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"Yet again, we’re all caught up with the fame-encrusted stories of rich, powerful men. The women and their reported life-scarring encounters with Epstein and his set are an afterthought. At best, they’re treated as a salacious backdrop to the fortunes of men whom society has lionised and – with epic irony – thought better than the rest of us." Michelle Cook says the reaction to the Epstein files spotlights how badly we are still failing women and girls.

"As DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] expands its footprint, it’s making its cruelty manifest in suburban areas like Roxbury – towns that might have once felt insulated from the brutality and chaos that immigration agents have unleashed in US cities." Schuyler Mitchell reports that the suburbs are fighting back against ICE's plans to turn warehouses into detention centers.

Peter Kellner writes an open letter to Labour's next prime minister: "It will be crucial to learn from Starmer's mistakes. Listing them is the easy bit. The crisis that has engulfed him deserves an explanation. How did he end up disliked by so many voters and alienating so many of his own MPs?"

Martha Gill argues that enthusiasts for apprenticeships haven’t worked out they fit into a modern economy: "The story of apprenticeships is a long struggle to make a scheme built for a time of trades and manufacturing fit into a modern flexible service economy – a wobbly journey of correction and overcorrection."

"One of the biggest barriers he sees for aspiring cricketers is that their parents often struggle to afford the prohibitive cost of kit, which can quickly spiral into hundreds of pounds." The former England bowler Saj Mahmood talks about making cricket to all with Chris Britt-Searle.

Chris Lovegrove has a site devoted to the world of Joan Aiken's Wolves Chronicles.

Andrew Lownie on today's arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

Andrew Lownie, the indefatigable author of Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York, responds to today's developments.

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Chris Dillow argues that if government wants to foster economic growth, it will have to fight for it: "Right now, the social transformation needed to raise growth requires the government to face down the powerful interests of, if not capital in general, then at least the more regressive elements of it such as rentiers, monopolists and media barons."

Virginia Heffernan investigates Jeffrey Epstein's favourite intellectual salon, Edge. She finds that it infiltrated Harvard, muzzled the humanities and preached master-race science.

"'Free School Meals' and 'Free School Clothing' were an absolute lifeline for us ... That support meant I could walk through the school gates looking like everyone else, focusing on my education rather than the clothes on my back. It taught me that while education is a right, the cost of accessing it can be a barrier we must actively dismantle." Shaffaq Mohammed on the importance of the Lib Dem amendment, passed by the Lords, that will put a price cap on school uniforms.

Lauren Leek crunches the numbers to see why so many pubs have closed: "So here’s the political economy of pub closures. It is not: people stopped going. It is: pubs became collateral in leveraged buyouts, debt costs were passed down as higher rents and lower investment, and the pubs that couldn’t sustain the extraction closed, while the ones that could were reshaped into higher-margin branded concepts serving a wealthier clientele."

Did climate change lead to greater persecution of witches? York Historian weighs the evidence.

"Whenever a performer had a Muppet on their hand, they never broke character. So all the time in between takes, Gonzo would still be Gonzo and I was still talking to Gonzo, not Dave Goelz, who is the performer of Gonzo. I believed that Gonzo and Rizzo were my friends, and we were on an adventure together. Rizzo in particular, Steve Whitmire, was so funny. We would just play all day long." Kevin Bishop shares his memories of playing Jim Hawkins in Muppet Treasure Island with Brian VanHooker.

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Julia Baird says there are many questions that the people in Epstein's web of connections have never answered, but this one perplexes her most: "Why is it that so many of Epstein's circle of male friends – inner, outer, bestie, acquaintance – have never decried or confessed to seeing something suspicious or concerning in his conduct or environment, while the few women who have spoken, thought it was blatantly obvious he was an 'abhorrent' creep?"

"For decades, Mandelson was both an irritant for the press and a reliable source of leaks, gossip, and backbiting. The part missing from many of the post-mortems on his political career that have appeared in newspapers and news programmes this week is how often he appeared as a media figure, treated as a 'sensible' big beast of British democracy." Mic Wright reminds us that the journalists pretending to be surprised about Peter Mandelson's character have used him as a resource for years.

Nathan Ley gives the reason why Council Tax keeps going up while council services get worse: the cost of adult social care.

Hedgehogs are disappearing fast – in fact they are vulnerable to extinction in the UK. Kate Moore lists some practical steps we can take to save them.

