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Chaminda Jayanetti on successive governments' failure to grasp the nettle of social care: "As far back as 1997, Tony Blair’s New Labour government launched a royal commission into adult care, only to then reject its calls for tax-funded free personal care and more support with residential care costs."

"Fascism is a strange ideology with a universe of conflicting and bizarre beliefs and rituals. Among the strongest is the ritualization of death that both mirrors and serves the main political drive of fascism: the creation of in groups and out groups. This is done through legal capture, the erosion and destruction of rights and protections, political framing of reality, fearmongering and weaponized activation, and the creation of religious cults of power, personality, and collective delusion." Jared Yates Sexton explains the fascist politics behind the public execution of Nidal Hasan.

Nick Baird asks where the Liberal Democrats' ambition has gone: "back in 2024, we were a Party on the up with a record number of MPs. The Tories were banished and in disarray. We talked, in all seriousness, about how we would be the Official Opposition after the next General Election. We looked admiringly at the Canadian Liberals who went from third place with a rump of MPs to an overall majority and thought 'that could be us'."

"I was confronted with a dilemma towards the end of writing my book because I had this line in the conclusion which I’d written a long time ago and thought was a really elegant, pithy sentence that summed up the argument of the book. But, as I was reading one of the final edits, I looked at it again and, having spent the last year immersed in AI slop on places like LinkedIn, I thought to myself, oh God, that sounds like something ChatGPT or Claude would write." Sarah O'Connor talks about her book We Are Not Machines: The Fight for the Future of Work.

"Dadd seems to have been captivated by extreme contrasts of large and small, beautiful and grotesque – which are, of course, a feature of fairy folklore but had also been exemplified in earlier depictions of Shakespeare’s fairies (such as Joshua Reynolds’ famous Puck of 1789, and the fairy paintings of Henry Fuseli). Dadd, however, took the grotesqueness of fairies to a new level." Francis Young reviews the Royal Academy's Richard Dadd exhibition, which runs until 25 October.

Anne Bilson chooses 15 of the best movie car chases.

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"The judge told him he did not qualify for asylum and asked the 13-year-old to make a choice: a promise of a $3,000 stipend from the Department of Homeland Security to return to Honduras without his mother and family, or a deportation order. 'I don't know,' Angel said before beginning to cry. 'I have no one. I have nothing.' Julia Conley reports on monstrous US deportation hearings where children are given no legal representation.

Steven Beschloss thinks the Republican mid-term candidates now deserting Donald Trump have left it too late.

"Feltham was described as the most violent YOI at the time of inspection, with more than 400 assaults recorded in the previous year, including 126 involving weapons. Wetherby recorded nearly 500 assaults, although inspectors noted it held more children than Feltham or Werrington, which recorded 324 assaults." Joanne Parkes reads an HM Inspectorate of Prisons' report Children in Custody 2025/6. which concludes that standards across the youth estate remain woeful, despite some improvements at individual establishments.

"From a safe distance, the news that one of English football’s most successful clubs has been found guilty of more than 100 charges of financial irregularity, including “sham” payments totalling around £900m, may feel like so much so-what, a thicket of sporting arcana that even devoted fans occasionally struggle to parse. But, of course, the City case goes deeper than one club, one league, even one sport. Fundamentally, it is a parable of power." Jonathan Liew says the Manchester City case shows us how the global mega-rich now expect to operate with impunity.

Francis Young reviews a new biography of M.R. James: "It has been a long time coming, and eagerly awaited by many, and in this year of the 90th anniversary of James’s death, it does justice to the man and does not disappoint."

Farran Smith Nehme watches Quartet, Trio and Encore – three anthology films adapted from short stories by W. Somerset Maugham.

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Dawn Butler lays bare the abuse that a Black female MP faces: "Followers of my social media know how bad it can be. I have a regular “block of the month” feature to raise awareness of the disgusting racist abuse sent to me every day – the N-word, “monkey” and “ape” are common insults. The deluge of abuse has a detrimental impact on my mental health, and on those around me."

"There is no reindustrialisation beyond heavily Government-directed industries such as defence and even pharmaceuticals without reversing Brexit. That will not be sufficient, but it is absolutely necessary. And yet, there is literally no mention of Brexit in the core arguments of Reindustrialising Britain." Anthony Painter reads a new collection of essays from Policy Exchange.

Milli Hill on David Walliams and his publisher: "It wasn’t until CEO Charlie Redmayne left Harper Collins in October 2025 and was replaced by a woman, Kate Elton, that decisive action was taken."

"Keynes was a liberal for our age: morally serious, hopeful for a better future, and yet reconciled to the expertly-executed compromises that must be struck to preserve a liberal order that is far more fragile than some would like to believe." Guillaume A.W. Attia says you should read John Maynard Keynes.

"It’s quite lonely and I hate this house because it’s so cold. I just wish I could speed up the process but I can’t. Some days I’m right on to it, and then other days I just can’t, because it’s very emotional – and I’m not really an emotional person." Stephanie Woods interviews four women about the ordeal of clearing a dead parent's house.

Francis Young looks at the importance of folklore to Penelope Lively’s The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy.

Listen to Dr Francis Young on the history of fairies

Where did fairies come from? They are so ubiquitous in our culture that there seems to never be a time when we were without them. 

But what are fairies exactly? Were they always associated with magic? Are they small? Are they winged? When did the first fairies appear? Who named them the fairies or the fey?

Francis Young discusses these questions here and in his book Fairies: A History.