Just as in the Oval Office this week, history shows the royals can be deployed to serve British interests – whether they like it or not

As Donald Trump waved his personal invitation from King Charles III to pay a second historic state visit in the Oval Office, there was no disguising his delight before the TV cameras.

Keir Starmer had retrieved the letter from his jacket pocket and handed it to the US president with the dramatic flourish of Neville Chamberlain’s “I have in my hand a piece of paper” moment.

Vance snaked his way in first to the row between Trump and Zelenskyy, his second intrusion this month after Munich

• Live reaction to Zelenskyy’s clash with Trump and Vance

JD Vance was supposed to be the inconsequential vice-president.

But his starring role in Friday’s blowup between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy – where he played a cross between Trump’s bulldog and tech bro Iago – may mark the moment that the postwar alliance between Europe and America finally collapsed.

Research shows strong support for keeping tax-free accounts in their current form with £20,000 annual limit

• Cash Isa providers fail to offer savers benefits of more flexible rules

A campaign to “save” cash Isas gathered pace this week, with research published showing strong support for the savings accounts.

However, data was also issued that investment firms said showed UK savers were “paying the price” for playing it safe because putting money into the stock market can generate much higher returns.

She is the Sex Education star now stealing the show in Mike White’s hit series and about to appear in a gritty new Netflix drama. It’s all she ever wanted – but somehow, this ‘sad and shy’ actor finds folding the washing more rewarding than fame

Aimee Lou Wood has a peculiar habit of losing herself. She is known among her fellow cast members for capsizing so completely into a role that they can’t tell who they’re talking to: Wood or her character. (This probably wasn’t helped by the fact that her standout debut role in Sex Education was also called Aimee.) Suranne Jones, who plays alongside her in forthcoming dramedy Film Club, even bought her a bag with a big A on it: “And she said to me,” Wood says, “‘You can put things in there, and that’s Aimee’s bag, so you don’t lose who you are.’ My imagination and my reality can get scarily blurred.”

Wood has been searching for more clarity recently. “I’ve noticed more and more that I’m thinking: what do I actually want? Where can I be the driver and not the passenger?” I meet the 30-year-old in a kind of yoga-adjacent cafe in London. She’s got a Shelley Duvall thing going on, where you can’t tell whether her face – wide open eyes like a Disney fawn, tentative smile – is what makes her seem honest yet mysterious, or whether those qualities created her face. Either way, she looks both very film star, in leather blazer, Dr Martens and miniskirt, yet also not out of place in this hippyish restaurant.

Campaigners say if government can find money to freeze fuel duty for motorists they can do similar for railways

Rail passengers in England and Wales face a steep increase in the cost of travel from Sunday, with fares rising by 4.6% and most railcards going up by £5.

The government said the rise is needed because of the dire financial state of the railway, but transport campaigners contrasted it with Labour prolonging the freeze on fuel duty for motorists.

The Oz-set blockbuster, plus the Inside Out and Dune sequels, packed out cinemas but won’t win best picture at Sunday’s Academy Awards

Box-office success is a strong indicator of Oscars failure at this year’s Academy Awards, with the two highest-grossing best picture nominees among those titles least likely to win.

Wicked and Dune: Part Two have both made more than $700m globally, but neither is tipped – by anyone – to pick up the top prize on Sunday in Hollywood. Wicked, Jon M Chu’s first half of his adaptation of the Broadway musical, is currently on $728m, from an estimated $150m production budget.