Star Trek: the Next Generation and X-Men actor died at his home after ‘a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia’

• Patrick Stewart – a life in pictures

• Patrick Stewart brought gravitas and complexity to the screen, from Star Trek to X-Men

Patrick Stewart, the acclaimed British stage and screen actor renowned for both Shakespeare and sci-fi, has died. He was 86.

The Star Trek: the Next Generation and X-Men star died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles after “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia”, said Kelly Bush Novak, his longtime spokesperson, to the Hollywood Reporter.

Star Trek: the Next Generation star died at his home after ‘a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia’

• His life in pictures

• Patrick Stewart brought gravitas and complexity to the screen

• O Captain, our Captain: on Star Trek, Patrick Stewart could make anyone feel hopeful for humanity

• ‘He stood for the best of us’: William Shatner and more pay tribute

Patrick Stewart, the acclaimed British stage and screen actor renowned for both Shakespeare and sci-fi, has died. He was 86.

The Star Trek: the Next Generation and X-Men star died on Wednesday at his home in Los Angeles after “a brief and poignant journey with Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia”, said Kelly Bush Novak, his longtime spokesperson, to the Hollywood Reporter.

Musician wrote a ‘love letter’ to Canada with a new album – and some pointed commentary about the US president

Lake Ontario, the vast body of water that straddles the US-Canada border, has gone by many names over the centuries: Lac Saint-Louis, Lacus Ontarius, Skaniadorio, Cataraqui Lake. But one thing it will never be called, says the Canadian rock star Bryan Adams, is Lake America.

In his new song Lake Ontario, Adams takes aim at the US president, Donald Trump, accusing him of “breaking the peace” between the people who live on the lake’s shores.

The ‘lake of shining waters’ is what the Iroquois called her

It’s a First Nations name – not an executive order.

But things weren’t going his way in Iran

So like a baby tossing the toys from the pram

You can push us to the brink

But where the open road divides

The Berlin-born performer had a gift for languages that took her to Hollywood, landing roles alongside Peter Sellers, Dick Van Dyke and Paul Newman

Elke Sommer, the prolific German star of the Pink Panther film A Shot in the Dark, early 70s Agatha Christie adaptation And Then there Were None, and British sex comedy Carry on Behind, has died aged 85. Bild magazine reported that Sommer died in Los Angeles of heart failure.

German-born Sommer, whose best-known film roles were in the 1960s and 70s, was one of the wave of European performers who crossed over to Hollywood and English-language cinema with considerable success, following the postwar emergence of European new wave cinema. Sommer was one of the few German actors to make waves at the time, as Hollywood made much of her bombshell image.

The Berlin-born performer had a gift for languages that took her to Hollywood, landing roles alongside Peter Sellers, Dick Van Dyke and Paul Newman

Elke Sommer, the prolific German star of the Pink Panther film A Shot in the Dark, early 70s Agatha Christie adaptation And Then there Were None, and British sex comedy Carry on Behind, has died aged 85. Bild magazine reported that Sommer died in Los Angeles of heart failure.

German-born Sommer, whose best-known film roles were in the 1960s and 70s, was one of the wave of European performers who crossed over to Hollywood and English-language cinema with considerable success, following the postwar emergence of European new wave cinema. Sommer was one of the few German actors to make waves at the time, as Hollywood made much of her bombshell image.

Howe’s ‘exceptional’ Foretokens took the main £10,000 award, while Nur Turkmani, Tara Bergin and Biff Smith swept up the remaining categories

Sarah Howe has won the Forward prize for best collection, one of the UK’s most prestigious poetry awards, for Foretokens, a collection that explores new parenthood, the death of her father and her mother’s early life in Hong Kong.

Howe was announced as the winner during a ceremony hosted by Joelle Taylor at London’s Southbank Centre on Saturday evening, and will receive £10,000.

Foretokens by Sarah Howe (Vintage Publishing, £12.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.

​Fronted by Mark Sandman​,​ the group brought enigmatic, elegant rock to post-grunge America. As lost demos surface, those closest to Sandman remember a man who grabbed on to life’s joys

It’s early 1998, and at Fort Apache recording studio in Massachusetts, Mark Sandman, the suave frontman of Morphine, is nearing breaking point. Morphine’s four enigmatic and blackly humorous albums have won critical acclaim and, lately, unexpected commercial success considering their uncompromising creative vision. After the excesses of grunge, Sandman considered their idiosyncratic blend of sophisticated storytelling, prowling slide-bass and Dana Colley’s atmospheric saxophone a kind of “palate cleanser”.

