Category: English

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michelle Pfeffer, Research Fellow in Early Modern History, University of Oxford

The Moon crossed the Sun’s path on February 17, causing what is known as an annular solar eclipse. The Sun was not covered completely, but the Moon blocked enough of its light to leave a fiery ring. Unless you’re deep in the southern hemisphere, you won’t have noticed.

However, astrologically speaking, eclipses have effects regardless of who is watching. In astrology, an ancient tradition that lacks scientific grounding, eclipses are regarded as being powerful and politically significant celestial events. They are traditionally associated with the destiny of rulers – and some astrologers think Donald Trump is no exception.

Astrologers interpret the meaning of eclipses through horoscopes, celestial maps that locate the Sun, Moon and planets within the 12 signs of the Zodiac that encircle our solar system. During the eclipse, the Sun and Moon were at the edges of the sign Aquarius, a position astrologers associate with endings and shakeups.

This, alongside various other factors including Trump being born during a lunar eclipse in 1946, has led some astrologers to suggest that the eclipse could mark the start of a severe crisis for the US president – even his death.

Predictions like this come around fairly often, and Trump has outlasted many of them before. But these extreme forecasts follow a very old script. For thousands of years, eclipses have been treated as political events, read as omens about kingdoms and their rulers.

Bad omens

Eclipses have been connected with the fate of rulers since at least ancient Mesopotamia, around 4,000 years ago. Keen observers there, in what is now modern-day Iraq, kept lists of phenomena they believed were linked to specific outcomes.

“If a lizard gives birth in the walkway of a house, the household will fall” and “if a white partridge is seen in the city, commercial activity will diminish” are two examples. But one omen has long outlived the others: “if there is an eclipse, the king will die”.

With such high stakes, ancient astronomers invested in systematic observation, record-keeping and calculation to predict eclipses with ever-greater accuracy. This enabled the so-called “substitute king” ritual, where royals tried to avoid their fate by temporarily making someone else king until an eclipse passed.

The link between eclipses and the death of kings spread widely in the ancient world. Egyptian papyri show evidence of this belief, and Greek and Roman history is full of stories connecting eclipses with prominent deaths.

Roman historian Cassius Dio recorded a solar eclipse around the death of the first Roman emperor, Augustus, in AD14, during which “most of the sky seemed to be on fire”. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, the death of Jesus is also marked by darkened Sun.

In the medieval period, when Arabic chroniclers recorded eclipses, they usually noted concurrent deaths of rulers. And in Europe, a solar eclipse in 1133 was so closely associated with the 1135 death of King Henry I of England that it became known as “King Henry’s Eclipse”.

Premodern rulers often hired astrologers to interpret their birth charts – the horoscope cast for the moment they were born. Ideally, the astrologer would pick out an aspect of the chart they could say justified the ruler’s leadership and foretold a long and prosperous reign. This was useful astrological propaganda.

But rulers were less happy when astrologers did this without authorisation – especially if they forecast illness or death. Astrologers were expelled from ancient Rome on numerous occasions for doing just that.

In his book, Lives of the Caesars, Roman historian Suetonius recounted the fate of an astrologer called Ascletarion (or Ascletario). Ascletarion’s predictions of the Emperor Domitian’s imminent downfall in the first century AD prompted the angry emperor to order his execution.

More than 1,400 years later, an astrologer in Oxford was executed for predicting the death of the reigning English monarch, Edward IV. And in 1581, Queen Elizabeth I of England made it a felony to use horoscopes to predict her death or her successor.

Similarly in France, royal pronouncements in 1560, 1579 and 1628 prohibited astrological predictions about princes, states and public affairs. Around the same time, astrologers in Italy got into serious trouble for predicting the deaths of popes.

This was not just a matter of anxiety on the part of rulers. It was also a question of maintaining public order and political stability. State powers were concerned with the ability of astrological predictions to cause general chaos and even prompt protests and rebellions.

