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The vulnerable are left unprotected by our attitudes to substance abuse, argues a leading documentary maker

Asuccess rate of 1%. In what area of public life would we accept that? Last year, Professor Neil McKeganey of the University of Glasgow, one of the most respected academics in Britain, established that the authorities seize just 1% of the heroin that enters Scotland in any one year. He sees no reason to think this would be any different for the nation as a whole.

Where were the headlines? Surely the press, obsessed by crime and drug-fuelled violence, would have it splashed across the front page. Not a peep. Why not?

If heroin gets in, we can only suppose cocaine and other drugs are smuggled in equally successfully. Gordon Meldrum, of the Scottish branch of the Serious Organised Crime Agency, tasked with coordinating our battle against drugs smuggling, shrugs: "1% or 10% – it is not good enough." He claims that a breakthrough in targeting top smugglers is around the corner, but when asked if there is any chance of achieving the 60-70% target the United Nations estimates would be required to change fundamentally the market in illegal drugs, he simply shakes his head.

I have been making a documentary series, Our Drugs War. They are not my first films on drugs. But even I was stunned by McKeganey's 1% figure – and the lack of response. I quoted it in interviews with senior police officers, drugs advisers and politicians; few expressed surprise, few felt that current policies were remotely adequate. Most questioned whether the Home Office was the best place to make drugs policy; surely it is an issue for health. But these public figures would only express their worries away from the camera.

I would ask why they were so concerned about opening up the debate. The response was almost comic in its predictability: "The Daily Mail." Anyone who steps out of line on policy gets shot down fast. Just ask Professor David Nutt, one of the world leaders on the effects of drugs on the brain and the now ex-chairman of the government's advisory committee on the misuse of drugs. The home secretary summarily sacked him for stepping out of line.

Drugs policies have little to do with science, health risk or harm. They have been hijacked by the emotive rhetoric of moralists.

This fear of the Daily Mail is a dishonest excuse – the truth is that there is a collective lack of will to address one of our major social problems. We bury our heads and pretend that banning drugs equals regulation. Quite the reverse; driving drugs underground leaves them unregulated and consumers unprotected. Just what is in the drugs they buy, what dose is safe, what are the side effects? And not just "old" drugs such as cocaine. There's the astonishing market in synthetic drugs which has grown up largely since the banning of ecstasy – operating in grey areas of legality and fuelling weekend parties up and down the country.

As Nutt's replacement as government advisor, Les Iversen, has found, ban one and another appears. Last year mephedrone was the craze, got banned and has been replaced by naphyrone. Ban… ban… ban… As John Arthur, head of the Edinburgh drugs charity Crew, says: "It seems to make sense to ban, but it does not work. It makes things worse. It criminalises everything."

This summer the nation's kids are out on the round of music festivals where alcohol is sold more cheaply than water and tobacco companies can be sponsors. Yet to get their fix they will either end up breaking the law, buying dodgy stuff from dealers in toilets, or they will swallow many pills before the festival to avoid security checks.

The only way to control and channel this demand is to tell the truth. If a drug really kills, tell us. If it is really dangerous, tell us. But equally, be honest when it is not. Regulate supply via prescription or chemists.

Look at the impact of tobacco education. In my lifetime we have moved away from a society where we smoked in trains, planes and pubs. We have easily accepted that we cannot smoke in any of them. We have been persuaded that tobacco really kills. Yet those who choose to go on smoking are free to do so. Because they want to.

Why should other drugs be so different? Some poor souls will end up as addicts – that is inevitable. But it should be treated as an illness, not a crime. Addictions of all types are usually a product of self-medication to avoid facing the world and we should do everything to help.

Treatment is much, much cheaper than putting people through the justice system and maybe locking them up in prison – where they will come across more drugs, of course. In this age of cuts, huge savings could be made at every stage of the drugs story.

Then there is the wider context and cost – be it in Latin America, Mexico or now Afghanistan. I went to Kabul, where the west finances both sides of the conflict. On one side, soldiers die and our tax money is spent to uphold a government riddled with drug-related corruption. On the other, the huge profits from an illegal heroin trade supply over 60% of the Taliban's finance.

Drugs money in one form or another makes up almost half of Afghanistan's GDP. These vast sums are generated solely because heroin is illegal.

On the frontline our policy has been equally confused. Some years British troops in Afghanistan are ordered to eliminate poppy production; other years eradication is deemed counterproductive because it will alienate the farmers we need on our side.

General Stanley McChrystal, before he was replaced, was for leaving most farmers in peace, while the Kabul government, presumably operating on last year's plans, sent teams down to Helmand on a determined drive to eradicate.

The counter-narcotics minister in Kabul shrewdly observes that if we ever stop it here, heroin will simply be grown somewhere else – the profits are too attractive.

Regulating drugs sensibly is not a magic solution. I make no bones about the dangers of drugs, be they heroin or the industrial cleaner, GBL [gamma butyrolactone]. People will continue to die each year.

I do not wish to undervalue the real emotion of each family, but we have to start being brave enough to acknowledge the level of failure of present strategies. Drugs are not a problem of morality and crime but of health.

One per cent. As a New York congressman said to me: "The definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and get the same results. It's true for the addict, it's true for the addicted society, it's true for our using a criminal justice model to solve a medical problem."

Angus Macqueen is a film-maker. His three-part Our Drugs War starts tomorrow at 8pm on Channel 4

• Drugs
• Drugs policy
• Drugs trade

It is shameful that this country has never prosecuted anyone for inflicting this dangerous and painful procedure on small girls

I am glad you covered the issue of female genital mutilation last week. It is shameful that this country has never prosecuted anyone responsible for inflicting this dangerous and excruciatingly painful procedure on small girls. Your articles have spurred me on: I have written to the home secretary and to the Lib Dem Home Office minister Lynne Featherstone. I am also going to write to every MP with a sizeable community from the Horn of Africa in their constituency. I urge other readers to do something along those lines.

The softly-softly approach hasn't worked. Enabling communities in this country to resist the pressure to mutilate their girls has achieved little. Over many years our impotent hand-wringing has condemned countless girls to a lifetime of pain and infection and possible infertility. Would we tolerate it if white women had to have their scar tissue cut open on their wedding night?

Vera Lustig

Walton-on-Thames

Surrey

While, according to the Oxford Dictionary, your use of the word "circumcision" is correct in contemporary usage, the term derives from the Latin "circumcise" (to "cut around"). For boys, this is the removal of a small section of prepuce, leaving intact the glans with its promise of a lifetime of erotic pleasure.

For girls, "female circumcision" is a violent amputation that removes the clitoris, the main, and for most women the most satisfying, physical source of pleasure. It is emphatically not circumcision, nor simply "genital mutilation", and the physical, sensual and emotional scars that remain are profoundly distinct from those of male circumcision.

It is deeply disturbing that the Observer does not name this horrific practice for what it is – clitoral amputation.

Professor Dr Suzanne Buchan

University for the Creative Arts, Farnham College

Surrey

In your editorial about female circumcision you refer to the "queasiness on the part of officials to intervene against a traditional practice". Does this include doctors? If evidence of gunshot or knife wounds can be passed on to the police then one assumes that child mutilation can be, given that they are all probably the result of illegal acts.

I hope your heartbreaking, but encouraging, article is just the start of a sustained campaign against this horrendous activity.

Andrew Dean

Exeter

I first encountered this practice as a medical student in obstetrics and then again when working as a doctor in reproductive and sexual health. As the feature rightly points out, it continues to be inflicted on British citizens despite its illegality. Worldwide there is no indication of any reduction in the number of young girls made to suffer this procedure in countries with a strong cultural tradition. The health risks, both physical and psychological, are evident and raising awareness and education are essential if this practice is ever to be ended. How this is to be achieved is problematical but your article is a step in the right direction.

Dr Christine Mustchin

Hove, East Sussex

Your reference to "this brutal cultural practice" perpetuates the tendency to devalue the term "cultural". It is regrettable that it is increasingly applied to all sorts of cruel, perverse and degrading deeds. My dictionary defines it as "cultivated: well educated: refined". Genital mutilation is none of these. It may be described as "practice" but one that is revolting and criminal. As your article rightly points it out: "It is condemned by many Islamic scholars and predates both the Qur'an and the Bible and possibly even Judaism, appearing in the 2nd century BC." It should have been repudiated long ago along with other barbaric rituals of the distant and murky past. Genital mutilation should never be given credence as something "cultural".

Professor PP Anthony

Exeter

• Child protection
• Doctors
• Islam
• Religion

Theatre troupe Combatants for Peace use their participatory theatre approach to find out what UK audiences would do in their shoes

Nour Shehadah and Chen Alon are both shaven-headed fathers in their forties. Shehadah is Palestinian and he spent five years in an Israeli prison for his activities as a leader of his local Fatah military. Alon is a former combat soldier and major in the Israeli army.

When they were combatants, both men would have considered the other with suspicion and fear. This week, however, Shehadah and Alon have been in Britain along with fourteen other Israelis and Palestinians for a series of events in Warrington, Coventry and in London aimed at helping end the Middle East conflict. The group are part of Combatants For Peace, an organisation that consists of former members of the Israeli army and Palestinian armed groups, who have all decided to renounce their weapons.

Combatants for Peace is not the only group working for peace in the Middle East, but they are the only organisation that use theatre to spread this message. They employ a technique known as forum theatre that was first developed by the Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal as part of the approach he named Theatre of the Oppressed. The group re-enact actual scenes from their own lives in front of an audience, who are then encouraged to stop being spectators and become 'spect-actors' - participating in the action.

