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The bleak southern continent of Antarctica conjures up images of hellish, frozen landscapes inhospitable to life, a realm not of this world and certainly not meant for human beings. This is a at once a majestic place that draws us in, but alas also seems to be a place not really meant for us, an unexplored domain that for the most part pushes us away, and indeed all life. Yet we have been drawn to this place for years, and it has often posed as a last frontier of the earth, with many dying in the process of trying to tame this land, and for all of its harrowing foreboding, Antarctica sure does seem to have its fair share of haunted places.

One creepy supposedly haunted place in Antarctica is not really much to look at, just a ramshackle abandoned house left out to the elements crouched on the appropriately named forsaken Winter Island, in the Argentine Islands archipelago. The house, officially called British Faraday Station, or Station F, was built in 1947 by James Wordie, who had been chief scientist on Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1914 - 1917 Endurance Expedition, for use as an observatory and base for researching geophysics, meteorology, and ionospherics. It would be used for decades before being abandoned when main operations moved to a larger base on adjacent Galindez Island. The original Wordie House still stands as an unused husk like a ghost in the snow, and by all accounts it has its own literal ghosts.

The few who have been here to experience the haunting say that objects within the house will move on their own, shadow figures are seen to prowl about, and that a strong presence can be felt lurking in the murk. There have even been reports of lights seen turned on in the house, which should be impossible since it no longer has any power source. The Wordie House was most famously investigated by the TV show Destination Truth, with the crew experiencing quite a bit of weirdness while there, including objects falling off of shelves, doors slamming shut on their own, and the curious sound of a light switch being feverishly flipped back and forth from an area of the house where no one was present, as well as the sense of a heavy, menacing presence that everyone could feel. It is unknown who these ghosts could be, but the house was built on a previous base that was washed away by a tsunami, so perhaps this could explain it.

Incidentally, Destination Truth also investigated an abandoned whaling station in Antarctica at a place called Deception Island, which was left to rot after the Great Depression when oil prices fell. The crew would see strange apparitions, light orbs, and also hear inexplicable voices. The crew also heard loud bangs that could not be accounted for and spotted a shadow figure skulking about. As evidence they provided a supposed thermal heat signature of something anomalous lurking near a window when nobody was there, and they also heard what they took to be a Morse code SOS signal being tapped out. Creepy things to experience when one is literally thousands of miles from the nearest semblance of civilization out in this cold starkness.

A perhaps even more intensely haunted place in Antarctica is Ross Island, which was the scene of tragedy in 1979. At the time, Antarctica was a rather popular destination for brave tourists who were looking for a bit of adventure and something different. On November 28, 1979, a New Zealand sightseeing plane carrying 257 people took off towards Ross Island, but things were seemingly doomed from the beginning, as it was carrying a crew who had little experience flying in Antarctic conditions, the flight data was mistaken, and visibility was poor. While lowering the plane through overcast skies so that passengers could see the Ross Ice Shelf, the pilot made an error of judgment partly due to the bad data, and took the plane far below the minimum allowed altitude, which due to the low visibility caused him to realize all too late that they were headed right towards the side of the volcano Mount Erebus. The plane would spectacularly smash into the mountain at full speed, killing every last person aboard.

The numerous dead bodies were retrieved from the frozen barren wasteland and kept at McMurdo Station, an American base on the island and the only inhabited place there, before finally being shipped back to New Zealand. With so much tragedy surrounding the accident it is perhaps no surprise that the place is supposedly haunted. Visitors and staff at McMurdo Station tell of seeing the ghosts of the flight victims wandering about aimlessly over the frozen tundra or appearing within the base itself, as well as hearing disembodied footsteps, voices, or even eerie moaning and screaming. These wraiths never seem to actually interact with anyone, and it has been speculated that they perhaps don't even know they are dead, or are mere memories somehow imprinted onto the landscape like images onto film. Whatever the reason, it would certainly be a spooky thing to see shambling over the frigid, lifeless landscape in one of the most remote, inhospitable places in the world.

Another allegedly haunted spot on Ross Island is a place called Scott's Hut, which dates back to the days of British explorer Robert Falcon Scott and his doomed 1911 Terra Nova Expedition, which took place between 1910 and 1913. The tragic expedition, led by Scott, was of a scientific nature, and also aimed to be the first to reach the geographic South Pole, but not only did they fail to be the first, but the entire team died during the ordeal out there in the bleakness far from home. It would not be until 8 months later that any signs of the men would be uncovered in the form of remains, photographs, and journals, one of which was Scott's, and in which was written the haunting final entry dated March 2, 1912, which reads:

Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end cannot be far. It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more. R. Scott. Last entry. For God's sake look after our people.

Among the things found left behind was a ramshackle, makeshift cabin, not more than a hut thrown together with wood, junk, and prayers, that Scott had built out in the bleak, rocky moonscape of Cape Evans, used as a launching point for their final failed bid to reach the South Pole. After the death of the Terra Nova Expedition, the hut was used by the wayward, shipwrecked Ross Sea Party from 1915 to 1917, and then it was abandoned to become a spooky part of the landscape. Scott's Hut still stands today and has gone on to become an important historic monument.

It is also considered to be intensely haunted, especially in the vicinity of a memorial cross set that was set out by the Ross Sea Party in the ice not far from the cabin to commemorate three of the men who died at the hut. Not only are there said to be the ghosts of these members lingering about the cross, but this cross is also said to draw the wandering spirits of other explorers who have died trying to reach the geographic South Pole of Antarctica, as if it is some way station for the dead. The hut itself is also said to be permeated with a sense of stifling dread and inhabited by shadow figures and various anomalous noises such as footsteps, voices, and the sounds of something dragging over the floorboards.

Abandoned huts on the remote Ross Island seem to be prime haunting locations, because another one is a hut built by Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton for his 1907-09 British Antarctic expedition. Shackleton's hut, like that of Scott, is also considered a historic monument, and is remarkably well-preserved, with even cans of food and other items set up or stored as if someone might come home at any minute. It is also said to be very haunted, and the paranormal phenomena here were even experienced by none other than famed New Zealand adventurer and conqueror of Mt. Everest Sir Edmund Hillary, who actually claimed to have seen Shackleton's ghost there. He would explain of his bizarre encounter:

I remember when I first went to Shackleton's hut-and I'm not a person who really sees things very much-but I went inside the door ... when I opened the door-it's a rather sort of bare hut inside-but I distinctly saw Shackleton walking towards me and welcoming me and then it all sort of flashed away and he was gone. It's the only time I can ever remember something occurring like that, so I have a very warm feeling indeed for Shackleton and for his hut and I really believe that those huts, Shackleton and [Robert Falcon] Scott's, must be preserved.

Even out here in this windswept unforgiving realm of ice, wind, and lifeless plains and mountains, there seem to cling ghosts in some form or another. The elements and harshness of the terrain seem to do little to deter them, and they purportedly exist out here far beyond civilization, mulling about and lurking in a possibly eternal loop that not many people will ever even be aware of far from the trappings of modern life. It seems especially lonely, and these spirits cling to an existence beyond our understanding, in one of the most inhospitable, remote places on earth.

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Strange Hauntings in the Frigid Badlands of Antarctica | Mysterious Universe

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The bleak southern continent of Antarctica conjures up images of hellish, frozen landscapes inhospitable to life, a realm not of this world and certainly not meant for human beings. This is a at once a majestic place that draws us in, but alas also seems to be a place not really meant for us, an unexplored domain that for the most part pushes us away, and indeed all life.

