The singer-songwriter on breaking up his band, recovering from a stroke, being too old to be a punk, and the chaos of recording with Mark E Smith

In these deeply troubled, fractured, febrile times, why did you call the new record Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation? smileywombat
It was Grace’s choice [Grace Maxwell, his wife and musical collaborator]. Up in Helmsdale [in the Scottish Highlands], in my studio, I have an art deco radiogram speaker which has a sort of sunburst thing with that phrase written on it. For £60 on eBay – pristine! It was the BBC World Service motto. When we were casting about for a title for the new record, it seemed like a great expression. Grace said, if you’re going to call it that you have to write a song with that title. So I did.

I very much enjoyed the new song Knowledge and the video, shot in Helmsdale. Do you like to travel much these days or are you pretty much happy at home? nogs09
I like Helmsdale, and Grace loves it. When I was seven, eight years old, I spent every holiday in Helmsdale, walking with Stuart, my grandfather. And, one year, Mum and Dad said, I think we’ll go to Spain. I said, you can go wherever you like – I’m going to Helmsdale. We’ve been abroad loads of times since I had the stroke [in 2005] – to Japan once, to Australia. But I love getting home to the studio. That fragrance of the air. The fresh air. It’s beautiful.

The singer-songwriter on breaking up his band, recovering from a stroke, being too old to be a punk, and the chaos of recording with Mark E Smith

In these deeply troubled, fractured, febrile times, why did you call the new record Nation Shall Speak Unto Nation? smileywombat
It was Grace’s choice [Grace Maxwell, his wife and musical collaborator]. Up in Helmsdale [in the Scottish Highlands], in my studio, I have an art deco radiogram speaker which has a sort of sunburst thing with that phrase written on it. For £60 on eBay – pristine! It was the BBC World Service motto. When we were casting about for a title for the new record, it seemed like a great expression. Grace said, if you’re going to call it that you have to write a song with that title. So I did.

I very much enjoyed the new song Knowledge and the video, shot in Helmsdale. Do you like to travel much these days or are you pretty much happy at home? nogs09
I like Helmsdale, and Grace loves it. When I was seven, eight years old, I spent every holiday in Helmsdale, walking with Stuart, my grandfather. And, one year, Mum and Dad said, I think we’ll go to Spain. I said, you can go wherever you like – I’m going to Helmsdale. We’ve been abroad loads of times since I had the stroke [in 2005] – to Japan once, to Australia. But I love getting home to the studio. That fragrance of the air. The fresh air. It’s beautiful.

Why purchase American-made F-35 jets instead of upgraded T5 Typhoons? Surely that would make a mockery of all he promised

In his statement to parliament last week, Keir Starmer pledged £13.4bn more spending on defence from 2027, rising to 3% of GDP in the next parliament. This additional spending is critical for our future defence. The House of Lords defence committee has pointed out that decades of underinvestment have hollowed out our defences, and that our vulnerabilities, especially in air defences, could put the UK in peril.

The prime minister also promised that the government “will translate defence spending into British growth, British jobs, British skills and British innovation”. Our 70,000 Unite members working in UK defence companies will certainly hold him to it.

Why purchase American-made F-35 jets instead of upgraded T5 Typhoons? Surely that would make a mockery of all he promised

In his statement to parliament last week, Keir Starmer pledged £13.4bn more spending on defence from 2027, rising to 3% of GDP in the next parliament. This additional spending is critical for our future defence. The House of Lords defence committee has pointed out that decades of underinvestment have hollowed out our defences, and that our vulnerabilities, especially in air defences, could put the UK in peril.

The prime minister also promised that the government “will translate defence spending into British growth, British jobs, British skills and British innovation”. Our 70,000 Unite members working in UK defence companies will certainly hold him to it.

We asked some of the UK’s finest cooks and restaurateurs about the tools that make all the difference, from tomato knives to stick blenders

• Want to avoid forever chemicals? Here are the best PFAS-free frying pans

We all have that gadget we reach for in the kitchen; the everyday item that changes the way we cook, making chopping, zesting citrus fruit, flipping fish and grinding spices that little bit easier (plus, saving fingertips). A kitchen gamechanger doesn’t have to be fancy, though – Feast’s Georgina Hayden finds a tomato knife picked up on holiday indispensable.

So which gadgets and tools will make your kitchen life complete (and perhaps more enjoyable)? We asked some of the UK’s top chefs about the things they couldn’t live without.

Royal Festival Hall, London
Renée Fleming brought her communicative gifts to Strauss’s Four Last Songs in a programme dominated by Wagner. Making his LPO debut, Thomas Guggeis was an urgent presence

It was Donald Tovey who first coined the phrase “bleeding chunks”, referring to the often unsatisfactory practice of excerpting Wagner’s operas out of context. German conductor Thomas Guggeis’s rather neat solution here was to stitch them together into a relatively seamless whole. It certainly worked well in the second half of this Wagner and Strauss program, the London Philharmonic segueing effortlessly from Tannhäuser into Lohengrin and on to Die Meistersingers von Nürnberg.

Guggeis, whose Wagnerian credentials are impeccable, was an urgent presence, his eloquent body language and balletic arms conveying his every musical wish. If it was a little distracting at times, the results spoke for themselves. In the Tannhäuser Overture, the burnished brass of the Pilgrims hymn contrasted with skittish violins and woodwind in the Venusberg music. Sensual strings were coaxed to an orgiastic climax replete with crashing cymbals and clacking castanets before Guggeis crouched low to tease out a balmy post-coital epilogue.