Families of the victims of , who pleaded guilty to 14 counts of aiding suicide in Canada in May, are set to address court.

Families of the victims of a ‘poison seller’ linked to dozens of suicides and five deaths in Scotland are set to tell a court of their grief as he faces sentence.

Kenneth Law pleaded guilty to 14 counts of aiding suicide in an Ontario court in Canada in May. The 60-year-old sold lethal substances to victims across the world, including 330 packages sent to the UK.

While Law’s guilty pleas related to cases in Canada, he is also linked to the deaths of 79 people in the UK, which prosecutors say must be taken into account when his sentencing hearing gets underway today.

Impact statements from victims, including those in the UK, are set to be read to the court, with one mum saying Law should “rot in hell” for his vile crimes.

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The court previously heard how Law owned four companies, with one website offering a “set of instructions” and advertising 40-minute telephone consultations for 150 dollars (£111).

The site also featured a “testimonial” from the estate of someone who had been successful in killing themself to prove the “efficacy” of his products.

In Canada, the maximum prison sentence for aiding suicide is 14 years – the same as for encouraging suicide in the UK. It’s understood Law could be sentenced to a longer term due to the number of victims in the case.

Victims’ loved ones will present impact statements to court today ahead of his sentencing. Deaf TikTok creator Imogen Nunn, known as Immy, died in January 2023 aged 25 after buying drugs online from Kenneth Law.

In an impact statement shared with the BBC, her mum Louise Nunn said: “You have destroyed my whole world. If Immy was here now, I know exactly what she would say to me, but I’m not Immy and I will never forgive you.”

The Canada court previously heard how one of his British victims, Tom Windsor, told police he used the substance sold by Law and was found unconscious by emergency crews while still connected to the 999 call.

He told the call operator he did not want to die.

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A 43-year-old British woman died in July 2021 after her four-year-old daughter asked her mum’s husband where she was. The court heard they found his wife “slumped over their daughter’s dollhouse” in the living room.

One of Law’s victims died 12 days after a visit from South Wales Police, who were performing a wellness check.

Danielle Cornish, 29, told officers she had no intention of killing herself and police took no action, but she died on August 22, 2022, after telling emergency services she had taken the product sold by Law.

Another man, Oliver Wade, who had no record of mental health issues, killed himself three days after his mother died of cancer, the court heard.

The National Crime Agency (NCA) and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said all 79 UK victims would form part of the wider investigation into Law, a hotel cook.

But victims’ families were told that Law will not face criminal proceedings in the UK because of the potential for him to challenge the extradition after being convicted in Canada.

British prosecutors described Law as a “serial offender who callously exploited many vulnerable and innocent people exchanging their lives for his financial gain”.

He sold 1,200 packages to 40 countries across the world from Canada-based websites, with 286 people in the UK receiving products, leading to 112 deaths. Some 330 products were sent to the UK, one to the Isle of Man and 12 to Ireland, the court heard.

A letter to bereaved UK families from the NCA and the CPS said the cases would be incorporated into the Canadian prosecution.

It said: “We recognise that this may be painful to hear, and that some victims and bereaved families may have hoped to see a separate prosecution in England and Wales.

“This difficult decision was reached only after detailed consideration of all available options.”

The Crown Office previously said it had been liaising closely with Police Scotland and Canadian prosecutors in relation to the deaths of a number of people in Scotland. It said: “We are limited in what we can say at this time.”

Senior NCA investigating officer Damon Hayes said the move “guarantees all victims and families in the UK will see justice”.

He added: “This approach is not unusual in cases involving serious offending that crosses international borders. This will allow the judge to take into account the full extent of Law’s criminal behaviour, including the fact that his actions resulted in the deaths of people in this country.”

But victims’ families criticised the move.

Adele Zeynep Walton, the sister of 21-year-old Aimee Walton, from Southampton, who died in 2022, said “doors have been shut” for families seeking justice.

The NCA has worked with 45 police forces across the UK to gather evidence on Law’s offending since it launched a probe in 2023.

Specialist CPS prosecutor Andrew Hudson told reporters “no victim has been left behind as part of this process” saying prosecutors would “ensure that the full devastating extent of his criminal conduct is seen and considered by the sentence in court”.