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It's Complicated: From the Roman Empire to Brexit, Britain Has Always Struggled to Define Its Relationship With Europe

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For centuries, Britain has alternated moving closer to and pulling away from Europe. Here's what to know about that complicated history.

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The U.S. government is, as a matter of policy, literally ripping children from the arms of their parents and putting them in fenced enclosures (which officials insist aren't cages, oh no). The U.S. president is demanding that law enforcement stop investigating his associates and go after his political enemies instead. He has been insulting democratic allies while praising murderous dictators. And a global trade war seems increasingly likely.

What do these stories have in common? Obviously they're all tied to the character of the man occupying the White House, surely the worst human being ever to hold his position. But there's also a larger context, and it's not just about Donald Trump. What we're witnessing is a systematic rejection of longstanding American values - the values that actually made America great.

America has long been a powerful nation. In particular, we emerged from World War II with a level of both economic and military dominance not seen since the heyday of ancient Rome. But our role in the world was always about more than money and guns. It was also about ideals: America stood for something larger than itself - for freedom, human rights and the rule of law as universal principles.

Of course, we often fell short of those ideals. But the ideals were real, and mattered. Many nations have pursued racist policies; but when the Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal wrote his 1944 book about our "Negro problem," he called it "An American Dilemma," because he viewed us as a nation whose civilization had a " flavor of enlightenment " and whose citizens were aware at some level that our treatment of blacks was at odds with our principles.

And his belief that there was a core of decency - maybe even goodness - to America was eventually vindicated by the rise and success, incomplete as it was, of the civil rights movement.

But what does American goodness - all too often honored in the breach, but still real - have to do with American power, let alone world trade? The answer is that for 70 years, American goodness and American greatness went hand in hand. Our ideals, and the fact that other countries knew we held those ideals, made us a different kind of great power, one that inspired trust.

Think about it. By the end of World War II, we and our British allies had in effect conquered a large part of the world. We could have become permanent occupiers, and/or installed subservient puppet governments, the way the Soviet Union did in Eastern Europe. And yes, we did do that in some developing countries; our history with, say, Iran is not at all pretty.

But what we mainly did instead was help defeated enemies get back on their feet, establishing democratic regimes that shared our core values and became allies in protecting those values.

The Pax Americana was a sort of empire; certainly America was for a long time very much first among equals. But it was by historical standards a remarkably benign empire, held together by soft power and respect rather than force. (There are actually some parallels with the ancient Pax Romana, but that's another story.)

And while you might be tempted to view international trade deals, which Trump says have turned us into a " piggy bank that everyone else is robbing," as a completely separate story, they are anything but. Trade agreements were meant to (and did) make America richer, but they were also, from the beginning, about more than dollars and cents.

In fact, the modern world trading system was largely the brainchild not of economists or business interests, but of Cordell Hull, F.D.R.'s long-serving secretary of state, who believed that "prosperous trade among nations" was an essential element in building an "enduring peace." So you want to think of the postwar creation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade as part of the same strategy that more or less simultaneously gave rise to the Marshall Plan and the creation of NATO.

So all the things happening now are of a piece. Committing atrocities at the border, attacking the domestic rule of law, insulting democratic leaders while praising thugs, and breaking up trade agreements are all about ending American exceptionalism, turning our back on the ideals that made us different from other powerful nations.

And rejecting our ideals won't make us stronger; it will make us weaker. We were the leader of the free world, a moral as well as financial and military force. But we're throwing all that away.

What's more, it won't even serve our self-interest. America isn't nearly as dominant a power as it was 70 years ago; Trump is delusional if he thinks that other countries will back down in the face of his threats. And if we are heading for a full-blown trade war, which seems increasingly likely, both he and those who voted for him will be shocked at how it goes: Some industries will gain, but millions of workers will be displaced.

So Trump isn't making America great again; he's trashing the things that made us great, turning us into just another bully - one whose bullying will be far less effective than he imagines.

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The U.S. government is, as a matter of policy, literally ripping children from the arms of their parents and putting them in fenced enclosures (which officials insist aren't cages, oh no). The U.S. president is demanding that law enforcement stop investigating his associates and go after his political enemies instead.

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What happens when a frog's car breaks down? It gets toad away. If you're like me and laughed at this joke more than you probably should have, you know that words are fun. Bruce Worden, the man behind a blog called Homophones, Weakly, also shares this opinion. Like you might have already guessed, he's into homophones (each of two or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling). In fact, Bruce likes them so much, he's even visualizing them!

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20+ Clever Illustrations Of 'Same' Words That You Probably Confuse Way Too Often

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What happens when a frog's car breaks down? It gets toad away. If you're like me and laughed at this joke more than you probably should have, you know that words are fun. Bruce Worden, the man behind a blog called Homophones, Weakly, also shares this opinion.

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A picture is worth a thousand words! ᴷᴬ By: TBWA\Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Another day, another black man violently assaulted by five rogue police officers for the ever-increasing crime of BWB (breathing while black). This time it was NBA player Sterling Brown. In January, the Bucks rookie was confronted by Milwaukee police at Walgreens for a parking infraction, which resulted in a compliant Brown being wrestled to the ground, handcuffed, tased, arrested - and given a parking ticket. The recently released police body-cam footage was called "disturbing" by Milwaukee's mayor. Particularly in a city that Bucks president Peter Feigin once called "the most segregated, racist place I've ever experienced in my life". The officers involved have since been disciplined. Now what? Bygones?

It's hardly news that people of color are continually harassed, but what's been making the news lately is the frequency with which upwardly mobile, middle-class people of color are being targeted. From the two black men waiting for a friend at a Philadelphia Starbucks, to a black Yale graduate student napping in her dorm's common room, to three black women facing down seven cop cars and a helicopter as they checked out out of an Airbnb house they were renting, the victims' faces on the news are not just the hoodied street thugs that white America expects and can then dismiss. And, while we can be thankful that none of them were killed, there is an overlooked long-lasting collateral damage to the black community's faith in the promise of the American dream and the sinister effect on their children that is much worse than that single assault.

The American dream pledges that every person in America, regardless of their ethnic, religious, or economic background, will have an equal opportunity to achieve success. There may be obstacles, but they won't be deliberately aimed at anyone based on the circumstances of birth or belief. That ideal is America's moral core as well as its most famous public relations branding abroad: a better life awaits all. People in this country - whether natural born or immigrants - work hard to achieve that dream, for themselves and for their families. Once you're successful, the expectation is financial security, a certain respect, and an elevated degree of personal safety. And that's exactly what you get - if you're white. But if you're a person of color, your skin color is still seen by some as a gang color, the shade a reflection of the darkness in your soul.

There is plenty of evidence that the American ​dream is blocked by a velvet rope wrapped in razor wire

Sterling Brown is a professional basketball player with the NBA. Only 1.2% of college players make it that far. He's an American dream success story, having overcome great odds through hard work, sacrifice, and discipline. He's a role model for other black kids, not just those who want to be a professional athlete, but those who see that hard work can be rewarded. Yet, there is plenty of evidence that the American dream is blocked by a velvet rope wrapped in razor wire. A study led by researchers at Stanford, Harvard, and the US Census Bureau concluded that even when black boys and white boys grow up in the same neighborhoods, the blacks earn less as adults than whites, even though there is no difference in cognitive abilities. Another study cites the high extent of anxiety, depression, stress, thoughts of suicide, diabetes, and hair loss among black college students competing at predominantly white schools where they feel the burden of not only personal success, but racial success. This phenomenon is referred to as "John Henryism", after the legendary slave-turned-railroad worker who literally worked himself to death to prove his worth.

