A new Washington DC exhibition examines how Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou and more used the Bard’s work to help tell their own stories

“William Shakespeare was a black woman.” In 1985, Maya Angelou spoke these words as part of a keynote speech at a convention in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

There, she spoke of the role poetry played in her transition from muteness as a child and how she fantasized herself triumphantly delivering Portia’s speech from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in front of her entire community at church. Though she never got the chance to perform that rendition, Angelou acknowledged her desire to deliver that rendition as part of a lifelong kinship with Shakespeare, a connection she continued to seek out throughout her life whenever she needed heartening or solace. In her eyes, Shakespeare wrote his emotionally desolate Sonnet 29 “for” her; how else could he have so aptly described the harsh realities of the Black feminine condition?

Sam Rockwell voices the gumshoe who becomes embroiled with Scarlett Johansson’s femme fatale in this big-hearted and beautifully designed fantasy spectacular

Brad Bird, the Spielberg of animation, applies his masterly authorial touch to a terrific family film that retrieves the genre from the doldrums of dull, AI-formulaic stories and visuals. This animation is smart, witty, humane: a fantasy spectacular with old-fashioned entertainment values and some amazing cityscape design showcasing a beguiling and sweet romance.

The setting is a city of marvels in a world to come, a retro-futurist urban landscape with hints of Metropolis and Blade Runner; there are plenty of regulation moving walkways, flying cars and eerie hologram billboards, yes, but a light touch to put the fun back into what could be just cliche. Here is where an old-school noir thriller is to take place with tough private detectives and bad guys wielding state-of-the-art laser-particle firearms (this explains the title, though I’d hoped that it might also include some reference to 1980s Republican politics). There are careworn cops, cynical club owners and alluring shady ladies with touches of Lana Turner and Veronica Lake. The airborne automobiles also have the bulbous lines of a previous century, and the TV monitors show black-and-white images; plasma flatscreens have evidently been disinvented.

A byelection win is a fillip for Andy Burnham and shows Zack Polanski must confront the failures damaging his party’s credibility and appeal

By holding Holborn and St Pancras, Andy Burnham’s Labour has shown it can attract liberal and left-leaning voters. The seat has substantial numbers of young adults, students, professionals and Muslims – offering fertile ground for the Greens’ ecopopulism. However, Labour prevailed. Having won leave-voting Makerfield in June, Mr Burnham can now claim an appeal that bridges Labour’s divided electorate. It’s worth noting that turnout in London was low and Labour’s vote share fell 3.7 points. But that compares with an average 19.3-point fall in four byelections under Mr Burnham’s predecessor. The new leader clearly has bought Labour breathing space and checked the Green advance.

The Greens more than tripled their vote share in the constituency to 33%. But they were beaten. Labour’s Sagal Abdi-Wali took 45% in Sir Keir Starmer’s former seat, leaving Zack Polanski’s ambition of entering parliament unfulfilled. For a party that began the year promising to turn voters’ hunger for change into a serious challenge to Labour, this was a sobering moment. The passing of a motion declaring “Zionism is racism” at its conference probably cost the party support – though the result in central London alone cannot definitively say that. There is a separate question of leadership. Mr Polanski now says he would have voted against the motion. Why, then, did he not make his opposition clear when it mattered last weekend?

Textile designer brings florals, vines and smiley doodles to brand’s luxury checks for one-off paired collection

Burberry and Celia Birtwell are both national treasures of sorts. One is Britain’s grandest luxury name, the other the textile designer who dressed bohemian 1960s London in her prints and has a place in art history as David Hockney’s favourite muse.

Burberry’s designer, Daniel Lee, has always loved Birtwell’s prints. When the two met this spring, he fell for “her energy, and her zest for life”, and a one-off Burberry meets Birtwell collection that closed London fashion week was born.

Appointment of Kane as creative director signals the return of serious style ambition for former It-bag brand

With spicy leather mini-dresses and shoes with miniature axes for heels, two beloved British names made a swaggering joint comeback at London fashion week.

Fifteen years ago, Christopher Kane and Mulberry were two of the biggest shows on the line-up. Kane was the brilliant young designer who could find fashion in the most unlikely places: rubberised lace minis were inspired by “Princess Margaret on acid”; while illustrations from the 1972 classic The Joy of Sex appeared on slinky slip dresses. Mulberry was London’s home-grown It-bag brand: anyone who was anyone had a Bayswater or an Alexa.