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Fans noticed an announcement could be on the horizon after a countdown appeared on her website and she changed some of the letters in her social media bios to zeroes

Taylor Swift surprised fans yesterday (September 22) by announcing new music. The songstress teased fans with a series of hidden clues and a countdown on her website, sending the rumour mill into overdrive.

The Blank Space singer confirmed that ‘Patient Zero’ will be released on streaming services on Friday, but it’s not yet clear whether the song represents a new era or a vault track from one of her previous releases.

Its release marks Swift’s first since she married NFL star Travis Kelce at Madison Square Gardens in July, and her first single since the Toy Story 5 soundtrack song ‘I knew It, I knew You’, which topped the charts this summer.

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“I’ve been impatiently waiting to tell you that my brand new single “Patient Zero” will be out on September 25 (!!!!!!) and it’s available to pre-order now on my website for 24 hours,” she wrote on social media following the teasers.

A series of clues pointed to a big announcement in the run up to the reveal, with her bio on Instagram and X changed to read, “And, baby, that’s sh0w business f0r y0u.” Each ‘O’ in the phrase was replaced with a zero.

It was paired with a countdown clock on her website, which then eventually revealed the upcoming single. Fans prior to this had been speculating that the countdown was something to do with an album re-record or re-release, Taylor Swift, while others suggested the music star was hinting at a deluxe version of her latest album, ‘The Life of a Showgirl’, or even a totally new album.

At the same time, one of Swift’s beloved backing dancers, Kameron Saunders fuelled the fire that a tour announcement could also be imminent. The backing dancer shared a Instagram post, which showed an image emblazoned across a digital screen next to Manchester’s Arndale Shopping Centre.

Kam toured with Taylor Swift on her record-breaking Eras Tour which hit UK venues including Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff and Wembley – the latter including a record-breaking eight nights at Wembley Stadium. Kameron teased a clue with an image showing him in a scene from the ‘Opalite’ video in which he holds a judge’s panel with the number zero on it.

Manchester was not included on the Eras Tour, with the closest location for fans over at Liverpool’s Anfield Stadium. Taylor Swift last played Manchester during the Reputation Tour at the Etihad Stadium in 2018, so many fans will be hoping it might finally be time for the singer to come back to the city.

Taylor Swift and Spotify billboards also recently appeared in New York City’s Times Square to celebrate the launch of all her music videos on the streaming platform.

‘Danny Tommo’ is being investigated by police after he shared footage of himself slashing a dinghy in the English Channel while a rescuer was still on board. 

The anti-migrant activist – real name Daniel Thomas – brought his boat up alongside the dinghy after all the migrants on board had been picked up by the RNLI.

Seconds later, a French rescuer stepped onto the empty dinghy to secure it, before Thomas sliced through one side of it.

‘You’re on English territory. This is England, this is not France any more,’ he told the rescuer. 

He then shouted at the Frenchman to get off the dinghy and return to his own boat. 

‘Get off the boat, you’ve got time to get off the boat,’ he said several times before shouting ‘let’s go’ and sailing off. 

The 37-year-old told his online audience that he was heading towards Gosport – where a crowd of black-clad protesters from his group, Patriot Platform, were expecting the migrants to be taken ashore from lifeboats. 

But they were instead taken ashore at Dover early this morning after completing an unprecedented 38-hour voyage to the UK.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary said they are ‘aware’ of the video, which appears to have been filmed at around 4pm. 

‘We are aware of a video circulating online relating to damage being caused to a boat in the English Channel on the afternoon of September 22, and we are conducting enquiries into the matter,’ a spokesman said. 

Seconds later, a French rescuer stepped onto the empty dinghy to secure it, before Thomas sliced through one side of it 

The French rescue worker did not react after the activist slashed the dinghy with a knife 

The migrants’ voyage started from Port-en-Bessin, north of Bayeux in Normandy, just before 10am on Monday, and the 51 migrants arrived in the Kent port after midnight following reports they had been bound for Gosport. 

It is thought to be the longest duration of any voyage undertaken by small-boat migrants – and it was branded a ‘fiasco’ by the Conservatives.

