The future of the UK seems perpetually in peril. As Andrew Marr argues in this month’s cover story, nothing is inevitable about Scotland’s breakaway, but London’s complacence is making it more likely. Also in this issue: Jill Rutter explores how we’re coping outside the single market, Eliane Glaser has been horrified by the education jargon being foisted on her children during her time homeschooling, and Miranda France gives her verdict on the new Kazuo Ishiguro.
Our fallible brains are not always wired to implement the moral and ethical blueprints needed forge human progress. Racism has influenced some of the most key elections in the past years—and harms everyone
Money is crucial to securing a stable and comfortable life. But pre-Covid, our obsession with wealth was reaching dangerous heights—now, we must rebuild
An early spate of Zoom quizzes and calls has abated in favour of the rare pleasures of occasionally seeing a friend from a maddening distance. It's still bizarre
Socially distanced mourning, 12-hour days, and and practising in full PPE—what the experience of funeral workers tells us about the changing face of grief
Its effect is to stall conversations about anti-Black racism and instead either pretend that all lives do matter, or talk about everybody’s lives all at once—whether or not particular groups are subject to particular injustices right now
During 16th and 17th-century plague outbreaks, mass relocation on part of the rich provoked such controversy that fleeing one’s place of residence earned itself a popular term: flight
Editing the past to tell some stories while silencing others is exactly what public commemorations do—even in the 19th century, the campaign to commission the Colston statue was met with a distinct lack of interest