They were right to worry. In a time when astrology was taken very seriously, predictions could cause collective panic. During the so-called wars of the three kingdoms, a series of conflicts fought between 1639 and 1653 in England, Scotland and Ireland, astrologers’ radical political predictions about the fate of the English monarchy fed revolutionary sentiment.

One of these astrologers, Nicholas Culpeper, published predictions of the downfall of all European monarchies on the basis of a solar eclipse in 1652.

Astrology left the world of universities and political courts in the 17th century, but astrologers did not stop making political predictions. In 1790s London, an astrologer called William Gilbert predicted the death of King Gustav III of Sweden. His prophecy was fulfilled a few months later.

And after his attempted assassination in 1981, the then-US president, Ronald Reagan, asked astrologer Joan Quigley whether she could have predicted it. She said yes. Quigley worked for the Reagans for many years, and claimed that she provided advice not just on personal affairs but also on matters of the state, including the best timing to make political announcements.

Although astrology is no longer counted as a science, it remains a player in contemporary politics. Whether or not eclipse predictions come to pass is almost besides the point. Historically, what made eclipses politically dangerous was the speculation often attached to them.

Michelle Pfeffer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. For thousands of years, solar eclipses have been associated with the fate of rulers – https://theconversation.com/for-thousands-of-years-solar-eclipses-have-been-associated-with-the-fate-of-rulers-275515

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Cooper Malanoski, Postdoctoral research associate, University of Oxford

As the Atlantic warms, many fish along the east coast of North America have moved northwards to keep within their preferred temperature range. Black sea bass, for instance, have shifted hundreds of miles up the coast.

In the Mediterranean, the picture is very different. Without an easy escape route towards the poles, many species are effectively trapped in a sea that is warming rapidly. Some native fish are even being replaced by more heat-tolerant species that have slipped in through the Suez Canal.

It’s a process affecting coastal species around the world: without a continuous pathway to cooler waters, many are in trouble. Escape becomes difficult where coastlines run east–west or are broken into enclosed basins and islands. In these settings, species have to move huge distances just to gain a few degrees of latitude – the so-called “latitudinal trap”.

It’s also a process that has repeated throughout history. When we analysed 540 million years of fossil data for a recent study published in the journal Science, we found that species along east-west coastlines were more likely to go extinct than those with easier movement north-south.

We hypothesised that the shape and orientation of coastlines could help species escape – or trap them. If coastlines provide direct, continuous pathways to move north or south, species should be able to better track shifting climates. But, where species have to travel a long way for minimal latitude gain, their extinction risk is raised during episodes of environmental change.

Coastlines themselves are not fixed. Over millions of years, plate tectonics rearrange continents, sometimes producing long north-south coasts, like those of the Americas today, and at other times sprawling east-west seaways such as during the Ordovician a bit over 400 million years ago.

This means climate shocks can produce very different extinction outcomes depending on the layout of continents at the time.

To test this hypothesis, we analysed fossil data for about 13,000 groups of related shallow-marine invertebrate species, such as clams, snails, sponges and starfish, spanning the last 540 million years. We then paired these records with reconstructions of ancient geography.

For each fossil, we estimated how difficult it would have been for that species to shift its latitude along shallow coastlines. We measured this as the shortest number of steps to travel 5°, 10°, or 15° latitude north or south. (For context, Great Britain covers about 9° from top to bottom). Short distances imply a relatively direct escape; long distances imply a long or maybe impossible escape route.

We found that, over the last 540 million years, extinction risk was consistently higher for marine animals with long escape routes.

Geography amplifies catastrophe

This pattern intensified during Earth’s five mass extinction events. In our models, species with longer distances showed increases in extinction risk of up to 400% during mass extinctions, compared with about 60% during other intervals, highlighting that geography becomes far more consequential when climate change intensifies.

Although our analyses focused on geologic timescales, our results help us understand how shallow marine species may respond to climate change today. Species living in the Mediterranean or the Gulf of Mexico or other regions with semi-enclosed geography, or around the margins of islands, may have more difficulty as the ocean warms.

