August/September 2025 issue
Oliver Bullough identifies the source of our dirty rivers and Isabel Hilton explains why Xi Jinping cares about reincarnation. Plus, David Blunkett debates ID cards and David Allen Green warns of Trump’s escape from justice
Past issues
Photograph by Sara Morris, post-production by the Retouching Shed image via Science Photo Library
Environment
How our water went to shit
Privatisation was meant to revitalise a public good. Instead, it left us with leaky pipes, sewage spills and rivers not fit to swim in
Oliver Bullough
Editor’s Picks
The Dalai Lama, an elderly man wearing glasses and a yellow hat, is surrounded by other monks, wearing a deep red. Credit: Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo
The Dalai Lama’s last stand
Isabel Hilton
Illustration by Paul Ryding
Does the UK need identity cards?
Rebecca Vincent & David Blunkett
Illustration by David McAllister / Prospect. Sources: Ian Dagnall, Bosiljka Zutich, Andriy Popov / Alamy
The US Supreme Court has freed Trump further from the rule of law
DAT Green
Image: JEP Celebrity Photos / Alamy Stock Photo
Brian Cox: ‘Keir Starmer is a Little Englander’
Graeme Green
Image: Courtesy IMS Prussia Cove
The magic of Prussia Cove
Mishka Rushdie Momen
Illustration by Clara Nicoll
Passover taught me there will always be a Palestine
Alice Goodman
People
Image: JEP Celebrity Photos / Alamy Stock Photo
Brian Cox: ‘Keir Starmer is a Little Englander’
Graeme Green
Image: Ehimetalor Unuabona / Alamy Stock Photo
Kelly Holmes: Growing up in care made me think no one believed in me
Lara Olszowska
Imag: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo
National Gallery director: ‘The pictures belong to the nation’
Franklin Nelson
Image: Helen Miller
Checking Labour’s sums add up
Alex Dean
Illustration by John Watson
The man fighting to protect the UK’s public loos
Lucy Kenningham
Regulars
Letters: August/September 2025
Stephen Collins’s cartoon strip: “Hot drone summer”
Stephen Collins
Illustration: Michael Rea
Mark Gatiss: Maybe it’s time for Doctor Who to have a rest
Prospect Team
Columns
Recent interviews with the Labour leader have an oddly elegiac tone. Image: Geopix / Alamy
Labour has squandered its first year in government
Ben Ansell
Kate Mosse’s diary: the great AI copyright swindle
Kate Mosse
Illustration by David McAllister / Prospect. Sources: Ian Dagnall, Bosiljka Zutich, Andriy Popov / Alamy
The US Supreme Court has freed Trump further from the rule of law
DAT Green
Image: Vincent Kilbride
An AI-enabled world isn’t inevitable
Ethan Zuckerman
Illustration by Andy Smith
Trump’s memecoin is a joke, but we’re not the ones laughing
Sarah Ogilvie
Minnesota governor Tim Walz and his wife Gwen attend a candlelight vigil on 18th June for former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, who were fatally shot. Image by Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo
American politics was violent before Trump. He has made it far worse
Sasha Mudd
Features
Photograph by Sara Morris, post-production by the Retouching Shed image via Science Photo Library
How our water went to shit
Oliver Bullough
Managing the nuclear threat has been central to the multilateral system since end of the Second World War. Image: Everett/Shutterstock
The new nuclear arms race
Jane Kinninmont
Image: Nuk2013 shutterstock
What’s wrong with the new Blue Labour?
Marc Stears
Illustration by Prospect. Sources: Gary Doak, Alamy / YouTube
Matthew Goodwin, Reform and the politics of resentment
James Bloodworth
Illustration by Ben Jones
Saving lives from synthetic opioids
Ed Vulliamy
People singing in the sunshine. They stand in a semicircle with the conductor in the middle with her arms raised. They are wearing casual clothes—including lots of blue Parkinsons tshirts. Image: Jess Hurd
Parkinson’s won’t stop me laughing
Bill Keller
© SOPA Images Limited/Alamy Stock Photo
How to do assisted dying
Mark Mardell & Emily Lawford
The Dalai Lama, an elderly man wearing glasses and a yellow hat, is surrounded by other monks, wearing a deep red. Credit: Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo
The Dalai Lama’s last stand
Isabel Hilton
Illustration by Paul Ryding
Does the UK need identity cards?
