John Lithgow plays the gay and often nude septuagenarian father of Colman’s character in Jimpa, a new story of intergenerational queerness. She explains why her own dad would have ‘sat and cried all the way through it’

In Jimpa, Olivia Colman plays a woman called Hannah who leaves Adelaide with her husband and 16-year-old child to visit her father in Amsterdam. This is Jimpa – the word sticks better once you know it’s a compound of Jim and grandpa. At the airport, the teenager, Frances, who’s trans, drops a bombshell: they want to move to the Netherlands and finish their schooling there. Hannah and her husband, Harry, respond thoughtfully, not freaking out.

But once they arrive in Amsterdam, Jimpa, played by John Lithgow, brings enough drama for everyone – something he’s been doing for 40 years, since he left his family for a fuller queer life than Australia at the end of the 20th century could offer. The film revels in revealing the sort of lifestyle he enjoyed instead.

Two mothers fought British bureaucracy to obtain lifesaving cannabis medicines for their children. But most patients are having to go private – at huge cost

In the summer of 2012, Britain was in a festive mood. It was the year of the queen’s diamond jubilee and the London Olympics, and the country was celebrating. But for former hairdresser Hannah Deacon and her young family in Warwickshire, it was a summer of ambulances, hospital wards and doctors rushing in and out of emergency rooms.

Eight months earlier, Deacon had given birth to a healthy baby boy named Alfie. The early months of his life had been challenging for her and her partner, Drew, as they are for any first-time parents, but by the summer, Alfie was sleeping and feeding well, and it felt like the family was settling into the new rhythm. However, one night the couple woke up to find their baby’s little body gripped by a paralysing seizure.

There are few places where history can be felt more powerfully than these pathways, walked by explorer, author and TV presenter Nicholas Crane

How often do you look down and wonder who created the path your feet are following? Or ask the cause of its curves and dips? Formed over thousands of years, paths form an “internet of feet” – a web of bridleways and hollow ways, drove roads and ridgeways, coffin tracks, pilgrimage trails and city pavements. Whether you’re hiking a National Trail or pottering along a National Trust footpath, there’s a good chance you’re following ancestral steps.

It’s thoughts like these that led me on a journey to track the evolution of British paths for my book, The Path More Travelled. Eleven thousand years ago ice age hunter-gatherers arrived from Europe’s heartlands, moving through the wilderness along broad “routeways”, that later widened to tracks when horses and then wheels were adopted in the bronze age. For more than 2,000 years, traffic moved no faster than the speed of a horse, until the internal combustion engine drove pedestrians off the road just over a century ago.

Test yourself on topical news trivia, pop culture and general knowledge every Thursday. How will you fare?

Welcome to the Thursday news quiz, where curiosity is in full bloom thanks to our illustration by Anaïs Mims. Even the most carefully arranged facts can contain a hint of uncertainty, so beware the rogue question marks popping up among the petals of knowledge. Fifteen questions on topical news, pop culture and general knowledge await. There are no prizes, but we always enjoy hearing how you got on in the comments. Allons-y!

The Thursday news quiz, No 247

If I were in government I’d propose a very different response to the challenges we face – starting with protecting people from the cost of living

• David Blunkett was Labour home secretary from 2001 to 2004

While I welcome many measures in the king’s speech, an alternative might look something like this.

My lords, and members of the Commons: my government is committed to winning back the support of the British people and demonstrating that they are “on the side” of those who are working – or who have worked – hard to make ends meet.

David (Lord) Blunkett was Labour home secretary from 2001 to 2004

Voters are desperate for a turnaround in living standards. The runners and riders for the Labour leadership must address this

“Westminster is a cocoon. Lots of people in lovely jobs, so it becomes easy to forget the world outside.” Catherine West should know. She’s been an MP for 11 years, even if you hadn’t heard of her until this weekend when the Labour backbencher threatened Keir Starmer for the leadership, firing the first shots in the civil war that now engulfs the government. Before Wes Streeting broke cover, before Andy Burnham boarded that train to Euston, there was Catherine West.

Ever since, she has been pelted with insults. But, when we spoke this weekend, she was not only self-aware, it was one of the few times this week that I’ve heard a Labour politician grasp that what’s at stake goes beyond who sits where at the cabinet table, or how their party is polling: it’s about who leads the UK into the 2030s.

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

The former deputy prime minister said she should be keen to ‘play my part’ in the event of a leadership contest

• Full report: Angela Rayner cleared by HMRC over tax affairs paving the way for potential leadership bid

Al Carns, the defence minister first elected in 2024, will launch his own leadership bid if a contest starts, Sky News is reporting.

Asked about this last night, Carns told Sky: “I’m just a humble junior minister.”

Unless Labour understands that insecurity on an emotional level as well as on an economic one, we will continue to lose voters who would naturally align with us. Working-class voters have not simply left Labour. Many feel Labour stopped understanding their lives, and so they looked elsewhere.

What is the point of Labour if it does not represent Sheffield, Stoke-on-Trent, Barnsley, Swansea and Aberdeen? What is the point of the Labour party if it cannot replace despair and frustration with hope, stability and purpose? The party was founded to give ordinary working people security, dignity and bargaining power over their lives.

Health secretary’s move to force race sparks scramble on left of Labour for candidate to oppose him

Wes Streeting is preparing to launch a leadership challenge against Keir Starmer on Thursday if the health secretary can secure the support of enough MPs to trigger a contest.

Streeting’s move to force a race has sparked a frantic scramble on the left of Labour to find a candidate to oppose him, with Ed Miliband and Angela Rayner both possible contenders.

Greater Manchester mayor seeks to reassure his supporters after potential seats for him fail to materialise

Andy Burnham has told Labour MPs they should hold the line and that he has options to return to parliament after several seats identified by his allies failed to materialise.

Two seats that backers of the Greater Manchester mayor had described as “nailed on” as recently as Monday night are now out of contention after the MPs concerned got cold feet.

Security was heightened in Beijing ahead of the two leaders’ crucial talks, which were set to be dominated by trade, AI and the war in Iran

• Trump lands in China for high-stakes summit with Xi Jinping as Iran war looms over talks

• Explainer: five key issues on the table at summit
  

Donald Trump will drive through a Chinese capital that is smoggier than it was on his last visit in 2017, when the authorities launched emergency measures to clear the skies of pollution days before his first state visit to Beijing.

Factories were ordered to halt production and heavily polluting cars were banned from the roads in the days ahead of the US president’s trip nearly a decade ago, an era in which China had declared war on air pollution and made special efforts to clear the skies ahead of important political events such as visiting dignitaries and the Beijing Olympics.