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Romance booksStanley Tucci, Jenny Colgan, David Nicholls and others reflect on their favourite romantic comedies, including Heartburn, A Room With a View and The Spanish Love Deception Curtis SittenfeldThe Idea of You by Robinne Lee I’m madly in love with this 2017 novel by Robinne Lee. It’s about Solène Marchand, a divorced 40-year-old art gallery owner and the mother of a 12-year-old daughter. Solène is gorgeous, sophisticated and unenthused about chaperoning her daughter and a few friends to see and meet a mega-famous boy band … but to her astonishment, Solène and the band’s extremely and delightfully Harry Styles-ish leader, Hayes, have outrageous chemistry and embark on a secret relationship.

Automotive industry This article is more than 15 years oldBuy one car, get one free: dealer's offer as desperation takes hold in showroomsThis article is more than 15 years oldA car dealer desperate to shift stock has stunned the motor industry with an extraordinary offer: buy one car - and get another one free. The Colchester-based online car broker Broadspeed.com said yesterday it had just sold the last of its Dodge Avenger saloons after launching the offer more usually seen on washing powder or packets of bacon.

James Wong on gardensGardening adviceThree deadly carnivores to terrify insects and delight kids If you are a regular reader, you might just have noticed that I have a slight fondness for exotic plants. Hell, let’s be honest, it’s more of an obsession. Yet I like to think that part of my love of them is not just due to personal bias, but because there is simply no other group of plants that quite captures the imagination of such a diverse group of audiences, which might not otherwise be into horticulture.

Lockdown cultureTheatreVikki Stone and Natasha Barnes’s new show celebrates comic songs for actresses – here are their favourites from musicals The Worst Pies in LondonFrom Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim Mrs Lovett is the sort of role that every actress (including me) hopes they’ll play one day. The Worst Pies in London is fiendishly hard to sing, with Sondheim adding stage directions on specific beats, too. But that musicality combined with excellent, funny writing is what gets my juices flowing.

Explain it to me quicklyFashionThe Sun sent a reporter on a horrifying assignment. For our series Explain It To Me Quickly, one Guardian Australia staffer asked another to explain why … quickly There seem to be only three topics animating our colleagues today: the Australian election, Game of Thrones and duct tape fashion. I’ve read too much about the first two. Please explain the third. You know how you see certain fashions on the catwalk and you think, “WHAT?

John Oliver recapJohn OliverThe Last Week Tonight hosts looks into the most powerful lobbying group for homeschooling in the US, which has rolled back regulations in many states John Oliver took on the unregulated legal landscape of homeschooling in the US on Last Week Tonight, as more and more children are taught outside of formal schools. The US homeschooling community is “much broader than just rightwing parents afraid of hypothetical third-grade lube demonstrations”, he started – one estimate has 2 million children homeschooled in the US for reasons from social or health issues to fears of school safety to Black families avoiding whitewashed curricula.

MusicIn 1970, Phil Ochs released Greatest Hits, an album titled with savage irony as his career fell apart. But 50 years on, it remains a powerful indictment of an America losing its way As a kid in the 1950s, Phil Ochs cut class and spent afternoons at the local movie house. The Searchers and Rebel Without a Cause were two of his favourites. Always a dreamer, Ochs fantasised that one day he could be a stoic cowboy like John Wayne, a teenage rebel like James Dean, or a rockabilly sex symbol like Elvis Presley.

Led ZeppelinLed Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven continues to prop up best-ever lists. But what made it great? Jimmy Page and some of the song’s admirers explain its magic Glenn Hughes’s band Trapeze were playing at Mother’s in Birmingham one night in autumn 1971 when John Bonham came barrelling through the doors, pushing through the crowd, until he reached the stage. He climbed up, and without ceremony starting playing along with the group.

Lauren BacallShe slouched on to screens in the 1940s, a new kind of female star: sexy, smart, able to give as good as she got. Sixty years on, Lauren Bacall is still making films - but it is those early lines and angled looks that cast her for ever as an icon. Susie Mackenzie meets her.At the Venice film festival last September, Lauren Bacall made what some might think of as a mistake.