Weeds are undergoing a cultural makeover. Historically vilified as a threat in a nation of impeccable lawns, they are finally being embraced by gardeners, from front gardens to the Chelsea flower show.

The conservation charity Plantlife, which runs the annual No Mow May campaign encouraging gardeners to leave their lawns to grow for a month, said 46% of more than 2,000 people it surveyed would not mow more than once in May, with 40 local councils also pledging to leave wild spaces untended .

A summer-long exhibition at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Wisley garden in Surrey opened last month, celebrating William Robinson, a pioneering advocate of wild gardens.

After last year’s Chelsea flower show, in which weeds were declared “hero plants”, this year saw cow parsley and forget-me-nots, flowers that typically grow wild, win best in show in Ula Maria’s forest bathing garden.

Now a new book focuses on the beauty of these previously unwelcome plants.

Artist and writer Anna Chapman Parker spent a year studying the weeds that grew near her house in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, writing and illustrating Understorey: A Year Among Weeds, which is published this week.

Chapman Parker said her year observing weeds everywhere she went – on the school run, walking her dog or out shopping – had allowed her to look at nature in a new light.

“Once you tune into what’s going on with these plants, the most unprepossessing walk becomes something really interesting and fresh,” she said. “One of the reasons I found this project so great was finding newness and freshness in that very routine, everyday rhythm.”

Chapman Parker’s work on Understorey began about five years ago, when, with two young children, she found she was missing time in her studio. She would take a sketchbook outside with her, drawing whenever she had a chance while her children were playing. “I wasn’t really thinking about what I was drawing,” she said. But often it was weeds.

While visiting the National Gallery in London, she had a lightbulb moment looking at Piero della Francesca’s The Baptism of Christ. Weeds were everywhere, “dotted all over the dry ochre earth, emerging from cracks in every rock,” she writes in the book. “No longer accidental green stuff that didn’t matter: they were a living constancy, a kind of wild connective tissue across time and place. I wanted to know them better.”

Armed with plant-identification apps and a copy of Wild Flowers of Britain by the photographer and botanist Roger Phillips, Chapman Parker learned about as many weeds as she could, making line drawings of them for the book, which spans a full year, showing the natural cycle of plants.

Zoe Claymore, an award-winning garden designer, said that the rehabilitation of weeds in our gardens had come as awareness grew of the climate crisis. “As our society becomes increasingly aware of the climate and biodiversity challenges we face, we are placing greater value on the ‘wild’,” she said. “This awareness drives us to take action in the spaces we can control, such as our gardens … We are reframing what a weed is in response to the climate challenges and biodiversity loss we are facing.”

As gardeners face increasingly volatile and unusual weather, weeds can also be useful, Claymore said. “As gardening requires more resilient plants – and we know the old set of ‘weeds’ are resilient by nature – they become more attractive. I think there is a push to recognise these robust plants and the role they can play.”

Take the groundsel, for example. One of the most widely distributed plants in the world, each specimen bears more than 1,000 seeds, which are resistant to frost, can self-pollinate and produce three generations in a year. “It’s an incredibly impressive plant,” said Chapman Parker.

Weeds are ecologically vital too. Since the second world war, the UK has lost 97% of its wildflower meadows. While most weeds would not be described as wildflowers, they would have grown in the meadows we have lost. Full wildflower meadows are harder to establish, but spaces given over to weeds can benefit pollinators and other insects, providing habitats and shelter for all kinds of animals, as well as capturing carbon.

Weeds, Chapman Parker said, have fantastic names. Groundsel is known as old-man-in-the-spring and there is also shepherd’s purse and ivy-leaved toadflax. Their names highlight a previous, closer relationship we once had with wild plants: we fed sow thistles to lactating pigs and chickweed to hens. Feverfew was a treatment for fevers and those with the “wort” suffix had medicinal uses.

Some weeds – notably the invasive Japanese knotweed – cause havoc or reduce biodiversity by overshadowing other species. But a few pots by the front door could harbour seeds blown on the wind or secreted by a bird.

“That happenstance element, or behaviour, of weeds, it’s so much more interesting than going along to the garden centre and chucking in a few bedding plants,” said Chapman Parker. “It’s really lovely.”

She described her garden as having “lapsed” since she took a keen interest in weeds, although she said she is “not a total rewilding romantic”. “Sometimes people say: ‘Don’t use the word “weed”, it’s negative.’ I think it’s more interesting to reclaim the word as neutral or potentially positive.

