Six of the Best 974

"The Government has no interest in the well-being of students. Throughout this crisis they've just treated us as the personal piggy banks of private landlords." Aleisha Stansfield says students are being exploited during the Covid-19 crisis.

Who killed soft Brexit? Jill Rutter and Anand Menon suggest a solution along the lines of Murder on the Orient Express.

Kathrin Glösel on a Finnish scheme under which homeless people receive a small apartment and counselling without any preconditions. Four out of five make their way back into a stable life and it all costs less than accepting homelessness.

"There used to be parties in the apartments on the top floors of New York City’s branch libraries. On other nights, when the libraries were closed, the kids who lived there might sit reading alone among the books or roll around on the wooden library carts—if they weren’t dusting the shelves or shovelling coal. Their hopscotch courts were on the roof. A cat might sneak down the stairs to investigate the library patrons." Sarah Laskow tells the story of the flats in New York's Carnegie libraries.

How did  a working-class Scottish actor became a suave English icon? Geoffrey Macnab looks at Sean Connery’s early career in film and television.

Bob Fischer has been reading children's books from the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties.