FOR THE PARTY, NOT THE NATION
The Conservatives may be ready for a general election, but the country isn’t. In the past week, the Conservatives have been placed twenty-one points ahead of Corbyn’s Labour Party in two polls. Many Labour MPs have accepted that not only do they face no real chance of forming the next governmen
Creating Narratives to Change the Mood
On the first page of our story The future seemed so bright Then this thing turned out so evil I don’t know why I’m still surprised. Even angels have their wicked schemes And you take that to new extremes But you’ll always be my hero Even though you’ve lost your mind.
My Mother’s Name
When I was younger there was a song my mother used to play often. It was always there, in the background, wrapped around images of my childhood like a gauze. Translated by memory, the song doesn’t have a tune, nor many lyrics, but I can recall the moments in which it was present: my mother [&helli
An interview with a travelling street musician
Having left his native Canada three years ago, Matthew Lennox lives nomadically: couch surfing, busking, and travelling around Europe, India, Australia, the Americas, and even parts of the Middle East. Watching him play, surrounded by crowds of people smiling and holding up their cameras, you begin
A structure of stones, a structure of stories
In the shadow of Camlough Mountain, there stands a hill. It rises out of the deep-set vale—a crease amid the furrows of rolling fields and verdant meadows sprawled out like a patchwork quilt. Proudly yet gently it brushes the sky and looms over the village below. Atop this hill, which goes by the
The Book of Everything
I had a vision of a book that was about Everything. A grand, enigmatic introduction promised to reveal profound and mysterious connections between almost all things, and to conclude with a staggering revelation. But this introduction ended with an apology: a lot of explanation would have to be done
Francis Bacon, Primrose Hill. Bill Brandt (1963)
To a pedantic and dogmatic doctrinaire of photography, almost everything about Bill Brandt’s fêted snapshot is wrong. Categorically, indubitably wrong. Consider, for a moment, the warped composition of the picture. The central, yet uncomfortably off-kilter lamppost awkwardly brushes the very
Post-Post Truth
When the Oxford Dictionary announced ‘post truth’ as its word for 2016, media around the world were quick to link the term to the improbable political events of the year. Trump’s startling triumph in the American Presidential elections, the success of the Brexit movement in Britain and the ris
Dart and other meetings
A whimsical flick through the Faber and Faber Poetry Diary 2013 led to an encounter with Alice Oswald’s ‘Woods etc’. I remember reading that poem aloud several weeks later, during a lunchtime of poetry in the school library, and feeling the nerves of public speaking fizzle into the goosebumps