Three days days from now, the UK will go to the polls to elect a government in a general election. In a nation where voter turnout has plummeted since before the turn of the millennium and where celebrity commentators urge young people not to bother voting, I’d sincerely like to fair-mindedly trumpet the view that if you’re […]
Buy Britannia: Is Consumable Nationalism a Problem?
What do you think of when someone says ‘Britishness’? Cups of tea, perhaps. The infinite varieties of rain. Cricket in the park on a sunny afternoon. Tikka masala. Saturday football. The Church of England. Embarassment. ‘Jerusalem’. London fried chicken. No example of what one might consider a quintessentially British thing will ever speak to everybody’s experience of […]
The Health of our Libraries
When I was small, every week my grandmother would take me with her into town. We would go to the greengrocer’s and the butcher’s, the baker’s for an iced bun and maybe the Post Office. Then we’d go to the library. The library was a magical place. It may have only been a couple of […]