His attempts to bully and exploit the weak hark back to an era when the US emulated the worst aspects of the British empire

Donald Trump’s imperial presidency is a tawdry, threadbare affair. The emperor has no clothes to cloak his counterfeit rule. Lacking crown and robes, he resorts to vulgar ties and baseball caps. His throne is but a bully pulpit, his palace a pokey, whitewashed house, his courtiers mere common hacks. His royal edicts – executive orders – are judicially contested. And while he rages like Lear, his critics are publicly crucified or thrown to the lions at Fox News.

Yet for all his crudely plebeian ordinariness, a parvenu imperialism is Trump’s global offer, his trademark deal and most heinous crime. He peddles it against the tide of history and all human experience, as if invasion, genocide, racial inequality, economic exploitation and cultural conquest had never been tried before. If it wasn’t clear already, it is now. He wants to rule the world .

The film star is among those undermining a role that was created out of the #MeToo movement to protect the powerless

How instructive to hear Gwyneth Paltrow’s views on intimacy coordinators, the people hired to supervise intimate scenes in film and television. Talking to Vanity Fair magazine about her big screen comeback, in Josh Safdie’s ping pong film, Marty Supreme , the actor, 52, joked of her sex scenes with 29-year-old Timothée Chalamet: “I was like, ‘I’m 109 years old. You’re 14’.”

Paltrow also said: “There’s now something called an intimacy coordinator (IC), which I did not know existed.” When the IC spoke to her: “I’m like, ‘Girl, I’m from the era where you get naked, you get in bed, the camera’s on’… We said, ‘I think we’re good. You can step a little bit back’.” She added: “I don’t know how it is for the kids who are starting out, but… if someone is like ‘OK, then he puts his hand here ’… I would feel as an artist very stifled by that.”

• England manager wants midfielder to have more impact
• Tuchel unsure why wingers didn’t ‘dare to take the risk’

Thomas Tuchel believes Jude Bellingham tried to do too much at Euro 2024 and must save his energy for key moments by being more disciplined. England’s new head coach has been honest about where his side can improve and he clearly is not afraid to follow the same path with Bellingham.

The Real Madrid midfielder produced some scintillating moments at the Euros – not least when he saved England from defeat against Slovakia in the last 16 by equalising in stoppage time with an overhead kick – but some of his performances did not meet expectations. Operating mainly as a No 10, Bellingham struggled to connect with Harry Kane and sometimes looked to go it alone.

Hopes of growth hang deflated, borrowing takes its toll and spending cuts loom

• You can buy a copy of this cartoon

• Saracens 12-23 Harlequins
• Replacement fly-half Jamie Benson sparks fine comeback

Who needs Marcus Smith, England fly-half? Who, for that matter, needs Jarrod Evans, Wales fly-half? Jamie Benson is a 22-year-old who made his Premiership debut in November. On Saturday he came on at half-time for Evans and kicked three long-range penalties in the last 10 minutes to set up Harlequins for their first Premiership away win over Saracens for 13 years.

He also converted both Harlequins’ tries, the second at the death. Score when he came on: 12-0. Score at the end 12-23.

Full report to follow shortly

• Van der Poel holds of Pogacar and Ganna in classic battle
• Wiebes wins first women’s race since 2005

Mathieu van der Poel outsprinted Filippo Ganna and Tadej Pogacar to win his second Milan-Sanremo Classic on Saturday, claiming the first Monument race of the season, while the European champion Lorena Wiebes won the first staging of a women’s event since 2005.

Dutchman Van der Poel, winner in 2023 , came out on top in a sprint finish after the leading trio were involved in a game of cat-and-mouse close to the line, with Ganna finishing second and Pogacar having to settle for third.

Risking discovery and even prison, teenage readers meet in secret to discuss texts that Putin’s troops are trying to erase

It must be one of the most dangerous book clubs in the world. Before they can feel safe enough to talk about poetry and prose, 17-year-old Mariika (not her real name) and her friends have to first ensure all the windows are shut and check there is no one lurking by the flat’s doors.

Informants frequently report anyone studying Ukrainian in the occupied territories to the Russian secret police. Ukrainian textbooks have been deemed “extremist” – possession can carry a sentence of five years.

There are times when a bowl of cornflakes is more enticing than dragging ourselves out for dinner. And avocados? Forget it

At a party not so long ago, a friend told me that she was about to leave. “I’m hungry,” she said, her eyes sliding towards the coats. “I’m going home for a bowl of Weetabix.” I greeted this with some surprise, if not outright derision. Wouldn’t she prefer a pizza with me? But already she was entering an ecstatic state. “Weetabix is lovely ,” she went on. “Sugar, cold milk … ” Half a century of eating the stuff had taught her the optimum point at which to devour it, a fleeting moment she could judge by sight. Its biscuit-dryness had to be gone, but it needed to be soft rather than soggy. Her eyes half closed, she wantonly mimed pushing a spoon into this late-night ambrosia.

I thought of this the other day, when Alan Titchmarsh, TV gardener and aspirant steamy novelist, informed the nation it should stop eating avocados on the grounds of their environmental impact (to summarise: many of those sold in the UK are grown on land that was formerly rainforest; their cultivation involves huge amounts of water in places where it’s scarce; they must be shipped 5,000 miles or more to reach us). “There’s a lot to be said for cornflakes, Weetabix and Shreddies,” he announced, deploying the homely tartness that made him such a hit on Pebble Mill and Ground Force to deal with the 21st-century hipster breakfast of choice. Ha! Next time my friend refused a dinner date on the grounds that she would rather commune with a bowl of cereal, I would have no choice but to mention him. Several times. In my best (native) Yorkshire accent.

In 2020, the English artist Ed Atkins started drawing on Post-it notes and sticking them to his daughter’s school lunchbox. As well as “little hellos”, they were also, amid the power-down of the pandemic, “a way for me to achieve something every day”, says Atkins. Some of the drawings are cute if a bit creepy – a smiley-faced ghost, a bell lifted to reveal a foetal human underneath – while others involving axes and claws might induce nightmares in adults, let alone children. What began as a private father-daughter ritual has since become integral to Atkins’s practice, which uses video and animation to explore how the digital world affects our sense of self. For his forthcoming show at Tate Britain, he wanted the Post-its to take centre stage – and “to be the legend at the bottom of the map, to teach a way of looking and accepting and feeling that might be useful for everything else”.

• Ed Atkins runs at Tate Britain from 2 April to 25 August 2025