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Book of the weekFictionReviewThis personal portrait of grief and politics in 1960s County Wexford does everything a great novel shouldWhat is it that commands us, in good writing? There are a few fiction writers whose words reach out to us from the very first sentences of a book, compelling our assent and our delight. Toíbín is one of these writers, for me. Taste – the leap of response to a particular writer – feels sensuous rather than intellectual.

The stacks of the Salt River Project generating station near Randolph, Arizona. Photograph: Caitlin O’Hara/The GuardianThe stacks of the Salt River Project generating station near Randolph, Arizona. Photograph: Caitlin O’Hara/The GuardianArizonaResidents in industry-choked Randolph renew efforts to block the power company’s plans near their fragile town A handful of weary residents gathered at the windowless Randolph church to mull over the latest effort by an electric utility to expand its power station – a polluting gas-fired plant next door to the community that the state regulator has blocked on environmental and health grounds.

FashionThe costume designer from the hit French show on how the clothes make the characters – and how you can channel their effortless chic In France, the hit Netflix series Call My Agent! is called Dix Pour Cent in reference to the fee charged by French cinema agents. For those in the know, the name says it all. For others, like me, the reference was opaque at first, but it sent the message that this is a show – unlike others representing a cliched take on French life, such as Emily in Paris – that positions itself as an insider’s peek into the capital and its movie business.

WesternsObituaryAndrew McLaglen obituaryFilm director whose collaboration with John Wayne extended the life of the westernThree long shadows lay heavily across the career of the film director Andrew McLaglen, who has died aged 94: those of two actors, his father, Victor McLaglen, and John "Duke" Wayne, and that of the director John Ford. By making mostly westerns, four of which starred Wayne, and by casting many actors from Ford's repertory company, such as Harry Carey Jr and Ben Johnson, McLaglen brazenly invited comparison with the great director.

Country diaryEnvironmentWetwang, East Yorkshire: Around this site of an iron age cemetery, the rats cluck and pheasants take flight in neurotic clatters It’s late and cold, but I’m passing a place long on my wishlist and convince myself there’s just enough daylight to go and see it. Wetwang Slack is famous for a huge iron age cemetery, used before Roman occupation. While the spectacular chariot burials nearby captured most headlines, most here in the valley bottom were more modest graves.

MusicObituaryJohn Gardner obituaryComposer in the English romantic traditionJohn Gardner, who has died aged 94, was one of the English composers who defied the serialist tide of the 1950s and 60s, sustaining the romantic tradition still to be found in the music of Vaughan Williams, Gordon Jacob and William Walton. The urbane wit and impeccable craftsmanship of Walton in particular found an echo in Gardner's music. There was a price to be paid for keeping faith with the style that suited him best: Gardner was viewed by the musical establishment as a prolific engineer of music that possessed little more than utilitarian or pedagogical value.

The age of extinctionGlobal development This article is more than 10 months oldParasitic fungus that infects and kills spiders discovered in Brazil This article is more than 10 months oldExclusive: rare purple organism preys on trapdoor spider in behaviour reminiscent of its ‘zombie’ relatives that feature in apocalyptic TV show The Last of Us Scientists believe they have discovered a new parasitic fungus which preys on trapdoor spiders in Brazil’s Atlantic rainforest.

Book of the daySociety booksReviewThis insightful account of a four-star establishment taking in rough sleepers amid the pandemic finds grounds for real if slender hope The Prince Rupert hotel in Shrewsbury is the kind of establishment where you’re offered a glass of sherry as you check in. A timber-framed oasis of fluffy towels and four-poster beds, its guests have included Margaret Thatcher, Monica Lewinsky and the Liverpool football team. Yet at the start of the pandemic, owner Mike Matthews, who had formerly managed Barbados’s Sandy Lane resort, made the decision to welcome a rather different clientele: the city’s rough sleepers.

English civil warArchaeologists say finding medieval gatehouse at Coleshill was ‘real shock’ and ‘highlight of our careers’ When archaeologists working on the route of HS2 began excavating a stretch of pasture in Warwickshire, they were not expecting to uncover what one of them calls “the highlight of our careers”. Their excavations revealed the monumental stone bases of two towers from a late medieval fortified gatehouse, the existence of which had been completely lost to history.