Coastline geometry may matter less for species that are good at dispersing themselves, however, especially those that have a long planktonic larvae phase where they drift around the ocean before becoming fixed in place. The survival of those species depends more on factors like ocean currents than coastline orientation.

Estimating whether a species is at risk of extinction is typically done with reference to attributes such as body size or geographic range size. But our work shows that extinction risk also depends on geography. Survival during climate upheaval depends not only on a species’ biology – but on whether the map itself offers an escape.

Erin Saupe receives funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Leverhulme Trust.

Cooper Malanoski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Species on east-west coastlines are more likely to go extinct than those on north-south shores – new study – https://theconversation.com/species-on-east-west-coastlines-are-more-likely-to-go-extinct-than-those-on-north-south-shores-new-study-275280

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Imad Ahmed, PhD Candidate, Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge

Each year as Ramadan approaches, more than 2 billion Muslims around the world prepare for a month of fasting, prayer and communality. But Ramadan does not begin on the same day everywhere in the world.

This year, some countries will commence the month of fasting on Thursday, February 19, whereas other countries may begin it a day earlier. Similarly, at the end of Ramadan, different communities will celebrate Eid on different dates.

The reason for this lies in the nature of the lunar visibility calendar – the new crescent Moon is not always visible everywhere on the same date. The prophet Muhammad is reported to have said: “Observe fast on sighting it [the crescent] and break fast on sighting it [the next crescent] – but if the sky is cloudy for you, then complete the number [30 days].”

In modern times, some countries such as Turkey have implemented calendar reforms, removing the act of monthly visual sightings of the crescent. They rely instead on pre-determined calculations.

Nevertheless, the visual sighting of the Moon to determine the start of the month remains the majority practice of Muslims across the world. Most believe this has to be done with the naked eye.

Cloud cover can therefore affect when the month begins in different locations, making it an unpredictable calendar. This imbues Moon sighting occasions with a sense of communal wonder – but it can also make the issue surprisingly contentious.

A very British problem

When Muslim migrants arriving in the UK in the middle of the 20th century tried to sight the new crescent Moon, they would often struggle – in part due to a very British problem: the cloudy weather.

As a result, various mosques and communities would outsource their Moon sightings to different countries. Some followed Morocco, others Turkey or Saudi Arabia. As each country might confirm a first sighting on different days, it meant UK mosques could end up with divided dates for Ramadan and Eid.

This has been a source of pain for some people in the British Muslim community. For me (Imad) growing up in London, it meant my school friends might start celebrating Eid on a different date to me and my family. This felt pretty sad – but I just assumed it had to be like this.

That changed when I witnessed the communal practice of Moon sighting during a family holiday to Cape Town in South Africa. When I saw thousands of Muslims gathering on the beach to celebrate seeing the new crescent Moon, I asked myself: “Why can’t we do this in the UK?”

When I returned from Cape Town, I founded a Muslim calendar lunar observation astronomy club called the New Crescent Society. Our aim is to find a way of celebrating Moon sighting communally throughout the UK – and to develop a viable lunar Islamic calendar here, like they have in other parts of the world.

Sometimes you can see the Moon in Cardiff but not in Cambridge. Sometimes the sky is clear in London but cloudy in Manchester. Our UK-wide astronomy education programme, Moonsighters Academy, now supports Muslims to lead their own lunar observation groups in their communities.

The astronomy of lunar visibility

Every month, the Moon goes from a thin crescent, waxing each night to become gibbous (more than half full) and then full, before waning back down to a crescent and disappearing again. This cycle occurs due to the Moon’s orbit around the Earth, and takes 29 and a half days.

The Moon does not create its own light. What we see is reflected sunlight – and the same side of the Moon is always facing towards us. It rotates on its axis at the same rate it orbits the Earth, a phenomenon called tidal locking.

