Editorial
300 not out
TOM CLARK
You need a break. Sadly, going abroad has become almightily complicated and everything closer to home is booked up. But a summer of sport on the TV can help— and so can Prospect with this summer double edition, which also happens to be our 300th issue.
Journalism always involves a delicate balance between purpose in the world and simple reading pleasure. After 18 extraordinary months of fear and curfews, to say nothing of the tumultuous few political years that came before, this time we have been especially mindful of the need to fulfil the pleasure quotient.
I found myself laughing out loud at James Hawes’s subversive rewrite of English history on p30. It’s less Our Island Story than Someone Else’s Island Story, a tale of a land that is repeatedly sliced, diced and taken over by foreigners as well as perennially divided within. It’s the perfect antidote to the flag-mania Chris Mullin explored last month, and gives real insight into how this most supposedly secure of nations has come to be gripped by an identity crisis.