Clearly, this is not just a Milwaukee issue. During my six years in Milwaukee playing for the Bucks, I experienced only support from the fans and the team. Except for a minor incident in which a white grocer refused to sell me a bottle of local beer I was buying for a friend, I enjoyed my time as a Milwaukeean. The Brown arrest is only a single thread in a larger tapestry that is spread across America. The Milwaukee police who confronted Sterling Brown weren't just assaulting the man, they were damaging the dreams of young people of color who imagine a more accepting world on the other side of the finish line. But the loneliness of these long-distance runners just got lonelier, harder and a little more hopeless.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a Guardian US columnist and the NBA's all-time leading points scorer. He played for the Milwaukee Bucks from 1969-1975
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Sterling Brown and the tasing of the black American dream | Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

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Another day, another black man violently assaulted by five rogue police officers for the ever-increasing crime of BWB (breathing while black). This time it was NBA player Sterling Brown. In January, the Bucks rookie was confronted by Milwaukee police at Walgreens for a parking infraction, which resulted in a compliant Brown being wrestled to the ground, handcuffed, tased, arrested - and given a parking ticket.

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Roughly 60 years after the abolition of , anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston made an incredible connection : She located the last surviving captive of the last slave ship to bring Africans to the United States.

Hurston, a known figure of the Harlem Renaissance who would later write the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God , conducted interviews with the survivor but struggled to publish them as a book in the early 1930s. In fact, they are only now being released to the public in a book called Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" that comes out on May 8, 2018.

Author Zora Neale Hurston (1903-1960). (Credit: Corbis/Getty Images)

Hurston's book tells the story of Cudjo Lewis, who was born in what is now the West African country of Benin. Originally named Kossula, he was only 19 years old when members of the neighboring Dahomian tribe captured him and took him to the coast. There, he and about 120 others were sold into slavery and crammed onto the Clotilda , the last slave ship to reach the continental United States.

The brought its captives to Alabama in 1860, just a year before the outbreak of the . Even though slavery was legal at that time in the U.S., the international slave trade was not, and hadn't been for over 50 years. Along with many European nations, the U.S. had outlawed the practice in 1807, but Lewis' journey is an example of how slave traders went around the law to continue bringing over human cargo.

To avoid detection, Lewis' captors snuck him and the other survivors into Alabama at night and made them hide in a swamp for several days. To hide the evidence of their crime, the 86-foot sailboat was then set ablaze on the banks of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta (its remains may have been in January 2018).

Most poignantly, Lewis' narrative provides a first-hand account of the disorienting trauma of slavery. After being abducted from his home, Lewis was forced onto a ship with strangers. The abductees spent several months together during the treacherous passage to the United States, but were then separated in Alabama to go to different plantations.

A marker to commemorate Cudjo Lewis, considered to be the last surviving victim of the Atlantic slave trade between Africa and the United States, in Mobile, Alabama. (Credit: Womump/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0)

"We very sorry to be parted from one 'nother," Lewis told Hurston. "We seventy days cross de water from de Affica soil, and now dey part us from one 'nother. Derefore we cry. Our grief so heavy look lak we cain stand it. I think maybe I die in my sleep when I dream about my mama."

Lewis also describes what it was like to arrive on a plantation where no one spoke his language, and could explain to him where he was or what was going on. "We doan know why we be bring 'way from our country to work lak dis," he told Hurston. "Everybody lookee at us strange. We want to talk wid de udder colored folkses but dey doan know whut we say."

As for the Civil War, Lewis said he wasn't aware of it when it first started. But part-way through, he began to hear that the North had started a war to free enslaved people like him. A few days after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered in April 1865, Lewis says that a group of Union soldiers stopped by a boat on which he and other enslaved people were working and told them they were free.

Cudjo Lewis at home. (Credit: Erik Overbey Collection, The Doy Leale McCall Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of South Alabama)

Lewis expected to receive compensation for being kidnapped and forced into slavery, and was angry to discover that emancipation didn't come with the promise of "forty acres and a mule," or any other kind of reparations. Frustrated by the refusal of the government to provide him with land to live on after stealing him away from his homeland, he and a group of 31 other freepeople saved up money to buy land near the state capital of Mobile, which they called Africatown.

Hurston's use of vernacular dialogue in both her novels and her anthropological interviews was often controversial, as some black American thinkers at the time argued that this played to black caricatures in the minds of white people. Hurston disagreed, and refused to change Lewis' dialect-which was one of the reasons a publisher turned her manuscript down back in the 1930s.

Many decades later, her principled stance means that modern readers will get to hear Lewis' story the way that he told it.

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The Last Slave Ship Survivor Gave an Interview in the 1930s. It Just Surfaced

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Roughly 60 years after the abolition of , anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston made an incredible connection : She located the last surviving captive of the last slave ship to bring Africans to the United States.

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Why incompetent people think they're amazing - David Dunning

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Brexit makes no sense and Britain should vote again, says Jürgen Klopp

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Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp believes the British people should have the chance to vote again on their future in Europe

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The trouble with the English, remarked Salman Rushdie in typically apt fashion, is that they don't know their history, because so much of it happened overseas. And so the island status that motivated Britain's imperial story in the first place has helped us distance ourselves from all aspects of that story.

There is the way, for instance, that the empire was built and sustained. From the Norman conquest of Ireland in the 12th century, the English began imagining themselves as the new Romans, persuading themselves they were as duty-bound to civilise "backward" tribes as they were destined to exploit their resources, land and labour.

There is the way the empire ended - a gentlemanly release, far less violent and disruptive than the dissolution of France's dominions, or so the self-congratulatory theory goes. "There is only one empire where, without external pressure or weariness at the burden of ruling, the ruling people has voluntarily surrendered its hegemony over subject peoples and has given them their freedom," said Clement Attlee in 1960, neatly summarising this belief.

It's an ingenious and uniquely British perspective, which achieves the seemingly impossible - casting Britain's empire as a great moral achievement, and its collapse as an act of casual generosity, without any hint at the irreconcilability of the two. The British empire was won, as the historian John Seeley famously claimed, "in a fit of absence of mind", and given away in a fit of collective indifference.

Lost in all this are inconvenient facts too numerous to list in anything other than the most cursory way. There are the centuries of state-sanctioned criminal activity: the remarkable looting by supposed heroes such as Francis Drake, one of the most notorious pirates in history, and Robert Clive, who pillaged Bengal to great personal gain. There are the crimes against humanity: the innovation of concentration camps in the Boer war that inspired the Nazis, for example, and the cultural annihilation of kingdoms and palaces from Ashanti to Beijing.

There is the industrial-scale exploitation of natural resources, enriching the imperial motherland to the same extent they underdeveloped wealth from the colonies, as Walter Rodney pointed out. And then there's the slave trade that was enthusiastically embraced by Brits of all classes and backgrounds - the greatest manmade human calamity of all time.

Our preferred solution to this inconvenient truth has been to avoid dwelling on slavery and focus instead on celebrating its abolition. At least Britain's role in the slave trade is remembered in the excellent museum in Liverpool. But having a couple of slavery-focused museums - there is Wilberforce House in Hull, too - sets the issue apart from the mainstream of British history. It's like a physical version of Black History Month, forcing forgotten histories into the open - a good thing - but as a footnote, a segregated narrative.

