After rereading the entire works of the great Victorian novelist during the pandemic, Peter Conrad became convinced – whisper it – that Dickens is an even greater writer than that other British literary giant, the Bard

• Who is better, Dickens or Shakespeare? We asked nine prominent writers

Early in 2020, as society shut down, I retreated behind closed doors with Charles Dickens, who kept me company and cheered me up throughout the pandemic. Carried along by narratives that Dickens thought of as speedy locomotives and warmed by a combustible imagination that he compared to an industrial forge, I soon felt no need for tame timed circuits of the local park, and I even stopped fretting about the imminent end of the world. But although Dickens saved from me one disease, he infected me with another: escaping Covid-19, I contracted an incurable monomania instead.

Emerging after the last lockdown, I buttonholed any friend who would listen and began to claim that Dickens contained the whole of literature. His novels made everyone else’s seem puny. Larger even than the newly metropolitan London he described, their scale is planetary: looking down from on high in A Tale of Two Cities, he ponders “the feeble shining of this earth of ours” and marvels at the “greatnesses and littlenesses” crammed on to it. Those swarming creatures are not exclusively human. At a country estate in Bleak House, Dickens overhears “motions of fancy” in the barnyard, where stabled horses conspire to corrupt a pony, a dim-witted mastiff dozing in the sun is puzzled by the moving shadows, and a turkey frets about the coming of Christmas. Inanimate objects also qualify as characters, and Sketches by Boz floats a theory about the physiognomy of brass door-knockers, which mould themselves into portraits of the house-owners.

Keir Starmer announces additional £1.6bn package for Ukraine, allowing it ‘to buy more than 5,000 air defence missiles’

Kemi Badenoch said she does not agree that the Oval Office clash was part of an orchestrated “ambush”, as some had suggested, as both Kyiv and Washington were representing their “respective national interests”.

The leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, says there is no difference between Labour and Conservative in terms of British support for Ukraine. When asked about the furious exchange between Trump and Zelenskyy at the White House, the Conservative party leader said her “heart went out” to the Ukrainian president while she was watching it.

I couldn’t believe what was happening. He was being humiliated. I don’t think we should conduct these sort of difficult conservations in front of the cameras and we have to remember that President Zelenskyy is a hero.

He is the person who represents that strength and resilience of the Ukrainian people and whatever difference and difficulties we might have during negotiations we need to be able to set them aside when everyone is watching because the only person who would have liked that wild have been Vladimir Putin.

Self-denial will save the Earth, we’re told. But big emitters seemingly haven’t had the memo

That I fully expect to be dead by the time the UK achieves net zero is, of course, no reason to dodge interim advice from the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the UK’s official climate authority. Its latest report to government is of particular interest to the public, in arguing that a third of the emissions cuts required to achieve net zero by 2050 will have to come from consumers themselves.

Unless we – individual households – accept heat pumps and electric cars and deterrents to flying and less meat (skipping two kebabs per week), the CCC explains, the target cannot be met. And assuming the introduction of a selective news blackout that reduces public awareness of UK plutocrats, celebrities and influencers with colossal carbon footprints, such a behavioural transformation may not be impossible.

The former Baywatch star’s turn as a veteran Vegas dancer single-handedly rewrites her career in Gia Coppola’s bruising and beautiful film

A life spent in the service of dreams and fantasy collides with unforgiving reality: Pamela Anderson’s veteran Vegas showgirl Shelly is forced to face a future that no longer has need of her 1,000-watt smile and glitter-smeared decolletage. The third feature from Palo Alto-director Gia Coppola (granddaughter of Francis, niece of Sofia), The Last Showgirl is a wisp of a thing, clocking in at under 90 minutes and shot in just 18 days. The film’s structure, more a series of vignettes than a linear narrative, feels like the fleeting reflections of a life captured in the facets of a mirror ball. It’s initially tempting to dismiss the picture, like its central character with her breathy, little-girl voice, as superficial. But there’s a bruising cumulative power to this melancholy little paean to an ending era. And Anderson, whose character is left questioning not just what the future holds, but also the costly choices that shaped her past, is excellent, delivering a performance that has single-handedly rewritten the way she is viewed as an actor.

Shelly has only ever been a showgirl; with well over 30 years of service under her garter belt, she is, by no small margin, the longest-serving cast member of Le Razzle Dazzle, an old school Vegas spectacle full of rhinestones, forced smiles and barely there costumes. The show is the last of its kind. It is, says Shelly firmly, a descendent of Parisian Lido culture. But Vegas punters, it seems, no longer have the appetite for showbiz cultural relics, even if they come dolled up in ostrich feathers and nipple tassels. Le Razzle Dazzle has already lost half of its weekly shows to an X-rated adult circus. And now comes the news, delivered by the socially maladroit stage manager Eddie (a lovely, low-key, sad-sack turn from Dave Bautista) that the casino’s management has decided to close the show for good. For most of the girls, who view the gig as just another job that pays the rent, it’s an annoyance. But for Shelly, whose whole identity is wrapped up in her status as a Razzle Dazzle showgirl, it’s an existential emergency.

For all the brand awareness, the human element in decision making in the most emotional of sports is undervalued

When William Goldman wrote in his memoir Adventures in the Screen Trade that in Hollywood “nobody knows anything”, he coined a phrase that spoke directly to the chaos at the heart of the movie industry. It was a remark made in 1983, the year of classic movies such as Tootsie, Trading Places and Local Hero and an era when the box office was booming.

The phrase came to mind this past week in the ballroom of the Peninsula hotel in London, where the great and the good and the rest of the global football industry gathered for the latest FT Business of Football Summit.

Emergency meeting called over strictness of discipline at Essex schools run by Mossbourne Federation

Parents and teachers have voiced alarm about the treatment of children at three Essex schools after they were taken over by a high-profile academy trust which is under investigation.

The Mossbourne Federation, known for strict discipline and high grades, runs four schools and a sixth form in Hackney, and began a takeover of two failing secondary schools and one primary in Essex late last year.