The UK could have its hottest day on record this week, with temperatures forecast to hit up to 43 C.

Britain was on course for its hottest day on record on Monday with temperatures forecast to hit 40C for the first time, forcing train companies to cancel services, schools to close early and ministers to urge the public to stay at home.

France scrambled more water-bombing planes and hundreds more firefighters to combat spreading wildfires that were being fed Monday by hot swirling winds from a searing heat wave broiling much of Europe. In Spain, two people have been killed in blazes there.

Spain reported a second fatality in two days as it battled wildfires. The body of a 69-year-old sheep farmer was found Monday in the same hilly area where a 62-year-old firefighter died a day earlier when he was trapped by flames in the northwestern Zamora province. More than 30 forest fires around Spain have forced the evacuation of thousands of people and blackened 220 square kilometers (85 square miles) of forest and scrub.

Much of Europe is baking in a heatwave that has pushed temperatures into the mid-40s Celsius (over 110 Fahrenheit) in some regions, with wildfires raging across tinder-dry countryside in Portugal, Spain and France.

The Met Office has issued a red extreme heat warning on Monday and Tuesday in much of England, from London and the south-east up to York and Manchester.

The current highest temperature in the UK is 38.7C, in Cambridge in 2019.

High temperatures are also forecast across the UK - with amber warnings in the rest of England, all of Wales, and parts of Scotland.

London is set to be one of the hottest places in the world on Monday, with temperatures soaring above the Western Sahara and the Caribbean.