GUEST POST Let next week's online summer school rekindle your Radical Liberal fire

William Lane invites you to an exciting online event being organised by the John Stuart Mill Institute and the Social Liberal Forum.

As Liberals, it is easy to feel despondent in the current political moment. The last few decades have told a tale of retreat from Liberal values globally, with rising authoritarianism across the world and a growing cynicism gnawing at the heart of established liberal democracies.

Our horizons are shrinking as the world grows ever smaller and more insular, riven with fear and mistrust, and it feels like many of our cherished values are facingpushback across the globe. The far right rises on the back of political hopelessness, states and businesses monitor us ever more closely, and people feel more and more disconnected from each other and their communities.

Yeats’s famous lines will resonate with many of us:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

But we must not give in to despair. Our political tendency, the tendency that has ushered in an age of unparalleled prosperity across the globe, is capable of astonishing regrowth and renewal.

Liberalism did not become the dominant global ideology overnight, it had to fight hard and fast against entrenched political and social interests, while also contending with the ideological threats of absolute monarchy, fascism and state communism. 

In our age of rising political tension, economic stagnation and growing authoritarian threat, we need to rediscover the social and political dynamism that made Liberal thought and politics so incisive in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The John Stuart Mill Institute and Social Liberal Forum are leading that charge, by launching an online Radical Liberal Summer School that is taking place from the 11-13 August. Through lectures, Q&As and panel discussions we hope to rekindle some of that old Liberal fire, and contribute to an as yet small but growing spirit of Liberal revivalism.

Join us next week for fascinating discussions on individual freedom, economic empowerment, foreign policy and workplace democracy. We will be hosting prominent politicians, philosophers and academics including Bobby Dean MP, Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle, Cllr Carl Cashman and Frances Foley.

For full details and to book your place, go the the event's webpage. We look forward to seeing you next week.

William Lane is senior researcher at the John Stuart Mill Institute.

Listen to David Howarth speak on liberal equality

David Howarth, the Liberal Democrats' most impressive thinker and the former MP for Cambridge, gave this year's Annual Beveridge Lecture for the Social Liberal Forum under the title "Liberal equality".

The event was chaired by Sarah Green, the new Lib Dem MP for Chesham and Amersham, and held at the National Liberal Club and online on 29 July.

You can watch David Howarth's lecture on the Social Liberal Forum website.

Social Liberal Forum report on rebuilding the Lib Dems

Ian Kearns and Jon Alexander from the Social Liberal Forum have published 'Winning for Britain: Rebuilding the Lib Dems to change the course of our country'.

You can download the report from the SLF website.

If you are short of time then its most important conclusion is:

The path to a real breakthrough, allowing the party to play a significant role in removing the Conservatives from office while giving it a real say in what happens afterwards, is going to require several things: a rigorous understanding of the diverse voter coalition that needs to be built; a much deeper engagement with those voters, including facing into issues that may be outside the “comfort zone”; and the articulation of a distinctively liberal and progressive narrative about the future direction of this country that can span that coalition, inspire hope, and bring people together.

Kearns and Alexander have also written an article about their report for Liberal Democrat Voice.

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The Social Liberal Forum has audio and video recordings of this evening's Beveridge Lecture by the Labour MP Clive Lewis.

Andrew Defty says the delayed publication of the Russia Report shows why reform is needed to preserve the independence of parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee

"What I have described here represents a crisis of ideology—an abstract, electronic-media-driven phenomenon by which conservatives prioritised partisanship and wishful thinking over saving lives. But the results played out all over real-world bricks-and-mortar America." Nidra Poller asks why so many right-wing Americans have embraced Covid-19 pseudoscience.

Giles Fraser says that beautiful choral music is not elitist: "The unspoken suggestion is that a traditional Anglican choir singing Stanford in C at Choral Evensong is just a bit too elitist for a working class city like Sheffield. And that is why Evensong has become so poorly attended."

The French have spent 20 years building a new medieval castle, reports The Mind Circle.

Simon Hughes pays tribute to Stuart Broad: "The first time he really stood out was in the final test of the 2009 Ashes (his 22nd) when, in an attack containing Steve Harmsion, Andrew Flintoff and Anderson, he routed Australia for 160 at the Oval with 5 for 37 using a clever combination of swingers and cutters to wriggle past Australian defences on a flat pitch."