In this week’s newsletter: A tour through the moments when American celebrities crossed the ocean and landed somewhere entirely unexpected

Hurrah! Today is the Guide’s 250th instalment, an anniversary celebrated the world over, with concerts and ticker tape parades and 10-part documentaries about its historical significance. You’re probably already a bit exhausted by all the wall-to-wall coverage, in fact. Also tomorrow, the United States of America might be celebrating some birthday or other, though it doesn’t sound like anybody is terribly fussed about it.

To mark both anniversaries, this week’s Guide is a “special relationship” special, with 25 of the most unlikely US/UK pop-cultural crossovers – those moments where American celebrities find themselves rubbing their stardust, intentionally or otherwise, all over weird corners of British popular culture, or vice versa. Read on for tales of Orson Welles in Norwich and Matt Berry at the Oscars.

Brollies are becoming year-round must-haves, as designers from Burberry to Blunt cater to people ducking out of the sun

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A bottle of water and a handheld fan are regularly deployed to keep cool while out and about in hot weather. With temperatures reaching record levels for June, though, a new heatwave accessory has emerged: the sunbrella.

On high streets around the country, people wielding umbrellas to shield themselves from the sun have become a common sight. On Thursday, as the Austrian Grand Prix declared a heat hazard, Lewis Hamilton was spotted in the paddock holding a Ferrari red umbrella that matched his race suit. And they’re popping up on catwalks, too. At the Dior show during Paris fashion week on Wednesday, guests including the actors James Marsden and Mike Faist were handed large cream umbrellas to help ease their discomfort as temperatures hit 38C.

He did every substance imaginable – and got punched by Chuck Berry – but Keef’s still going strong. As the Stones knock out another new album, he explains why he’s rejecting AI in favour of ‘the old ways’

Keith Richards has just become a great-grandfather. “This is true! This is true!” he enthuses, video-calling from somewhere in the depths of the Hit Factory, the New York studio first patronised by the Rolling Stones 46 years ago when they were making Emotional Rescue. “It’s been a couple of weeks. It’s a new thing for me. But I’m a fantastic grandad,” he confides. “Great-grandadding is … I try to let them hang with me for as long as humanly possible, then I hand ’em back. I’ve been doing a lot of grandfathering in the last year or so. I’ve got three or four new ones, you know. When I say new, I mean … two or three years old. Or four. Or one, or maybe five.”

Hang on, that seems a little vague. He shrugs and explodes in a wheezy chuckle. “I lose track, you know.”

Labour backbenchers disappointed as new trade guidance over illegal settlements stops short of outright ban

The UK in alliance with a group of other western powers including Australia, France and Norway has announced it is imposing sanctions on six firms and one individual involved in enabling and financing the recent upsurge in settler violence in the West Bank.

However, the foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, disappointed many of her own backbenchers by stopping short of banning trade, saying instead the government was only issuing updated advice to British firms not to become involved in any economic activity with the illegal settlements.

File detailing security mitigations is among those withheld at the request of the Metropolitan police

Ministers have faced renewed cross-party pressure in parliament over documents missing from a 1,500-page release of papers about Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to Washington.

Despite the volume of information published on Monday, crucial documents were withheld at the request of the Metropolitan police on the grounds that they could “potentially prejudice” an investigation. They include a document summarising the vetting process, which concluded with officials recommending Mandelson not be given security clearance.

Zeal for ‘the Hamptons of England’ has rubbed off on sales, with luxury British fashion brand back to a full-year profit

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The luxury fashion brand Burberry has said a new £2,000 handbag named after the Cotswolds has bolstered sales, as the English region becomes increasingly popular with wealthy Americans.

Joshua Schulman, the company’s chief executive, said its tote bags – which mix leather and the signature Burberry check – had helped drive its best performance in bag sales since 2023.

Bereft of any big ideas, or indeed policies, the PM is in his happy place: a never-ending parliamentary procedural process

Have his enemies done it? Have the rebels managed to find a thermal exhaust port in the Death Starmer that would enable them finally to destroy it? No, would seem to be the answer after yet another morning of increasingly unwatchable procedural drama for the prime minister.

You know what, it’s such a shame procedural rows aren’t a path to growth. The UK would be a global economy unicorn by now. Still, here we go again for another trip down committee corridor, as the displacement activists of the British political system mine further nitty-gritty on how a sex offender’s best pal was accidentally-on-purpose appointed ambassador to the US. If we keep digging, we’re totally going to strike gold and be able to pay for all the infrastructure upgrades and housing and incentives to capital investment that are the only way out of our decline spiral, to say nothing of the defence boosting urgently required. And I’m barely kidding. There’s probably genuinely more chance of those happening via an orgy of recriminatory committee hearings than via the policies of Keir Starmer and his chancellor. If we stuck the prime minister on the psychoanalyst’s couch, I think they’d find he subconsciously provokes these endlessly consuming process crises. It’s certainly more his happy place than big ideas.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

PM’s former chief of staff looked far from happy when forced into the open to face Commons committee

He walks! He talks! He breathes! For most people, Morgan McSweeney is a quasi-mythical creature. A being that exists almost entirely in the shadows. If at all. Away from the public gaze. The legendary slayer of the Labour left, rumoured to have been shaped in the dark arts by Peter Mandelson, who went on to become the eyes and ears of the prime minister. Possibly even his brain. It was often said the only ideas Keir ever had were ones he had been force-fed by Morgan the Mighty.

