My son, Stefan Hoyle, who has died suddenly aged 33, was a Manchester-based musician who was also a DJ under the name Syd Far-I, specialising in jungle/drum’n’bass, but was also known for sets of older Jamaican reggae.

Stefan was born and brought up in Manchester, where I and his mother, Bev Gallier, are both involved in the music scene. I am a musician and Bev works for Factory International/Aviva Studios. Stefan went to primary school in the Longsight and Levershulme areas, where he soaked up the music and culture of his many friends in the Asian, Caribbean and Irish communities, and later to South Chadderton school in the north of the city. This multicultural childhood gave him an appreciation of the lives of others, a worldview that would lead him to befriend many of those who had no hope of help anywhere else.

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The story of how the Earth, and human beings, have been shaped more than we know by these forces of nature

When was the last time you stopped to say thank you to a tree? Perhaps it’s something we should do more often. After all, we owe them everything, from the air we breathe to the soil beneath our feet, and far less obvious things too. We have trees to thank for the swirl of our fingerprints, our posture, and possibly even our dreams.

In her new book, British tree science consultant Harriet Rix presents trees as an awesome force of nature, a force that has, over time, “woven the world into a place of great beauty and extraordinary variety”. How have trees done this? And can they really be said to possess “genius”?

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Roger Cauthery, 81, and wife, Angele, were attending BBC Proms when initially barred from going into concert

The chief executive of the Royal Albert Hall has apologised to an 81-year-old concertgoer who was stopped from entering the auditorium because he had a Palestine flag pin in the lapel of his blazer.

Roger Cauthery and his wife, Angele, from north London, were attending a BBC Proms concert at the Royal Albert Hall last Friday featuring the pianist Yunchan Lim performing Rachmaninov.

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Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler; The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King; Hemlock & Silver by T Kingfisher; Secret Lives of the Dead by Tim Lebbon; The Course of the Heart by M John Harrison

Where the Axe Is Buried by Ray Nayler ( W&N, £ 20)
The new from the award-winning author imagines a world in which some nations have undergone “rationalisation” by accepting AI governance; while in the Federation, under a brutally repressive regime, the human leader maintains his iron grip, downloading his mind into a new body when the old one begins to fail. Lilia was lucky to be allowed to leave the Federation for London, where she worked on a device to enable neural entanglement. This could be a powerful tool for changing – or controlling – society, and there are those who will stop at nothing to get their hands on it. At the heart of this story is a dissident book, The Forever Argument, asserting the necessity of opposition in any society: “It keeps us not only honest, but human. Without it, anyone is a monster.” Like the fictional text, this thought-provoking, fast-moving thriller is also a heartfelt call for resistance to oppressive regimes.

The Phoenix Pencil Company by Allison King ( 4th Estate, £16.99)
Monica, a talented coder in present-day America, worries about her beloved grandparents, now in their 90s. She decides to track down her grandmother Yun’s long-lost cousin Meng, who remained in China after Yun emigrated. Once close, the two women were divided by political history, like so many Chinese families in the mid-20th century. Monica is puzzled when her attempt to connect with Meng results only in the gift of a single wooden pencil, but Yun understands. Before it is too late, she must tell her story – and reveal to Monica the secret power possessed by the women of the family, once used to reclaim the words written with the pencils their company sold in wartime Shanghai. The gift brought hardship and heartbreak, the shame of being forced by government officials to betray the secrets of people who bought their pencils, but also chances to preserve precious letters and poems that would otherwise have been lost. This unusual idea provides the single shining thread of fantasy illuminating an absorbing family saga interwoven with reflections on the power of stories, and who has the right to decide what is preserved or permitted to remain secret.

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Young poet details low mood and disappointment in love in 1795 letter, written not long before he met Wordsworth

He would go on to write The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, two of the greatest English poems.

But in a letter written when he was 22, Samuel Taylor Coleridge revealed he was contemplating packing it all in and fading into obscurity.

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A new exhibition highlights three Illinois photographers whose work captures the after-dark life of midwest cities and towns. Robin Bailey, Jim Hill and Dave Jordano capture unusually compelling contrasts and independent businesses that have survived decades of change, from Michigan to Ohio. Midwestern Nights is on display at the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, until 8 September

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There’s a growing appetite for stories from around the globe – if only we can avoid the cliches and exoticism of recent years, writes the International Booker nominee

When I heard that a major international broadcaster would be producing a TV series based on Claudia Durastanti ’s Strangers I Know, as a millennial Italian writer I was enthusiastic. Durastanti’s book – a fictionalised memoir about growing up between rural southern Italy and Brooklyn, and between identities, as the hearing daughter of two deaf parents – was the first literary novel of an Italian writer from my generation to reach a global public. Published in English by Fitzcarraldo Editions in 2022, in a translation by Elizabeth Harris, its success was widely seen as a good omen, the sign that international publishers were starting to show interest in a new crop of Italian literature.

A further reason for my enthusiasm was that a big part of Strangers I Know takes place in Basilicata, where my father is from. It is one of the country’s poorest regions, right at the arch of Italy’s boot, a place so derelict and forgotten that the one nationally renowned book about it, Carlo Levi’s wartime memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli, owes its title to the idea that the saviour, crossing Italy from the north, stopped at a village before the region’s border: Basilicata was never saved.

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Assembly George Square Studios, Edinburgh
Robert Daws stars as the great comic author in this one-man show but is let down by lukewarm humour

Robert Daws has lots of previous form on PG Wodehouse: he has played in various Jeeves and Woosters through the ages, with Hugh Laurie, Stephen Mangan and Ian Carmichael. So he is steeped in Wodehouse’s wonderland.

That shows in his ease with this one-man play about the comic writer. He is a natural as “Plum”, the affectionate name that Wodehouse went by. Premiering as a touring show some years ago, and directed by Robin Herford, it is well oiled enough if wooden and unadventurous in its storytelling.

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Artists including Damon Albarn, Paloma Faith, Sampha and Jamie xx to perform alongside Palestinian artists at Together for Palestine on 17 September

The lineup has been announced for one of the largest-scale benefit concerts for Palestine since the intensification of conflict after 7 October 2023. It takes place at Wembley Arena in London on 17 September.

Brian Eno is overseeing Together for Palestine, which brings together British and Palestinian artists at the 12,500-capacity venue to raise funds for Choose Love, a British charity working with 23 partner organisations in Gaza to deliver food, medical supplies and other support.

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