The recent heatwaves revealed how ill-prepared Britain remains for a hotter future – and how unequal the ability to cope with it has become, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
WITH the right to roam back once more as a live political issue, Nick Hayes’s new book, The Trespasser’s Companion (Bloomsbury, 2022), could not be more timely. It is an informative and attractive read, and it will lift your spirits. Buy it.
In 1999 Marion Shoard’s excellent book, A Right to Roam, provided fuel for the last up-swelling of activism on this issue, while Michael Meacher introduced his “Crow Bill,” which became the Countryside and Rights of Way Act (2000). Shoard’s book was a great deal more detailed and methodically argued than Hayes’s, and remains indispensable.
Meacher’s Crow Act brought us some very partial and unevenly spread gains. Still, only 8 per cent of our countryside is free for us to wander by legal right.
As Saudi Arabia is hailed abroad for its ‘reforms,’ the reality for women inside the kingdom grows ever more repressive. On the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, MARYAM ALDOSSARI argues it is time to stop applauding the illusion – and start listening to the women the state works hardest to silence
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
One of the major criticisms of China’s breakneck development in recent decades has been the impact on nature — returning after 15 years away, BEN CHACKO assessed whether the government’s recent turn to environmentalism has yielded results
MIKE COWLEY welcomes half a century of remarkable work, that begins before the Greens and invites a connection to — and not a division from — nature