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In 2016 Paul Pettinger wrote a Social Liberal Forum paper arguing that centrism doesn't work as a strategy for minor parties.

"The government failed to activate the full network of laboratories at its disposal - within the NHS, as well as in universities and independent research facilities. When the government did finally roll out wider testing, months later, it again bypassed existing labs and set up three, new mega-facilities whose operations - managed by Deloitte under the banner of 'lighthouse laboratories' - have been based on contracting arrangements about which there’s little public disclosure." Rachel Shabi says the British government's response to Covid-19 has been pro-privatisation shock therapy.

Sarah Simons says meritocracy is a myth but education can still open doors.

"Numerous studies have shown the mental and physical benefits of spending time in nature, but for some people, it took a pandemic and stay-at-home orders for that desire to spend more time outdoors to feel like a necessity." Children’s behaviour may suffer from lack of access to outdoor space, argues Meg St-Esprit McKivigan.

Jem Poster examines Richard Jefferies' influence on the poet Edward Thomas.

The lost hills and walkways of Nottingham city centre are explored by David Lowe.

The Wolves in the Forest: Tackling Inequality in the 21st Century

The current issue of Liberator carries my review of the Social Liberal Forum's new publication The Wolves in the Forest: Tackling Inequality in the 21st Century, which is edited by Paul Hindley and Gordon Lishman.

I won't post the whole review here, just enough of it to explain the splendid title:

David Howarth contributes the introduction here too. He begins by pointing out that it is 110 years since Lloyd George delivered his ’People’s Budget’: 

‘He described a time when “poverty and the wretchedness and human degradation that allows follows in its camp, will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests”. The wolves of poverty, wretchedness, human degradation and inequality are still with us. Far from being remote to modern Britain their infestation of modern Britain is becoming more widespread.’

And my conclusion:

Keynes died 73 years ago and L.T. Hobhouse and T.H. Green make their obligatory appearances too. Liberal Democrats are either going to have more recent thinkers to be inspired by or do the intellectual heavy lifting themselves.  The Wolves in the Forest is a welcome sign that we may be prepared to do just that.

You can buy The Wolves in the Forest from the Social Liberal Forum website.

The new issue of Liberator is out - and why you should subscribe

The new Liberator has arrived, which is pretty impressive seeing as I was still writing for it this time last week.

Soon I will inflict Lord Bonkers' latest writings on you, and maybe my review of the new Social Liberal Forum publication The Wolves in the Forest.

But this evening let's do what every reader does and turn first to Radical Bulletin, the feature that tells you what is really going on in the Liberal Democrats.

There you will find the answer to these questions:

• Which Lib Dem leadership contended sacked their campaign chief halfway through the recent contest?
• Which seat says it has been told by party HQ to stand down its candidate in favour of Plaid Cymru?
• Which seat where we polled 3.3 per cent last time round is being treated as a target?

Once again the moral is clear: subscribe to Liberator.

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Seth Thevoz reviews a new publication from the Social Liberal Forum: Am I a Liberal?

"A former British ambassador to an EU country, and ardent Remainer, cites a piece featuring a testing interview with a Remainer about the security risks that could follow from no longer accepting ECJ jurisdiction. A Conservative spokesman was quoted in a subsequent news report saying that was twaddle - but there was no scrutiny about why it would be twaddle." Mark Damazer on the BBC's travails over Brexit.

The tragedy of the commons? It's nonsense, says Cory Doctorow: "But this isn't what actually happened to the Commons: they were stable and well-managed until other factors (e.g. rich people trying to acquire even more land) destabilized them."

Michael Newton looks at the flowering of folk horror in Brexit Britain.

"Why isn’t Frank Zappa better-known, and better-liked, than he is? Why don’t more people 'get' him?" asks Mike Scott.

English cricket must not abandon its fans in pursuit of a new audience, argues Sam Morshead with The Hundred in mind.

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Caron Lindsay was at the Social Liberal Forum conference yesterday, where big ideas abounded.

"It has been de rigueur in certain middle class circles to complain about the baleful effect of political parties in government, but nobody appears to be complaining now they have all but disappeared in the chaos hat now seems to be overtaking what used to be known as the UK government." David Boyle is as penetrating as ever.

"Leave-supporting areas can be easily distinguished from those supporting Remain. Broadly speaking, they are more deprived, have lower levels of income, fewer high status-jobs, a weaker economic structure, and an ageing demographic with lower levels of educational attainment." Thiemo Fetzer argues that the vote for Brexit can be explained by the Coalition government's austerity policies.