“The international conversation around ecology is pretty dark, and most of us feel incredibly powerless and despondent about it. I think these plants are a real signal of hope.”

It is a land of mire, mist and midges that could soon be awarded a special status among the planet’s wild habitats. In a few weeks, Unesco is set to announce its decision on an application to allow the Flow Country in north Scotland to become a world heritage site.

Such a designation is only given to places of special cultural, historical or scientific significance and would put this remote region of perpetual dampness on the same standing as the Great Barrier Reef, the Grand Canyon and the Pyramids.

The Flow Country straddles Caithness and Sutherland in the most northerly part of the British Isles and is the largest area of blanket bog in the world. Covering 4,000 sq km, it is also home to a remarkable range of wildlife that includes the black-throated diver, golden plover, greenshank, golden eagle, merlin and short-eared owl, as well as otters and water voles.

The land is carpeted with sphagnum moss that covers layers of peat that can reach down to depths of 10 metres, enough to bury a double decker bus, while the local plant life includes sundews, which use their sticky tentacles to feed on insects.

It is a remarkable habitat which was the subject of a formal request made last year by a partnership including the RSPB, NatureScot and the Highland Council to have the bogs, pools, lochs and hills of the Flow Country designated a world heritage site, a place of outstanding international importance that deserves ­special protection. Unesco has said that, after more than a year’s deliberation, it is ready to give its formal decision on the application in the next few weeks.

“There are many other, larger areas of peatland in the world – in Siberia, for example – but blanket bog is special,” said Roxane Anderson, professor of peatland science at the University of the Highlands and Islands, which is also involved in the Unesco bid. “Blanket bog can cover very steep slopes, unlike other types of peatland, and can envelop the landscape in a very complex mosaic. It is also very thick, not so much a blanket as a quilt that coats the entire terrain.”

As to the factors that sustain ­blanket bog, Anderson is clear. “It’s the rain and the fog. If you have peat and the weather gets warm and dry, it will dry, crack and fall away in steep areas. But in the Flow Country it never gets dry or hot, so the bog here remains intact, even on sharp inclines.”

The blanket bogs of Caithness and Sutherland have been growing for an astonishingly long time, since the last glaciers retreated from the north of Scotland more than 10,000 years ago. Over this time, they have played a critical role in storing carbon. The Flow Country covers a total of almost one million acres of land and stores more than 400m tonnes of carbon in its blanket bog, scientists have calculated. However, there is a downside to this mix of peatland and peace: midges. The Flow Country is rated as one of the worst places in Scotland for that eternal curse of Caledonia, Culicoides impunctatus. Midges appear as maddening clouds of biting bugs that will attack humans, livestock and pets and they thrive in the region’s boggy, acidic ground which provides a perfect environment for breeding.

The region is also remarkable because it provides an extensive area of wild land and solitude on the other­wise highly developed and densely populated British islands. This desolation was enhanced during the clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries, when many Highlanders were forcibly evicted from their homes in the wake of the failed uprising by the Jacobites. Vast tracts of the north of Scotland were depopulated as a result.

Just what the Flow Country will gain if it is made a world heritage site remains to be seen, however. “At present, tourists take the North Coast 500 route, a 500-mile circuit of roads that loop round the north of Scotland completely skirting the Flow Country,” said Frances Gunn, chair of the Flow Country World Heritage Project steering group. “We hope that, in future, if they see signs telling them they are passing a world heritage site, they might take a detour and visit us.”

A key site to appreciate the ­wonders of the Flow Country is the RSPB reserve at Forsinard which covers more than 21,000 hectares and provides sights of golden plover, dunlin, greenshank, hen harrier, skylark and meadow pipit. “It provides a perfect view of the glories of the Flow Country,” said the RSPB’s Milly Revill Hayward.

Gunn, who has lived in the area all her life, recalls the onset of summer when she was young. Families would set off to cut peat from land at the edge of the main part of the Flow Country. “It was a great social occasion that could last a long time, depending on the weather. For us, peat was a key source of energy. Today, we now realise that peat helps provide us with protection against ­climate change.”