"Theatre is an important tool for non-violent resistance", explains Shehadah. He admits he grew up hating Israelis, but after years of being involved in the military resistance .

"I participated in military activities to end the occupation" he says, "but I eventually changed my mind because after 45 years of fighting there had been no concrete results." When he was asked to head up a non-violent movement by a woman who had taught him at university he agreed, and began to study the works of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

Combatants for Peace was formed five years ago after a group of 12 Israeli soldiers who refused to serve in the territories met with four former Palestinian gunmen. Since that first meeting the group has grown and now has more than 150 members, and it recently won the prestigious Anna Lindh Award for Dialogue Between Culture.

"We are the only joint bi-national group that uses this technique" says Ben Yeger, the UK representative of the organisation and himself a former Israeli soldier. "The benefit is that it bridges difference in a way that talking does not do on its own."

During their theatrical performances the Israelis in the group play the Palestinians and vice versa. "There was one scene where I had to act like I was a Palestinian woman trying to get through a checkpoint" says Ricky, an Israeli female member of the group, "and for me, suddenly being forced to confront what Palestinians deal with on a daily basis, it was the moment when I completely understood what was being done in my name."

Trying to inhabit the world of the other side is also difficult for the Palestinian members of the group. Among the sixteen is one Palestinian man who was in prison for three life sentences for killing Palestinians who had been collaborating with the Israelis. There are also former members of Hezbollah in the party. "These are people who were educated to hate Israelis", says Ben Yeger, "so for them to even be in the same room as Israelis is huge for them."

In coming to Britain the members of Combatants for Peace were not simply interested in sharing their own personal stories: they also wanted to challenge audiences to think about what they would do. Troupe member Chen Alon says "we don't want our audience to criticise or just observe - we want them to put themselves in our shoes."

During Tuesday's performance at the United Reform Church in Coventry the group re-enacted a checkpoint scenario. Not everyone was happy to participate - one woman walked out in disgust at what she saw as the anti-Jewish slant of the scene.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinians in Combatants for Peace are hardened to criticism from their respective communities. That men like Alon and Shehadah are even sharing the stage is, for Ben Yeger, a tribute to the power of theatre and a reason for hope. "No change happens without changing ourselves' says the former soldier 'and if people like us can change then surely others can as well."

• Theatre
• Israel
• Palestinian territories

Julian Assange defends the whistleblowers' website after its publication of 75,000 leaked files of US army secrets

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has hit out at the US military, saying that it bears the ultimate responsibility for any deaths of Afghan informers in the wake of the publication by his organisation of 75,000 leaked files of American army secrets.

Assange and WikiLeaks, the whistleblowers' website that publishes leaked documents from around the world, have come under increasing fire amid accusations that publishing the files put people's lives at risk. But in an interview with the Observer, Assange said the blame for any deaths lay squarely with US military authorities.

"We are appalled that the US military was so lackadaisical with its Afghan sources. Just appalled. We are a source protection organisation that specialises in protecting sources and have a perfect record from our activities," he said.

WikiLeaks has been accused of disclosing the names of Afghan collaborators who may now be subject to reprisals. Critics also say that the information it published is unchecked and some of it may be of dubious provenance. But Assange responded to those claims by saying: "This material was available to every soldier and contractor in Afghanistan… It's the US military that deserves the blame for not giving due diligence to its informers."

Assange insisted there was no evidence that anyone had been put at risk and that WikiLeaks had held sensitive information back and taken great care not to put people at risk. "Well, anything might happen, but nothing has happened. And we are not about to leave the field of doing good simply because harm might happen… In our four-year publishing history no one has ever come to physical harm that we are aware of or that anyone has alleged."

However, he did concede that, if it was proven someone had been killed or injured because of the leak, then WikiLeaks would consider changing the way it operates. "We will review our procedures," he said. But that is unlikely to defuse the growing international row. Last week the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, branded Assange "irresponsible". The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, said he might have "blood on his hands".

At the same time US authorities are broadening their investigation into how the leak happened. The suspected leaker, Private Bradley Manning, is in custody. He has already been charged with passing on a video shot in Iraq of a US helicopter attack and 150,000 classified diplomatic cables. He is also the main suspect in the Afghan "war logs" leak. Now, according to a report in the New York Times, investigators are probing whether Manning acted alone or with others. The focus of the inquiry was on a group of people in Cambridge, near Boston in Massachusetts, who might prove to be the link between Manning and WikiLeaks.

Assange said he was undeterred by the attacks, and that traditional journalism had vacated a space into which WikiLeaks was stepping. "We are creating a space behind us that permits a form of journalism which lives up to the name that journalism has always tried to establish for itself," he said.

• WikiLeaks
• Julian Assange
• US military
• Afghanistan
• US foreign policy

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been thrust into the public eye over one of the biggest intelligence leaks of all time

How many people had even heard of WikiLeaks a week ago? Or Julian Assange? And yet, seven days after the biggest intelligence leak of all time – the publication of over 75,000 files amounting to an entire history of the Afghanistan war – he is everywhere; in every newspaper, on every news broadcast, in what appears to be every country in the world. It's been an extraordinary week for WikiLeaks, which has seen the entrance on to the world stage of a remarkable new character: Assange, a man who, even friends and supporters admit, looks "a bit like a Bond villain".

Could it be the week that changed the war in Afghanistan? It's possible, if the revelations contained in the files swing popular and then political opinion. At the very least, they've triggered a whole new debate about the future course of the conflict. Because what the files revealed was the sheer scale and exhausting mundane detail of the everyday violence suffered by Afghan civilians, caused by coalition forces as well as the Taliban, as well as evidence of what may or not be double-dealing on the part of Pakistan government.

By last Wednesday, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan had branded Assange "irresponsible". And by Friday, the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, had accused him of "having blood on his hands". Their charge was that WikiLeaks has disclosed the names of Afghan collaborators who may now be subject to reprisals; that the information is unchecked; that some of it may be of dubious provenance, and that Assange seems to be accountable to no one.

Perhaps the most surprising and confusing aspect of all this is that Assange didn't leak the material. He was not the source for these files, he merely published them. Where once, the focus was on the whistleblower, it's now on the technological conduit by which the whistleblower can reach the world.

By the time I come to talk to Assange, his very last interview of the week, the backlash is in full swing. "Have you seen this?" he says waving a copy of the Times at me. "Have you seen how much bullshit this is? Have you seen page 13? Do you think I should call [the libel law firm] Carter-Ruck?

"It would be a bit silly for me but I'm tempted to. Just look at the headlines and the photo. What's the imputation?"

There's a photo of Assange below a headline that reads "'Taliban hitlist' row: WikiLeaks founder says he did right thing". And next to the photo, another headline reading "Named man is already dead." The imputation is quite clearly that Assange's actions have resulted in the man's death, although in the story itself it makes it clear that he actually died two years ago.

"Is it clear?" says Assange. "Let's see how much we have to read before we reach that information. It's not in the first paragraph, second, third, fourth, it's not in the fifth. It's not until the sixth paragraph you learn that."

The Times had splashed on its front page the claims that there are named Afghan sources in the files whose lives are now in danger. It's pure "self-interest", he says, designed to undermine the Guardian, the Observer's sister paper and one of three publications to publish stories based on the files, the others being the New York Times and Der Spiegel. "You can see that this is coming down from editorial, not up from journalism."

Maybe. Although it doesn't mean that there aren't hard questions to answer. What about these named sources? Might he have endangered their lives?

"If there are innocent Afghans being revealed, which was our concern, which was why we kept back 15,000 files, then of course we take that seriously."

But what if it's too late?

"Well, we will review our procedures."

Too late for the individuals, I say. Dead.

"Well, anything might happen but nothing has happened. And we are not about to leave the field of doing good simply because harm might happen … In our four-year publishing history no one has ever come to physical harm that we are aware of or that anyone has alleged. On the other hand, we have changed governments and constitutions and had tremendous positive outcomes."

If Afghan informers are at risk, he says, the fault lies squarely with the US military. "We are appalled that the US military was so lackadaisical with its Afghan sources. Just appalled. We are a source protection organisation that specialises in protecting sources, and have a perfect record from our activities.

"This material was available to every soldier and contractor in Afghanistan …It's the US military that deserves the blame for not giving due diligence to its informers."

Not everyone agrees. There's a school of thought, to which a leading article in the Times gave voice, that he is playing a dangerous game. He says he hasn't read it, so I quote a chunk: "The sanctimonious piety of the man is sickening."

"Oh sure," he says. "Because it would be better to be a ruthless media mogul just in it for the money. That would be then be acceptable. We can't actually have people doing something for moral reasons. It's only acceptable if we do it just for the money."

It is possible that this is part of it. When Julian Assange burst on to the world stage last week, people grappled to make sense of him, of WikiLeaks, of the new hybrid formed by old media – the Guardian, the New York Times, Der Spiegel – co-operating with a radical, activist, very new media, what the New Yorker described as less an organisation, more "a media insurgency".

It is no coincidence that last week marked WikiLeaks' most successful operation to date, and also the implementation of what is quite clearly a new media strategy. Not just its new step of co-operating with three international news organisations but also the decision, made over the past few months, for Assange himself to come out of the shadows and take up a public role as the WikiLeaks' front man.

"We started off like the Economist," he told a packed audience at the Frontline Club on Tuesday, meaning they retained complete anonymity. "We wanted to make the news, not be the news. But that produced extraordinary curiosity as to who we were ... this attempt not to be the news, made us the news."

This new openness seems designed to counter one of the greatest criticisms of the organisation: its lack of accountability. Because what this week has made clear is that it is no longer governments who can choose what to keep secret, it is WikiLeaks.