The precise moment at which some amount of lunar illumination is first visible from Earth each month depends on geometrical physics. At this point, the crescent is so thin that even cameras struggle to determine it.

But as the Moon moves further away from the Sun in the sky, the crescent slowly becomes thicker as the angle of separation increases. There is now a longer “lag” between sunset and moonset, which also makes the new crescent more visible. The best time to view a young crescent is approximately halfway between sunset and moonset, balancing sky brightness with lunar altitude.

Astronomers relish the challenge of spotting a very thin crescent Moon when it is less than 24 hours old. But just how young a Moon can people see with the naked eye? One established landmark of 15 hours 32 minutes was set by the astronomer Stephen James O’Meara, who is also known for first spotting Halley’s comet on its return in 1985.

When you introduce optical aids like binoculars, even younger and thinner crescents can be seen. With the right conditions and technology, you can even image the Moon at the moment of conjunction, with an age of exactly zero hours. This was first achieved by astrophotographer Thierry Legault in July 2013, using an infrared filter on a telescope that had been “baffled” to block out the precariously nearby Sun.

When will Ramadan and Eid start?

This depends on where you are in the world. On February 17, the Moon will only be around three hours old at the time of sunset in Saudi Arabia, and moonset is only a few minutes after sunset at this point in the lunar cycle. So the Moon will be too close to the Sun in the sky for it to be astronomically visible.

Nonetheless, if the Saudi Supreme Court receives a report that someone has seen the Moon, it is likely to accept this, leading to a first day of fasting in Saudi Arabia (and all mosques around the world that follow its calendar) on Wednesday, February 18.

In the UK, Europe and North Africa, we are likely to have positive sightings the day after and commence fasting on Thursday, February 19. Countries further east, such as Australia, will probably see the Moon a day later still, and thus have their first fast on Friday, 20 February.

In March, on Thursday, 19, the Moon will be between 17 and 18 hours old at sunset, so difficult – but not impossible – to see in the UK, Europe and North Africa. So we expect communities following these sightings to start celebrating Eid on Saturday, March 21. Mosques following Saudi Arabia are likely to celebrate Eid a day earlier.

However, this is not just a story about calendars. When people gather to search the horizon for the new crescent Moon, they are participating in a practice that links them to the most ancient of human practices: observing and connecting with the natural world around them. In Britain, we hope our work can help make this an even more unified celebration.

The Moonsighters Academy was funded by a Science and Technology Facilities Council Spark award.

Emma L Alexander receives funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Counci for her research at the University of Leeds.

– ref. Moon sighting is a key part of Muslim life – how the lunar cycle determines the start of Ramadan and Eid – https://theconversation.com/moon-sighting-is-a-key-part-of-muslim-life-how-the-lunar-cycle-determines-the-start-of-ramadan-and-eid-276195

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Cooper Malanoski, Postdoctoral research associate, University of Oxford

As the Atlantic warms, many fish along the east coast of North America have moved northwards to keep within their preferred temperature range. Black sea bass, for instance, have shifted hundreds of miles up the coast.

In the Mediterranean, the picture is very different. Without an easy escape route towards the poles, many species are effectively trapped in a sea that is warming rapidly. Some native fish are even being replaced by more heat-tolerant species that have slipped in through the Suez Canal.

It’s a process affecting coastal species around the world: without a continuous pathway to cooler waters, many are in trouble. Escape becomes difficult where coastlines run east–west or are broken into enclosed basins and islands. In these settings, species have to move huge distances just to gain a few degrees of latitude – the so-called “latitudinal trap”.

It’s also a process that has repeated throughout history. When we analysed 540 million years of fossil data for a recent study published in the journal Science, we found that species along east-west coastlines were more likely to go extinct than those with easier movement north-south.

We hypothesised that the shape and orientation of coastlines could help species escape – or trap them. If coastlines provide direct, continuous pathways to move north or south, species should be able to better track shifting climates. But, where species have to travel a long way for minimal latitude gain, their extinction risk is raised during episodes of environmental change.

