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Focuses on the emergence of a different type of English fiction when `The Pickwick Papers,' by Charles Dickens, was published in 1836. The role of Robert Seymour in the first articles published; The revolutionary narrative when Dicken's took the lead after Seymour's suicide; The popularity of the stories in England; The writings as a reflection of England's changing society.

The article focuses on security measures at Glastonbury, Britain's biggest pop festival. There will be spot checks for cars without tickets within a 15-mile radius and patrolling guards in Land Rovers. Anyone with no tickets will have a 12-foot-tall, four-mile-long perimeter fence to scale. How different from 1970, when the first Glastonbury Fayre attracted about 1,500 curious revellers to a single field for a laid-back weekend of folk and blues. Today's tickets cost ten times as much in real terms and must be ordered online or by phone. The emphasis is now on security, safety and making sure that the 115,000 people who have paid are the only ones allowed in. Official advice is to bring a credit card and a mobile phone. There is a family-oriented camping ground for parents with young children, sensible advice on noise levels and reminders not to drink to excess. To be fair to Michael Eavis, who runs the event, the local council, which gives him his entertainment licence, demands the security measures.

Engineers frequently admire the ways in which living creatures solve problems. However, they rarely manage to emulate them. But Andrey Geim, from Manchester University, in England, and his colleagues have done so. In a paper just published in "Nature Materials," they describe how they replicated the way that geckos cling to ceilings in a new, glue-free adhesive tape. A gecko's powers come from tiny hairs on the soles of its feet. Each hair sticks to any surface it touches by a combination of capillary action due to water it has absorbed and so-called van der Waal forces--electrostatic interactions between individual molecules. Dr Geim and his colleagues used electron-beam lithography (a technique employed in the manufacture of computer chips) to fabricate small pieces of plastic tape that had hairlike protuberances on their surfaces.

The article discusses the politics involved with reproductive health. A decade ago, the world's leaders met in Cairo at the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). There, they crafted a plan to achieve "reproductive health and rights for all" by 2015. That plan was wide-ranging--from more contraception and fewer maternal deaths to better education for girls and greater equality for women. The ICPD plan also aimed to change the way those at the sharp end of making policy and delivering services thought about reproduction. It wanted to move away from a focus on family planning (and, by extension, government policies on population control) towards a broader view of sexual health, and systems and services shaped by individual needs. Over the past week, hundreds of government officials, public-health experts and activists met in London to mark the anniversary of the ICPD and to take stock of progress towards achieving its goals. On paper, that progress has been impressive. Governments around the world have introduced legislation that reflects the ICPD's aims. But when it comes to turning policy into practice, "mixed success" is the verdict of a report card just released by Countdown 2015, a coalition of voluntary bodies involved in the field. According to the United Nations' Population Fund (UNFPA), 61% of married couples now use contraception, an 11% increase since 1994. This has helped push global population growth down from 82m to 76m people a year over the past decade. But in some places--particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia--birth rates remain high. Few poor countries have earmarked enough of their budgets to meet their citizens' reproductive-health needs. Nor have donors lived up to expectations.

Discusses the outlook for economic growth in London, England as of March 2002. Information about population and housing, according to a paper published by the Centre for Economic and Business Research; Idea that there is an impending crisis in housing, according to a report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a social policy think-tank; Indication that the increasing population is straining the transport system; Issue of Ken Livingstone's London Plan that will force councils to release land for development.

Presents the author's experience as a journalist who joined 'The Economist' in 1933 and retired as finance director in 1978. History of the journal, which began as a weekly paper in London, England; Impact of war, the communications revolution, and economic and social change; Outlook for the periodical.

The article looks at the decrease in crime in Great Britain following the terrorist bombings of July 2005. It has long been the subject of speculation among the police and criminologists: what would happen if all the officers who now spend so much of their time taking statements, profiling criminals and moving pieces of paper around were suddenly put on the streets? Crime figures released by London's Metropolitan Police this week provide the best answer yet. Following the bombings of July 7th and 21st, thousands of police officers materialised on London's pavements, many of them sporting brightly coloured jackets. Drawn from all over the city, they were assigned to guard potential targets such as railway stations. The show of force did not just scare off terrorists. There was less crime in July than in May or June, which is unusual: the warmer month tends to bring out criminal tendencies, as windows are left open and alcohol is imbibed alfresco.

The article examines the controversy surrounding two executives of the Football Association (FA) who had affairs with the same FA secretary. The situation is potentially a bit embarrassing, but not much worse--unless, that is, the organization they happen to work for is the Football Association (FA), which runs England's national game, and one of the chaps is the England football manager, Sven Goran Eriksson and the other is the FA's boss, Mark Palios. After press reports that Mr Eriksson was conducting an affair with Faria Alam, an FA secretary, Mr Eriksson was asked whether it was true, and is said to have responded that it was all "nonsense". If the FA had a chance of using Mr Eriksson's latest indiscretion to get rid of him on the cheap, it lost it last weekend when the "News of the World" revealed that Colin Gibson, the FA's director of communications, offered a deal: in exchange for keeping quiet about Ms Alam's prior relationship with his boss, Mr Palios, the paper would get the full "chapter and verse" on Mr Eriksson's fling with the FA's femme fatale. The News of the World promptly published the full transcript of its conversation with the hapless Mr Gibson. Mr Palios and Mr Gibson resigned.

The article focuses on international banking and a British court case. Normally, an insolvent, little-known British paint company would interest few bankers besides those who had lent it money. However, any international bank that has made a secured loan under English law--which is used in many jurisdictions around the globe--might well keep an eye on the case of Spectrum Plus. Earlier this month the Court of Appeal in London said, in effect, that the House of Lords, Britain's highest court, should have the final say in a test case brought by National Westminster Bank about Spectrum Plus, to which it had given a secured loan. At issue is whether NatWest enjoys a fixed or a floating charge over Spectrum Plus's book debts and their proceeds. The difference is important, because fixed charges give banks the legal right to payment from a bust borrower ahead of all other creditors. With a floating charge, they must join the queue and face more risk of losing their money. NatWest asked the High Court last year whether security (identical to that in the Siebe Gorman ruling) that it had taken for a loan to Spectrum Plus gave it a fixed charge. Recent doubts over the correctness of Siebe Gorman date from 2001.In a New Zealand case known as Brumark, senior English judges hearing the final appeal in London ruled that whether a charge was fixed or floating depended on substance, not form: what mattered was not what the parties had agreed on paper, but how easily the lender could gain control of the assets on which the loan was secured. The appeal to the Lords will surely cause a re-examination of this ruling too. It will interest the British government as well as bankers. Until the law changed last September, some government departments were first in line after fixed-charge holders when firms went under. Now they must wait their turn, at an estimated cost to the state so far of £70m ($128m).

Six Algerian men and one Ethiopian were arrested in a north London flat this week in which a smidgen of ricin, a lethal poison was discovered. Ricin is derived from castor beans using a simple chemical process involving easily obtainable materials, chiefly lye, acetone, a coffee grinder and some old newspapers. The latest raid in London is probably a result of another success: the discovery last month of false papers, protection suits, and chemicals suitable for bombmaking in a flat in Paris, where four North Africans were arrested. Documents found after the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan show that al-Qaeda had investigated ricin, among other poisons. The government is planning new laws to update the country's disaster planning, which is currently a cluttered mixture of cold-war relics and ad hoc measures introduced since September 11th 2001.