Culture

The Prime Minister has an 'Australian Style' litany of successes to celebrate in his first full year, as told to Otto English

Hi-jacked while hitchhiking, knife fights with Germans, camping on French rubbish tips... now Britain’s divorce from the EU is finalised, Peter Jukes reflects on his teenage dreams of an ever-deeper union

Bonnie Greer, a former British Museum trustee, observes the role of African Empires in her own roots and looks beyond possession and subjugation for true post-imperial thinking

Angelique Richardson explores how social media has fuelled its own Orwellian ‘two-minute hate’ and ways to combat the racial and social fragmentation it produces

Heidi Siegmund Cuda speaks to the historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat about the new global rise in authoritarianism and why the recent defeat of Donald Trump in the US Presidential Election was so significant

The Government may not seem like it cares much for its people, but the common humanity which has emerged in this challenging year can still be celebrated this Christmas, says Reverend Joe Haward

As discussions of Empire and Britain’s imperial history have come to the forefront in 2020, Hardeep Matharu speaks to BBC journalist and author Kavita Puri to explore what she learnt from those who lived through the end of the colonial project in India about divisions tearing societies apart for her book ‘Partition Voices’

Peter Jukes explores the melancholy emptiness of city centres during the COVID-19 lockdowns and wonders whether the invisible cities of social media will ever become civilised or inhabitable

Saba Salman explores how a century of prejudice still finds echoes today in the treatment of people with learning disabilities during the Coronavirus pandemic

Bryan Knight speaks to Alex Wheatle, whose life was recently brought to television screens by Steve McQueen in the BBC’s Small Axe series

Chris Sullivan reviews the documentary ‘Billie’, detailing how one of the greatest singers of all time was hunted by officers at the Federal Bureau of Narcotics

John Mitchinson explains how increasing intolerance around festivities in the 17th Century helped promote a reactionary backlash

Hardeep Matharu with a personal account from the psychological frontline of the culture wars exploring the inner appeal of hate, division and xenophobia

Hannah Charlton reflects on her personal exploration of understanding racism today and the individual and collective legacy of our Empire past

Reverend Joe Haward explores the shocking rate of male suicide in the UK and its relationship to masculinity

Jan Fuscoe, of the ‘Brick Lane: The Turning Point’ project, hears from Dan Jones, an artist, activist and campaigner for over 50 years

Composer Howard Goodall sets out what performers will need to know in a post-Brexit world and reflects on the sorrow of the Government’s desire to erect barriers, when the job of creatives is to tear them down

This Netflix depiction of mass protests repressed by brutal state violence has stark parallels to today, says Ellin Stein

Otto English has received an exclusive leak from Boris Johnson’s top advisor on his farewell to No 10 and his smashing thoughts on smashing elites

Caolan Robertson explains how, though Donald Trump lost last week's presidential race, his brand of nativist populism is still spreading, particularly in the UK