Two survivors urged politicians and those without experience of abuse to allow women to shape the investigation

Campaigners from trade unions, voluntary organisations and the Church of Scotland have announced plans for an anti-poverty march to “demand better” from politicians in Scotland, reports the PA news agency.

The campaign, Scotland Demands Better, will culminate in a march in Edinburgh on 25 October, walking from the Scottish parliament, up the Royal Mile and along George IV Bridge to The Meadows.

Change for the better happens when people stand together and demand it. Scotland desperately needs that change.

Too many of us are being cut off from life’s essentials. Too many are frightened of what the future will bring. Too many of us are feeling tired, angry, isolated, and disillusioned.

Air pollution remains the most important environmental threat to health, with impacts throughout the life course.

It is an area of health where the UK has made substantial progress in the last three decades, with concentrations of many of the main pollutants falling rapidly, but it remains a major cause of chronic ill health as well as premature mortality.

LGBTQ+ emblem disappears from above Matlock Christian bookshop as manager says they are ‘not happy with the gay rights situation’

The spa town of Matlock in the Peak District is known for the joyful flags adorning its historical high street. The St George’s Cross, the union flag, the Derbyshire county flag and the Pride flag flutter brightly above the town’s many independent businesses.

That was until a row erupted that has divided the town, after the mysterious disappearance of a Pride flag turned out to be the work of the very council that had installed it.

The civil service, judiciary and media are still dominated by the privately educated 7%. Lasting change is not a pipe dream – but it’s up to us

For the first time in our history, we have a cabinet made up entirely of people who went to state schools. Several, including prime minister Keir Starmer, come from working-class backgrounds; some, such as deputy prime minister Angela Rayner, were raised in conditions of poverty that feel as if they ought to belong to another age.

So far so good. What better signs could one ask for to show that Britain is a meritocracy, social mobility is real and anyone can rise to the top provided they have talent, commitment and determination?

Alastair Campbell is a former journalist turned strategist and spokesperson for the Labour party. He is now a writer, podcaster, consultant strategist and mental health campaigner

‘Efficiency’ cuts across offices have left teams understaffed, firefighters underpaid and uninsured, and without adequate equipment

Summer temperatures are rising and the US is bracing for another hot, dry and hectic wildfire season. But with the promise of extreme conditions in the months to come, federal fire crews are also growing concerned that a series of changes brought on by the Trump administration have left them underprepared.

Severe cuts to budgets and staff have hamstrung the agencies that manage roughly 640m acres of the nation’s public lands, leaving significant gaps in a workforce that supports wildfire mitigation and suppression. The administration’s crackdown on climate science and the dismantling of departments that provided world-class research and weather forecasting, may also undermine early warning systems, slowing response and strategic planning.

(Island EMI)
The Londoner’s trademark sentimental sweetness is balanced by a new unaffected singing style – his fourth album is his most impressive work yet

Loyle Carner raps like he has a lump in his throat and tears in his eyes. Wonder, nostalgia, love, hurt, excitement, hard-won peace: these are the emotions his voice tends to catch on. When combined with his typically blissed-out sonics – feathery breakbeats, dreamy piano figures, delicate synth washes, gently plucked guitars – the results are often very nice. Sometimes a bit too nice. So it is on Feel at Home, the sentimental love song that opens the 30-year-old’s fourth album, Hopefully!

Carner – whose moniker is a spoonerism of his real name, Benjamin Coyle-Larner – never makes music that is boring or basic. As well as the slushy lyrics and comfortingly toasty chords, Feel at Home is buttressed by madly skittering percussion and what sounds like a blurry reproduction of young children’s playground chatter. But much like the outpouring of earnestness and loveliness on the Croydon-raised rapper’s first two albums, Hopefully! may well have you hankering for a shred of dissonance or disruption – especially after 2022’s Mercury-shortlisted Hugo, which gratifyingly offset Carner’s trademark tenderness with a more abrasive sonic palette. Initially, the musician seems to have moved on – or perhaps backwards – from that record.

False claims obstructing climate action, say researchers, amid calls for climate lies to be criminalised

Rampant climate misinformation is turning the crisis into a catastrophe, according to the authors of a new report.

It found climate action was being obstructed and delayed by false and misleading information stemming from fossil fuel companies, rightwing politicians and some nation states. The report, from the International Panel on the Information Environment (Ipie), systematically reviewed 300 studies.

