Covid-19: a pandemic in numbers
Michael Goodier of the New Statesman data journalism team highlights some crucial new themes.
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Land of confusion
“We saw the virus coming and failed to respond”
Our contributors Laura Spinney, Dr Phil Whitaker and Professor Michael Barrett joined Jason Cowley to discuss pandemics past, present…
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How plagues change the world
Could the coronavirus pandemic have an effect as lasting and profound as the Black Death?
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How the myth of “Britain alone” overshadows VE Day
The UK has long downplayed the awkward truth that its victory in the Second World War largely depended on the…
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Why British prisons aren’t working
A spate of recent memoirs by former inmates and staff reveal the shocking reality of life behind bars in…
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How the Second World War was written
If poetry was the literary form of the First World War, it was fiction that best expressed the reality…
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Why we should not fight our fears
A timely memoir investigates the benefits of being afraid.
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Adam Mars-Jones’s Box Hill: a slim but disquieting novel
What is Box Hill about? In its 128 pages, it is both strikingly expansive and wilfully resistant to interpretation.
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Mark Lanegan’s Sing Backwards and Weep: a memoir of sex, drugs and grunge in Nineties Seattle
Mark Lanegan – former frontman with Seattle proto-grunge pioneers the Screaming Trees – gives us an extraordinary snapshot of…
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Élisa Shua Dusapin’s Winter in Sokcho: a masterful short novel
The Prix Robert Walser-winning novel by the French-Korean author Élisa Shua Dusapin centres around an unnamed young graduate in South…
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The greats outdoors: How Thomas Cole shaped the American landscape
Why Cole’s wounded pride helped inspire a national school of painting.
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Grayson’s Art Club is intimate and playful lockdown viewing
Filmed mostly in the artist Grayson Perry’s studio, there’s a homespun informality to the whole affair.
By
The Byron family’s astonishing, hilarious, morally abhorrent lust for life
A reading of Emily Brand’s Fall of the House of Byron showed the wrath of shame and destruction brought on little…
By
The quiet bravery of abortion drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Like two other recent films by female directors – Portrait of a Lady on Fire and The Assistant –…
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Why everyone should watch the BBC’s Covid-19 special Hospital
These extraordinary films should win all the prizes, and everyone in Britain should have to watch them, by law.
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Yanis Varoufakis: Covid-19 has “turbocharged“ the EU’s failures
The former Greek finance minister on Boris Johnson’s recklessness, Keir Starmer, and why he believes the UK should now…
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How our dreams are connecting us during Covid-19
The website idreamofcovid.com has provided a surreal, poignant, and often darkly comic online archive.
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First Thoughts: National confusion, newspaper troubles and goodbye to queues at the checkout
Supermarket apps allow you to scan each item and pay for it instantly.
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Commons Confidential: Boris’s spray-paint speeches
Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.
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How the coronavirus crisis has revived the politics of time
The pandemic has deprived us of something we took for granted: the ability to dispose freely of our private time.…
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Letter of the Week: Alert to bad messaging
A selection of the best letters received from our readers this week. Email [email protected] to have your thoughts voiced…
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Leader: A nation left dazed and confused
The government’s fatal early errors have been compounded by a succession of haphazard interventions.
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Where, and how, to begin if you are one of lockdown’s many first-time gardeners
As I have been telling novice gardeners for years, gardening successfully is largely about assessing priorities.
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Joe Wicks Q&A: “I don’t respect politicians like I respect Greta Thunberg“
The fitness coach talks David Brent, Vincent van Gogh, and guided meditation.
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I talk to my mum, who has been dead for nearly ten years, and I wonder, is this a prayer?
“Mum,” I say/think, “you won’t believe what’s happening. There’s a pandemic and we all have to stay indoors. Like,…
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We’d never meet Harry and Jack in the park. Unless, of course, we all just happen to be there…
I expect one of the other parents to intervene, to stop the game, to tell the kids to keep…
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When I’m not under the spell of vivid dreams my waking life revolves around a duck
With each successive nap, the brain takes longer than usual to distinguish between dream and waking reality.
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The problem with our response to Covid-19 wasn’t that we didn’t have a plan – it was the opposite
In 2011, in the shadow of the much-criticised swine flu response, officials prepared a new pandemic blueprint.
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I’m not a sports fan – but I can’t look away from Michael Jordan in Netflix series The Last Dance
“Hey, are you watching this Chicago Bulls doc? I’m a sports guy now!”
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Lockdown should never be compared to the genuine evils suffered by minorities in history
Comparisons to past injustices and genuine discrimination are ludicrous. We are being told to stay at home for our own…
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The Covid-19 crisis is a chance for progressives to rediscover their lost internationalism
Chastened by its early defeats and the rise of populism, the progressive coalition has turned inwards.
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As lockdown is loosened, those with the least are being asked to bear the greatest risk
The new voters won by the Conservatives at the 2019 general election are among those most exposed by the…
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Suzanne Moore’s Diary: I miss travel and the company of strangers, I don’t want to knit and the clapping isn’t helping
This level of stress is a full-time job, and all I know is that Thursdays are terrible.
