Tapestry’s loan to UK is just another chapter in the love-hate relationship that has spanned the centuries since it was created

Five British prime ministers ago – and six French ones – when Emmanuel Macron first confirmed that France would return the Bayeux tapestry to Britain after 1,000 years, he told an audience at Sandhurst and Theresa May – the No 10 seat-warmer of the day – that when it came to France and Britain there were “two things that nothing can change, be it a vote or a political decision: our history and our geography”.

It was January 2018, 18 months after the UK had voted to leave the EU, and relations between the near neighbours were not good. The French political establishment had been shocked and angered by Brexit; personal relations were frazzled, and cross-Channel government contacts measurably dwindling. This was not a rupture that a piece of embroidered medieval linen, however perfectly it represented that tangled history, was going to solve on its own.

Country star came to South Yorkshire town in 2007 for UK launch of the Imagination Library, her book donation scheme

Shane Jarman was up a ladder decorating a Christmas tree at the school where he was deputy headteacher when he got a call asking him to come to Rotherham hospital ASAP. It was December 2007 and Jarman’s wife, Claire, had given birth the previous day to their first child, a girl called Emma, so of course he rushed to the phone. All was well, he was told, but that “everything would become clear” when he got to the hospital.

Once there, his wife told him – somewhat unexpectedly – that they were going to meet Dolly Parton. “And literally within what felt like five minutes,” he recalled, “there were great camera flashes, lots of noise, lots of clicking and in walked this real big bundle of energy.”

Sticking or unlockable doors are yet another problem caused by the hot summer, but winter can also bring difficulties

Thursday was another busy day for Alan Hickman, a Bournemouth-based locksmith who works in the area around the New Forest (“though I’m currently dodging the bit between Ringwood and Eastleigh because that’s closed because of the forest fires”).

Speaking on his way to see a man who can’t close his patio doors – “probably because they’ve got some expansion issues” – he then has a callout to see an elderly woman who needs a lockbox installed for her carer, before visiting a customer in Westbourne “to sort another composite door that can’t lock”.

South Western and GTR announce fightback after move away from paper tickets increases fare dodging

There is more than one way to commit fraud and, for some rail travellers, it has been as simple as a couple of taps on their phone as their train approaches its destination.

That telltale last-minute purchase of a digital ticket – for the shortest journey that will allow them to bleep through the gates, regardless of how far they have travelled – is one of a number of illegal wheezes that train operators are trying to eliminate, with the enthusiastic backing of the government department that will directly oversee most of England’s rail services when they are renationalised next year.

PM’s team can be seen as backward step even though in some ways it is more diverse. Yet its makeup points to wider access to power

• Race, school, gender: the makeup of Andy Burnham’s cabinet – in charts

Like 20 British prime ministers before him, Andy Burnham’s new cabinet minister for AI, Kanishka Narayan, went to Eton. After graduating from the country’s most elite private school, Narayan attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied – what else? – PPE (politics, philosophy and economics), like David Cameron, Rishi Sunak, Ed Miliband and a host of other senior politicians. An MBA at Stanford and a career in the City followed.

But Narayan’s background is hardly typical of the British ruling class. Born in Bihar in eastern India, he moved with his family to Cardiff when he was 12. He and his younger brother were sleeping on the floor of their one-bedroom home when a teacher at his local high school suggested the bright young boy apply for some private schools. His parents, who had joined the Labour party almost as soon as they arrived in Wales, ran a petrol station. Eton was possible only thanks to a full scholarship.

Former Tory minister, who later joined Reform UK and became an unlikely celebrity, was found dead on Thursday

On Wednesday, shortly after Nigel Farage announced he would stand down from his parliamentary seat in Clacton to trigger a byelection, Ann Widdecombe appeared by video link on Talk TV to praise his decision.

“This is a very decisive man,” Widdecombe told the interviewer, speaking with the same forthright conviction that had defined her controversial political career and more eccentric parliamentary afterlife.