From her house, Gunn has a clear view of the peatlands of the Flow Country, while from the other side of her home, in Tongue, she can ­witness the creation of another remarkable local project: the Sutherland Space Port which is being constructed on the nearby A’ Mhòine peninsula. In the near future, rockets fired northwards from the port, over the open seas, will carry satellites into orbits that will sweep over the poles and allow them to monitor the Earth below.

“It’s a neat juxtaposition,” said Gunn. “On one side, we will be working to protect the past in our neighbourhood and preserve the Flow Country. On the other, we will be launching space probes that will allow us to survey the state of the environment in every other part of the globe.”

Deontay Wilder’s career as an elite heavyweight came to a crashing end. For Daniel Dubois, the journey into the top flight is only just beginning. And the unceasing, unsentimental round-and-round of boxing’s glamour division turned in dramatic fashion early Sunday morning in the an-Nafud desert.

Wilder, who held the WBC’s version of the heavyweight title from 2015 through 2020, suffered a brutal fifth-round knockout at the hands of Zhilei Zhang in the main event of a joint Matchroom-Queenbury card that pitted the stables of British boxing’s leading promoters against one another.

The disastrous defeat marked the American’s fourth loss in his past five outings and the likely terminus for the 38-year-old fighter widely regarded as boxing’s biggest puncher, who had strongly hinted at retirement in the run-up to the crossroads fight at Riyadh’s Kingdom Arena.

“I have to pay attention to his right hand, but I successfully took his right hand away,” Zhang said through a translator. “I block a few punches, but hell yeah. He punches hard. I give him a lot of respect. He’s a heavy puncher.”

Zhang, the 41-year-old from China’s Henan province based in the suburbs of Newark, New Jersey, was coming off a December setback against Joseph Parker where he lost on points despite scoring two knockdowns. But he spent the opening four rounds on Sunday morning pressing an eye-opening weight advantage of 68lbs and methodically walking down the uncharacteristically timid Wilder, who appeared a silhouette of the Alabama knockout artist who raced to a record of 40 wins in 40 fights with 39 coming inside the distance before the first instalment of his heavyweight championship trilogy with Tyson Fury back in 2018.

Wilder roused from his slumber early in the fifth, landing a pair of wild right hands that moved his mountainous foe backwards, but the abrupt offensive created openings that Zhang wasted little time seizing on. Within moments he’d spun Wilder 180 degrees with a lead right hook that left the American stunned before following it up with a free shot: a second right hook that detonated flush and dumped him to the seat of his trunks. Wilder managed to beat the 10-count, but he was out on his feet and referee Kieran McCann correctly stopped it at the 1:51 mark.

“I lost to Parker,” Zhang said. “It was a fair loss. He was a better man that night. But I do think I learned a lot from that fight, because after I knocked out Joe Joyce [twice in 2023], I was overconfident and I underestimated Parker. So I learned that I had to stay focused. As long as the bell doesn’t ring, stay focused.”

The mostly dull affair, at least until the violent denouement, was in stark contrast with the all-action, defense-optional melee before it, which saw Dubois upset the odds and take a major stride toward a heavyweight title shot with an eighth-round stoppage of Filip Hrgović, a 2016 Olympic bronze medalist and the IBF’s mandatory challenger .

The twice-beaten Dubois, a 26-year-old from south-east London who lost by ninth-round knockout to unified heavyweight champion Oleskandr Usyk in August, absorbed heaps of punishment in the opening rounds as Hrgović found alarmingly consistent purchase with one punishing right hand after another. But the 31-year-old Croatian was cut over his right eye in the second round and over his left around the fifth and his conditioning wilted under the frenetic pace that he’d set from the opening minutes.

By the seventh Dubois was stalking Hrgović around the ring, throwing and landing heavy blows with his exhausted opponent in retreat. The bloodied Hrgović, whose white trunks had faded to an ominous pink, was badly hurt by a concussive right hand near the end of the frame, then a pair of explosive shots along the ropes that might have closed the show if not for the bell.

Dubois picked up where he left off in the eighth but it wasn’t long before referee John Latham called time, summoning the ringside physician to inspect Hrgović’s double wounds. When the doctor proved unsatisfied, Latham waved it off 57 seconds into the round and Dubois’ career-best performance was accomplished.

“I ate them shots, but it was all to wake me up,” Dubois said of his sluggish start. “Once I’ve felt a few shots, a few stings, I woke up and I was just on it. I just thought don’t wait. Don’t wait.