We no longer live in a society where the descendants of the colonisers are the sole authors

Few British people understand how fundamental this trade was to the British empire, and the extent to which the history of empire is the history of Britain. That there is not a single museum dedicated to empire, the historical episode with the most profound consequences for modern British identity, is nothing short of remarkable.

The announcement of a new Holocaust museum, designed by the renowned British-Ghanaian architect David Adjaye, illustrates the crucial role museums can play in shaping understanding of the past and present. This museum, dedicated to "the complexity of the Holocaust story, including the British context ... a series of layers that have become hidden by time", will - quite rightly - take pride of place in Westminster, on the bank of the Thames next to the Houses of Parliament.

Both the fact of the new museum's existence and its location serve, as Peter Bazalgette, chair of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation, has said, "as a statement of our values and a constant reminder of the British connection to this history, much of which we can be proud, but also a reminder of where we fell short, with tragic consequences".

This is needed now more than ever. Why do we not afford the history of empire the same attention and symbolic value? We are not alone in neglecting it. America only gained its first ever federally funded museum of African-American History and Culture in 2016, also designed by Adjaye, who has described it as the defining project of his career. It's astonishing that only now does the nation have a museum dedicated to the devastating history of its African-American community - on whose backs, there is a gradual but growing recognition, it was built.

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'View of Calcutta from the Esplanade', c1860, during the period of East India Company rule. Illustration from The History of the Indian Mutiny, by Charles Ball, Volume II, The London Printing & Publishing Co. Photograph: Print Collector/Getty Images

Neither Adjaye nor any other celebrated architect has been asked to build a museum to Britain's history of empire. The only such place to have existed in my lifetime was a privately operated museum in Bristol, which closed in 2008 to relocate to London, never to surface again.

This national neglect of our imperial past has attracted some strange bedfellows. A pro-Brexit historian recently told me that one of the consequences of Britain's fatally flawed attempt to integrate more closely with the continent is an academic obsession with European history. He argued that the heads of history at eminent universities have been Germanists, and school curriculums have been obsessed with events in 20th-century Europe. We began to reimagine our history as solely continental, and not the global - and colonial - past it undoubtedly was.

But this is not a history that is universally ignored. We no longer live in an age where people accept the official version of events, nor in a society where the descendants of the colonisers are the sole authors of the story. Indeed, the personal history of Barack Obama - whose father was tortured by the British during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya - offered some awkward truths from the other perspective.

To counter the historians who have sold us, and continue to propagate, a glorious version of the imperial past, we have a generation of brilliant scholars such as David Olusoga, whose book Black and British paints an accessible picture of forgotten links with Africa and the Caribbean with richness and depth. We have charismatic global stars such as the Indian MP, diplomat and author Shashi Tharoor, whose Oxford Union speech on the impact of colonial rule in India has had more than 4m hits. There is a "Crimes of Britain" Twitter account - whose provocative emblem is a bleeding poppy, its black centre featuring the image of a bone-white skull - that sends out a daily stream of indictments: from British army massacres in Ireland to the devastation of Bengal, and the reduction of modern-day Libya to rubble, it seeks to present an alternative view of imperial legacy.

It may be distasteful to some, but as long as the establishment continues to avoid acknowledging this history, it will flourish underground. That has consequences not just for people like me - Britons personally connected to the events we continue to ignore - it denies all of us an education about the most salient episode in our past. A museum is the least we could do.

* Afua Hirsch is a writer and broadcaster. Her book Brit(ish) will be published in 2018
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Britain's colonial crimes deserve a lasting memorial. Here's why | Afua Hirsch

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The trouble with the English, remarked Salman Rushdie in typically apt fashion, is that they don't know their history, because so much of it happened overseas. And so the island status that motivated Britain's imperial story in the first place has helped us distance ourselves from all aspects of that story.

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Earlier this year, I was on stage at London's Young Vic playing Patrice Lumumba - a remarkable man who made a remarkable journey from being a beer salesman to the Democratic Republic of the Congo's first prime minister. The play was called A Season in the Congo, and it focused on the years in which the country won its independence from Belgium. Lumumba was elected to office in June 1960; less than three months later, he was ousted in a coup. The following January, he was killed by firing squad. The plot was almost certainly organised with the backing of Belgium and the US.

Earlier this year, I was on stage at London's Young Vic playing Patrice Lumumba - a remarkable man who made a remarkable journey from being a beer salesman to the Democratic Republic of the Congo's first prime minister. The play was called A Season in the Congo, and it focused on the years in which the country won its independence from Belgium. Lumumba was elected to office in June 1960; less than three months later, he was ousted in a coup. The following January, he was killed by firing squad. The plot was almost certainly organised with the backing of Belgium and the US.

The play, by the Martinique-born writer Aimé Césaire, made me think - about the relationship between African nations and western ones, about the violent history of Congo and its struggles to deal with its past. As I started working on a script for the short film that would become Columbite Tantalite, I knew that I wanted to weave in the firsthand experiences I'd had travelling to Goma and Kinshasa, and draw on the wider politics of the region. Though my story would partly dwell on Congo's past, I wanted it to be set in the present. Congo now and Congo then.

As I researched for the play, I became fascinated by the story of coltan: an extraordinary mineral that's mined mainly in the eastern areas of the present-day Congo. In the ground, it's a metallic ore; when refined, it acquires unique heat-resistant characteristics that make it perfect for use in electronic capacitors. As a result, it is present in nearly every electronic device you can name. Coltan is with us almost everywhere we are - in smartphones, laptops, desktop computers, games consoles - but few people have heard of it. And its story reaches back directly to Congo, where the mining industry has been linked with everything from bankrolling civil wars in the region to the destruction of gorilla habitats.

In full, coltan's name is columbite-tantalite, after Tantalus, the figure in Greek mythology who was condemned to a horrifying eternal torment, of the things he most desired being just out of his grasp. For many people in Congo, that's exactly what coltan is - close enough to touch, but its riches out of reach. Like copper at the birth of the electrical age, rubber during the era of automobiles, diamonds for as long as they have been mined, it's a substance that Congo has supplied to other countries, and which, for all the wealth it generates, has turned into a kind of curse. I knew then that I had the nugget of an idea. And the title for the film.

Without giving too much away, the story focuses on a character who has made a life out of coltan and his attempts to come to terms with his past. Interwoven with this is another strand, which focuses on a new computer game that's being developed, a game so lifelike that it's almost like stepping into another world. The young guy promoting the game has no sense at all of how he's involved in the wider scheme. Indeed, the idea that he is connected to a conflict in a remote part of the world would seem absurd.

But, in a way, that's what was interesting to me: the capitalist system itself being almost like a game. A game with winners and losers, a game that has had terrible, devastating consequences for so many people in the world. A game that we all play, and in which we manage to silence the horrors that implicate us.

* Columbite Tantalite is the latest in a series of short feature collaborations between the Young Vic and the Guardian
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Columbite Tantalite: a film that fuses Congo's past and present struggles

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Earlier this year, I was on stage at London's Young Vic playing Patrice Lumumba - a remarkable man who made a remarkable journey from being a beer salesman to the Democratic Republic of the Congo's first prime minister. The play was called A Season in the Congo, and it focused on the years in which the country won its independence from Belgium.

