• All-format coach wants Buttler to ‘really enjoy himself’
• England face a busy schedule in India and Pakistan

Brendon McCullum believes Jos Buttler’s “best years could definitely be ahead of him” as the two begin their partnership in charge of England’s white-ball teams.

McCullum’s tenure as all-format head coach begins this week, with five Twenty20 internationals and three one-day internationals in India followed next month by the Champions Trophy in Pakistan. High on the list of priorities is getting the best out of Buttler. The white-ball captain’s 2023 included a dire title defence of the 50-over World Cup in India, while his 2024 was disrupted by a calf injury .

Its dean has launched an emergency appeal to raise £300k by the end of March as costs climb to over £2m a year

Beneath the breathtaking oak ceiling of Peterborough Cathedral, on which images of kings, saints, bishops and a monkey riding a goat were painted nine centuries ago, the Very Rev Chris Dalliston pondered how to keep this magnificent edifice afloat in the face of financial calamity.

Dalliston, the cathedral’s de facto CEO in a dog collar, has done his best to avert the looming crisis. The cathedral, built as a monastery in the 12th century, has become a venue for concerts, banquets, exhibitions, corporate events and even a controversial Ibiza-themed party night as well as daily religious services. Assets have been sold or rented.

Yellow warning for parts of the country with potential power cuts, travel disruption and damage from Thursday

A “weather bomb” is forecast to hit parts of the UK later this week, bringing strong winds, heavy rain and snow.

The first half of the week will be “benign” with cloudy weather and outbreaks of rain for much of the country before the arrival of more unsettled conditions, the Met Office said.

Genre films typically only get the technical gongs, but critical smashes such as Dune: Part Two, Wicked and The Substance could make ‘prestige’ category wins a reality this year

Ah, the Oscars. That perennial exercise in Hollywood patting itself on the back with all the subtlety of a fireworks display, while the rest of us squint at our screens and wonder how many of these movies we’ve actually seen.

At least two years ago there was something for genre fans to crow about: Everything Everywhere All at Once drove all before it, making and resurrecting careers while smartly satirising Marvel’s multiverse saga before the latter even had the chance to collapse under the weight of its own convoluted timelines.

A growing number of well-run clubs have shown what can be achieved by recruiting smartly and playing to a system

• Sign up to Soccer with Jonathan Wilson here

This is not 2015-16, when Leicester City won the league, but this season does share certain similarities. After 22 games of that season, Arsenal topped the table on goal difference from Leicester with Manchester City a point back and Tottenham four behind them. It was the following weekend that Leicester began to take control of the league, as they beat Stoke, Manchester City drew at West Ham and Arsenal lost at home to Chelsea. Wins over Manchester City and Liverpool in their following two games consolidated a lead that they never surrendered.

It’s not to diminish Leicester’s achievement to point out that they benefited from a number of elite sides having disappointing seasons: Arsenal came second with only 71 points . The theory then was that the general wealth of the Premier League – the fact that, to use Deloitte’s figures from 2024, Aston Villa, Brighton, Fulham, Leeds, Crystal Palace and Everton are among the 30 wealthiest clubs in the world by revenue – meant that the elite were facing too consistent a challenge for 85-plus points in a season to be a viable target every year. A flourishing middle class, the thought ran, had helped equalise the league, at least at its top end.

This is an extract from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, a weekly look from the Guardian US at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Have a question for Jonathan? Email soccerwithjw@theguardian.com , and he’ll answer the best in a future edition

Cavernous totes and trouser pleats join broad-shouldered jackets with just enough construction to create shape

For 50 years, Giorgio Armani has only ever wanted “to dress real men, not an invented character who only exists on the runway”.

Speaking before launching his autumn collection in Milan, this may have sound a strange thing to say before a fashion show – but it does explain why the Italian designer has rarely deviated from the look on which he has made his fortune.

‘I thought I’d be rushing around doing stunts. But instead, it was all about my tight, sexy outfits. After three episodes, I was thinking, “I hate this big hair!”’

I got the impression Blake’s 7 was just going to be “space opera” and wanted to move on and do other things, but the script for the first episode won me over. It was 1977, before the mass surveillance we have today, so the idea of everyone being watched by cameras, as that opening episode had it, seemed striking. It had shades of Nineteen Eighty-Four and felt very adult and relevant.

The pianist, director and playwright of Farinelli and the King, which starred her husband Mark Rylance, is remembered by the Globe’s former artistic director

Claire van Kampen, theatre director and composer, dies aged 71

On the first afternoon of rehearsals for any new show, I would ask Claire to push past the awkwardness and nerves of new beginnings with some group singing. Within a couple of hours, her galvanic energy and shining eyes would have a group of strangers harmonising together with a gusto they had not felt since childhood. Ten days ago, when she first went under palliative care in a German clinic, a devoted community on WhatsApp formed and then grew, to feed messages to her through Mark, her husband, and her daughter, Juliet. Anecdotes of Claire in excelsis were shared, some ribald, some tender and others filthy; old photos of her dazzly smile accumulated; insights which Claire had rained on the world for free were appreciated; and tears were spilt over how remorselessly she had spread light. Even under sedation, Claire could still get a wide and diverse group from across the world to sing together.

Claire was all art. A piano prodigy as a youth, she became one of the world’s great theatre composers, whose work was heard at the RSC, the National, the Globe and eventually everywhere. No one has ever set a Shakespearean song better than her – her versions of the closing songs to Twelfth Night and Love’s Labour’s Lost are definitive; no one knew better how to drive a story with percussion; how to detonate some humour into a room with some oompah, nor how to make 1,000 hearts skip a beat with a single plaintive human voice. The Renaissance and her were natural companions – something about the openness and candour of that age, together with its bubbling humanity, found a natural interpreter in her.

• Manager to stay on for Hoffenheim and Leicester games
• Levy taking injuries into account despite poor run

Daniel Levy intends to give Ange Postecoglou the opportunity to revive Tottenham’s fortunes, with the under-pressure manager set to remain in charge for this week’s matches against Hoffenheim in the Europa League and Leicester in the Premier League, although the situation is precarious.

Levy would normally be expected to sack a manager who has presided over a league run of five points from 10 matches, as Postecoglou has done to leave the club languishing in 15th place. The 3-2 defeat at Everton on Sunday was the latest low, with Spurs 3-0 down at half-time to a team that had scored 15 goals in 20 previous league matches this season. Their rally towards the end did not obscure the faultlines.