The US health secretary’s ‘digital affair’ with Olivia Nuzzi doesn’t need sombre analysis. Take it from this Brit: sometimes laughter is the only option

Literally nothing on this earth takes itself as seriously as American journalism. There are rogue-state dictators it’s more permissible to laugh at than the endlessly hilarious pretensions of newsmen and newswomen in the United States. The crucial difference between the British press and US press is that at least we in the British press know we’re in the gutter. The Americans have always imagined – and so loudly – that they are involved in some kind of higher calling. Guys, I love you and stuff, but get over it, because you’re missing one of the great jokes of the century. Yourselves.

I don’t deny that everything’s bigger in America. Our former health secretary had a knee-trembler up against his office door in the pandemic; their current one apparently wrote felching … poetry, is it … felching poetry? … to a superstar journalist who was worrying about his brainworm, yet the story is being written up like it’s Dante, instead of X-rated Italian brainrot.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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Fans and historians have spent 60 years debating what the band means – and which member is greatest. Will the returning Anthology project and Sam Mendes’s planned biopics create new arguments?

The early notion of the Beatles as “four lads that shook the world” has been subject to many shifts in emphasis over the decades. They have been valorised, vilified, mythologised, misunderstood and even ignored. The release this month of the new Beatles Anthology – an expansion of the original mid-1990s compilation with CD, vinyl reissues and the documentary series streaming on Disney+ – is testament not just to their enduring appeal but also to how the constant reframing of their story reveals as much about our changing tastes. The 2025 edition arrives as a full-scale revisitation of the original project, bringing with it a remastered, expanded documentary series and a substantial reissue campaign.

What is more likely to reshape the way we see the band, though, is the addition of a brand-new ninth episode to the original TV series, built from recently excavated footage of Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr working together in 1994–95. Far more intimate and informal than the original broadcast, this material captures the three surviving Beatles rehearsing, reflecting and simply spending time as old friends rather than cultural monuments, albeit still with the “kid brother” tensions between Harrison and McCartney. They work on Free As a Bird and Now and Then, jokingly speculate on a stadium reunion tour and generally talk about their history, loss and their unfinished musical ideas. It’s a rare, humanising coda to the well-worn story. With new material like this, and with more than that axiomatic 50 years of distance since the Beatles dissolved in a blizzard of lawsuits and “funny paper”, are we finally approaching a unified theory of everything fab?

Tate Britain, London
JMW Turner is beaten by John Constable in this mighty show. But who cares when the work is so sublime you can hear the squelching and smell the river?

Turner or Constable: who’s the boss? Tate Britain’s exhibition of work by the two artists, subtitled Rivals and Originals, fudges the question. Born a year apart and both alumni of the Royal Academy schools in London, each was keenly aware of what the other was doing, in a British art world that was as febrile and competitive, if immeasurably smaller, than it is today (although you should try the Italian Renaissance if you want full-blooded rivalries and enmities). Sometimes, they sought the same collectors and painted the same subjects. Turner was encouraged from an early age by his father, a Covent Garden wigmaker and barber; Constable was the son of a Suffolk mill owner and grain merchant who wanted him to take over the family business.

As well as their contrasting backgrounds, their temperaments could not have been more different. A scene from Mike Leigh’s 2014 film Mr Turner, starring Timothy Spall as Turner and James Fleet as Constable, plays in the show, presenting the two painters bickering on Varnishing Day at the Royal Academy in 1832. Turner added a touch of red, in the form of a buoy, to his seascape Helvoetsluys; the City of Utrecht, 64, Going to Sea in order to upstage Constable’s The Opening of Waterloo Bridge, on which the painter had been working for more than a decade. But whatever their rivalry entailed, it was hardly the odd-couple bromance between Van Gogh and Gauguin depicted in the 1956 Vincente Minnelli movie Lust for Life (Gauguin: “You paint too fast!” Van Gogh: “You look too fast!”). It is worth remembering that Constable once wrote in a letter: “Did you ever see a picture by Turner, and not wish to possess it?”

It’s love at first bite for diners. From cheese puffs to tuna eclairs, chefs are putting some of their best ideas on the snack menu

Elliot’s in east London has many hip credentials: the blond-wood colour scheme, the off-sale natural wine bottles, LCD Soundsystem and David Byrne playing at just the right decibel. The menu also features the right buzzwords, such as “small plates” and “wood grill”.

But first comes “snacks”. There are classics: focaccia, olives, anchovies on toast. But more creative options include potato flatbreads with creme fraiche and trout roe, mangalitsa saltimbocca with quince, and what became (and has stayed) the Hackney restaurant’s signature dish since around 2012, Isle of Mull cheese puffs: plump, gooey croquettes filled with Scottish cheddar and comté, deep-fried until crisp and topped with yet more grated cheddar. Only two other dishes have never left the menu: fried potatoes with aïoli and cheesecake.

