A weekly reflection on a topical issue.
Zoe Strimpel reflects on the new sexual conservatives changing the face of feminism. 'The sexual revolution bequeathed us choice: to shag as voraciously as we wanted or to get married and have a baby at 30,' she writes. But, she says, the landscape of sexual politics today has changed dramatically. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
Will Self says there are distinct downsides to being tall. At six foot, four and a half inches, Will ponders the drawbacks of a lofty stature. 'The very ideal of beauty is the small', writes Will, 'so how awful it is to realise that you will never fulfil this artistic ideal with your enormous person which, far from being an artwork, is simply a scale model of gigantism!' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith...
Adam Gopnik, recently recovered from his first bout of Covid, explores the profound impact of the pandemic on our whole belief system. 'Covid acted as a kind of universal solvent,' Adam writes, 'dissolving pretty much everyone's expectations of what could happen in the world'. He looks in particular at the concept of ‘trusting the science’ and argues that ‘science is not a transaction of faith but of accumulated confidence’. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: I...
David Goodhart argues that our politics is stuck, not for want of clear ideas about what to do, but because of the inability to get important things done. 'Politics has always been about herding cats', he writes, 'but is the current generation of politicians less good at herding? Or perhaps the cats are even less herdable than usual.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
Tom Shakespeare weighs up his options to avoid being crushed by the tottering pile of books on his bedside table. 'Shutting the blinds a few weeks ago,' Tom writes, 'I was hit on the head by three or four falling Terry Pratchett books'. So act he must...and he came up with a plan to ensure no book goes unread. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
As Americans prepare to go to the polls in the US midterm elections and the COP27 environment conference gets underway, AL Kennedy takes the temperature of debate and of the environment from a barn in upstate New York. And she reflects on being a Brit these days in the US. 'In the normal course of events,' she writes, 'it's Brits who like to make fun of Americans. Now, Americans are bewildered by us'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith...
As warnings are sounded of possible power cuts and lights going out this winter, Rebecca Stott reflects on our relationship with darkness. She looks at how our ancestors experienced the dark and our enduring fascination with celebrating the dark season of winter. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
Will Self ponders the close connection between man and dog, as his dog nears the end of his life. He reflects on lessons learnt: 'You've taught me such a lot these past fifteen years, I wonder, old friend, what you have to teach me now that you're dying?' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
From cancel culture - ancient Greek style - to the binary politics of today, Sara Wheeler argues that the perils of entrenched positions have been clear for a very long time. In ancient Greece, once a year, citizens gathered in the forum to scratch the name of the person they most wanted removed from the political arena on an ostrakon, a shard of broken pot. Too many appearances, and you got banished to a faraway province for a decade...ostracised by the ostraka. 'Once you were out of Athens in ...
Howard Jacobson ponders greed, wealth and horse-and-sparrow, or 'trickle down', economics. From King Lear and Deuteronomy to bankers' bonuses and universal credit, Howard extols the concept of sufficiency and concludes that trickle down economics simply doesn't work. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
Bernardine Evaristo reflects on notions of blackness in the aftermath of comments made this week by the Labour MP, Rupa Huq, who described the Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, as 'superficially' black. 'If one of the most egregious features of racism' Bernardine writes, 'is to reduce people to stereotypes, to homogenise and generalise the qualities of people according to their racialised identities, then what does it say about us when we describe a person as not really being black or Asian because th...
As Vladimir Putin warns he is willing to use any military means necessary in the war with Ukraine, Zoe Strimpel - a recent convert to chess - examines how Mr Putin is likely to play his next hand. 'The future of the world once more hangs in the balance of moves between the West and Russia,' she writes. 'The question of whether Russia really does have a strategic grandmaster at the helm - and whether the West can outmanoeuvre him - has become a matter of horrible urgency'. Producer: Adele Armstro...
Michael Morpurgo reflects on the remarkable life of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. 'The crown and the jewels were costume, the Palace was a stage. She knew that, we knew that', writes Michael. 'It was a charade, but one that worked wonderfully well, because she was centre stage in our national drama, because enough of us believed in her'. As the world changed around her, Michael argues, the Queen at all times looked to the future, helped us find our place in the world and discover who we are as...
Megan Nolan questions why women writers still struggle to be taken seriously. 'The appearance of the woman writer', she says, 'is often clumsily welded together with her work in an effort to make the two inseparable, or indeed to act as a sort of explanation of her work, that she is able to create it at all'. Megan discusses the pressures this imposes. Photo credit: Sophie Davidson Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Penny Murphy...
Will Self reflects on success...and failure. 'Ours is a society', he writes, 'in which that hoary old saying, 'Nothing succeeds like success', has been elevated to the status of a political, philosophic and indeed moral credo.' But, Will argues, this is a world typified by hyperbole and exaggeration, where the successful, 'with plenty of cake to eat, have no need to partake of the true bread of life, which is, of course, failure'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordina...
Linda Colley argues that President Putin's invasion of Ukraine is a wake-up call which should remind people that the days of empire are far from over. And these enduring imperial habits, she says, are evident in some unexpected quarters - not just in places like Russia and China. 'When Donald Trump floated the idea of the US purchasing Greenland in 2019, this was widely dismissed as just another Trumpian eccentricity', she writes. 'But this 'real estate deal' as the former president characterist...
