My offer to host dinner is declined. My cooking is never good. Triumph lies in the fact food is cooked and not full of bacteria

Yeah, I’m gonna say it – stop with the fetishisation of sandwiches, already! Obviously we’ve had the annual rejoicing over the advent (Ha! See what I did there?) of the Pret Christmas offering and the paler imitations thereafter by lesser chains and retail outlets. Now Harrods is getting in on the act with a £29 version on sale at its steakhouse, the Grill on Fifth. It consists of a burger patty (and listen, let’s get rid of the word ‘patty’ while we’re about it, shall we? Why? Because it’s viscerally hateful, that’s why), roast turkey breast, stuffing, a pig in a blanket, spiced red cabbage, cranberry sauce and turkey gravy.

Royal Festival Hall, London
Playing a mix of traditional folk and radically rearranged acoustic Led Zeppelin classics, the former Zep frontman is in fine voice – but also happy to step out of the spotlight

Between songs, Robert Plant describes his latest project, Saving Grace, as hailing “from the west side of common sense”. It’s a self-effacing remark but he has a point. Most rock stars of his vintage and stature (78 next year, somewhere between 200m and 300m albums sold with Led Zeppelin) would be out there underlining their status by touring the hits. But as anyone who has followed Plant’s serpentine post-Zeppelin career will tell you, the straightforward option doesn’t seem to hold great appeal for him.

So Saving Grace are a band assembled from musicians local to his home in Shropshire – though it isn’t entirely clear if Plant is joking when he suggests he found multi-instrumentalist Matt Worley working in the local tourist information office. Their oeuvre is an intriguing stew of traditional folk songs (The Cuckoo, As I Roved Out); covers that pay testament to Plant’s famously catholic tastes (Everybody’s Song by Low rubs shoulders with It’s a Beautiful Day Today by 60s psych heroes Moby Grape); and a scattering of Led Zeppelin tracks that you could fairly describe as radically rearranged: both Ramble On and Four Sticks now heavily feature an accordion, with the low end provided not by a bass guitar but a cello. Moreover, this is an evening in which one of the most renowned frontmen in rock history – whose voice is in quite astonishing nick – seems happy to regularly cede the spotlight, and effectively act as a backing singer for Worley and vocalist Suzi Dian.

Tribute to Victorian author and LGBTQ+ pioneer secured in Dorchester amid parallel feminist campaigns around UK

“The thing all women hate is to be thought dull,” says the title character of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s 1926 novel, Lolly Willowes , an early feminist classic about a middle-aged woman who moves to the countryside, sells her soul to the devil and becomes a witch.

We ask supporters for their take on the Egyptian’s standoff with the club before Saturday’s game against Brighton

Mohamed Salah is one of the greatest players in Liverpool’s history. That isn’t open for debate. But everyone makes mistakes, and after the draw at Leeds , Salah made a huge one. By seeking the media to air his personal grievances , he essentially justified Arne Slot’s decision to bench him for three consecutive games. Salah’s recent behaviour suggests he’s an individual playing in a team sport. An individual who Liverpool can’t quite afford to carry right now.

Artists explore insomnia and snoozing, sculptors imagine alternative futures and we look back with a great British photographer – all in your weekly dispatch

To Improvise a Mountain
Painter Lynette Yiadom-Boakye portrays fictional people in made-up settings. Where does she get her haunting ideas? Here she reveals her inspirations from Walter Sickert to Bas Jan Ader.
• MK Gallery, Milton Keynes, until 25 January

Scientists in Kansas believe Kernza could cut emissions, restore degraded soils and reshape the future of agriculture

On the concrete floor of a greenhouse in rural Kansas stands a neat grid of 100 plastic plant pots, each holding a straggly crown of strappy, grass-like leaves. These plants are perennials – they keep growing, year after year. That single characteristic separates them from soya beans, wheat, maize, rice and every other major grain crop, all of which are annuals: plants that live and die within a single growing season.

“These plants are the winners, the ones that get to pass their genes on [to future generations],” says Lee DeHaan of the Land Institute , an agricultural non-profit based in Salina, Kansas. If DeHaan’s breeding programme maintains its current progress, the descendant of these young perennial crop plants could one day usher in a wholesale revolution in agriculture.

Unhurried trippy bass lines and poet Iona Lee’s commanding, velvety voice conjure a glamorously unhurried sense of hypnosis

From Edinburgh
Recommended if you like Dry Cleaning, Massive Attack, Nick Cave
Up next Warm Days in December out now, new EP due early 2026

As fixtures of Edinburgh’s gig-turned-performance art scene, Acolyte’s eerie, earthy psychedelia is just as likely to be found on stage at the Traverse theatre as in a steamy-windowed Leith Walk boozer. Their looped bass lines and poet Iona Lee’s commanding, velvety voice conjure a sense of slow-burn hypnosis – and just like their music, Acolyte are glamorously unhurried. They’ve released only a handful of songs in the seven years since Lee and bassist Ruairidh Morrison first started experimenting with jazz, trip-hop and spoken word, but now the group (with Daniel Hill on percussion and Gloria Black on synth, also known for throwing fantastical, papier-mache-costumed club nights with her former band Maranta) are gathering pace.

Not a fan of the traditional festive spread? These recipes are a Christmas feast that even turkeys would vote for

Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds; Paris Fantastique by Nicholas Royle; All Tomorrows by CM Kosemen; The Salt Oracle by Lorraine Wilson; The Witching Hour by various authors

Halcyon Years by Alastair Reynolds ( Gollancz, £25)
Yuri Gagarin , the Russian cosmonaut who was the first man in space, is reborn as a private eye on board the starship Halcyon as it draws nearer to the end of a centuries-long journey. Yuri knows he died for the first time back in the 1960s, long before the technology existed to launch such sophisticated spaceships, but believes his remains were preserved and stored for future revival. Onboard life is modelled on classic crime noir from the 1940s: men in hats, cigarettes and whisky, with no futuristic tech beyond some clunky, glitching robots. As he doggedly pursues the truth about the seemingly unconnected deaths of two teenagers from the most powerful families on the ship, Yuri gradually learns about himself. There’s a conspiracy that goes back generations in this clever, entertaining blend of crime and space opera.

Paris Fantastique by Nicholas Royle (Confingo, £ 9.50)
The third collection after London Gothic and Manchester Uncanny captures both the reality and the mysteries of contemporary life in Paris in 14 short stories, 11 published here for the first time. Royle is a genius at blending the ordinary with the eerie, and his stories range from displays of outright surrealism to sinister psychological mysteries that play out as suspensefully as Highsmith or Hitchcock. It’s a memorable, unsettling excursion through the streets, passages and banlieues of Paris, and a masterclass in writing evocative short fiction.