Features

Inside the brutal world of the Peckham Conker Championships

This nostalgic-sounding event is pure carnage, with scenes of biting and adults wrestling on the concrete

The pages of our lives

Diaries can be the most revealing records of who we are. One compulsive diarist introduces the intimate reflections of Audre Lorde, Salvador Dalí, Elton John and others

The dropping that proves rhinos are rising again

Black rhinos were all but eradicated from Zambia’s Luangwa valley by poachers. But now extinction is being reversed

Laughing in Joe Rogan land

How did comedians get so much political power?

Art, raves and four-minute warnings: 24 hours in Kyiv

How the city’s young are clinging to normality while war rages on

The world’s first steam train chugs back to life in Stockton

The first passenger rail journey, from Stockton to Darlington, took place 200 years ago this week. After HS2, it’s a badly needed reminder of what Britain can build

How a western charity helped the Syrian regime abduct children

SOS International helped disappear hundreds of children kidnapped by the state during the Syrian civil war

Gary Kemp’s adventures in Clubland

Spandau Ballet’s creative force leads us on to the dance floor

John le Carré’s shadow world of secret informers

Long after his intelligence career ended, the author remained at the centre of a web of contacts who were key to his writing

Health misinformation killed my sister. She deserves justice

Gabriel Shemirani blames his mother’s conspiracy theories for the death of his twin Paloma. He talks to Marianna Spring about his campaign against health misinformation

The secret life of a tattoo parlour

More British adults than ever before have tattoos. We get under the skin of our obsession with ink

How to liberate 450 schoolgirls from the Taliban

For more than a decade, writer Bella Pollen helped her friend support a pioneering school in Afghanistan. When US forces withdrew, that became a life-and-death commitment

Preparing for the worst at Europe’s first survivalist shop

From ‘ammo’ boxes for storing food to hazmat suits, survival packs and crossbows, a Cornish shop is cashing in on the post-Covid boom in paranoia

How to stay cool: 100 ways to beat the heat

As the scorching summer rolls on, here are 100 ingenious ways to stay chilled

‘My God, what have we done?’

The words of the co-pilot who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima still echo 80 years on. Could the devastation it wrought ever be justified?

‘Heathcliff, it’s me, I’m Cathy…’

Out on the wily, windy Kent seafront, a red sea of Kate Bushes gather to celebrate the annual Most Wuthering Heights Day Ever

‘Why I left my family home in Alum Rock behind’

Writer Kasim Ali is one of the few members of the community he grew up with in Birmingham’s Alum Rock to have left – and his family can’t understand why. He attempts to explain

You, me and ChatGPT

We're using AI in the most unexpected ways. But do its answers raise even bigger questions?