Coastlines themselves are not fixed. Over millions of years, plate tectonics rearrange continents, sometimes producing long north-south coasts, like those of the Americas today, and at other times sprawling east-west seaways such as during the Ordovician a bit over 400 million years ago.

This means climate shocks can produce very different extinction outcomes depending on the layout of continents at the time.

To test this hypothesis, we analysed fossil data for about 13,000 groups of related shallow-marine invertebrate species, such as clams, snails, sponges and starfish, spanning the last 540 million years. We then paired these records with reconstructions of ancient geography.

For each fossil, we estimated how difficult it would have been for that species to shift its latitude along shallow coastlines. We measured this as the shortest number of steps to travel 5°, 10°, or 15° latitude north or south. (For context, Great Britain covers about 9° from top to bottom). Short distances imply a relatively direct escape; long distances imply a long or maybe impossible escape route.

We found that, over the last 540 million years, extinction risk was consistently higher for marine animals with long escape routes.

Geography amplifies catastrophe

This pattern intensified during Earth’s five mass extinction events. In our models, species with longer distances showed increases in extinction risk of up to 400% during mass extinctions, compared with about 60% during other intervals, highlighting that geography becomes far more consequential when climate change intensifies.

Although our analyses focused on geologic timescales, our results help us understand how shallow marine species may respond to climate change today. Species living in the Mediterranean or the Gulf of Mexico or other regions with semi-enclosed geography, or around the margins of islands, may have more difficulty as the ocean warms.

Coastline geometry may matter less for species that are good at dispersing themselves, however, especially those that have a long planktonic larvae phase where they drift around the ocean before becoming fixed in place. The survival of those species depends more on factors like ocean currents than coastline orientation.

Estimating whether a species is at risk of extinction is typically done with reference to attributes such as body size or geographic range size. But our work shows that extinction risk also depends on geography. Survival during climate upheaval depends not only on a species’ biology – but on whether the map itself offers an escape.

Erin Saupe receives funding from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) and the Leverhulme Trust.

Cooper Malanoski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Species on east-west coasts have greater extinction risk than those on north-south shores – here’s why – https://theconversation.com/species-on-east-west-coasts-have-greater-extinction-risk-than-those-on-north-south-shores-heres-why-275280

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Janet Godsell, Dean and Professor of Operations and Supply Chain Strategy, Loughborough Business School, Loughborough University

Recent investigations have uncovered forced labour in agricultural supply chains, illegal fishing feeding supermarket freezers, deforestation embedded in everyday food products, and unsafe conditions in factories producing “sustainable” fashion. These harms were not visible on labels. They surfaced only when journalists, whistleblowers or activists exposed them.

And when they did, something predictable happened. Consumers felt uneasy. Brands issued statements. Promises were made. The point is that the force that set change in motion was not regulation. It was consumers.

Discovering that an ordinary purchase may be tied to exploitation or environmental damage creates a jolt of personal responsibility. In our research,
we found that when environmental consequences are clearly linked to people’s own buying choices, many are willing to switch products — especially when credible alternatives exist.

But guilt is private. It nudges personal behaviour. It does not automatically reshape systems. The shift happens when private discomfort becomes public voice.

Consumers are often also the first to make hidden environmental harms visible. They post evidence on social media. They question corporate claims. They compare sustainability promises with independent reporting. They organise petitions, boycotts and review campaigns. By shining a spotlight on the truth, the scrutiny shifts from shoppers to brands.

That shift matters because modern brands depend on trust. Reputation is an asset. When sustainability claims are publicly challenged, credibility is at risk. Research in organisational behaviour
shows that firms respond quickly to threats to legitimacy. Reputational damage affects customer loyalty, investor confidence and regulatory attention.

In many high-profile cases, supply chain reforms have followed intense public scrutiny rather than quiet compliance checks. Leaders may not act out of moral awakening — but they do act when inaction becomes costly to their reputation.

