Six great reads: flight attendant confessions, culture wars and Sam Neill’s final interview

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Composite: Universal; Barbara Alper/Allstar; Getty

Composite: Universal; Barbara Alper/Allstar; Getty

Need something brilliant to read this weekend? Here are six of our favourite pieces from the last seven days

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   1. Sam Neill’s final interview: ‘I’d like to think that, in life, I’m a goodie’

   

   Sam Neill near his vineyard in New Zealand earlier this year. Photograph: Aina J. Khan

   The great New Zealand actor’s death was announced earlier this week and our writers, including Peter Bradshaw, have paid tribute to the much-loved star. Neill’s last interview was a Q&A with Guardian readers hosted by Rich Pelley, in which he talked about working with Robin Williams, changing his name and whether he would have turned down Bond.

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   2. The secret lives of flight attendants: ‘British passengers always drink like they’ve never drunk before’

   

   Composite: Guardian Design; izusek; nuttapong/Getty Images

   Lewd propositions, drunken tirades, groping, grumbling and grubby behaviour – cabin crew have to experience it all, at altitude. In this piece they opened up to Zoe Williams about the horrors they’ve seen from passengers and colleagues.

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   3. ‘People are picking the dumbest fights’: the tortured history of America’s culture wars

   

   Christians protest outside the Ziegfeld Theater in Manhattan, against Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ in 1988. Photograph: Barbara Alper/Getty Images

   We now live in an age of endless culture wars, but it wasn’t always the case. In this interview David Smith spoke to Isaac Butler, author of a new book that traces how an ascendant religious right pivoted from the cold war in the late 1980s to wage a domestic battle over contemporary art.

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   4. The Manchester years: how Andy Burnham’s rebirth as ‘king of the north’ set him on the road to No 10

   

   Andy Burnham will become Britain’s seventh prime minister in 10 years. Composite: Guardian Design/Getty Images

   On Monday, Burnham will become the latest resident at 10 Downing Street. In this profile, north of England editor Josh Halliday told the story of how Burnham was reshaped and repowered by his stint as mayor of Greater Manchester. In an earlier piece, Daniel Boffey traced Burnham’s early years, from an “impostor” at Cambridge to a young star of New Labour.

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   5. ‘The trash does not stop’: life among the garbage mountains of the world’s biggest city

   

   The Bantar Gebang landfill in Indonesia. Photograph: Claudio Pramana/The Guardian

   In Jakarta, Michael Neilson travelled to the city’s largest landfill to find an economy supporting thousands of waste pickers who make a living from the trash mountains – people who now face imminent uncertainty as the government looks to close the site.

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   6. The Dacre dynasty: how Britain’s rightwing press was radicalised

   

   Illustration: Anaïs Mims/Getty

   At the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre broke new ground in selling readers an angry rightwing perspective. Today, most of Fleet Street is run by his disciples. Andy Beckett explored how one man’s worldview has come to dominate so many of Britain’s newspapers.

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