In 1997 Morphine had signed to DreamWorks Records, founded by industry bigwigs David Geffen and Mo Ostin. Now, working on Morphine’s first LP for his new paymasters – a batch of songs finally seeing release almost three decades later – Sandman was consumed by doubt over their direction. “For the first time, Morphine were trying to please someone other than just ourselves,” remembers Colley.

Late-night hosts discussed the president’s weird campaign behaviour and his out-of-touch comments about wealth

Late-night hosts expressed disgust at Donald Trump’s latest racist attacks while also taking aim at his comments about money.

Jonathan Bailey, Ella Purnell, Aimee-Lou Wood, Maggie Gyllenhaal and more bring shock and gore to an immersive retelling with real bite

Do we really need another retelling of Bram Stoker’s fabled horror novel, which has already yielded multiple films, plays and radio dramas? Perhaps not, but this new audio version of Dracula, directed by Mary Lambert and adapted by Robyn Aherne, justifies its existence with an unusually star-studded cast, a streamlined story and an immersive and frequently nightmarish sound palette.

Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey is smooth and charismatic as the eponymous count who invites a young solicitor, Jonathan Harker (Louis Partridge), to his castle in Transylvania to assist him with the sale of a property. There, Harker becomes increasingly uneasy as he glimpses the count’s diabolical powers and realises that he is, in fact, a prisoner.

Barbican Hall, London
For this celebration of the composer in his 90th year, the Colin Currie Group focused on works written in the last two decades, including the brand new In All Your Ways

There have been a fair few 90th birthday concerts celebrating Steve Reich this year, but the Colin Currie Group came up with something a little different. Eschewing the signature works of the 1970s and 80s, and with the exception of 1972’s still mind-expanding Clapping Music, everything here was written by a composer over the age of 71. Furthermore, the London premiere of In All Your Ways featured the work of a man entering into his tenth decade.

After a bitty start, the group got into its stride with a series of four masterworks back-to-back. Radio Rewrite is Reich at his coolest, five continuous movements that riff on a pair of classic Radiohead songs; those in the know can just about perceive them in the harmonic atmosphere of the slow sections and the faster music’s lyrical outlines. Currie conducted a nicely chilled reading, the playing as tight as a drum.

Afshar’s experiences as a young woman in Iran have shaped her artistic career in Australia, focusing her eye on the humanity within inhumane systems

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When Hoda Afshar was a teenager, coming of age in theocratic and authoritarian Iran in the 1990s, she and her friends were repeatedly arrested and physically punished by the “morality police”, for wearing their hijabs incorrectly in public and for attending underground parties. “They used to put a few of us in small solitary confinement cells together for a night or two, it was very common for my generation to experience that,” she says.

“We are part of the nasl-e sukhteh, or ‘burned generation’; the generation born after the 1979 revolution, who had to pay the price for many of the transformations and changes that happened.”

Sinfonia of London/Wilson/Kilsby/Parkes
(Chandos)
The Sinfonia and John Wilson bring warmth and sparkle to works by Ireland, Walton and Goosens; rising star tenor Laurence Kilsby and Christopher Parkes are expressive soloists in the Britten Serenade

This is John Wilson and the Sinfonia of London’s third album exploring British music for strings and, like its predecessors, showcases lesser-known repertoire alongside an acknowledged masterpiece. In this case, the byways include music by Ireland, Walton and Goossens with Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings as centrepiece.

Written with the country on the brink of war, Ireland’s Concertino Pastorale comes with a baked-in nostalgia for an imagined rural idyll. Wilson gets to the troubled heart of the matter with a brooding Eclogue and poignant Threnody before finding release in the upbeat Toccata. The Sinfonia of London string sound displays a tremendous warmth in Chandos’ spacious recording, especially evident in Goossens’ lyrical nature poem, By the Tarn.

From the beheading in The Omen to the attic scene in The Birds, here’s a countdown of the genre’s most iconic moments – in glorious, old-school pre-CGI style

Towards the end of the 20th century, when film-makers’ overreliance on CGI was increasingly making special effects less special, it took the old-school practical approach of Japanese film-maker Hideo Nakata to make one’s hair stand on end. Just when you think the cursed VHS tape has claimed its last victim, Sadako’s vengeful ghost emerges from the well, comes closer … and climbs out of the television screen.

As John Lewis reports a 96% rise in searches for CD players, music fans share their reasons for ditching streaming

CDs appear to be having a resurgence. John Lewis said searches for CD players are up 96% since July, while another report on trends in music and film this year found that CD sales are up 16%.