“The round before the last, I was getting to him. It was just coming together like magic. … I’m just so proud of myself for this. It’s all a learning experience. I’ve come from rock bottom last year and now we’re back on top.”

The heavy-handed Briton nicknamed Dynamite claimed the IBF’s interim heavyweight title with Sunday’s win, which could be upgraded to a proper world championship should Usyk, who outpointed Fury for all four major titles last month, be stripped by the sanctioning body ahead of their scheduled Demember rematch. Dubois could also move into a lucrative showdown with former two-time champion Anthony Joshua, who took in Sunday’s action from ringside.

“I’m glad I’ve got this IBF belt and on to the next,” Dubois said. “I’ve heard the next opponent will be AJ, so bring it on. I’m just anxious to to become the best. This is my era. This is my time, and I just need to keep improving and [keep] coming through these tests.”

Earlier, Liverpool’s Nick Ball gave Britain a second current male world champion by winning the WBA featherweight title from the American Raymond Ford in a razor-thin 12-round split decision.

One judge scored it 115-113 for Ford but was twice overruled by the same margin for Ball, who captured a world title in his second try after being cruelly denied in a controversial March draw with Mexico’s Rey Vargas.

“He’s a tough man and a class boxer. I had to dig deep to get the belt,” Ball said. “I’m made up. I should be two-time [champion] but it’s not the case. I’m the champ now so it doesn’t really matter.”

The 27-year-old Merseysider finished strong in a wildly entertaining back-and-forth scrap that surely demands a rematch. He joins WBO cruiserweight title-holder Chris Billam-Smith as Britain’s second man to currently hold a major world title.

Also on the undercard Russia’s Dmitry Bivol successfully defended his WBA light heavyweight title against Malik Zinad of Libya, scoring a knockdown in the opening session before winning by sixth-round TKO for his first stoppage win since 2018.

The unbeaten Bivol, one of the sport’s most gifted technicians and a fixture on pound-for-pound lists since a 2022 win over Canelo Álvarez, was initially slated to headline Saturday’s card against Artur Beterbiev in a hugely anticipated four-belt unification fight for the undisputed title at 175lbs. But Beterbiev was forced to withdraw due to a ruptured meniscus suffered in training camp last month, prompting Zinad’s call-up as a replacement opponent.

Afterward Turki Alalshikh, chairman of the General Entertainment Authority and the driving force behind Saudi Arabia’s expanding influence in boxing, entered the ring to announce that Bivol’s fight with Beterbiev was rescheduled for 12 October in Riyadh.

China’s Chang’e-6 lunar probe has successfully landed on the far side of the moon to collect samples, state media reported on Sunday.

The lander set down in the immense South Pole-Aitken Basin, one of the largest known impact craters in the solar system, Xinhua news agency said, citing the China National Space Administration.

It marks the first ever attempt to collect samples from the rarely explored area of the moon, according to the agency.

The Chang’e-6 is on a technically complex 53-day mission that began when it took off on 3 May.

The probe will attempt to scoop up lunar soil and rocks, and carry out other experiments.

That process should be complete within two days, Xinhua said. The probe would use two methods of collection: a drill to collect samples under the surface and a robotic arm to grab specimens from the surface.

Then it must attempt an unprecedented launch from the side of the moon that always faces away from Earth.

Scientists say the moon’s “dark side” – so-called because it is not visible from Earth, not because it never catches the sun’s rays – holds great promise for research because its craters are less covered by ancient lava flows than the near side.

Material collected from the dark side may better shed light on how the moon formed.

Plans for China’s “space dream” have been put into overdrive under its president, Xi Jinping.

Beijing has poured huge resources into its space programme over the past decade, targeting a string of ambitious undertakings in an effort to close the gap with the two traditional space powers: the US and Russia.

It has notched several notable achievements, including building a space station called Tiangong, or “heavenly palace”.

Beijing has landed robotic rovers on Mars and the moon, and China is only the third country to independently put humans in orbit.

But Washington has warned that China’s space programme is being used to mask military objectives and an effort to establish dominance in space.

China aims to send a crewed mission to the moon by 2030 and plans to build a base on the lunar surface.

The US is also planning to put astronauts back on the moon by 2026 with its Artemis 3 mission.

Stormy Daniels has called for Donald Trump to be jailed after he was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records.

