Our little neighbourhood in Greenwich is having a street party today.

Here are some photos of the prep, with residents selflessly coming together to organise a good show.

Not everyone realises it but street parties are a very British tradition. They started in this country in 1919 as ‘Peace Teas’ after World War I.

Then too, they were held in the aftermath of a pandemic and had a sense of desperate gaiety — an attempt to hold on to a fleeting moment of togetherness after a period of hardship.

I didn’t know until recently that Bristol is Britain’s street party capital with more than a hundred organised every year.

We can’t match that here in Greenwich, but here’s hoping we rack up the numbers.

Pretend you’re on holiday with @TheNewEuropean summer special pod!
🏖️@rashmeerl on what other countries think of Boris Johnson
🏖️@jamesrbuk on Europe and the case for legalised cannabis
🏖️@charlieconnelly on the best Euro reads for your green-list beach https://t.co/COggFEx04b

- Steve Anglesey (@sanglesey) July 30, 2021

For this week’s bumper summer special issue episode, host Steve Anglesey is joined by journalist Rashmee Roshan Lall who discusses if the government’s love of India is reciprocated and emphasises the importance of keeping your word in politics. Global editor of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism James Ball considers the issues on both sides of…

Notice something about the photos above? There’s almost no one around.

Two years ago, a warm July evening in central London would have been very different. People would have been spilling out of pubs and restaurants on to the pavements. Tourists would have been out in force, selfie-sticks at the ready.

Covid-19 sparked the biggest fall in UK gross domestic product — a measure of the size of the economy — for more than 300 years in 2020, sending it plunging by a record 10 per cent.

But now, seven months into 2021, here we are, with London eerily empty…

In conversation the other day with a writer who also teaches the art and craft of writing at university, I heard a dispiriting truth: that university students in Britain are no longer willing to read Paul Bowles.

He is, said the writer, considered beyond the pale.

I understand what the writer was delicately trying to convey. Bowles, who wrote about North Africa, was not beyond the pale; rather, he was too pale, a pale white male who travelled around recording his impressions of the world and pretending they were somehow true because he said them.

In other words, Bowles, whose…

I was very taken by a British professor’s assertion the other day that bankers and pastoralists share more than we might think. Both, said Ian Scoones, work with deep, pervasive uncertainty and both often face unknown unknowns. This makes, he suggested, for “a very distinct approach to navigating day-to-day practices, as well as long-term futures”.

It’s a fascinating comparison and Professor Scoones is well placed to make it because he’s an agricultural ecologist at the Institute of Development Studies and is interested in agrarian change and sustainability.

One of the points that emerges from the professor’s argument about pastoralists is…

Joe Biden hasn’t been US president very long but six months are up, as of July 20. In that half-year, he’s run an MOT and a tune-up of America’s foreign policy apparatus.

He’s re-opened the usual diplomatic channels.

He’s reassured allies that America will be predictable.

Adversaries know too that Mr Biden’s America will be predictable.

After four years of Donald Trump’s tweetstorms and social media sulks, we’re back in the usual world of an American presidency that doesn’t have the commander-in-chief undercutting his secretary of state, even as he empowers his diplomats and allows meetings to run as they…

On 20 July, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos became the second billionaire in a matter of weeks to take a flashy joyride into space. The date was significant, marking 52 years since the first moon landing in 1969.

Nine days previously, another billionaire, British business mogul Richard Branson, had also taken off for the edge of space. A third billionaire, Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, has reportedly reserved a seat to visit space with Virgin Galactic, Branson’s company.

What’s the point of these intergalactic endeavors? The three billionaires claim it’s a necessary, almost philanthropic, investment in the future of humanity.

…