One of 11 surviving copies of ‘Exeter printing’ and only one known outside US was taken from American privateer ship

For Michael Scurr, a volunteer at the National Archives in Kew, west London, it was “just a boring old Thursday morning” when he sat down in late May to catalogue a collection of documents from the British national collection that had never previously been recorded in detail.

As he opened a volume of 18th-century Royal Navy correspondence, however, Scurr unfolded a document whose opening words he recognised. “In Congress, July 4, 1776. A declaration by the representatives of the United States of America …”

How five months in 2016 that encompassed Boris Johnson siding with Vote Leave, Jo Cox’s murder and David Cameron’s resignation shaped the UK’s future

David Cameron, having promised in 2013 that a future Conservative government would offer a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, announces the date of the vote: 23 June 2016. The next day, Boris Johnson, then the mayor of London, says he will campaign for leave.

Wessex Archaeology suspect they have uncovered a prototype for world-famous Stonehenge site in Wiltshire

A 5,000-year-old monument that was aligned with the summer and winter solstices and may have served as a prototype for the later solar alignment at Stonehenge has been discovered close to the famous neolithic site, in what archaeologists have described as a “once in a lifetime” find.

The structure at Bulford, 5km (3 miles) from the world heritage site in Wiltshire, has been carbon dated to around 3000BC, the same time as the earliest phase of construction at Stonehenge and 500 years before its huge trilithon stones were carefully placed to line up with the midsummer and midwinter sun.

Councils fix a pothole every 17 seconds – but getting on top of the repair backlog would cost £18.6bn. Why is it so hard to solve a problem that drives the nation crazy?

Marsh Street in the historic centre of Bristol is a modest little stretch of road with an office block at one end, a Thai restaurant at the other, and an almighty mess in between.

Along its length of 200 metres or so, the tarmac surface of the road is pockmarked with many dozens of cracks, patches, divots and holes. In some spots where the surface has worn away, three or more layers of road structure are exposed beneath. What is a bouncy enough ride in a bus or car is even more of an assault course for cyclists, a number of whom weave carefully down its length as they cut through the city centre.

The world has watched the news of deaths and evacuations anxiously, and those still onboard MV Hondius face a wary reception in the Canary Islands

As the MV Hondius sailed out of Ushuaia, the most southerly city on Earth, on 1 April, the grey skies above Tierra del Fuego lifted, lighting up the fresh snow on the mountaintops and the autumnal tree cover closer to shore.

Eighty-eight passengers and 61 crew of 23 nationalities had boarded the small polar-class vessel for its 35-day “Atlantic expedition” from the Argentinian province to Cape Verde, via some of the most remote islands on the planet. As the ship cleared the narrow channel leading to the open sea, those onboard had already been treated to glimpses of humpback whales, dolphins, black-browed albatrosses and South American sea lions.

Kent schoolgirl tracks down 10,000 namesakes as part of campaign – but non-Kirstys are welcome to donate too

Calling all Kirstys! A schoolgirl from Tunbridge Wells in Kent is seeking people who share her name to help raise money for research into paediatric brain tumours like the one for which she is being treated.

Kirsty Waugh, who turns 12 on Monday, has already persuaded more than 10,000 Kirstys, Kirsties, Kersties and assorted other variants to plot their locations on a map that shows Kirstys can be found everywhere from Colombia to Malaysia, and even at the Rothera research station in Antarctica.

Former US ambassador and Labour peer joins a long line of people who have gone out to meet awaiting paparazzi head-on

For a man at the centre of a storm that has rocked the political establishment, Peter Mandelson has spent the week looking remarkably relaxed. Day after day, as MPs have grilled civil servants over who knew what when about the former US ambassador’s security vetting, and police continue to investigate serious allegations over his own conduct, Mandelson has stepped out of his Regent’s Park mansion and pottered across the road to take his dog for a walk.

Smart-casually dressed in jeans and a jumper and holding in front of him a plastic ball-thrower, he has set off for the park like a weekending solicitor on his way to an egg and spoon race. There have been occasional small smiles for the photographers at his gate, but no comment. The message appears to be: I am insouciant, normal. Not in prison.

