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As Britain’s death toll from Covid-19 passes 100,000, there is one burning question: why did so many have to die? Tom Clark, Gaby Hinsliff and Philip Ball chart the persistent failures—from both the chief scientists and the politicians. Former head of the Supreme Court Brenda Hale takes on the human rights sceptics and Rana Mitter asks whether China's grip on Hong Kong means the end of the historic freedoms in the city.

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Essays Magazine drugs LSD


Will Self: After 100 trips, I know how drugs help us deal with the darker side of life

As long as you can cope with corpses playing jazz with human bones

By Will Self  
April 19, 2018
May 2018

I first experienced ego-death in my oak-panelled room at Exeter College, Oxford in 1979 after swallowing a red microdot of blotting paper soaked with some 150 micrograms of lysergic acid. Things had begun going awry while we were watching an episode of Doctor Who in the JCR—but an ascent of the University Church’s tower in Radcliffe Square didn’t help, and by the time I collapsed back on to my bed, life, the Universe, me, and everything was being sucked into a horrific involute, that took the visual form of the…

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Will Self

Will Self's most recent novel is "Phone" (Penguin)

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