Britains

“Why does Birmingham exist?” asks historian Richard Vinen of Britain’s perennially overlooked second city. It’s not near a significant river or estuary. It doesn’t sit on a hill, atop bountiful natural resources. Not only is Birmingham 105 miles from the nearest beach, but, writes Vinen, it is also “one of the least walkable cities in Britain”. Its districts are segregated by class, race and income as much as by its notorious road system.But it is in the middle. From the 18th century onwards, people were drawn to…

The human rights lawyer Philippe Sands first encountered Liseby Elysé at the great hall of the international court of justice in The Hague in September 2018. Elysé, a diminutive figure, dressed in mourning black, clutching her handbag, was then 65 and the story of her life is also the story of this book. Elysé had been called to the court by Sands to represent the people of the Chagos Islands, the Indian Ocean archipelago from which, in 1973, the entire population was forcibly removed by the British colonial…

Dir: Lee Cooper. Starring: David Raven, Paul O’Grady, Jason Sutton, Dave Lynn. 15, 75 minutesDavid Raven doesn’t like the term “drag queen”. He prefers to be known as a “drag artiste” when he performs as his sensational alter-ego Maisie Trollette, a role in which he’s been dazzling audiences for over half a century. First-time feature director Lee Cooper’s sweet, soulful documentary Maisie captures Raven in the run-up to his 85th birthday celebrations and provides a joyful insight into the trailblazing life of Britain’s…

‘I should have written a bloody book. I’d have been rich.” So says David Raven, Britain’s oldest drag artiste (he hates the term “drag queen”). At 88, Raven is still performing – perched on a stool – as his alter ego Maisie Trollette. In this affectionate if slight documentary, he tells a story or two, though perhaps not enough to fill a book. Raven’s memory is fading. Nothing is said outright, but the camera lingers a few times on his medication, Donepezil, which is prescribed to help with dementia.So the film becomes a…

Poet, playwright and author Joseph Coelho has been named the new Waterstones children’s laureate, and will look to celebrate the power of poetry during his two-year tenure.Coelho takes over the role from How to Train Your Dragon author Cressida Cowell, who served three years instead of the usual two because of the coronavirus pandemic. He was announced as laureate at an event today at the Unicorn theatre, London, where he was given his bespoke laureate medal by Cowell. At the ceremony, Coelho performed a new poem he had…

British-Ghanian artist Larry Achiampong has created a complex and thoughtful piece, partly under the aegis of the Turner Contemporary gallery in Margate. It is a curation of scenes and images that straddles the concepts of the essay movie, the road movie and – that emerging genre – the lockdown movie. Perside Rodrigues portrays a young woman of colour who is making a kind of mythic or hallucinatory journey, a dreamed quest through a British landscape from north to south, in which she often seems like the only person left…

An overlooked archaeological site outside of Canterbury turned out to contain some of the oldest human-made tools in Britain.Many of the artifacts were found in the 1920s in the market town of Fordwich, Kent, but they were only recently properly dated.  According to modern radiometric techniques, the collection of more than 330 hand axes and 251 flakes, scrapers, and cores were most likely fashioned between 560,000 and 620,000 years ago.Given the style in which the tools were made, researchers often attribute them to a…

Sophie Pavelle has been busy. A science writer, presenter, maker of podcasts, ambassador for the Wildlife Trust and adviser to the RSPB, she’s also spent much of the last two years roving from Cornwall to Orkney in search of 10 species whose fortunes have been affected by human-induced climate change. More impressive still, she’s done so in the middle of a pandemic and while eschewing wherever possible high-carbon forms of transport – and she is still only 27. Plug this woman into the grid.Forget Me Not is not a hymn to…

A selection of handaxes discovered in the 1920s. Image: authors of the research. Credit: University of Cambridge Archaeological discoveries made on the outskirts of Canterbury, Kent (England) confirm the presence of early humans in southern Britain between 560,000 and 620,000 years ago, making it one of the earliest known Paleolithic sites in northern Europe.…

Inflation in the U.K. rose to 9.1% in May, a fresh four-decade high, darkening the country’s economic prospects at a time of mounting worker unrest and growing disaffection with the government.The figure marks the fastest rise in prices for a Group of Seven rich economy since the global surge began at the start of last year. The U.K.’s rapid inflation and low-growth prospects have converged into what Britons have called the cost-of-living crisis, which has displaced the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the U.K.’s divorce…