Firing Peter Mandelson, convening with Marco Rubio – then handling the fallout of conflict in the Middle East… it’s been a busy time for the secretary of state, and our writer has had a ringside seat

Before Yvette Cooper joins me in a plush side room at the Foreign Office, an aide comes in and draws the heavy curtains. Outside is Horse Guards Parade. I can see a strip of Downing Street, a patch of the No 10 garden, daffodils in bloom. I say that it’s a shame to block the light on such a beautiful spring afternoon. The aide coughs, embarrassed, and explains that it’s actually for security.

So that people can’t see in?

Excitement in Killarney will reach fever pitch on Sunday, when the actor is hotly tipped to become the first Irish woman to win best actress

If Jessie Buckley wins the Oscar for best actress on Sunday night, County Kerry will need no further proof of a cherished truism: to be born in this corner of Ireland really is the greatest gift that God can bestow. The award would be for Buckley’s performance in Hamnet, but for Killarney, her home town in the county nicknamed the Kingdom, credit will stretch back to her childhood, when she acted in local plays.

“Hollywood here we come!” proclaimed the newspaper Kerry’s Eye, underlining a sense that Buckley’s path to Hollywood for the 98th Academy Awards has been a collective journey propelled by her talent, determination and roots.

Datacentre investment boom is one of the biggest infrastructure gambles of this era, and Britain may be uniquely exposed

Stargate was to be the world’s biggest AI investment: a $500bn infrastructure project to “secure American leadership in AI”. Never shy of hyperbole, its key backer, the ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, promised “massive economic benefit for the entire world” with facilities to help people “use AI to elevate humanity”.

Now, OpenAI appears to be dropping out of a part of the deal – the expansion of a flagship datacentre stretching across a swathe of land in Abilene, Texas, which has become one of the most visible manifestations of a frenzy of investment in the chips and power plants required to build and run AI. There has been a breakdown in negotiations over project financing, as well as the timeline of when the expanded capacity might come online.

She wasn’t a great one for dispensing wisdom. Instead, she fought for me whenever I most needed it

Mum was a brilliant non-giver of advice. Now Dad, he had his pearls. “If you do something, do it with a good heart.” It sounded platitudinous to me, but he had a point. And then there was his favourite: “If you think something bad about someone, say it up there [pointing to his head] but not out loud.” Dad was a good man, but that infuriated me.

Mum played a bigger part in my life. She often had to fight like crazy for me – to keep me in school when I’d told the dinner lady to fuck off at the age of five (no, I don’t know where it came from); to take on the doctors who labelled me a malingerer when I had encephalitis; to allow me back into mainstream education after I’d had three years off, and finally to persuade the University of Leeds to let me in after I’d messed up my A-levels.

The author on failing at atheism, why she lost her place at Cambridge, and bringing back Hilary Mantel

Born in Essex, Sarah Perry, 46, studied English at Anglia Polytechnic University and worked as a civil servant before taking a PhD in creative writing and the gothic at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her first novel, After Me Comes the Flood, was published in 2014. Her second, The Essex Serpent, was Waterstones Book of the Year in 2016, a Radio 4 Book at Bedtime and adapted for television. Her other works include Melmoth and Enlightenment, the latter of which was longlisted for the Booker prize, and Death of an Ordinary Man, which won the 2025 Nero Non-Fiction Book award. She is married and lives in Norfolk.

What is your greatest fear?
Not being loved.

A National Rally victory in France’s second city in municipal elections that start on Sunday would be hailed by the party as a step towards taking the presidency next year

Nathalie, a market trader in her 40s, had woken early to prepare a pan of paella rice. She was spooning it into tubs at a market in southern Marseille last week when a crowd of far-right canvassers approached, promising cleaner and safer streets if she voted for them in the local elections.

“Our cash tin was stolen right here at Christmas time,” Nathalie said. “I’ve had a bag stolen too. It tends to happen at the end of the day, around 7pm. I worry for the elderly grandmas. I had a necklace ripped off me in the city centre once.”

Trump also threatens to hit island’s oil infrastructure if Tehran does not allow passage for ships via Strait of Hormuz

• How have you been affected by the latest Middle East events?

Iranian media has reported there is no damage to its oil infrastructure on Kharg Island, following US attacks that Trump claimed had “obliterated” military targets on the Island.

Iran’s armed forces have threatened to destroy US-linked oil infrastructure if its own energy facilities are hit. Kharg Island serves as the export terminal for 90% of Iran’s oil shipments.

Mood among some in Iran shifts from hope of being rescued to dismay at destruction of infrastructure, culture and lives

After years of arrests, disappearances and mass killings of protesters, the hatred in Iran from some quarters for the hardline, oppressive governing regime had boiled into such a desperate rage that many believed Donald Trump’s promise that the US would “come to their rescue”.

Now, after a fortnight of war, with US and Israeli airstrikes killing hundreds as they hit residential blocks, shops, fuel depots and even a school, the mood is changing.

Refusal to kowtow to US president has won public backing – and left Badenoch and Farage playing catch-up

It is not often that Keir Starmer’s allies believe he has Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch on the run – but on Iran, they think he is on the right side of history and public opinion.

“It could be the making of him,” said Emily Thornberry, the Labour chair of the foreign affairs committee, who was first out of the blocks to say she thought Donald Trump’s strikes on Iran were illegal. “You’ve not had a British prime minister say no to an American president since Vietnam. This is a big deal.”

Communities displaced and destroyed while death toll rises faster than during any previous war in Lebanon

For Batoul Hamdan and her two children, seven-month-old Fatima and Jihad, three, Monday’s iftar, the evening meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan, was special.

For a week, they had eaten to the sounds of bombs in their home in Arab Salim. Hamdan eventually decided to leave for Al-Nimiriya, the sleepy town where she had grown up. Surrounded by her parents and siblings in the family home, she hoped they could finally enjoy the festive mood of Ramadan.