After attempted arson attack, communities are determined to remain resilient and open

“How good and how wonderful it is when friends sit together,” reads a variation on a verse from Psalms painted high on the wall inside Finchley Reform Synagogue (FRS). For the congregation gathering in a cheerful hubbub before its Shabbat service on Friday evening, it felt like an especially apt sentiment.

Three days after the synagogue was the target of an attempted firebombing, hundreds of members made an extra effort to come together in determined, if slightly nervy, solidarity, joined by guests including local politicians, other faith leaders, police officers – and one particularly special group of neighbours.

On Monday, a public inquiry will reopen, nine years after the plan was proposed and a toxic local battle began

When Fidelma O’Kane retired more than a decade ago from her career as a social worker and lecturer, she thought she would be “travelling and having a glass of wine and eating chocolate and reading books” while based in the quiet, hilly corner of rural County Tyrone where she has lived almost all her life.

It didn’t quite work out that way. Instead, an idle remark from a neighbour would set O’Kane on a path that would become an all-consuming mission. A mining company, the neighbour told her, was planning to drill for long-rumoured reserves of gold in the Sperrins, the low peatland mountain range in Northern Ireland where O’Kane’s family has lived for generations.

Harold may have sailed, not marched, in 1066, reshaping explanations for his defeat in England’s historic battle

It is a story that has been taught to generations of British schoolchildren about one of the most famous and pivotal events in the country’s history.

In September 1066, as a Norman duke called William prepared to sail from France to claim the English throne, King Harold of England discovered the Viking leader Harald Hardrada had landed in Yorkshire with an army of his own.

Former politician tells court he was never a member of the IRA in case brought by survivors of republican bombings

“A very happy St Patrick’s Day,” said Gerry Adams, as he took his seat in the stand of court 16 in the Royal Courts of Justice on Tuesday. Mr Justice Smith hadn’t quite caught what the defendant said, and asked him to repeat himself.

“Oh that’s very kind of you,” the judge stammered when he finally worked it out. The green tie and small sprig of shamrock in Adams’s lapel – worn alongside a Palestinian flag pin – ought perhaps to have been a clue.

As the storied London dining room reopens on its bicentenary, restaurateur Jeremy King honours its heritage while restoring a faded icon

Simpson’s in the Strand was the sort of London institution where nothing changed without very good reason. Founded in 1828 as a coffee and chess club, the restaurant introduced wheeled silver trolleys so waiters could dispense roast beef and gravy without disturbing the players’ concentration, and kept them long after the chessboards had gone. In the 1860s, to emphasise its focus on British food, Simpson’s rejected the French word “menu” in favour of “bill of fare”, and so it would remain.

Ornate, self-consciously stately and a bit stuffy, it was as English as Charles Dickens, PG Wodehouse and Winston Churchill – all of whom, perhaps unsurprisingly, were devoted patrons. Wodehouse described Simpson’s as “a restful temple of food” where, as one of his characters observed, diners were “at liberty to eat till you were helpless, if you felt so disposed”. Not all diners, however: women were barred from the main dining room until 1984.

Brooklyn’s Instagram bombshell tested decades of image control, revealing how fame, PR and power collide behind the scenes

On a personal level, it’s all extremely sad. A once close family ripped apart by feuding and bitterness. A much-loved son blocking all contact with his parents and siblings.

From another perspective, however, for those who have followed the movements of David and Victoria Beckham in their 30 years in the (carefully curated) spotlight, the public falling out this week of Britain’s alternative royal family has been a car crash from which it is hard to look away.

Queen tells reading campaign that listening counts too – and the publishing industry increasingly agrees

Queen Camilla has met many disreputable characters in her time as a royal, but her encounter this week with two celebrity reprobates was at least for a good cause. The queen has appeared in the Beano alongside its celebrated bad boy Dennis the Menace and his dog, Gnasher, as part of a campaign to promote reading.

It wasn’t the cartoon Camilla’s waspish waist that captured the headlines (“I wish,” she said of her comic strip avatar), but what she had to say while encouraging the tween menace to “go all in” for reading: “Comics and audiobooks count too!”