The Joy of Six 1303

"The safety net once provided by the social security system and council services has been outsourced to a patchwork of grassroots groups, to the point where meeting basic human needs – being fed, clothed and housed – relies on fundraising in December as well as taxation in April." Frances Ryan welcomes us to Britain’s Victorian Christmas, where volunteers in Santa hats fulfil the basic functions of the state.

Keith Edwards argues that the US Democrats need to give youth its head: "Americans are some of the youngest people in the rich world. Yet our elected leaders are easily the world’s oldest."

Patrick Barkham reports that water voles continue to decline in their distribution across Britain, but there are signs of recovery in 11 key areas.

"A few years ago, on social media, I posted the architectural critic Jonathan Meades' description of Birmingham as 'an almost excessively sylvan place' with 'lavishly green' suburbs. It was laughed at in some corners, so at odds was it with many outsiders’ image of the city as a concrete jungle." Jon Neale says that Birmingham's 19th-century 'guinea gardens' gave the city a split personality that it retains to this day.

"I used to know Mary Norton. I played with her daughter. One day I asked her 'What’s this story you have written about little people who live under the floorboards?' and Mary replied 'It's not about little people who live under the floorboards, it’s about Czechoslovakia.'" Chris Wallis asks if The Borrowers is a children’s fantasy classic or a political allegory.

Amanda Craig celebrates the genius of Joan Aiken: "Darkness, injustice and cruelty underlie Aiken’s stories; packed with vivid characters, each can be read as a critique of capitalism, industrialisation and the class system. Her aristocrats are often villains of the deepest dye, never more so than in The Whispering Mountain ... with its cold, murderous, gold-obsessed Marquess of Malyn, searching for a lost tribe of goldsmiths living inside a Welsh volcano."