There’s been high drama in Ambridge and a great start for Today’s new presenter. Plus, a delightful Lee Krasner documentary and an amusing study of unfinished art

The Archers (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Today (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Death of an Artist: Krasner and Pollock | Pushkin Industries/Samizdat Audio
Archive on 4: Gareth Gwynn Hasn’t Fin- (Radio 4) | BBC Sounds

Pray for this week’s radio reviewer, allergic since time immemorial to the theme tune of The Archers, finding herself writing in the thick of a blockbuster storyline. But with a crack consultant to hand (my mother-in-law, who remembers listening to Grace Archer dying in a stable fire in 1955: thank you, Lill) I’m braving the challenge.

These images highlighting themes of climate resilience, personal trauma and identity are part of an exhibition of the work of students from more than 25 different countries

• The annual student showcase will be on view for at the International Center of Photography from 18 May until 2 September

Tal Danino’s day job at Columbia University, New York, is engineering “living” medicines. “We program microbes for cancer therapy using synthetic biology,” he says. As a side hustle he manipulates and photographs the microbial world; his images are collected in a book, Beautiful Bacteria. Taking bacteria from substances such as wastewater, dental plaque or kimchi, Danino lets them multiply in a petri dish, adding dyes. The results are artworks differing from the digital enhancements often made in scientific photography to make images more informative. Indeed, he says, the microbes deserve some credit: “They do often deviate from our plans, becoming active collaborators in the creation of the work.”

Beautiful Bacteria: Encounters in the Microuniverse is published by Rizzoli (£38.50). To order a copy for £33.88 go to guardianbookshop.com or call 020-3176 3837

When on holiday in Berwick the artist often gave his work away. Now a new exhibition reveals the value of drawings that survived in a shoebox

A 1958 drawing of a family with their dogs by LS Lowry from one of his many holidays in Berwick-upon-Tweed is to go on public display for the first time. But the sketch is lucky to have survived: it was kept in a shoe box for 43 years, emerging somewhat creased because its recipient had little idea of Lowry’s significance.

The signed and dated drawing on headed notepaper from the Castle Hotel, where the artist stayed for most summers from the 1930s until the 1970s, was given to hotel receptionist, Anne Mather. “I didn’t think much about it, and only after he died did I remember it,” Mather told the Berwick Advertiser in 2001 when she put the sketch up for auction. “He was quiet and reclusive, but I can still visualise him in the lounge. He would sit and doodle, with his glasses at the end of his nose.”

The novelist on the continuing relevance of Ibsen, the joyful quilt art of Faith Ringgold and where to find British scotch eggs in New York

Born in Greenwich, Connecticut in 1966, author Claire Messud studied at Yale University and the University of Cambridge. Her first novel, 1995’s When the World Was Steady, and her book of novellas, The Hunters, were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner award; her 2006 novel The Emperor’s Children was longlisted for the Booker prize. Messud is a senior lecturer on fiction at Harvard University and has been awarded Guggenheim and Radcliffe fellowships. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband, literary critic James Wood; they have two children. Her latest novel, This Strange Eventful History, is published on 23 May by Fleet.

Jonathan Yeo’s divisive painting of the king raises the question of whether paintings of the monarchy have become irrelevant and anachronisitic

Why do reports always say that a portrait of someone great and good has been “unveiled”? The word is an empty metaphor that turns the first viewing into a ceremony; it also mystifies the entire procedure and makes it somewhat morbid.

Portraits of kings, presidents, prime ministers and the like are effigies, meant to replace the mortal being. Once the official image has been fixed in place, the living subject can be sent off to die. The unveiled portrait draws a veil over another ceremonial occasion: what we are looking at is posterity’s verdict, so in effect we are attending a funeral.

The photographer and her husband came across an abandoned boat while out walking and took the opportunity to float a surreal idea

Every September, Carla Vermeend and her husband go on holiday to Terschelling island, in the Netherlands.

“It has lots of nature, right in the middle of the Wadden Sea, which is listed by Unesco as a world heritage site,” says Vermeend, a Dutch photographer. During their visit in 2014, the couple were walking by the sea together.

Shocking, arresting and extraordinary photographs that shifted how women are seen in the world

• Author Anne Enright: ‘The lens has not lost its power to claim and possess’

By Sophy Rickett

John Krasinski and Ryan Reynolds go family-friendly in their new imaginary-friends comedy, while the singer swaps introspection for lust on her long-awaited new album

If
Out now
In what has to be one of the more enviable showbiz lives, John Krasinski has played Jim in The Office, married Emily Blunt, and written and directed acclaimed horror franchise A Quiet Place. Now he turns his hand to family entertainment, writing and directing this part-animated fantasy about imaginary friends made visible with a little help from Ryan Reynolds and Steve Carell.

‘Bakery scent’ added via microcapsules to postage stamp celebrating ‘jewel of French culture’

The French Post Office has released a scratch-and-sniff postage stamp to celebrate the baguette, once described by President Emmanuel Macron as “250 grams of magic and perfection”.

The stamp, which costs €1.96, depicts a baguette decorated with a red, white and blue ribbon. It has a print run of 594,000 copies.

War in Gaza, the Russian offensive in Kharkiv, protests in Georgia, the Northern lights and the Cannes Film Festival: the last seven days as captured by the world’s leading photojournalists

Warning: this gallery contains images that some readers may find distressing

Photographer Dougie Wallace has been looking at the impact of the decriminalisation of cannabis in Thailand, from Khaosan Road to the beach resorts, such as Krabi and Phuket, that attract tourists

The decriminalisation of cannabis in Thailand in June 2022 has led to an explosion in marijuana shops across the country – especially in its tourist areas. It is sold at trendy dispensaries in Bangkok, at beachside bars across resort islands and even on river cruises. On bustling streets, green leaf logos glow in neon above shop fronts, and small stalls, set up with rows of glass jars, dot the pavement.

Tourists and street advertiser in Patong, Phuket

Benediktas Gylys admits he was surprised by the rowdy behavior that came from the exhibit connecting people in the two cities

The artist behind the controversial “Portal” art exhibit that visually linked New York and Dublin in real time, but was then closed due to rowdy and extreme behavior by the public using it, has admitted he was surprised by the reaction.

Benediktas Gylys also vowed to continue with his project, which has the aim of connecting people and communities all over the world and is hoped to reopen soon.

A mega egg in Paris, a hovering hotel in Machu Picchu, an hourglass tower in New York, a pleasure island in Baghdad … we reveal the architectural visions that were just too costly – or too weird

Did you know that, if things had gone differently, the Pompidou Centre could have been an egg? In the 1969 competition for the Paris art centre – ultimately won by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, with their inside-out symphony of pipework – a radical French architect called André Bruyère submitted a proposal for a gigantic ovoid tower. His bulbous building would have risen 100 metres above the city’s streets, clad in shimmering scales of alabaster, glass and concrete, its walls swelling out in a curvaceous riposte to the tyranny of the straight line.

“Time,” Bruyère declared, “instead of being linear, like the straight streets and vertical skyscrapers, will become oval, in tune with the egg.” His hallowed Oeuf would be held aloft on three chunky legs, while a monorail would pierce the facade and circle through the structure along a sinuous floating ribbon. The atrium was to take the form of an enclosed globe, like a yolk.