Andy Burnham has called an emergency Cobra meeting in response to Britain’s extreme heat, which has caused wildfires and plunged three-quarters of England and all of Wales into drought. Southern Water has warned that more than 165,000 people in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight face water shortages unless rare “non-essential” use restrictions are introduced. A former US marine who was imprisoned in Russia has been released by Moscow on humanitarian grounds after claims he was close to death. Robert Gilman, 32, who was arrested after allegedly kicking a police officer on a train in 2022, returned to the US last night after a conversation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. “We appreciate this decision,” Trump wrote on social media, “and the fact that Russia asked for no one in return.” The UK will experience its fullest solar eclipse since 1999 – and the best until 2081 – this evening. Its peak, which will see up to 96% of the sun covered by the moon, is expected between 6.58pm and 7.15pm, depending on your location.

I don’t want to minimise what Odysseus went through, says Frank Bruni in The New York Times. Scylla, the Cyclops, the “suboptimal bedding and plumbing” in the Trojan horse. “It’s a lot.” But at least ancient Greece didn’t share the modern world’s insistence on taking anything deemed a big cultural event and “inflating it until it bursts”. Which is to say, if I see one more word about Christopher Nolan’s uber-hyped new movie adaptation of The Odyssey, I’m going to “hurl myself into the nearest Charybdis”. There have been think pieces about every aspect of the story: family, faith, duty, defiance, loyalty, treachery, courage, cowardice. Forbes promised “three key lessons for leaders”. The food magazine Bon Appétit even looked into the historical accuracy of Circe’s entrails stew.

On the one hand, I’m delighted by any film – or musician, or sporting event – with an appeal broad enough to bring together our increasingly fragmented society. The football World Cup did something similar. But the digital age has a frustrating habit of “turning excitement to exhaustion”. The same happened with Taylor Swift’s Eras tour – the magic of it evaporated a bit with “every new exegesis on its significance”. Likewise the Super Bowl, which now has to have at least a dozen subplots and serve as some sort of mirror to society. For what it’s worth, I enjoyed the Nolan movie. “I’ve spent three hours in much, much worse ways.” But trying to navigate through – or indeed avoid – the oceans of material it has spawned is an odyssey in itself. One that, like the man himself, I would rather do without.