Culture

Penny Pepper explains why well-meaning but pity-inducing fundraisers do not lead to structural change for marginalised people

With their recurrent urban legends that 'Christmas' is to be cancelled, Christian Christensen notes the European right has somehow overlooked a genuine cultural invasion

If humans can’t yet hibernate, could we approach something like the ‘torpor’ that bears and other larger mammals practice? asks John Mitchinson

Katharine Quarmby explores why Britain’s story of transportation – the biggest forced migration in its history – has largely been buried 

Otto English explores how Remembrance Sunday has been commercialised and weaponised to feed hollow national myths

During lockdown, Keith Kahn-Harris discovered a strange anomaly inside Kinder Surprise Eggs, and almost began to uncover a vast corporate conspiracy...

As international leaders gather in Glasgow for the COP26 summit, Hadley Coull and Chris Ogden consider Britain’s unmoored identity in a volatile world

Julian Petley looks back to the Soviet oppression of Czechoslovakia and the dissidence of the playwright Václav Havel for an understanding of the Post-Truth ideology of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson

Sian Norris speaks to Professor Lea Ypi and reflects on the threats to freedom and democracy hanging over Europe – and their historical roots

Mic Wright unpicks the attraction by repulsion of the hit HBO/Sky Atlantic drama, partly inspired by the Murdochs, but wonders whether it gives solace to the super-rich

While Priti Patel and the tabloid press seek to protect our borders from those who need protection, one film has broken the mould, writes Deborah Shaw

With emails, text messages and WhatsApp groups now a dominant feature of all our lives, John Mitchinson considers the enduring qualities of a more humble form of social communication

To mark the start of Black History Month 2021, Almaz Ohene meets inspirational leaders in the younger generation fighting back against the Government’s divisive ‘culture war’

Matthew Gwyther considers how the pandemic shifted office norms, and the dilemmas associated with our new routines

Penny Pepper explores the failure of the diversity and inclusion trope for disabled people with a variety of stories to tell

Nadine Dorries’ appointment as Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Secretary is said to be turbo-charging the culture war – but a new report has found the real issue facing the cultural sector is structural inequality not ‘wokery’

An author of a new book about the Bath Arts Workshop explores the strength of the 1960s and 1970s counterculture – and asks what lessons it has for us today

In the second part of his look at Brexit 'campaigning' groups, Otto English explores the attempts of those trying to weaponise their versions of British history and turning it into an orthodoxy which cannot be challenged

John Mitchinson explores the lessons in the inventor, philosopher and mathematician’s ‘doing more with less’ philosophy