But on Tuesday morning, Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff was forced out into the open, summoned to Westminster to give evidence to the foreign affairs select committee about the appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador. McSweeney looked far from happy at the exposure. Head down, no eye contact with the public as he sped down the corridor. Maybe he was worried about being out and about in daylight. The darkness has been kind to his skincare regime. He looks far younger than his 49 years.

Jonathan Brash says ‘own goals’ are distracting from Labour’s achievements

UK inflation accelerated to 3.3% in March after the Iran war triggered the biggest jump in fuel prices for more than three years, Richard Partington reports.

Today the Liberal Democrats staged a photocall to publicise their line about this being “Trumpflation”. Daisy Cooper, the Lib Dem deputy leader and Treasury spokesperson, said:

People across our country have been struggling for years with a devastating cost-of-living crisis and Donald Trump’s idiotic war in Iran has added to it. The cost of fuel is soaring, mortgage rates are rising and fixed energy deals are already going up by hundreds of pounds.

But what is utterly inexcusable is that there are politicians in this country - Nigel Farage and Kemi Badenoch - who are happy to cheerlead Donald Trump as he hikes people’s bills. All the while this Labour government promised to fix the country but instead we’ve got political Groundhog Day: yet more sleaze and scandal.

Olly Robbins told MPs he had been asked to get the ex-No 10 aide a role and not mention it to then Foreign Secretary David Lammy

• Robbins v Starmer: the key Mandelson points they disagree on

The hearing has started.

Emily Thornberry, the chair, started by saying that Robbins did not tell the whole truth about this process when he gave evidence to it in November.

Appointing an amoral narcissist was the PM’s biggest crime, but he was keen to prosecute others in his Commons statement

Things could be worse. The prime minister can still catch a break. Some had called Monday’s Commons statement Keir Starmer’s judgment day. But that was a category error. Many Labour MPs had long since made up their minds. Keir wasn’t the right person to be running the country. But it was just that now, with a war in the Middle East and the local elections early next month, was not the right time to think about replacing him. The party and the country wouldn’t thank them for turning a drama into a crisis.

You may also wonder whether the lack of interest in replacing their leader to be found among Labour backbenchers was mirrored by Starmer’s lack of interest in being prime minister. Because it’s increasingly looking as though he often fails to do the basics. I mean, I’m sure he likes being prime minister. When he remembers he is prime minister. We can’t be certain he doesn’t have to be reminded from time to time.

MPs jeered as PM said it is ‘incredible’ he was not told full story and he was wrong to appoint Mandelson as US ambassador

At his press conference Nigel Farage was asked about reports saying that Keir Starmer knew about the security concerns about Peter Mandelson that led to him failing his security vetting interview. That was a reference to the Telegraph splash, which says:

Senior Whitehall sources told The Telegraph that the UKSV [UK Security Vetting] findings largely restated security risks that had already been drawn to Sir Keir’s attention.

One senior source with knowledge of the process said: “The reality is that Starmer had already been warned about the major risks and he had waved them away.”

Sources have told The Independent that MI6 failed to clear the Labour peer largely because of concerns over his business links to China.

However, there were also worries that his past links to the disgraced financier and convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein “would compromise him”.

It’s impossible for the prime minister to say the warning lights weren’t flashing.

And if you were prime minister and there were news reports last September that your ambassadorial choice had failed vetting, you would have thought perhaps he might have had some curiosity to try to find out whether this had really happened or not. I just find the whole thing totally incredible. Incredible. There is no way the prime minister couldn’t have known.

The Labour backbenchers are not yet of a mood to get rid of their prime minister, although after 7 May they just might be.

Response from British fashion industry has been jubilant and Kane’s first Mulberry collection is reportedly to be unveiled at London fashion week 2027

The British fashion designer Christopher Kane has been named as the new creative director of Mulberry.

The Glaswegian-born designer will relaunch the English heritage brand’s women’s ready-to-wear collection, with his debut reportedly to be launched in September at London fashion week, before landing in stores and online from January 2027.