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The day that Junior fell down began like any other day: the explosion of heat rippling the air, the trumpeting sunlight, the traffic's tidal surges, the prayer chants in the distance, the cheap film music rising from the floor below, the loud pelvic thrusts of an "item number" dancing across a neighbor's TV, a child's cry, a mother's rebuke, unexplained laughter, scarlet expectorations, bicycles, the newly plaited hair of schoolgirls, the smell of strong sweet coffee, a green wing flashing in a tree. Senior and Junior, two very old men, opened their eyes in their bedrooms on the fourth floor of a sea-green building on a leafy lane, just out of sight of Elliot's Beach, where, that evening, the young would congregate, as they always did, to perform the rites of youth, not far from the village of the fisherfolk, who had no time for such frivolity. The poor were puritans by night and day. As for the old, they had rites of their own and did not need to wait for evening. With the sun stabbing at them through their window blinds, the two old men struggled to their feet and lurched out onto their adjacent verandas, emerging at almost the same moment, like characters in an ancient tale, trapped in fateful coincidences, unable to escape the consequences of chance.

Almost at once they began to speak. Their words were not new. These were ritual speeches, obeisances to the new day, offered in call-and-response format, like the rhythmic dialogues or "duels" of the virtuosos of Carnatic music during the annual December festival.

"Be thankful we are men of the south," Junior said, stretching and yawning. "Southerners are we, in the south of our city in the south of our country in the south of our continent. God be praised. We are warm, slow, and sensual guys, not like the cold fishes of the north." Senior, scratching first his belly and then the back of his neck, contradicted him at once. "In the first place," Senior said, "the south is a fiction, existing only because men have agreed to call it that. Suppose men had imagined the earth the other way up! We would be the northerners then. The universe does not understand up and down; neither does a dog. To a dog, there is no north or south. In this regard, the points of the compass are like money, which has value only because men say that it does. And in the second place you're not that warm a character, and a woman would laugh to hear you call yourself sensual. But you are slow-that is beyond a doubt."

This was how they were: they fought, going at each other like ancient wrestlers whose left feet were tied together at the ankles. The rope that bound them so tightly was their name. By a curious chance-which they had come to think of as "destiny" or, as they more often called it, "a curse"-they shared a name, a long name like so many names of the south, a name that neither of them cared to speak. By banishing the name, by reducing it to its initial letter, "V," they made the rope invisible, which did not mean that it did not exist. They echoed each other in other ways-their voices were high, they were of a similarly wiry build and medium height, they were both nearsighted, and, after a lifetime of priding themselves on the quality of their teeth, they had both surrendered to the humiliating inevitability of dentures-but it was the unused name, that symmetrical V., the Name That Could Not Be Spoken, that had joined them together, like Siamese twins, for decades. The two old men did not share a birthday, however. One was seventeen days older than the other. That must have been how "Senior" and "Junior" got started, though the nicknames had been in use so long now that nobody could remember who had originally thought them up. V. Senior and V. Junior they had become, Junior V. and Senior V. forevermore, quarrelling to the death. They were eighty-one years old.

"You look terrible," Junior told Senior, as he did every morning. "You look like a man who is only waiting to die."

Senior-nodding gravely, and also speaking in accordance with their private tradition-responded, "That is better than looking, as you do, like a man who is still waiting to live."

Neither man slept well anymore. At night they lay on hard beds without pillows and, behind their closed eyelids, their unsettled thoughts ran in opposite directions. Of the two men, V. Senior had lived by far the fuller life. He had been the youngest of ten brothers, all of whom had excelled in their chosen fields-as athletes, scientists, teachers, soldiers, priests. He himself had begun his career as a college-champion long-distance runner, had then risen to a senior position with the railway company, and for years had travelled the railroads, covering tens of thousands of miles to assure himself and the authorities that the proper safety levels were being maintained. He had married a kind woman and fathered six daughters and three sons, each of whom had proved fertile in his or her turn, providing him with a haul of thirty-three grandchildren. His nine brothers had sired a total of thirty-three more children, his nephews and nieces, who had inflicted upon him no fewer than a hundred and eleven further relatives. To many this would have been proof of his good fortune, for a man blessed with two hundred and four family members was a rich man indeed, but abundance gave the ascetically inclined Senior a permanent low-level headache. "If I had been sterile," he told Junior frequently, "how peaceful life would be."

After his retirement, Senior had been one of a group of ten friends who met every day to discuss politics, chess, poetry, and music at a local Besant Nagar coffeehouse, and several of his commentaries on these topics had been published in the excellent daily newspaper based in the city. Among his friends was the editor of that newspaper, and also one of the editor's employees-a celebrated local figure, a bit of a firebrand and too much of a boozer, but the creator of wonderfully grotesque political cartoons. Then there was the city's finest astrologer, who had been trained as an astronomer but had come to believe that the true messages of the stars could not be received through a telescope; and a fellow who for many years had fired the starting pistol at the racetrack's well-attended meets; and so on. Senior had revelled in the company of these men, telling his wife that it was a grand thing for a man to have friends from whom he could learn something new every day. But now they were all dead. His friends had gone up in flames one by one, and the coffeehouse that might have preserved their memory had been torn down, too. Of the ten brothers only he remained, and the brothers' wives, too, were long departed. Even his own kindly wife was dead, and he had remarried, finding himself a woman with a wooden leg, toward whom he behaved with an irritability that surprised his children and grandchildren. "Not having much choice at my age," he would say to her, hurtfully, "I chose you." She retaliated by ignoring his simplest demands, even requests for water, which no civilized person should ever refuse. Her name was Aarthi, but he never used it. Nor did he call her by a diminutive or an endearment. To him she was always "Woman" or "Wife."

Senior endured the multiple health problems of the very old, the daily penances of bowel and urethra, of back and knee, the milkiness climbing in his eyes, the breathing troubles, the nightmares, the slow failing of the soft machine. His days emptied out into tedious inaction. Once, he had given lessons in mathematics, singing, and the Vedas to pass the time. But his pupils had all gone away. There remained the wife with the wooden leg, the blurry television set, and Junior. It was not, by a long chalk, enough. Each morning he regretted that he had not died in the night. Of his two hundred and four family members, quite a few had already gone to their fiery rest. He forgot exactly how many, and their names, inevitably, eluded him. Many of the survivors came to see him and treated him with gentleness and care. When he said that he was ready to die, which was often, their faces took on hurt expressions and their bodies sagged or stiffened, depending on their nature, and they spoke to him reassuringly, encouragingly, and, of course, in injured tones, of the value of a life so full of love. But love had begun to annoy him, like everything else. His was a family of mosquitoes, he thought, a buzzing swarm, and love was their itchy bite. "If only there were a coil one could light to keep one's relations away," he told Junior. "If only there were a net around one's cot that kept them out."

