We’ve tasted, sniffed and inspected more than 300 presents to bring you our ultimate Christmas gift guide – from must-have Lego and smoky mezcal to Meera Sodha’s favourite knife

Don’t you just love Christmas shopping? There’s a massive thrill in finding a present you know they’ll love and won’t have thought to ask for, but the pressure is enough to drive any sane person to hibernation.

We’ve gone the extra (2,000) miles to help you find the perfect gifts: we’ve tested out the latest products to see which ones are worth the hype (and which aren’t); trawled shops in person; enlisted babies (OK, their parents), tweens and teens to test out toys and give us their must-haves; tasted the good, bad and the did-I-really-put-this-in-my-mouth; and rounded up some of the products that were tried and tested by us this year.

She’s Hollywood’s biggest character actor who terrified a generation of men with her ‘bunny boiling’ turn in Fatal Attraction. Now, Close alternates the glamour of the red carpet with living in a red state. She talks about the joy of her ‘undefined’ life

Most of us don’t live our lives in accordance with a governing metaphor, but Glenn Close does. The 78-year-old was born in Greenwich, Connecticut, a town in the north‑east of the US that, to the actor’s enduring irritation, telegraphs “smug affluence” to other Americans. In fact, Close’s background is more complicated than that, rooted in a childhood that was wild and free but also traumatic, and in an area of New England in which her family goes back generations. “I grew up on those great stone walls of New England,” says the actor, chin out, gimlet-eyed – Queen Christina at the prow of a ship. “Some of them were 6ft tall and 250 years old! I have a book called Sermons in Stone and it says at one point that more energy and hours ran into building the New England stone walls than the pyramids.”

If the walls are an image Close draws on for strength, they might also serve as shorthand for the journalist encountering her at interview. Close appears in a London hotel suite today in a military-style black suit, trim, compact, and with a small white dog propped up on a chair beside her. For the span of our conversation, the actor’s warmth and friendliness combine with a reserve so practised and precise that the presence of the dog in the room feels, unfairly perhaps, like a handy way for Close to burn through a few minutes of the interview with some harmless guff about dog breeds. (The dog is called Pip, which is short for “Sir Pippin of Beanfield”. He is a purebred Havanese and “they’re incredibly intelligent”. Most dog owners in the US have the emotional support paperwork necessary to get them on a plane but, says Close, laughing, “That’s really what he is!”)

A huge cleanup effort has seen volunteers working to remove beads by hand and machine. They can only wait and see the extent of damage to wildlife and dune habitat

Just past a scrum of dog walkers, about 40 people are urgently combing through the sand on hands and knees. Their task is to try to remove millions of peppercorn-sized black plastic biobeads from where they have settled in the sand. Beyond them, a seal carcass grins menacingly, teeth protruding from its rotting skull.

Last week, an environmental disaster took place on Camber Sands beach, on what could turn out to be an unprecedented scale. Eastbourne Wastewater Treatment Works, owned by Southern Water, experienced a mechanical failure and spewed out millions of biobeads on to the Sussex coastline. Southern Water has since taken responsibility for the spill. Ironically, biobeads are used to clean wastewater – bacteria attach to their rough, crinkly surface and clean the water of contaminants.

Camber Sands is one of England’s most popular beaches, with rare dune habitat

Sydney Sweeney has become the poster child of a predicted rightwing cultural domination. So why is no one watching her films?

I was on a walk around my local area in London when I was stopped in my tracks by a young man sauntering past me, wearing stone-wash jeans, a pair of shades and a “Reagan-Bush ’84” T-shirt. He gave off an incredibly smug air but, to be fair, he did look good. It’s a nice T-shirt, not like those garish Reform-branded football kits, so I could see why it might be appealing. A quick search informed me that for gen-Z rightwingers in the US, it has become the “conservative take on a band shirt or the once-ubiquitous Che Guevara tee”.

That casual display of conservative aesthetics reminded me of something else too: a much discussed cover of New York magazine from earlier this year, after Trump 2.0’s inauguration, which showed young rightwingers celebrating as they “contemplate cultural domination”.

After Tim Davie’s resignation, the next director general will face internal strife, external noise and looming talks over the corporation’s existence and purpose

As BBC senior editors arrived at its New Broadcasting House headquarters in central London on Monday, the most pressing question was what had convinced Tim Davie, the corporation’s director general, to quit suddenly. Like any good BBC drama, it was a plot twist no one had seen coming.

As they assessed the brutal pressures that had finally proved too much for Davie, a second question soon arose. Was running the BBC now simply an impossible job?

Their dads lit a fire that consumed me but Eubank Jr v Conor Benn embodies all that has gone wrong with the Dark Trade

Thirty-five years ago this month, on 18 November 1990, my life changed course when I watched Chris Eubank and Nigel Benn fight each other in Birmingham with a ferocity which left me astonished and breathless. After that savage and surreal contest, I began working on a book about boxing, Dark Trade, which allowed me to become a full-time writer.

Benn and Eubank were so different that my already deep interest in boxing caught fire. I became consumed by the fight game for decades until, earlier this year, I finished writing The Last Bell, my fifth and final book about boxing. I still loved the most interesting fighters and their incredible life stories, but the controversies around the manufactured rivalry between Conor Benn and Chris Eubank Jr left me sick at heart.

Exclusive: thinktank report finds health secretary has failed to improve productivity, with the health service unlikely to meet its targets

Wes Streeting has been accused of taking a “chaotic and incoherent approach” to reforming the NHS which makes it unlikely the government will hit its own targets, according to a damning report by the Institute for Government (IfG).

The report praises elements of how the health secretary has managed the health service in his first year in office, including improving performance and staff retention in hospitals. Thepay settlement he reached with resident doctors last year avoided a winter plagued by NHS strikes

South Wales fire service describes ‘large-scale incident’ as England braces for cold weather warnings

A major incident has been declared in the aftermath of Storm Claudia, with more rain and flooding expected across Britain and Ireland on Saturday.

Four severe flood warnings had been issued by Natural Resources Wales as of 6am. This means there was a “significant risk to life and significant disruption to the community is expected”.

US president says he will sue the corporation for ‘anywhere between a billion and $5bn’

Donald Trump has said he still plans to sue the BBC despite receiving the apology he demanded over a misleading edit of one of his speeches.

The row, over an episode of Panorama from last year about the Capitol riot in 2021, led to accusations of bias at the broadcaster and the resignation of two of the most senior executives at the BBC: the director general, Tim Davie; and Deborah Turness, the chief executive of news.

Pair devised responses to public outrage about Epstein’s criminal history, his treatment by the justice system, and his friendships with powerful people

Hundreds of texts over almost a year show Maga influencer Steve Bannon and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein workshopping legal and media strategies to protect Epstein from the legal and publicity quagmire that enveloped him in the last year of his life.

The texts, released by the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday, show that as early as June 2018, the pair were devising responses to the gathering storm of public outrage about Epstein’s criminal history, his favorable treatment by the justice system, and his friendships with powerful figures in business, politics, and academia.