Six of the Best 944

"The substantive way to improve lives of working class people is through making their work better-paid and more secure, and to reduce the cost of life’s essentials, such as housing. There is at last some sign that both Conservative and Labour politicians are starting to recognise it (I wish I could say the same for my own Liberal Democrats, who have become something of a middle-class ghetto – though not irretrievably)." Matthew Green says we need to talk about class.

Tom Brake goes back to Russia: "Returning to Moscow last year, over forty years later, jeans were available in all sizes and price ranges, chewing gum could be purchased in every flavour imaginable and the supermarkets were bulging with produce flown in from around the world. What had not altered one iota was the lack of democracy and the Kremlin’s confrontational approach to the West generally, and the UK in particular."

The abuses in Leicester's fast fashion factories were known for years before Covid-19 highlighted them. So why, asks Sam Bright, was nothing done?

If you read the news regularly, you may have noticed that a lot of women die in ‘isolated incidents’. Debbie Cameron argues that they are not isolated at all.

Andy Mitchell uncovers the history of a black athlete in Scotland in the 1870s.

"Paintings in sound, his Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes are infused not only with the Suffolk seascape but also with the sounds of birds, the redshanks and the reed warblers that Britten would have heard on the daily 'composing walks' he took after lunch to reflect on his morning’s work." Marci Meth on Benjamin Britten's debt to the natural world.