Junior's life had been a disappointment to him. He had not expected to be ordinary. He had been reared by doting parents who had instilled in him a sense of destiny and entitlement, but he had turned out to be an average sort of fellow, doomed by average academic achievement to a life of clerical work in the offices of the municipal water board. His above-average dreams-of road travel, rail travel, air travel, perhaps even space travel-had long since been abandoned. Yet he was not an unhappy man. The discovery of his affliction with the incurable disease of mediocrity might have cowed a less ebullient spirit, but he remained bright-eyed, with a ready smile for the world. Still, in spite of his apparent enthusiasm for life, there was a certain deficiency in the energy department. He did not run but walked, and walked slowly-had done so even in the distant years of his youth. He abhorred exercise and had a way of poking gentle fun at those who took it. Nor did he interest himself in politics, or the all-pervasive popular culture of the cinema and the music that it spawned. In all significant particulars, he had failed to be a participant in the parade of life. He had not married. The great events of eight decades had managed to occur without any effort on his part to help them along. He had stood by and watched as an empire fell and a nation rose, and avoided expressing an opinion on the matter. He had been a man at a desk. Maintaining the flow of the municipality's water had been a sufficient challenge for him. Yet he gave every appearance of being a man for whom living was still a joy. He had been an only child, so there were few relatives to look out for him in his advanced years. Senior's immense family had adopted him long ago and brought him tiffin and attended to his needs.

The question of the dividing wall between Senior's and Junior's adjoining apartments was sometimes raised by the visiting hordes of Senior's blood kin: whether it should be taken down so that the two old men could share their lives more easily. On this matter, however, Junior and Senior spoke with one voice.

"No!" Junior said.

"Over my dead body," Senior clarified.

"Which would make the whole exercise pointless, anyhow," Junior said, as if that settled things.

The wall remained in place.

Junior had one friend, D'Mello, a man twenty years younger than him, an old colleague from his water-board days. D'Mello had grown up in another city, Mumbai, the legendary bitch-city, urbs prima in Indis, and had to be spoken to in English. Whenever D'Mello visited Junior, Senior sulked and refused to speak, even though, secretly, he was proud of his prowess in what he called "the world's No. 1 tongue." Junior tried to hide from Senior how much he looked forward to D'Mello's comings; the younger man bubbled with a kind of cosmopolitan brio that Junior found inspirational. D'Mello always arrived with stories-sometimes angry accounts of injustices against the poor in a Mumbai slum, sometimes funny anecdotes about the characters who took their ease at the Wayside Inn, the famous Mumbai café in the Kala Ghoda area, named for a no longer present equestrian statue, "the Black Horse district from which the black horse has been exiled." D'Mello fell in love with movie stars (from a distance, of course), and provided gory details of the killing spree of a not-yet-arrested madman in the district of Trombay. "The miscreant is still at large!" he cried gaily. His conversation was littered with wonderful names: Worli Sea Face, Bandra, Hornby Vellard, Breach Candy, Pali Hill. These places sounded altogether more exotic than the prosaic localities to which Junior was accustomed: Besant Nagar, Adyar, Mylapore.

D'Mello's most heartbreaking Mumbai story was his tale of the great poet of the city, who had surrendered to Alzheimer's disease. The poet still walked to his small magazine-infested office every day, without knowing why he went there. His feet knew the way, and so he went and sat looking into space until it was time to go home again and his feet walked him back to his shabby residence, through the evening crowds massing outside Churchgate station-the jasmine sellers, the hustling urchins, the roar of the B.E.S.T. buses, the girls on their Vespas, the sniffing, hungry dogs.

When D'Mello was present and talking, Junior had the sense that he was living another, very different life, a life of action and color; that he was becoming, vicariously, the type of man he had never been-dynamic, passionate, engaged with the world. Senior, observing the light in Junior's eyes, inevitably became cross. One day, when D'Mello was speaking of Mumbai and its people with his habitual, gesticulating fervor, Senior, breaking his rule of silence, snapped at him in English, "Why your body doesn't return there only since your head has already gone?" But D'Mello shook his head sadly. He no longer had a foothold in his city of origin. Only in his dreams and conversations was it still his home. "I will die here," he answered Senior. "In the south, among sour fruits like you."

Senior's wife, the lady with the wooden leg, increasingly took her revenge upon her unloving husband by filling their apartment with family members. She, too, came from a large family, of hundreds of persons, and she began most particularly to invite her younger relations, the great-nephews and great-nieces, with their wives and husbands and, especially, their babies in tow. The presence in the small apartment of large numbers of babies, toddlers, high-speed pigtailed girls, and slow plump boys fulfilled her own matriarchal ambitions, and also, very satisfyingly, drove Senior wild. It was the babies-in-law that really got his goat. The babies-in-law rattled their rattles and giggled their giggles and screamed their baby screams. They slept, and then Senior had to be quiet, or they woke up, and then Senior could not hear himself think. They ate and defecated and puked, and the smell of excrement and vomit remained in the apartment, even when the babies-in-law had gone, mingling with a smell that Senior disliked even more: that of talcum powder. "At the end of life," he complained to Junior, in whose apartment he often took refuge from the squalling hordes of his and his wife's blood kin, "nothing stinks worse than the smells of life's sweet beginning-bibs and ribbons and warm bottled milk and formula, and farting, talcumed behinds." Junior could not help replying, "Soon you also will be helpless and need someone to tend to your natural functions. Babydom is not only our past but our future, too." The thunderous expression on Senior's face revealed that the words had hit their mark.

For, it's true, they were both fortunate men. They were neither wholly blind nor wholly deaf, and their minds had not betrayed them like the Mumbai poet's. The food they ate was soft and easily digestible, but it was not old buggers' mush. Above all they were still ambulatory, still able, once a week, to climb slowly down their building's stairs to street level, and then to shuffle along, helped by walking sticks and frequent little rest stops, to the local post office, where they cashed their pension slips. They did not need to do this. Many of the young who thronged Senior's apartment, driving him next door to quarrel with Junior, would readily have dashed down the street to cash the checks for the frail old gentlemen. But the gentlemen did not care to allow the young to dash for them. It was a point of pride to cash one's own pension slip-on this, if on nothing else, they agreed-to travel under one's own steam to the counter where, behind a metal grille, a postal-services operative waited to dispense the weekly sum that was their return for a lifetime's service. "You can see the respect in the fellow's expression," Senior said loudly to Junior, who kept mum, because what he saw behind the grille was something more like boredom, or contempt.

To Senior the pension trip was an act of validation; the weekly sum, small as it was, honored his deeds, transmuting into banknotes society's gratitude for his life. Junior thought of the journey more as an act of defiance. "You care nothing for me," he once said flatly to the face behind the grille. "It means nothing to you to count out the cash. But, when your turn comes to stand where I stand, then you will comprehend." One of the few privileges of very old age was that you were allowed to say exactly what you thought, even to strangers. Nobody told you to keep your mouth shut, and few people had the guts to answer back. They think we will soon be dead, Junior thought, so there's no point getting into a fight with us. He understood the nature of the contempt in the eyes of the post-office employee. It was the scorn of life for death.

On the day that Junior fell down, he and Senior set forth on their errand at their customary midmorning hour. It was late in the year. The local Christians, D'Mello included, had just finished celebrating their Savior's birth, and the consequent proximity of New Year's Eve-with its promise of a future, of, indeed, an interminable future in which a sequence of such Eves stretched out at their predetermined intervals toward infinity-was bothering Senior. "Either I will die in the next five days, meaning that there will be no new year for me," he told Junior, "or else a year will begin in which my end will surely come, which is hardly a thing to look forward to." Junior sighed. "Your gloom and doom," he moaned, "will be the death of me." This sentence struck them both as so funny that they laughed heartily, and then for a while they had to huff and puff for breath. They were descending their building's staircase at this point, so the laughter was not without danger. They clung to the bannisters and panted. Junior was lower down than Senior, past the second-floor landing. This was how they customarily descended, some distance apart, so that if one of them should fall he would not drag the other down with him. They were too unsteady to trust each other. Trust, too, was a casualty of age.

