The Joy of Six 1126

"Johnson has already inflicted considerable damage on Britain's constitutional practices. A second period of office for this flawed and flamboyant politician would be even more disastrous for British politics." David Sanders studies the consequences of Boris Johnson's assault on our political system.

Amy Silverstein writes a moving and personal essay on the shortcomings of transplant surgery: "These transplant drugs (which must be taken once or twice daily for life, since rejection is an ongoing risk and the immune system will always regard a donor organ as a foreign invader) cause secondary diseases and dangerous conditions, including diabetes, uncontrollable high blood pressure, kidney damage and failure, serious infections and cancers."

Our traditions around the dressing of boys and girls are more recent than we realise, argues Matthew Wills: "Exploring the biographies of men as disparate as Tsar Nicholas II (b. 1868), Franklin Delano Roosevelt (b. 1882), and Ernest Hemingway (b. 1899), you’re apt to come across pictures of them as young boys looking indistinguishable from young girls. Their hair is long and they’re wearing dresses."

Fergus Butler-Gallie discusses some members of the clergy featured in recent films and television shows.

"'People in the past were not just like us,' she wrote. 'To pretend so is an evasion and a betrayal, turning our back on them so as to be easy among familiar things.'" Miranda Carter on the historical novels of Mary Renault.

Ingrina Shieh takes a walk from Henley-in-Arden to Stratford-upon-Avon: "If the Slow Ways community has taught me anything, it’s that you never assume anything about a route. Routes are mere lines on a map until people bring them to life by walking and wheeling them, feeling the landscapes through their senses, and interpreting their own experiences of walking to share with others."