In July 2023, Kevin Spacey stood outside a south London court and thanked the jury that had just acquitted him of nine charges of sexual assault. A year before, another jury, this one in the US, had acquitted him of the civil charges of sexual battery brought against him by the actor Anthony Rapp. As the Oscar-winning star addressed the press in the unlikely environs of Southwark – didn’t he remind you in that moment just a little of his character in House of Cards? – I remember thinking that a line had now surely been drawn. This story had gone the same way as Spacey’s career. It was over. Bu ..read more

On 10 April, a group of around 2,000 elderly Swiss women – the so-called Swiss Grannies – won the first ever climate case victory in the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Having launched their case nine years ago, the judgement states that Switzerland is violating the human rights of the older women by not taking the necessary steps to combat climate change. The case will not only force a reaction from the Swiss government, but will also establishes a binding legal precedent for courts in all 46 countries that are signatories to the European Convention on Human Rights, including the ..read more

Of all the things I imagined might go wrong during our US road trip – tussles with the car-hire company over scratches, overbooked hotels, major arguments – it never occurred to me that the weather might fail us. The day we picked up the car in Nashville to begin our drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway, there was a total solar eclipse. The previous night we had met a young law student from New York who was driving the three hours to Kentucky to watch it. I hope his view was better than ours. At the time of the eclipse’s peak, as we made our way on to the interstate, it was so cloudy that all wa ..read more

The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) plays a vital role in knee joint stability. Sudden pivoting movements accompanied by abrupt deceleration can cause it to tear or rupture. This is a devastating injury, often requiring reconstructive surgery and certainly entailing prolonged rehabilitation. And it is something to which footballers are particularly prone. It will take a professional player out of the game for a minimum of nine months. The surge in popularity of women’s football has brought the ACL into the headlines. There’s a disturbing signal in the data that shows female players are up to ..read more

Our Island Stories by Corinne Fowler Until 2020, Corinne Fowler was an academic specialising in empire and heritage largely out of the public eye. Then, with the appearance of a report she co-authored about the links between National Trust properties and colonialism, she found herself on the receiving end of high-octane invective flung by aggrieved traditionalists. They won’t be calmed by this book: Fowler hasn’t backed down and turns her attention to the ramifications of colonialism to be found in the British countryside. A keen hiker, Fowler describes ten walks that bear the traces of the pa ..read more

The Crab Museum in Margate celebrated International Crab Day with some clawsome gags, in the inaugural World’s Funniest Crab Joke competition. The event was  judged by an expert panel of judges including the comedians Harry Hill and Rose Matafeo, as well as children from Ramsgate Arts primary school. The winning gag, submitted by Leon Price, was: a man walks into a restaurant with a crab under his arm and says, “Do you make crab cakes?” The manager answers, “Yes, we do.” “Good,” says the man, “because it’s his birthday.” The Guardian (Kate McIntosh) Parked and deprived A new £51m park-and ..read more

What do you do? Public affairs. Where do you live? Leyton, east London. Do you vote? Whenever I can. How long have you been a subscriber? Two years. What made you start? I just got so jaded with click-bait reactionary news. Is the NS bug in the family? I’m working on it! What pages do you flick to first? I feel the need to check on Nicholas Lezard immediately. How do you read yours? In print, on a packed Central Line Tube. What would you like to see more of in the NS? Tech, Ukraine and even more Westminster gossip. Who are your favourite NS writers? Edward Docx and Pippa Bailey. Who would you ..read more

Dr Hilary Cass has achieved what many thought was impossible. She has brought about something close to consensus on one of the most toxic and divided issues of our time: how best to care for children who are questioning or distressed about their gender identity. She has done so with calm, compassionate and evidence-based writing and reasoning in the publication of the most comprehensive review ever undertaken into youth gender care. Taking nearly four years to complete, the Cass Review was informed by meetings with more than 1,000 people, seven new evidence reviews, and a survey of 15 gender c ..read more

In establishing the modern welfare state, the 1942 Beveridge Report recognised the link between work and health. Yet more than 75 years after the founding of the NHS, the state still does not provide support to keep workers healthy and in work.  This has perhaps never been so important. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the estimate for the number of people who are economically inactive due to ill health has increased from 2.6 to 2.8 million. More than a fifth of the working-age population (aged 16-24) are neither in work nor looking for a job, and 4 per cent of the U ..read more

The Italian writer-director Alice Rohrwacher’s first feature, Corpo Celeste, was concerned with the heavenly realms above. Her fourth, La Chimera, nominated for the Palm d’Or at last year’s Cannes, takes us into the soil beneath. Josh O’Connor (also now in Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers) plays Arthur, an Englishman in an increasingly filthy cream linen suit, living in backwater Tuscany in the 1980s. Like a reverse Indiana Jones, he is an archaeologist gone bad: he has the paranormal power to find Etruscan tombs by using a dowser, collapsing on the leaves that cover them from the effort. His abi ..read more