The Joy of Six 1457

"What the US needs to understand is that hybrid warfare isn’t simply a weapon used between and against states. It’s a strategy being deployed by your very own government. This is both kinetic warfare – bombs and missiles – and information warfare – false constructs, false narratives, false justifications." America is not our enemy, but it's a danger to itself and the world, says Carole Cadwalladr.

Rowan Williams reminds us that migrants are at the heart of our culture: "Many of the most characteristic forms of western medieval architecture ... owe their development to the to-ing and fro-ing of engineers and architects between western Europe and the Middle East during the Crusades. And we find it easy to forget that most of the stylistic repertoire of modern western popular music would be unthinkable without the Black American tradition that itself adapted and reshaped African idioms in the new and terrible world of enslavement."

"Decades of research have demonstrated that our political beliefs and behaviour are thoroughly motivated and mediated by our social identities." David Roberts argues that the cure for misinformation is not just more information or smarter news consumers.

"Norwich, contrary to the county town image that some may have of it (though that too was true), was a densely-settled, industrial city which came under Labour control in 1933. The Council built over 7500 houses in the 1920s and 30s (twice the number of new private homes built in the same period) and rehoused some 30,000 people – almost a quarter of the population. Mile Cross was the finest of its new estates." Municipal Dreams on the history of a Norwich housing estate.

Francis Young reviews Chasing the Dark by Ben Machell: "[Tony Cornell] was wary of supernatural explanations but was open to a complex view of human psychology in which people who simulated paranormal phenomena were not always aware they were doing so, or did not necessarily see a distinction between their own agency and that of the supernatural power they believed in."

Petra Tabarelli explains the appeal of Midsomer Murders: "The characters are not merely bizarre, eccentric or exaggerated; they are condensed allegories, just as the Midsomer backdrop is itself an allegory for the idealised English landscape."