Ferdinand Mount reviews a new life of Charles de Gaulle.

Bernard Weinraub examines the strange failure of the Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner film A Perfect World.

Whenever a glimmer of chess talent is spotted in the United States, people often ask: “Is this the next Bobby Fischer?” Daaim Shabazz on Fabiano Caruana, the challenger for the world chess championship.

GUEST POST Social Liberal Forum conference promotes big ideas

Helen Flynn, chair of the Social Liberal Forum, looks forward to its annual conference in London on 28 July.

The Social Liberal Forum’s (SLF's) eighth annual conference is a meeting place for all liberals to talk about big ideas, following on from the successful publication of the SLF’s new book, published in March this year, Four Go In Search Of Big Ideas.

The SLF Council took the decision to publish the book because:

• the Liberal Democrats appear to have fallen into "managerial mode" since the Coalition, and there is a space for Liberals to talk about new ideas that is largely unoccupied;
• the country in general is on permanent hold because of the uncertainty that has been unleashed since Brexit vote, leaving the territory of what we need to do next as a country to look forward and modernise, wide open and empty.    

The book is an attempt to open the debate on the issues we need to be urgently addressing to face -head on - the 21st century and its many challenges.

So we are pleased to be basing our annual conference on the themes of the book: a new Liberal economics; the welfare society; and climate change.

But we shall also have a section devoted to the policy areas we need to be addressing next, and also to look ahead at what a post-Brexit UK may look like.

We are delighted to have Kate Pickett as one of our headline speakers.  Kate is co-author of the influential book, The Spirit Level, and the newly published, The Inner Level.

As well as talking about the social and psychological issues that surround inequality, Kate will also be tackling regional inequality in the UK, which is the focus of one of the contributions in the SLF book.

We also very pleased that Layla Moran MP, our other headline speaker, will give the annual Beveridge Memorial Lecture.  Layla and Kate are joined by a whole host of other speakers, including Ed Davey MP, Amelia Womack (deputy leader of the Green party), Caron Lindsay, Baroness Kishwer Falkner, David Howarth, Alex Marsh and Lucy Salek.

Go to the SLF website to find out more and to register for the conference.

The early-bird registration rate finishes on 4 July, but bookings can be made online or bythe post any time up until the day of the conference, Saturday 28 July, or on the door on the day.

The conference takes place takes place at Resource for London, 356 Holloway Road, London N7 6PA (two stops from Kings Cross), from 10 am to 4 pm and lunch and refreshments are included in the price.

Helen Flynn is chair of the Social Liberal Forum - follow her on Twitter.

Two new publications for thinking Liberal Democrats

The new Liberator contains reviews of a couple of publications that seek to restore some philosophical backbone to the Liberal Democrats.

One is Towards a Liberal Future by Bernard Greaves and David Howarth. You can download it for free (as a pdf) from the Liberator website.

You can also subscribe to Liberator there too.

The other publication is Four Go in Search of Big Ideas by Helen Flynn, Iain Brodie Brown, Gordon Lishman and Ekta Prakash.

You can buy it from the Social Liberal Forum website for £9.50.

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Natalie Bloomer lists 32 homeless people who have died on our streets this winter. She is sure there are many more.

"The Social Liberal Forum is publishing this book to contribute to a Progressive Alliance of Ideas, People and Campaigns. Contributors including leading Liberal Democrats and people from other political backgrounds and some from outside formal parties." Gordon Lishman will tell you all about it.

"Whatever the people in charge did or didn’t know, they should stand down. Horrendous crimes happened on their watch. They owe it to the hundreds of lives wrecked as a result of what happened under their noses for years. There are too many names on the headed paper that have not changed in 30 years." Adam Breeze has turned his back on Crewe Alexandra.

Modernism in Metro-Land looks at John Betjeman's television documentary Metro-Land, which was first screened 45 years ago.

"1963’s Tom Jones might be amongst the least timeless of the 89 films to date that have taken home the Best Picture prize. Tony Richardson’s adaptation of Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel, which chronicles the adventurous life of a womanising troublemaker of dubious origin played by Albert Finney, is a British film that found a home in Hollywood at a crucial moment in which the American film industry was desperately looking elsewhere for inspiration, relevance, and a fresh identity in the age of television." Landon Palmer analyses a British Oscar winner.

Marc Freeman on the great American television comedy M*A*S*H.

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" I was on the ... Social Liberal Forum stand. I was approached by a man who was attending his first conference. He had won a prize in the raffle. He explained that his son was on the Liberal Reform stall and they had told him we were a 'bunch of lefties'. He wanted to know about joining...." Iain Brodie Brown reports a conversation at the recent Liberal Democrat Conference.

Jennie Rigg offers her guide to filling out a speaker's card at Lib Dem Conference.

"Forced through war, poverty and uncertainty to make new lives in England, they were drawn to cricket as a way of connecting with home." Nick Greenslade tells the story of how Afghan refugees have saved a Kent village cricket team.

Andy Boddington asks if too many trees are being felled in Ludlow.

"Guillam’s interrogators - Laura and Bunny (the latter is a man) - are almost parodies of awfulness, and one cheers on Guillam as he gamely lies to them and seeks to protect ‘old Circus’ from the consequences of its actions." Dan Atkinson enjoys John Le Carré's A Legacy of Spies.

Clare Balding: all-round good egg or control freak? Listen to the experience of Ginny Dougary and learn how celebrity works..

The Richmond Park by-election - and some local Liberal history

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Seth Thévoz has written a study under the title The Richmond Park By-Election in Perspective: Lessons from Liberal, Social Democrat and Liberal Democrat By-Election Gains for the Social Liberal Forum.

Like everything he writes, it is worth reading. The first lesson he draws is that:

Liberal Democrats should be realistic in aiming to make more by-election gains this parliament - but not ... imagine that a streak of four or five such victories is likely, given the diminishing number of by-elections triggered. One more, maybe two, would be quite enough to show that the party is winning elections again.

That is surely true. I am less convinced by his argument that we should consider ad hoc arrangements with other parties in parliamentary by-elections.

In part this is because I believe Jeremy Corbyn is politically toxic and an alliance with him might well do more harm than good for the Lib Dems.

More fundamentally, it is because, as I have argued before, the idea that a party can deliver its voters en bloc to a different party is a bit of an activist's fantasy.

And as I also argued then:

When voters have made up their mind to throw out the Tories, they are quite capable of organising themselves to do it. 

Think of 1997, when the operation was carried out with ruthless efficiency. Sometimes that was to the detriment of us Liberal Democrats. 

In several of our target seats (St Albans, Hastings and Rye, Bristol West) ... Labour came from third place to beat the Tories.

Seth also goes into the history of modern Liberalism in Richmond upon Thames. As I was active there in 1983 and 1984 that part is of particular interest to me.

He is right to say we were convinced we were going to gain the seat at the 1983 general election, only to lose by 74 votes.

Given how close that result was, it is fair to suggest that a more dynamic candidate that Alan Watson, and in particular one with stronger roots in community campaigning, might well have won.

Seth also underestimates how home-grown the Liberal success in Richmond was. He writes:

In the aftermath of the December 1972 Sutton and Cheam by-election, Liberals in Kingston and Richmond were visited by Trevor Jones, who had served as campaign manager in the Sutton by-election, and offered a masterclass on how to win council seats, with these techniques being put to good use.

I never heard any mention of this visit from Jones while I was in Richmond, so I wonder how important it was. My memory of those days was that just saying you were from Richmond when you turned up to help at a by-election somewhere else gave you remarkable kudos.

And if you read the Wikipedia entry for Stanley Rundle, the pioneer of modern Liberalism in the borough, you will see how early he stated publishing Kew Comments (a forerunner of the ubiquitous Focus):

Rundle targeted the Kew ward on Richmond Council from 1963, distributing the monthly Kew Comment bulletin. When a by-election occurred in 1966, he won the Liberal's first seat on the council. 

However, he was narrowly beaten in the Richmond upon Thames London Borough Council election, 1968, after a local residents' association put up rival candidates. Another by-election arose later that year, and Rundle won, becoming the only opposition councillor on the Conservative-dominated body. 

The Conservatives would meet in private to agree council business before holding a formal meeting with Rundle also present. In protest at this, Rundle organised his own pre-council meeting with local residents; over 400 turned up, attracting press attention.

Note how radical Rundle was. Everyone who mentioned him to me did so in terms of enormous admiration. I suspect his contribution to the Liberal revival deserves to be much better known.

