Samuel Bottomley, 23, to tutor on courses at West Yorkshire Workshop, aimed at working-class actors in north of England

A Bafta-nominated actor from Bradford has launched his own drama school to help working-class northern English talent access the TV and film industry.

The West Yorkshire Workshop in Bradford was opened this week by 23-year-old Samuel Bottomley, who received a Bafta nod for his role in Channel 4’s Somewhere Boy in 2023.

The US crooner, whose career stretches back to 1956, will play four more scheduled concerts but cancels remainder of 2025 run

Johnny Mathis, the US pop singer whose career stretches back to 1956, has announced his retirement from performing live.

A statement posted to Facebook reads: “As many of you may already be aware, Johnny Mathis is approaching his 90th birthday this year. So, it’s with sincere regret that due to Mr Mathis’s age and memory issues which have accelerated, we are announcing his retirement from touring and live concerts.”

This spare, luminously pure novel charts a secret gay relationship in post-industrial Wales

Set during the late 1980s, against prevailing Aids paranoia and the Tories’ Section 28 bill forbidding the promotion of homosexuality in education, Anthony Shapland’s taut debut novel about the relationship between two men in the Welsh valleys packs a considerable punch. In an interview, Shapland suggests there was “a generational howl of film and literature about that era when legislation combined with moral attitudes and misconceptions”. Indeed, there are echoes of 80s queer cinema, such as the work of Derek Jarman and My Beautiful Laundrette, in the forbidden liaison between the men, who are known only as B and M throughout. The difference here is that their world is not metropolitan but suffocatingly provincial, a fact that adds considerably to their predicament.

The novel begins on New Year’s Eve 1987, a time when “ Don’t Die of Ignorance ” HIV information leaflets were being pushed through letterboxes, with their melodramatic images of icebergs and black marble slabs, warning “the virus can be passed from man to man”. At the time, B is living with his father in a cul-de-sac near a “man-made mountain” of coal waste, a “place to be alone with this feeling he’s different to the others”. In the pub, he meets the “good-natured M” from the ironmonger’s, who is 11 years his senior, and with whom he feels an immediate spark.

The summers were full of falls and leaps and forfeits. Of scabs picked at the edges and tarmac-grit grazes, dock-leaf salve on stings, breath held underwater. Of running alongside trains and freewheeling bikes down the steep rutted tracks. Summers of dares and whispers of what men do and what women do, and who has seen what.

In Sebastian, a writer sells his body to provide material for his debut novel, then doesn’t give the night job up. Mikko Mäkelä explains what inspired his film – and remembers his cinematic sexual awakening

Growing up in a small Finnish town close to the Russian border, Mikko Mäkelä knew he was gay from the age of 11. “I think I was happy until then,” says the shy 36-year-old, whose slippery second film Sebastian is about to be released. Isolated he may have been, but at least the young Mäkelä had movies. Alone in his room, he watched queer gems such as Mysterious Skin, Presque Rien and Beautiful Thing, keeping the volume low in case his parents heard. Then a trip to the cinema to see Brokeback Mountain changed everything.

“When I got home, they asked me, ‘Did you like that film?’ They had read about it and wanted to make sure I wasn’t like the characters. That was the night I ended up coming out to them.” He didn’t stay in Finland much longer, movingNottingham to attend university. “My home town felt extremely homophobic, which was a big part of why I left. I told myself that when I stepped off the plane in the UK, I’d stop lying.”

This fascinating book questions whether such a misunderstood ideal should be lauded as an end in itself

This book arrives at an interesting moment. Elon Musk has declared himself a “free speech absolutist”. JD Vance worries that free speech in Europe is “in retreat”. Donald Trump issues an executive order “restoring freedom of speech and ending federal censorship”. Meanwhile, journalists are routinely abused, threatened with lawsuits and branded enemies of the people. US federal agencies circulate lists of red-flag words such as “equality”, “gender” and “disabled”, and reporters are denied White House access for referring to the Gulf of Mexico by its actual name. Free speech is, shall we say, an elastic concept.

In fact, as Fara Dabhoiwala explains in this meticulous and much-needed history, it has long been a “weaponized mantra” in a public sphere dominated by the moneyed and the powerful. Many of those who think of free speech as being uniquely under threat today are rich, white men – but then freedom, like wealth, is something that hardly anyone thinks they have enough of.

Founded by a $10,000 loan from a dentist, the label has had an extraordinary array of groundbreakers from Aretha Franklin to the Drifters, from Abba to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

In a region fractured by jihadists and coups, Ségou’Art shows ‘we share our culture, even if politics divides us’

A group of Tuareg musicians dressed in light blue robes were playing by a campfire that cast dancing shadows on the red sand. A drum and violin accompanied the electric guitars as more people came to watch the band, called Aitma.

Every February, the city of Ségou, 140 miles (230km) north of the capital, Bamako, is transformed into Mali’s cultural hub as tens of thousands of people come to enjoy a week-long arts and music festival, Ségou’Art , on the banks of the Niger River.

A devastating documentary about the teenager’s life, murder and legacy. Plus: the people trying to flee Putin’s kill list. Here’s what to watch this evening

9pm, ITV1
The last text Esther Ghey sent to her daughter, Brianna, said “how good it was” that she was going out and re-entering society. Esther doesn’t know if she ever saw that message – Brianna was murdered in 2023 by two 15-year-olds, one who she believed was her friend, in a brutal attack partly motivated by her transgender identity. This devastating and brave documentary tells Brianna’s story, from the sparkling, beloved girl she was to how the disturbing online world affected her wellbeing. It also examines the legacy she has left, as her mother continues to campaign for social media reform. Her friends help paint a picture of her, while journalists and police give insights into a case that shocked and saddened the nation. Hollie Richardson

Decades of detective work have uncovered Joan Miró’s hidden act of rebellion: painting over his mother’s portrait. But why did the artist do it?

Three clumps of raised paint, an old X-ray and months of scientific analysis and dogged detective work have revealed that a portrait of Joan Miró ’s mother has lurked, undetected, beneath the cobalt-blue surface of one of the Spanish artist’s inimitable works for the best part of a century.

Between 1925 and 1927, Miró created a small, oil-on-canvas picture, titled Pintura (Painting) , which he gave to his great friend, the art promoter Joan Prats.