The Joy of Six 1375

"As I stood outside the barricaded burial site and watched through a peephole, I felt a sense of joy. The grounds are now full of cabins, small diggers and fencing. There are workers in hard hats, forensic archaeologists and a multitude of others who will keep us up to date on what they find. Hopefully it will be the full number - 796 little bodies waiting for a dignified burial." Catherine Corless refused to give up until she learnt what became of the children who died at the mother and baby home in Tuam, County Galway.

Ben Ansell dissects the increasing extremism in British commentary about race: "For a large number of writers - from Matt Goodwin to David Goodhart, Lord Frost to the MP Neil O’Brien - the distinctions among British citizens are apparently important and worthy of what can at best be described as suspicion and at worst denigration."

Olivia Bridgen asks if trail hunting is an important tradition or just a cover for illegal hunting.

"Racism, especially Islamophobia, is impossible to avoid in Farage-adjacent TikTok. Some of it is imbued with nationalist melancholia, the screen dotted with Union Jacks, clips of wartime heroics interspersed with laments for what the country has become. Some of it is didactic, explaining to the viewer where Islam originated, and the dangers it supposedly presents." William Davies ventures into Faragist TikTok.

Josh Jones looks at research that confirms what philosophers and writers have always known: walking fosters creativity.

"The six town centres are now littered with empty and derelict historic buildings, many of which are in the hands of absentee owners. Meanwhile, those that are put to use are often terribly managed by what can only be described as rogue landlords." Dave Proudlove weighs the prospects for postindustrial Stoke-on-Trent.