Politics

Anger, despair, disillusionment. The state of our politics is such these days that all those feelings regularly sweep over us. But political journalist Rafael Behr (Politics – A Survivor’s Guide: How to Stay Engaged Without Getting Enraged) and strategist and writer Alastair Campbell (The Rest is Politics podcast host; author of But What Can I Do? Why Politics Has Gone So Wrong, and How You Can Help Fix It) are here to demonstrate that you can stay engaged with politics without getting enraged. Using their expert knowledge, the pair take us through how we can play our part and make a real difference, develop our skills of advocacy and persuasion, and campaign for change. Even if we find ourselves frustrated with politics, Behr and Campbell show us there’s always something we can do.

Two of the most famous women in history, Anne Boleyn and Queen Elizabeth I are rarely spoken about as mother and daughter. Tracy Borman, joint chief curator of Historic Royal Palaces and chief executive of the Heritage Education Trust, offers an illuminating insight into how their short-lived relationship – Elizabeth was just three when Anne was executed – had a long-term impact. Piecing together evidence from original documents and artefacts, Borman tells the story of Anne Boleyn’s relationship with, and influence over, her daughter Elizabeth and sheds new light on the two women.

Challenge your assumptions about the origins of everything from farming to democracy with archaeologist David Wengrow. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, a collaboration between Wengrow and the late anthropologist David Graeber, brings together the latest scholarship and archaeological evidence to tell a new story about the last 30,000 years, from the egalitarian early cities in Mexico and Mesopotamia to part-time kings and queens in Ice Age Europe. Ambitious and wide-ranging, Wengrow and Graeber’s work overturns everything you know about human behaviour. Wengrow talks to Georgina Godwin, journalist and Books Editor for Monocle 24.

The author and broadcaster presents a powerful, career-spanning collection of his journalism on race, racism and Black life and death from Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and the United States. For three decades, Younge has had a ringside seat at the most significant events and personalities to impact the Black diaspora and recounts these in Dispatches From the Diaspora: accompanying Nelson Mandela on his first election campaign, joining revellers on the southside of Chicago during Obama’s victory and entering New Orleans days after hurricane Katrina. We see him with Maya Angelou in her limousine, discussing politics with Stormzy on his couch and witnessing Archbishop Desmond Tutu almost fall asleep mid-interview. He discusses how much change is possible and the power of systems to thwart those aspirations with author and educator Jeffrey Boakye.

In 1923, German democracy faced crisis and near destruction. In this remarkable year in modern European history, France and Belgium militarily occupied Germany’s economic heartland, the Ruhr, triggering a series of crises that almost spiralled out of control. Drawing on previously unseen sources, in 1923 Mark Jones weaves together a thrilling and resonant narrative of German lives in this turbulent time. Tracing Hitler’s rise, he shows how political pragmatism and international cooperation eventually steered the nation away from total insurrection, and illustrates how the warnings of 1923 – a rise of nationalist rhetoric, fragile European consensus, and underestimation of the enemies of liberalism – became only too apparent a decade later when Weimar democracy eventually succumbed to tyranny. Jones is assistant professor in history at University College Dublin. He talks to Georgina Godwin, journalist and Books Editor for Monocle 24.

The consultation industry, argue authors Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington, has made its way to the heart of our economies and governments, resulting in everything from getting in the way of our attempts to halt climate change to muddying political accountability. In The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies, they debunk the myth that consultancies always add value to the economy with original research and recommendations for how to make sure the role of consultants works for economies and governments that are fit for purpose.

Aged 43, now mayor of London Khan was unexpectedly diagnosed with adult-onset asthma, and so began his journey to becoming more educated about the dangers posed by air pollution and climate change. In Breathe: Tackling the Climate Emergency, he shares how he underwent a political transformation that would see him become one of the most prominent global politicians fighting elections on green issues, talks about some of the ways in which he believes the environmental discussion can be put back on track, and shares how anyone can win the argument on climate. Khan was first elected mayor in 2016, and re-elected in 2021.

On Henry Kissinger’s 100th birthday, David Miliband, CEO of the International Rescue Committee and former UK Foreign Secretary, discusses the American century – and whether we’re still living in it. He’ll be in conversation with David Runciman for a special live episode of Runciman’s new podcast Past Present Future, presented in partnership with the London Review of Books.

Europe has always been a haven for people fleeing repression, where freedom of the press, freedom of speech and expression are guaranteed. But is that still true? In 2021, the International Federation of Journalists reported that six journalists had been killed that year and 95 others were in prison in Europe. Why does Europe fail to acknowledge the pressure journalists are under in an increasingly violent climate? How can we support journalists in protecting democracy and freedom? Journalists from across Europe discuss the challenges they face.

