Why the BBC finds the truth about their wartime role embarrassing

David Boyle writes… If the period portrayed in the film Darkest Hour is the founding myth of the modern British state, it also provides a kind of mythic justification for the BBC – for pretty much everything. And we can listen to the BBC’s Ed Stourton weaving it again on Radio 4, in last week’s Book of the […]

How I came to write Tearagh’t…

Craig Newnes writes… Dunquin is unremarkable as you approach – apart from the extraordinary views over the Atlantic. On blustery days you can see four or five storm systems and the curve of the earth. It lies on the Dingle peninsula not far from Coumenole beach where Ryan’s Daughter was filmed. The pub – of […]

In praise of great mavericks

David Boyle writes… I met the folk singer Pete Seeger just before he died. He was jamming outside in the July sunshine, with some young violinists, playing Ashokan Farewell. He was at a conference near the Hudson River about local currencies where I had just been speaking. It was a great honour to meet him, […]

Ireland, Irish politics and the homosexuality laws

David Boyle writes… The main roadblock to a negotiated Brexit still looks as though it is likely to be the Irish border. And that reminds me about other incident of Anglo-Irish muddle which led to extreme events on the mainland – in this case, the so-called Dublin Scandal of 1884, which led directly to the […]

Why would scientists, economists and ecologists replace facts with folk tales?

Andrew Simms, the editor of Knock Twice, writes:  ‘The last person on earth sat alone in a room, and there was a knock at the door…’ If you want to know what happened next, so do I. But what about this: ‘the concentration of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere, recently hit 404.19 parts per […]

Ten reasons for writing Fourth to First (and for reading it too!)

Steffan Aquarone writes: I confess to knowing very little about anything – in particular political campaigning.  But one thing I can talk about at length is how we did it in a small rural patch of North Norfolk (six shops, four pubs, two petrol stations and zero towns), going from fourth position last time to […]

A century since the fairy photographs

When I wrote my first novel, Leaves the World to Darkness, I had been determined to write a novel for grown-ups about fairies. A serious subject, after all. The consternation and confusion the whole idea seemed to cause was irritating and finally rather amusing. One fiction editor, interested in publishing the book, asked me if […]

Why have leading economists and environmentalists turned to folk tales?

Andrew Simms writes: It’s Hallowe’en today. Why is a group of leading scientists, economists, environmentalists and policy experts turning to modern folk tales to get their message across? The answer is that our new book Knock Twice is part of an ongoing project of the New Weather Institute. Decades of campaigning for a better world still finds us all […]

You’ll believe you were there, sailing on the Armada…

Thysse message is o’er long. It doth comprise two main parts, a briefe note from one of mie oarsmenne on the findinge of the Spaniartt’s papers and the translat’d papers themselffes. These are in onlie part sensible order as the oarsman had yet to right them and the manne that translat’d the Spanish writinge simplye […]

The great debate about children’s online time starts now!

David Boyle writes (crossposted from Radix): You can see how this kind of manufactured argument happens, especially in the period they used to call the silly season. The Children’s Commissioner takes over the lead story of the Observer, urging parents to limit their children’s online bingeing. Then the Telegraph hits on the idea of asking a former head of GCHQ […]