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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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Cultural Demise: The Gutting of the Hospitality Sector is About More than Jobs
Chris Sullivan, who founded the Wag Club in Soho, considers the sad end of London’s Café de Paris and the future of the UK’s pub, bar and club industry
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150 Years of History and Renewed Political Rivalries Will Charge the England-Scotland Euro Clash
Sports journalist Gary Gowers looks forward to Scotland’s clash with England in June and considers the historical baggage the game will bring with it
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The Upside Down: Long Live the Elders! The Exemplary Life of Barry Lopez
John Mitchinson returns with his reflections on the final book of the late great American author and what it reveals about the demands on humans to evolve ethically in order to meet the many challenges on the horizon
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The Despicable History of Imperial Food and Drink Still Casts A Shadow Today
Stephen Colegrave delves into the dark colonial past and historic human cost of the products Brits can’t seem to live without
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Helluva Year! Boris Johnson’s 2020 Review
The Prime Minister has an ‘Australian Style’ litany of successes to celebrate in his first full year, as told to Otto English
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The Idea of Europe: Peter and Markie’s Loon-Clad 70s Euro-Rampage
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
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Beyond the Lure of Empire: The Door of No Return
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
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Learning to Love: Liberating Speech from Hate Speech
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
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‘Strongmen’: How a Crisis in Masculinity Paved the Way for Fascism
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
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Emerging From the Christmas Mire
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
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‘You See What People Can Do to Other People, People they Lived Side-By-Side With’: Ending the Silence on Partition and Empire
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’
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The Year of Living Distantly: The Comfort of Strangers
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
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Last In Line: The Forgotten Learning Disabled Soldiers of World War One
Saba Salman explores how a century of prejudice still finds echoes today in the treatment of people with learning disabilities during the Coronavirus pandemic
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Uprising to Rising Up: The Education of Alex Wheatle
Bryan Knight speaks to Alex Wheatle, whose life was recently brought to television screens by Steve McQueen in the BBC’s Small Axe series
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The Hounding of Billie Holiday
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
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The Upside Down: The Year of No Yule – How the Puritans Created Christmas Without Meaning To
John Mitchinson explains how increasing intolerance around festivities in the 17th Century helped promote a reactionary backlash
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The Powerful Lure of the Soft Fascism Within
Hardeep Matharu with a personal account from the psychological frontline of the culture wars exploring the inner appeal of hate, division and xenophobia
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The Journey to Confront My Whiteness
Hannah Charlton reflects on her personal exploration of understanding racism today and the individual and collective legacy of our Empire past
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Male Suicide: Exploring a Lost Identity
Reverend Joe Haward explores the shocking rate of male suicide in the UK and its relationship to masculinity
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Fighting Fascism: Art As Activism
Jan Fuscoe, of the ‘Brick Lane: The Turning Point’ project, hears from Dan Jones, an artist, activist and campaigner for over 50 years
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Brexit’s Toll On Britain’s Creative Industries: The Sadness and Madness that Awaits
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
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‘The Trial of the Chicago 7’ and the Prosecution of America
This Netflix depiction of mass protests repressed by brutal state violence has stark parallels to today, says Ellin Stein
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Dominic Cummings’ New Blog: My Odyssean Adventure Hasn’t Hit the Rocks
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
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US Election 2020: Trumpism Is Here To Stay and Nowhere Is Sacred
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
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New York City: A Theory of Evolution
Chris Sullivan remembers the run-down, experimental and sleazy New York of punk, hip hop and disco – the creative epicentre of the world, suffocated in recent years by big developers, greed and rent hikes. But could COVID-19 signal a return to its innovative and more humanistic edge?
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The Upside Down: Why the Poetry of Claudia Rankine is Essential Reading for Right Now
John Mitchinson considers how the author combines the integrity of an investigative journalist with a rhetorical urgency in a timely exploration of whiteness
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The Illusionists of Hope can be Defeated with the Real Thing
Reverend Joe Haward considers how a dedication to rooting out corruption and accepting the realities of the present can provide an engine for change
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‘The Problem is Not COVID-19, the Problem is this Country’: Pandemic Poverty in Coronavirus Britain
Francesca Borri visits the Hyde Park neighbourhood in Leeds, and finds a community abandoned by government; ravaged by deprivation
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A Forgotten Community: Bangladeshis Continue to be Marginalised in Modern Britain
The plight of British Bangladeshis is an unpopular one, explains Shafi Musaddique, yet the community continues to wrestle with unique inequalities
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Dishonest, Extreme, Corrupt: Coming of Age in the Era of Trump
CJ Werleman wonders if the new generation of voters will have normalised the extraordinary values and actions of an unprecedented President
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‘We Want the Ability, Space & Time to Retell Our Own History’
Melissa Chemam speaks to campaigners and creatives taking part in Black History Month in Bristol, where the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was brought down in June and discussions about past and present racism continue to run deep
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Imperial Amnesia Strikes Back: ‘Racism in America Nothing to do with Us’
In a debate on the UK’s Black History Month, Kemi Badenoch highlighted the Government’s colonial arrogance by deflecting attention and throwing its ‘special’ ally under the bus
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The Bigger Big Picture: How Soccer Can Survive the Pandemic
Nathan O’Hagan looks at the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on grassroots football and finds some green shoots of hope
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Fighting Fascism and Britain’s ‘Divide and Rule’
Jan Fuscoe, of the Brick Lane Project, tells the story of Balwinder Singh Rana, an Indian activist who has been fighting racism and structural attempts at division in Britain for decades
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OUR LIVES MATTER: Black History is Still Confined to the Margins of the Education System
Teacher Dr Cheryl Diane Parkinson explains how students are taught to equate Britishness with whiteness
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Why Is Homophobia Still an Explicitly Acceptable Prejudice to Hold?
Strictly Come Dancing’s first same-sex pairing is not the milestone those praising the decision believe it to be, writes George Attwood
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American Comedy Tries to Avoid a Repeat of History
US talk show hosts are taking a radically different approach to Donald Trump this time around, reports Eleanor Longman-Rood
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Inside Berlin’s Anti-Gentrification Rebellion
30 years after German reunification, the country’s capital is experiencing a change in its culture and character, Craig Stennett reports
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Government Cultural Recovery Spend Leaves North Out in Cold
The Government’s new bid to save cultural institutions is heavily concentrated in the South of England, reports Sam Bright
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COVID-19 and the End of Economic Fatalism
In the global response to the Coronavirus pandemic, Anthony Barnett sees an epoch-defining moment as governments are forced to put people’s health and wellbeing before market fundamentalism
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QAnon and Coronavirus Conspiracists are in Denial about what ‘Freedom’ Really Is
Joe Haward explores the modern conflation of ‘freedom’ with ‘choice’ and the concept’s historic definition of human flourishing through caring for the whole community
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Spitting Image: Why Politicians Collude with their Latex Lampoons
As the classic TV puppet satire show returns, Jon Bailes thinks satire needs to get much more serious
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Very Like a Whale – We Need to Rethink Our Relationship with Nature
John Mitchinson is back with another fact and fun-filled insight into the human animal and what we can learn from orcas and octopuses