Consumers can trigger the emotional chain reaction. They feel guilt. They seek information. They speak collectively. That collective voice generates corporate shame.

Sustainability professor Mike Berners-Lee argues in his book A Climate of Truth that demanding honesty is one of the most powerful climate actions available to citizens. Raising standards of truthfulness in business and media changes incentives. When the gap between what companies say and what they do becomes visible, maintaining that gap becomes harder.

Our research explores how that visibility can be strengthened. The findings were clear. When environmental and social consequences are personalised and traceable, sustainability feels less distant. People see both their own role and the role of particular firms. That dual awareness encourages two responses: behavioural change driven by guilt and corporate accountability driven by shame.

Shame works because it is social. Brands care about how they are seen. When the negative environmental and social effects of supply chains can be publicly connected to named products, corporate narratives become contestable in real time.

Making supply chains socially visible

The technology to improve transparency already exists. Companies track goods through logistics systems, supplier databases and digital product-tagging that collect detailed information about sourcing and production. The barrier is not data collection. It is disclosure.

Environmental indicators — carbon emissions, water use, land conversion risk, labour standards compliance — can be linked to products through QR codes or retail apps. Comparable reporting standards would ensure consistency. Simple digital interfaces would make information accessible. Social sharing tools would allow consumers to compare and discuss findings publicly.

Social media is crucial. It already enables workers, communities and campaigners to challenge corporate messaging. Integrating verified supply chain data into these spaces would shift transparency from crisis response to everyday expectation.

This strategy, with its behaviour change directive, could work more effectively than rules or green marketing campaigns alone.

Regulation is essential but often slow and uneven across borders. Marketing campaigns can highlight selective improvements while leaving deeper practices untouched. Transparency activated by collective consumer voice operates differently. It aligns emotional motivation with reputational consequence.

Consumers are not passive recipients of information. They are catalysts. By feeling the first twinge of guilt, asking harder questions and speaking together, they create the conditions under which companies experience shame. When shame threatens trust and market position, change becomes rational and inevitable.

Shame is uncomfortable. But when directed at opaque systems rather than consumers, it can be powerful. By demanding truth and making supply chains socially visible, consumers can push businesses towards greater transparency — and, ultimately, towards more sustainable practice.

Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?

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Janet Godsell receives funding for the Interact Network+ from the Innovate UK Made Smarter Innovation Programme via the ESRC. She is affiliated with the World Economic Forum (WEF) Advanced Future Council for Advanced Manufacturing and Global Value Chains.

Nikolai Kazantsev receives funding from UKRI funded project “Resilience in Agrifood Systems Supply Chain Configuration Analytics Lab (Project ID: R1650GFS). He is a fellow of Clare Hall College, Cambridge.

– ref. How shaming unethical brands makes companies improve their behaviour – https://theconversation.com/how-shaming-unethical-brands-makes-companies-improve-their-behaviour-273062

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Oliver Bray, Dean of Leeds School of Arts, Leeds Beckett University

Walking through the doors of London’s Charles Dickens Museum is always a special moment. This handsome, tall London townhouse – middle class by Victorian standards but practically palatial to visitors today – was the crucible in which a young, ascending Charles Dickens wrote himself into international superstardom.

It is here that The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby spilled from his pen. And it is here, as the new exhibition Extra/Ordinary Women compellingly demonstrates, that Dickens lived in constant proximity to the intelligent and talented women who shaped his imagination, his domestic life and his enduring theatricality.

The Extra/Ordinary Women exhibition offers insights to many of these women. His wife, Catherine Dickens, who also wrote within these walls. His sister, Mary Hogarth, whose sudden death here devastated him. His sister-in-law, housekeeper and adviser Georgina Hogarth, who remained his rock for the rest of his life.

Victorian culture, which was suspicious of women who moved in theatrical, artistic or public spheres, left deep traces on Dickens’s portrayals of women. In his writing, Dickens either sanitised his female characters, like the “saintly” Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop (1841) or the “innocent” Rose Maylie in Oliver Twist (1838); or he reformed them, like the “fallen” women, Martha Endell and Little Em’ly in David Copperfield (1850). He gave these characters emotional clarity and symbolic weight that belies the more complex real-world inspirations.

