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How to follow The Time Traveller's Wife – a ballet

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Audrey Niffenegger, author of the bestselling The Time-Traveler's Wife, has never felt that she was cut out for ballet. "I'm five foot nine, I'm not the most athletic person by any stretch of the imagination and I've always had a poor sense of balance," she remarks. "Watching someone go up on pointe, it's like, 'How does she do it?'. I didn't even learn to ride a bike until I was nine – I kept falling over. I felt like another species!"

Gardener's world of botanical escapes

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

What's the attraction?

London is in bloom, celebrating the centenary of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show until Saturday with bigger, better and more elaborate displays than ever (rhs.org.uk).

Arias and graces in Ravello

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

It's only the first night of my visit, and I'm beginning to wonder if I'm the only non-famous person to have stayed in this lovely southern Italian town. Richard Wagner, born 200 years ago today, was one of many celebrities to appreciate the operatic drama of the Amalfi coast – and its main town, Ravello.

Natalie Haynes: Confessions of a Booker judge

Tue, 21 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

I have hit the halfway point. Four months in, 75 books read, 75 left to go. Judging the Man Booker Prize, to paraphrase Bette Davis, is not for sissies. I did the Orange Prize last year (about 50 books for each judge), and it ate up all my free time: during every bus journey, every moment sitting waiting for a film to start, every interval of whatever play I was reviewing, I'd whip out a book and cram a few more pages in.

Exclusive: Championship clubs set to push for safe-standing trials

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:41:50 GMT

The Football League is facing mounting pressure to back trials for safe standing after an overwhelming majority of Championship clubs went against the League's stance and voted in favour of permitting trials at a meeting earlier this season.

Why clubs are keen to take a stand

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:41:49 GMT

It was on Valentine's Day that representatives of 22 Championship clubs gathered in the Lineker Suite within Leicester City's King Power Stadium for one of their regular get-togethers. At item six on the agenda was a motion that read: "The Football League would encourage and support the instigation of a rail seat/safe-standing trial period at any League club wishing to run such a trial. This permission would only apply during a new build or stadium redevelopment." It was passed by 21 votes to one.

Phil Neville in frame for role at Stoke City

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:41:49 GMT

The former England international and Everton captain Phil Neville is in the frame for a senior coaching role at Stoke City following the departure of manager Tony Pulis after seven years in charge at the club.

In the end the fans decided Tony Pulis had made a pig's ear of the job at Stoke City

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:41:49 GMT

The Stoke City players had their end-of-season bash a week early on the penultimate Sunday of the season, and rather than Stoke-on-Trent it was 55 miles north up the M6 at a restaurant in the upmarket new Spinningfields district of Manchester city centre that they toasted another year in the Premier League.

James Lawton: The James Hunt I knew is the subject of a new F1 movie

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:41:49 GMT

Amid all the hype building around the Hollywood blockbuster that will shortly bring back to life the extraordinary duel between James Hunt and Niki Lauda in 1976 there is a curiously poignant memory. It is of Hunt sitting in his elegant house beside Wimbledon Common, shortly before he died in 1993 at the age of just 45, and enthusing over his latest project.

Stuart Hogg: Ready to climb his own Everest

Tue, 21 May 2013 21:41:49 GMT

Stuart Hogg knows the words of Jim Telfer, the finale to the "this is your Everest" speech delivered by the granite-hewn Scot on the eve of the 1997 series in South Africa, the last time the Lions came home victorious. They are written in rugby history, a seminal moment in the Lions story, and Hogg, despite being the cub of the latest tour party, knows his rugby history.

Oklahoma tornado: ‘Our hearts are broken. This is bigger than anything I’ve ever seen. It’s huge. It’s horrific’

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:55:29 GMT

They are the lucky ones along Telephone Road close to Main St in Moore, Oklahoma. Their homes are spattered all over as if by a giant muck spreader, but they are still standing, Two more blocks, however, at SW 4th Street, you cross the boundary that divides the spared from the destroyed, the still living from the dead or missing.

