The Joy of Six 1461

"The government continues to frame the cost-of-living crisis as a problem that can be solved largely through domestic policy choices. Announcements focus on price caps, fare freezes and measures like free school meals and breakfast clubs to ease pressure on family budgets. But these treat the symptoms, not causes." We need to recognise that geopolitics is driving the cost-of-living crisis, argues Anna McShane.

Harriet Walter on the effect of the government's misbegotten treatment of Palestine Action: "By accusing them of being part of a terrorist organisation rather than a protest movement, the government ensures that these people who broke machinery in factories or sprayed paint on aeroplanes or helped to plan these actions can be seen not as ordinary people who are innocent until found guilty of ordinary crimes such as criminal damage or violent disorder, but as outside forces that are deeply threatening to social order and our ways of life."

Chaminda Jayanetti says falling school rolls are not just a problem for London.

"His fabulously wry first wife, Eileen, described his landmark 1941 essay ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ as ‘a little book explaining how to be a Socialist, though Tory’. Even in his most revolutionary moods, Orwell was very specific about what should stay and what should go. Small wonder that he found fault with every version of socialism except his own." Dorian Lynskey reviews two recent books on George Orwell.

"She became a byword for the brutal and controlling ways of the ‘Hollywood factory’ and its tendency to swallow up child stars. You’ve probably heard that MGM encouraged Garland’s use of drugs – ‘pep pills’ to get her to work and suppress her appetite, downers to help her sleep – only to criticise her for being unreliable when she became an addict who sometimes couldn’t show up for work. Eventually, the studio dropped her. She wasn’t yet thirty." Bee Wilson on Judy Garland.

Peter Adams has good news. The Devon Heritage Orchard at RHS Garden Rosemoor is preserving traditional apple varieties, some of which were on the point of disappearing.