With this in mind, we asked music fans why they favour discs over other formats, and if it is a new preference or a lifetime habit.

As John Lewis reports a 96% rise in searches for CD players, music fans share their reasons for ditching streaming

CDs appear to be having a resurgence. John Lewis said searches for CD players are up 96% since July, while another report on trends in music and film this year found that CD sales are up 16%.

With this in mind, we asked music fans why they favour discs over other formats, and if it is a new preference or a lifetime habit.

(Fiction)
After frontperson Juliette Jackson lost half her hearing, she wrote sad songs and felt frustrated. So she pivoted, writing herself a happy ending. The results are joyfully convincing

From the outside, it looks as if things have gone swimmingly for the Big Moon. Fronted by Juliette Jackson, a former waitress who dreamed big, they have been active for 12 years, a success in itself in these days, notching up four albums including this latest. They have enjoyed a Mercury nomination (for 2017 debut Love in the 4th Dimension), decent chart positions, good-sized gigs and streaming figures in the hundreds of thousands, or millions in the case of 2019 single Your Light.

Delve beneath the surface, however, and things haven’t always been so sunny. After their debut’s ramshackle wide-eyed pop, second album Walking Like We Do detailed the travails of contemporary womanhood, and Your Light found Jackson bemoaning her generation’s lot with a weary resignation: “We were promised the world, but so was everyone else”. 2022’s Here Is Everything was conceived during Covid and processed Jackson’s life-changing experience of becoming a mother, including the disorienting experience of lack of sleep. Tricky stuff, if nothing that made Jackson’s concerns much different from vast swathes of the population.

When 17-year-0ld Danny Donelly got a bank loan to open a record shop and sell dancefloor-filling electronic music, he little knew how he would help revolutionise his town and dance music at large

In the early 1990s, the suburban town of Romford was known for three things. It was the home of the world’s best snooker player, Steve Davis. It was where people placed bets at Romford dog track, over a dinner of chicken in a basket. And for those in the know, it was where the UK’s best underground dance music was bought and sold.

That pedigree was immortalised by Romford’s most famous musical act, Underworld, with frontman Karl Hyde shouting the words “mega mega mega, going back to Romford” at the climax of 1995’s Born Slippy. Those words now form the title of a new exhibition in the town, Mega Mega: Romford’s Suburban Sound Revolution, which charts how this unglamorous but party-spirited backwater became an upstart rival to great dance music cities such as Manchester or Detroit.

‘Miracle’ cache of letters written by French scientist who died in ill-fated La Pérouse mission give personal account of 1785 voyage

As he prepared to climb the scaffolding to be publicly executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793, Louis XVI is reported to have asked: “Is there news of Monsieur de la Pérouse?”

He was referring to Jean-François de Galaup, the count of Pérouse, a naval officer and navigator whom the French king had dispatched in 1785 on a round-the-world scientific mission to rival discoveries made by the English explorer Captain James Cook.

‘Miracle’ cache of letters written by French scientist who died in ill-fated La Pérouse mission give personal account of 1785 voyage

As he prepared to climb the scaffolding to be publicly executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793, Louis XVI is reported to have asked: “Is there news of Monsieur de la Pérouse?”

He was referring to Jean-François de Galaup, the count of Pérouse, a naval officer and navigator whom the French king had dispatched in 1785 on a round-the-world scientific mission to rival discoveries made by the English explorer Captain James Cook.

Liquid Static Studio; PC
You take on the role of flight attendant in this clever and absorbing retro-style game that veers from daft horror spoof to genuinely disturbing

There was always something creepy about the job-simulator genre. All those mindless automatons queueing up to use your bus, bar or bed store, or whatever workplace you are trapped in for the duration of the game. The endless repetitive tasks. The emptiness of the world beyond your corporate existence. Together, these elements scream existential terror … which is perhaps why we are now seeing a new indie sub-genre of job sim horror games, including Home Safety Hotline, Dredge and more recently, Grease Trap ’99, a Lovecraftian mystery set in a Scottish chip shop.

Now, we have Night Plane, in which you take on the role of a flight attendant on a jumbo jet to hell. It all starts kind of normally. You turn up for the first day of your new job, meet your colleagues, then take your spot at the departure gate, checking in customers and being careful to root out anyone with invalid tickets. Once on the plane, you roll your trolley down the aisle, serving booze and inedible meals, and occasionally dealing with passenger complaints. Then the plane crashes and, frankly, it all goes downhill from there.