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SubscriptionsSection: Culture
History, music, cooking, travel, books, theatre, film – but also with an eye on the ‘culture wars’, nationalism and identity.
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English Football’s Own Goal: A Game of Dodgy Money & Foreign Influence
The beautiful game has become a way for foreign aggressors to gain leverage over British politics, writes Adrian Goldberg
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OUR LIVES MATTER: Educating the White Moderate
Creating a fuller, fairer picture of British history requires urgent reforms to the National Curriculum, explains Dr Cheryl Diane Parkinson
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COVID-19 Could Mark the Beginning of the End for Obsessive Consumerism
Jon Bailes considers how free we really are under the free market system and whether the Coronavirus crisis will have revealed this to the public with far-reaching consequences
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A Blindspot in History: The Truth About Churchill
Churchill Fellow Nishtha Chugh argues that Britain will only truly understand its imperial history with a fuller appreciation of its wartime leader’s legacy
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The Spectre of Shamima Begum Returns to Haunt Britain
Amina Shareef predicts that the return of Begum to challenge the revocation of her citizenship will unleash another wave of ruthless demonisation and internal exile for British Muslims
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Religious Gatherings in the Netflix Age
Reverend Joe Haward wonders whether churches and congregations can re-evaluate their role in the wake of lockdown, remote streaming, and the Coronavirus crisis
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OUR LIVES MATTER: White Reaction is a Yawn
Continuing Byline Times’ series dedicated to giving a platform to new voices of colour, S Dorothy Smith from Virginia argues symbolic gestures alone won’t improve the lives of African Americans
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The Odeon of Death Film of the Month: Buffoon
The Odeon of Death on the month’s events through the medium of cinema. This time a remake of the Ron Howard Classic about a rotund Covidian
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POST-COVID CULTURE: Opening Up or Closing Down?
Following the Chancellor’s lifeline in funding for the culture and heritage sectors, Stephen Unwin considers whether this will usher in a real ‘levelling-up’ of the arts across the country
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In the COVID-19 Era, the Boomer Generation is Out of Touch
COVID-19 signals the end of Boomer dominance over business, culture and the economy, writes Stephen Colegrave
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Another Controversial Historian Uses Darren Grimes’ Platform to Pursue Right-Wing Culture Wars
After the furore over comments by historian David Starkey, Sam Bright reports on a second attempt to rewrite British imperial history in response to the Black Lives Matter movement
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Prince Harry Calls Time on the System of Secrets and Lies Modern Britain is Built On
Comments by the Queen’s grandson on the need to ‘right those wrongs’ from the past across the Commonwealth reveal why he is rebelling against the system that created him
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Touching but Untouched: Visiting Joey
Stephen Unwin’s first reunion in months with his severely disabled son under strict conditions of isolation reveals what we all should hold dear
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Living in My Black Skin is for a Lifetime Not a ‘Moment’
Musa Okwonga reflects on the Black Lives Matter movement and explains why Keir Starmer’s actions have been so revealing of entrenched structural white supremacy
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The Roar of the Greasepaint: Can British Theatre Survive the Coronavirus Crisis?
Vida Adamczewski interviews the artistic director of the Young Vic on the future of a crucial industry that defies social distancing
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In the Search for Truth, We Have to Take Off Our Masks
Reverend Joe Haward considers what the pursuit of truth really involves and how knowledge of this is being manipulated by our politicians
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To Alabama and Back: The Memorial that Holds Up a Mirror to Racism
Hannah Charlton takes a journey into America’s dark history of segregation and subjugation of black communities and wonders how Britain could do the same
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The Radicalisation of Katie Hopkins
In the week her Twitter account was suspended, Otto English looks back on how the mainstream media and the tabloid press paved Katie Hopkins’ path to the extremes
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Hope Carved from Bone: The Prehistoric Treasures of the Swabian Jura
In the 40,000-year-old fragments of evocative animals and figurines, Mike Stuchbery finds inspiration and resilience in dark times
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Static Statues Can’t Change their Position – But We Can
Beyond offensive memorials being removed, real progress will come when we talk to each other and make it our focus to understand the other side, writes Bonnie Greer
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Disappearing Cities: The Rift Between Notting Hill and Notting Dale
Three years after the Grenfell Tower tragedy, Chris Sullivan excavates the hidden history of one of London’s most polarised neighbourhoods
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Infection & Revolution: What Can We Learn from the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’?
