Is Britain in the grip of collective, clinical narcissism? Is economic growth a thing of the past? What gives our words meaning?
During 2016, Prospect has, as always, been making sense of the big issues—and you’ve been reading about them in record numbers. Below, you can find ten of our most popular pieces of the year, in which world-class writers set out to answer the questions above and more besides.
Among the contributors are Prospect regulars like Roger Scruton, who asks what it means to be British. His answer has taken on even more significance in the wake of the suggestion that public servants should swear an oath to British values. Larry Summers, former US Secretary to the Treasury, asks whether economic growth is over, as Robert Gordon has claimed. And Will Self argues that belief in God may have been replaced, in part, by romantic longing.
Will our children really not know economic growth?
Not so fast, Robert Gordon
By Larry Summers
Who are we?
The "Remain" side thought the EU referendum was all about economics. It was really about how we define ourselves as a nation
By Roger Scruton
Who guards the Guardian?
The newspaper has taken on hundreds more staff, but its grand digital gamble has not yet paid off and it is losing money rapidly. Can it survive?
By Stephen Glover
The Romance delusion
Many have thrown off the God delusion, but another has us in a firmer embrace
By Will Self
How words shape our world
There is gold in Charles Taylor's new work on language—a pity it's so hard to find
By Julian Baggini
Britain: narcissist nation
The country's inflated sense of self-worth is beginning to look clinical
By Joris Luyendijk
Gender—good for nothing
Our preoccupation with gender identity is a cultural step backwards. For me, the self transcends sex
By Lionel Shriver
How John Berger taught us to see
Berger, now 90, has changed his life so radically and so often because he cannot bear idle conversation
By Colin MacCabe
Esperanto: the language that never was
It never became the world language that many hoped, but some still keep the faith
By Edward Docx
The haunted summer of 1816
Two great horror stories were born during a few wet days in Switzerland. Kevin Jackson retells the story of what happened
By Kevin Jackson