Depending on who you ask, between four and six million people showed up – and according to one theory, this could be a turning point

The scale of last weekend’s “No Kings” protests is now becoming clearer, with one estimate suggesting that Saturday was among the biggest ever single-day protests in US history.

Working out exactly where the protest ranks compared to similar recent events has been a project of G Elliott Morris, a data journalist who runs the Substack Strength in Numbers, calculated turnout between four million and six million, which would be 1.2-1.8% of the US population. This could exceed the previous record in recent history, when between 3.3 million and 5.6 million people showed up at the 2017 Women’s March to rally against Trump’s misogynistic rhetoric.

Located in Ontario, the church provided shelter and aid to Black Americans who participated in the Underground Railroad to escape slavery in the US

On a cold day in January 2024, Rochelle Bush walked up the steps of Salem Chapel, British Methodist Episcopal Church in St Catharines, Ontario, Canada. Bush, the owner and primary tour guide of Tubman Tours Canada and Salem Chapel’s historian, moved quickly through the church pointing out the history, which spans across generations back to when the building was built centuries ago.

The church’s roots stretch to about 1788 when Black people, many of whom were seeking freedom from slavery in the US, began to settle in the St Catharines area. Along with their hopes, dreams and plans for the future, these settlers, many of whom were followers of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, and Richard Allen, a founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, brought their religions with them.

Government accused of making ‘secret exchange deal’ with fossil fuel companies to compensate for tax hike

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, told a fossil fuel company the industry would receive a “quid pro quo” in return for higher taxes on its windfall profits, it can be revealed.

In a meeting with the Norwegian state energy company Equinor on 27 August, Reeves suggested that the government’s carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) subsidies were a payoff for oil firms being hit with a higher tax rate.

The legendary video game designer discusses directing actors in LA from Japan, how Mad Max inspired his career and the unique reason why he wants to go to space

Hideo Kojima – the acclaimed video game director who helmed the stealth-action Metal Gear series for decades before founding his own company to make Death Stranding, a supernatural post-apocalyptic delivery game this publication described as “2019’s most interesting blockbuster” – is still starstruck, or perhaps awestruck. “George [Miller] is my sensei, my God,” he proclaims gleefully.

Kojima is visiting Australia for a sold-out chat with Miller, the creator of the Mad Max film franchise, at the Sydney film festival. The two struck up an unlikely but fierce friendship nearly a decade ago, and Kojima says that, as a teenager, the first two Mad Max films inspired him to become a movie director and thus, eventually, a video game maker. At the panel later, Miller is equally effusive, calling Kojima “almost my brother”; the Australian even lent his appearance to a major character in Kojima’s latest game, Death Stranding 2.

Calls follow news that attorney general advised government to limit its involvement to defending allies

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Ministers are facing calls to publish legal advice given to the government on Israel’s war against Iran after reports emerged that the attorney general had warned that any UK involvement beyond defensive support would be illegal.

Richard Hermer, the government’s most senior legal officer, is reported to have raised concerns internally about the legality of joining a bombing campaign against Iran.

Ahead of her Glastonbury performance, the First Cut Is the Deepest singer will be taking on your queries about her star-studded career

She’s the singer with iconic 60s hits such as The First Cut Is the Deepest and Angel of the Morning, who has been called on as a collaborator by some of the biggest names in British music. And as she gears up for a performance at this year’s Glastonbury festival, PP Arnold will be answering your questions.

Born into a family of gospel singers in Los Angeles, Arnold could have easily never ended up in music: by the age of 17 she was a mother-of-two in an abusive marriage. But she auditioned for Ike and Tina Turner and was hired as an Ikette, fleeing her husband to perform backing vocals on tour and in the studio, with Tina becoming a mentor.

Starship 36 was preparing for 10th test flight from Texas when it underwent ‘catastrophic failure’ while on stand

One of Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starships has exploded during a routine test in Texas, authorities said, in the latest setback to the billionaire’s dream of turning humanity into an interplanetary species.

The Starship 36 underwent “catastrophic failure and exploded” at the Starbase launch facility shortly after 11pm on Wednesday (0400 GMT Thursday), a Facebook post by the Cameron County authorities said.

Exploration of Bahamas seabed will be first time notorious New Providence hideout has been searched

The Pirates of the Caribbean is a $4.5bn swashbuckling film franchise and Blackbeard and Calico Jack Rackham are among marauding buccaneers who have captured imaginations over the centuries.