The adult film star, who was paid $130,000 as “legal expenses” for her silence about her affair with the former US president, warned the presidential candidate is “completely and utterly out of touch with reality”.

“I think he should be sentenced to jail and some community service working for the less fortunate, or being the volunteer punching bag at a women’s shelter,” Daniels, 45, told the Sunday Mirror.

Daniels said she feels “shocked” but vindicated after a jury at a New York court quickly convicted Trump, which she said showed they believed her testimony.

But she said she cannot escape death threats from Trump’s supporters, which she has faced since she spoke out about a payment by Trump’s then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, which was allegedly to ensure she remained silent in the days leading up to the 2016 US election about the alleged sex she had with the businessman at a celebrity golf tournament 10 years earlier.

“You always feel like you’re the bad guy, even when you’re not just being up on that standard,” she told the paper.

“Being in court was so intimidating with the jurors looking at you but I’m glad that the stuff came out in court that wanted to come out and prove, like I said, I’ve been telling the truth the entire time.

“It’s not over for me. It’s never going to be over for me. Trump may be guilty, but I still have to live with the legacy.”

The verdict against Trump came after the jury deliberated for less than 12 hours in the unprecedented first criminal trial against a US president, current or former.

It marks a perilous political moment for Trump, the presumptive nominee for the Republican nomination, whose poll numbers have remained unchanged throughout the trial but could tank at any moment.

Trump was convicted by a jury of 12 New Yorkers of felony falsification of business records, which makes it a crime for a person to make or cause false entries in records with the intent to commit a second crime. He will be sentenced on 11 July at 10am ET.

Wembley officials were left embarrassed after three pitch invaders caused a delay to the Champions League final between Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund despite the presence of more than 2,500 stewards as part of increased security measures.

An 18-month operation had been put in place in an attempt to avoid a repeat of violent scenes that marred the Euro 2020 final between England and Italy, with a large police presence at Wembley and throughout London.

Metropolitan Police said 53 arrests were made during the final, five linked to the pitch invasion and “the majority of others for attempts to breach security”.

It is the nature of the pitch invasion which will raise most questions. The game had to be halted barely 30 seconds after kick-off when three men made it on to the turf, with one attempting to take a selfie with Madrid’s Vinícius Júnior and Jude Bellingham before eventually being bundled off.

Another who had eluded security for almost a minute was eventually apprehended with the help of the Dortmund midfielder Marcel Sabitzer, with a fourth invader stopped before he could get over the barriers.

All those involved were wearing T-shirts which appeared to bear the name of the Belarusian streamer Mellstroy. The 25-year-old was reported to have offered £300,000 to anyone who ran on during the final with his name on their shirt.

The incident caused a two-minute delay to the match, with the UK broadcaster TNT Sports cutting away during its live coverage. An announcement at half-time reminded fans that entering the field of play was “an arrestable offence”.

After the serious disorder at the Euro 2020 final – and the 2022 Champions League final in Paris having been brought to the brink of disaster by organisational failures – officials had pledged an unprecedented security operation involving more than 2,500 stewards and a £5m investment in security infrastructure.

Speaking before Saturday night’s match, the FA’s tournaments, events and interim stadium director, Chris Bryant, had said: “It is vital we deliver and do every­thing we can control in the best ­possible way … We are in a really good place, we’ve been ­planning in detail for 18 months.”

A Met Police spokesperson added that footage circulating online after the game of groups of ticketless fans trying to force a way inside “does not necessarily represent successful attempts to enter the stadium. There are typically multiple further levels of security beyond an initial entrance.

“We are confident that the overwhelming majority of attempts to unlawfully gain access to Wembley this evening were unsuccessful thanks to the efforts of officers, stewards and other stadium staff.”

A Wembley spokesperson said last night: “We will support the relevant authorities to ensure appropriate action is taken.”

It is the competition that Real Madrid like to think they own and the reasons why were mapped out in graphic detail at Wembley. Yet again. Borussia Dortmund brought the punch of the underdog and they played with a stirring liberation in the first half, creating chances and, well, missing them. It was impossible to think they would not regret it.

Madrid reset at half-time and when they started to press, everybody knew they had seen this movie, especially the ending. If Vinícius Júnior was a symbol of Madrid’s travails in the first half – booked for a lunge at the Dortmund goalkeeper, Gregor Kobel; guilty of a lack of conviction, at times – he relocated his game to dazzling effect thereafter.

