From the NS archive: On keeping cool
16 July 1921: Hot weather is weather in which human beings hate each other and welcome any reason for a…
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Vaughan Williams’ vision of Englishness is not the one we need
The composer dominates the BBC Proms this year, the 150th anniversary of his birth. But if this is our national…
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This England: Urban cowboy
This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain –…
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Back in Time for Birmingham tells the story of immigration in postwar Britain
For all its banalities, the BBC’s warm-hearted recreation of the lives of previous generations of British Asians is welcome, even…
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The myth of England’s rural idyll
The countryside is not a peaceful refuge from urban life, writes Vron Ware in Return of a Native, but a…
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This England: Losing Faith
This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain –…
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Identity in crisis, understanding England, and the joy of a cherry tree in spring
The question of what England is, and what part it can play in the events unfolding, remains as unresolved as…
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As a unified sense of British nationhood fades, we must ask: what is England?
As the UK fragments, we are experiencing a reawakening of English national consciousness.
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How the end of the eviction ban has pushed thousands into homelessness
Between July and September 2021, 36,510 households became homeless following the end of the eviction ban in May.
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How the number of NHS beds in England has halved
The total number of hospital beds has fallen from 300,000 to 141,000 over the last 30 years.
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