THIS SCEPTRED ISLEHow tall does a cliff have to be to be classified as a cliff? Paul Barrow, St Albans UK Height is not the criteria for a cliff to be reckoned as a cliff as such. Any steep rock face especially at the edge of the sea can be designated as cliff. It appears that the question has been misconceived by basing the height as the principle or standard for judging cliff.

CrimeShe was convicted of sexually assaulting a female friend while disguised as a man. How? Simon Hattenstone hears a tale of loneliness and betrayal in the digital age Judge David Stockdale QC is a serious man with a hangdog expression and a lugubrious manner. He speaks in a basso profundo and looks as if he may never have smiled in his life. But he is measured and scrupulously fair: the perfect lawyer to preside over last month’s retrial of 27-year-old Gayle Newland in Manchester.

The ObserverGermaine GreerFor nearly 50 years feminist icon and firebrand Germaine Greer has been inspiring and infuriating in equal measure – and her latest book, On Rape, has sparked fresh outrage. We asked three generations of women to read and respond to itYvonne Roberts, writer and journalistView image in fullscreenYvonne Roberts Photograph: Katherine Anne Rose/The ObserverThe iconic cover of the The Female Eunuch, an international bestseller first published in 1970 and still in print, shows the stylised trunk of a naked woman, a handle on each hip, fresh off the conveyor belt.

Blogging This article is more than 12 years oldSecond lesbian blogger exposed as a manThis article is more than 12 years oldPaula Brooks, who claimed to be editor of LezGetReal.com, admitted to the Washington Post that 'she', too, was a manA second supposedly leading lesbian blogger was exposed as a man masquerading as a gay woman, a day after the Gay Girl in Damascus blog was revealed to be the fictional creation of a married male student from Edinburgh.

Irresistible charm … The Band. Photograph: Ronald GrantIrresistible charm … The Band. Photograph: Ronald Grant10 of the bestMusicFrom metaphysical meditations to blue-collar laments, here are 10 standout tracks from the roguish rockers 1. The WeightGram Parsons might have coined the phrase “cosmic American music”, but has any piece of music ever sounded so cosmic, or indeed so American, as the Band’s signature track? By the time Levon Helm’s road-weary traveller has pulled into Nazareth – not in biblical Galilee, but eastern Pennsylvania, where CF Martin founded the oldest guitar company in the US in 1833 – he’s already “feeling ’bout half-past dead”, with light years on the clock, and no end to his journey in sight.