It feels like there's been some sort of revolution, I say to him, but one which the world is still struggling to understand. In reply, he deploys one of his deadly monotones: "We are creating a space behind us that permits a form of journalism which lives up to the name that journalism has always tried to establish for itself. We are creating that space because we are taking on the criticism that comes from robust exposure of powerful groups."

It is interesting that he phrases it this way because, as well as being a new and radically different model of what is and isn't possible in the news future, Assange himself is a curious hybrid.

His skills as a cryptographer led him to becoming one of the architects of the WikiLeaks model, but as Gavin MacFadyen, the director of the Centre of Investigative Journalism and a friend of his, points out, there's something almost old-fashioned about his particular brand of committed idealism.

"We don't really see people like him any more. In the 60s and 70s, they were around. Those who are totally committed and passionate about what they're doing. But not after 20 years of Thatcherism."

There was a video of Assange on the centre's website, and "our server crashed", says MacFadyen. "There's no doubt he's an inspirational figure." He is also "probably the most intelligent person I've ever worked with" and has an "unusual amount of self-confidence".

When you interview Assange, this seems like an understatement. He is at least five steps ahead. Probably more. But then, as he told the New Yorker, what appealed to him about computers was their austerity: "It is like chess – chess is very austere, in that you don't have many rules, there is no randomness, and the problem is very hard."

David Leigh, the Guardian's investigations editor who oversaw publication of the files, says Assange has the mentality of a hacker, "a distinct psychological genre". At times, he can seem almost autistic, although "he doesn't lack charm".

That is perhaps the most surprising thing about Assange. The first time I meet him, a fortnight before publication of the files, he's tense and edgy. With good reason, it turns out. The second time, after a speaking engagement at the Frontline Club, the journalists' club in West London he made his base for the week, he's like a man transformed: relaxed and clearly enjoying himself. He makes jokes. He even smiles. The third time, he looks simply exhausted. And yet, he's also still quite clearly up for taking on all-comers.

Vaughan Smith, the director of the Frontline Club, tells me that he's more or less subsisted on "two hours' sleep and two sandwiches". But then, there's something about Assange that if not superhuman, is almost as if sleep and food are mere technicalities that might concern the rest of us, but that he has found a way of simply dispensing with. Combat, intellectual combat, seems to be his stimulant of choice. It just fuels him.

When I try to question him about the morality of what he's done, if he worries about unleashing something that he can't control, that no one can control, he tells me the story of the Kenyan 2007 elections when a WikiLeak document "swung the election".

The leak exposed massive corruption by Daniel Arap Moi, and the Kenyan people sat up and took notice. In the ensuing elections, in which corruption became a major issue, violence swept the country. "1,300 people were eventually killed, and 350,000 were displaced. That was a result of our leak," says Assange. It's a chilling statistic, but then he states: "On the other hand, the Kenyan people had a right to that information and 40,000 children a year die of malaria in Kenya. And many more die of money being pulled out of Kenya, and as a result of the Kenyan shilling being debased."

It's the kind of moral conundrum that would unnerve most people, that made some wonder last week what the potential ramifications of the latest leak might be, but it is a subject on which Assange himself is absolutely clear: "You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can't lead to a good conclusion."

The other key thing about WikiLeaks is that it's internationalist in the true sense. "We do not have national security concerns. We have concerns about human beings," says Assange. And, with its servers located in different countries, and its headquarters nowhere, it raises intriguing questions about the future of nation states. WikiLeaks seems to be beyond the power of any of them, although Assange jumps on me pretty fast when I suggest as much.

"Of course not. We have had over 100 legal attacks. We have been victorious in almost every single legal attack. As far as nation states are concerned, we operate within the rule of law."

But it is an organisation that has been brilliantly constructed to get around such assaults, and with each release of information, it seems to evolve and grow stronger.

Even if it's not yet known, can't be known, what the long-term impact of this particular leak will be.

David Leigh describes Assange as "a mendicant friar of the electronic age". Like his organisation, he is global and rootless. And when he does sleep, it's usually on somebody else's sofa.

But Leigh also says "it's actually fairly irrelevant to talk about whether what Julian is doing is a bad thing or a good thing, because if he wasn't doing it, somebody else would".

Assange might be an arresting figure and WikiLeaks an extraordinary organisation, but they are manifestations of a phenomenon, he says, not its root cause.

"He's a function of technological change. It's because the technology exists to create these enormous databases, and because it exists it can be leaked. And if it can be leaked, it will be leaked."

• WikiLeaks
• Julian Assange
• Afghanistan
• US military
• Internet
• Freedom of information

Families forced off their land and into illegal plots as minister drafts tougher trespass powers for police

Human rights campaigners have condemned a wave of evictions and court actions against Gypsies and Irish Travellers which they say are threatening to extinguish a whole way of life.

Dozens of families face the prospect of being pushed off plots of land they own and forced to move back into illegal "side-of-the road" and wasteland camping. Children will be unable to go to school and the elderly and infirm unable to access health services, say the campaigners.

Eric Pickles, the communities and local government minister, is drafting new laws to allow police more powers to evict and arrest people for trespass on public land. Planning laws are also being changed to stop applications for retrospective permission to put caravans on private land.

Pickles has already announced the reversal of previous efforts to provide "pitches" within all local authorities, abolishing the regional planning bodies which were to oversee provision of registered sites for travellers and ease the tensions caused by Gypsies being forced to camp illegally.

The grants that had been made available to councils to provide sites have also been slashed, although an estimated £18m a year is being spent on evictions.

"Gypsies are being squeezed on all sides in this wave of intolerance and racism which is unlike anything I've ever seen before," said Gratton Puxon, 69, a founder member of the Gypsy Council.

There are around 18,000 Gypsy and Traveller caravans in England, with 80% of them on authorised sites, land they own or rent. The numbers on illegal sites is so small, according to the government's own reports, that they could all be accommodated on one square mile.

The clampdown comes against a background of rising attacks against Roma people in Europe which has led to a demand for the EU to tackle what some are calling an attempted "ethnic cleansing" of travelling people. France has intensified its crackdown on Gypsies, announcing that 300 sites would be closed down in the next three months and any Gypsies found breaking the law would be deported. In 2008 the Italian government declared its Roma population was a national security risk, while in 2009 more than 100 Romanian Gypsies were attacked with bricks and bottles in Ireland and driven from their homes.

In Essex, where the statutory requirement for the provision of sites to accommodate 104 travelling people has now gone with the abolition of the regional planning assemblies, Basildon council issued an eviction notice last week on eight families living on their own land at one site. It is also embroiled in a court battle to evict a further 70 families from a site at Dale Farm, on the outskirts of the town. At the former scrapyard, bought by Irish Travellers 10 years ago and slowly transformed into a caravan park, families have been buying tents in preparation for their eviction. The camp's 50 or so children have no idea whether they will return to their primary school after the summer holidays.

"There is a very real sense of fear and people are very worried, especially the old people. There's people here ill and infirm who can't be going back on the road and there's nowhere to go," said Margaret McCarthy, 45, a mother of two who, like many others on the site, has vowed to fight the eviction, planning blockades and protests. "They're trying to destroy our pride and our dignity. The British government is trying to do away with Gypsies. It's scandalous, but nobody is watching, so nobody will help."

"It's seen as the last bastion of racism. It's not socially acceptable to express racism against ethnic minorities, but against Gypsies and travellers it's fine," said Emma Nuttall of the support group Friends, Families and Travellers.

"We are getting more and more calls from families who are in a panic about where they can and can't go, desperately trying to find bits of land they can buy and get planning permission for before the laws change, just so their kids can go to school."

Hostility from local communities is high. The Equality and Human Rights Commission Scotland is so concerned at the way many local newspapers are presenting issues with Gypsies, and the racist remarks left on their noticeboards, that it is contacting media outlets "to remind them that moderation of online comment boards is crucial in order to prevent the incitement of racial hatred".

At Dale Farm, Mary Ann McCarthy, 69, insists on an inspection of her immaculate static caravan and says the stereotype of "dirty gypsies" is not true.

"Travellers are very house proud; you always get a few people who leave a mess but so does any community." Born in a horse-drawn caravan, she is wistful of the days when her family would be welcomed by farmers who relied on Travellers to pick seasonal fruit and at the fairs where their horses were prized.

"We have never been treated really well, but it's never been as bad as now." Additional reporting by Oliver Morrison

• Social exclusion
• Race in education
• Roma

Security forces fear wave of terror as austerity programme provokes strikes, protests, violence – and assassination

Greek security forces have warned of a wave of violence reminiscent of the terror that stalked Italy in the seventies after urban guerillas threatened last week to turn the country into a "war zone".

"Greece has entered a new phase of political violence by anarchist-oriented organisations that are more murderous, dangerous, capable and nihilistic than ever before," said Athanasios Drougos, a defence and counter-terrorism analyst in Athens.

"For the first time we are seeing a nexus of terrorist and criminal activity," he said. "These groups don't care about collateral damage, innocent bystanders being killed in the process. They are very extreme."

The threats came from a guerrilla group called the Sect of Revolutionaries, as it claimed credit for the murder of Sokratis Giolas, an investigative journalist. Giolas was shot dead outside his Athenian home on 19 July, in front of his pregant wife.

The gang promised to step up attacks on police, businessmen, prison guards and "corrupt" media – and, for the first time, threatened holidaymakers.

"Tourists should learn that Greece is no longer a safe haven of capitalism," its declaration said.

