At 90, McCullin has spent seven decades recording conflict and tragedy – while escaping snipers, mortar fire and capture. He reflects on pain, pride and regret

War photographers are not meant to reach 90. “Fate has had my life in its hands,” says Don McCullin. Over his seven-decade career covering wars, famines and disasters McCullin has been captured, and escaped snipers, mortar fire and more. How does it feel to be a survivor? “Uncomfortable,” he says. No wonder he finds solace in the beautiful still lifes he creates in his shed, or in the images he composes in the countryside around his Somerset home.

McCullin is proud of escaping the extreme poverty he was born into, and the interesting and adventurous life he has lived, but he says the accolades – including a knighthood in 2017 – make him uneasy. “I feel as if I’ve been over-rewarded, and I definitely feel uncomfortable about that, because it’s been at the expense of other people’s lives.” But he has been the witness to atrocity, I point out, and that’s important. “Yes,” he says, uncertainly, “but, at the end of the day, it’s done absolutely no good at all. Look at Ukraine. Look at Gaza. I haven’t changed a solitary thing. I mean it. I feel as if I’ve been riding on other people’s pain over the last 60 years, and their pain hasn’t helped prevent this kind of tragedy. We’ve learned nothing.” It makes him despair.

The Oscar winner’s turn as a no-nonsense private investigator is a role model for women everywhere. She really shines alongside Ruth Wilson in this pacy, twisty thriller based on Mick Herron’s debut novel

I always forget how good Emma Thompson is. That is partly because she tends to work in film rather than television and I last made it to the cinema in the mid-90s. It is also partly because she is always so … how can I put this? … so Emma Thompson in all her interviews and award speeches that I can’t envisage her putting herself away enough for Proper Acting.

But of course she can – and does as the private investigator Zoë Boehm, a woman of flint and diamond, in the new eight-part thriller Down Cemetery Road, Morwenna Banks’ adaptation of Mick Herron’s debut novel of the same name. Herron has since become known for Slow Horses, the series about the busted spies in Slough House pushing paper under the world-wearied eye of Jackson Lamb, ever hoping to get back in the game. Gary Oldman, who plays Lamb, has become a sort of niche national treasure for his portrayal of the beleaguered antihero whom we like to think lives in all of us. I hope the same happens with Thompson/Boehm, because both are magnificent. Boehm is a role model for ladies everywhere, but especially those hampered by a lack of innate cynicism or by a people-pleasing nature (or early training). Look at Boehm and learn. Observe the barren wasteland in which she stands, the field of fucks she has left to give. “I don’t drink prosecco and I don’t bond emotionally,” she tells a new client and one of the show’s many delights is that this remains almost entirely true.

Down Cemetery Road is on Apple TV

We’re watching the Orbánisation of the US – and as in Hungary, control of the media is key to consolidating power

Democracy may be dying in the US. Whether the patient receives emergency treatment in time will determine whether the condition becomes terminal. Before Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, I warned of “Orbánisation” – in reference to Hungary’s authoritarian leader Viktor Orbán. There, democracy was not extinguished by firing squads or the mass imprisonment of dissidents, but by slow attrition. The electoral system was warped, civil society was targeted and pro-Orbán moguls quietly absorbed the media.

Nine months on, and Orbánisation is in full bloom across the Atlantic. Billionaire Larry Ellison, the Oracle co-founder, and his filmmaker son, David, have become blunt instruments in this process. Trump boasts they are “friends of mine – they’re big supporters of mine”. Larry Ellison, second only to Elon Musk as the world’s richest man, has poured tens of millions into Republican coffers. Shortly after the 2020 election, he joined a call that discussed challenging the legitimacy of the vote. His son, David, has a history of backing Democrats – but at one time, so did Trump, his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist

She was five when I first took her to a junior parkrun and I was amazed at her attitude and ability. After a lifetime of seeing exercise as punishment, I could suddenly appreciate it

As a teenager, I was very much a “don’t put me down for cardio” girl. At school I would volunteer to be the goalkeeper as it required the least amount of movement. When it came to sports day, if I couldn’t blag a sicknote, I’d reluctantly sign up for long jump, since the long-jump pit was tucked away behind the bike shed and drew no crowds. The idea of running on the track in front of the whole school felt like a nightmare brought to life.

