairs-downstairs coalition lies in ruins, as Democrats struggle to connect with working-class voters across racial and ethnic lines.

Last November, Trump came within just three points of winning a majority of Latino voters. Such Americans walked away from their presumed political home – in droves. A Trump endorsement by Roberto Clemente Jr, son of the late Pittsburgh Pirates baseball star, was a harbinger. Likewise, Trump posted double-digit gains among Catholics and Jews, once core constituencies in the Democratic party of FDR.

Butler is published in the US by Hachette

Having made waves as part of the alt-lit movement, the US author is poised to go mainstream with The Stalker, her most exhilarating work yet

When I arrive at Paula Bomer’s apartment building in south Brooklyn I am briefly disoriented in the lobby, until I hear the yapping of dogs and amid them, her voice calling my name. Bomer is tall and striking, in her mid-50s. I met her last year at a reading in Williamsburg, Virginia, where she seemed like someone who cared almost manically about literature and also like someone who would be fun to hang out with, two qualities not always confluent. I had heard of these anxious dogs before, when she and I met for dinner a few months ago, and she disclosed that her life was now spent managing canine neuroses.

“I got them when my dad died,” she says, in between offering me matcha, coffee, tequila or wine (it’s 2.30pm on a Sunday; Bomer doesn’t drink any more, save a glass of champagne on selling her book, but doesn’t mind if others do). “The dogs were a mistake,” she says, “But that’s OK, I’ll survive it.”

Decades ago, a generation of UK schoolchildren unwittingly took part in an initiative aimed at boosting reading skills – with lasting consequences

Throughout my life, my mum has always been a big reader. She was in three or four book clubs at the same time. She’d devour whatever texts my siblings and I were studying in school, handwrite notes for our lunchboxes and write in her diary every night. Our fridge door was a revolving display of word-of-the-day flashcards. Despite this, she also was and remains, by some margin, the worst speller I have met.

By the time I was in primary school, she was already asking me to proofread her work emails, often littered with mistakes that were glaringly obvious to me even at such a young age. It used to baffle me – how could this person, who races through multiple books a week and can quote Shakespeare faultlessly, possibly think “me” is spelt with two Es?

Langston Hughes and Toni Morrison’s childhood homes remain unmarked – raising urgent questions about legacy and preservation

Nothing could prepare me for seeing the house that Langston Hughes, the heralded Harlem Renaissance poet, author, journalist and traveler, lived in as a teenager in Cleveland, Ohio. Only eight steps separated me from the walkway that led to the front door as my Uber driver idled behind me. I clasped my camera in my hand, the shutter echoing in the quiet of a snowy February day. I looked more like a too-curious-tourist than a concerned writer researching the literary legacy of a man who had inspired me all my life.

The house was ordinary, painted in an aging beige that was deepened with crisp, burgundy accents. At the top in an attic space the burgundy was most prominent. I’d learned before this visit that Hughes had lived and written there. I’d also known going into this trip that the house had at one point been at risk of being demolished, efforts that were subverted largely in part due to local librarian Christopher Bucka-Peck’s intervention.

Her kooky online skits brought her viral fame and a breakout role in HBO’s Hacks. Then Lena Dunham came calling with the job of a lifetime. Is the actor ready to take centre stage?

When Lena Dunham messaged, Megan Stalter lost it. “Like d’uhh,” Stalter is explaining – delighting, really. “Who wouldn’t? I was at home: this really bad apartment in Laurel Canyon [in the Hollywood Hills]. The area is haunted, and it was actually a really scary building, and nothing ever got fixed because apparently in the lease I signed they didn’t have to repair anything! I don’t actually live there now …” Stalter, 34, has a tendency to wander off on tangents. So Dunham?

“OK yes, so we were just about to start filming Hacks again.” The wildly popular, 48-times-Emmy-nominated HBO comedy in which Stalter plays nepo-baby Kayla, a chaotic and kind-hearted talent agent, her total-commitment-to-the-bit characterisation making her a breakout star. “And there Lena was in my DMs.” Stalter opened the message, which said: “I have a project I want to talk to you about.” “That’s when I lost my mind,” she adds. “Panic set in.”

The pop veteran works up a sweat to Biffy Clyro and recognises the dancefloor power of Abba, but which Kylie banger hits a little too close to home?

The first song I fell in love with
I’ve got two older brothers and an older sister. My sister played the grooves out of Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell. When I got my chance, I’d put on I Wan’na Be like You from The Jungle Book.

The song I do at karaoke
Tale As Old As Time from the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack, even though it’s a duet. My daughter Emilie is 33, but when she’s home, we’ll watch a Disney film together. She turns into a five-year-old, I turn into a young dad and it’s just lovely.