Industry
Letters: What we lose when we lose our factories
Chains of command Sir: Matthew Lynn is correct to emphasise the economic dangers of deindustrialisation (‘Not made in Britain’, 25…
Unmade in Britain: we’re becoming a zero-industrial society
The French sociologist Alain Touraine coined the term ‘post-industrial society’ in 1969. By the 1980s it had become shorthand for…
A hit – but please don’t pretend it’s feminist: Disney+’s Rivals reviewed
For most of my adult life, clever, well-read, feminist women have told me how much they love Jilly Cooper. It…
After the Olympics, France has to face its grim reality
The French television personality Laurent Baffie, interviewed by Le Figaro, came up with a nice phrase for the success beyond…
The important business of idle loafing
Alain Corbin describes how rest, once seen as a prelude to eternal life, began to assume a therapeutic quality in the 19th century, as a guard against burnout and a cure for TB
Factory setting
When Maurice Broomfield left school at the age of 15, he took a job at the Rolls-Royce factory, bending copper…
How plastic saved the elephant and tortoise
Plastics — even venerable, historically eloquent plastics — hardly draw the eye. As this show’s insightful accompanying publication (a snip…
Made in Port Talbot
Port Talbot, on the coast of South Wales, is literally overlooked. Most experience the town while flying over it on…
Change and decay
Writing of his grandmother’s cremation, Kushanava Choudhury reflects in The Epic City that, while his expatriate Indian cousins are separated…
Vape alarm
The e-cigarette means that tobacco is going the way of the top hat. So what is the medical establishment’s problem with it?
Fragile China
For all its bombast and success, the Chinese Communist party faces a host of looming problems – and a big decision

















