The president-elect tapped into a fierce anti-establishment sentiment – and the Democrats didn’t have enough to say

The party was buzzing, the confidence was surging and Kenneth Stewart was riding the Trump train. “He’s masculine,” explained Stewart, an African American man from Chicago. “He brings a lot of energy. He talks about things that we can understand. He talks about building. He talks about the auto industry. He talks about a lot of stuff that people in the Rust Belt care about.”

Stewart was a guest at Donald Trump’s election watch event in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday night and celebrated his victory over Democratic vice-president Kamala Harris. The result said much about gender, race and the new media landscape. It also represented a populist backlash against America’s perceived elites.

Continue reading...

The singer, 35, opens up about fame before social media, psychiatric support, and the one thing she’d change about her wedding

I was anxious from the womb. It’s who I am. As a child, my thoughts would happen at night-time: I’d struggle to breathe and have stomach aches. Depression came in my late teens. The doctor suggested therapy and I was outraged. “I’m British. We don’t do that.” Then I realised anxiety had spilled over into something else.

My nan called me “Sunshine and Showers”. I was either happy or low, without much in between. It wasn’t until I was older I realised she was right. I got a “Sunshine and Showers” tattoo but she had dementia by then and didn’t remember that’s what she called me. Instead, she told me off for having a tattoo.

Continue reading...

AO Arena, Manchester
In an expansive, transporting show that draws on his diverse decades and a world of pain, the singer-songwriter turned guru to all sets his sights on the stars – and anyone within touching distance

“YEAHYEAHYEAHYEAHYEAH!” barks Nick Cave, crouched face to face with the first few rows of an audience who are having, at a conservative estimate, the time of their lives. Four-and-a-half decades into an already serpentine career, the Australian singer-songwriter’s recent history has thrown up a great many surprise developments, not least a radical rapprochement between this often forbidding artist and the rest of humanity.

On his Red Hand Files – a kind of open-source life coaching website – Cave now makes himself publicly available, answering existential dilemmas and basic factchecks with candour and no little humour. Since the death of his teenage son Arthur in 2015 and the outpouring of fellow feeling it provoked, Cave’s worldview has undergone a tectonic shift. Previously, his output most often saw mankind – and it was most often man kind – as bad to the bone.

Continue reading...

As UK diagnoses have doubled, prescriptions of the treatment have halved. While experts feud over its use, many patients feel it is an effective way of managing their condition

Occupational stress is a trigger for Rebecca Wilde, a 32-year-old tech worker in Buckinghamshire. Four years ago, work pressures combined with family issues affected her sleep, leading to a severe manic episode. She was hospitalised for a month and a half, and diagnosed with type 1 bipolar disorder , also known as bipolar 1, a mood condition that can have devastating consequences if not managed well. Mania, and sometimes psychosis, is present in type 1.

Wilde was experiencing both: at one point, she thought she could talk to dogs. She was put on the antipsychotic drug olanzapine and another mood stabiliser, lithium. She has now been taking lithium alone for a year, and it has been transformative. “On the lithium, I definitely feel like me,” she says.

Continue reading...

A stirring performance by Víkingur Ólafsson of a piano concerto written amid a period of great sorrow. I think we could relate

On Wednesday evening, I went to the Royal Festival Hall on London’s Southbank Centre to hear the Icelandic pianist, Víkingur Ólafsson, play Brahms’ Piano Concerto No 1 , the tickets for which I’d booked aeons ago, in ignorance of the future significance of the date. Ólafsson’s marvellous name conjures someone ruggedly bearded, a tame puffin or guillemot perhaps sitting on the shoulder of his tufty jumper, when in fact he looks more like one of the cast of Mad Men . But either way, to see him on stage is incredibly exciting. He plays with such fervour, leaning into the orchestra whenever his fingers are idle, his body like a flag in high wind.

Ólafsson’s encore was immaculately well judged. “This is a prayer for the world,” he said, before giving the crowd his version of Ave Maria, composed by his countryman Sigvaldi Kaldalóns. Don’t worry: this isn’t one of those awful hopey, joy-is-a-strategy columns. We’re where we are now because one lot of people is wholly unable to imagine how another lot of people thinks; it would be sensible of me not to make any assumptions about how you felt last Wednesday.

Continue reading...

Bree Hughes says state’s safeguards to curb gambling are a ‘joke’ after she realised very few venues checked if she was on the self-excluding list

• Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast

After Bree Hughes signed herself up to Victoria’s pubs and clubs pokies self-exclusion program, she didn’t go into any venues for several months.

“I was worried about what might happen if I tried to enter,” she says. “So I didn’t even attempt it.”

Sign up for a weekly email featuring our best reads

Continue reading...

The masks were never exactly on to begin with – social media was a hotbed of bigotry long before Trump’s victory. But winning has emboldened his followers

Well that didn’t take long, did it? As soon as it became clear that Donald Trump had won the election, social media saw a major spike in gleeful misogyny. And it seems Trump’s army of angry incels have found a favourite new catchphrase to taunt women with: “Your body, my choice.”

Continue reading...

Tickets to visit ruins buried by Mount Vesuvius, seen by 4 million this summer, to be capped at 20,000 a day

Pompeii plans to limit visitor numbers to 20,000 a day and introduce personalised tickets from next week in an effort to cope with overtourism and protect the world heritage site, officials said.

This summer, a record 4 million people visited the remains of the ancient Roman city, buried under ash and rock after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79.

Continue reading...

• Updates from Premier League 3pm kick-offs and more
• Live scores | Share your thoughts with Dom via email

Crystal Palace (3-4-3): Henderson; Clyne, Lacroix, Guehi; Munoz, Chalobah, Devenny, Mitchell; Sarr, Kamada, Mateta.

Fulham (4-2-3-1): Leno; Tete, Andersen, Bassey, Robinson; Berge, Pereira; Nelson, Smith Rowe, Iwobi; Jimenez.

Continue reading...