The Joy of Six 1062

Lewis Baston looks at the significance of last week's local by-elections in Camden and Hackney: "They show how strong some inner urban communities, inhabited by much-maligned educated professionals and global citizens, can be. There is a fiercely protective local pride in these neighbourhoods."

"In truth, what boarding schools do culturally is 'get rid of the maternal. They were intended to stop all that softness, to turn boys into men and what that means is that masculinity became a hard, disconnected, mean and emotionally vapid way of being in the world.'" Suzanne Zeedyk talks to Neil Mackay about what being sent to boarding school at an early age does to the men who grow up to be our leaders.

Richard Kemp sends a dispatch from the battle to give Liverpool a less centralised system of local government.

What do we know and what should we do about fake news? Matt Bluemink reviews a book by Nick Anstead.

"When Avtar Singh Jouhl arrived in the UK from India in the late 1950s he was taken to the Wagon and Horses in Smethwick. The pub had two smoking rooms, two public bars, and an assembly room. He opened the door to one of the smoking rooms saw that there were only white drinkers there and was told by his friend: the 'Gaffer doesn’t let us drink in that room.'" David Jesudason on the colour bar that once operated in British pubs.

Richard Bratby speak up for the BBC Proms in the face of the annual attacks.