Hillary Burlock explains that not knowing how to dance could ruin your reputation in Regency Britain: "Dancing masters were crucial to transforming girls and boys into ladies and gentlemen, equipping them with the skills necessary to perform when they made their entrance into society around the age of 18."

"The Amish community, along with their traditions, customs and way of life, serve as an integral part of the movie, not a picturesque backdrop to the main arc of the story." Sven Mikulec finds Peter Weir's Witness is a deep, subtle and complex social comment disguised as a police thriller.

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"The fallout from the latest revelations has again put survivors secondary to the actions of powerful men. Mandelson, who maintained a friendship with Epstein after his 2008 conviction, initially declined to apologise to Epstein’s victims and distance himself from any knowledge of the financier’s sex crimes." Victims have told us the worst of Epstein’s crimes for decades – and  but they are still being ignored, says Lindsey Blumell.

Stephanie Burt on the organised opposition to ICE in Minnesota: "In January a horde of masked thugs arrived in the Twin Cities as part of Donald Trump’s Operation Metro Surge to brutalise, kidnap and deport undocumented residents. The goons soon found themselves outnumbered, as well as watched, followed, tracked and sometimes stymied by rapidly organised networks of civilians, who use text chains, plastic whistles, car horns and in one case a trombone to discomfit the would-be kidnappers and warn their potential victims."

Anna Fazackerley and Tam Patachako travel to Southend to see what happens to a city when its university closes.

"The 'laissez-faire' of free trade was ... less an ideological commitment to the free market or a desire to give free rein to rich capitalists as it was an effort to feed the poor, foster world peace and cosmopolitan friendship, and erode the baleful and unjustly got power of land-owning aristocrats." Paul Crider speaks up for Manchester Liberalism.

"She may have been a child of Victorian Wales but she saw nudity as natural." Jonathan Jones goes to see the Gwen John exhibition at the National Museum, Cardiff.

Cavan Scott encounters Charles Dickens and Winnie the Pooh in New York.

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"Without doubt, information provided during the height of the global financial crisis by a senior Member of the British Government, will have been operationally beneficial to a hedge fund manager, international financier and broker like Jeffrey Epstein. Without doubt, Mandelson will have known this when he was sending this information." Gareth Roberts makes the case for charging Peter Mandelson with misconduct in public office.

Catherine Barnard and Denzil Davidson ask if Greenland can join the European Union: "Whether Greenlanders decide that it should be attempted, and how such an attempt would be received in Washington, will be an important question for the geopolitics of the High North and the EU’s role in it."

Laura Laker on the battles over Haringey's delivery of one of the largest simultaneous rollouts of Low Traffic Neighbourhood zones in London, and of 36 school streets covering 44 schools.

"The full origins of Epstein’s wealth remain shrouded in mystery, but what is clear, according to Forbes' review of court filings, an investigative memo and financial records, is that Epstein relied above all on two billionaire clients and a tax gimmick to build his fortune." How did Jeffrey Epstein get so rich? Giacomo Tognini and John Hyatt investigate.

John Mullan sings the praises of Dombey and Son: "Like all great Dickens novels it has really satisfying baddies. Major 'Joe' Bagstock, one of those who predates on the loftily oblivious Mr Dombey, is a sinister, blue-faced old soldier with the disconcerting habit of talking of himself in the third person to an invisible confidante. 'He's hard-hearted, Sir, is Joe – he's tough, Sir, tough, and de-vilish sly!'"

"I don’t know the Lake District very well, but back in 2015 I went to see the last Golden Eagle that lived alone on the dark crags above Haweswater Reservoir. At the time, I didn’t realise how lucky I was to watch it soar above me, because by 2016 it had gone, presumed dead somewhere in the mountains and thus ending the history of breeding Golden Eagles in England." Mary Colwell on Lee Schofield and his book Wild Fell.

What the latest Epstein revelations mean for the Royal Family

I review Andrew Lownie's Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York in the latest Liberator. 

Here he talks about what the revelations contained in the latest batch of Epstein files mean for the Royal Family – Andrew and Fergie in particular.

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"Nine of the groups are being run from Sri Lanka, three have admins in Nigeria, and the admins of six other groups appear to be located in Mexico, the US, Australia, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Kosovo. The remaining eleven have hidden their locations, but conform to the same pattern of fake address – AI memes – gaming video creator, suggesting they are similarly moderated." Katherine Denkinson explains how foreign entrepreneurs are monetising the clicks of British racists.

Rebecca Hamer on the common thread that links abusers, from grooming gangs to Jeffrey Epstein and his friends.

