The Sussexes must have hoped for a warm welcome. Then they read the king’s delicately savage letter about ‘private citizens’

As welcome-back-to-Britain gestures go, the lord chamberlain’s letter, sent on behalf of King Charles on Monday to remind Harry, Meghan and everyone watching that they’re still “private citizens”, was so perfect as to restore me to monarchism. After six years in the wilderness, what greater comfort for Prince Harry than to find himself, once again, in the familiar waters of this country’s passive aggression, being attacked by his father via the merciless phrase “fully respected”, and provoking from the prince a coded up-yours in the form of his publicly stated “surprise”.

Well, it’s up there with better cheese, bread and the NHS, isn’t it?! Even the most Eurocentric American can’t match us for this kind of subtextual bare-knuckle fight. Before we get into what else the returnees may be enjoying this month, let’s fully excavate the letter’s encrypted hostility. First, the king’s repeated use of the words “personal” and “private” – as in “the charitable work of the Duke and Duchess is a personal matter for them both and undertaken in their private capacity” – is so intense, so heavy handed, as to go beyond merely calling his younger son a civilian and come perilously close to the ultimate insult, “middle class”.

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Since Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024, there has been a 63% rise in Americans renting properties in Scotland. Politics is one reason – but there are many other surprising motivations …

Four years ago, when Tammi Gaw, a 50-year-old property adviser, moved from Washington DC to Glasgow with her Scottish partner, friends and family laughed at her. “People back home kept asking me: ‘Ha ha, why would you want to move to Scotland, where it rains all the time?’ Now those same people are asking me: ‘Hey, how do I move there?’”

They are not alone. According to data from Rightmove, 28% of inquiries from Americans about buying a home in the UK are about Scotland, a larger number than for London. And a recent survey from lettings platform Goodlord reported a 63% rise in the number of Americans renting properties in Scotland since Donald Trump’s re-election in November 2024.

Every decade, the BBC’s continued existence must be secured through an elaborate multi-year negotiation with the government. But what does charter renewal actually involve – and will it secure the BBC’s long-term future?

In a temperature-controlled room in a suburb of Reading, the basis of the BBC’s existence is kept in a flat, square, faded navy case, the size of a large pizza box. Inside is a stack of vellum – calfskin, pounded until it forms a milky and translucent paper that is supposed to last for thousands of years. The queen’s red wax seal is secured to its base with red and gold cord. The pages are strapped down with two strips of white elastic, more PE kit than Buckingham Palace.

The document is unique. Like hundreds of other British organisations, the BBC was founded via a Royal Charter, granted by the monarch of the day. But unlike Oxford colleges, the British Film Institute, or the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards, the BBC was given an expiry date. When the British Broadcasting Corporation was founded, in the 1920s, radio was seen as such an uncertain, risky technology that the government only gave it a 10-year guarantee, after which it would have to seek a new charter.

Manager is excited by new US deal but might have returned to Spurs if the stars had aligned and does not rule out taking England job one day

If things had worked out differently, Mauricio Pochettino would have gone back to his beloved Tottenham over the summer. They had put in the call and it stirred him. Nothing was going to put him off – not even the possibility of the club being in the Championship.

Seriously, Mauricio? After a World Cup campaign with the United States and top jobs with Chelsea and Paris Saint-Germain before that, he would have been willing to start a new chapter in the second tier of English football? “Yes, of course,” Pochettino says. “Tottenham … it’s the only club that always I am open to help. In whatever division.”

Aardman’s hero is back in The Beast of Mossy Bottom – a terrifying tale of frankenfood, pitchfork-wielding villagers and a monster with suspiciously stiff orange hair. Our writer meets its makers and moulds her very own Shaun

The Aztec West industrial estate in Bristol was opened by Margaret Thatcher in December 1989. One hundred and sixty acres of breeze block and mirrored glass, it is home to about 7,000 employees and 100 companies, including EDF, EE, HSBC, Co-op Legal and Spandex. It has its own gym, spa, church and morgue. Step inside Unit 1410, though, and bucolic England is magically restored. A farm complete with sheep. Rolling fields in autumn colours. A small parish town boasting post office, war memorial, chippy. It looks lush. But before you hit up Rightmove, I should say: Mossingham is only two feet tall. And plasticine.

It’s January 2026 and Aardman animations are about halfway through production on Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom. The 300-odd staff in this shed are full speed ahead – which means each of the 30 animators is rattling out almost two seconds of footage a day.

Tango is an art form which, as the competitors themselves described, serves as a deeply personal means of expression, communication and connection between people beyond cultural and geographical borders. The final featured dancers from several countries including Russia, Turkey, Japan, Indonesia and Kazakhstan, underlining tango’s global and growing appeal.

Spiritual leaders stress diversity of views within Jewish community and warn against inaction on settler violence

• ‘It’s a good start’: prominent Israelis welcome UK sanctions

Prominent British rabbis have backed Ed Miliband’s sanctions on Israeli settlements, warning that the time for inaction on settler violence must come to an end.

The intervention comes after the UK’s chief rabbi, the spiritual leader of mainstream Orthodox Jews in the UK, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, described UK sanctions against illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories as a “dark day for British Jews” and warned they could embolden people who “use hatred as a weapon against Jews”.

Paul Nowak says changes to immigration rules risk overstretching social care and fuelling far-right sentiment

Andy Burnham must overhaul Shabana Mahmood’s migration reforms or risk overstretching social care and fuelling far-right sentiment, the TUC general secretary, Paul Nowak, has warned.

Speaking ahead of the TUC’s annual congress in Brighton next week, Nowak welcomed the “sense of optimism” around Burnham’s fledgling government, but he urged the PM to act in a series of areas, including migration and the cost of living.

Temperatures reached 1.65C above preindustrial levels, months before El Niño system reaches full strength

August was the joint-hottest month ever recorded around the world, with global temperatures reaching 1.65C above preindustrial levels, scientists said on Thursday, amid warnings of further heating on the way.

August 2026 tied with July 2023 for the hottest month ever recorded, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Sea surface temperatures also soared to their highest levels on record for August.

President makes offer that would cost US over $1tn and asks voters to ‘pretend that I’m on the ballot’ despite being deeply unpopular among electorate

Donald Trump pledged to pay every adult citizen in the US $5,000 if Republicans retain the House and Senate in the midterm elections, during a marathon speech at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas in which the president assailed Democrats as “radical” and defended his unpopular war in Iran.

The outlandish proposal, which would cost over $1tn, immediately raised ethical concerns. But it laid bare the extent of the Republicans’ concern about their prospects in the pivotal November elections.