The designer reinvented power dressing, redefined what it meant to look modern and was the architect of how we dress now

Giorgio Armani dressed all of us. Whether or not you ever had the money for a jacket with an Armani label, you wore a jacket that he invented. He was the mastermind of contemporary style, the architect of how we dress now. If you have worn an unstructured suit with a T-shirt to a wedding; if you have worn muted neutrals to work; if you have thought it might be chic to paint your living room grey: that was Armani.

Armani was working until his final days. Invitations had already been sent out for his next show, to be held on 28 September in the 14th-century courtyard of Milan’s Palazzo Brera. A spectacular party to accompany the show was planned as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of the brand, which he founded in the summer of 1975.

In Ashton-under-Lyne there is little sympathy for the deputy prime minister’s tax troubles

“I’ve got to pay my taxes and so has she, it’s as simple as that,” Andrew Davies, 57, said, a common view on the streets of Angela Rayner’s Ashton-under-Lyne constituency.

On Wednesday, the deputy prime minister acknowledged for the first time that she had mistakenly not paid the correct amount of stamp duty when she bought a flat in Hove earlier this year.

Liz’s latest delusional outing was on the Master Investor podcast. Spoiler alert: she was right all along, you know

Government debt at record levels. A deputy prime minister under investigation by the standards watchdog. Reform UK 15 points ahead in the opinion polls. A summer in which hatred of migrants has become normalised. Politicians competing with one another to appear more authoritarian.

But hey, things aren’t all bad. Because at least we still have Liz Truss. The country’s most abject prime minister. Liz of the 49 days. Radon Liz. Because she is both a gas and inert.

The Welshman was a brilliant, original coach who had to fight against a culture that was prejudiced against him

By No Helmets Required

Hull FC began one of the greatest seasons in their history 70 years ago this week. Roy Francis guided them to their first title in 20 years with a desperately tight 10-9 win over Halifax at Maine Road. Not only was Francis an outstanding coach but he was black and this was the 1950s. In his majestic new book Rugby’s Forgotten Black Leader, Tony Collins calls Francis “quite probably the only black person to be a leader of white people in any walk of life in Britain”. He really was extraordinary.

No one had written in great depth about Francis and then two books came along almost at once. Peter Lush’s Ahead of his Time focuses on his tremendous playing and coaching career, whereas Collins widens the lens to take in Francis’s remarkable life.

Venice film festival
In an audacious move, director Kaouther Ben Hania reconstructs the killing of the five-year-old in Gaza using her real voice as she is bombarded by the Israeli army

There can be no doubt about which movie has set the Venice film festival ablaze – it is this one, from Tunisian film-maker Kaouther Ben Hania. The Voice of Hind Rajab is about the horrifying ordeal of the five-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab, who was killed in 2024 by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in Gaza in her uncle’s car along with six family members, and two paramedics who tried to come to her rescue. Rajab herself, who survived the original assault by the IDF which killed those around her, stayed on the phone for hours to the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), desperately begging for help. With startling audacity, Ben Hania has used the real audio recording of Rajab’s heart-wrenching voice, while fictionally reconstructing the drama of the emergency responders in their call-centre office, with real people played by actors, talking, shouting and emoting in response to Rajab’s actual voice.

The result was greeted with a 23-minute standing ovation at Venice, about a quarter of the film’s running time, with journalists and festival attenders reportedly sobbing in the auditorium. Since that passionate reception, others have wondered if there is not something questionable or exploitative in presenting this authentic shattering recording in a Hollywoodised suspense drama, getting actors to cry and rage alongside a kind of docufictional hologram, almost instructing the audience in how they too should be responding. I wonder. Perhaps Ben Hania’s high-concept idea is debatable, and it might have been just as moving to present this extraordinary real-life recording in the straightforward documentary context of interviews with the responders and emergency workers. This might have made clearer what happened from their point of view, why they were impeded from helping Rajab and what continues to hinder them.

Ballet flats, fancy notebooks, sweater stones … our edit for men, women and kids has everything you need for a September reset – plus clever ways to update what you already own

• How to buy secondhand clothes online that you’ll actually wear

Does that back-to-school feeling ever fade? As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time in stationery shops, I’d posit that no, it doesn’t. There’s just something about September that feels like a fresh start – whether that’s cracking the spine of a new notebook or jamming your feet into shoes without toe posts for the first time since May.

Admittedly, going back to the office after a summer spent corralling children, drinking canned cocktails, or some chaotic combination of both is less thrilling than heading into a new class when you’re a kid. But it still brings that same mixture of trepidation (emails) and excitement (new shoes).

Exclusive: Isaac Herzog will make trip just weeks before UK is planning to recognise statehood of Palestine

The president of Israel will travel to London next week for a controversially timed trip amid outcry from Labour MPs who have urged Keir Starmer not to meet with the visiting delegation.

The arrival of Isaac Herzog is fraught with complication for ministers, with the UK government on the brink of recognising the state of Palestine at the UN general assembly.

Head of family-run conveyancer says calculation was ‘strictly based on the facts and information provided to us’

The conveyancing firm that Angela Rayner used to complete her purchase of an £800,000 flat on the south coast has said it did not offer her tax advice and completed her stamp duty return based only on information she provided.

Joanna Verrico, the head of a small, family-run firm in Kent, said on Thursday it had not provided any advice to the deputy prime minister on how much stamp duty to pay.

Former cabinet minister’s move on the eve of Reform conference is a further boost for the party which took almost £1m in donations from ex-Tory donors

Nadine Dorries has defected to Reform on the eve of its conference, saying the Conservative party “is dead”.

The former Tory cabinet minister, a close ally of Boris Johnson when he was prime minister, served as culture secretary until 2022 before resigning a year later when blocked from getting a peerage.

Airborne particles cause toxic clumps of proteins in brain that are hallmarks of Lewy body dementia, study indicates

Fine-particulate air pollution can drive devastating forms of dementia by triggering the formation of toxic clumps of protein that destroy nerve cells as they spread through the brain, research suggests.

Exposure to the airborne particles causes proteins in the brain to misfold into the clumps, which are hallmarks of Lewy body dementia, the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease.