Win a copy of Book Boyfriend by Lucy Vine in this week's Fabulous book competition terms and conditions

T&CS
Open to United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland residents aged 18 or over only, except employees of the Promoter, News Corp UK & Ireland Limited, and their associated, affiliated or subsidiary companies, their families, agents or any other person(s) connected with the competition, including third party promotional partners.
Competition closes at 11.59pm on July 5, 2025 (the 'Closing Date'). Entries received after the Closing Date will not be counted.
One entry per person. Bulk, automatically generated or third party entries are void.
To enter you must click the 'click to enter' link on Book Boyfriend page before the Closing Date.
There will be 10 winners.
The winners will be selected at random from all valid entries for this competition received before the Closing Date.
Winners will be notified by email or phone or using the other contact details provided by the winner within fourteen days after the Closing Date. All reasonable endeavours will be made to contact the winner during the specified time. If a winner cannot be contacted or is not available, the Promoter reserves the right to re-draw another winner from the valid/correct entries that were received before the Closing Date.
The prize is a copy of Book Boyfriend in hardcover, paperback or e-book format, at the discretion of the Promoter.
The prize is non-transferable and there are no cash alternatives to the prize in whole or in part.
The promoter of this competition is News Group Newspapers Ltd (publishers of The Sun) (the 'Promoter').
General terms and conditions for competitions apply*.
*GENERAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COMPETITIONS
These terms and conditions apply to all competitions (unless and to the extent that) the competition states otherwise.
The winner is responsible for ensuring they are able to accept the prize as set out and in accordance with these terms and conditions, in the event they are unable to do so then the Promoter reserves the right to redraw the prize.
Entry is free but entrants should be aware that they may be subject to data charges depending on their own individual arrangements for Internet access if entry is online or by email.
An eligible entrant must be an individual, must enter on their own behalf, and must submit an entry in the form requested by the Promoter under this promotion including their name, address and e-mail address.
By entering, all eligible entrants agree to abide by each and all these terms and conditions. Misrepresentative or fraudulent entries will invalidate an entry. Where a competition involves a voting process: offering or receiving any incentive for voting is not permitted and will invalidate the vote, and may disqualify the recipient of the vote. The Promoter reserves the right, with or without cause, to exclude entrants and withhold prizes for violating any of these terms and conditions. The Promoter reserves the right to amend these terms and conditions. Any amendments will be published on the Promoter's website (the 'Website').
The Promoter reserves the right to publish entries (including parts of entries) other than the winning entry and publication does not necessarily mean the entrant has won a prize.
Entrants will retain copyright in their submitted entries, however, by entering, all entrants licence the Promoter a worldwide royalty-free perpetual licence to edit, publish and use each entry in any and all media (including print and online) for publicity and news purposes. The Promoter reserves the right to publish entries (including parts of entries) although publication does not necessarily mean the entrant has won a prize.
There is no cash or other alternative to the prize stated and the prize is not transferable and no part or parts of the prize may be substituted for other benefits, items or additions.
Winners may be required to submit valid identification before receiving their prize.
The Promoter's decision is final and binding on the entrants. No correspondence will be entered into.
The Promoter will not be liable for technical, hardware, or software failures of any kind or lost or unavailable network connections that may limit or prohibit an eligible entrant's ability to participate in the competition. Other than death or personal injury arising from the acts or omissions of the Promoter or its employees, the Promoter will not be liable for any loss or damage arising out of the winner's (or their guest's) enjoyment of the prize.
By entering, any subsequent prize winners agree to allow the free use of their names, photographs and general locations for publicity and news purposes during this and future promotions by the Promoter or any associated or subsidiary company of News Corp UK & Ireland Limited.
Uses of personal data received by the Promoter in the course of the promotion are subject to the privacy policy found on the Website. Winners' names may be published on the Website.
Completion and submission of a registration slip or e-mail will be deemed acceptance of these terms and conditions.
The Promoter reserves the right at any time to cancel, modify or supersede the competition (including altering prizes) if, in our sole discretion, a competition is not capable of being conducted as specified. The Promoter reserves the right to substitute a prize of equal value in the event that circumstances beyond their control make this unavoidable.
For a list of winners please send a stamped envelope to News UK, Competitions Department, 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF stating for which competition you would like winners' details.
Competition rules published in publications of the Promoter (including social media if applicable) or on the Website form part of these rules.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Scotsman

2 hours ago

• Scotsman

The EIBF has learned nothing about real diversity

Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Last year, the board of the Edinburgh International Book Festival was forced to sever ties with its sponsor of two decades, Baillie Gifford. The threats from protestors to disrupt the festival due to Baillie Gifford's alleged ties with Israel and fossil fuel companies were simply too grave to ignore. Greta Thunberg pulling out of the programme and a pious bunch of petition-signing celebrities helped pile the pressure onto the EIBF and, with regret, they kowtowed. For those of us in the writing world with openly heterodox opinions, it was a sorry but predictable farce the Scottish arts world had brought on itself. This is what happened in a culture that had done nothing but, for instance, pander to trans activists when they were hounding people with reality-based views on sex and chant blindly along with every trendy 'social justice' slogan. If you make political diversity heresy, don't act surprised when the torch-bearers turn on you. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Activist Greta Thunberg, seen at a protest in Paris, cancelled a planned appearance at the Edinburgh International Book Festival over investments in the fossil fuel industry by the event's then-sponsor Baillie Gifford | AFP via Getty Images Alongside the justified schadenfraude there was also tentative hope that a lesson would be learned. That the Scottish literary scene would start to amend this crisis of its own making and start platforming a spectrum of political views. The theme for this year's festival is 'Repair', after all. Alas though, things remain broken. One would think that in the year the UK Supreme Court confirmed the definition of women in law and multiple politicians have rescinded their support for gender self-ID, there might be a single event featuring a notable women's rights campaigner. Quite a few of them have written excellent books recently after all. Victoria Smith. Julie Bindel. Susanna Rustin. Orwell-prize shortlisted Hannah Barnes. The Scotland-focused Sunday Times bestseller The Women Who Wouldn't Wheesht, edited by Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn, has come out on paperback, in which over thirty essayists (including myself) are featured. Yet nothing. I'm not naive enough to be surprised but it remains highly depressing. One particularly glaring omission There is one omission that seems particularly glaring however, and that is Jenny Lindsay, a performance poet and leading figure in the Scottish literary scene. In November last year she published a book 'Hounded: Women, Harms And The Gender Wars' and there's few texts that would have complemented the 'Repair' theme more aptly. Because before you can fix anything, you have to understand what's gone wrong, and that's exactly what 'Hounded' explores. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Drawing on Lindsay's own experience in the arts, where overnight she found herself a target of wrongthink hounding for the crime of calling out violence against women, her book moves through the psychological, social and democratic harms the normalisation of bullying-disguised-as-virtue is wreaking on society. Lindsay had drawn attention to trans-identified Cathy Brennan, a writer for The Skinny, who'd advocated online for physical violence against lesbians at that year's Pride. For this, Lindsay was branded a 'TERF' and subjected to years of harassment and career disruptions. A matter of days after, Brennan allegedly attacked lesbian and women's rights campaigner Julie Bindel at Edinburgh University. As Lindsay speculated in a recent podcast interview , her being proven right was the most unforgivable thing in her hounders' eyes. Of course, it's at the EIBF's discretion to invite who they please. No one is entitled to a platform. But on the programme are several of Lindsay's most vicious and vocal hounders. Alice Tarbuck, for instance, the Literature Officer at Creative Scotland who brought disgrace on the institution when she was exposed as having actually rang bookshops and demanded they do not stock Lindsay's book. There's also Harry Josephine Giles, who co-authored a censorious petition to The Scottish Poetry Library against Lindsay and fellow poet Magi Gibson. (I confess I've a particular abject loathing for those that orchestrate petitions against individuals, trumped only by my disgust at the sheep who sign them). Statement of allegiance? Giles, whose most recent noteworthy public appearance has been screaming 'Give us wombs and give us t***ies!' to a crowd of baying activists after the Supreme Court ruling, will be appearing at six events in the programme. It's hard to read this as anything but a statement of allegiance to misogynistic bullies over a renewed dedication to freedom of expression. What a concerning indictment of the Scottish arts scene. Susan Smith, left, and Marion Calder, co-directors of For Women Scotland, celebrate outside the Supreme Court in London in April after its ruling on the definition of a woman | PA In the interest of transparency, Jenny is a dear friend of mine. I've known and loved her as a sister in feminism trying to navigate the Orwellian artistic landscape in which we (still) find ourselves. But before that, I knew her as a poet and writer. Without bias, the EIBF has snubbed not only a throughly principled artist but an enviably talented one. Around the time she published her brave, articulate essay 'Anatomy Of A Hounding' in The Dark Horse magazine, I was a creative writing student and seeing first hand the damage ideological hiveminderey was doing, not only to aspiring writers' freedom of expression, but literary quality itself. 'Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others' as Albert Camus said. There are seemingly few artists left that embody this spirit. Jenny is one of them. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad My favourite poem of Jenny's is 'The Schism Ring' from her collection This Script. She opens it by describing the menu for a feminist literary gathering - a superficially inclusive, oh-so-safe borefest of gluten-free and vegan cakes, before going on to describe the meaty, unctuous, mischievously un-PC feast she secretly craves - frogs legs, steak on the bone, duck eggs and full-fat buttery mash. It's a beautiful metaphor for the intellectual hunger so many of us feel around modern feminism, the literary scene or both. It would be disingenuous to say the EIBF doesn't feature a lot of talented, compelling writers outside the likes of Tarbuck and Giles. All the same, I read the programme and see an artistic climate that remains starved, mostly of courage.