But almost nothing is known about the life and times of actual pirates.

Opponents view the controversial act as part of a growing trend across Brazil to further restrict abortion access

A new law has just come into force in Rio de Janeiro requiring all public hospitals and clinics run by the municipal government to display anti-abortion signs bearing messages such as: “Did you know that the unborn child is discarded as hospital waste?”

Reproductive rights activists view the act as the latest example of a growing trend across Brazil to further restrict access to abortion in a country that already has some of the world’s most restrictive laws.

The Skrmetti decision upholding Tennessee’s ban on transition-related healthcare for minors deprives children and batters the 14th amendment

By now, it is a ritual: every June, Americans endure several weeks of agonizing suspense, as we wait to hear how the supreme court will erode our freedoms, attack our dignity, undermine self-government and empower those who enrich themselves at our expense. The court, controlled by career politicians in robes who were hand-selected for their loyalty to the rightwing and their willingness to be wildly intellectually dishonest in pursuit of Republican policy objectives, has ended the right to abortion, desiccated the Voting Rights Act, made state gun regulations nearly impossible and declared the president functionally immune to criminal law. Many of us waited, with a mixture and terror and disgust, to see what cruelties the court would deliver for us in 2025.

The justices decided to start by attacking vulnerable children. In a 6-3 split, the court’s conservatives ruled on Wednesday that Tennessee’s law banning transition-related healthcare for minors can remain in effect. The law prohibits hormone therapies and surgeries only for their use in treating gender dysphoria; cisgender minors retain access to these drugs. The statute is on its face sex-specific and designed to mandate certain forms of gender conformity: the care that it bans, it bans on the basis of a patient’s sex. This is in straightforward violation of the 14th amendment’s equal protection clause, which has long been interpreted to ban facially sex-discriminatory laws and those that encourage sex-role stereotyping. The court decided to ignore this precedent and the plain intent of Tennessee’s statute, and in the process it both imposed a cruel and needless deprivation on trans children and their families, and also substantially weakened constitutional guarantees of equal protection of the sexes.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

More than 120 years after billions of the trees were wiped out, blight-proof seeds are being planted

It was in New York City that a mysterious fungus was first spotted on an American chestnut, a blight that was to rapidly sweep across the eastern US, wiping out billions of the cherished trees. Now, 120 years later, there is fresh hope of a comeback for chestnuts, spurred not only by scientists but also eager New Yorkers planting blight-proof seeds in their back yards and local parks.

The American chestnut was once found in vast numbers from Maine to Mississippi and known as the redwoods of the east due to its prodigious size. But 4bn trees were killed off in the first half of last century by a blight introduced from Asia to which it had little defense, spread by spores carried by the wind, rain and animals.

Shares fall by 20% before paring back the loss by midday after it predicts annual profits of about £45m

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A slump in hiring activity at businesses around the world means profits will more than halve at Hays, the global recruitment company has warned, sending its shares down more than 10%.

Demand for new permanent staff has fallen sharply, reflecting “low levels of client and candidate confidence as a result of macroeconomic uncertainty”, Hays told investors in an unscheduled update.

Government issued permit to shoot young female who entered Vilnius, despite only small number left in Baltic country

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A young female bear caused a stir after wandering out of the forest and into the leafy suburbs of the Lithuanian capital.

For two days, the brown bear ambled through the neighbourhoods of Vilnius, trotted across highways and explored backyards – all while being chased by onlookers with smartphones and, eventually, drones.

The star makes for a charmless lead in a rubbishy attempt to mash a female-led wedding comedy and an action caper

In Apple’s 2023 car crash Ghosted, things went from worse to genuinely never been this bad when the sounds of Uptown Funk erupted during another shoddily choreographed action sequence. It was a marriage so heinous that one would be tempted to think it was parody had it not existed in a film so entirely devoid of humour and self-awareness. The Chris Evans/Ana de Armas vehicle became the new nadir of the action comedy, a subgenre that has been run down into the sewer by streamers, carelessly cobbling together big stars and bad quips on an almost weekly basis.

But as dreadful as it was, there was something fascinatingly dreadful about it, a cacophony of bad decisions that became almost instructive to the industry in its of-the-moment awfulness. In this week’s Bride Hard, the latest tinny genre mix to get chucked at us, when Rebel Wilson’s shoddy kitchen-based fight scene is scored to Geri Halliwell’s It’s Raining Men, you’ll be too bored to even roll your eyes, if you’re even awake at that point.

