There’s glamour, Goop and ghosting in this an unsparing account of Paltrow’s world

Gwyneth: The Biography opens, where else, with the vaginal egg, an episode that has come to stand for Paltrow’s general ability to sell dumb ideas to credulous rich women using widespread mockery as her marketing rocket fuel. (In case you need a reminder: this was the $66 jade egg Paltrow sold via her lifestyle brand Goop that promised various health benefits upon insertion.) Amy Odell’s book, billed as delivering “insight and behind-the-scenes details of Paltrow’s relationships, family, friendships, iconic films”, as well as her creation of Goop, takes no particular stand on this, nor on many of Paltrow’s more divisive episodes, instead offering us what feels like an earnest jog back through the actor and wellness guru’s years of fame. The author writes in the acknowledgments that she spoke to 220 people for the book, in which case we have to assume that a great many of them had little to say.

To be fair to Odell, whose previous biography was of Anna Wintour, another difficult and controlling subject – although Wintour did give Odell some access – Paltrow’s world is notoriously hard to break into if she’s not on board with a project; the author quotes numerous hacks tasked with profiling Paltrow for magazines who found themselves iced out of her networks, and the same happens to her in the early stages of research. Odell’s task only gets harder in the second half of the book, which tackles the Goop years. Since, she claims, many of its staff signed NDAs, those sections lack even the modest stream of gossip that enlivens the first half.

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Southwark Playhouse Elephant, London
Hollering songs, cartoonish characters and dire dialogue mar this well-intentioned true story of the first all-female crew to attempt the Whitbread ocean race

This intrepid tale of a sailing team atop the high seas spumes with good intentions. It is an against-the-odds story of the first all-female crew to attempt an ocean race – the Round the World Whitbread race of 1989-1990 – even as a sexist press scoffs at them.

Skipper, Tracy (based on Tracy Edwards, played by Chelsea Halfpenny), leads the eight-strong team, singing all the while. The production’s sails are raised in an opening scene featuring a projection of waves (good work by video designer Jack Baxter), the set itself the boat’s helm.

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As a stuck-up socialite tangled in a love triangle, Hepburn delivers one of the most memorable screwball heroines – and we can’t help but love her

These days, Katharine Hepburn is revered as a progressive icon of Hollywood’s golden age, an androgynous (and possibly queer ) fashion rebel whose seven best actress awards have yet to be topped at the Oscars. But back in 1938, only six years into her illustrious career, she was branded as “ box office poison ”.

She was a star ahead of her time, her domineering screen presence registering as shrill and petulant by the tail end of the 1930s. After the box office disappointments of Bringing up Baby and Holiday – both now canonised romcom classics – she retreated from Hollywood and signed on to a new play penned by her friend Philip Barry: The Philadelphia Story.

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He sang about love, injustice, Einstein – and his landlord Fred Trump, father of Donald, ending up in hell. As a trove of Guthrie tracks resurfaces, his daughter Nora remembers the penner of ‘hard-hitting songs for hard-hit people’

With mass deportations of migrants across America – not to mention reports of people being put in shackles or made to kneel and eat “like dogs” – Nora Guthrie is disappointed there hasn’t been more noise from musicians about the issue.

“I’ve been out protesting every weekend,” says the 75-year-old daughter of singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, and founder of the Woody Guthrie Archive. “And I’ve found myself asking, ‘Where are the songs for us to sing about this?’”

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A Swiss film about a nurse pushed to her limits one night is being praised for the picture it paints of treacherously underfunded healthcare. The director talks about the ‘heart-pounding’ story that inspired her

The world could face a shortage of 13 million nurses by the end of this decade . For her new film, Swiss director Petra Volpe imagined the consequences of just one missed shift on a busy night at a hospital, and found herself making a disaster movie.

With Late Shift, Volpe aimed to shine a light on the frontlines of the looming healthcare catastrophe through the eyes of the dedicated, exhausted Floria. Played by German actor Leonie Benesch, the young nurse shows an initially acrobatic grace in her workday, whose first half resembles a particularly hectic episode of the restaurant kitchen series The Bear, but with life-and-death stakes.

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Every year since 2016, Will Braden has devoted himself to assembling a feature-length film from snippets of moggies doing the darndest things – and it has started to bring in serious money

Name: Cat videos.

Age: 131.

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Sweeping dramas set in days of yore are everywhere. But which are some of the finest television ever created? And which are little more than an excuse to show naked backsides?

Inflate thy balloons and unsheathe thy Party Rings, for here is Chief of War (Apple TV+) to remind us of the joy of the scowling historical epic. Here too, almost, is Battle of Hastings belter King & Conqueror (BBC, August). And Spartacus: House of Ashur (Starz, this winter). Also in the period-specific pipeline are second series for Disney+’s brilliant Shogun and Amazon Prime’s terrible House of David.

Historical epics, it would not be unreasonable to say, are everywhere.

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The musical satirist, who has died aged 97, was famously sharp and funny – but his contemporaries also remember his generosity and humility

Tom Lehrer, acclaimed musical satirist of cold war era, dies aged 97

A reputation for wit is often a burden – people expect bon mots to drop constantly from your lips – but no one ever wore their reputation for wit more lightly than the great American singer-songwriter Tom Lehrer, who has died aged 97 .

Lehrer admirers all over the world know his witticisms from his concert recordings. “If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worthwhile,” he said. A doctor became a specialist, “specialising in diseases of the rich”. And Lehrer reflected on protest singers: “It takes a certain amount of courage to get in a coffee house or a college auditorium and come out in favour of the things that everybody else in the audience is against, like peace and justice and brotherhood and so on.”

But although I detest

Learning poems and the rest

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Chair of judges Roddy Doyle says the 13 ‘gripping’ titles in contention for the £50,000 award all ‘examine identity, individual or national’
• Comment: This year’s Booker prize longlist looks in new directions

Kiran Desai, Tash Aw and David Szalay are among the authors nominated for the 2025 Booker prize, on a longlist that features writers from nine different nationalities – the most global list for a decade.

The judging panel, which this year includes Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker alongside Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ and chair of judges Roddy Doyle, also chose books by Katie Kitamura, Andrew Miller, Ben Markovits and Jonathan Buckley as part of their “Booker dozen” longlist of 13 titles.

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