The Times

5 hours ago | thetimes.com | Karen Dacre

What was your first memorable purchase? When I was about 12 or 13 my godfather took me shopping in Jenners, Edinburgh, where he bought me a pair of grey herringbone trousers. They were rough tweed, possibly Harris, with a little mitred coin pocket with a flap. I adored them and was still wearing them a few years later on the night I lost my virginity. I’d wear them with an oversized jacket, as was the style at the time. I wore those trousers all over. I definitely wore them at Coasters Roller Disco.

6 hours ago | thetimes.com | Michael Grant

Russell Martin used to enjoy being able to go for a stroll in Glasgow’s west end and find somewhere to sit and read. For years his visits to the city passed in peaceful anonymity, even though he was playing fairly regularly for Scotland at the time. With the stroke of a pen his privacy vanished. Signing a contract to become a Rangers player removed the cloak of invisibility. What he regarded as precious — that anonymity — was gone.

11 hours ago | thetimes.com | Tom Shone

The entry threshold for film spin-offs is amazingly low these days. Han Solo got his own because he helped to destroy the Death Star. Professor Dumbledore got one starring Jude Law because he made sure Harry Potter finished his homework. The first we saw of the heroine of the new action flick Ballerina was a brief scene in John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum where John Wick (Keanu Reeves) glimpsed a young ballerina, bearing a number of interesting tattoos, in training at his local crime syndicate.

11 hours ago | thetimes.com | David Collins |Hugo Daniel

A British soldier based at the army’s barracks in Kenya has been accused of raping a woman, close to where a local mother was murdered, also allegedly by a soldier on secondment to the country. The alleged rape occurred last month after a group of soldiers visited a bar in Nanyuki near British Army Training Unit Kenya (Batuk), which is north of Nairobi.

12 hours ago | thetimes.com | David Leask

“The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees,” sneered Samuel Johnson, “is the high road that leads him to England.”The London wit and English dictionary author always revelled in his contempt for Scotland. But there was — and still is — a grain of truth in his 18th-century jibe. Many Scots do seek their fortune south of the border. In 2022-23 some 34,500 Scottish residents moved to other parts of the UK. A lot? Of course, but also the second lowest figure since records began.