Rebecca Vincent & David Blunkett
Notre-Dame-de-Bétharram, the elite Catholic boarding school in southwest France at the centre of a historic abuse scandal. Image: Jonathan Cathala / Alamy
‘Gulag of the Pyrenees’: France’s Catholic school shame
Diane de Vignemont
Culture
Illustration by Timothy Hunt
Rising sun: why Japanese fiction is booming in the west
Susie Mesure
Composites by Prospect. Sources: Chronicle, Smith Archive, Underwood Archives, Inc, Pictorial Press Ltd, Glasshouse Images, Sueddeutsche Zeitung Photo, Colin Waters, World History Archive / Alamy
Gertrude Trevelyan is a novelist for the 1930s—and now
Oliver Soden
Illustration by Nick Taylor
Serving life: an interview with Monica Feria-Tinta
Heather Brooke
“The Nonchalant Dandy” (1901) by Edward Loevy. Image: Bridgeman Images
Fine and dandy: the history of a fashion trend
Lucy Lethbridge
The dispensers of good sense: a satirical take on the Athenian Society by Frederick Hendrik Van Hove, 1692. Image: Photo 12 / Alamy
Personal questions: the changing meaning of the advice column
Jane O'Grady
Detail of “Study for Portrait VII” (1953) by Francis Bacon. Image: Museum of Modern Art, New York / Alamy
Anger management: why we need to rethink this stigmatised emotion
Emily Bootle
Illustration by Kate Hazell
Prospect staff recommend books for the beach: 2025
Illustration by Kate Hazell
Prospect contributors recommend books for the beach: 2025
Illustration by Kate Hazell
Prospect critics recommend books for the beach: 2025
Detail of “Dance of the Nine Opals” (1942) by Ithell Colquhoun. Image: The Sherwin Family Collection / Spire Healthcare / Noise Abatement Society / Samaritans
Ithell Colquhoun’s flight from modernity
David McAllister
Cornish delight: a scene from “Traum eines Sommers” (2004), a TV movie based on a novel by Rosamunde Pilcher. Image: Collection Christophel / Alamy
Ich bin ein Cornwaller
Miriam Dahlinger
Image: Courtesy IMS Prussia Cove
The magic of Prussia Cove
Mishka Rushdie Momen
Clifftop creepiness: a shot from the Cornish-set folk horror film “Enys Men” (2022). Image: Neon / Courtesy Everett Collection / Alamy
Welcome to Weird Kernow
David Barnett
Illustration by David McAllister / Prospect. Sources: Oksana Kuzmina, Wirestock Inc, ONOKY Photononstop / Alamy
Why is everyone suddenly making Hamlet smaller?
Kate Maltby
Alfred Brendel in the 1980s. Image: United Archives GmbH / Alamy
Classical notes: At peace
Ian Bostridge
Lives
Illustration by Clara Nicholl
Life in the Soviet Union taught me to cherish Britain’s miniature libraries
Vitali Vitaliev
Illustration of Tilly Lawless by Clara Nicoll
Sex life: OnlyFans workers can be bad colleagues
Tilly Lawless
Illustration by Clara Nicoll
Young life: Sweating it out Scandi-style
Alice Garnett
Rural life: A walk in the forest will always awaken the child in us
Kiran Sidhu
Illustration by Clara Nicoll
Mindful life: Why I’m terrified of being spied on
Sarah Collins
Illustration by Clara Nicoll
Passover taught me there will always be a Palestine
Alice Goodman
Illustration by Clara Nicoll
Long life: Sorry has become an empty word
Sheila Hancock
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