Unlike lots of my male friends who played football or rugby for fun, I only saw exercise as punishment. Diet culture in the 90s dictated that thinness – and subsequent “goodness” – was a simple case of calories in versus calories out. Exercise was a gruelling way to stay slim and nothing more. I knew nothing of the feelgood effects of exercise, since I only ever experienced feeling as if I was going to pass out.

The accomplished classical actress had a perfect ear and the ability to effortlessly pull off demanding jokes. Her performance as Sybil alongside John Cleese in Fawlty Towers was one of sitcoms’ finest

• Fawlty Towers actor Prunella Scales dies aged 93

• Prunella Scales: a life in pictures

• Share your tributes and memories of Prunella Scales

Prunella Scales portrayed two of Britain’s greatest monarchs on TV: Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II. She was the first dramatic actor to play the latter on television, and won a Bafta nomination for doing so.

However, Scales, who has died aged 93, knew that public memory of her would be shaped by another woman. One who made those two royals look powerless – the self-declared domestic and hospitality industry empress, Sybil Fawlty, wife of Basil, owner of the worst hotel in Torquay in Fawlty Towers, in which she co-starred with John Cleese, who also co-wrote with Connie Booth.

As the singer and former Canadian PM get together, we look at the history of romances between artists and politicians

His dad dated Barbra Streisand and his mother partied with the Rolling Stones, so perhaps it is no shock to see the former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau romantically linked with the American singer Katy Perry.

But it is a surprise. “This was NOT on my 2025 bingo card,” posted the entertainment news site Tyla in July, when the couple were first spotted together in Montreal. Grazia magazine this week labelled them “2025’s most surprising couple”.

Warning of life-threatening flooding as storm hits Cuba; path of destruction ripped across Jamaica

• ‘Storm of the century’ wreaks havoc across Jamaica

• Visual guide to Hurricane Melissa

• Tell us if you’ve been affected

As Cuba prepares for the storm to make landfall any minute, officials in Jamaica are preparing to assess the damage on Wednesday.

A video shared by the Jamaican Constabulary Force shows officers surveying extensive destruction in Black River, close to where Hurricane Melissa made landfall on Tuesday as a Category 5 storm.

Hadush Kebatu received discretionary payment as he threatened to disrupt his deportation to Ethiopia

• UK politics live –latest updates

A sex offender mistakenly released from prison was given £500 as he was deported back to Ethiopia.

Hadush Kebatu was flown back to his home country on Tuesday night and arrived on Wednesday morning with no right to return to Britain.

PM ducks question from Conservative leader but talks about positive news in economy

Mark Sedwill, the former cabinet secretary and former national security adviser, goes next. He is now a peer, and a member of the committee.

He says the deputy national security adviser, Matthew Collins, thought there was enough evidence for the case to go ahead. But the CPS did not agree. Who was right?

In 2017, the Law Commission flagged that the term enemy [in the legislation] was deeply problematic and it would give rise to difficulties in future prosecutions.

And I think what has played out, during this prosecution exemplifies and highlights the difficulties with that.

Netanyahu ordered strikes on Tuesday evening after firefight between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants

Israeli airstrikes on Gaza overnight killed at least 104 Palestinians, including children, in what appeared to be the gravest challenge yet to the increasingly fragile US-brokered ceasefire and the deadliest day since the truce began.

The strikes, one of the bloodiest attacks in the two-year war, killed at least 35 children and injured 200 people, according to Gaza’s civil defence agency. They took place hours after Donald Trump said nothing would jeopardise the ceasefire agreement he had helped broker.