Reformist blocked from running for Iranian presidency

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:41:13 GMT

One of Iran's most reform-minded presidential candidates has been barred from standing in next month's presidential ballot by the conservative Guardian Council leaving just eight men on the ballot paper, all of whom are considered hardliners.

Donald Macintyre's Sketch: If the Tory beast needs red meat, call for Chris Grayling

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:27:55 GMT

When a minister is needed to feed the ever-restive Tory beast with some red meat, you could do a lot worse than Chris Grayling. The tribunes of the anti-European, anti-gay marriage cohort looked to him for some reassurance that the Government had not all turned cuddly. And the Justice Secretary, no slouch in playing to the right-wing gallery, did not disappoint.

Disarray as DPP contradicts new guidance on naming of suspects

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:25:01 GMT

Controversial plans to protect the identity of suspects arrested by police were in disarray last night after the Director of Public Prosecutions called for more “wriggle room” to name suspects before they were charged.

Bipolar pregnant woman tells court: I’ll kill myself if I’m denied an abortion

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:20:25 GMT

A pregnant woman with severe mental health problems told a High Court judge that she would kill herself and her unborn daughter if he did not allow her to have an abortion.

Oklahoma tornado latest: Obama pledges support for 'as long as it takes' to rebuild the suburb of Moore

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:15:11 GMT

As the frantic rescue work continued in Moore, President Obama promised that the federal government would get everything needed “right away” to victims of the devastating tornado that struck on Monday afternoon, killing at least 24 people.

Reforms to teachers’ pay ‘will mean bigger class sizes’

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:00:29 GMT

Children will face larger class sizes as a result of the plan to let heads award higher pay rises to good teachers, the chief schools inspector has warned.

Boris Johnson: The flawed Mayor of London

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:33:28 GMT

Boris Johnson’s ‘recklessness’ about pregnancy and the feelings of others when committing ‘extramarital adulterous liaisons’ raises questions about his fitness for public office. That was the conclusion of an extraordinary judgment by the Appeal Court this week: that his ‘reckless’ attitude to the women and children involved is a matter of public interest that overrides the normally paramount rights to privacy of a blameless infant.

Andy McSmith's Diary: Listen children, the world really was created in seven days

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:30:53 GMT

A question thrown up while MPs were arguing over gay marriage is whether fundamentalist Christian teachers should have a legal right to propagate creationism in the classroom. This cropped up while opponents of gay marriage were fighting a rearguard action to ensure that any religious group or individual with a religious objection to gay marriage was protected from anti-discrimination law.

Apple CEO Tim Cook tells Senate: Tiny tax bill isn’t our fault – it’s yours

Tue, 21 May 2013 19:25:38 GMT

Apple “avoided” more than $1m (£650,000) in US taxes every hour last year, a senior Washington lawmaker said as the tech giant found itself the centre of the debate over loopholes in international tax laws.

'The ultimate all-in-one home entertainment system': Microsoft finally unveils its Xbox ONE console

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:57:41 GMT

Microsoft has unveiled the Xbox ONE, its hotly anticipated replacement for the hugely popular Xbox 360.

PM under more pressure as 130 Tory MPs oppose gay marriage Bill

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:56:56 GMT

David Cameron's leadership came under further pressure tonight as 130 Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage and he was warned that the proposal would now run into fierce opposition in the House of Lords.

Take disabled sport seriously, urges Baroness Grey-Thompson

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:46:44 GMT

Seven months after the Prime Minister gave an emotional speech insisting that the Paralympics had transformed perceptions of the disabled in Britain, a former Paralympian has launched a scathing attack on the Government’s approach to sport, insisting that fewer disabled children are competing now than in the early 1980s.

Hospitals freeze A&E targets - because they can’t hit them

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:27:00 GMT

Hospitals across Britain have been forced to suspend targets to see accident and emergency patients within four hours because they can no longer cope with demand, doctors and managers have warned.

Pop for pop: Is the music used to market soft drinks ever any good?

Tue, 21 May 2013 18:13:13 GMT

We’ve already heard a snippet of Beyoncé’s track “Grown Woman”, which was teased in her Pepsi commercial last month, but now the whole song has leaked online (although those who made it to her Mrs Carter tour would have heard it performed in full).