Following reports yesterday the dinghy was to dock in Hampshire’s Gosport, hundreds of protesters turned out in the town – and in nearby Portsmouth – but the effort dissipated after the boat was rerouted to Dover.

Hampshire Police described some of those who remained in Gosport thereafter as ‘hostile’ towards officers and said it arrested six people for offences including careless driving, assaulting an emergency worker and aggravated trespass.

Around a dozen protesters were seen in Dover as the migrants arrived and officers closed nearby roads in anticipation.

The dinghy incident raised serious questions over the effectiveness of Labour‘s £662million deal with the French to prevent crossings.

French authorities, who shadowed the dinghy across the Channel, said they decided not to intervene due to safety concerns.

As tides took the boat back towards the French coast on Monday evening, it was so close to shore another 10 to 15 migrants were able to board, it is claimed.

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said: ‘This latest fiasco shows that the French are not even trying to stop the illegal immigrants’ boats in French waters – instead they are escorting them here.

‘Our border security has descended into chaos with migrants crossing at will over ever larger distances and in ever larger boats.

‘The Government’s claim to smash the gangs is laughable and their deal with the French is clearly not working.

‘The Conservatives have a plan to end all accommodation and benefits for illegal immigrants, and instead deport them on arrival. Then, these farcical crossings would soon stop.’

Four French lifeboats plus the search-and-rescue tugboat Abeille Liberté, along with a French Navy helicopter, were scrambled to the 40ft dinghy’s location on Monday. A spokesman for local rescue services said: ‘The boat was in a very bad way, and very low in the water, with just a single small outboard motor to power it.

‘The sea was calm, and weather conditions were good, but the decision was taken to escort the boat, without intervening.’

The Abeille Liberté continued to follow the migrant boat yesterday morning and afternoon.

At about 4.30pm, the migrants were transferred from their dinghy to two RNLI lifeboats. Half an hour later, they switched to Border Force’s HMC Vigilant.

A mega-dinghy with at least 60 migrants on board began its 38-hour journey escorted by the French Navy

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Before the French sailors handed over to the RNLI in the Channel

Protesters – some wearing masks – gathered in Gosport and Portsmouth, Hampshire, as reports suggested the dinghy may dock nearby

Photos last night showed the migrants making their way into a Border Security Command compound in Dover

Hampshire Police said it made six arrests in Gosport after some protesters who remained on the streets became ‘hostile’ towards officers

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The cutter then headed towards Gosport but last night the town’s Conservative MP Dame Caroline Dinenage said she was ‘pleased’ Border Force had confirmed the migrants were instead being taken ‘to Dover by water as we asked’.

She added: ‘This must now set a clear precedent. If further boats are intercepted in our part of the Channel, they should be taken straight to Dover.’

Hampshire Police said it was investigating a reported slashing of a boat in the Channel after a video appearing to show the attack was posted on social media.

Migrants are normally processed at Manston, near Ramsgate. This incident comes just over two weeks after a mega-dinghy with 120 migrants aboard was brought into Eastney Marina, three miles from Portsmouth’s main harbour, sparking protests.

The Daily Mail reported yesterday how a migrant boat reached Folkestone in Kent without being intercepted by UK Border Force.

The migrants then arrived in Dover at around midnight.  

Defence minister Luke Pollard said a Home Office investigation was under way.

Up to Sunday, 17,480 migrants have arrived via the Channel this year.

A Government spokesman said: ‘The Border Security Command works around the clock to protect our border and will continue to detain, check and process every small boat arrival.’

Part of Atherton Road is closed following a crash involving a police car.

Greater Manchester Police says it was called out to the scene at around 8.30am.

It followed a collision involving two cars, including a GMP one which was responding to another incident on blue lights.

There are not currently thought to have been any serious injuries caused by the crash.

It’s the second time part of the road has been shut in less than 24 hours, following a fatal motorbike crash on Tuesday.

Updates will follow in this blog.

Essie Loftus is awaiting a heart transplant

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A “happy” girl whose stomach pain turned out to be a sign her heart was failing now has a mechanical heart pumping blood for her while she waits for a transplant. Her parents, Annemarie, 41, and Michael, 46, said she began showing “subtle” changes in 2024, including not wanting to cycle to school and being “chubbier” than her siblings.