From economic aftershocks to social unrest, racial discrimination and healthcare inequality, Otto English predicts a pandemic will transform this century just as it did the last
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Building on the Rubble — The Memorials of Stuttgart
Mike Stuchbery explains how, rather than mute statues, Germany has a much more dynamic dialogue with its traumatic imperial past
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Racism in Britain: A Dark Legacy of Political Betrayal
When Britain’s politicians swore to make racial equality a reality and did not deliver, they compromised democracy itself, writes Brian Cathcart
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OUR LIVES MATTER: An Education in Institutional Racism
In the first of Byline Times’ new series dedicated to giving a platform to new voices of colour, Cheryl Diane Parkinson shares her experiences of confronting structural prejudice within schools
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Tear Down the Tyrants, Reappraise the Past
As the Black Lives Matter movement removes a symbol of slavery and Empire from the heart of Bristol, Otto English explains why misplaced reverence for these relics of a shameful past has had its time
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Sci-Fi Dystopias No Longer Warnings, but an Inspiration to Silicon Valley Billionaires
Jon Bailes looks at the social stratification in the TV remake of Snowpiercer and the new Final Fantasy video game and sees an instruction manual for the Uber-rich.
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Is Murdoch’s New Radio Station Part of Dominic Cummings’ Onslaught on his ‘Mortal Enemy’ the BBC?
Ellin Stein considers whether Times Radio could be part of a wider campaign against public service broadcasting in the UK
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The Ideology of Sacrifice Conditioning Us Must End
Reverend Joe Haward explores how the political narrative of struggle and fear, enforced through market-driven ideology, needs to be replaced with one placing humanity at the centre again.
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The Coronavirus Crisis: Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 Message Exploits a Long-Established Culture of Individualism
Jon Bailes explores why the Government may have changed its Coronavirus messaging to ‘Stay Alert’ and how this represents the tenets of a culture in which social problems are blamed on perceived individual failings.
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Postcards from the Red Wall: Victory Celebrations for a Nation at War with Itself
Graham Williamson reports on how the COVID-19 phase of the culture wars in Middlesborough are an endless re-run of the 1940s
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The Mainstream Media Needs to Give Learning Disabled People their Own Voice
Saba Salman calls on the mainstream media to more accurately reflect the lives of those with learning disabilities and explains how her new book of essays, written by the learning disabled, aims to change the narrative.
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The Year of Living Distantly: As Brightness Falls from the Air will Celebrity Survive?
Bonnie Greer muses on how lockdown and social distancing may be making us more remote from the neediness of the famous.
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Britain’s Chernobyl: COVID-19 and the Cost of Lies
Hardeep Matharu finds echoes of the nuclear explosion that helped end the Soviet Union and the UK’s response to COVID-19, which has resulted in one of the highest Coronavirus death rates in the world.
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In a Life and Death Crisis, Will the British People Finally Wake-Up to the Reality of Boris Johnson?
Musa Okwonga explains why, despite the Government’s objectively scandalous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, those in the UK remain broadly supportive of the Prime Minister.
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Stay Alert. Take Back Control. Don’t Blame Us
Mike Buckley argues that the UK Government’s apparently confusing ‘Stay Alert’ messaging is actually carefully calibrated to wash their hands of blame.
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REVIEW: Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans – ‘Heartbreaking Genius of Staggering Over-Simplification’
Rupert Read and Deepak Raghani lament the film’s fatalism and argue that there is a ‘managed descent’ from our current dangerous energy dependencies.
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Nerd Immunity and the COVID-19 Infodemic: Contagious Conspiracies
Our Secret Scientist looks why Coronavirus conspiracy theories have gone viral, and suggests new ways we can vaccinate ourselves against disinformation.
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Dangerous and Subversive – The Government’s New ‘Stay Alert’ COVID-19 Messaging
Rebecca Welshman detects a disturbing subtext which echoes Boris Johnson’s Churchillian rhetoric over the pandemic while shifting blame away from his administration.
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Immunology Pioneer’s Legacy Threatened by Coronavirus Lockdown
While the Jenner Institute is at the centre of the search for a COVID-19 vaccine, David Hencke explains how a museum dedicated to Edward Jenner is threatened because of the lockdown.
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The Year of Living Distantly: Lockdown Shadows of the Mind
Confined to a small urban apartment during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bonnie Greer reflects on her time in the Actors Studio, and how shaming memory brings self-knowledge.
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Odeon of Death Film of the Month: Caws
The Odeon of Death takes a look at events through the medium of cinema