The exhibition shows that Mary Hogarth, for instance, is scattered through Dickens’s fiction in the form of saintly young women whose deaths confer moral meaning. Dickens’s close friend Angela Burdett‑Coutts – a philanthropist and powerful progressive – was softened into Agnes Wickfield, a gentle moral influence in David Copperfield.

Dickens the performer

Looking around the exhibition, I found myself thinking about performance. Not just the performances of the women around him, but Dickens’s own lifelong, desperate theatricality.

It has always seemed obvious to me, as a performer of Dickens’s work, that he wrote with an actor’s mind. My own performed reading of A Christmas Carol taught me that his prose demands embodiment: the regretful cadences of Scrooge’s former fiancée Belle, the anguish of Bob Cratchit, the vocal changes that illustrate the transformative journey of Scrooge himself. These characters were not merely written to be read, they were written to be heard.

The deputy director of the museum, Emma Harper, informed me that while writing, Dickens would break from his desk to perform the characters he was developing in the mirror. He also performed domestic dramas for his children, founded amateur dramatic troupes and he threw himself into public readings so intensely that doctors monitored his pulse before and after each performance. He made himself physically ill with the sheer force of his acting. This is not a writer who happened also to perform. This is a performer who happened also to write.

And the women around him were, in many ways, part of that theatrical and artistic world. His daughters are good examples. Mamie Dickens loved performing, and Katey Perugini, an artist of real talent, appears in the exhibition through in a newly displayed painting that mimics her own painting style. The exhibition also reminds us that Ellen Ternan – Dickens’s longtime mistress – came from a theatrical family.

All of this becomes shockingly vivid with the exhibition’s centrepiece: the newly revealed, previously unpublished letter to the French opera singer Pauline Viardot. It is, in many ways, a perfect artefact, because it shows Dickens in full, contradictory colour.

Here is the great novelist, in Paris for his triumphant theatrical readings, writing with unabashed admiration to a woman whose artistry moved him to tears. But here is also Dickens the flirt – offering her an invitation to dine and promising tickets to his next reading.

Dickens wrote the letter while en route to see his mistress, Ternan, in Geneva. “I am going to Geneva tomorrow night, but will be back in seven days,” he says breezily, attempting to schedule dinner with Viardot for the following week.

The exhibition also includes a letter from Viardot to Dickens’s biographer, where she recalls Dickens “raining tears” during her performance of Orphée. And it reveals something about Dickens that the exhibition continually circles back to: he existed in a self-made world of performance, admiration, emotional excess and artistic intoxication. He was drawn to women who were brilliant, expressive and creative, because they belonged to that same world of heightened feeling and dramatic possibility.

This is what makes Extra/Ordinary Women so compelling: it reframes Dickens not only through the women he knew, but through the theatrical culture they collectively inhabited. Stepping outside, I felt his familiar voice linger, now joined by the sense that the women behind the scenes were finally stepping into the light – something the dramatist in Dickens might have appreciated.

Extra/Ordinary Women is at the Charles Dickens Museum in London until September 6

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Oliver Bray does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Extra/Ordinary Women exhibition explores the women in Charles Dickens’s life and writing – https://theconversation.com/extra-ordinary-women-exhibition-explores-the-women-in-charles-dickenss-life-and-writing-275861

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Josie Geris, Reader in Hydrology, University of Aberdeen

After weeks of relentless rain and flooding, and even more forecast, 2025’s droughts and hosepipe bans feel like ancient history. But they shouldn’t.

The UK is increasingly caught between these wetter winters and warmer, drier summers. What if this year’s summer brings water shortages again? The seemingly endless rainfall causing flooding across the UK right now could help solve future summer drought problems – if we capture it right.