Annemarie and Michael, from Dublin, noticed Essie, seven, had “lost her spark” the following summer. By March 2026, she had developed worsening stomach pain, exhaustion and vomiting, and was initially diagnosed with constipation.

As her condition continued to worsen, further tests uncovered that she had hybrid cardiomyopathy, a rare heart condition that affects the heart’s ability to pump blood, which explained her earlier symptoms.

She was subsequently transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospital in London after medical staff warned that she would likely require a heart transplant to survive. In order to keep her heart functioning while she awaits a donor organ, Essie was placed on an advanced life-support system for 12 days before being fitted with a Berlin Heart mechanical pump on May 5.

Now, with Michael and Annemarie dividing their time between London and Dublin while also caring for their two other children, Ayla, 13, and Cael, four, young Essie takes around 25 medicines each day as she waits for a new heart.

Annemarie, a Montessori teacher, told PA Real Life: “When I see Essie with the biggest smile on her face, or she’s got some story to tell me about winding up the doctors, you just think to yourself, ‘If she can get through this all, then so can we’.”

Michael, a streaming media engineer, added: “She’s an inspiration to us every day.”

Essie had always been constantly “running around” and “cheeky”. However, at the age of four in 2024, her parents Annemarie and Michael began noticing some “subtle” shifts in her behaviour, including becoming “very concerned” about whether they would drive or cycle to school.

They also noted she appeared “a bit chubbier” than their other two children, though they did not think “too much of it” at the time. By the summer of 2025, the couple felt that Essie had “lost her spark” and sought the help of a play therapist, though she appeared to be “was fine”.

Despite this, Essie continued to seem not “quite herself” and by March 2026 she had started “complaining” of stomach pains.

Annemarie added: “She was saying that she was tired and wanted to go to bed early, which wasn’t like her. We took her to the St Patrick’s Day parade and she wanted to be carried and not stand. It just got worse – over the next day or two she started vomiting and couldn’t keep anything down.”

At the end of March, the couple took their daughter to their GP, who diagnosed her with constipation and prescribed medication. However, when her condition failed to improve over the following days, they brought her to their local children’s hospital, where she received the same diagnosis.

Annemarie and Michael had a “feeling” that “something wasn’t right”, prompting them to return to hospital, where she underwent a series of tests, including an ultrasound, electrocardiogram (ECG) and X-ray. Just hours later, on April 15, a meeting with the cardiac nurse specialist and chief cardiologist confirmed it was “something serious”.

Michael recalled: “They told me separately to Annemarie that they thought Essie had restrictive cardiomyopathy. I didn’t know what that meant, but they mentioned the word transplant, and of course, in between going in and out the room, I Googled it, and that was probably the worst day of my life. It wasn’t a good day.”

Restrictive cardiomyopathy, as described by the NHS, is a condition in which the walls of the heart’s main chambers become stiff and rigid, preventing them from relaxing properly after contracting and stopping the heart from filling with blood adequately. According to the National Library of Medicine, the average survival rate following diagnosis is estimated at between two to five years.

Essie was admitted to intensive care before undergoing a cardiac catheterisation to assess her heart function. The couple revealed her diagnosis was subsequently changed to hybrid cardiomyopathy, meaning she displayed signs of both restrictive and dilated cardiomyopathy, and that treatment was a viable option.

In dilated cardiomyopathy, the muscular walls of the heart become stretched and thin, preventing them from squeezing properly to circulate blood around the body, according to the NHS. This explained Essie’s exhaustion, and the condition can also cause swelling, which accounted for her appearing “chubbier” than her siblings, as well as stomach pain, as a weakened heart causes fluid to accumulate in the digestive organs.

Three days later, she underwent additional tests to determine whether she was eligible for a mechanical heart at Great Ormond Street Hospital, and was confirmed as a suitable candidate. The mechanical heart, known as a Berlin Heart Ventricular Assist Device (VAD), is used to support children suffering severe heart failure while awaiting a heart transplant.

It takes over the function of a child’s own heart when it becomes too weak to pump sufficient amounts of blood to the lungs and around their body, according to Great Ormond Street Hospital.