In a world of stress and social media, birding offers something completely different. And it is now easier than ever to get to know your chaffinch from your chiffchaff

I’m assured this is a big deal: on the far side of a field in Thetford, separated from me by a gate, there is a stone-curlew.

Jon Carter, from the British Trust for Ornithology, patiently directs my binoculars up, down and past patches of grass until my gaze lands on an austere-looking, long-legged brown bird. “Quite a rare bird,” Carter says, pleased. “Very much a bird of the Breckland.”

History tells us attacks on migrants are a predictable result of political failings, distorted media coverage and far-right opportunism

In early June, the violence began. Rumours of a foreigner assaulting a local woman resulted in groups roaming through a small British town, breaking windows of homes belonging to “outsiders”. A few days later, the police attempted to stop mobs from reaching another nearby multiracial area. Eventually they broke through, ransacking shops and burning down a house, while local media reported that the violence had developed into “something like a fever”.

Sound familiar? This isn’t Ballymena, the County Antrim town in Northern Ireland that has seen several nights of unrest in which immigrant homes were attacked after reports of an alleged sexual assault on a local girl by two teenagers, who had a Romanian interpreter read them the charges. These incidents actually took place more than a century ago, during the summer of 1919, as racial violence spread throughout south Wales, eventually reaching Cardiff and the diverse district of Tiger Bay.

Lanre Bakare is an arts and culture correspondent for the Guardian. He will be discussing his new book, We Were There, at the Southbank Centre in London on 11 July

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Since 1999, Armando López Pocol and his team of volunteers have bucked the trend for deforestation, regenerating the landscape of the highlands with their Chico Mendes project

Armando López Pocol is showing off some of the thousands of trees he has planted in Pachaj, his village in the highlands of western Guatemala, when he suddenly halts his white pickup truck. Alongside an American volunteer, Lyndon Hauge, he gazes out over a charred field. Clouds of smoke are still billowing from the ground.

As he walks through the ash-covered field, his optimistic speech turns to sadness and he pauses in silence to take in the barren landscape.

Israel Katz officially acknowledges goal of war, as Iranian missile hits hospital and Israel strikes nuclear site

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Israel’s defence minister has said he ordered increased attacks on government targets in Iran to “undermine the regime”, while an Iranian missile evaded Israeli air defences to hit a hospital in the country’s south.

Other missiles landed around Tel Aviv, injuring at least 40 people, as Israeli planes bombed a heavy-water reactor and returned to strike the Natanz nuclear complex.

Volatile weather patterns may be altering taste of juniper berries – a key botanical in the spirit – scientists say

The flavour of a gin and tonic may be impacted by climate change, scientists have found.

Volatile weather patterns, made more likely by climate breakdown, could change the taste of juniper berries, which are the key botanical that give gin its distinctive taste.

Rolling coverage of the latest economic and financial news, as Switzerland and Philippines cut interest rates

Newsflash: We have a third interest rate cut this morning!

Norway’s central bank has surprised analysts by cutting its policy rate by a quarter of one percentage point, to 4.25%. The rate had been set at 4.5% since December 2023.

“Inflation has declined since the monetary policy meeting in March, and the inflation outlook for the coming year indicates lower inflation than previously expected.

A cautious normalisation of the policy rate will pave the way for inflation to return to target without restricting the economy more than necessary.”

“The uncertainty surrounding the economic outlook is now greater than normal. If the economy takes a different path than currently envisaged, the policy rate path may be adjusted. But our objectives stand firm. We will finish the job and ensure that inflation is brought all the way back to 2 percent.”

The Monetary Board also noted indications of a deceleration in global economic activity, driven primarily by uncertainty over US trade policy and the conflict in the Middle East. This would lead to slower growth in the Philippines.

A rise in oil prices, electricity rate adjustments, and higher rice tariffs, would add to inflationary pressures.

The Hungarian ban on the Budapest Pride march comes a day after a debate on the march was held at the European parliament

But despite the ban, liberal Budapest mayor Gergely Karácsony vowed to still hold the gathering.

“Given that the city council did not make its announcement within the ambit of the law on gatherings, this ban has no value,” Karácsony wrote on Facebook, AFP noted.