"We intend to turn it into a war zone of revolutionary activity with arson, sabotage, violent demonstrations, bombings and assassinations, and not a country that is a destination for holidays and pleasure."

In an accompanying picture, the group displayed an arsenal that included AK 47 assault rifles, semi-automatic pistols and brass knuckledusters.

"Our guns are full and they are ready to speak," it said. "We are at war with your democracy."

The terror threat comes as Greek authorities endure a summer of strikes and escalating upheaval. Military trucks and petrol company vehicles were employed yesterday to alleviate a fuel shortage as more 30,000 lorry and tanker truck operators ignored a government order to return to work on pain of prosecution. Shortages were reported on many holiday islands and destinations in northern Greece where thousands of tourists are stranded.

The far more serious scourge of domestic terrorism was thought to have been eradicated in 2004, with the disbandment of the 17 November group.

Born out of the turmoil that followed the collapse of US-backed military rule, 17 November murdered the CIA station chief, Richard Welch, in 1975.

For the following 27 years it targeted Turkish envoys, juntists, US military personnel, industrialists and western diplomats, including a British military attaché in Athens, Brigadier Stephen Saunders, who was murdered in 2000.

Unlike 17 November, Greece's new generation of urban guerrillas has not tried to garner popular support.

The Sect of Revolutionaries emerged from the rioting after a teenager, Alexis Grigoropoulos, was shot dead by a policeman in December 2008. The men and women thought to comprise its closely guarded ranks are in their late twenties and thirties and appear to espouse violence almost for the sake of it.

"We don't do politics, we do guerilla warfare," its members announced in the proclamation placed on the boy's grave within hours of their first attack, on a police station, in February 2009. Two weeks later they sprayed the offices of a private television station with bullets. Three months after that, they claimed their first victim, Nectarios Savvas, a police officer protecting a state witness. Six people have died in separate attacks this year.

Last month another group, yet to be named, sent a parcel bomb wrapped up as a gift to the office of Michalis Chrysohoidis, the minister in charge of public security. It killed his chief aide.

The surge in violence comes amid rising social tensions over the austerity measures enforced by the government in exchange for €110bn in emergency aid, the biggest bailout in history.

Mounting social unrest, waning support for political parties and record levels of unemployment among an increasingly radicalised youth are believed to have augmented the ranks of anti-establishment groups.

"The economic crisis has most definitely played a role in aggravating the violence," Chrysohoidis told the Observer. "And the violence we are seeing is worst than ever before because society as a whole is more violent than ever before."

To date Chrysohoidis, who oversaw the break-up of 17 November during a previous stint in the same post, has ordered police to tread a fine line.

But anger is growing. Security officials say it is only a matter of time before one of the three groups currently active in Greece strikes again.

More worrying, they say, are their connections to the Balkan criminal underworld that has made access to weapons dangerously easy.

"In other European countries, home-grown terrorism has been on the decrease for years," said Drougos. "But in Greece the situation is not unlike pre-Bolshevik revolutionary Russia or Italy at the start of the terror campaign by the Red Brigades… it's very unpredictable and tourists should be vigilant."

• Greece
• Global terrorism

Hundreds die from extreme cold in remote mountain villages also struggling with severe poverty

Peru has declared a state of emergency after hundreds of children died from freezing conditions that have seen temperatures across much of the South American country plummet to a 50-year low. In 16 of Peru's 25 regions, temperatures have fallen below -24C.

Reports from the country say 409 people, most of them children, have already died from the cold, with temperatures predicted to fall further in coming weeks.

Worst hit are Peru's poorest and most isolated communities, which are already living on the edge of survival in remote Andean mountain villages more than 3,000 metres above sea level.

Although those living at such high-altitude would expect temperatures to drop below zero at this time of year, NGOs and government officials say many are unable to withstand the extreme cold which they are now experiencing.

"Over the past three or four years we have seen temperatures during the winter months get lower, and people are unable to survive this," said Silvia Noble, from Plan Peru, an NGO. "This cold weather is now extending into areas that never saw these low temperatures before and children and elderly people are especially at risk as they are not physically strong enough to last month after month of sub-zero conditions."

Last December, Observer reporters visited farming communities living at more than 3,000 metres above sea level in Huancavelica – one of the areas worst hit by the current cold snap – to find families already struggling with rising child mortality fuelled by malnutrition, poverty and what they say are increasingly erratic and unreliable weather patterns.

Seven months on, local NGOs say these mountain villages are now racked with pneumonia, chronic respiratory illnesses and hunger.

The freeze is also killing hundreds of alpaca. Farmers are struggling to keep livestock alive due to frozen water points and a lack of food, which could have severe repercussions on the ability of families to see out the winter.

The declaration of a state of emergency means authorities in affected states can get emergency funds to provide medicine, blankets and shelter to those most at risk.

• Peru

Budget movie is banned in Pakistan but will be released in the US

A small budget film about a fake Osama bin Laden video has become one of India's biggest box office hits of the year and is about to hit American cinema screens.

Tere Bin Laden (Without You Laden) has grossed more than $2m in India, despite having a first-time director and initially only being shown on 344 screens.

The film tells the story of a young journalist from Pakistan whose repeated attempts to obtain a visa to the US to pursue his media career are thwarted. Finally he resorts to unscrupulous means by making a bogus Bin Laden video to sell to the news channels with disastrous results.

The film's main character is played by one of Pakistan's biggest pop stars, Ali Zafar, the first time a Bollywood film has featured a Pakistani actor in a main role. Zafar said he hoped the film would challenge people's misconceptions about his country. "People in Pakistan, especially the educated youth, are by and large very liberal and desire progression and peace," he said. "People who have seen pirated copies of the film in Pakistan have loved it and are open to it."

The film, directed by Abhishek Sharma, has been banned in Pakistan, for fear of provoking attacks on cinemas by Bin Laden sympathisers. Zafar said: "I don't think the government is willing to take any risks because it's a very precarious situation. I do understand where they are coming from. If a single incident happens in Britain and the US, you see how perturbed people are and all the sadness that comes with it. In Pakistan, something like this happens almost every other day. Pakistan is a country in a lot of turmoil."

He denied claims that it made light of terrorism attacks, but insisted it focused on attitudes in the west towards Pakistanis. "As soon as Bin Laden's name is mentioned, there are issues and perceptions that come with it. But the point of the movie is to comment on that and how fear is generated. Through humour, some very serious issues can be commented upon."

The film recouped its budget in India alone and has made a further £200,000 in the UK, Middle East and Australia, despite limited releases. That figure is expected to double when the film is released in the US on Friday.

Production company Walkwater Media said the delay of the US opening was not due to the nature of the storyline, but to test the waters in smaller markets first. Aarti Shetty, producer, said: "We were always going to release the film in the US a little later. When it released in India and we looked at the media support and numbers, we thought we should make use of the buzz around the movie."

• India
• Osama bin Laden
• Bollywood
• Pakistan

Gavin Grant's five-year career with Millwall, Wycombe and Bradford ended when he was convicted of a 2004 shooting. The north London estate where he grew up is now transformed, but his Old Bailey trial shed light on its notorious history of gun crime

Gavin Renaldo Grant had potential. An aspiring professional footballer, he was never going to give Cristiano Ronaldo competition, but he possessed, in the words of one fan site, "lightning pace and tricky wing play".

A journeyman footballer who could play as a striker or winger, Grant started his career in 2005 with his local non-league club, Tooting and Mitcham in south London, scoring 10 goals in 16 matches – an impressive haul that attracted interest from clubs in higher divisions. Between 2005 and 2010, he had spells with Millwall, Wycombe Wanderers, Gillingham and, at the end of last season, was turning out for Bradford in League Two.

"He's got bags of potential and he's a good finisher," said Peter Taylor, who managed Grant at Wycombe and Bradford. "He's got an eye for goal, he's quick, he's an athlete and he will get better."

Taylor's words, spoken in 2008, sound hollow now. Grant's attempt to escape the drug-fuelled violence of the London estate where he grew up for the glamorous world of professional football ended last week when he was jailed at the Old Bailey for a minimum of 25 years, convicted with two others for the murder of his former friend, Leon "Playboy" Labastide, in May 2004.

The trial, the culmination of a six-year investigation by Operation Trident, the Metropolitan police unit that investigates black-on-black killings, heard how Grant, now 26, Gareth Downie, 25, and Damian Williams, 32, had orchestrated an execution-style killing, one of a series of tit-for-tat shootings in the Stonebridge Park estate in Brent, north-west London, in the 1990s.

Once an intimidating fortress of tower blocks, Stonebridge supplied the labour to a giant industrial estate, home to employers including Wall's, the ice-cream maker. But as the firms moved out, unemployment soared. Stonebridge became home to large migrant populations and assumed a reputation among Trident officers as a "hot spot".

Stonebridge looms large in the story of Grant's descent from promising athlete to killer. A lawless, no-go area of poorly lit alleyways and concrete walls, it was the perfect breeding ground for crime. The estate became enmeshed in a turf war fought between gangs battling to control the supply and distribution of crack cocaine. The violence was so bad that in 1995 John Major, then prime minister, cancelled a speech he was due to give there over fears of being shot.

"There were always problems between Stonebridge and the [nearby] Church End estate," said Detective Inspector Steve Horsley, who led the investigation into Labastide's murder. "You couldn't go from one estate to the other because different gangs ran it." Gangs from neighbouring Kensal Green and Wembley were also vying for control, while Jamaican Yardie gangsters overseeing the importation of the crack into the UK were never far away.