In the first period, the Dortmund right-back, Julian Ryerson, had been up close and physical against him, enjoying success. After the interval, Vinícius was simply too much, flicking on the afterburners, making his moves, including a jaw-dropping stop-and-go nutmeg on Ryerson.

It was Dani Carvajal who scored the crucial first goal, getting in front of Niclas Füllkrug to flick home a Toni Kroos corner. And something seemed to break in Dortmund at that point. Few people had believed Edin Terzic’s team would escape the group of death with Paris Saint-Germain, Milan and Newcastle, let alone get past PSV Eindhoven, Atlético Madrid and PSG in the knockout rounds. The only faith came from within their ranks.

Now it waned. Madrid poured forward. Jude Bellingham, who was below his best, was denied by a last-ditch Nico Schlotterbeck challenge; Eduardo Camavinga worked Kobel from distance; Nacho did likewise with a header from a corner. Dortmund have been the eternal bridesmaids in recent years and they would be so again, their fate confirmed when Ian Maatsen played a loose pass to Bellingham and he released Vinícius, who was never going to miss.

Dortmund’s cast-offs, journeymen and unheralded names would summon one last push on 87 minutes, Füllkrug flashing home a header from Karim Adeyemi’s cross only to be pulled back for offside. There was no fairy tale for the team that finished fifth in the Bundesliga. Against Madrid – in this tournament – they do not happen.

It was European Cup No 15 for Madrid, La Decimoquinta, and their ninth from nine finals since the Champions League rebrand in 1992. Milan are next on the list with seven. Madrid have won six in the last 11 seasons alone. For Carlo Ancelotti, it was his fifth as a manager – a record; he has two more from his playing days – while it was number six as players for Carvajal, Nacho, Kroos and the substitute Luka Modric, equalling Paco Gento’s all-time mark.

When Kroos was withdrawn for Modric in the 85th minute, he saluted the Madrid fans. He knew, not that there was any doubt by then. He had started the party and now retires from club football at the very pinnacle. Could there be a final act for him at Euro 2024 with Germany?

It was a typically star-studded occasion, Sir Alex Ferguson, Zinedine Zidane and Figo among those present; Jürgen Klopp, too. The former Dortmund manager was given a tremendous ovation by the club’s supporters when he was pictured on the big screen.

Dortmund dominated the first half, bringing the aggression in the duels, their No 8s, Marcel Sabitzer and Julian Brandt, stepping high. It was remarkable to see how they got runners in behind the Madrid defence. They enjoyed a concerted patch of pressure around the midway point when they created their openings and there were two huge ones.

The first was for Adeyemi, the winger sent through for a one-on-one with Thibaut Courtois, Madrid’s recently returned goalkeeper. In his four games in May – his only four of a season undermined by serious knee ligament problems – Courtois did not concede. Madrid needed him here. Spooked by Courtois, Adeyemi took a heavy touch, going too far wide. His shot was blocked by the covering Carvajal.

Brandt had enjoyed the first opening only to be crowded out and after Adeyemi had almost got on to a low cut-back, Dortmund had their second big moment. It was Maatsen who robbed Camavinga and, having raced back towards the Madrid goal, he released Füllkrug who guided first-time on the stretch for the far corner. The ball came back off the inside of the post. It was agonising.

Madrid offered next to nothing as an attacking force in the first 45 minutes and Dortmund had other flickers, Adeyemi extending Courtois from a tight angle; Sabitzer doing likewise from further out. Courtois had been the difference in Madrid’s previous Champions League final victory over Klopp’s Liverpool in 2022. “That fucker Courtois,” as Klopp called him a couple of weeks ago.

It had certainly been a strange start to the showpiece, a worrying one, too, from a security point of view. Three men ran on to the pitch in the opening few minutes, the first stopping to take a selfie with Vinícius. Where were the stewards? Nowhere. The first two invaders left of their own accord; the third ran back on before a few luminous bibs finally showed up.

Madrid stirred after the second half restart. Ancelotti wanted Kroos to drop deep to make the play, which he did, and Camavinga to push up in central midfield. The connections which were not there before the interval started to fire.

