Before the Spanish conquest, the history of the Aztec Empire was recorded orally and with hieroglyphs. In danger of being lost or forgotten, Indigenous historians began to write it down.
In 1938 a sensational spy trial exposed a Nazi plot to seduce and blackmail US officers. Despite America’s technological might, counterintelligence had been slow on the uptake.
Willem de Kooning’s works on paper document his efforts to find ways of retaining both image and abstraction, depth and flatness.
Willem de Kooning Drawing an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, June 14–September 20, 2026, and the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, October 9, 2026–January 17, 2027
Charles Lamb’s camp, mischievous, melancholic alter ego, Elia, owes much to his sister, Mary, with whom he lived for forty years, absorbing her “rambling chat.”
Complete Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume IV: Elia and The Last Essays of Elia edited by Gregory Dart
Friedrich Merz is a man with few choices and little popular support as he faces the end of Germany’s postwar settlement and the collapse of all the checks and balances to maintain democratic norms after the second world war and reunification. While Alternative für Deutschland’s success in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt saw the party win 44% of the vote, they are three seats short of a governing majority and, so far, no other party has said they are prepared to work with them, which means that for the moment, at least, the threat of Germany’s first rightwing extremist state government since the Nazi period has not yet come to pass.
As Berlin correspondent Deborah Cole explains, Merz is seen as the wrong man to present and sell a political counterpoint to the AfD’s populist policies. Seen as lacking in empathy and political dexterity, his demeanour is in sharp contrast to Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt. But as Deborah’s Berlin colleague, Kate Connolly, reports, some of Siegmund’s prospective new MPs have questionable backgrounds, including criminal records, Stasi pasts and connections to far-right networks.
Spotlight | Stop, slow down and swerve the apocalypse Can the world heave a collective sigh of relief after fellow tech bosses heeded a proposal by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s to put the brakes on AI’s headlong rush to over take human intelligence? Nick Robins-Early weighs up our chances
Science | Can I borrow your coyote? Guardian US reporter Lois Beckett visits a one-of-a-kind California lending library where you can check out taxidermied animals and fossilised dinosaur bones.
Feature | Slime is not as simple as it seems Scientists are battling to determine whether supposedly simple organisms demonstrate a form of intelligence. If they do, what does it mean for our understanding of brain power, asks Samanth Subramanian
Opinion | Ethics make a return to UK foreign policy The evidence is Ed Miliband’s bold decision to label settler violence in the West Bank as “ethnic cleansing” and institute a boycott, argues Steve Bloomfield
Culture | Shear fun Catherine Shoard is rounded up for a trip down to Mossy Bottom farm to get a behind-the-scenes preview of the latest Shaun the Sheep film
THE ATLANTIC MAGAZINE: The latest issue features “EMPIRE OF GRIFT” – Anne Applebaum examines how hardened ideologues and opportunistic profiteers are bending American diplomacy to advance an antidemocratic agenda—and their own financial interests. For our cover, the illustrator Ben Hickey created an ominous image of figures in shadow arrayed around a map of the world, evoking the war-room scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
John Goodall finds a moving monument to Katherine Parr, the last wife of Henry VIII, at Sudeley Castle, Gloucestershire
Are you local?
How many generations does it take for a dynasty to be bona fide rather than blow-in? Mary Skipwith visits five Cotswolds estates in search of the answer
Property market
Renovated Cotswold manor houses with light-filled interiors and contemporary layouts catch the eye of Penny Churchill
Properties of the week
Julie Harding scours all corners of the Cotswolds as she show-cases a selection of the latest honey-hued homes for sale
Paint your garden
Tiffany Daneff is charmed by the colourful, considered palette of an artist’s garden at Ham Court in Gloucestershire
Jeremy Finnis’s favourite painting
The GWCT chairman chooses a purple-tinged landscape that evokes the spirit of the Highlands
A golden fleece
An array of parish churches are an enduring legacy of the wealth generated by Cotswolds sheep farming, reveals John Goodall
The legacy
Julie Harding travels back in time with the poetic prose of Laurie Lee’s classic Cider with Rosie
The artist’s way
The redstart’s striking looks and talent for mimicry make it a favourite for Mark Cocker
Don’t follow the lights
John Lewis-Stempel tries to avoid that sinking feeling as he ponders the precarious future of Britain’s precious peat bogs
Luxury
Justine Picardie celebrates the enduring appeal of the Burberry trench and Amie Elizabeth White rests easy with sleep essentials
Interiors
Amelia Thorpe reveals how to cook up an elegant kitchen look
Countryside mystery
John Wright debunks the myth surrounding the water-retention miracle of manmade dew ponds
Travel
A revived Ottoman masterpiece is the perfect retreat on Teresa Levonian Cole’s Greek odyssey
In a league of their own
Claire Jackson peers into curious British collections dedicated to everything from dog collars to canals and cuddly toys to clocks
Strike a posy
The Victorians were the original experts at saying it with flowers. Ashleigh Arnott reads the signs
It’s a stitch up!
Julie Harding traces the tale of the needle, a darn good creation made with pin-point precision
Arts & antiques
Feats of clay will always catch the eye of Will Gompertz, as he explains to Carla Passino
The play’s the thing
Turgenev and Sir Alan Ayckbourn supply the on-stage standouts for Michael Billington this month
California’s Big Sur coastline is often called a slice of heaven. But this year – beset by wildfires, road closures and disruptions to tourist amenities – it has endured a long summer of hell. Now questions are being asked about how many visitors it can sustain in the face of the climate crisis.
For our big story this week, Andrew Gumbel visits Big Sur, where the tourist industry accounts for about 90% of the local economy, to hear why the community fears its ethos is under threat.
The UN has warned that the El Niño climate phenomenon is “supersizing before our eyes”. Environment editor Damien Carrington reports on the latest forecasts, which predict the event is near certain to shatter temperature records.
Then, the mayors of Paris, Milan and Phoenix write about how their cities are learning from each other on responding to the heat crisis. “How do you protect millions of people,” they ask, “when extreme heat is no longer an exceptional event, but an increasingly familiar part of summer?”
Spotlight | ‘It breaks my heart’ Kate Connolly reports from Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt, where voters are digesting the far-right Alternative für Deutschland’s state election triumph
Science | Forbidden planet Since it was stripped of planetary status, Pluto’s defenders have been fighting the decision – and they’re only getting more passionate, writes Tim Dowling
Feature | Your lying AIs LLMs have an alarming tendency to deceive and manipulate their users. As they become ever more embedded in society, the race is on to find out why – and stop them doing it. Snigdha Poonam explains
Opinion | The route to a brighter future The world is being driven to the brink by thugs and dictators, says Simon Tisdall, but ordinary people have more power than we think
Culture | A stitch up As the Bayeux tapestry goes on show in London, cartoonist Edith Pritchett offers an alternative 21st century take, capturing today’s battles, while art critic Jonathan Jones reviews the British Museum’s blockbuster exhibition of the original masterpiece
Intellicurious 