Apocalypse now / Albo room: Inside the 27 May Guardian Weekly

What you see on the cover on this week’s Guardian Weekly depends on where in the world you get your copy of the magazine.

For most readers, our focus is on the looming global food crisis. The signs aren’t good: the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, spoke last week of “apocalyptic” food price rises in the offing, and just days earlier, the UN secretary general, António Guterres, had warned that food shortages could be about to tip tens of millions into food insecurity.

As our big story outlines this week – portrayed starkly for our main cover by the Slovenian illustrator Tomato Košir – a perfect storm of war, extreme weather and inflation have formed the conditions for a food disaster – and its consequences are likely to be profound on a range of levels. Simon Tisdall and, in Opinion, George Monbiot, set out the impacts of a catastrophe that is unfolding in plain sight.

For readers in Australia, we have a special focus on the federal election victory for Labor’s Anthony Albanese.

This week’s Australia cover illustrator, Eleanor Shakespeare, tells us she often gets asked to visualise moments of political change. “Some have resulted in polarising leadership and social division, while others carry more positive hope,” Eleanor says. “For Australia, it certainly seems Albanese can offer the latter and I tried to capture a sense of that.”

The result marked an electoral sea change, most notably regarding green issues, where an often locally driven alliance from across the political spectrum turned against the climate cynicism of the Coalition era. Guardian Australia’s political editor Katharine Murphy reports on what many hope will be a new dawn for the country.

In Culture, director Danny Boyle opens up to Alexis Petridis on the trials and tribulations of making his new Disney+ drama about punk pioneers the Sex Pistols, which should present something of a counterpoint to the forthcoming platinum jubilee celebrations. God save the Queen? They still mean it, man …

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