As a kid, I did my best to avoid exercise. As an adult, I endured it for the sake of my health. Then I set myself a clear goal – and motivation was no longer an issue

It’s fair to say I don’t come from a long line of athletes. When I was growing up in the 1990s, sport was something other people did; we were not a family who cycled, much less jogged. In PE I was the wheezing child hiding behind the bins, pretending I’d twisted an ankle. When I contemplated working out – not often – I had the vague idea it was supposed to turn my body into something other people might find attractive.

I evolved from an unsporty child into an unsporty adult. Occasionally, mostly in an attempt to lose weight without having to stop eating croissants, I would attempt something like Couch to 5K, which I’d either abandon after a couple of sessions or see through to the bitter end out of the perverse determination to prove I’d been right all along: exercise was a mug’s game and endorphins an invention of Big Wellness.

From gritty criminals to teens coming to terms with their identity, pride month sees Guardian writers on their most beloved queer characters

Forget about dimly lit period dramas where miserable women with no access to electricity gently sob in their heaving corsets and accidentally-on-purpose brush hands in the trembling candlelight; overblown, bombastic heist-capers and brooding, butch anti-heroes are far more up my street when it comes to lesbian cinema. What, after all, could be more intensely gay than immediately committing to a life of crime with someone you’ve only just set eyes on? My favourite of the entire bunch has to be the swaggering ex-con turned plumber Corky, who helps to save Violet from the clutches of her mob boss husband in 1996’s cult classic Bound. Though we first meet Corky trussed up in a literal closet, the metaphor doesn’t play out how you might expect: unapologetic and visible in a time when few films explored queerness full stop, she flexes a labrys tattoo, spends her down time swigging beer in grotty dive bars, and eventually drives off into the sunset, her new partner-in-crime in tow, in a beaten-up Chevy pick-up. The sheer simplicity of Corky as a queer heartthrob was, somehow, ridiculously ahead of its time, and her magnetic influence has played out everywhere from Bottoms to Love Lies Bleeding. El Hunt

From frontline reporting to a trailblazing comic novel and a prophetic dystopia, which of Eric Blair’s books is the best?

Imagination was not George Orwell’s forte. In each novel the protagonist is to some extent an Orwell surrogate doing things that Orwell did in places where Orwell had been. Here, somewhat unconvincingly, the author’s representative is a repressed young woman, Dorothy Hare, who loses her memory, identity and faith. Orwell considered it “tripe” except for the dream-like, polyphonic chapter where Dorothy sleeps rough in Trafalgar Square – a fascinating legacy of his youthful infatuation with James Joyce.

The writer made headlines when she accused the world’s wealthiest man of lacking joy, culture, a sense of beauty … Meanwhile, her own life has been an attempt to understand and explain the world. She talks us through her latest book

‘Many people, including myself, spend a lot of time thinking about the past. And if you’re living in the same house you were living in with a spouse, the spouse is all around. Nonetheless, it’s not healthy to live in the past; I think we all know that.” Joyce Carol Oates is speaking to me from a book-lined room – one that makes you finally understand what “den” means – at her home in Princeton, New Jersey. She teaches at Princeton University as well as teaching advanced creative writing at Rutgers, also in New Jersey.

The author turned 88 this month, but she looks little changed from the 1960s, when she came to prominence: weightless like a sprite, focused and serious like a librarian. She has been a prolific writer, with more than 60 novels and many volumes of short stories to her name, earning her five Pulitzer prize nominations and a National Book award, among others, since the start of her career. Blonde, a haunting, fictionalised account of the life of Marilyn Monroe, Them, part of the Wonderland quartet, and Zombie, loosely based on the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, are often name-checked as career highs, but her consistency is striking. When she wanted to write mysteries, she did so under the pseudonyms Rosamond Smith and Lauren Kelly. Her works of nonfiction, mainly criticism and memoir, would constitute a career on their own.

From north-east Scotland to Romford, London, what do those who spoke to the Guardian during the referendum campaign make of how it all panned out?

The Guardian has revisited five bellwether constituencies we reported on during the 2016 EU referendum campaign, and asked those we spoke to at the time how they now feel about Brexit a decade on from the vote.

Tournament could hold up a useful hand mirror to the isolationism and divisiveness of Trump’s joint-host nation

One of the best parts of following football across the world is the way it drags you into special places, local shrines, objects of profound cultural connection. The US, of course, has these holy spaces too.

The queue of pilgrims in Philadelphia on Thursday morning stretched down the sun-blasted steps to the plaza at the bottom. Edging forward, the people in their ritual colours approached the figure at the top, arms outstretched in supplication, in a state of hushed deference. Called finally for his moment of communion, the man at the front of this line straightened his Ronaldinho shirt, clenched his fists above his head for the ceremonial Insta pic and shouted: “Adrian! I did it.”

The prime minister said a new leader will be in place before parliament returns in September

• Full report: Keir Starmer to step down as prime minister two years after historic election victory

• Wes Streeting backs Andy Burnham to become Labour leader and PM

This is from Tom Baldwin, Keir Starmer’s biographer, and head of communications for Ed Miliband when he was Labour leader.

We seem to be in a strange place where Keir Starmer is being told he must quit to prevent more uncertainty and chaos (by those who have caused much of it) but then stay on for a couple of months because the guy who has been desperate to take his job is not yet ready to do so…

Keir Starmer has a mandate from Labour members.

He stood on a manifesto and won a mandate from the British people

Modern politics:

Consumerisation

Former health secretary decides not to run, making Burnham overwhelming favourite to succeed Keir Starmer as soon as July

• UK politics live – latest updates

Wes Streeting has said he will back Andy Burnham to become the next Labour leader, making it highly likely that Burnham, the former Greater Manchester mayor, will replace Keir Starmer as prime minister in July.

In a post on X, Burnham, who will be sworn in as an MP later on Monday after winning last week’s Makerfield byelection, said Starmer’s announcement on Monday that he would stand down as prime minister “marks the beginning of a transition and it is important that this process is conducted in an orderly and responsible way”, adding: “I will put myself forward as part of this process.”

May, Johnson, Truss, Sunak, and now Starmer: each one was brought low for a reason. But what if the deeper problem is the office itself?

They were times in which prime ministers seemed to be on their way out as soon as they’d arrived. The big strategic decisions the country faced were ducked or postponed. The public finances repeatedly wobbled, yet efforts to rationalise the tax system faltered in the face of vested interests, including farmers. Reforms to social security were trumpeted before being diluted. The whole business of politics was animated by rancour and rivalry, rather than practical action. All the while, populists waited in the wings.

This is not a sneak peak into a future history book about today’s Britain, but a description of the French fourth republic, which staggered after a difficult birth in 1946 until 1958, when the exhausted regime ceded the authority to create a new order to Gen Charles de Gaulle, effectively putting itself out of its misery.

Starmer appeared ruthless in banishing the influence of Jeremy Corbyn, and winning power – but far less certain on how to wield it

Few would describe him as a dramatic man, but Keir Starmer’s political career has been almost Shakespearean in its trajectory: a mere 11 years to enter parliament, lead Labour to an election win many assumed was impossible and then, inside the final two years, throw it all away.

His demise is, of course, a reflection of an unprecedented era, one in which voter loyalties were atomised, a two-party hegemony fractured into five, and for the first time ever Labour faced a coherent threat on its left as well as its right.