“We were just trembling, sitting there, holding each other, shaking with fear and anxiety and everything you can imagine,” Michael said. “Eventually they came and told us, and we were just so happy and relieved.”

However, in the long run, Michael and Annemarie would need to alternate between one of them remaining at Great Ormond Street Hospital with Essie while the other stayed in Dublin with their other children.

“It was very difficult to accept, but it meant saving Essie – we had a good cry and we knew it was something we needed to do,” Michael said.

Within days, Essie was airlifted from Dublin to Great Ormond Street and placed on an advanced life-support system that temporarily pumps and oxygenates a patient’s blood outside the body for 12 days before receiving the mechanical heart on May 5.

Annemarie said: “It’s horrific to watch your child go through something like that. Essie has been through some things adults will never, ever go through. When she got on to the Berlin Heart, we just felt like we’re one step closer to transplant and she got her spark back.”

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Essie remained in intensive care for several weeks following the procedure, with her parents beside her, and gradually started to recover her strength. While in intensive care, they received news of a matching donor for transplant, but were subsequently told the tissue wasn’t suitable and they couldn’t go ahead, leaving them “so disappointed”. Yet Michael and Annemarie credit Essie’s “character” with helping her survive the experience.

Michael said: “We always said her sassiness and sense of humour will do her well when she’s older, we just didn’t realise that she was going to need it so soon.”

In June 2026 Annemarie’s mother died and she felt she did not “get time to grieve” while worrying about Essie, balancing care for her other children and making repeated trips between Dublin and London.

“It’s all just been so tough, and I don’t know if I’ve processed it all, I feel like maybe I will years later,” she said. “I believe there will be some major breakdowns once this is over, but it’s just about putting one foot in front of another for now.”

Currently, Essie undergoes regular wound dressing changes and monitoring, taking approximately 25 medications daily. The Berlin Heart VAD features a plastic pump or chamber positioned outside the body, with the air-filled section connected through a lengthy plastic tube to a driving unit that Essie wheels alongside her.

She receives bedside schooling at Great Ormond Street for an hour each day and interacts with other children and nursing staff, frequently pretending to be a nurse on the ward.

“The team have just been incredible at making life feel as normal as possible, and there are parents here that all understand what we’re going through,” Michael added.

Michael will remain at Great Ormond Street until Essie can receive a transplant, though they “have no idea” when that might be. “It’s just a waiting game for us and our little girl now,” Michael said.

For more information, visit gosh.nhs.uk and organdonation.nhs.uk

The UK will grow by less than expected next year amid the ongoing US-Israel war in Iran, an international agency has said.

It is one of many countries whose economic prospects are facing a hit due to the prolonged conflict, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) said.

The downgrade to the UK’s economic growth outlook is moderate, according to the OECD, which predicted it will grow by 1% in 2027, against an earlier forecast of 1.1%.

The agency also upgraded the UK’s growth outlook for 2026, from an expected 0.9% to 1.1% for the year.

The prediction comes as Chancellor John Healey prepares to deliver his first Budget at the end of October.

In the short-term, UK growth in 2026 is expected to be higher than the OECD predicted in June after “solid domestic demand growth”.

But it will be lower than predicted in 2027 as higher fuel prices eat into growth. The effects of this depend on how long supply disruptions last, it said.

Risks to the global economy include the war in the middle east and climate-change related supply shocks, the OECD said.

Next year, global growth is expected to also be 0.1% lower, with countries affected including Australia, Canada, and the Euro-area.

Conflict in the Middle East has contributed to higher oil and gas prices globally, pushing up inflation in countries including the UK.

Weather-related shocks, including from a strong El Nino, could hit farmers and help push up food prices, it added.

The hospital is one of those that was built using Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC)

Plans to rebuild Hinchingbrooke Hospital have taken another step forward as new land has been acquired. North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust has secured around six-hectares of former Cambridgeshire Police land and associated highways land.

This forms part of the Hinchingbrooke Hospital Redevelopment Programme. Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon was built in 1983 and is one of four in the East of England with Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (RAAC) in some of its walls and roof, causing ongoing structural issues.