In the front yard they paused briefly by the golden-shower tree that stood there. They had watched it grow from a tiny shoot to its present sixty-foot grandeur. It had grown quickly, and, though they did not say so, this rapid growth had disturbed them, suggesting, as it did, the speed of the passing of the years. The Indian laburnum: that was another name for it, a name among many names. It was konrai in their own, southern language, amaltas in the tongue of the north, Cassia fistula in the language of flowers and trees. "It has stopped growing now," Junior said, approvingly, "having understood that eternity is better than progress. In the eye of God, time is eternal. This even animals and trees can comprehend. Only men have the illusion that time moves." Senior snorted. "The tree has stopped," he said, "because that is in its nature, just as it is in ours. We, too, will stop soon enough." He placed his gray trilby on his head and moved through the gate into the lane. Junior was bareheaded and traditionally dressed in a white veshti and a long blue checked shirt and sandals, but Senior liked to go to the post office in the guise of a European gentleman, wearing a suit and hat and twirling a silver-handled walking stick, like that Beau-somebody of Piccadilly of whom he had read, or the man in the old song he liked, who walked along the Bois de Boulogne with an independent air, the Man That Broke the Bank at Monte Caaar-lo.

The shady lane gave way to the brilliant sun-soaked street, where the noise of traffic drowned out the softer music of the sea. The beach was just four blocks away, but the city didn't care. Junior and Senior shuffled slowly past the homeopathy shop, the pharmacy where prescription drugs could easily be bought without troubling any doctor, the general store, with its jars of nuts and chilies, its tins of clarified butter and its imported cheese, and the sidewalk bookstall, with its many pirated editions of popular books brazenly on display, and set their sights on the traffic lights a hundred yards ahead. There they would have to cross the lawless main road, where a dozen forms of transport battled for space. After that a left turn, and another hundred yards of walking, and then they would be at the post office. A five-minute journey for the young, half an hour each way, minimum, for the two old men. The sun was behind them, and both men, inching slowly forward, were looking down at their shadows, which lay side by side upon the dusty pavement. Like lovers, they both thought, but neither of them spoke, their habit of opposition being too ingrained to permit them to express so fond an idea.

Afterward, Senior regretted that he had not spoken. "He was my shadow," he said to the woman with the wooden leg, "and I was his. Two shadows, each shadowing the other, to that we were reduced, that is so. The old move through the world of the young like shades, unseen, of no concern. But the shadows see each other and know who they are. So it was with us. We knew, let me say this, who we were. And now I am a shadow without a shadow to shadow. He who knew me knows nothing now, and therefore I am not known. What else, woman, is death?"

"The day you stop talking," she replied. "The day these tomfool notions stop dropping from your mouth. When your mouth itself has been eaten by the fire. That will be the day." It was the most she had said to him in more than a year, and he understood from it that she hated him, and was sorry that Junior was the one who had fallen.

It happened because of the girls on the Vespa, the girls on their new Vespa making their way to college, pigtails horizontal behind them as, giggling, they rode toward murder. Their faces were vivid in Senior's mind, the long thin one driving the scooter and her chubbier friend behind her, holding on for dear life. But life was not dear to such persons. Life was cheap, like a garment idly flung away after a single use, like their music, like their thoughts. This was how he judged them, and when he discovered afterward that they were not at all like his unjust characterization it was too late to change his mind. They were serious students, the thin one of electrical engineering and the other of architecture, and, far from being unaffected by the accident, they both went into dreadful, guilt-ridden shock, and for weeks afterward they could be seen almost every day standing silently with lowered heads across the lane from Junior's home, just standing there, heads bowed in expiation, waiting for forgiveness. But there was nobody to forgive them; the one who would have done so had died, and the one who could have done so would not. Haughty Senior looked down upon them with disdain. What did they think a human life was? Could it be so cheaply bought off? No, it could not. Let them stand there for a thousand years, it would not be long enough.

The Vespa had wobbled, no doubt about that; its young driver was inexperienced and it had wobbled too close to where Junior stood, waiting to cross the road. Of late he had been complaining of a weakness in his ankles. He had said, "Sometimes when I get out of bed I do not think that they will bear my weight." He had also said, "Sometimes when I go down the stairs I worry that an ankle will turn. I never used to worry about my ankles, but now I do." Senior had responded adversarially, as was customary. "Worry about your interior," he had said. "Your kidneys or your liver will fail long before your ankle does." However, he had been wrong. The Vespa had come too close and Junior had leaped back. When he landed on his left foot, his ankle had indeed turned, and that had induced a second half-leap, as Junior tried to save himself. So it had been a strange fall, more like a hop and a skip, but at the end there was the tumble, and Junior, toppling backward to the sidewalk, had bumped his head, not hard enough to be knocked out, but, still, hard enough. He was winded, too. Air left him in a great whoosh as he clattered down.

Senior was too busy shouting at the terrified girls on the Vespa, calling them assassins and worse things, to notice the moment when the thing happened that must happen to us all in the end, when the last little puff of vapor pops out of our mouths and dissolves into fetid air. "The spirit, whatever it is," Junior used to say. "I do not believe in an immortal soul, but I also do not believe that we are only flesh and bone. I believe in a mortal soul, the non-corporeal essence of ourselves, lurking within our flesh like a parasite, flourishing when we flourish, and dying when we die." Senior was more formal in his religious beliefs. He read the ancient texts often, and the sound of Sanskrit was for him akin to the music of the spheres-the subtlety and profundity of those texts, which were capable of questioning whether even the creative entity itself understood its creation. Once, he had discussed these texts with his students, but there had not been any students for a long time, and he had been obliged to keep his own counsel on the grand matters of being. The ancient ambiguities gave him joy; Junior's lay-philosophical invention of a soul that died was banal by comparison.

So Senior thought, and, ranting as he was, he missed the telltale little puff of air that might have persuaded him to think again. An instant later there was no Junior anymore, just a body on the sidewalk, a thing to be disposed of before the heat of the tropics did its malodorous worst. There was only one thing to be done. Senior reached into his friend's pocket and took out the pension slip. Then, sending the Vespa girls to his apartment to speak to his wife and relations, he set off on his mission alone. There would be time for death to be respected. In the traditions of the Palakkad Aiyars or Iyers, from whom both he and Junior were descended, the rites in honor of the dead lasted for thirteen days.

The next morning, in the south of the planet, far away from Senior's home town, but not far enough, there was a great earthquake under the ocean's surface, and the mighty water, answering the agony of the land beneath it with an agony of its own, gathered itself up into a series of waves and hurled its pain across the globe. Two such waves travelled across the Indian Ocean and, at a quarter to seven in the morning, Senior felt his bed begin to shake. It was a violent and puzzling vibration, because there had never been an earthquake in this city. Senior got up and went out onto his veranda. The veranda next door was empty, of course. Junior was gone. Junior was ashes now. The neighbors were all out in the lane, improperly dressed, hugging blankets around their shoulders. Everyone had a radio on. The earthquake's epicenter had been near the distant island of Sumatra. The tremors stopped and people went on with their day. Two and a quarter hours later, the first giant wave arrived.

The coastal areas were smashed. Elliot's Beach, Marina Beach, the beachfront houses, the cars, the Vespas, the people. At ten o'clock in the morning, the sea made a second such assault. The numbers of the dead grew: the lost dead, taken by the sea, the marooned dead, washed up on the remnants of the sands, the broken dead, everywhere the dead. The waves did not get as far as Senior's house. Senior's lane was undamaged. Everybody lived.