Rundle died in 1978 and I believe he had been ill for a while before that.

It was expected that his protege John Waller would fight Richmond in 1979, but Alan Watson (then something of a television personality) wowed the selection meeting and won the nomination instead.

John Waller crossed the river and fought Twickenham instead. In those days the Liberals were firmly in third place there. I can recall one young Liberal activist confiding to me in the pub that, crazy as it sounded, he thought one of the wards in the centre of town might be winnable.

But because of the foundations John Waller laid, Twickenham was gained by the Liberal Democrats in 1997 on the same night we gained Richmond.

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"There are those who dislike the term Left. I am not one. It is a short hand for those dissatisfied with the status quo. For a season it came, somewhat perversely, to mean political ideas that championed state ownership and regulation." Iain Brodie Brown attended the Social Liberal Forum's Brighton fringe meeting on the realignment of the left.

Dirk Singer offers two questions you should ask Labour MPs who suddenly oppose freedom of movement.

Donald Trump is the second coming of Joseph McCarthy, says Jelani Cobb.

"'Don’t worry, I’ll be back by lunch.' Those were the last words of a Scottish teacher who was murdered at Auschwitz for protecting Jewish schoolgirls, as revealed by the students who watched her being taken away to her death." Esther Addley tells the story of Jane Haining.

Michaelangelo Matos reviews '1966: The Year the Decade Exploded' by Jon Savage and 'Never a Dull Moment: 1971 - The Year That Rock Exploded' by David Hepworth.

Olly Parry-Jones visits The Bog. It's an abandoned mining village. In Shropshire.

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Caron Lindsay can't recommend the Social Liberal Forum conference highly enough.

"To say that voters should not be allowed to change their minds when they see what the withdrawal terms actually are would be deeply undemocratic." Alan Renwick considers the possibility of a second referendum on Brexit.

Vaughan Bell examines why are paranoia and schizophrenia more common in cities.

"I cannot help but feel that I would not have heard such comments from the strangers I spoke with had I been a young twenty-something male travelling alone on this adventure. I truly believe the comments stem from the fact that I am a woman." Leilani on female solitude as a challenging act.

"I Could Go On Singing isn’t a movie: it’s a 99 minute heartbreak." Nathaniel Hood watches Judy Garland's last film, which paired her with Dirk Bogarde.

Tim Wigmore meets the Joyces - the first family of Irish cricket.

Did the rise of the SNP really spook Lib Dem voters in England?

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Last July I began a post like this:

A myth is growing up about the Liberal Democrat debacle at the last general election. It holds that we lost almost all of our seats because the Conservatives ruthlessly targeted them and won over former Liberal Democrat voters. 

So they did, but there is little sign that our lost voters went to the Conservatives instead.

My assurance was based on my reading of an article by Seth Thévoz and Lewis Baston on the Social Liberal Forum site.

Here are a couple of the paragraphs I quoted back in July:

The Conservative-facing seats showed a remarkably consistent pattern; the main factor at play was Lib Dem collapse rather than Conservative recovery. In each of the 27 seats lost to the Conservatives, the collapse in Lib Dem votes was sizably larger than any increase in Tory votes, by a factor of anything up to 29.

And:

This means that although the Lib Dem position in many Tory-facing seats is dire following a collapse of the party’s vote, the Conservative position is not necessarily ‘safe’ or stable; the Conservatives have won many of these seats on relatively small popular votes, and there still exists in these constituencies a reasonably large non-Conservative vote which could potentially be mobilised around a clear anti-Conservative candidate with a more appealing pitch than that of the 2015 Lib Dem campaign. 

Nor is the Conservative vote appreciably growing much in such areas. In seats like Lewes, Portsmouth South, St Ives, Sutton and Cheam, and Torbay, the increase in Conservative votes was negligible, and Lib Dem defeat can be laid down entirely to so much of the Lib Dem vote having vanished.

I thought of this article when I read the review of David Laws' new book Coalition that Nick Thornsby has written for Liberal Democrat Voice.

Or, to be more accurate, when I read the comments on that review.

In one of them Nick himself says:

The conclusion he [Laws] comes to is that the coalition was probably worst for the party in terms of 2015 results, but that whatever route we took was always going to result in a fairly significant loss of seats, either in a later election in 2010, or in 2014/5. 