John Connell goes fishing in northern Spain, home to one of the oldest populations of Atlantic salmon in the world. But he discovers a world on an ecological edge - with water at dangerously low levels, distraught fishermen and virtually no fish. 'What is a fish without a river?' he asks. 'Indeed what is a river without a fish?' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Neil Churchill Production Coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
Sara Wheeler has just been appointed the authorised biographer of the travel writer, Jan Morris. But she faces a dilemma. She's concerned that she is 'effectively appropriating the story of a woman who appropriated hundreds of other stories'. How, she wonders, can she navigate this tricky territory. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
From boyhood, through young adulthood, to the present day, Howard Jacobson ponders his relationship with dancing. As summer festivals get underway across the UK, Howard tries to understand the attraction. 'I didn’t dance to Paul McCartney in the 60s, and I’m not going to start now... dancing isn’t what I do,' he says. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
Tom Shakespeare decided several years ago he was no longer going to fly for pleasure. But his father's cousin - who lives in the US - has just turned 90 and he'd love to see her again. He describes his fraught decision - as he grapples with his environmental conscience. Reading from WH Auden's poem, 'Musée des Beaux Arts'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
As the Tory leadership election highlights questions of social mobility, David Goodhart looks at why some people seem to have more luck than others. To what extent can we create our own opportunities, regardless of background? What role does personality play? And is it really possible to engineer and cultivate our own luck by being open to chance encounters? Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
'We're witnessing a major change in British politics,' writes John Gray. 'But to what?' With Boris Johnson on the way out, many Conservatives, he says, believe the party needs a new 'big idea'. But that is a fundamental error, he believes. 'What the party needs is not another new philosophy but a healthy dose of pragmatism...new thinking, but not some grand new theory'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Penny Murphy
Zoe Strimpel argues that wealth creation should be the bedrock of politics. She says that while she loathes the arrogance sometimes displayed by the super rich - especially in the present climate where millions are sinking into poverty - it's not billionaires who are the problem. 'My view is that we need not fewer billionaires but more, the richer the better,' she writes. 'In fact, the more rich people the better'. Hatred of billionaires, she believes, is perplexing at a time when government can...
Sarah Dunant relives a road trip she took 50 years ago, travelling across the USA at a time when Roe v Wade was the talk of America, and revolution was in the air. 'I can only imagine what it must be like to be a woman living in America this week, she writes in the aftermath of the decision by the US Supreme Court - a decision which almost instantly makes abortion illegal in more than 20 US states. She takes us back to 1972 and her travels across America in a beat-up car, when radical lawyers we...
'It's time to acknowledge', writes Will Self, 'that we don't really feel nostalgia at all - only something far more worrying and debilitating: a condition I've named no-stalgia'. Will argues that the West is particularly in thrall to rose-tinted nostalgia and looks to Japan - and its concept of 'mono no aware' - as an alternative and healthier way of thinking about the past. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith...
Howard Jacobson reflects on his upcoming 'significant birthday' and why he's become a willing participant in the ways of personal trainers. 'I say trainer but I am past training,' writes Howard. 'He's more my stretcher. My wife's stretcher, actually, but she doesn't want to be stretched while I shrink. I refused to have him at first. But I capitulated. It was either that or watch my wife by stretched to twice my length'. So down on the floor he goes, 'hoping someone - anyone - will think I'm a w...
Adam Gopnik grew up in Canada, where he saw the Queen age gracefully on the country's bank notes - though he says the royal connection often felt vague. Arriving in London this week amid union flags and flowers, Adam reflects on the constancy of the Queen's reign. "What lasts for seventy years," he writes, "and never takes a turn into indecency or becomes cruel or sordid in any of the obvious ways has my vote. Well, not my vote, obviously....my allegiance. Well, okay, not my allegiance... my adm...
After recently discovering the secret of her local meadow, which hides the ruins of World War Two, Rebecca Stott reflects on how we rebuild lives and landscapes, from 6th Century Britain to post-war Berlin to Beirut. She reflects on the damage currently being inflicted on Ukraine, and highlights recent discussions held by the Mayor of Kharkiv to plan the rebuilding of his city. 'It struck me as remarkable that despite the war, despite seeing his city in ruins... the mayor had the capacity to sta...
'Over the centuries', writes Michael Morpurgo, 'we have been a safe haven to so many, and they have helped make us the people we are today - at our best, a deeply humanitarian people. I fear we are not at our best today'. Michael argues that, although we need to address the issue of people smuggling and deaths from dangerous Channel crossings, we must not lose our capacity for kindness and 'generosity of spirit' towards those who need our help. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Produ...
'We must never underestimate the power of words to shape public opinion and politics', writes Bernardine Evaristo. This comes in the aftermath of a call from a school authority in South Dakota for the banning of her novel, 'Girl, Woman, Other' on the grounds that it - and four other novels - are unsuitable for seventeen and eighteen-year-olds. Bernardine argues that we should avoid vocabulary that fosters outrage and try instead to find words that convey our exact, and reasoned, argument. Produc...