Doctors Henry Marsh, author of And Finally: Matters of Life and Death, and Rachel Clarke, author of Breathtaking, have worked in Ukraine during the war, visiting hospitals and helping local doctors treat their patients, and are now setting up a charity. Olesya Khromeychuk is a historian of 20th century East–Central Europe, specialising in Ukrainian history. They talk to Emma Graham-Harrison, the Guardian’s foreign affairs correspondent, about Ukraine and people’s day-to-day ordeal in a time of conflict.

Our politics – and our politicians – can seem chaotic and confusing, so how do we make sense of what’s happening? Daniel Finkelstein, who has had a long political career in the Conservative Party and who now works as a journalist for The Times, Jess Phillips, MP for Birmingham Yardley, John Crace, parliamentary sketch writer for the Guardian, and editor and journalist Baroness Rosie Boycott help us understand British politics today.

MP Jesse Norman’s witty historical novel The Winding Stair is the story of the rivalry between scholar Francis Bacon and Edward Coke, already acclaimed as the greatest lawyer of his generation. As Queen Elizabeth I is dying and James I waiting to accede, Bacon and Coke are locked in a bitter struggle for influence and power in the palaces, parliaments and royal courts. Norman, the MP for Hereford and South Herefordshire and currently Minister of State in the Department for Transport, discusses combining history and fiction to create a tale of political machinations.

Journalist Daniel Finkelstein’s family story is one of miraculous survival against the 20th century’s two genocidal dictators. His grandfather Alfred is now widely acknowledged to have been the first person to recognise the existential danger Hitler posed to the Jews, and with his family was sent to Bergen-Belsen, while his father’s family was sent to do hard labour in a Siberian gulag. In Hitler, Stalin, Mum & Dad, Finkelstein, who serves in the House of Lords, shares his family’s extraordinary, often painful and hellish history through concentration camps, the Gulag, secret archives and freezing wastelands, to eventual happiness and safety. He talks to Philippe Sands, author of East West Street and The Ratline.

The Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in 2021 has had a huge and negative effect on the country’s women; they are banned from secondary and university education, cannot work for non-governmental organisations, and face increasing restrictions on basic freedoms. Film-maker and journalist Tamana Ayazi speaks to the BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet about the reality for women in Afghanistan, and what happens next. Ayazi directed the Netflix documentary In her Hands, which narrates the story of Zafira Ghafari and her fight for human rights when the Taliban took over her country.

From creating simple yet tasty recipes with low-cost store cupboard ingredients to creating the Vimes ‘Boots’ index to measure the cost of basic foodstuffs and inflation, Monroe is the UK’s best-loved expert on budget cooking. She discusses her new collection of recipes, Thrifty Kitchen, and talks about her activism around ensuring everyone has access to delicious, nutritious food.

Writers Tania Branigan and Xiaolu Guo speak to the Guardian and Observer’s senior international affairs correspondent Emma Graham-Harrison about their work, the past and present of China, and the Chinese cultural role in the world. Branigan is a journalist for the Guardian and author of Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution, a book about the people who lived under Mao’s regime and how the Cultural Revolution affects China today. Guo was born in China and her most recent book is the memoir Radical, which she wrote after moving to New York for work, leaving her child and partner in London. The encounter with American culture and people threatened her sense of identity and threw her into a crisis, and Radical is a playful and deeply personal take on carving out a life of her own.

Enjoy a little light ridicule, mockery and fun to start the day as the satirists read the papers and see what’s trending online. An irreverent look at what’s tickling the nation’s fancy – and driving it to splenetic fury – today. Strong coffee recommended.

Before Charles became King, he was Prince of Wales. Charles’ approach to the role has been to serve Wales and to promote Welsh life. But what impact has he had on the country, and what impression did the Welsh leave on him? Huw Thomas, Business Correspondent at BBC Wales and author of Charles: The King and Wales, discusses the role and the man.

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams and Professor Laura McAllister, professor of public policy and the governance of Wales at Cardiff University, co-chair the commission looking at options to reform the structures of the UK and strengthen Welsh democracy to deliver improvements for its people. With commission member Gonzalez, they discuss the existential challenges facing the UK, the work of the commission and options to secure Wales’ future with Auriol Miller, director of the Institute of Welsh Affairs.

A little light ridicule, mockery and fun to start the day as the satirists read the tabloids and surf the social media storms for an irreverent look at what’s tickling the nation’s fancy – and driving it to splenetic fury – today.