Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some brilliant new paperbacks, from a festive mystery to a kaleidoscopic ode to the animal kingdom

The unlikely story of an English girl catapulted to French fame – and a relationship with Serge Gainsbourg that resembled a piece of deranged performance art

Boarding a flight in 1983, Jane Birkin found herself wrestling with the open straw basket into which she habitually crammed everything from playscripts to nappies. As she reached for the overhead locker the basket overturned, spilling the contents on her neighbour. He turned out to be the chief executive of Hermès, the French luxury goods company, and immediately offered to make her a bag with internal pockets and a secure closure. Birkin sketched what she wanted on a sick bag and “The Birkin” was born: a slouchy trapezoid in finest leather complete with its own little padlock. These days a Birkin bag starts at around £10,000 while the original, made for Birkin herself, was auctioned this summer for £7.4m.

It is a tale that gets endlessly repeated thanks to its neat compression of the main beats of the Jane Birkin story. First, there’s the insouciance, the fact that the Anglo-French singer and actor never seemed to go after anything; rather, it came to her. Then there’s her lack of mortification at having her whole life upended on a strange man’s lap, nappies and all. Finally, there’s her refusal to feel overawed by her bounty. Birkin famously did not treat her Hermès bag with especial reverence, enthusiastically festooning it with charms, beads, stickers and ribbons. The trend for personalising your handbag with bits of tat was ubiquitous this summer, part of a wider revival of the Birkin aesthetic, comprising flared mid-wash jeans, peasanty cheesecloth blouses and ballet flats. You couldn’t avoid it if you tried.

UN GEO report says ending this harm key to global transformation required ‘before collapse becomes inevitable’

The unsustainable production of food and fossil fuels causes $5bn (£3.8bn) of environmental damage per hour, according to a major UN report.

Ending this harm was a key part of the global transformation of governance, economics and finance required “before collapse becomes inevitable”, the experts said.

Looking for a new reading recommendation? Here are some brilliant new paperbacks, from a festive mystery to a kaleidoscopic ode to the animal kingdom

The unlikely story of an English girl catapulted to French fame – and a relationship with Serge Gainsbourg that resembled a piece of deranged performance art

Boarding a flight in 1983, Jane Birkin found herself wrestling with the open straw basket into which she habitually crammed everything from playscripts to nappies. As she reached for the overhead locker the basket overturned, spilling the contents on her neighbour. He turned out to be the chief executive of Hermès, the French luxury goods company, and immediately offered to make her a bag with internal pockets and a secure closure. Birkin sketched what she wanted on a sick bag and “The Birkin” was born: a slouchy trapezoid in finest leather complete with its own little padlock. These days a Birkin bag starts at around £10,000 while the original, made for Birkin herself, was auctioned this summer for £7.4m.

It is a tale that gets endlessly repeated thanks to its neat compression of the main beats of the Jane Birkin story. First, there’s the insouciance, the fact that the Anglo-French singer and actor never seemed to go after anything; rather, it came to her. Then there’s her lack of mortification at having her whole life upended on a strange man’s lap, nappies and all. Finally, there’s her refusal to feel overawed by her bounty. Birkin famously did not treat her Hermès bag with especial reverence, enthusiastically festooning it with charms, beads, stickers and ribbons. The trend for personalising your handbag with bits of tat was ubiquitous this summer, part of a wider revival of the Birkin aesthetic, comprising flared mid-wash jeans, peasanty cheesecloth blouses and ballet flats. You couldn’t avoid it if you tried.

UN GEO report says ending this harm key to global transformation required ‘before collapse becomes inevitable’

The unsustainable production of food and fossil fuels causes $5bn (£3.8bn) of environmental damage per hour, according to a major UN report.

Ending this harm was a key part of the global transformation of governance, economics and finance required “before collapse becomes inevitable”, the experts said.