The land acquisition represents a significant milestone in plans to develop a modern new hospital at Hinchingbrooke, which was added to the New Hospital Programme in May 2023. It will provide the land required to deliver critical infrastructure that supports the future redevelopment programme, the trust said.

The land will, subject to planning consent, enable the creation of a new access road, around 682 parking spaces, environmental mitigation works and low-carbon energy infrastructure, helping prepare the site for future development and construction activity.

The redevelopment programme is designed to address the challenges associated with ageing hospital infrastructure while ensuring healthcare services can continue to meet the needs of a growing population across Huntingdonshire and surrounding communities, the trust said.

The project will also aim to improve access to the hospital site and support measures to reduce congestion in the surrounding area, benefiting patients, visitors, staff and local residents.

Senior Responsible Officer for Hinchingbrooke Hospital Redevelopment, Deborah Lee, said: “Reaching agreement on this land acquisition is a major milestone for the Hinchingbrooke Hospital Redevelopment Programme. Securing this site will allow us to deliver the vital infrastructure needed to support our plans for a modern hospital that meets the needs of our patients, staff and communities for decades to come.”

Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), Darryl Preston added: “As owner of the police estate in Cambridgeshire, I have a duty to ensure that land no longer needed for policing purposes is used in a way that delivers the greatest benefit to the public. Once finalised, this sale will help improve access to local healthcare facilities, providing a positive outcome for residents and the wider community.”

The transaction remains subject to legal completion and final approvals as well as the transfer back of land to the PCC from National Highways following completion of the Views Common scheme.

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The following story is the winner of The Conversation Prize for writers 2026, a competition run in partnership with Faber and Curtis Brown. Read more about the competition here.

“It’s a heck of a way”. My parents are surprisingly resistant to visiting Spurn Point. It’s the second summer of the COVID pandemic, and my husband, young son, and I are holidaying near their home, so we can sit with them in their garden. I’ve suggested a day trip to the very edge of the land – a skinny, hooked, peninsula, far off to the east of Hull.

Windswept and bleakly beautiful, Spurn Point (or Head) has coastal sand dunes on one side and estuarial mud flats on the other. It is a National Nature Reserve, littered with the military detritus of two world wars, an abandoned railway, and a lighthouse. It is also the closest we can get to Ravenser Odd – the sunken medieval island that obsesses me.

Ravenser Odd was a real place. And yet it feels like myth. Its story is brief and dramatic. New land emerged in the mouth of the Humber estuary, sometime in the early 13th century, and was quickly inhabited and developed. Within decades, it was a wealthy royal borough with two MPs, embroiled in accusations of piracy and conspiracy, and in wars against Scotland and France. And then, the storms came. The island was reclaimed by the waters. All this within 130 years.

This is the kind of story you’d expect to know. Especially if you had been the kind of kid who was taken to local historical sites at weekends, and who traipsed around medieval ruins, posing gothically as a teen. But I didn’t. Not until decades later, when I was living on another coast, staring at a different sea, looking for distraction from my career as a historian of modern Britain.

Gathering the fragments

I could tell you that this is a lost history. But that isn’t true. Not quite. Ravenser Odd isn’t well known, even locally. But it does have something of a cult following. A handful of scattered “facts” have coalesced into the outlines of a story, endlessly repeated in obscure blogs, news stories, and “weird history” podcasts. They’ve formed the basis of an ever-growing list of poems, songs, stories, and games.

There is a canon behind this: a collection of weighty tomes by Georgian, Victorian, and Edwardian authors who pieced together its fragmented archival traces. But while this isn’t a lost history, it is one which has somehow come to seem lost – or at least to lend itself to being continually refound, always resurfacing.

Thomas Thompson, a retired MP and close friend and business partner of William Wilberforce, was the first to gather the pieces. His 1821 account opens with an image of “the patient Antiquary”, “sit[ting] on the banks of the Humber, and watch[ing] the ebbing of the tide, without being able to discern a blade of grass, where once stood the market-town, and sea-port”.

In the absence of either a physical site, or local memories or legends, Thompson turned to “ancient records, neither numerous, nor generally accessible,” noting that it was only through “a careful collection of scattered facts, that a faint representation can be given of a place which has had no local existence for many generations”. Yet for all its mystery, his search proved so fruitful that he was unable to fit it all into one pamphlet and had to write another.

