Blitz and sieve those pods into a flavour-packed, emerald-green puree that’s perfect for stirring through a risotto base

Inspired by Raymond Blanc’s pea risotto from his 2015 book Kew on a Plate, today’s dish is Blanc at his best, demonstrating his skill and thrift at the highest level. I’ve simplified the original by making it entirely from pea pods and parmesan rind, not least to show just how much flavour and colour they hold.

Danish toymaker’s first-half profits also rise, and sales almost double at UK-based Yoto, creator of screen-free speakers for children

Lego said it could be benefiting from parents’ desire to keep children – and themselves – away from smartphones as sales rose 12%, helped by strong sales of its Botanicals and Formula One grand prix-themed sets.

The Danish toy company said sales increased to a record 34.6bn Danish kroner (£4bn) in the first half of the year, rising well ahead of the recovering global toy market in which sales rose 7%.

• First baseman also threw bubble gum and helmet

• Bat hit player’s batting coach during incident

Major League Baseball has suspended St Louis Cardinals first baseman Willson Contreras for six games after he threw his bat while arguing with umpires on Monday night.

Contreras’ bat hit his own coach, and the player also spiked his batting helmet and threw a bucket of bubble gum from the dugout on to the field.

Donmar Warehouse, London
Mike Bartlett’s invigorating play becomes a state-of-the-world drama about whether it is possible to live responsibly in our age of toxic capitalism

Mike Bartlett’s striking three-act play is a curiously changing thing. It begins as a blended-family satire with eco-arguments and generational clash bolted on. But with each act the ground on its earthy set turns, developing into what might be a state-of-the-nation play and entering into similar ground to Bartlett’s brilliant Albion in its portrait of middle-class urbanites who have upped sticks for an alternative, “better” rural existence through sustainable farming.

It grows into something bigger and more universal still, to become a play about how to live responsibly in the midst of toxic capitalism. Are the characters who seek freedom in fact in retreat? Is localism just a yearning for a purer past and can we rewild our way to a new pastoral idyll? Important questions are asked through the prism of a family headed up by Ruth (Hattie Morahan), her shaggy, laconic partner, Lip (Sam Troughton) and Ruth’s former stepdaughter, Milly (Nadia Parkes).

Last year’s total fertility rate of 1.41 was lowest since comparable data was first collected in 1938, ONS says

The fertility rate for England and Wales has fallen for the third year in a row to reach a record low, figures show.

The total fertility rate across both nations, meaning the average number of live children women can expect to have across their child-bearing life, stood at 1.41 in 2024, down from 1.42 in 2023, the lowest since comparable data was first collected in 1938, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Two such groups claim they persuaded Alberta to institute sweeping public school book ban

Socially conservative “parents’ rights” groups that have emerged as powerfully political lobbying groups in the US are quickly gaining ground in Canada, academics and free speech advocates say, after two such groups claimed they had persuaded Alberta to institute a sweeping public school book ban.

Alberta recently directed schools to purge library books from shelves that fit its definition of “explicit sexual content” by 1 October. If the policy is applied precisely as outlined, a host of books face being purged, including George Orwell’s 1984 due to passages in the text that discuss sexual intercourse and rape.