A gripping film captures the fraught contests, lonely outposts and human toll of the Philippines’ struggle to assert sovereignty against China

Director Baby Ruth Villarama and her crew board an assortment of maritime vessels to record the ongoing strife and its consequences between the Philippines and China over control of what has recently been named the West Philippine Sea (WPS), formerly part of the South China Sea. This area, which is seen by just about everyone (apart from the People’s Republic of China) as part of the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, has been increasingly infiltrated by Chinese boats, some of them fishing vessels but mostly Chinese coast guard vessels that have harassed, rammed and attempted to board Filipino boats as part of the dispute over sovereignty in the area. Some of the footage seen here is pretty tense, although mostly it’s a game of bluster at sea, with officers on different vessels exchanging puffed-chest speeches peppered with legalese over short-wave radios, a kind of airwave diplomacy.

The film’s title refers to the ongoing efforts by the Filipino army to deliver foodstuffs to some of the tiny islands in the WPS where soldiers hold the line, literally, for long lonely stretches. And when we say “islands”, we’re talking about dollops of sand in shallow waters no bigger than a football pitch, accessible only by inflatable motorboats travelling at frightening speeds. They are certainly scary for the poor baby goats, loaded along with canned food and other supplies that we see scrambling for better footholds as the boats go zooming across the waves. Elsewhere, we follow fishers living in the more populated Scarborough Shoal who complain they are catching less due to Chinese fishing boats in the area.

A pregnant woman’s journey becomes a surreal exploration of class, gender and spiritual transformation in Sofia Alaoui’s striking debut

This film’s tagline tells only half the story: “A young pregnant woman finds emancipation as aliens land in Morocco.” Or possibly it suggests the wrong sort of story, like we’re in for a Roland Emmerich doomsday extravaganza or some high-concept M Night Shyamalan-style shenanigans. Instead, Moroccan film-maker Sofia Alaoui’s debut begins as insightful, sharply observed commentary on class and gender in her home country. The young pregnant woman of the tagline is Itto (Oumaïma Barid), who lives with her husband and his parents in palatial marble-and-gold luxury.

But Itto was not born into wealth: she is from a poor rural family, a fact that her stuck-up mother-in-law (Souad Khouyi) won’t let her forget. Itto is at home alone when a meteorological event hits, a flood that brings out the army in trucks. A neighbour is paid to drive her to the city where her husband and his family are stranded, but the neighbour abandons her in a village. Extremely pregnant and alone, Itto is vulnerabile which makes her fierce, conveyed by the intensity of Barid’s captivating performance. We’ve seen Itto being passive or sulky at home, but suddenly her face has the determination of an Olympic sprinter running towards the finish line.

A gripping film captures the fraught contests, lonely outposts and human toll of the Philippines’ struggle to assert sovereignty against China

Director Baby Ruth Villarama and her crew board an assortment of maritime vessels to record the ongoing strife and its consequences between the Philippines and China over control of what has recently been named the West Philippine Sea (WPS), formerly part of the South China Sea. This area, which is seen by just about everyone (apart from the People’s Republic of China) as part of the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, has been increasingly infiltrated by Chinese boats, some of them fishing vessels but mostly Chinese coast guard vessels that have harassed, rammed and attempted to board Filipino boats as part of the dispute over sovereignty in the area. Some of the footage seen here is pretty tense, although mostly it’s a game of bluster at sea, with officers on different vessels exchanging puffed-chest speeches peppered with legalese over short-wave radios, a kind of airwave diplomacy.

The film’s title refers to the ongoing efforts by the Filipino army to deliver foodstuffs to some of the tiny islands in the WPS where soldiers hold the line, literally, for long lonely stretches. And when we say “islands”, we’re talking about dollops of sand in shallow waters no bigger than a football pitch, accessible only by inflatable motorboats travelling at frightening speeds. They are certainly scary for the poor baby goats, loaded along with canned food and other supplies that we see scrambling for better footholds as the boats go zooming across the waves. Elsewhere, we follow fishers living in the more populated Scarborough Shoal who complain they are catching less due to Chinese fishing boats in the area.