Times

5 hours ago

• Times

Overwork is making us sick — here's how to rest your brain

As I was reading The Brain at Rest, about the cognitive benefits of doing nothing, I was reminded of a comedy sketch that was doing the rounds on social media last year. In it, the American-Irish stand-up Des Bishop fondly recalls how 'mindful' life was before smartphones. Remember, he says, how much of our lives was spent just waiting — for people to show up, for a video to rewind, for a bus to arrive. 'We were mindful half of every f***ing day because we didn't have a choice!' he concluded. 'I didn't realise I was like a f***ing guru before I got a cellphone.' I have a feeling that the British neuroscientist Joseph Jebelli, 39, would enjoy this sketch. He is a fan of just staring out the window on the bus — not to mention hugging trees and meandering through forests with no real agenda except to discover the 'soft fascinations' that plants and flowers can offer. He takes long baths and daily naps. He lies in bed — his 'sleep temple' — daydreaming and only surfaces when he feels rested. He even plays 30 minutes of computer games each day. Even better, he has overcome any guilt associated with idleness. He claims that working only four to six hours a day with frequent breaks has transformed his life and enlarged his brain, enabling him to think in completely new ways. Jebelli is not alone in making claims for the productive powers of idleness — see also business gurus like Fergus O'Connell (The Power of Doing Less, 2013) and activists like Evie Muir (Radical Rest, 2024). But he does bring some scientific rigour to the subject, having written books on Alzheimer's and brain evolution. It's all about activating the 'default network', the circuit of neurons that enables us to daydream, think reflectively and imagine the future (as opposed to the 'executive network' that we use to complete specific tasks). The default network fans out across the brain, occupying the frontal, parietal and temporal lobes. It's active only when our minds can roam free. Jebelli explains how he used to put in long hours at the University of Washington until he began to understand that the default network is really 'your brain's hidden superpower' and that accessing it can 'enhance your intelligence, creativity, social empathy and long-term productivity'. Overwork is the monster Jebelli is determined to 'slay'. He cites Roger Federer's 12 hours of sleep each night (plus two hours of naps) and Maria Carey's 15. He rails against the capitalist imperatives of relentless labour, as well as the pressure to socialise. 'We're trapped in a self-erected maze of commitments, missing the beauty and insight beyond its boundaries,' he says, urging the reader to embrace activities like staring into space for 20 minutes. 'Boredom remains one of the most misunderstood and wrongly disparaged mental states.' He wants to reframe boredom as an opportunity for discovery and invention, and overwork as a 'pandemic' that's killing us. 'The scariest thing about the work pandemic is that, unlike other pandemics caused by viruses and bacteria, there is no means of contact-tracing, no methodical approach to the control and spread of the infection. We are all carriers. We are all at risk.' If this sounds hysterically alarmist, it's backed up by some hair-raising stats. The World Health Organisation has called long working hours 'the single deadliest occupational risk factor'. Jebelli says our culture of overwork cost Britain £20.7 billion in 2022 from workers going off sick with everything from cases of stress, depression or anxiety to work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Millennials are the worst affected generation: 58 per cent of us overwork, apparently, compared with 31 per cent of baby boomers. These figures represent a 38 per cent increase since 2019, which is worrying. Jebelli urges readers to prioritise sustained wellbeing over 'short-term productivity' and recognise the early warning signs of work burnout. He runs through all the stages, which will feel distressingly familiar to anyone who has experienced it: a subtle feeling of dissatisfaction, followed by stress and emotional exhaustion, that quickly leads to cynicism. • How to supercharge your brain — the experts' rules 'Next comes dehumanisation,' he warns, which manifests as an 'emotional hardening' towards your colleagues. You start complaining about everything, which leads to irrational worry and a 'heavy, suffocating feeling of dread'. Your mind stores feelings of guilt, hopelessness and incompetence that you wear 'like a skin'. Then the most alarming sentence: 'Once it sets in, it can take up to three years to recover.' In