Jenny Saville’s bruising paintings, Andy Goldsworthy’s immersive stones, Lee Miller’s surrealist shots and Diane Arbus’s unforgiving nudes – our critics highlight a spectacular year
• The best design and architecture of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

It was 1995, and I had spent the evening carousing and drinking neat vodka. Now I was trapped in a friend’s flat in Paris, with no phone – and he had flown to New York

Winter 1995: I wake to the sound of a vacuum cleaner repeatedly striking the door near my head. I’m in a small bed in a tiny room. Wherever I am, I’m hungover.

I remember: I’m in Paris, after a big night out. Just the one night – I’d arrived on the Eurostar the previous afternoon with a friend. We’d gone out for drinks, then to a cool restaurant, then somewhere to drink more. The rest was blurry, but we ended up back at this apartment – owned by the company my friend worked for – drinking neat vodka until my friend remembered he was catching an early plane to New York.

It’s all there: more apprenticeships, more rights for workers and renters – and most of all, a focus on children. What a shame Labour wavers about saying so

Warning. This column contains good news, when it is an (un)truth widely acknowledged that only grim stories attract public attention. News must be something someone somewhere doesn’t want printed, says the old maxim. Well, battalions of interests want to suppress good news: the overwhelmingly Tory or Reform UK press and antisocial media sites don’t want any stories to surface that might do credit to a Labour government.

Among this deluge of disinformation and malevolence, when asked, a sour and disengaged electorate struggles to think of anything good this government has done. True, the prime minister and his cabinet are partly to blame for failing to tell their story, paint their picture, draw us a map of where they are going and why. They too often do good by stealth, afraid of what the right and business might say if they dare trumpet the strong social justice themes that drive most of what they do. But lay out what the government has done and there it is, plain as a pikestaff. There have been blunders, missteps, bad timing and wrongheaded manifesto pledges, but follow the money to define its identity. What has Labour raised from whom and how was it spent? That’s what historians will look for.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

From pub chic to sofa-ready, we’ve got looks for every kind of NYE celebration, including the New Year’s Day walk

• The best party dresses

Whether you’re curled up at home watching Jools Holland’s Annual Hootenanny, braving the cold to catch a fireworks display or escaping to the countryside with your nearest and dearest, New Year’s Eve offers the perfect excuse to get dressed up.

No matter your plans, there are simple ways to add sartorial sparkle to your night, even if your preferred party look is a pair of pyjamas. Here are the best New Year’s Eve outfits to welcome in 2026, however you’re celebrating.

Rich Stockdale says model of ‘regenerative capitalism’ would maximise profits by planting trees, restoring peatlands, and installing windfarms across its estates

The founder of an investment firm buying large estates across Britain to restore woods and peatland has said it is “unashamedly and proudly” capitalist, and plans to make tens of millions of pounds in profit.

Rich Stockdale, the chief executive of Oxygen Conservation, said his model of “regenerative capitalism” was a “force for good” because it would offer investors significant profits by planting trees, restoring peatlands, operating solar farms and holiday homes and installing new windfarms across its estates.

This year’s highlights include the remodelling of a Richard Seifert brutalist ‘corncob’ tower, a celebration of Japanese carpentry and a wearable hot-water bottle
• The best art and photography of 2025
• More on the best culture of 2025

In a case of contents outshining the container, the V&A’s national museum of everything takes the public up close and personal to a gallimaufry of precious things, from porcelain to poison darts, textiles to tiaras. Elegantly shoehorned into the gargantuan hangar that was originally the broadcasting centre for the 2012 Olympics, it’s an Amazon warehouse crammed with global treasures, setting visitors off on an odyssey of “curated transgression” through an immersive cabinet of curiosities.

Labour urged to accelerate reset with Brussels as many exporters struggling to trade in the EU after Brexit deal

Keir Starmer’s government has been told a closer EU trade deal is a “strategic necessity” for companies in Britain as growing numbers of exporters find it tougher to do business under the UK’s post-Brexit agreement.

Calling on Labour to accelerate its reset with Brussels, the British Chambers of Commerce (BCC) said the UK’s existing trade and cooperation agreement (TCA) was failing to help them grow their sales in the EU.

Middlesbrough-born musician had hits with Driving Home for Christmas, On the Beach and The Road to Hell

• Chris Rea – a life in pictures
• Driving Home for Christmas captures the season’s true spirit

Chris Rea, the British singer-songwriter whose hits included Driving Home For Christmas, has died at the age of 74, a spokesperson for his family said.

The statement said that he died “peacefully in hospital … following a short illness”.

CPS says new law marked ‘significant shift in recognising serious nature’ of offence, often linked to domestic abuse and sexual assault

The number of suspects charged for strangulation and suffocation in England and Wales has increased almost sixfold in the three years since the offence was first introduced, Crown Prosecution Service data has revealed.

Brought in under the Domestic Abuse Act, which came into force in 2022, the legislation closed a gap in the existing law, giving courts much greater sentencing powers.

Philip Young, 49, is accused of 56 sexual offences, including drugging and raping his now ex-wife

A former Tory councillor has been charged with drugging and raping his then wife over a period of 13 years, with five other men also charged with sexual offences against her.

Philip Young, 49, a white British national, formerly from Swindon but now living in Enfield in north London, has been charged with 56 sexual offences. Police have released the ethnicity of each man charged.