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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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The Upside Down: Kissing Cousins – Why Learning About Neanderthals Teaches Us More About Ourselves
John Mitchinson explores why our closest cousins were wrongly defamed as boorish, rude stupid louts
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Opening Our Eyes to the Cost of Empire: Why We Must Demand the Return of Nigeria’s Benin Bronzes
Paddy Docherty explains how research for his book on the 1897 invasion of the Kingdom of Benin left him ashamed – an emotion he believes must be converted into action
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Will the Government’s £12 Million Jubilee Book Be Another Exercise in Airbrushing British History?
A commemorative children’s book marking the Queen’s platinum jubilee year is likely to be an exercise in selective remembering, says Sam Bright
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A Disabled Person’s Liaisons with Politicians: A Love-Hate Affair
Penny Pepper explores what a steady stream of inadequate disability ministers reveals about the sorts of people required to really improve disabled people’s lives
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Ms Dorries Goes to the Barricades
Otto English has already imagined how the Culture Secretary could write up the last few tumultuous days in Westminster in her (in)imitable novelistic style
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The Upside Down: Glass Act – The Substance that Enabled the Scientific Revolution
John Mitchinson explains why gazing out of his window or at his computer screen brings him wonderment at an invention we spend little time observing
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The Hangover of Bullingdon Club Britain
Peter Jukes explains why the ongoing scandal about lockdown-breaking parties hit the Prime Minister’s core appeal more than crony contracts, personal expenses or his handling of the Coronavirus crisis
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The Jackpot: How London Became a Concierge for Kleptocrats
Novelist Cory Doctorow tracks Britain’s domestic scandals back to the capital’s reliance on laundered money from overseas, and the feasting of so many professions on the proceeds
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The Highs and Lows of 2021: A Disabled Person’s Perspective
Penny Pepper shares some of the enduring inequalities and the memorable breakthroughs which characterised the past year for disabled people
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‘Refugees and Migrants Do Not Come From a Different World’
Malka Al-Haddad introduces a new magazine aiming to challenge stereotypes about refugees and migrants by showcasing their writing and editing and building a ‘bridge’ of understanding
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‘Life Unworthy of Life’: The Lessons of T4
Stephen Unwin delves deep into the intellectual traditions and cultural mindset that produced the Nazis’ ‘wild euthanasia’ of people with disabilities, and finds we have not yet put those prejudices to rest
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Settling Scores: The Private School Prime Minister Takes his Revenge
Author Richard Beard, who was sent to an English private school in the same year as Boris Johnson, explores why the politician’s time there explains his destructive approach to leading the country
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This Is My Proof: How Women Are Processing Violence and Domestic Abuse Through Art
With women facing a crisis of justice when it comes to gender-based violence, survivors are turning to creative ways to process trauma and tell their own stories
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The Upside Down: Slow Company – The Shameful History of Humans and the Giant Tortoise
John Mitchinson explains why our relationship with these fascinating creatures is such a depressing one
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The Prime Minister of Mendacious Melodies
The scandal of the Downing Street Christmas parties last year flies in the face of the essence of the Christmas message, says Reverend Joe Haward
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Hope Soars Eternal: The Nebra Sky Disk
An ancient artefact due to go on display in the British Museum opens our eyes to a sophisticated and internationally-connected Bronze Age community
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A Naked Interview with Mike Leigh
Chris Sullivan interviews Mike Leigh about the re-release of his film Naked and explores the creative process behind his more recent films such as Peterloo and Turner
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Recognise Disabled People’s Rights Instead of Turning them into Charity Cases
Penny Pepper explains why well-meaning but pity-inducing fundraisers do not lead to structural change for marginalised people
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Black Friday versus Christmas: The Great Replacement Reality
With their recurrent urban legends that ‘Christmas’ is to be cancelled, Christian Christensen notes the European right has somehow overlooked a genuine cultural invasion
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The Upside Down: The Appeal of Hibernation
If humans can’t yet hibernate, could we approach something like the ‘torpor’ that bears and other larger mammals practice? asks John Mitchinson
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Colonial Amnesia: The Forgotten Victims of Transportation
Katharine Quarmby explores why Britain’s story of transportation – the biggest forced migration in its history – has largely been buried
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A War Christmas: What Exactly Are We Remembering?
Otto English explores how Remembrance Sunday has been commercialised and weaponised to feed hollow national myths
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KAnon: How I Almost Became a Kinder Conspiracist
During lockdown, Keith Kahn-Harris discovered a strange anomaly inside Kinder Surprise Eggs, and almost began to uncover a vast corporate conspiracy…
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Lost At Sea: Untethered Britain in the Age of Emotion
As international leaders gather in Glasgow for the COP26 summit, Hadley Coull and Chris Ogden consider Britain’s unmoored identity in a volatile world
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The Origins of Normalisation
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
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At the Crossroads of Freedom
Sian Norris speaks to Professor Lea Ypi and reflects on the threats to freedom and democracy hanging over Europe – and their historical roots
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Unreal People in a Hyperreal World: The Empty Rich of Succession
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
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Luftwaffle: Fantasy Nostalgia Betrays the Past, and the Present
Otto English explores the trend among Brexiters to summon myths about World War Two It’s a day of the week, so right-wingers are busy invoking World War Two again. In a country where virtually no-one goes to church any more, ‘The War’ has become a de-facto religion for many a Brexit-minded Conservative. And several have…
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In Limbo: Understanding the Painful, Human Existence of Asylum Seekers
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
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The Upside Down: Wish You Were Here – The Persistence of the Postcard
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
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Rebalancing the History Books: Why Learning About Colonialism Matters
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’
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Workers of the World Sit Tight: How COVID Revolutionised Our Working Lives
Matthew Gwyther considers how the pandemic shifted office norms, and the dilemmas associated with our new routines
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The Rejection of Disabled Creativity – Enough Is Enough
Penny Pepper explores the failure of the diversity and inclusion trope for disabled people with a variety of stories to tell
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The Real Culture Divides Being Masked by the Government’s ‘Culture War’
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’
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Reconsidering the Counterculture
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
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Fake History: The New Brexiter Great Crusade
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
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Less Is More – What Buckminster Fuller Still has to Teach Us
John Mitchinson explores the lessons in the inventor, philosopher and mathematician’s ‘doing more with less’ philosophy
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The History Racket: Blowing the Whistle on the Official Versions and Perversions of the Past
Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu explore the real threats to history – emanating not from ‘wokeists’ intent on rewriting the past but an establishment elite regularly burying inconvenient truths to maintain Britain’s mythic narratives
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Why We Need New Statues Reflecting Britain’s Diverse History
MP Preet Kaur Gill explains why she is backing a new campaign for public artwork commemorating people who are under-represented and forgotten in the country’s narratives about its past
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Googlies for Global Britain
Otto English has been leaked the first draft of the list of trade envoys suggested by International Trade Secretary Liz Truss. Byline Times cannot guarantee its authenticity
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The Angry Brigade, How All You Need is Love Became All You Need is Dynamite
Fifty years on from a Special Branch raid on Angry Brigade, Dave Haslam looks at the conditions that led the group to go beyond conventional politics and protests and bomb more than 100 buildings
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Age is a Feminist Issue in the Arts
The announcement of a new writing prize for under-35s raises questions about how age limits create barriers for women writers, says Joanna Walsh
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The Upside Down: Odd and Odder – The True Value of Eccentricity
John Mitchinson makes the case for those who have lived and died by their own rules, flying in the face of conventionality
