2 w. ago Helm by Sarah Hall review – a mighty epic of climate change in slow motion

A Cumbrian wind is the central character in this hugely ambitious, millennia-spanning novel, which was 20 years in the makingEven if Sarah Hall did not begin her acknowledgments by saying that it’s taken her 20 years to write Helm it would be evident. Not from a cursory glance at her bibliography, perhaps: in that time Hall has published six other novels and three volumes of extraordinary short stories. But in every other way, and the moment you begin reading.There’s the subject, for starters. Ever since the first paragraph of her first novel, Haweswater, in which an early 20th-century man drives his horse and cart through the waters of a Cumbrian valley recently drowned by a dam, Hall has been concerned with landscape, with weather, with nature in all its forms, with the ways in which we affect each other. In The Carhullan Army, climate change has already happened. Cumbria is semi-tropical, temperate England a folk memory; a dystopian vision that feels, this baked summer, uncomfort...

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3 w. ago Last of 72,000 homes in Scotland which lost power in Storm Floris reconnected

SSEN said record wind speeds and widespread storm-force gusts caused ‘considerable network damage’.

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4 w. ago Storm Floris live: Commuters hit by more rail disruption after ‘most damaging summer storm in recent memory’

The Met Office warned flying debris could pose ‘a danger to life’, while 43,000 homes lost power in Scotland

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4 w. ago Storm Floris latest: 120mph winds recorded in 'most damaging summer storm in recent memory'

Met Office warned of injuries and danger to life from large waves hitting seafronts, coastal roads and properties

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4 w. ago Storm Floris latest: 120mph winds recorded as amber 'danger to life' weather warning extended

Met Office warns of injuries and danger to life from large waves hitting seafronts, coastal roads and properties

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4 w. ago Storm Floris: Wind gusts of 122mph recorded as storm causes widespread damage, disruption across Scotland

Warning that travel disruption could extend into Tuesday

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