Jolly humouring and kind words guarantee nothing from this White House. Right now Walmart has more clout than the UK

It’s not funny, of course – livelihoods if not actual lives depend on reaching a workable accord. But the news that President Trump has probably stiffed the UK into a second- or third-tier boarding group for trade talks, behind South Korea and Japan, triggers at least a snort of recognition for anyone who has experienced versions of that dynamic. The phrase “British negotiators are hopeful” followed almost immediately by use of the word “disappointed” in heavy rotation takes you, with grim amusement, back to every toxic relationship in which you have played Britain to someone else’s America.

We are talking, of course, about the wisdom or otherwise of appeasing a man many think of as a tyrant, and the main takeaway from the Guardian’s story on Tuesday is that no matter how the UK pretzels itself to fit Donald Trump’s requirements, none of it will make any difference. Or rather what difference it makes, beyond the immediate relief enjoyed before the flattery wears off, is likely to be negative. It’s a rule of extortion that demands will increase with each capitulation, as Columbia University is finding out to its cost . (After caving to Trump’s demands last month in return for the restoration of $400m in federal funding, the university has not, in fact, had its funding restored. Instead Trump officials have told Columbia its concessions only represent the “ first step ”.)

Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist

Ever since Raphael included Leonardo and Michelangelo in a crowd scene of one of his works, painters have had a fascination with depicting their peers, as a new exhibition reveals

As with all genres of art, portraiture has its own set of subgenres. Aside from the standard configuration of artist and model, there is the double portrait, the group portrait, the self-portrait and so on. But one other strand habitually draws freely on all the others to create its own unique sub-subgenre: when artists are the subject of another artist’s work.

Artists painting other artists has a long and distinguished tradition: see Raphael including Leonardo and Michelangelo – and a self-portrait – in his Renaissance crowd scene masterpiece The School of Athens. This unique dynamic has remained a source of fascination for both artists and viewers ever since.

Exclusive: Company headed by Denise Coates holds talks with Wall Street banks about full or partial sale of assets

The billionaire Coates family behind Bet365 are weighing up a sale of their online gambling empire that could value the business at £9bn, the Guardian has learned.

The company, headed by Denise Coates , has held talks with Wall Street banks and US advisers in recent weeks about a full or partial sale, sources familiar with the matter said.

Live, rolling coverage of business, economics and financial markets as US electric carmaker says report board is looking for next Tesla boss is ‘absolutely false’

Good morning, and welcome to our live coverage of business, economics and financial markets.

Tesla ’s chair has denied that the electric car company is looking for a replacement for Elon Musk , after the billionaire spent several months focusing on serving Donald Trump even as the carmaker’s profits slumped.

Japan’s economic growth is likely to moderate as trade and other policies in each jurisdiction slow overseas growth and weigh on corporate profits. Thereafter, Japan’s economy will see growth accelerate as overseas economies resume a moderate growth path.

A warming tundra has seen unexpected shifts, raising the alarm about fragile ecosystems and those who rely on them

Scientists studying Arctic plants say the ecosystems that host life in some of the most inhospitable reaches of the planet are changing in unexpected ways in an “early warning sign” for a region upended by climate change .

In four decades, 54 researchers tracked more than 2,000 plant communities across 45 sites from the Canadian high Arctic to Alaska and Scandinavia. They discovered dramatic shifts in temperatures and growing seasons produced no clear winners or losers. Some regions witnessed large increases in shrubs and grasses and declines in flowering plants – which struggle to grow under the shade created by taller plants.

A restoration project at Sharpham near Totnes aims to tackle the loss of the natural world while helping people build mental resilience

Two landscapes separated by a wide sweep of river tell a story of change. On one side is traditional farmland, close-cropped grazing, uniform grasses, neatly tended hedges and a sparsity of trees, a farmscape ubiquitous across England. On the riverbank opposite, rougher, less uniform grasses grow unevenly between trees, thistle and brambles, in a chaos of natural disorder swaying in the breeze towards the reedbeds below.

The land on the Sharpham estate side of the River Dart used to be a mirror of the traditional farmscape on the opposite bank. It hosted a non-organic dairy farm and a vineyard, within a tightly controlled 18th-century heritage landscape of deforested parkland.

From daredevil swimmers in Tunisia to a rope-tricking Mexican horseman and a family get-together at a Californian river bar, the magic of the everyday is celebrated in LensCulture’s New Visions awards

A renovated lighthouse on the Bay of Biscay is the perfect base for exploring Asturias’s maritime delights

I have always longed to be a lighthouse keeper and now, at last, I am one. If only for the weekend. Look at my chunky-knit jumper! Feel the waterproof weave of my Donegal tweed cap! Truth be told, I am way too toasty in this quasi-nautical ensemble, having hoped and dressed for ominous fog, murderous gales and oceanic rainstorms. Instead, it is bright, calm and warm on an early spring afternoon in the famously pretty fishing village of Cudillero in Asturias, where the Costa Verde of northern Spain drops away into the deep blue Bay of Biscay.

Built in 1858, the local lighthouse – the Faro de Cudillero – stands on a shelf of rock just beyond the harbour, a short walk up stone steps and along a narrow cliff side service path. Its hexagonal beacon tower has been remodelled a few times over the years. The signal lamp inside was first fuelled by olive oil, then paraffin and petrol, before being electrified and eventually automated. With no further need for a human operator, its sturdy keeper’s cottage was left derelict decades ago. It’s sad to contemplate that absence, and the general obsolescence of the role itself. But if I can’t man the light, I can at least occupy the lighthouse.

This fantasia on the life of Lambert Simnel, who finds himself a claimant to the English throne, is a romp through late-medieval identity and historical uncertainty

One day in 1484, strange men arrive at the Oxfordshire farm where 10-year-old John Collan lives. They’ve come to carry him away to a new life, for he is not, after all, the farmer’s son; in fact, he’s Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, spirited away in infancy to keep him safe ahead of the day he might return to claim the throne of England. That day is now in sight. He can’t call himself John any more, but he can’t yet be announced as Edward, Earl of Warwick. In the meantime he’ll be given a third name: Lambert Simnel.

Over the course of this fantastically accomplished novel, the many-named boy will travel from Oxford to Burgundy then Ireland, and at last into the paranoid and double-crossing heart of Henry VII’s court. The tail end of the Wars of the Roses – with Richard III’s crown snatched from the mud of Bosworth by Henry Tudor – is a foment of plot and counter-plot, and our hero spends his adolescence being passed around scheming factions who go so far as to hold a coronation for him. What a painful life this is for a boy “so grateful for any amount of love” as he falls in and out of favour, uncertain of his own parentage, gaining and losing relatives as their interest turns to other plots and other pretenders.