In August 2005, Rohan "Chunky" Chung, a Yardie drugs importer, tied up a stepfather and two sisters in their flat on the estate and shot them in the head. Chung was furious that the sisters' brother, one of his "mules", had disappeared with 4kg of his cocaine.

Today Stonebridge's towers are gone, replaced by award-winning low-rise housing, interspersed with communal areas, trees and street lights – a committed attempt to "design out" crime. A Stirling prize-nominated children's centre is a visual testimony to the area's £225m renaissance. Crime is down dramatically. Prostitutes, junkies and guns are no longer ubiquitous. Much is down to the success of Trident working in conjunction with local police and the community. When Grant and those involved in the revenge attacks were arrested, shootings on the estate plunged by 50%, according to some reports. These days Stonebridge is regularly held up around the world as a success story when it comes to transforming problem estates.

"The area is transformed beyond belief," said Chinyere Ugwu, who has lived on the estate for 13 years and is managing director of Hillside Housing Trust, which runs Stonebridge. "The residents are actively involved in the community and are running things for themselves."

But Grant's trial shone a light on the days when Stonebridge was notorious. As the prosecution suggested at the start of the trial, it was "more the law of the jungle than the law of civilised England". Grant, though, had a better chance than some of avoiding being sucked into its gang culture. An impressive athlete in his early teens, he signed schoolboy terms with Watford when he was 14. Money, fame and girls beckoned. He could earn more in a week than his friends could in a year if he made it big.

But, like thousands of other hopefuls, Grant was let go by his club at 16. With no qualifications, he took a job at Tesco. But, as his trial was told, Grant was impressionable and revelled in the kinship of gang culture. It was suggested that Williams's "larger personality" had been a huge influence on him. It was Williams, the Old Bailey jury heard, who convinced the other two that Labastide must have been involved in a burglary at the flat of his cousin, Romain Whyte, Grant's best friend and someone he looked up to.

Days before he was shot, Labastide, a member of a rival gang, had seen Whyte crash his motorcycle outside his house.Sensing an opportunity while Whyte was incapacitated, a gang, rumoured to be led by Labastide, raided his house and stole £20,000 of what the court heard was suspected drug money. As the gang piled into Whyte's flat, its three occupants – Whyte's girlfriend, Sabrina Edwards, his sister Melika, and a 16-year-old girl – jumped out of a first-floor window, fearing for their lives. Two of the women broke legs in the fall.

Williams was incensed. Grant, who was best friends with Whyte, was similarly furious. In the warped world of Stonebridge, they considered the fact the burglars had carried guns "disrespectful". Labastide had often eaten at Williams's mother's house. "How could he do that?" the three accomplices raged.

Urged on by Williams, Grant and Downie, armed and wearing motorcycle helmets, went looking for Labastide. They found him outside his mother's house talking on the phone to a friend and shot him six times. Grant was heard boasting about the shooting hours later.

The killing unleashed a wave of violence. Typewritten letters accused Whyte and others of killing Labastide. "YOU WILL NOT GET AWAY THE PAST WILL HAUNT YOU," they proclaimed.

Sean "Fusey" Cephinis, a friend of Labastide, was suspected of writing the letters. In a case of mistaken identity, gunmen looking to silence Cephinis killed Jahmall Moore in January 2005. Two years later Whyte and Grant were tried and acquitted of the shooting.

After the acquittal, Grant must have been hoping to turn his back on his murderous lifestyle. Stonebridge was being transformed and Grant had a fresh opportunity, too. By the time Moore died in a hail of bullets, ambushed by four gunmen while in his car, Grant had been signed by Gillingham. As the defence at last week's trial observed: "Whatever he did in the past, he had turned his life around by the time it [the murder case] was resurrected."

But the Trident officers had a theory. They had noticed the burglary at Whyte's flat and were aware that the day before it occurred Whyte had come off his motorbike in front of Labastide's house. Were the incidents connected? "We got an indication things were not quite right," Horsley recalled after questioning the three young women who had jumped from the window. He suspected they might be holding something back.

Then, in 2008, new intelligence prompted the Trident officers to reopen their files and track one of the women to the south-west of England where she admitted hearing the three men plot the murder. "She was almost relieved that someone wanted to ask her," Horsley said. "She had held it in since she was a girl of 16."

Appearing under a pseudonym, "Susan Norwich" supplied the testimony at a first trial and then a retrial in which Grant's conviction was secured. "She was a brave little girl to have done it twice," Horsley said. Her decision to testify was startling. Criminologists say it is rare for the police to receive such co-operation. Horsley agrees. "You can imagine you're a witness to a gun crime and the people who have done it are seriously bad guys. You have got to worry about your own safety, especially if you are from that community. We have to disclose names to defence and names will come out [in court], but we do our best to protect people."

Grant's conviction was a stunning success for Trident officers. In two earlier related trials they had relied on evidence from Britain's first black-on-black supergrass, Darren Mathurin, a drug dealer, whose testimonies failed to convince the juries.

As he was sent down last week Grant was seen to weep. Only months before he had been playing professional football, trying to resurrect a career that had stalled when he was 16.

"Because he hadn't made it with Watford he went back to Stonebridge and hung around with friends and family there and got into the wrong things," Horsley said. "Then after the shootings he tried to sort himself out."

But it was too late. Far too late.

• Gun crime
• Crime
• London
• Gangs

A new breed of PR gurus is evolving to combat digital disaster areas

Haunted by a revealing photograph from your drink-mad office party posted on Facebook? Berated by an ex-lover on a blog posting? Or is your business being skewered online by a vindictive customer? Then Gary Powers is waiting to hear from you. He can help.

In the modern digital age where seemingly everything and everyone is online, a new industry is emerging to "manage" the internet footprint that people and businesses leave online. "Reputation managers" can clean up and shape a person's online history: burying the damaging stuff and promoting the good.

Given the numbers of famous people who arguably are in need of such a service, and the millions of others leaving an online footprint around the world every day, the potential market is dazzling.

Kate Moss is already rumoured to be using online brand reputation management to make sure Google searchers come to positive stories first. By contrast, due to recent online leakings of abusive rants about his ex-girlfriend, actor Mel Gibson's fourth result on a Google search is a negative gossip story.

The same goes for Paris Hilton, the socialite and heiress. The fifth result on a Google search for her brings up disputed claims that customs officers in Corsica had found marijuana in her purse and had briefly detained her. A good reputation manager might be able to push that story down Hilton's Google results chain. Lindsay Lohan, currently in jail, is famed for use of her Twitter account where she frequently sends out ill-advised updates. A reputation manager could help to suppress those Tweets or even try to get them deleted.

Powers, who works for a US company called Reputation Defender, is paid to help promote the positive, hide the negative and even have hostile internet postings removed altogether. Fees vary across the industry. For $15 (£9.50) a month, Reputation Defender will work with a client to clean up and monitor their internet reputation. They can also send you an alert whenever a new reference to your child is posted anywhere online. For $30, you can subscribe to a service that will try to destroy hostile internet content. In 2008 the firm raised $2.6m in investment funding.

"We get people from all walks of life," said Powers, the company's "head writer". People who come to the firm for assistance range from professionals, like lawyers or doctors, to those involved in the entertainment industry; anyone who is concerned that someone, somewhere, might search for them online.

Increasingly the results of a Google search can affect the most important elements of people's lives. A recent Microsoft study showed that 78% of job recruiters conducted internet searches on their clients in order to check out their backgrounds. Experts say that the huge growth of the internet has in effect created a "permanent memory" online that can be searched by anyone. Embarrassing statements, and photographs, or angry attacks by spiteful ex-friends once faded away. But no longer. Anyone can be judged forever on a moment of madness or bad luck.

There are now many firms offering help in keeping people's online history safe. They include companies and websites like Online Reputation Manager, Reputation Professor and Reputation Management Partners. It is an industry that has arisen almost overnight. Reputation Defender was founded in 2006 and now employs dozens of people from its base in Redwood City, California. David Thompson, chief privacy officer at Reputation Defender, sees the sector as involved in an "arms race" with web developments that erode people's privacy. "If they are building a better gun, we are building a better bullet-proof vest," he said.

Some developments can be potentially scary. Facial recognition software will allow the internet to recognise – and make potentially searchable – any photograph in which someone appears, even if only in the background (say at a riot, protest or orgy). Experts warn that everything we do on the internet can be collected and collated digitally. All that information is tracked, gathered and used by marketers who then build up a detailed profile of the consumer.

Professor Joseph Turow, of the University of Pennsylvania, believes this "unknown reputation" that everyone has will eventually lead to people having very different experiences online. "People will be defined by marketers in ways they know nothing about, and this is a process that is getting bigger and bigger," Turow said.

Turow spoke in front of the US Senate last week appealing for government regulation. "Most people do not have a clue this is going on. They don't even know they have a reputation online that is being used in this way," Turow said.

Eventually, experts predict, millions will employ someone to manage the traces they leave, perhaps even those who work in reputation management.

Does Powers employ someone to manage his own online history? Not yet. Instead he cuts the problem off at the source, trying not to leave a trace in the first place. "I have a very low profile. I kind of like that," he said.

• Internet
• Marketing & PR
• Google

Scenic Ladbroke is set to become a flashpoint over plans for HS2, the 200km high-speed link between London and the Midlands

For centuries Ladbroke, a picturesque Midlands village recorded in the Domesday Book, has been the sort of place where people aspire to live. With its coaching inn, 12th-century church, village green, Grade II-listed houses and active Women's Institute, it is the quintessential English idyll, a tranquil haven in the splendour of the Warwickshire countryside.

