The Loch Ness monster doesn’t exist. So why are people still looking for it?

This weekend will see believers gather in Scotland for the biggest Nessie hunt in 50 years. What is it about Loch Ness and its mysteries of the deep that so entices people?

The pangolin bites back

Mankind’s abuse of this little mammal may have brought us some rough justice, writes Simon Barnes

The magician

Shane Warne’s powers over cricket balls and players transcended sport

Back where we started

James Joyce’s Ulysses is 100 years old. It is still long and difficult but, Simon Barnes says, it must be read

Let there be night

The days grow short. The winter solstice is upon us. Simon Barnes traces the history of light and squints anxiously into our bright future

Hunting the blues

Human action, or inaction, is helping blue whales recover. Our treatment of our biggest neighbour is hugely symbolic

The government’s approach to sewage – and Britain’s rivers – is full of shit

There are good, natural reasons why flooding rivers and the sea with sewage is a terrible idea. It’s also deeply unpopular

Be nice to bats this Halloween

These wondrous flying mammals have had a bad rap, thanks in no small part to Bram Stoker. They deserve our friendship

A planetwide horror story

Insects are crucial for the flourishing of life on Earth. We should be nurturing them. Instead we’re killing them off, wholesale

Our watery wasteland

Too little water is bad for both the planet and people. Too much water is bad for them, too. We’ve created a crisis in which both extremes are happening at once

The butterflies have a message for us

Their brief existence and their perceived fragility is a sermon on the nature of beauty and life. How sad that 76 per cent of the UK’s resident and migratory butterfly species are in decline – with all that has to say about the future of the planet

Much as you love to mow the lawn, let the grass grow

As appealing as tidiness is, grass is too important to the environment, to agriculture and to biodiversity to be tamed

Boycott! The lost Olympics

The missing and the triumphant

Hundreds of athletes didn’t get the chance to compete in the 1980 Olympics, their dreams crushed under the wheel of global politics. This is what it meant then – and means now

What happens when someone adds to a million-word masterpiece

A Dance to the Music of Time is one of the great works of literature. The Anthony Powell Society exists to celebrate its author’s legacy – except it’s doing rather a lot more quarrelling these days

Dawkins is wrong – grossly wrong – about Down’s syndrome

The author of The God Delusion made his name as a scientist, but he’s increasingly peddling his own brand of baseless religion. If only he could have been at Eddie Barnes’ 20th birthday party…

Sport and money don’t mix well

The European Super League is just the latest example of a decades-long intrusion of business into sport. The people driving these changes don’t understand what they’re playing with

Peat practice

The preservation of carbon sinks, such as peat bogs, is one of the easiest steps we can take to address the climate emergency

Simon Barnes: Why a man who sat on a dead horse became a hate figure

Brits baulk at equine cruelty, but don’t flinch when other animals suffer. Our national obsession has shaped politics and literature – and destroyed a trainer’s career

Tiger Woods isn’t normal

The golfer achieved greatness and threw it away. Twice. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised when godly beings do extraordinary things

Return to the rivers

Beavers are coming back to the waters of Britain, in glorious abundance. They must not be thwarted by the meddling of our own species

Happy the elephant

Nature’s rights

Do all wildlife and all natural habitats have the right to be protected from humans?

The greatest man on Earth

If mankind survives another century or two, the history books of the future will record one man as the giant of our times.

Fractured future

• Hydraulic fracturing provides cheap access to natural gas and has transformed the US energy industry
• But in Britain, where financial benefits do not flow to landowners, the process of extraction has attracted fierce opposition from environmentalists
• To frack or not to frack? That is the question. Or is it?

Fractured communities

• In the village of Misson, Nottinghamshire, locals are concerned about traffic disruption; increased vehicle emissions; anxiety and stress; and impact on house prices
• Some villagers opposed to the drilling for hard-to-extract gas are feeling let down by planning decisions they believe were imposed unfairly
• Wherever fracking is proposed, it is opposed. Is it time to ask more fundamental questions about our attitudes to energy?

Oil and water

• Hydraulic fracturing is a proven way of getting inaccessible fossil fuel
• Its high-pressure methods have attracted widespread protest ranging from fear of earthquakes to water pollution
• Its supporters argue that it is a vital new source of cheap energy and would make the UK less dependent on imported oil and gas