Jon Stewart on US attacks in Iran: ‘A war with no clear purpose, no end in sight’

Late-night hosts delved into the new US regime-change war in the Middle East, after Donald Trump directed the US military to bomb Iran in conjunction with Israel.Jon Stewart opened The Daily Show on Monday in a daze, after Iran state media confirmed that US and Israeli forces killed its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, over the weekend. The host joked that, for the surprise occasion and chaos that followed, he needed to bring back “a 20-year recurring segment” titled “Mess O’Potamia”.“America, apparently, had to start an entire war to kill an 86-year-old man in ill health and not wait – I don’t know – three weeks to let saturated fat do its thing,” he joked.He then played a clip of Trump, wearing his USA hat, announcing the so-called “Operation Epic Fury” against Iran from his luxury golf course in Florida

How to keep free entry to UK museums and galleries | Letters

I believe that national museums should be free for all. Your report (Is the UK’s golden era of free museum entry coming to an end?, 21 February) quoted me from a Daily Telegraph article that selectively used parts of a much longer interview. I said in principle that people would be willing to pay; however, I then outlined all the reasons this would not work financially, practically and ethically. I do not wish to be represented as a mouthpiece for those who wish to introduce charges.Nick MerrimanHastingleigh, Kent There is an easy answer to the budget difficulties faced by many UK art galleries and museums: identity cards

The Guide #231: ​How the ​hunt for the ​next James Bond ​became the ​franchise’s ​best ​marketing ​tool

Callum Turner’s turn as James Bond lasted at most a couple of weeks. No sooner had he been enshrined as frontrunner to succeed Daniel Craig, than he was nudged from the DB5 driver’s seat by the latest heir apparent, Jacob Elordi, installed as the new bookies’ favourite after his smouldering, highly profitable performance in Wuthering Heights. Smarting somewhere in the background is Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who seemed locked in for the job a couple of years ago, enjoying the backing of former 007s Pierce Brosnan and George Lazenby, but now seems to have fallen out of favour. And don’t forget the succession of other dead cert Bonds now banished to the back of the odds market: the long-rumoured likes of Tom Hardy and Idris Elba (both now likely to have aged out of the role); Theo James; James Norton; Josh O’Connor; Harris Dickinson; Bridgerton’s Rége-Jean Page; and approximately 5,000 other predominately British actors who have enjoyed box office success/led a successful TV drama/look good in a tuxedo.On and on the hunt goes

My cultural awakening: Operation Mincemeat taught me how to cry – now I sob at everything

A musical number about a woman’s letter to her husband on the second world war frontline unlocked my ability to blub – and made me a happier personI am sure I must have cried as a child, but by the time I was a teenager it had stopped. It was probably a boarding school thing. Very stiff upper lip. My parents are not the most emotionally available human beings, either. I like to tease them by saying: “I love you

‘My guitar was mangled – like my life!’ Goo Goo Dolls on how they made epic ballad Iris

‘I’m grateful to Taylor Swift, and others who have covered it, for introducing the song to a new generation. Three billion streams on Spotify is astonishing!’I was going through a divorce and living in a hotel in West Hollywood when my manager said Warner Brothers were seeking songs for the movie City of Angels. They already had U2, Peter Gabriel and Alanis Morissette, so I thought getting a track on there would draw attention to us. Warners showed me the film and it was like Wim Wenders’ Wings of Desire. They wanted a song for the scene where the angel – played by Nicolas Cage – decides to become human to be with the woman he loves

My cultural awakening: Leonardo da Vinci made me rethink surgery – I’ve since mended more than 3,000 hearts

For one heart surgeon, seeing the Renaissance artist’s anatomical drawings gave him a natural understanding of the body that was often overlooked in modern medical scienceIf you’d asked my teenage self, growing up in a small village in Shropshire, what I wanted to do with my life, I would have talked about art and music long before I spoke of scalpel blades and operating theatres. As an 18-year-old, I intended to go to art school, until my mother sat me down and told me rather bluntly that being an artist wouldn’t earn me much money. As she spoke, a surgical documentary flickered across the screen of the black-and-white television in our living room. I told her, half joking, that that was what I’d do instead. Which is how I ended up repeating my A-levels and fighting my way into medical school, where I qualified in 1975