Latest incident is 16th time the coastguard has been called out to the Ribble estuary in six weeks

As a sailor, I respect the sea; as a gardener, I'd very much prefer to do without it, because with a sea view comes a wind, bearing salt on its wings. "The most effective windbreak," according to Your Gardening Questions Answered, "is provided by planting two kinds of hedges, a sturdy wind-resister such as blackthorn or euonymus, set in two rows four feet apart on the side facing the sea: then four feet inside that a hedge of hebes or escallonia to filter out what gets past the outer defences..." But seaside gardeners who plant the cheerless hedges four feet apart, might find that within a few years, they've not only lost half the garden to hedge, but also planted out the view.

You can't swing a Wellington boot in the Lake District without hitting a country house hotel. With a rival at the turn of every country lane, hotels always have to raise their game – a wing refurbished here, a new spa there – if they're going to keep up with the competition. A shining example of this is Gilpin Lodge, which steps up to the challenge with aplomb.

The abuse scandal at a Bristol care home has put the shadowy world of private equity in the spotlight. Who's behind these financial titans?

Centrica, the parent company of household gas supplier British Gas, has carried out its threat not to reopen one of the UK's largest gas fields following the Government's decision to raise taxes on production.

The backlash against the Chancellor's decision to impose higher taxes on energy firms continued yesterday after Centrica decided not to recommence production at a major gas field, citing the heavy tax burden.

The owner of clothing retailers La Senza and American Apparel has bought fellow fashion chain All Saints in a deal set to secure hundreds of jobs.

The Government was today urged to rethink its oil and gas tax hike amid concerns that the move could hasten the demise of UK production.

As the lavish period drama, now set in the 1930s, returns to TV, Andrew McCorkell offers a guide to the series, recalls its predecessor and speaks to modern-day lords, ladies and butlers

Age: 47

Betsy Tobin's fourth novel is the story of an imagined survivor of the 2004 disaster in Morecambe Bay which claimed the lives of 21 Chinese cockle-pickers. Illegal immigrant Wen's fate is interwoven with those of two women, his twin sister Lili and depressive alcoholic Angie, who has aborted her own suicide attempt in order to pull him half-drowned from the sea.

A drive against the "scourge" of sex trafficking from China to Britain was agreed by the two countries at the end of David Cameron’s two-day visit to Beijing.

Wear comfortable clothes and flat shoes to visit Move: Choreographing You at the Hayward, because to experience this exhibition properly, you will be swinging, crawling and balancing your way through the galleries. This vast show takes into account dance and contemporary art since the 1960s, and it's based on the premise that you, the visitor, are the dancer, and that the objects in the space manipulate your movement somehow. So you will find yourself squeezing sideways down Bruce Nauman's very narrow Green Light Corridor, feeling trapped and anxious, or stumbling in the dark through Lygia Clark's The House Is the Body. Penetration, ovulation, germination, expulsion, which creates a kind of brilliantly barmy sense of inhabiting a woman's body and then being born out of a woolly chamber. You can swing across the gallery (no easy task) on a series of gym rings by William Forsythe and goose-step over buckets of water in Trisha Brown's Stream on the outdoor sculpture terrace. A couple of Robert Morris's brilliant Bodyspacemotionthings, sculptures for balancing on, are here, subversive in the sense that they always feel rather dangerous.

A woman who was swept to sea with her husband in the Morecambe Bay cockle picker tragedy six years ago will be buried alongside her husband in China, a detective said today.