But not for much longer. The village, which has a population of 250, lies within metres of the proposed High Speed II (HS2) rail link between London and the Midlands that the government hopes will help to make domestic flights a thing of the past. Residents have expressed outrage at the plan, which has made their homes difficult to sell, while claims for compensation will take decades to be approved.

Now the village's plight has seen it pushed to the forefront of a vocal alliance of 40 groups stretching along the proposed 125-mile route that runs through areas of outstanding natural beauty such as the Chilterns and Warwickshire's Forest of Arden, creating a "noise corridor" up to four miles wide.

A flagship project of the previous government now under consideration by the new coalition, HS2 is set to provide the next key skirmish between conservationists and politicians after high-profile battles to expand Stansted Airport and build a third terminal at Heathrow.

Ladbroke, where the gunpowder plotter Robert Catesby had a manor which is thought to have been used later as a lookout point during the civil war, is likely to be one of the flashpoints. Its position on a flood plain means that the track would run past the village on a 40ft-high, three-mile viaduct visible for miles.

"Parts of the village will become uninhabitable," said Graham Long, chairman of the Ladbroke Action Group and a director of the HS2 Action Alliance. "We will end up with a kind of ghost village at one end, which will be completely unoccupiable, and a live village on the other."

Independent reports commissioned by opponents of the route suggest that the trains, which may run as frequently as once every two minutes at peak times, will generate noise levels of 74 decibels as far as 100 metres from the track – the equivalent of the sound of a pneumatic road drill. Government regulations stipulate that houses cannot be built close to infrastructure projects that generate noise levels above 66 decibels.

Apart from the noise, there are concerns about the rail link's visual impact on the English countryside. The Chiltern Society warns that the project "is a mass of iron and steel and concrete and noise that will leave an indelible, ugly scar across one of the most beautiful areas of England. It will cause an unforgivable blight".

But the government thinks there is a strong case for HS2, which would allow trains to travel at almost 250mph, cutting journey times from Birmingham to London to 49 minutes, compared with the current 84 minutes.

Philip Hammond, the transport secretary, said the £13bn project was one of several under consideration that "can justify themselves economically'' and "one of the best investments the taxpayer can make".

The first phase of the project would start in 2017, with an operational target date of 2026. An expansion of the route, linking up with Manchester and then Glasgow, would not be in place until the 2030s at the earliest.

Residents living near the proposed route – which skirts past Stoneleigh, near Coventry, up to Hampton in Arden – have expressed anger at how they were informed about it. "The first we knew of it was when we heard it on the local radio," said Steve Copley, a retired church warden who lives in Ladbroke. "Now the village is blighted and nobody will buy a house here."

Campaigners have attacked Hammond's claim that HS2 will see domestic flights become a thing of the past, pointing out that there are no commercial flights from Birmingham to London. But the plan has won unexpected backing from Coventry-born pop impresario and rail enthusiast Pete Waterman, who said the project would have economic benefits. "Bugger Coventry," Waterman said with characteristic frankness. "This will benefit the whole country."

The HS2 Action Alliance has also attacked the updated compensation arrangements quietly unveiled by the government last week. An interim emergency hardship fund has been established for people who urgently need to sell their homes, such as those facing repossession, but few property owners along the proposed line qualify. It has emerged that the government has only set aside £15m for the fund, which campaigners claim will be insufficient.

Properties directly on the proposed route will be issued with compulsory purchase orders, but the vast majority of those that will be affected by noise will not be able to claim until the project has been running for a year. The HS2 Action Alliance complains that this criterion was drawn up just after the second world war and fails to recognise the impact of modern infrastructure projects.

"We are sitting here in 2010; our property and our lives are blighted and many of us are not subject to compulsory purchase orders, but we will be within very close distance to this very fast line," Long said. "But we won't be in consideration for blight provisioning until one year after the line opens, which makes it 2027 until we can claim; it's hideous."

It has been claimed that residents living alongside High Speed I, the line that runs from London St Pancras through Kent to the Channel Tunnel, saw the value of their homes fall by 30% but received only between 5% and 10% in compensation.

More than 4,500 people responded to the consultation on the planned compensation package, most to express concerns that they will face hardship.

"While we recognise the climate of austerity, the government should appreciate that, if HS2 cannot pay for the damage it does, including the cost of fair compensation, then HS2 cannot be in the national interest," said Hilary Wharf, director of the HS2 Action Alliance.

An interim report on the future of High Speed II is due to be made to parliament in October, with a full consultation expected to take place early next year.

• Conservation
• Rail transport
• Transport policy
• Air transport

The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation is taking seriously the farming of creepy-crawlies as nutritious food

Saving the planet one plateful at a time does not mean cutting back on meat, according to new research: the trick may be to switch our diet to insects and other creepy-crawlies.

The raising of livestock such as cows, pigs and sheep occupies two-thirds of the world's farmland and generates 20% of all the greenhouse gases driving global warming. As a result, the United Nations and senior figures want to reduce the amount of meat we eat and the search is on for alternatives.

A policy paper on the eating of insects is being formally considered by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. The FAO held a meeting on the theme in Thailand in 2008 and there are plans for a world congress in 2013.

Professor Arnold van Huis, an entomologist at Wageningen University in Belgium and the author of the UN paper, says eating insects has advantages.

"There is a meat crisis," he said. "The world population will grow from six billion now to nine billion by 2050 and we know people are consuming more meat. Twenty years ago the average was 20kg, it is now 50kg, and will be 80kg in 20 years. If we continue like this we will need another Earth."

Van Huis is an enthusiast for eating insects but given his role as a consultant to the FAO, he can't be dismissed as a crank. "Most of the world already eats insects," he points out. "It is only in the western world that we don't. Psychologically we have a problem with it. I don't know why, as we eat shrimps, which are very comparable."

The advantages of this diet include insects' high levels of protein, vitamin and mineral content. Van Huis's latest research, conducted with colleague Dennis Oonincx, shows that farming insects produces far less greenhouse gas than livestock. Breeding commonly eaten insects such as locusts, crickets and meal worms, emits 10 times less methane than livestock. The insects also produce 300 times less nitrous oxide, also a warming gas, and much less ammonia, a pollutant produced by pig and poultry farming.

Being cold-blooded, insects convert plant matter into protein extremely efficiently, Van Huis says. In addition, he argues, the health risks are lower. He acknowledges that in the west eating insects is a hard sell: "It is very important how you prepare them, you have to do it very nicely, to overcome the yuk factor."

More than 1,000 insects are known to be eaten by choice around the world, in 80% of nations. They are most popular in the tropics, where they grow to large sizes and are easy to harvest.

The FAO's field officer Patrick Durst, based in Bangkok, Thailand, ran the 2008 conference.

Durst helped set up an insect farming project FAO project in Laos which began in April. This involves transferring the skills of the 15,000 household locust farmers in Thailand across the border. "There were some proponents of a bigger dairy industry in Laos to improve a calcium deficiency," says Durst, whose favourite is fried wasp - "very crispy and a nice light snack". "But this is crazy when most Asians are lactose intolerant." Locusts and crickets are calcium-rich and 90% of people in Laos have eaten insects at some point, he says.Durst says the FAO's priority will be to boost the eating of insects where this is already accepted but has been in decline due to western cultural influence.

He also thinks such a boost can provide livelihoods and protect forests where many wild insects are collected. "I can see a step-by-step process to wider implementation."

First, insects could be used to feed farmed animals such as chicken and fish which eat them naturally. Then, they could be used as ingredients.

Van Huis adds: "We're looking at ways of grinding the meat into some sort of patty, which would be more recognisable to western palates."

One of the few suppliers of insects for human consumption in the UK is Paul Cook, whose business Osgrow is based in Bristol. However, no matter how they are marketed or presented, Cook is not convinced they will ever become more than a novelty. "They are in the fun element ... But I can't see it ever catching on in the UK in a big way."

• Food
• Insects
• United Nations

Whistleblowers won't find a better place to spill the beans than WikiLeaks

In the annals of the net, one of the sacred texts is John Gilmore's aphorism that "the internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it". Mr Gilmore is a celebrated engineer, entrepreneur and libertarian activist, who is regarded by the US Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency and men in suits everywhere as a pain in the ass. He was the fifth employee of Sun Microsystems, which meant that he made a lot of money early in life, and he has devoted the rest of his time to spending it on a variety of excellent causes. These include: creating the "alt" (for alternative) hierarchy in the Usenet discussion fora; open-source software; drugs law reform; philanthropy; and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (which last week won a notable concession from the Library of Congress to legalise the "jailbreaking" of one's iPhone – ie liberating it from Apple's technical shackles).

The Gilmore aphorism about censorship first saw the light of day in 1993 – in a Time article about the internet – and since then has taken on a life of its own as a consoling mantra about the libertarian potential of the network. "In its original form," Gilmore explains, "it meant that the Usenet software (which moves messages around in discussion newsgroups) was resistant to censorship because, if a node drops certain messages because it doesn't like their subject, the messages find their way past that node anyway by some other route." But, he continues, "The meaning of the phrase has grown through the years. Internet users have proven it time after time, by personally and publicly replicating information that is threatened with destruction or censorship."

The aphorism came up a lot last week following publication by the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel of extensive reports based on the stash of classified US military reports published on the WikiLeaks website. And of course in one sense this latest publishing coup does appear to confirm Gilmore's original insight. But at the same time it grossly underestimates the amount of determination and technical ingenuity needed to make sure that the aphorism continues to hold good.