"His speech on Monday was a sprawling grievance tour, hitting every GB news talking point: immigrants, net-zero, lefty lawyers; all responsible for our economic woes and declining living standards." Zoe Gruenwald deconstructs Nigel Farage's big speech.

"In July 1616, nine women from the small South Leicestershire village of Husbands Bosworth were hanged after being found guilty at the Leicester Assizes of bewitching the teenage son of the Lord of the Manor." Margaret Brecknell says the case of the so-called Witches of Husband Bosworth shines a spotlight on the atmosphere of fear and superstition sweeping the entire country during the reign of King James I.

Rob Goulding reports on disagreements over the restoration of the Anderton Boat Lift in Cheshire. This marvel of Victorian engineering lifts boats from the River Weaver to the Trent and Mersey Canal.

Jefferson Pooley and Michael J. Socolow show that Orson Welles notorious 1938 radio dramatisation of War of the Worlds did not cause hysteria across the US and ask why this legend persists.

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Peter Jukes argues that Peter Thiel’s name "now sits at the centre of a transatlantic web stretching from Epstein to Boris Johnson’s Downing Street, through the NHS’s largest ever data contract, and into Labour leader Keir Starmer’s recent trip to Washington".

"Federal Council turned out to be the worst committee that I've ever served on. And remember, I've been doing this for the best part of forty years." Mark Valladares has found the first three years of the Liberal Democrats' Federal Council to be an exercise in futility.

"It's easy to condemn anti-migrant protests on moral grounds. What such condemnation misses, however, is that there's also an intellectual error here – an excessive focus on individuals and insufficient attention to structural societal problems." Chris Dillow says we should spend less time looking for scapegoats and more time thinking about socio-economic failure.

Danny Chambers discusses how his varied veterinary career now shapes his work in politics: "I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t look after animals – or other people – unless you look after yourself first. Whether you’re a vet or an MP, it’s incredibly easy to let your own wellbeing slide, to say yes to everything, and to push yourself to the point of burnout."

"'If you love cider, this is cider to the power of 10,' says Barny Butterfield, speaking about the flavours packed by some of this year’s 'special' apples. Indeed Butterfield, the owner of Sandford Orchards, near Exeter, is buying extra tanks to increase cider production after the UK’s hottest summer on record resulted in an abundance of fruit." Zoe Wood reports on the prospects of a vintage year for English cider.

Andrew Hickey celebrates Jethro Tull and Living in the Past.

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Sam Bright looks at new research that suggests effective attack lines to use against Reform UK: "Farage’s shtick is to pose as a champion of the working man, fighting against out-of-touch elites and corrupt institutions. But this new research shows the importance of exposing Farage’s foundational myth: namely, that Reform isn’t a grassroots rebellion; it’s a vehicle bankrolled by the financiers who crashed the economy in 2008 and the austerity-obsessed corporate vandals who have profited ever since."

Like it or not, Britain's membership of the European Convention on Human Rights is going to be an issue at the next general election, and we're going to need better arguments than we were able to come up with during the European Union referendum. Here, George Peretz makes a social democrat case for Britain's continued membership of the ECHR.

Dan Friedman counsels Democrats against getting entangled in conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein as there are more than enough real Trump scandals to expose.

Michaela James and Mayara Silveira Bianchim find that it's not so much activity as feeling confident and in control when they’re active that boosts children’s wellbeing: "autonomy, confidence and competence – were stronger predictors of wellbeing than more traditional measures like deprivation (normally we’d expect deprivation to positively or negatively affect wellbeing) or even total time spent being active."

"Nowadays, it’s hard to believe that Durrell was once ranked among the best prose stylists of the postwar period. Such is the fickle nature of literary legacies that the main charge made against his writing – its luscious language and bewildering structure – was originally considered its unique achievement." Guy Stagg on the decline of Lawrence Durrell's literary reputation.

"I contend that The Rising of the Moon is Gladys Mitchell's greatest stylistic achievement: she sets out to create a world filtered through the eyes of her thirteen-year old narrator, Simon Innes, and to that end she succeeds on every page. It's not just a perspective, it's an entire ideology that Miss Mitchell offers in her young protagonist. Simon and Keith have scruples; they are cunning and resourceful, in the best meaning of those words; they have their own particular code of honor. They also have a thorough understanding of how their world operates (parental laws; omissions which are not the same as lies), and Simon's subdued narrative prose bolsters this point." The Stone House celebrates an extraordinary book.