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Capital-ism

Growing up in Huddersfield 25 years ago, we heard Bradford

Letters & opinions

Rafael Behr’s article (“How Twitter poisoned politics

America’s compromised referee

With Kavanaugh on the bench, the Supreme Court will struggle to retain its authority

Punishing talk

Dull, difficult and unremitting, the conversation about Brexit will grind on forever

Counts for nothing

Measuring happiness is impossible

Fear and faith

The best estimate is that around 7 per cent of the

Cross to bear

Even today, Britain’s Catholics can run into hostility—but it no longer comes from Anglicans

Cap in hand

Now it’s the IMF’s turn to pass the begging bowl

Social saving

“No man is an island entire of itself,” wrote John

The future of DC pensions

This might be one of the most unusual sentences you will read this year: it is a really exciting time in pensions!

The sighs of freedom

A generation after breaking with the Soviets, the mood in Latvia is far from upbeat

Tap to addict

How smartphones got the world hooked

Is “political correctness” a force for good?

YES “Political correctness” (PC) arouses much sound

Saving Britain from London

Most of the country is hurting, but it won’t be able to escape the shadow of the mighty metropolis without an overhaul of capitalism

Earnings in the capital and beyond

Like most capital cities, pay was always somewhat higher

Wealth in London and Britain

London has often been a byword for wealth in provincial

An island adrift

The inside story of the Foreign Office’s losing battle to find post-Brexit Britain a new place in the world

The first lady

THE INCREDIBLE TRUE STORY OF THE FIRST WOMAN TO VOTE IN BRITAIN—50 YEARS BEFORE THE SUFFRAGETTES WON THEIR BATTLE

The red states

The economics of the crash and the politics of Trump are creating a new force in the US— American socialism

A SPARK IN PAKISTAN

Can this 23-year-old activist, armed only with a microphone and social media accounts, change a dangerous country?

The human defence

Computers can now easily beat grandmasters. But as the World Chess Championship approaches, fans still want to see flawed humans battling it out on the board

Who do we think we are?

Genes have a profound effect on human traits from intelligence to mental health. Which doesn’t mean DNA defines destiny, argues Philip Ball

The pity of war

The life of one paratrooper shows how we learned to see soldiers as ordinary people suffering in the service of their country, finds Lara Feigel

Arguing for India

Gandhi’s ideas might seem eccentric but they helped to liberate a nation, and have much to teach us today, says Yasmin Khan

The middling sort

An ambitious novel of modern England is let down by its Brexit blindspot, says Ian Sansom

Books in brief

A Short History of Europe: From Pericles to Putin by

Recommends

The British Museum’s magnificent Assyrian reliefs celebrate

Thicker than blood

Charleston Farmhouse, the Bloomsbury group’s bucolic

Dying of the light

After our long, sultry summer it’s been hard not to

Thinker, player, soldier, sailor

In one of CS Forester’s Hornblower novels, I can’t

A second referedum

Athenian democracy is often sentimentalised as the

Up in smoke

Last night I dreamt I smoked a cigarette again. I inhaled

Policy report: The future of finance

How will a post-Brexit City fit into the global economy?

Events

The Prospect Book Club meets every third Monday of the month at 6.30pm at 2 Queen Anne’s Gate, London, SW1H 9AA. To book tickets please visit prospectmagazine.co.uk/events

Brief Encounter

The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading by Edmund White