The sad truth is that, in practice, it is now trivially easy to censor the web. In most jurisdictions all you need to do is pay a lawyer to send a threatening letter to the ISP that hosts an offending site. The letter can allege defamation, or copyright infringement or privacy violations or a host of other grounds. The details usually don't matter because, nine times out of 10, the ISP will immediately shut down the site, often without bothering to check whether your complaints have any validity. The reason: a legal precedent set by the so-called "demon internet" case, which established that an ISP may be held liable for damages if it fails to act on a complaint. Most companies won't want to take the risk, so they pull the plug. QED.

So if the WikiLeaks operation depended on simply putting stuff on a website, then the governments and corporations who feel threatened by its exposures would have easily wiped it out years ago. Its durability is a product not just of the commitment of the activists behind it, but also of a sophisticated technical infrastructure which uses cryptography to ensure that every node in its virtual pipeline except the final, public, site is virtually impossible to identify.

At the heart of this is Tor, an open-source implementation of a networking technology which uses cryptography to pass data from router (internet node) to router in such a way that the identity of each is hidden. (The technology is derived from an earlier, multi-layered approach known as "the onion router" – hence the acronym.) As luck would have it, Tor is also a technology routinely used by governments to pass secret information around, so there's a nicely ironic side to WikiLeaks' deployment of it.

Tor provides a way of publishing information so that it's extremely difficult to trace content to a particular internet address. This is good news for WikiLeaks geeks, but less so for the average whistleblower because it requires a level of technical expertise most people don't possess. Which is why most whistleblowers will have to rely on the old-fashioned approach of putting stuff on lots of websites and social networks in the hope that it will be widely replicated. This may ensure that John Gilmore's aphorism continues to hold. But it will also mean that the whistleblowers' identities will be exposed. So if you have anything to reveal, try sending it to WikiLeaks first.

• WikiLeaks
• Internet
• Open source
• Censorship

Candace Bushnell's Sex and the City columns inspired some dire chick lit, but also a generation of more serious young writers

Emily Gould still finds it irritating when she gets stuck behind a group of women walking four abreast along a New York pavement, intent on imitating the infamous Sex and the City line-up. "Really, two of you should walk behind and allow other people to walk past," Gould says with a groan. "It's one of many things that upsets me about Candace Bushnell."

But for all that she might get annoyed by those high-heeled women on the sidewalk, without Sex and the City, there would arguably have been no Emily Gould. The 28-year-old has just published her first confessional memoir, And The Heart Says Whatever. In 11 pithily written essays, Gould, a former co-editor of the Gawker gossip website, charts her experiences as a young adult in New York, working in jobs she loathes, facing up to failed relationships and going to parties attended by people she dislikes. Her debut has already attracted praise from the likes of Jonathan Franzen, while Curtis Sittenfeld, the author of American Wife, has hailed it as a modern-day version of The Bell Jar. Gould is one of a new generation of female confessional writers who, according to Sittenfeld, "speak, in our often phoney and cheesy culture, to the truths of women's lives".

Before Candace Bushnell, books like Gould's that sought to capture the dilemmas and dichotomies of modern womanhood with a wry, humorous honesty, were almost unheard of. For decades, the experiences of ordinary women had been largely overlooked by the literary world: either it was recounted in fictional terms (as in Mary McCarthy's The Group) or it was relayed anonymously by feminist polemicists and social historians (Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique). Bushnell changed all that. When she started writing her first-person columns for the New York Observer in 1994, she won a considerable following for her acerbically witty portrayal of the Manhattan singles scene, with its Martini bars, non-committal men and cruel, almost Whartonesque mating rituals. The newspaper columns based on the sexual experiences and romantic intrigues of Bushnell and her three friends became a bestselling book, which in turn became a hit television show and then spawned a film franchise that has evolved into a multi-media juggernaut of product placement and tie-in beauty products.

For a while after Bushnell's extraordinary success, the publishing industry assiduously attempted to sniff out the next Sex and the City and a motley assortment of chick lit writers of varying talent found their books marketed with bright pink covers and an illustration of a pair of sparkly Manolo Blahniks. "Sometimes great parents have really terrible children and it's not really their fault," concedes Gould, who lives in Brooklyn. "I think that's what happened with Candace Bushnell. She paved the way for good and bad things. She opened things up for female writers but she also gave rise to this chick-litty stereotype of the single girl having a romantic storyline. That kind of stuff bores me, to be honest. There are only so many ways that that story works out."

But Bushnell was also at the vanguard of a different type of confessional writing, one that was both unsentimental, smart and unapologetically female; that did not shy away from uncomfortable truths or from tackling the subjects women previously only talked about behind closed doors. Now, 17 years after the first "Sex and the City" column was published, a new wave of confessional writers is picking up where Bushnell left off.

As well as Emily Gould, there is 40-year-old Meghan Daum, an acclaimed newspaper columnist whose third book, Life Would be Perfect if I Lived in That House chronicles her obsessive fascination with real estate and has just been published in America. Sloane Crosley, 31, whose first collection of essays, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, became a New York Times bestseller has also just written her second book, How Did You Get This Number, in which she tackles a dizzying array of subjects from living with an anorexic flatmate to buying stolen upholstery as a means of getting over a heartbreak. And the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert's bestselling memoir, Eat, Pray, Love, in which she charts a year travelling around the world after the failure of her marriage, opens next month, starring Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem.

According to Neill Denny, the editor-in-chief of The Bookseller, the sudden rash of confessional memoirs is partly attributable to the rise in popularity of blogging and reality television. "It's the idea that everyone's got a story to tell and everyone is a star, a media brand in their own right," says Denny. "It's the Big Brother phenomenon, where we are led to believe that our own stories are valid and have resonance. The world of the web has definitely opened up the market in a way that wouldn't have been conceivable 15 or 20 years ago. The things people would have written in a diary for themselves, they are now writing in a diary in a book. That has combined with a big tectonic shift in our society talking openly about sex and I think it has been led from America."

In the UK, we are still slightly discomfited by the idea of baring all in a confessional essay, partly, one presumes, because we are restrained by a sort of cultural prudishness, but also because we do not wish to appear self-indulgent. "American writers of that type are prepared to lay more on the line," agrees Denny. "The British are good at producing plenty of gripping, hardcore misery memoirs or they tend to write confessionally about the past."

British writers who address the experiences of modern women tend to do so in a fictional format, following the example of Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary, which also started off as a newspaper column. In America, says Meghan Daum, there is more of a tradition for non-fiction examinations of what it is to be female, inspired not only by Bushnell but also by writers such as Joan Didion. "Joan Didion is incredibly veiled and meticulous," says Daum, a graduate of Vassar College who now lives in Los Angeles, where she writes a weekly column for the LA Times. "She keeps the reader at arm's length even though she gives the impression of being totally candid.

"To me the word 'confessional' is problematic because it connotes a kind of over-sharing or perhaps unconsidered sharing. I try to let the reader feel like they are learning everything about me, but actually my goal at the end of the piece is that they know everything about the narrator but nothing about the author."

According to Daum, one of the major problems with dubbing a piece of writing "confessional" is that it now immediately gets lumped in with the breathless prose of sub-standard chick lit. "I think in the realm of fiction women have painted themselves into a corner. Bridget Jones's Diary I consider to be a brilliant, hilarious, subversive book, but a lot of people knocked it off and reduced it and this chick lit genre emerges and there's no meat or nuance there at all."

In many ways, says Daum, women's confessional writing is a victim of Bushnell's success: "Publishers tend to be more willing to take personal work that is not as good because you know you have an in-built audience of female readers. Because something is relatable, there's not as much emphasis on craft, and publishers know that more women buy books than men."

In fact, the allegation most often levelled at a confessional essayist tends to be that they are writing in a trite and essentially superficial way about themselves: the literary equivalent of navel-gazing. In an article for the National Review last year, journalist Katherine Connell wrote that: "Excessive self-regard is the essence of this type of confessional writing, in which significant others figure only as supporting actors in the author's personal drama – as stepping stones on the road to their self-actualisation."

And when a woman does this kind of thing – particularly a young, attractive woman – there is often a critical presumption that they are nakedly selling themselves, rather than analysing anything more profound. "If a woman writes about herself, she's a narcissist," says Emily Gould. "If a man does the same, he's describing the human condition." Or, as Erica Jong, the author of seminal feminist novel Fear of Flying (published in 1973), once put it: "It's often called confessional writing by male reviewers, but I think the word confessional in this instance is a put-down. It implies that what these women are doing is just sort of spilling out whatever they have in their guts and that there's no craft involved in the writing."

When Gould wrote a lengthy article for the New York Times in 2008 about her compulsion to reveal details of her private life online – she coined the term "oversharing" – more than 1,200 irate comments were left on the Times website condemning her "self-exposure" and calling her everything from a "moronic juvenile" to an "unfeeling, self-absorbed unsavoury clod". It did not help that the article was illustrated with a cover photograph of Gould sprawled suggestively across a bed – a decision she now says she regrets – but, still, it was hard to imagine that a male writer would have attracted quite the same level of vitriol. "Yeah," agrees Gould. "And there was one review of the book that was headlined 'Emily Gould: all dressed up and nowhere to go'. I mean, dressed up in what? In words?"

Partly as a consequence of her New York Times experience, Gould decided "very consciously to let go of whether or not anyone likes me". In And the Heart Says Whatever, she deliberately resists the urge to mould each story along a neat, narrative arc with a cleverly packaged ending. "I don't tie everything into a little bow and say: 'That's what I've learned'," she explains. "I think a lot of women writers go around apologising, saying: 'Oh stupid me, oh the goofy things I did when I was young and didn't know any better' but I set out specifically not to do that… I think a lot of the stories I told were about having agency, about what you're going to do with it and maybe you're going to do something bad. That's not to say I'm prickly or hard to get along with, I just want it to be OK for women to be complete people, to have sides to themselves that aren't whitewashed or palatable."