The stakes are high in Speyside, home to around half of Scotland’s malt whisky distilleries. They had to cope with 2025 being the UK’s warmest and sunniest on record, where prolonged dry conditions led to widespread restrictions on water abstraction. Multiple distilleries were forced into temporary closures, costing the industry millions of pounds and highlighting just how vulnerable even Scotland’s famously wet regions are to water scarcity.

Whisky production represents one of the UK’s biggest industrial water users. Large quantities of water are required for the distilling process and the product itself, so understanding water conservation is both extremely important for the industry, and can also help others recognise the benefits.

If it was possible to retain this winter’s rainfall and release it gradually when it was needed, the nation could become more resilient to both floods and droughts without building expensive new reservoirs.

Managing droughts with floods

Across Speyside, they’re testing ways to slow, store and steadily release water by working with the landscape rather than against it. Distillers have invested in leaky dams (small barriers built across temporary upland streams) to slow the flow of water during heavy rain and allow the rainwater to soak into soil and recharge groundwater.

Leaky dams hold the water at surface level as well helping it store underground. Water in the soil and deeper groundwater move through the subsurface much more slowly than over land – taking weeks or months rather than hours or days – which is why rivers still flow even after long dry spells.

There are other examples of useful interventions. Peatland restoration, wetland creation and tree planting all work by increasing temporary storage in the landscape and slowing the movement of water into rivers.

Read more:
Environment issues have never been so fiercely debated in a Welsh election campaign as they will be in 2026

Research across upland catchment areas in Cumbria and West Yorkshire shows how the principles being tested in Speyside could translate to elsewhere. A large academic review of natural flood management evidence concluded that measures increasing water storage, slowing the flow of water over the land or enhancing soil structure can consistently reduce the peak level of a flood.

This growing body of evidence supports a simple but powerful idea: the UK and other countries could be more resilient to droughts and floods by redesigning landscapes to keep water around for longer.

Three lessons for the rest of the UK

1. Design and location matter

Local factors and hydrology (the study of the movement and management of water) can determine what works best where. For example, planting trees “somewhere” delivers far less benefit than planting them in the right places, especially near rivers, near the source of the river, or where soil can absorb water.

2. Benefits must stack up or they won’t be adopted

Leaky dams and other projects, such as tree planting, are relatively inexpensive, compared with traditionally engineered flood defences or having to deal with flood and drought consequences. They can deliver benefits at a fraction of the cost, while potentially also increasing biodiversity, soil health, carbon capture and improving water quality.

But there are trade-offs, which need to be assessed early. For example, in some cases, large-scale tree planting can also reduce summer water availability in already stressed catchment areas. Tree canopies can temporarily store water on the leaves, but if this water evaporates it doesn’t return to the soil. Tree roots improve the soil so it absorbs and stores more water, but trees can also use more water. The net effects depend on factors such as climate, soil type and tree species.

3. Good governance will unlock funding

When water security has clear economic benefits, businesses are willing to engage. However, investment is not always private, and a recent review showed public funding is often fragmented, with inconsistent planning rules. Strengthening overall governance of these kind of schemes is essential, because farmers, businesses and landowners are far more likely to participate if they benefit.

Managing our landscapes appropriately won’t stop all floods or prevent every drought, but it can make both less severe, while restoring habitats, supporting farming, and protecting industries that rely on dependable water supplies.

Every river carrying floodwater to the sea represents water that could be stored for drier months. Thinking ahead for what happens during heavy rains can be part of forward planning for more extreme weather in years to come.

Josie Geris receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, Royal Society, the Scottish Government via CREW (Scotland’s Centre of Expertise for Waters), and Chivas Brothers.

Megan Klaar receives funding from the Natural Environment Research Council, The Leverhulme Trust and National Trust.

– ref. Why coping with heavy rain in Scotland’s whisky country shows how to save water for the summer – https://theconversation.com/why-coping-with-heavy-rain-in-scotlands-whisky-country-shows-how-to-save-water-for-the-summer-275762