The latest data from a major study of grassroots politics in the UK has thrown up something troubling for the Conservative party this week. It turns out that only 29% of its rank-and-file members are women – fewer than 25 years ago. And the future looks even more bleak, since a whopping 85% of its youngest members are men, too. The Tories really do have a woman problem and it’s going to take something pretty radical to fix it.

It’s popular in the English language to refer to swear words as “Anglo-Saxon”. But expert in medieval linguistics, Emily Reed has looked into the origins of some of the most common profanities and found that many were actually adopted from European neighbours such as the French, Germans and Dutch. And some of these curses had perfectly innocent meanings until the bloody English started using them as expletives.

Like a one-man Google Earth, in 1909 Swiss aviation pioneer Eduard Spelterini flew his balloon 100 miles across the Alps – from the French town of Chamonix to Switzerland. Now, more than a century on, his groundbreaking photographs are being used to map how climate change is dramatically altering France’s biggest glacier. Kieran Baxter explains.

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