So it is that Gould writes unabashedly in one chapter about having sex with a 14-year-old boy when she was 17. She is honest, too, about her own shortcomings: "I can look back and recognise the things I've done and said that were wrong: unethical, gratuitously hurtful, golden-rule-breaking et cetera," she writes in the introduction. "But I did these things because I felt the pull of a trajectory… I would be lying if I said I was a different person now. I am the same person. I would do it all again."

In the same vein, Meghan Daum sees her writing as a corrective to the tradition of women's magazines that talk about relationships, diet or body image in a redemptive fashion, plotting each minor self-improvement along a wider trajectory of personal growth. "I tend to be very honest and my goal is to identify something people think but are afraid to say," explains Daum. "That's not the general cultural expectation of women."

Sloane Crosley's books, although different in tone to those of Gould and Daum – she self-mockingly writes of her own comic misadventures in a manner heavily influenced by David Sedaris – share a similar aspiration. "I think different essays of mine have different points to them and are crafted in different ways, which is why I hate Jane Austen," says Crosley, who lives in New York and works as a publicist for Random House, where she represents authors including Dave Eggers, Toni Morrison and Jay McInerney. "Has anyone noticed that she's just changed the names in Emma and turned it into Sense and Sensibility? It's just the same story.

"You want to say something larger, to say something cohesive, to impart a truth in a way that is beautiful. It's like taking medicine with apple sauce. The label 'confessional' makes me alarmed because although my writing is confessional, I think you have to write something that's structured and is an attempt at art, even if it's not a successful attempt. It worries me if you just write a diary or a blog and then publish it. You can't just hand it over and reach literary absolution because you've confessed everything." Crosley's first piece of confessional writing sprang from an email she sent to a group of friends recounting an incident where she got locked out of the same apartment twice in the same day – the email found its way to an editor at the Village Voice who encouraged her to rework it as an article. After the publication of her first anthology in 2008, Crosley was touted as a 21st-century Dorothy Parker. "Those comparisons are flattering but not accurate," she says. "I know I'm not Dorothy Parker but I also know there's another layer to my writing and that it's not just about shoes."

For Daum, who spent much of her 20s in Manhattan before moving to Nebraska (the 1999 New Yorker essay she wrote about the move earned her comparisons with Didion), the framework of a confessional essay enables her "to use myself as a vehicle to get into the layers of a subject". But, she adds, the subject "has to be something universal"; it has to carry some kind of meaningful weight beyond how to make the perfect Cosmopolitan and it also has to be truthful to the extent of making the author look bad. In My Misspent Youth, Daum admits that her stories are "all about the way intense life experiences take on the qualities of scenes from movies. They are about remoteness. They are about missing the point."

By giving the impression of accessibility and writing about topics that can be easily related to by the average female reader, the new generation of confessional writers seeks to communicate different depths of experience that take the reader beyond the stereotypical tale of a single woman obsessively on the hunt for the ideal mate. For all that Candace Bushnell might have broken down barriers for female writers by writing with clear-eyed candour about previously taboo subjects, Sex and the City was, essentially, shaped by this same, age-old assumption that a woman's life could only ever be complete once she had settled down with the perfect man.

"I'm more interested in a narrative that doesn't put a man at its centre," explains Gould, who says she made a conscious decision to concentrate on "the characters on the sidelines" – the personal assistants who never get asked for their opinion or the glassy-eyed waitresses whose job it is to flirt for tips. "It's quite scary to men to know what that person is thinking. It's much more convenient to imagine that they aren't really people."

In the same way, one imagines it might be easier to dismiss the work of female confessional authors as being somehow facile and glib because, on the surface, they deal with the small moments of everyday experience rather than dealing with the grittiness of big ideas. But this would be to do them a disservice. By engaging with their readers and speaking to them on their own level with humour and candour, Gould, Daum and Crosley seek to illuminate broader truths. They might not always succeed but at least they aim for something bigger; for something that is hopefully a little more nuanced than the endless search for Mr Right and a world viewed through the bottom of a Martini glass.

After four outings, Bushnell's Sex and the City column, started in 1993 in the New York Observer, was bought as a book and in 1996 sold to HBO as a series. Charting the shopping and mating rituals of Manhattan's female socialites, it became not only a bestseller but an era-defining work responsible for introducing lingo such as "toxic bachelor" to women worldwide.

Extract "I like my money right where I can see it… hanging in my closet."

Elizabeth Gilbert Eat, Pray, Love (2006)

Aged 34, reeling from a disastrous divorce, journalist and author Gilbert set off on a year-long trip to Italy, India and Indonesia. Her engaging and brutally honest memoir charting her breakdown and recovery became a global phenomenon, endorsed by celebrities from Oprah Winfrey to Sophie Dahl to Julia Roberts (who stars in the forthcoming film version).

Extract "Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You need to be certain it's what you want before you commit."

Nora Ephron I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman (2006)

Best known for depicting the trials and tribulations of women in screenplays such as When Harry Met Sally…, Ephron has also written several highly successful essay collections on womanhood. Her latest, a New York Times bestseller that began life as a Vogue piece, is a frank exploration of ageing in a society that prizes youth.

Extract "You can put make-up on your face... you can shoot collagen and Botox and Restylane into your wrinkles and creases, but short of surgery there's not a damn thing you can do about a neck."

Julie Powell Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (2005)

Bored of working in dead-end New York jobs, in 2002 Powell began a blog chronicling her attempt to cook all the recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. As much a diary of her private life as a document of her struggle with lobsters and lard, the blog gained a huge following and became a hit book, then a film written/directed by Ephron, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.

Extract "It was not until the second harvesting (they actually call it 'harvesting'; fertility clinics, it turns out, use a lot of vaguely apocalyptic terms) that I realised I had polycystic ovarian syndrome, which sounds absolutely terrifying, but apparently just meant that I was going to get hairy and fat and I'd have to take all kinds of drugs to conceive."

Imogen Carter

• Women
• Feminism

Inspired by the Josef Fritzl case, Emma Donoghue's much-hyped seventh novel is a gem, says Nicola Barr

Much hyped on acquisition and by its publisher since (and longlisted for the Booker prize last week), Room is set to be one of the big literary hits of the year. Certainly it is Emma Donoghue's breakout novel, but, seemingly "inspired" by Josef Fritzl's incarceration of his daughter Elisabeth, and the cases of Natascha Kampusch and Sabine Dardenne, it's hard not to feel wary: what is such potentially lurid and voyeuristic material doing in the hands of a novelist known for quirky, stylish literary fiction?

It is a brave act for a writer, but happily one that Donoghue, still only 40 but on her seventh novel, has the talent to pull off. For Room is in many ways what its publisher claims it to be: a novel like no other. The first half takes place entirely within the 12-foot-square room in which a young woman has spent her last seven years since being abducted aged 19. Raped repeatedly, she now has a five-year-old boy, Jack, and it is with his voice that Donoghue tells their story.

And what a voice it is. "Ma" has clearly spent his five years devoting every scrap of mental energy to teaching, nurturing and entertaining her boy, preserving her own sanity in the process. To read this book is to stumble on a completely private world. Every family unit has its own language of codes and in-jokes, and Donoghue captures this exquisitely. Ma has created characters out of all aspects of their room – Wardrobe, Rug, Plant, Meltedy Spoon. They have a TV and Jack loves Dora the Explorer, but Ma limits the time they are allowed to watch it for fear of turning their brains to mush. They do "phys ed" every morning, keep to strict mealtimes, make up poems, sing Lady Gaga and Kylie, and most importantly, Ma has a seemingly endless supply of stories – from the Berlin Wall and Princess Di ("Should have worn her seatbelt," says Jack) to fairytales like Hansel and Gretel to hybrids in which Jack becomes Prince Jackerjack, Gullijack in Lilliput: his mother's own fairytale hero. And really, what is a story of a kidnapped girl locked in a shed with her long-haired innocently precocious boy if not the realisation of the most macabre fairytale?

Donoghue has not been so crass as to make light of their plight: at times it's almost impossible not to turn away in horror. When Ma's kidnapper comes to the room in the evening, she makes Jack hide in the wardrobe, where he listens as they get into bed: "I always have to count till he makes that gaspy sound and stops." Ma has days where she is "gone" to blank-eyed depression and Jack, left to his own devices, reveals: "Mostly I just sit." But the grotesque is consistently balanced with the uplifting and there is a moment, halfway through the novel, where you feel you would fight anyone who tried to wrestle it from your grasp with the same ferocity that Ma fights for Jack, such is the author's power to make out of the most vile circumstances something absorbing, truthful and beautiful.

Thereafter, the setting moved to "Outside", the relationship diluted by alternative voices, by the number of new things with which Jack has to deal, the novel loses some of its intensity and has the more familiar feel of the naive child narratives of Roddy Doyle and Mark Haddon. Jack's introduction to the confusing world of freedom is handled with incredible skill and delicacy – as is his first separation from Ma. But the novel, like Jack, now has to follow a more logical and straightforward path.

For me, the rhythm of Ma and Jack's speech bears traces of the author's native Irish brogue, though the second half reveals the setting to be America (Donoghue now lives in Canada). But this only adds to the strange, dislocating appeal of Room. In the hands of this audacious novelist, Jack's tale is more than a victim-and-survivor story: it works as a study of child development, shows the power of language and storytelling, and is a kind of sustained poem in praise of motherhood and parental love.

• Emma Donoghue
• Fiction
• Josef Fritzl