Six of the Best 651

"The idea that America would follow its first black president with Donald Trump accorded with its history. I was shocked at my own shock. I had wanted Obama to be right." Ta-Nehisi Coates on the history of the first African American White House - and of what came next,

Chris Dillow explains why the government is cutting the number of overseas students: it's target fetishism.

"Something is deeply wrong with this erstwhile national staple: it has become a travesty of trade, a grim parody of twenty-first century consumerism." David Butterfield explains how W.H. Smith became a national embarrassment.

"The spread of bad archaeology online is not fuelled by conspiracy theorists or Macedonian teenagers out to make a buck. It is fuelled by fans." Adrián Maldonado on the fate of archaeology in the post-truth era.

E.R. Braithwaite, the author of To Sir, With Love. has died in the United States at the age of 104. Sewell Chan wrote his New York Times obituary.

Matt Gilbert takes us to Johnny Ball Lane, a half-hidden route to Bristol's past.