It used to be all boozy lunches and late-night carousing. Now it’s hyperbaric chambers and longevity chat. Andrew Carnie, CEO of the private club, explains how life and trends have changed since the Covid era

Friday night in the north of England. On the ninth floor of the old Granada Studios, a very chi-chi crowd is drinking tequila and eating crisps. Not Walkers out of the bag, mind, but canapes of individual crisps with creme fraiche and generous dollops of caviar. A young woman – leather shorts, chunky boots, neon lime nails, artfully messy bob – winks at me from the other side of the silver tray. “Ooh, caviar. Very posh for Manchester.”

Soho House’s 48th members’ club has caused quite the stir. Thirty years after Nick Jones opened the first club in Soho, London, the first north of England outpost of the empire is raising eyebrows. An exclusive club, in the city that AJP Taylor described as “the only place in England which escapes our characteristic vice of snobbery”. (The home, after all, of the Guardian.) An open-air rooftop pool, in the climate that fostered the textile industry because the rain created the perfect cool, damp conditions for spinning cotton. Will it work?

At Maple Farm, nature is returning in droves: nightingales, grass snakes, slowworms, bats and insects. All due to the vision of a group determined to accelerate its recovery

The manically melodic song of the nightingale is a rare sound in Britain these days, but not at Maple Farm. Four years ago, a single bird could be heard at this secluded spot in rural Surrey; this summer, they were everywhere. “We were hearing them calling all night, from five different territories,” says Meg Cookson, lead ecologist for the Youngwilders, pointing to the woodland around us. A group of Youngwilders were camping out at the site, but the birds were so loud, “we couldn’t sleep all night,” says Layla Mapemba, the group’s engagement lead. “We were all knackered the next day, but it was so cool.” An expert from the Surrey Wildlife Trust came to help them net and ring one of the nightingales the next morning, Cookson recalls: “He’d never held a nightingale in his hands before. He was crying.”

Rewilding is by definition a slow business, but here at Maple Farm, after just four years, the results are already visible, and audible. The farm used to be a retirement home for horses. Now it’s a showpiece for the Youngwilders’ mission: to accelerate nature recovery, in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, and to connect young people (18-30-year-olds) with a natural world they are often excluded from, and a climate crisis they are often powerless to prevent. Global heating continues, deforestation destroys natural habitats, and another Cop summit draws to a disappointing conclusion in Brazil – so who could blame young people for wanting to take matters into their own hands?

Chancellor says people must be ‘properly rewarded for their hard work’ with 16- to 21-year-olds also in line for raise

Millions of low-paid workers in the UK are to get a pay rise of 4.1% next year, as Rachel Reeves confirmed that minimum wage rates will go up as part of the government’s ambition to improve living standards.

The national living wage will rise from £12.21 to £12.71 an hour from April for over-21s, which the government said would increase the annual earnings of about 2.4 million workers by £900.

A year in Westminster: John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar. On Tuesday 2 December, join Crace, Hyde and Crerar as they look back with special guests at another extraordinary year, live at the Barbican in London and livestreamed globally. Book tickets here

The radical plan from David Lammy has been criticised by senior lawyers, who say it could ‘destroy justice as we know it’

Jury trials for all except the most serious crimes such as rape, murder and manslaughter are set to be scrapped under radical proposals drawn up by David Lammy.

In proposals that drew a swift backlash from senior lawyers, who said that they would not reduce court backlogs and could “destroy justice as we know it”, the justice secretary has proposed that juries will only pass judgment on public interest offences with possible prison sentences of more than five years.

Ukrainian leader says that talks should also include European allies; Trump says deal is close

• US optimistic over Ukraine peace deal talks but ‘a few delicate details’ remain

In other EU related news, a top European court on Tuesday ruled that an EU nation had to recognise a gay marriage recorded in another member state, after a complaint by two Poles married in Germany.

The couple, one of whom also has German nationality, were living there and married in Berlin in 2018, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The spouses in question, as EU citizens, enjoy the freedom to move and reside within the territory of the member states and the right to lead a normal family life when exercising that freedom and upon returning to their member state of origin.

“Sweden’s defence needs to be strengthened against threats such as robots, drones and helicopters. The best way to guarantee peace and freedom is to invest in defence. The orders also contribute to growth, jobs and security of supply. It also improves the possibilities of increasing production capacity in the defence industry.”

Report says Israel’s operations ‘significantly undermined every pillar of survival’ and reduced the economy by 87%

Israel’s war in Gaza has created a “human-made abyss”, and reconstruction is likely to cost more than $70bn (£53bn) over several decades, the United Nations has said.

The UN’s trade and development agency (Unctad) said in a report that Israel’s military operations had “significantly undermined every pillar of survival” and that the entire population of 2.3 million people faced “extreme, multidimensional impoverishment”.