Over the next century, Thompson’s successors added to his tale – using collections of printed documents and sources held at the newly-opened Public Record Office. The best known of these texts, J.R. Boyle’s Lost Towns of the Humber and Thomas Sheppard’s Lost Towns of the Yorkshire Coast, are still key reference points. Their flourishes, speculations, and suppositions have become inextricably part of the island’s lore.

The Insights section is committed to high-quality longform journalism. Our editors work with academics from many different backgrounds who are tackling a wide range of societal and scientific challenges.

But even the archival sources are extraordinary. I team up with medieval expert, Kathryn Maude, of The National Archives, who traces the records of this upstart new town. She finds customs accounts detailing trading relations with Scandinavia, the Low Countries, the Baltic – and the complaints that follow when things turn sour: theft; extortion; murder. Closer to home, Ravenser Odd was accused of intercepting ships heading for Grimsby and impoverishing its neighbours.

Most striking are the records of its physical structures – and the sheer size of the town they suggest. Along with the docks, court, prison, chapel, goldsmiths, and tannery, Kathryn uncovers records of three windmills and hundreds of houses.

The year after two thirds of the town was annihilated by storms, a further 145 houses (seemingly belonging to a single woman) were destroyed, along with many other buildings and 42 plots of land. This is more than a lost village. Its trace has been left on numerous world maps of the time.

Yet, despite all this, I am still unable to answer one of the biggest mysteries of all: where exactly was Ravenser Odd?

When we finally get to Spurn Point (without my parents), I realise I don’t know where I should be looking. Was it out in the North Sea, or within the estuary? How far away? The earliest sources say a mile out to sea; others that it was joined to the mainland by a sandy road. Since 2013 the end of the peninsula has become a tidal island. Maybe the same thing happened back then in reverse. When land first appeared perhaps it looked like a “true island”, which “the sea surrounds”, but over time more of the peninsula emerged. In any case, the point itself has moved, drifted, extended over the centuries. The sandbanks, mudflats, and saltmarshes appear and disappear with the tides.

I’d assumed that once I got here, I’d feel it somehow. I’d know. But the idea of a busy, noisy port in this isolated landscape seems impossible, unfathomable. We content ourselves with a seal, a deer, and a full array of wading birds.

In the months before our trip, a team of geographers from the University of Hull started looking for Ravenser Odd. Their hi-tech scans of the seabed led to media claims that “Yorkshire’s Atlantis” would soon be found. Five years later, there is still nothing to see.

À lire aussi :
Ravenser Odd: the medieval city Yorkshire lost to the sea

The wonder of being lost

But something is definitely happening. The handful of blogs, pamphlets, and a couple of songs, have multiplied. Every time I search, I find more – more songs, more poems, more podcasts, more novels and short stories and plays. The most recent have an element of AI-assistance. I start collecting these works, talking to their creators, asking what brought you to this story? What does it mean to you?

A lawless place, unmapped, untamed –
some boats that sprawled to make a town:
illustrious and briefly famed.

But sand ran through. The sky dropped down.
The waves stood up and raised their voice
until there was no other sound.

– Extract from “Ravenser Odd” by Michael Daniels

And I find it is the lostness that matters. Ravenser Odd cannot be visited and that gives it a poetic element, an allure, a hauntingness. A musician describes the fact that “on the maps it keeps moving” as “really magical”, it makes it feel “almost not real”. A poet says: “The fact that it is unstable, that you can’t pin it down, to me is the wonder”.

While most of the people I speak to are local, only a few knew the story as children, most came to it in later life. Like me – and my parents – they were intrigued that they had never heard of it before. Others are from further afield: London, Scotland, Ireland, the United States, Ukraine. Surprisingly few have seen the media coverage of the physical search for the island; surprisingly many have stumbled across Boyle’s and Shepherd’s books in libraries or online booksellers.