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Editor’s Note: Boris Johnson’s (Eng)land of confusion, and how Labour is unifying behind Keir Starmer
The new Labour leader has patience and is collegiate, and though he lacks charisma he does not lack authority.
By
As we pass the pandemic’s peak, the NHS needs to adjust to life in the shadow of Covid-19
The health service must prepare for next winter’s viral season to avoid becoming a major factor in driving a second…
By
Boris Johnson’s Covid-19 threat alert system is a parody of mathematical precision
The government uses “number theatre” to distract from the lack of clear guidance.
By The problem with our response to Covid-19 wasn’t that we didn’t have a plan – it was the opposite
In 2011, in the shadow of the much-criticised swine flu response, officials prepared a new pandemic blueprint.
By I’m not a sports fan – but I can’t look away from Michael Jordan in Netflix series The Last Dance
“Hey, are you watching this Chicago Bulls doc? I’m a sports guy now!”
By First Thoughts: National confusion, newspaper troubles and goodbye to queues at the checkout
Supermarket apps allow you to scan each item and pay for it instantly.
By Lockdown should never be compared to the genuine evils suffered by minorities in history
Comparisons to past injustices and genuine discrimination are ludicrous. We are being told to stay at home for our own…
By The Covid-19 crisis is a chance for progressives to rediscover their lost internationalism
Chastened by its early defeats and the rise of populism, the progressive coalition has turned inwards.
By As lockdown is loosened, those with the least are being asked to bear the greatest risk
The new voters won by the Conservatives at the 2019 general election are among those most exposed by the…
By Adam Mars-Jones’s Box Hill: a slim but disquieting novel
What is Box Hill about? In its 128 pages, it is both strikingly expansive and wilfully resistant to interpretation.
By Mark Lanegan’s Sing Backwards and Weep: a memoir of sex, drugs and grunge in Nineties Seattle
Mark Lanegan – former frontman with Seattle proto-grunge pioneers the Screaming Trees – gives us an extraordinary snapshot of…
By Suzanne Moore’s Diary: I miss travel and the company of strangers, I don’t want to knit and the clapping isn’t helping
This level of stress is a full-time job, and all I know is that Thursdays are terrible.
By How our dreams are connecting us during Covid-19
The website idreamofcovid.com has provided a surreal, poignant, and often darkly comic online archive.
By Élisa Shua Dusapin’s Winter in Sokcho: a masterful short novel
The Prix Robert Walser-winning novel by the French-Korean author Élisa Shua Dusapin centres around an unnamed young graduate in South…
By Grayson’s Art Club is intimate and playful lockdown viewing
Filmed mostly in the artist Grayson Perry’s studio, there’s a homespun informality to the whole affair.
By The Byron family’s astonishing, hilarious, morally abhorrent lust for life
A reading of Emily Brand’s Fall of the House of Byron showed the wrath of shame and destruction brought on little…
By Commons Confidential: Boris’s spray-paint speeches
Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.
By The quiet bravery of abortion drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always
Like two other recent films by female directors – Portrait of a Lady on Fire and The Assistant –…
By Why everyone should watch the BBC’s Covid-19 special Hospital
These extraordinary films should win all the prizes, and everyone in Britain should have to watch them, by law.
By Where, and how, to begin if you are one of lockdown’s many first-time gardeners
As I have been telling novice gardeners for years, gardening successfully is largely about assessing priorities.
By How the coronavirus crisis has revived the politics of time
The pandemic has deprived us of something we took for granted: the ability to dispose freely of our private time.…
By When I’m not under the spell of vivid dreams my waking life revolves around a duck
With each successive nap, the brain takes longer than usual to distinguish between dream and waking reality.
By I talk to my mum, who has been dead for nearly ten years, and I wonder, is this a prayer?
“Mum,” I say/think, “you won’t believe what’s happening. There’s a pandemic and we all have to stay indoors. Like,…
By Letter of the Week: Alert to bad messaging
A selection of the best letters received from our readers this week. Email [email protected] to have your thoughts voiced…
By We’d never meet Harry and Jack in the park. Unless, of course, we all just happen to be there…
I expect one of the other parents to intervene, to stop the game, to tell the kids to keep…
By As we pass the pandemic’s peak, the NHS needs to adjust to life in the shadow of Covid-19
The health service must prepare for next winter’s viral season to avoid becoming a major factor in driving a second…
By Editor’s Note: Boris Johnson’s (Eng)land of confusion, and how Labour is unifying behind Keir Starmer
The new Labour leader has patience and is collegiate, and though he lacks charisma he does not lack authority.
By Joe Wicks Q&A: “I don’t respect politicians like I respect Greta Thunberg“
The fitness coach talks David Brent, Vincent van Gogh, and guided meditation.
By Leader: A nation left dazed and confused
The government’s fatal early errors have been compounded by a succession of haphazard interventions.
By Boris Johnson’s Covid-19 threat alert system is a parody of mathematical precision
The government uses “number theatre” to distract from the lack of clear guidance.
By How the myth of “Britain alone” overshadows VE Day
The UK has long downplayed the awkward truth that its victory in the Second World War largely depended on the…
By