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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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Who the Hell are the Disabled?
The impact of COVID-19 has made it starkly clear to those who live disability that it’s the imposed barriers of social organisation that makes them disabled, explains Penny Pepper
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Art and Violence: Technology and Domination: Futurism and Fascism
Chris Sullivan looks back at the role of painters and writers who co-opted 1930s technology and modernity to espouse far-right ideas
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In his Upside-Down World, the Only Free Speech Johnson Cares About is his Own
The Government’s ‘free speech’ proposals aim not to invite conversation but to shut it down – an Orwellian allegory of epic proportions, says Jonathan Lis
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A Radical Press: Intelligencers, Poor Men’s Guardians and Two-Penny Trash
Russell Jackson with a primer on the surprisingly radical traditions of the British press and the 200 hundred-year-old battle cry ‘information is power’
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Reaganite Rockers to Brexit Punks: ‘The Kids are Alt-Right’
Nathan O’Hagan catalogues the surprising conservatism of many radical musicians
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Lust: Can We Afford to Keep On Rewarding Excess?
Matthew Gwyther looks at the craving for power, money, sex, success, legitimacy and legacy – and wonders whether the world is big enough for any one person’s greed So, bye bye, then Jeff Bezos. The CEO of Amazon – who with a worth of $188 billion was for a while the richest man in the…
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Brexit, COVID and the Rhyme of History
Reverend Joe Haward explores the current parallels around power, propaganda and patriotism with the First World War
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From Folklore to Wokelore: How Myths of Britishness are Turning Totalitarian
Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu argue that Britain cannot ignore the Conservative kulturkampf, and that one way to combat the mythologising of politics is to expose the politics of the myths
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The ‘War on Woke’ and the Great Free Speech Czar Paradox
Otto English explores why the Brexit battle’s successor should be pushed back against now – if Britain is to be stopped from continuing down a much darker path still
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Anti-Woke Crusade Igniting Threats to Safety and Careers: ‘There’s So Much Hatred Projected at Women in Public Life’, Warns Historian
Hardeep Matharu reports on how the history of the English countryside has turned into a dangerous battleground as various forces try to provoke an uncivil culture war
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Second Impeachment: American Kompromat Author – ‘We Have to Prosecute Trump To the Fullest Extent of the Law’
As Donald Trump faces an unprecedented second Senate trial, journalist Craig Unger tells Heidi Siegmund Cuda that the most terrifying aspect of modern America is the things that are still legal
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THE UPSIDE DOWN: Mental Slavery – What ‘Moving Forward’ Will Require for America
John Mitchinson explores how the mental structures that enabled slavery are still alive and thriving in the United States today
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Everybody is Somebody: My Daughter’s Pandemic Anxiety
Reverend Joe Haward explores the impact of the Coronavirus on empathetic children and what we can do to reassure them that they are not helpless while the Government fails to reassure us at every turn
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A Fatal Reckoning: UK reaches 100,000 deaths from COVID-19
With 3 per cent of worldwide Coronavirus, fatalities Byline Times Chief Medical Officer, John Ashton, marks Britain’s worst public health catastrophe for over a century
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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