Kroos forced Kobel to tip a curling free-kick behind; from the corner, Carvajal headed off target. Carvajal also had a side-on volley blocked by Maatsen. Füllkrug planted a header straight at Courtois but the tide had turned, Madrid on the front foot. When Vinícius shaped a cross towards the far post, Bellingham was inches from making the decisive contact but the goal was coming. As it always does for Madrid.

The Tory general election campaign hit more trouble on Saturday as Rishi Sunak faced accusations of using levelling up funds to win votes and Labour opened its biggest poll lead since the disastrous premiership of Liz Truss.

As Sunak tried to fire up his ­party’s campaign before the first crucial TV debate with Keir Starmer on Tuesday, it emerged that more than half of the 30 towns each promised £20m of regeneration funding on Saturday were in constituencies won by Tory MPs at the last election.

Some 17 of the £20m pots went to towns in areas won by the Conservatives in 2019, although two of those were no longer held by Conservative MPs when the general election was called.

Just eight awards were made to towns in Labour seats, although many of the party’s strongholds tend to be in more deprived areas in need of levelling up money.

The funding pledge led to accusations from Sunak’s opponents of “pork barrel” politics, while those involved in regeneration of the north said the announcement was more about winning votes than levelling up.

The row came as the latest Opinium poll for the Observer on Sunday gives Labour a 20-point lead – the highest level it has recorded since Truss was briefly running the country.

This is despite Labour having endured a torrid week on the election trail and days of infighting over whether veteran Diane Abbott should be allowed to stand again.

Labour is on 45% – up four points on last weekend, while the Conservatives are down two points on 25%. Reform is up on one on 11%, the Lib Dems down two on 8%, and the Greens down one on 6%.

The poll also showed more people (45%) thought the Tories’ big announcement last weekend – the reintroduction of a form of mandatory national service for 18-year-olds – was a bad idea than thought it was a good one (35%).

Some 28% said their opinion of Sunak had become more negative since the start of the campaign, against 18% who said it had become more positive. By contrast 28% said their view of Starmer had become more positive against 18% who said it was now more negative.

Henri Murison, chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, an independent body representing business and civic leaders in the north of England, criticised the regeneration announcement. “This is nothing to do with raising prosperity. This is only about trying to win a few votes at election time,” he said.

Murison added that a separate announcement last weekend by the government to abolish the UK shared prosperity fund, which replaced EU structural funds, to help fund the national service scheme, had in reality been the last “nail in the coffin” for levelling up. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has found the Conservative proposals would leave the UK’s poorest regions millions of pounds worse off.

Sunak said on Saturday that the party had allocated more than £15bn to overlooked areas across the UK since 2019 and had used established methodology to select the areas that would benefit. A Tory spokesman said the party was “providing more funding to the most deprived towns in the areas with the highest need of levelling up”.

The towns in Tory areas include Gainsborough in Lincolnshire. Edward Leigh, its veteran Conservative candidate, said money had been pledged to the town “following our lobbying”. He said it would be “the greatest boost the town has ever had”.

Justin Madders, who retained the seat of Ellesmere Port and Neston in the north-west of England for Labour in 2019, said “given their monumental failure to deliver on levelling up over the last four years, why would anyone believe this is going to make a difference now?”

Lib Dem Treasury spokesman Sarah Olney said: “It will take more than this desperate attempt at pork barrel politics to win over voters after years of failure on the NHS and cost of living.”

Starmer, in an interview for the Observer with his biographer Tom Baldwin, attempted to draw a line under the row over Abbott’s candidacy by lavishing praise on the veteran. “Although I disagree with some of what she says … I have actually got more respect for Diane than she probably realises,” he said.

Referring to Tuesday’s debate on ITV, Starmer suggested he would not be trying to land a knockout blow on Sunak, but was going to “keep it calm and measured”. He said: “Having carried this ming vase around for a while now, I am going to avoid the temptation to start juggling it.”

Starmer said Donald Trump’s 34 convictions last week were “off the charts and more the kind of thing you would find in fictional books than real life.” But he said it will be necessary to work with whoever is in the White House. “When you are serious about being in power you have to work with whoever other countries have as their leader.”

Last night the Tories announced a £1bn plan to bring more NHS care services into the community, meaning fewer people will have to see a GP. As well as modernising 250 GP surgeries, the party pledged to build 50 new community diagnostic centres on top of the 160 built in this parliament.

