Baby on boardThe best of The Observer, from across our newsroom |
Genevieve Fox and Brad Gray • Thursday 21 August 2025 |
Who doesn't relish the idea of a long-haul adventure or feel the seduction of a spontaneous escape? Well, if you are a newbie parent, the prospect might fill you with horror as a way to add to already broken, sleepless nights. Not so for Matt Alagiah and his partner who decided on a whim to take their two-year-old daughter on a three-month trip around Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand.
They would do it the old way, the way they did Before Parenthood. This meant minimal planning, maximum number of bags to carry, and no fancy car services or transfers to ease their passage. Culture, food, overnight train journeys and good times… that's all they were after.
And you know what? That's exactly what they got, even though the trip's highlights would never appear on any itinerary and their best memories took them completely by surprise. Click here to read more → |
"The enemy of nonsense" – George Orwell |
Truth and trust are in trouble. It's time for an independent BBC
Last night, The Observer's editor-in-chief James Harding delivered the 50th annual MacTaggart lecture at the Edinburgh TV festival, following in the footsteps of Louis Theroux, Michaela Coel, Greg Dyke and Ted Turner. The lecture is published in full on The Observer website and makes the case to establish the independence of the BBC, which James calls "the most important source of shared information and ideas in this country, and around the world". It tackles the "chilling" interventions from modern politicians on BBC matters, the danger that a surging Reform party poses to the organisation's future, and the threat that AI will replace journalism. James writes: "If we wait to see what the future has in store for us, I fear that the recent past can give us the answer already. Bystanding is surrender." Click here to read more → |
'I'm wired to feel shame very easily' by Nick McGrath Tim Minchin is turning 50 in October. His mum died when she was 73, and on the night she died Minchin took to the stage. In the past twenty years, the stage has been pivotal to Minchin's success as a firebrand comedian in the 2000s and as the writer of the Matilda musical, which is still a phenomenon on the West End to this day. In this week's This Much I Know column, he tells Nick McGrath: "There's nothing else I need to do before it's over, but I'm still hungry. I want to write five more musicals and five more albums and make five more TV shows. Nothing is going to stop me except the clock."
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The friendly rivalry between Churchill and de Gaulle by Margaret MacMillan Winston Churchill referred to Charles de Gaulle as his "cross of Lorraine". Even as Britain's relationships with Roosevelt's USA or Stalin's Soviet Union took centre stage, de Gaulle and Churchill's relationship mattered hugely in the postwar years. This relationship is examined in The Last Titans, reviewed by Margaret MacMillan, in which Richard Vinen "draws the two men with a sure touch, their personal interactions a mix of mutual suspicion and admiration".
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'Yi-Ban in London's Docklands is a shrine to dim sum' by Joel Golby Joel Golby took two friends who are obsessed with planes, one of them a pilot, to Yi-Ban near City Airport in London. Telling, then, that the food there still captured the table's attention. Joel writes: "By day (apart from Thursday, when it is closed), Yi-Ban is a shrine to dim sum: you get a pencil and a little dusty-pink menu and you tick off dishes like you're ordering at Argos." He adds: "This is undoubtedly the strangest place in London. But somehow, home to two of my favourite meals of the year."
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Daily Sensemaker What is Putin's price for peace?One region in western Ukraine has become a key sticking point in Donald Trump's attempts to bring the war to an end
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Thanks for reading. We'll be back tomorrow.
Genevieve Fox The Observer Magazine
Brad Gray Production editor, newsletters
The Observer
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