When Stephen Spencer began setting his daughter’s surreal stories to music, he had 36 followers. Now his banging pop miniatures have been streamed nearly 30m times – and are making parents cry

I’m listening to the latest Stephen Spencer song when suddenly I burst into tears. Was it the falsetto vocals? The swirling harmonies? No, it was the lyrics: “What did Apple-the-Stoola say? He said ‘I love you’ twenty-sixty times.”

Spencer, you see, has a unique lyrical collaborator: his three-year-old daughter. Over the last four months, he has been posting short songs online based on her stream-of-consciousness stories. There’s a smooth soul number about “a regular rabbit, who has regular ponytails just like me”. A song called Funchy the Snow-woman that could fit easily on to a 1975 album, but for its lyrical message about using a litter tray in the forest. And a festive tune about a Christmas cat called Harda Tarda, who hopes that Taja (“a funny way to say Santa”) will bring her “a doggy, a puppy and a ninja-bread man”.

Growing up in a turbulent household taught me to expect the worst. Then one day I found £20 in the street and shifted my thinking

Growing up, I was envious of one type of person. It was never the kids who were smarter, sportier or more popular. My awe was reserved for a rarer breed of people: optimists. I was hypersensitive to the ease with which they sailed through exams, social gatherings or teenage milestones with a sunny conviction that things would more or less work out. To me, they were the chosen people. “It’ll be fine,” one such friend would reassure me. “Or you could embarrass yourself,” my mind would purr like a villain. “Be rejected. Fail.”

I was a chronic worrier. A negative Nancy. I couldn’t fathom that people’s brains weren’t hardwired to compulsively fear things might go wrong. I grew up as the eldest daughter in a turbulent household where my father’s moods would plummet quickly and I walked on a knife-edge. Every morning, the second my eyes opened, I would force myself to accept it was going to be a bad day – an act of self-preservation so the rug could never get pulled from under my feet hoping for better. My thinking was that if you always expected the worst, things had a tendency to turn out better than you imagined.

As her Women’s prize-winning novel heads to the Oscars, we rate the author’s best work – from tales of new motherhood to a life-affirming memoir of mortality

The ghost of a previous lover is always a challenge, particularly if you (mistakenly) believe that she’s actually dead. This is the unenviable situation for Lily, the protagonist of O’Farrell’s second novel, who is swept off her feet by dashing architect Marcus and in short order moves in with him. Lily takes his assurances that her predecessor Sinead is “no longer with us” to mark a more permanent absence; in fact, Sinead has simply been thrown over, and it is in the details of the collapse of her relationship with Marcus that the novel most engages. Hints of the gothic ghost story deepen one of the main takeaways, which is that Marcus consists almost entirely of red flags.

After JD Vance’s frontal attack in Munich last year, the US secretary of state’s tone seemed almost soothing. That’s just a new Maga trap

The good news from the Munich Security Conference is that there was no dramatic deterioration in the transatlantic relationship. After the shock of last year’s event, when JD Vance stunned the audience with a frontal US attack on Europe’s liberal democracies, the seemingly more conciliatory tone struck by Marco Rubio was greeted by many present, including Wolfgang Ischinger, a veteran German diplomat and the conference chair, as “reassuring”. Indeed, the US secretary of state got a standing ovation in the room – a gesture perhaps more of relief than of adulation. But is the Trump administration’s message to Europe really any different now from that contained in Vance’s assault 12 months ago? What traps are being laid and what lessons should Europeans draw?

A year ago, Vance accused Europe of succumbing to the alleged tyranny and censorship of woke liberals and losing sight of the cultural bonds that link the two shores of the Atlantic. His attack baffled European leaders, who, while often prone to navel-gazing about their internal struggles, do not consider restrictions on free speech a primary concern. The US vice-president shocked Munich by insisting that Europe’s biggest threat was the woke “threat from within”, even as he endorsed far-right nationalists including Germany’s AfD. The insult was so deep that this year the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, used his opening address to issue a blunt warning about American unilateralist values, declaring that “the culture war of the Maga movement is not ours”.