the case of Jebelli's father, Abolfazl, though, it's probably too late. As with his 2017 book, In Pursuit of Memory — in which Jebelli described his grandfather's struggle with Alzheimer's — this book is fuelled by a painful personal narrative, in this case what Jebelli calls his family's 'toxic relationship with work' since they emigrated from Iran to England in the early 1980s. It's a classic immigrant story: the family threw themselves into jobs of 'soul-crushing monotony' to make the family back home feel proud. For Abolfazl, who worked long hours in an office, 'this new world was efficient, yes, but desolate'. One day, after he came home shouting, he quit his job and never went back. He was diagnosed with a major depressive disorder and hasn't worked since. He now sleeps most of the day. The pressure has fallen on Jebelli's 68-year-old mother, who runs a day care centre but suffers from diminished sight and dangerously high blood pressure that she never has time to address. It's a continuing source of anguish for Jebelli, who insists that the sacrifices they have made on their health are 'not in vain, for it taught me the value of rest'. He struggles with a 'debilitating' anxiety disorder', alleviated by embracing the Dutch art of niksen, a verb that literally means 'to nothing'. He doesn't just stare into space. He forest bathes (walks in the woods), goes for long runs, finds solitude in ten-day solo retreats in remote cabins and plays a fair bit of Mario Kart and zombie shooter games. Still, there are several moments when Jebelli's assertions seem more borne of personal preference than actual research. I don't believe that computer games are better for your health than socialising (an 'unhealthy obsession' of the modern world, he believes). Similarly, he conflates scrolling TikTok with watching a TV show on Netflix, which is apparently full of 'complex storylines' and 'moral dilemmas', which overtaxes your brain. I'd be interested in seeing him go head to head with the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, the author of The Anxious Generation, on this one. 'Here's what's really bad,' Haidt has said. 'iPad time by yourself. It's solitary.' • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List Nor does Jebelli address the gendered nature of rest. Women at work who slack off face far more stigma. In my present co-working space, I have a running joke with my male colleagues — or 'leisure dads' as I've dubbed them — about their hour-long lunch breaks in the park and 11.30am starts after a rock climbing session. But perhaps we could all learn from the leisure dad class. I don't see them suffering from burnout. The revolution has to start somewhere and I think Jebelli's spotlighting of the cognitive benefits is supremely helpful. For all my niggles, The Brain at Rest is inspiring and practical and, I hope, signals a wider change in how we think about work. 'We need to set firm boundaries so that saying 'no' becomes a respected choice, not a sign of weakness, a mark of wisdom, not a failure.' The Brain at Rest: Why Doing Nothing Can Change Your Life by Dr Joseph Jebelli (Torva £20 pp256). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members 1. Walk slowly through a forest. This helps to improve our creativity and problem-solving abilities. While you're there, hug a tree, which reduces cortisol and activates your brain's default network. 2. Listen to sad music. Not only does it improve your mood, it's also associated with stronger mind wandering, which can enhance your intelligence, creativity, social empathy and emotional processing. 3. Try to nap for 30 minutes daily. It reduces stress, regenerates damaged brain cells and makes your brain bigger. One study suggests that nappers' brains are 15 cubic centimetres larger.

Scottish Sun

7 hours ago

• Scottish Sun

Win a copy of Book Boyfriend by Lucy Vine in this week's Fabulous book competition

CHARMING READ Win a copy of Book Boyfriend by Lucy Vine in this week's Fabulous book competition Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) BOOKISH Jemma and her flighty twin sister Clara don't have the best relationship. But when Jemma finds a penpal via her fave library book and Clara starts fixating on an actor starring in a new TV adaptation, it seems they might have more in common than they thought. . . Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 1 10 lucky Fabulous readers will win a copy of this new novel in this week's book competition 10 lucky Fabulous readers will win a copy of this new novel in this week's book competition. To win a copy, enter using the form below by 11:59pm on July 5, 2025. For full terms and conditions, click here.