Blogs

What can history teach us for the task of rapid transition in the face of climate change and corrosive inequality? Historian Molly Conisbee looks at how communities adapted during Britain's dramatic urban growth and upheaval in the 18th and 19th centuries. She reveals...

Creeping climatic upheaval and corrosive global inequality are like two threads pulling apart civilisation’s fabric. To survive and thrive we face an unprecedented challenge of rapid transition. But the way we live is locked-in by multiple factors. We are in the grip...

A decade or so ago, I was finishing my book about the relationship between Columbus, Cabot and Vespucci, and their race for America (you can buy it here as an ebook these days I’m glad to say). I became convinced that the real story there was the friendship between...

In 1972 the law was passed that allowed the UK to join what was then called the European Economic Community (EEC). Despite Europe’s current crises, it’s unchanging, fundamental challenge was expressed that year by Sicco Mansholt, then president of the European...

Being poor is an expensive lifestyle. When you can’t afford things most people take for granted you have to find unusual, costly ways around. So, if you don’t have a washing machine you have to use a Laundromat – this costs about a tenner for one load to be washed and...

Fancy going to Accident and Emergency with conjunctivitis. I mean, what kind of feckless, ignorant type would do that? That was the sort of attitude I felt from the handful of medical staff I encountered there early on Saturday morning. It wasn't even bad...

Dear Jane Ellison MP, When I travel from your constituency where I live to visit family members outside London, I pass through Liverpool Street station. Perched near the steps that bring you up from the Underground is a statue so modest that most commuters pass it...

Meet our heroine – talented, lively, hard working, striving and ambitious. A Londoner. With a deal of bad luck in her life but also acts of kindness and support, for instance a lot of random but interesting internships. A desire to do well and to change the world for...

I am just back from Japan, where I concentrated on eating as much rice and sushi as I could. It was a fabulous trip and I learned a great deal, and perhaps the most important lesson I learned is about Japanese growth. Put simply, there isn't any but it doesn't appear...