Wartime defences in Surrey and model boat club boathouse in Birmingham among this year’s unusual listings

If Nazi tanks had ever attempted to invade Guildford, they surely would have been thwarted by concrete pyramid-shaped obstacles known as “dragon’s teeth”.

Eight decades after the defences were installed in Surrey woodland, their history is being remembered by Historic England (HE), which has included them on its list of remarkable historic places granted protection in 2025.

Some businesses still waiting for final EHRC guidance while firms that moved early to exclude trans people show no sign of backtracking

On Monday, a Dundee employment tribunal ruled a narrow win for Sandie Peggie , the nurse who complained about sharing a changing room with a transgender doctor. But the lengthy judgment also takes on the pivotal question that has been challenging employers, lawyers and campaign groups since April – does a supreme court judgment mean that transgender people must now be excluded from same-sex facilities that align with their chosen gender? Does it amount to a bathroom ban or not?

The supreme court ruled earlier this year that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological sex. Interim advice released by the Equality and Human Rights Commission soon after the judgment in effect banned trans people from using facilities according to their lived gender, and its official guidance is expected to closely reflect that advice.

Young Vic theatre, London
A powerful blend of VR, testimony and theatre exposes the human toll of benefit cuts – and asks what justice looks like in a new political era

David Cameron did not just leave us the gift of Brexit before fleeing his premiership. There is also the toxic legacy of his “ age of austerity ” policies. Here is an excoriating production that examines what austerity meant for those targeted by it. They include some of the most vulnerable members of society – people who were abused, destitute, disabled, mentally ill and jobless (what was it that Pearl Buck said about the test of a civilisation?).

The show is based on the lives of people who were denied welfare benefits and died. Directed by Sacha Wares, it is an installation that combines promenade theatre with holograms. Wearing a VR headset, you enter a room where eight static figures emerge (played by actors). They lie on gurneys, bare mattresses, park benches, pavements and soiled duvets, and make for a woeful army of “invisibles” who have, for this time, come into our line of vision. We hear their stories, told by relatives (interviews co-edited by Wares and special advisor John Pring) and the accounts bring tears to your eyes.

Former chancellor also says Johnson was ‘least well briefed’ of the PMs he had served

Sajid Javid told Boris Johnson he was a “puppet” of Dominic Cummings before he resigned as chancellor rather than accept a Cummings-led takeover of his Treasury, he has said in an interview about his experiences as a minister.

Speaking to the Institute for Government (IfG), Javid also said that his other departure from Johnson’s government, shortly before it collapsed in 2022, was because he had lost confidence in the prime minister after being assured that allegations about lockdown-breaking parties in No 10 were “bullshit”.

Study on skull of Altamura Man could be blow to adaptation theories about Neanderthals and their extinction

One sign of a really cold day is the sharp sting of freezing air in your nose. It was believed that the noses of Neanderthals were better adapted to breathing the cold air of the Ice Age and that when the climate became warmer they were outcompeted by modern humans. This is now being questioned.

The opening in the Neanderthal skull is bigger than ours, with a larger nasal cavity behind it. This was thought to have bony convolutions to warm and moisten the incoming air, similar to those seen on some arctic mammals. These delicate structures would only survive in an exceptionally well-preserved skull though, so it was never clear whether they were actually present.

Wildlife smuggling is serious organised crime that ‘fuels corruption and drives species to extinction’, Home Office says

More than 250 endangered species and illegal wildlife products were seized at the UK border in a single month, new figures have revealed, including spiders, snakes and birds.

The illicit cargo was uncovered as part of an annual crackdown on wildlife smuggling known as Operation Thunder, which is led by Interpol and the World Customs Organisation.

Unfettered love for late photographer in France and elsewhere stands in contrast to occasional reservations in UK

The death of Martin Parr , the photographer whose work chronicled the rituals and customs of British life, was front-page news in France and his life and work were celebrated as far afield as the US and Japan.

If his native England had to shake off concerns about the role of class in Parr’s satirical gaze before it could fully embrace him, countries like France have long revered the Epsom-born artist “like a rock or a movie star”, said the curator Quentin Bajac.

More than £3bn that could have been used for UK patients will go to big pharma for its branded products – money for care siphoned off for profit

Of Arthur Scargill it was said that he began each day with two newspapers. The miners’ leader read the Morning Star of course, but only after consulting the Financial Times. Why did a class warrior from Yorkshire accord such importance to the house journal of pinstriped Londoners? Before imbibing views, he told a journalist, he wanted “to get the facts” .

In that spirit, let us parse a deal just struck by the governments of Donald Trump and Keir Starmer. You may not have heard much about this agreement on medicine, but it is huge in both financial and political significance – and Downing Street could not be more proud.

A “world-beating deal,” boasts the science minister, Patrick Vallance. It “paves the way for the UK to become a global hub for life sciences,” claims the business secretary, Peter Kyle, with the government press release adding: “Tens of thousands of NHS patients will benefit.”

Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist

Director of After the Rain, set in animal therapy retreat, says she aimed to portray ‘children as children, not as a statistic’

Sasha Mezhevoy was five years old when she, her older brother and sister were sent to an orphanage in Moscow. They were told they were going to be adopted by a Russian family. But they were not orphans. They were Ukrainian children who had been forcibly removed from their father.

Sasha grew up in Mariupol , the port city that endured more than 80 days of bombardment in one of the bloodiest and most destructive chapters of the early months of Russia’s full-scale invasion.