“Budapest city hall will organise the Budapest Pride march on 28 June as a city event. Period.”

Blockage of strait of Hormuz, through which about 25% of world’s oil passes, could shock energy market, says Wael Sawan

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An escalation in the Middle East conflict could have a “huge impact on global trade”, the boss of the oil company Shell has warned, as Donald Trump suggested the US could enter the air war between Israel and Iran.

Shell, one of the biggest traders of oil and natural gas in the world, said it had contingency plans in case the conflict disrupted flows from the region. There is a risk that a blockage in the strait of Hormuz could shock the energy market.

A senator handcuffed, people snatched in public, military deployed – Trump’s slide towards autocracy has come quicker than critics feared

It reads like a checklist of milestones on the road to autocracy.

A succession of opposition politicians, including Alex Padilla, a US senator, are handcuffed and arrested by heavy-handed law enforcement for little more than questioning authority or voicing dissent.

A new slogan has offered a non-partisan rallying point – and last weekend, protests overshadowed the president’s weird military parade

Two months ago, around the US, mass demonstrations against Donald Trump were organised in what felt like the beginning of the great unfreezing of the popular movement. Since the inauguration in January there have been plenty of ad-hoc anti-Trump protests, but compared to the huge numbers that turned out in 2017 – half a million at the Women’s March in Washington DC alone – the response has been muted. What was the point? The threat was so large, and the failure of the first movement apparently so great, that Americans have been suffering from what appeared to be a case of embarrassed paralysis: a sense, at once sheepish and depressed, that pink hats weren’t moving the needle on this one.

It looks as if that thinking has changed. On Saturday, in a follow-up to the protests in April, more than 2,000 coordinated marches took place in the US, organised by multiple groups under the umbrella No Kings Day and attended by numbers that at a glance seem startling. While in the capital on Saturday, Trump oversaw his weird, sparsely attended Kim Jong-un style military parade, an estimated 5 million people country-wide took to the streets to protest peacefully against him, including an estimated 80,000 in Philadelphia, 75,000 in Chicago, 50,000 in New York, 20,000 in Phoenix, and 7,000 in Honolulu. More heartening still were the numbers from deep red states, such as the 2,000 odd protesters who gathered in Mobile, Alabama, and a reported 4,000 in Louisville, Kentucky.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Today’s rumours prefer baking

Viktor Gyökeres may or may not have spat the dummy out after reportedly refusing to hold clear-the-air talks with Sporting over his desire to move. Arsenal and Manchester United have been linked with the Sweden international but the Portuguese side want a wheelbarrow full of cash for his services, which is putting off potential suitors. Gyökeres wants the club to lower their demands but if the striker does not get what he wants, then he could go on strike to really show his employer who is boss.

In a further blow to Arsenal, the Athletic Club winger Nico Williams has told anyone who will listen that he only wants to join Barcelona this summer. It is now up to Barça to look down the back of the sofa for the cash to pay for him. If the Spain international does head from the Basque Country to Catalonia, it will end any chance of Marcus Rashford joining the Spanish champions. Rashford might need to turn to Italy where Napoli, Milan and Como are interested in helping him escape from Manchester United.

Amina says the constant influx of baked goods is too much. Ruby says she’s just trying to bring joy to the workplace. You decide who should bake off

Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror

I’m not saying we should have no cakes ever, I just think we should stop assuming cake is always welcome

Bringing cakes in shows we care and adds a little joy to the office. I’m not force-feeding anyone

After a run of greats at the helm, the tourists’ early promotion of their new leader is an intriguing choice to steady a listing ship

Shubman Gill was a pretty laid-back character when he played for Glamorgan three summers ago. So laid back, in fact, that early on during his time there he parked the brand new Volvo the club had arranged for him and apparently left the keys in the ignition. Sure enough, after training, he returned to find it had been pinched.

Cue panic in the finance department at Sophia Gardens, calls to the insurers and the like. But at least his new teammates had material for some lighthearted mickey-taking. Gill, just turned 23 but already an India star on the rise, had arrived for three September rounds of the County Championship in 2022. Saying hello with 92 on debut in Cardiff, and goodbye with 119 at Hove, it sounds like he fitted in well.

There are fears the crackdown against ‘outsiders’ is driving widespread persecution as expelled Indians are returned by Bangladesh border guards

The Indian government has been accused of illegally deporting Indian Muslims to Bangladesh, prompting fears of an escalating campaign of persecution.