Labour renewed the row between the two main parties over tax, saying that chancellor Jeremy Hunt must rule out increasing VAT on things including food and children’s clothes, after he seemed to leave the door open to raising it.

In a recent interview with the Daily Telegraph, Hunt said the Tories would not raise “the main rate of VAT” for the duration of the next parliament. But the main rate does not apply to essential goods and services that are taxed at the zero or reduced rates of VAT.

One of the dangerous “fools” caricatured in a medieval printed satire called Ship of Fools is the Foolish Reader. He is shown in an illustration surrounded by his many learned volumes, but he doesn’t read any of them. This idiot, depicted with many others, including a Feasting Fool, a Preaching Fool and a Procrastinating Fool, was a warning to the wise by the German author Sebastian Brandt 530 years ago.

Now research at a London university has unearthed a rare English 1509 copy of this book once owned by the renowned English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. And the 1494 satirical allegory, which pokes fun at various kinds of public folly, sheds new light on Bentham’s influential ethics.

It also makes it clear that Bentham himself was not the sort of fool to ignore his own books, since he has left revealing notes and formulas inked in the margins of several pages.

Bentham, the father of utilitarianism, is the man who established the principle that the best actions are those that create “the greatest good for the greatest possible number”. He remains the presiding academic muse at University College London, set up by admirers in 1826 to honour his intellect and academic approach. Bentham’s ethics were also later an inspiration to liberal theorists such as John Stuart Mill.

Last month, UCL academics unveiled the most significant rediscovered books left to the university in Bentham’s will, including the translation of Brandt’s Ship of Fools and a maths textbook explaining Euclid’s propositions. Their contents, together with the philosopher’s own notes, indicate how some of his radical ­theories were first sparked.

Bentham’s famous formulas for good governance now seem like a response to both the idiocy depicted in Ship of Fools and the mathematical clarity of Euclid. Dr Tim Causer, principal research fellow at UCL’s Bentham Project, believes the books show that the philosopher’s repu­tation as a “cold calculator” is undeserved.

“He had a well-developed sense of humour,” said Causer, whose team is working on a new definitive edition of Bentham’s collected works. “From his correspondence, you can see he had a dry wit and a sarcastic turn of phrase.”

But Bentham’s love of sums is just as evident: “There’s a mathematical sense to a lot of what he does, and this collection is a real window into the intellectual and cultural world of one of the world’s great thinkers.”

Critical margin notes under one of Euclid’s geometrical propositions are in Bentham’s handwriting. “The truth of this assertion of the commentators is not so obvious,” a jotting suggests.

Also in the bequest is a rare copy of the last volume of The Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande by Raphael Holinshed (1577) – the text used by Shakespeare as a source for his history plays – and another history, The Union of the Two Noble and Illustre Famelies of Lancastre and Yorke by Richard Grafton (1548).

Masters student Isabel Evans from California, studying library and information at UCL, has identified what she thinks is Bentham’s signature on the frontispiece of this huge volume. “We are still verifying some of the handwriting,” she said last week, “but you can just see that it has been crossed out later.”

Evans’s detective work was prompted by a chance conversation when Causer learned from a colleague of the extent of the gifts made to the university after Bentham’s death in 1832. Causer realised many of the valuable titles had gone astray.

“It is really exciting. There are still slips of paper in some pages that Bentham put there 200 years ago,” said the university’s head of rare books, Erika Delbecque, who is overseeing Evans’s work. “It is a hugely significant because Bentham is so closely related to the history of the university.”

Causer is confident more of Bentham’s books could be tracked down with further research funding: “A long-term aim is to digitise the books and make them available as a virtual Bentham library, but in the first instance we are trying to find out where they are. Some of the books date back to the 15th and 16th centuries. They are really important works and are priceless.”

Bentham’s last will and testament also infamously included the highly unusual stipulation that his body be publicly dissected and preserved as an “auto-icon”. In keeping with the dead man’s wishes, his skeleton, dressed in his own clothes and topped with a wax head, is still on display in the UCL student centre.

A climate activist was arrested at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris after sticking a blood-red poster over Monet’s painting of poppy fields. The woman then revealed a T-shirt saying ‘L’enfer’ (hell). The action by a member of Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) – a group of environmental activists and advocates of sustainable food production – was seen in a video posted to X. In the video she said of the poster covering Monet’s art that ‘this nightmarish image awaits us if no alternative is put in place’