How do you follow Oppenheimer? By spending £250m bringing Homer’s epic poem to the big screen in Imax. Today’s most powerful director talks big swings, trauma-bonding and the healing powers of chocolate labrador Charlie

‘I’m in that moment of sheer terror,” says Christopher Nolan, sitting in a suite at the Corinthia hotel in London, in a slightly rumpled suit, next to a pot of tea. Outside, crowds jostle, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of the stars within – Matt Damon, Tom Holland, Lupita Nyong’o. It is the day before the world premiere of Nolan’s latest film, an adaptation of Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey, and the last day of waiting before audiences decide whether the biggest gamble of Nolan’s career has paid off. The film, which reportedly cost $250m (£185m), doesn’t just need an audience to show up. It needs the entire moviegoing world to do so.

“It never gets any easier, because I make films for audiences and the audience tells me what it likes,” he says. “They finish the film. I don’t have anything to hide behind. I can’t just be like: ‘Oh, people don’t get it.’ Those aren’t the films I make. What does the audience make of it? Do they turn up? Do they like it if they do turn up?

Knowledge learned over more than a century in Australia is being tested by worsening fires. It’s a familiar narrative around the world

The violent hot red flames of deadly wildfires across the UK and Europe and scenes of panicked communities fleeing homes could not, at least geographically, be further away for Jan Harris.

But sitting in her new home at Reedy Swamp in rural New South Wales in Australia, the 67-year-old has found herself in tears.

A Grammy nom at 17, a US No 1 ... then silence. With new album Oh Yeah? finally out after four years away, the genre-hopping artist explains the trauma and heartbreak that informed it

Since Steve Lacy became a Grammy-winning artist with a No 1 hit in the US, little has changed for him. His single Bad Habit was one of the biggest songs of 2022, leading to a sold-out tour across North America, Europe and Australia. But off-stage? He bought a new home in Los Angeles, but he hasn’t made any new famous friends. He doesn’t get hounded in public, because he’s a natural homebody. Besides, he’s not really that famous, is he?

“I think my name is bigger than my face, which is great,” he says, smiling mischievously. Sitting in a private room in a London hotel, wearing a Serge Gainsbourg T-shirt and jeans so ripped that they might as well be shorts, Lacy says he thinks he has pulled off the greatest trick of modern pop stardom: being one of the most celebrated musicians of his generation while remaining almost unrecognisable.

Dehumanising politicians is the first step towards justifying their elimination. It matters more than ever to keep putting the person back into the picture

Ann Widdecombe was never one to hide from an argument. And she wasn’t afraid for her safety either. She scoffed at friends’ suggestions that she should get electric gates, as an elderly woman with a public profile living alone on Dartmoor, just as she dismissed concerns about her health at 78.

Having lost friends in the Brighton hotel bombing that almost killed Margaret Thatcher, she wasn’t naive about security. But she was forged in a different era: one before Jo Cox was murdered, when the greatest risk was to politicians identified as symbols of the state, rather than as the embodiment of an idea. She posed happily for press photographs inside her retirement bungalow, including one available to anyone casually Googling that included the house’s distinctive name: Widdecombe’s Rest. She would have been so easy to find, had anyone gone looking. Perhaps she never really believed that anyone would.

Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist

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In the second part of a two-part profile, Josh Halliday charts PM-in-waiting’s journey northward, where as mayor he revelled in his Covid-era popularity – and changed his approach to politics

• Part one: From Cambridge ‘impostor’ to New Labour star

Andy Burnham was a broken man. In a pub a short walk from parliament, which he had taken to calling “the madhouse”, he plotted his escape over beers with three trusted colleagues.

It was late March in 2016. Burnham, the MP for Leigh in Greater Manchester, had been in Westminster for 15 years but here, in a politico-free pub on Horseferry Road, his mood was dark.

The 2018 final against Germany went to penalties – we thrashed them and won gold

I was 12 years old when I first played foosball – table football – in the summer of 1975 in Beirut. My home city was under siege, split by civil war. School was cancelled and roads were closed. We couldn’t get to the beach and the only place to go was the amusement arcade. Luckily for me, it was across the road.

Alongside billiard tables and games machines were a couple of foosball tables. I watched older kids play for hours, mesmerised by a game where you could outsmart an opponent two feet away, then celebrate in their face. You needed 20 pence, or qurush in Lebanese money, to play: 10 pence for the table and 10 pence for the winner. Money was scarce, so I made a deal with the guy who owned the place – if I cleaned the tables, I could play for free. With machine guns rattling on the nearby green line, which divided the east and west of the city, I’d stuff a towel inside the goal and practise until I was confident enough to play. I got really good. By the following summer, I was winning 10 games in a row.

‘Special conference’ to take place at noon where Burnham will be formally announced as Labour leader

Andy Burnham will reportedly allow more drilling in the North Sea when he becomes PM.

A story for Bloomberg says:

Officials are working on a range of options. They include signalling willingness to approve new oil and gas fields at Jackdaw and Rosebank, and an expansion of so-called tiebacks which allow further drilling on or near existing fields.

No final decision has been made on what form the North Sea announcement will take, but Burnham is likely to indicate he is in favour of more drilling, the people said.

Burnham has told Scottish Labour MPs that he will make an early visit to Aberdeen to underline the importance he attaches to the North Sea oil and gas industry.

Gary Smith, leader of the GMB union, and Sharon Graham, leader of Unite the Union, have slammed the Labour government’s policy of ending new exploration licences in the basin on environmental grounds as “economic madness” and “an act of self-harm” respectively.

Southern rail station also attacked, Iranian media says, as IRGC claims to have destroyed US fighter jets stationed in Jordan

• US marines board tanker amid blockade of Iranian ports

Kuwait’s energy ministry said one of its power and water desalination plants was attacked by Iran, resulting in a fire and damage to the facility.

In a statement shared online, the country’s ministry of electricity, water and renewable energy said emergency services were able to control and extinguish the fire, while technical teams worked to restore service and monitor the electricity grid.

Six bridges in Khamir county in Hormozgan province were hit, resulting in the deaths of seven people.

One person was killed in the port city of Bandar Abbas in Hormozgan province, where several areas were struck by missiles including a railway station

The maritime control tower of Shahid Kalantari port in Chabahar in Sistan and Baluchestan province was targeted for a third time and “completely destroyed”. No casualties were reported.

Opponents say president’s address about 2020 election loss is attempt to sow confusion ahead of midterms that could deliver big losses for Republicans

Donald Trump accused China of interfering with the 2020 election in a primetime televised address that laid bare his continuing obsession with his defeat to Joe Biden, but which opponents warned was a smokescreen for him to meddle in the forthcoming congressional midterms.

In a 25-minute speech on Thursday that had been hyped by Trump himself, the US president cast extraordinary doubts on the integrity of the US electoral process, saying it was “catastrophically” short of standards of fairness and trust, and vulnerable to trespassing by foreign powers.

British domestic holidays are being pushed to their highest levels since Covid

The start of the peak summer season is set to bring millions of drivers on to British roads, with concerns of traffic chaos as the port of Dover faces its biggest test yet of new EU border controls.

The semi-functioning entry-exit system (EES) is credited, along with the heatwaves and fears about flights after the war in Iran, with helping push British domestic holidays to its highest levels since Covid halted international travel.