Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite

Not​ all coal is the same. The lowest ranks – the closest to peat – are lignite and sub-bituminous coal, known in Britain as brown coal. These have been estimated to make up nearly a third of proved global reserves, but are not much exploited in areas where higher-grade coal is available, because they produce a lot of smoke and relatively little heat (they are also difficult to...

Charlotte Williams imagines a Welsh identity that is not based on ‘land, language, lineage’ but is progressive, open and diverse. This is Richard King’s project too, and his book is an attempt to construct a genealogy for a progressive Welsh nationalism. Although he includes blood-and-soil nationalists like Barnard Jenkins, and opponents of nationalism like Neil Kinnock, most of the voices in his book belong to people like Charlotte Williams or Ron Davies: people who are critical of exclusionary forms of nationalism but who believe in the possibility of an inclusive civic nationalism, and in the idea that self-government is better for Wales than Westminster government. And who’s to say that one version of Welsh nationalism is more ‘true’ than any other? The claim that ‘Wales is a nation’ isn’t a descriptive statement: it is – or aspires to be – an illocutionary act. Nations are all imagined communities, in Benedict Anderson’s phrase, and they can be imagined in different ways. The question is how many people can be persuaded to imagine the community in the same way.

In the early​ 1960s, London was boring. The population was in decline, the buildings were black with pollution and there were still bombsites in the City. Public transport was hard to come by after 11 p.m. and many shops in the West End closed at 1 p.m. on Saturday, not reopening until Monday. Sunday was so dull that in 1964 a guide was released with tips on what you could actually do on the...

The analogy between the welfare state and the sick note ignores the fact that, unlike the sick note, the welfare state has been consistently popular with the public – despite the carping of the Daily Mail. Grassroots critics of welfare have rarely called for cuts but overwhelmingly for expansion: for the system to live up to the high hopes invested in it.

In​ 1955, William Strath was asked to produce a report for the government on the possible impact of nuclear conflict on the UK. Strath, a former tax inspector, economic planner and experienced civil servant, came to the conclusion that Britain was unlikely to emerge from a nuclear attack as a functioning society, never mind as a nation able to wage war. The United States had recently tested...