Thousands of people, largely Muslims suspected of being illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, have been rounded up by police across India in recent weeks, according to human rights groups, with many of them deprived of due legal process and sent over the border to neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh.

Playing out from the back works for top teams but sides at the bottom are giving away too many chances

By Opta Analyst

Long-ball football has, for better or worse, been on the decline for years. Football was once a kick-and-run game, shaped by long balls and the thinking that getting the ball close to the opposition’s goal as quickly as possible increased the chances of scoring, well, more quickly.

That was swiftly disproved and left further and further in the rear-view mirror as the game sped off into the Premier League era and further still in the Pep Guardiola-inspired 2010s. As the technical standard of players increased, the ball was kept on the floor more and more. The laws of the game have even been changed to allow teams to play passes so short from goal-kicks that they do not even leave the penalty area.

At 15, she began seeing an older man and conceived her beloved daughter. It was years before she properly understood it as abuse. Now she is working tirelessly in parliament for other survivors

Natalie Fleet is nervous about this interview. Her assistant has warned me and Fleet tells me several times, before and during. “I just feel sick,” she says. “I don’t know if it’s because it’s about me or because of the subject. It just doesn’t seem to get any easier.”

The subject is rape – specifically Fleet’s experience of being groomed by an older man when she was 15, becoming pregnant and having the baby. That daughter, “the love of her life”, is now 24. Since entering parliament last summer as the Labour MP for Bolsover, Fleet has spoken a good deal about rape, her life story and the lack of support for mothers whose children were conceived this way – and each time it upsets her. “My husband said: ‘I don’t want you to be the “rapey MP”,’ and I don’t want that either,” says Fleet. “But it’s such a massive void in our national conversation. If nobody’s talking about it, then people won’t report it or understand it, perpetrators won’t be prosecuted or convicted. And shame really does need to switch sides. That can only happen if we start telling each other that it’s not our fault.”

In this frank, exposing memoir, Jong-Fast reflects on her dysfunctional upbringing as her family falls apart

In 2023, Molly Jong-Fast had the year from hell. Her husband, Matt, discovered he had pancreatic cancer; her father-in-law, aunt and stepfather all died; and her then 81-year-old mother, the novelist and poet Erica Jong, was diagnosed with dementia. “My mother is just a body now,” she states in How to Lose Your Mother. “Erica Jong the person has left the planet.”

That year also marked the 50th anniversary of Fear of Flying, Jong’s autobiographical novel. Hailed as a landmark of feminist literature, it made a star of its author, selling more than 20m copies and leading to appearances on The Tonight Show and the cover of Newsweek. The book coined the phrase “the zipless fuck” to describe casual sex. “Now think about being the offspring of the person who wrote that sentence. And pour one out for me,” writes Jong-Fast.

Premium sports tracker adds built-in torch, smartwatch and accuracy upgrades, plus useful new training tools, but costs far more than rivals

Garmin’s new top running watch, the Forerunner 970, has very big shoes to fill as it attempts to replace one of the best training and race companions available. Can a built-in torch, a software revamp and voice control really make a difference?

The new top-of-the-line Forerunner takes the body of the outgoing Forerunner 965 and squeezes in a much brighter display, useful new running analytics and more of the advanced tech from Garmin’s flagship adventure watch the Fenix 8.

Birthplace of vermouth, grissini and espresso, the north Italian city is a fitting host for the annual World’s 50 Best Restaurants ceremony on 19 June. But you don’t need to have deep pockets to enjoy its great food scene

Many renowned dining destinations have hosted the annual “food Oscars” – the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. This year is the first time the honour goes to Italy, with Turin, capital of Piedmont, holding the ceremony on 19 June. Although Emilia-Romagna is usually regarded as the country’s food capital, Piedmont has a proud gastronomic tradition, with white truffles, rice, chocolate, pastas and cheeses, not to mention wines such as barolo and barbaresco.

Greener than most Italian cities, Turin, the former capital of Savoy and briefly capital of Italy, also has elegant piazzas, royal palaces, possibly Europe’s biggest outdoor market and the wide Po River for strolling, cycling and kayaking. It is where vermouth (see below), grissini breadsticks and espresso coffee were invented.

From combatting racist skinheads to fixing railway lines, these photographs and stories reflect the enduring, positive impact Windrush arrivals had on the UK. Portraits by Amit Lennon.