The particularly big factor in that is Scotland, and the SNP’s rise there would almost certainly been as drastic whatever we did, which had the double-edged effect of denying us seats in Scotland and scaring our voters in the south-west into voting Tory.

In reply Glenn says:

The Lib Dem vote was not scared by the SNP or Miliband or The Greens or frankly even UKIP. Many more former Lib Dem voters voted for these parties than for the Conservatives. The vote simply split enough in enough seats to give Cameron an edge. This is a government formed on a small majority, not a landslide victory or masses of popular support.

And, Adrian Sanders - the defeated Liberal Democrat MP in Torbay - agrees:

“our voters in the south-west into voting Tory.” No, no, no, this is not what happened. Firstly there was no great swing to the Tories – 500 votes in my seat while I lost over 7,000. Our voters mostly stayed loyal. It was tactical voters who deserted us for Ukip, Labour and the Greens, not the Tories.

This debate matters, because our analysis of what went wrong at the last election must be central to our attempts at recovery.

Are we trying to soothe people who voted Conservative last time and praying for something to change in Scotland? Or are we trying to reassemble the coalition of anti-Conservatives that returned us in these seats between 1997 and 2015?

My feeling, backed by the original article by Thévoz and Baston, is that we should adopt the latter approach,

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"When he became leader of the Opposition, Corbyn was an unknown, even to his own side. Really, he was not of the Labour Party at all. He’s hardly followed the Labour whip, he disagreed with large amounts of what the party did when last in government, and he’s spent most of his time surrounded by a small coterie of like-minded outsiders." Jay Elwes on the takeover of Labour by a strange tribe.

Gordon Lishman writes writes about an economics motion the Social Liberal Forum will be submitting to the Liberal Democrat Conference.

You will find a good podcast about Labour's troubles on Political Betting.

"It almost seems as if the Chancellor doesn’t feel that improving house prices is possible. His range of policies set out in the Budget and Spending Review this year all point to him focussing on using public funds to ‘help’ people buy homes rather than improving market conditions. And, unsurprisingly, the problem is most acute in London." Joe Sarling explains how public funds are inflating the bubble in the capital's property prices.

Jim Holt reviews a new book on Sir Thomas Browne.

Footprints of London visits Churchill’s secret wartime facility at the former Down Street Underground station,

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Peter Black fears that the Liberal Democrats' election post mortem is being written by the usual suspects and will miss the point.

Seth Thévoz has conducted for the Social Liberal Forum a detailed study into the effectiveness of the Interim Peers Panel System for electing Liberal Democrat nominees to the House of Lords. You can download the whole report from the SLF website.

"One suspects that in today’s online world, Fischer’s paranoia and personal flaws would have tripped him up long before he became champion." Kenneth Rogoff, once one of the world's best young chess players and now a leading economist, reviews Pawn Sacrifice, the new Hollywood biography of Bobby Fischer.

Running Past discovers the former home of the GPO film unit, where W.H. Auden and Benjamin Britten worked together in the 1930s.

The Witch, The Weird, and The Wonderful has tales of drowned churches and ghostly peels of bells.

"Thackray’s handsome face and strong Roman nose, his vertical posture and watery, wisenheimer eyes – with the merest hint of vulnerability – made him a housewives’ favourite back in the day, though Thackray was also an anomaly, impossible to categorise. That is perhaps the reason the national treasure epithet evaded him in life; his cult hero status has only inflated since he died in 2002." Jeremy Allen remembers the great Jake Thackray.

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"I’d definitely recommend the experience to new members, even if you aren’t sure whether you align yourself with the SLF ... It’s a great way to understand what’s important to different people within the Lib Dems and to benefit from the wisdom and experience of people who have been a force for positive, liberal change in society through their activism and campaigning. " Tom King enjoyed attending the Social Liberal Forum Conference.

Peter Black says universities must justify a situation where more than 70 per cent of graduates are now leaving university with a first or upper second class degree.

Oliver Burkeman curses the fashion for iced coffee.

London Life with Bradshaw's Hand Book follows the Ravensbourne River from Lewisham to Lower Sydenham.

"In Vermont, any road that was ever officially entered into a town’s record books remains legally recognized, indefinitely. It doesn’t matter if the road has not been travelled in two hundred years, or if it was never travelled at all, or if it was merely surveyed and never actually built." Geoff Manaugh on the lost roads of one American state.

Abandoned Britain visits Leicester's former Abbey Motor Hotel.