Lots of these creators find Ravenser Odd because they are looking for it – or rather for this type of story, set in this kind of place. They search “lost coastal Yorkshire village”, or “sunken English island”. And this is what they find. It satisfies a narrative need. Partly, Ravenser Odd is standing in for all lost settlements, all drowned landscapes. Interviewees frequently mentioned their interest in other lost places: mythical and real; ancient and modern; local and international. But it also offers something new. An American role-playing games designer describes Ravenser Odd as “memetically sticky”, but with “its own weird details”: like Dunwich (a thriving medieval port city in Suffolk, England, that largely vanished into the North Sea because of coastal erosion) with added – if historically ambiguous – Viking influences.

The main difference is its obscurity, although that is a shrinking resource. A video artist tells me how shocked she is by the sheer quantity of internet sources now available – a stark contrast to 2006, when she last looked. A songwriter who found the story in 2025 was disconcerted to discover she was not the first, that it was already ‘trendy’. And yet, she found she couldn’t give it up – and “just got drawn in deeper and deeper.”

A very odd name

She was not the only one to get hooked or to find it had got under her skin. As one novelist put it: “I immediately saw it and thought, well, that is fascinating, and it is odd that I’ve never heard of it before, and I haven’t actually stopped thinking about it since.”

Her reference to it being odd is telling. The strange name of the island is a key part of its appeal. One creator explained his inspiration came from a search for lost local places, “and seeing those words, ‘Ravenser Odd’, and that being odd in itself”.

JR Boyle suggested that the name was Viking, meaning “Raven’s Tongue”, and that has stuck – although the medieval spellings are too variable to be sure of anything, and its 13th-century emergence seems rather late for that. Other key aspects of Ravenser Odd’s popular mystique are similarly ambiguous. Although it was repeatedly accused of piracy, this was common to many of its neighbours; part of a medieval economy of complaint and recompense.

The reason we don’t remember Hull or Grimsby as notorious pirate havens is because they went on to have other lives. Yet already in 1400, Ravenser Odd’s story could be wrapped up with a dramatic moral conclusion. In the retrospective account of the Chronicle of Meaux Abbey – a monastery which had itself lost land on the island – “by its wicked works and piracies, [Ravenser Odd] provoked the wrath of God against itself beyond measure”.

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As a historian of public heritage, I initially approached this as an example of what academics call popular medievalism. But it soon became clear that this is one of the least important aspects of its appeal. Only a handful of writers were drawn to it because it is a medieval story; for most a generic sense of pastness and unspecified authenticity is enough.

Instead of historical period, I find that it’s really the location that matters. Geographers are interested in what the island’s position reveals about longshore drift, whereby sediment is moved along the coastline, forming new land formations. Locals complain that it has been forgotten because it’s in a neglected part of the north. And Spurn Point has its own allure. Interviewees described being startled and staggered by the idea that “such a tiny little place on the end of nowhere”, a desolate place, had been “a port that kings used” or could have once been “this enormous place with half a dozen churches, or more.” In truth, it seems that Ravenser Odd only had one church, but the exaggeration is telling in itself; the unimaginability of a place like that in a landscape like this.

It also turns out that my dad was onto something. Spurn Point is indeed a heck of a way from most places. And that matters too. A local historian tells me that it is much further away than you think it’s going to be and that “you’ve really got to be alert because it’s so neglected often you can’t see the road markings”. Even when you reach the peninsula, the point itself is still some distance, with no remaining road.

Having walked with my family as far as the lighthouse and back, I leave them to eat cakes in the visitor centre, while I hire a bike in a panic to take me on the eight-mile round trip to the very end of the land. We’ve come all this way and I need to get there and back before the tide cuts it off. I soon regret this. A bike is not an ideal form of transport on sand, and I end up pushing more than riding, with the rain setting in as I struggle up and down the bramble-covered hillocks before the final point.

But, in the words of a local folk musician: “Once you do it and you get past the kind of grass scrubland onto that final beach, I mean it’s just because you’re there on your own … It’s just stunning. It’s brilliant … I think that adds as well to the Ravenser Odd sense of being magical”.

I breathe in the salt air, look across the estuary at (the medieval-inspired) Grimsby Dock Tower, and out at the windfarms on the horizon. And I wonder what would be lost if this story were to be fully found, if it became a well-known history of a mapped-out place. Without its mysteries would Ravenser Odd still astound and intrigue? Would it still allow us to wonder?