Nathalie Tocci is a Guardian Europe columnist

The maximalist adaptation of the gothic romance shows great interest in production design but very little in character

It does not take long into Wuthering Heights, Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Emily Brontë’s English lit classic, for one to detect the film-maker’s true faith. It is not to the challenging and beloved gothic novel of emotional repression and inheritance; as with many other cinematic adaptations, Fennell dispenses with the unruly latter half of the book, along with most of its conventions. In Fennell’s emphatically maximalist vision – she has explained that the quotation marks in the film’s marketing are a note of humility, to her singular and limited interpretation – the tortuously connected Cathy (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) swoon about the Yorkshire moors in extravagant, anachronistic formalwear, flagrantly unbound by period decorum.

Over three features, the English writer-director has demonstrated a penchant for sticky visuals; arguably the most-discussed scene from 2023’s Saltburn, her discourse-driving sophomore feature, involved the licking of cummy bathwater from the drain. Wuthering Heights is not to be controversially out-soaked. In closeup, sweat beads and drips down a spine; snail slime indolently streaks a window; freshly poured pig blood mucks Cathy’s dress. Desire, less suggested than enforced, stains everything. Early in the film, just after the abrupt ageing of Cathy and Heathcliff from boundless children (played by Charlotte Mellington and Adolescence’s Owen Cooper) to unspecific adults, Elordi’s brooding, beastly Heathcliff catches Robbie’s blonde Cathy, furiously horny after a bit of light voyeurism, pleasuring herself against the windswept rocks. She tries to hide her hand in her dress; he picks her up by the bodice strings, and licks her fingers clean.

The Guardian’s community affairs correspondent, Chris Osuh, reports on the plot by two IS terrorists to massacre Jews in Manchester, and how it was thwarted by an undercover sting

Walid Saadaoui had once worked as a holiday entertainer, organising dance shows and quizzes at a resort in his native Tunisia. After moving to the UK and marrying a British woman, he became a restaurateur and an avid keeper of birds.

All the while, however – as the Guardian’s community affairs correspondent, Chris Osuh, explains – he was hiding a secret: he had pledged allegiance to Islamic State.

British women in Spain and Greece face ‘huge problems’ entering UK because of differing surname rules

New rules requiring British dual nationals to show a UK passport when entering Britain are “discriminatory” against women, campaigners claim.

From 25 February, British dual nationals are required to present a British passport when boarding a plane, ferry or train to the UK, or attach a new document, a “certificate of entitlement”, which costs nearly £600, to their second passport.

Prime minister says outcomes of consultation on social media ban should be implemented quickly as technology minister says Australia-style ban is not inevitable

In his Q&A with journalists, Keir Starmer was also asked to respond to a report by the BBC’s James Landale saying he is looking at plans to raise defence spending to 3% of GDP by the end of this parliament. In the past Starmer has just said that he would like to do this at some point in the next parliament.

In his reply, Starmer said that at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend he was arguing that the UK, and Europe as a whole, needs to “step up”.

We want a just and lasting peace, but that will not extinguish the Russian threat, and we need to be alert to that, because that’s going to affect every single person in this room, every single person in this country, so we need to step up.

That means, on defence spending, we need to go faster.

PM says ‘we need to step up’ but sources clarify that is unlikely to mean spending 3% of GDP before next election

• UK politics live – latest updates

Keir Starmer has said Britain “needs to go faster” on defence spending, though any increase to military budgets in this parliament would probably not be as high as the £15bn suggested in an overnight report.

At a press conference in south-west London, the prime minister was asked to comment on a BBC report that No 10 wanted to increase the defence budget to 3% of GDP by 2029.

Hopes of success remain low after Trump points finger at Zelenskyy and as Russia keeps up hardline demands

• Europe live – latest updates

Senior Ukrainian and Russian officials are to meet this week in Switzerland for a second round of talks brokered by the Trump administration, days before the fourth anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The two-day meeting, kicking off on Tuesday, is expected to mirror negotiations held earlier this month in Abu Dhabi, with representatives from Washington, Kyiv and Moscow in attendance. Despite renewed US efforts to revive diplomacy, hopes for any sudden breakthrough remain low, with Russia continuing to press maximalist demands on Ukraine.