Six of the Best 827

"Hammond presented a narrative that explained who the Tories were, what they had done and where they were going that was fathomable and even a little compelling to the objective viewer." Nick Tyrone finds Philip Hammond a more impressive politician than his leader.

Silkie Carlo explains why we should be worried about the mass surveillance of shoppers.

"As the years went by the idea of a confident working class taking its destiny into its own hands - either collectively or through some individual expression of rebellion such as Arthur’s - gradually went out of fashion." James Bloodworth debates the meaning of Alan Sillitoe's novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, 60 years after its publication

"To this day the sacrifice of thousands of watermen who worked on Britain’s canals before serving on the front line has yet to be commemorated." Phil Hoad has news of plans to put that right.

Parul Sehgal explains the persistence of the ghost story in American literature: "In the modern ghost story, especially the American kind, something different occurs. Ghosts protest norms - slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration - the norms that killed them."

Phil Hoad on the career of Muriel Box - Britain’s most prolific female director you've never heard of.