Except Junior.

It was fortunate that the waves arrived at Elliot's Beach in the morning. The romantic young who laughed and flirted there in the evenings would all have been slain if the waves had come at night. So young friends and lovers survived. The fishermen were not so lucky. The nearby fishing village-its name was Nochikuppam-ceased to exist. A seaside temple remained standing, but the fishermen's huts and catamarans and many of the fisherfolk themselves were lost. After that day the fishermen who survived said that they hated the sea and refused to return to it. For a long time it was hard to buy fish in the markets.

Senior did not like the Japanese word everyone used to name the waters of death. To him the waves were Death itself and needed no other name. Death had come to his city, had come a-harvesting and had taken Junior and many strangers away. In the aftermath of the waves, there grew up all around him, like a forest, the noises and actions that inevitably follow on calamity-the good behavior of the kind, the bad behavior of the desperate and the powerful, the surging aimless crowds. He was lost in the forest of the aftermath and saw nothing except the empty veranda next to his own and, in the lane below, the girls with the lowered heads. News came that D'Mello was among the lost. D'Mello, too, was gone. Perhaps he was not dead. Perhaps he had simply gone home, at last, to his storied city of Mumbai, on the country's other coast, that city which was neither of the north nor of the south but a frontierville, the greatest, most wondrous, and most dreadful of all such places, the megalopolis of the borderlands, the place of in-between. Or, on the other hand, perhaps D'Mello had drowned and Death, swallowing him, had denied his body the Christian dignity of a grave.

He, Senior, was the one who had asked for death. Yet Death had left him alive, had taken so many others, had taken even Junior and D'Mello, but left him untouched. The world was meaningless. There was no meaning to be found in it, he thought. The texts were empty and his eyes were blind. Perhaps he said some of this aloud. He may even have shouted it out. The girls in the lane below were looking up at him, and the green birds in the golden-shower tree were disturbed. Then, all of a sudden, he imagined that across the way, on the empty adjacent veranda, he saw a shadow move. He had cried out, "Why not me?," and in response a shadow had flickered where Junior used to stand. Death and life were just adjacent verandas. Senior stood on one of them as he always had, and on the other, continuing their tradition of many years, was Junior, his shadow, his namesake, arguing. ♦

Salman Rushdie has written twelve novels, including "Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-eight Nights," which will be published in September.
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The day that Junior fell down began like any other day: the explosion of heat rippling the air, the trumpeting sunlight, the traffic's tidal surges, the prayer chants in the distance, the cheap film music rising from the floor below, the loud pelvic thrusts of an "item number" dancing across a neighbor's TV, a child's cry, a mother's rebuke, unexplained laughter, scarlet expectorations, bicycles, the newly plaited hair of schoolgirls, the smell of strong sweet coffee, a green wing flashing in a tree.

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Jamila Lyiscott: 3 ways to speak English

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Jamila Lyiscott is a "tri-tongued orator;" in her powerful spoken-word essay "Broken English," she celebrates - and challenges - the three distinct flavors of English she speaks with her friends, in the classroom and with her parents. As she explores the complicated history and present-day identity that each language represents, she unpacks what it means to be "articulate."

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Empire strikes back: why former colonies don't need Britain after Brexit | Griffith Review

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British politics and culture feel nostalgic about the Commonwealth and hope to rekindle the old relationship. But the reality is not so simple

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Many modern apologists for British colonial rule in India no longer contest the basic facts of imperial exploitation and plunder, rapacity and loot, which are too deeply documented to be challengeable. Instead they offer a counter-argument: granted, the British took what they could for 200 years, but didn't they also leave behind a great deal of lasting benefit? In particular, political unity and democracy, the rule of law, railways, English education, even tea and cricket?

Indeed, the British like to point out that the very idea of "India" as one entity (now three, but one during the British Raj), instead of multiple warring principalities and statelets, is the incontestable contribution of British imperial rule.

Unfortunately for this argument, throughout the history of the subcontinent, there has existed an impulsion for unity. The idea of India is as old as the Vedas, the earliest Hindu scriptures, which describe "Bharatvarsha" as the land between the Himalayas and the seas. If this "sacred geography" is essentially a Hindu idea, Maulana Azad has written of how Indian Muslims, whether Pathans from the north-west or Tamils from the south, were all seen by Arabs as "Hindis", hailing from a recognisable civilisational space. Numerous Indian rulers had sought to unite the territory, with the Mauryas (three centuries before Christ) and the Mughals coming the closest by ruling almost 90% of the subcontinent. Had the British not completed the job, there is little doubt that some Indian ruler, emulating his forerunners, would have done so.

Far from crediting Britain for India's unity and enduring parliamentary democracy, the facts point clearly to policies that undermined it - the dismantling of existing political institutions, the fomenting of communal division and systematic political discrimination with a view to maintaining British domination.

In the years after 1757, the British astutely fomented cleavages among the Indian princes, and steadily consolidated their dominion through a policy of divide and rule. Later, in 1857, the sight of Hindu and Muslim soldiers rebelling together, willing to pledge joint allegiance to the enfeebled Mughal monarch, alarmed the British, who concluded that pitting the two groups against one another was the most effective way to ensure the unchallenged continuance of empire. As early as 1859, the then British governor of Bombay, Lord Elphinstone, advised London that "Divide et impera was the old Roman maxim, and it should be ours".

Since the British came from a hierarchical society with an entrenched class system, they instinctively looked for a similar one in India. The effort to understand ethnic, religious, sectarian and caste differences among Britain's subjects inevitably became an exercise in defining, dividing and perpetuating these differences. Thus colonial administrators regularly wrote reports and conducted censuses that classified Indians in ever-more bewilderingly narrow terms, based on their language, religion, sect, caste, sub-caste, ethnicity and skin colour. Not only were ideas of community reified, but also entire new communities were created by people who had not consciously thought of themselves as particularly different from others around them.

Large-scale conflicts between Hindus and Muslims (religiously defined), only began under colonial rule; many other kinds of social strife were labelled as religious due to the colonists' orientalist assumption that religion was the fundamental division in Indian society.

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Muslim refugees cram aboard a train during the partition conflict in 1947 ... the railways were first conceived by the East India Company for its own benefit. Photograph: AP

It is questionable whether a totalising Hindu or Muslim identity existed in any meaningful sense in India before the 19th century. Yet the creation and perpetuation of Hindu-Muslim antagonism was the most significant accomplishment of British imperial policy: the project of divide et impera would reach its culmination in the collapse of British authority in 1947. Partition left behind a million dead, 13 million displaced, billions of rupees of property destroyed, and the flames of communal hatred blazing hotly across the ravaged land. No greater indictment of the failures of British rule in India can be found than the tragic manner of its ending.

Nor did Britain work to promote democratic institutions under imperial rule, as it liked to pretend. Instead of building self-government from the village level up, the East India Company destroyed what existed. The British ran government, tax collection, and administered what passed for justice. Indians were excluded from all of these functions. When the crown eventually took charge of the country, it devolved smidgens of government authority, from the top, to unelected provincial and central "legislative" councils whose members represented a tiny educated elite, had no accountability to the masses, passed no meaningful legislation, exercised no real power and satisfied themselves they had been consulted by the government even if they took no actual decisions.

As late as 1920, under the Montagu-Chelmsford "reforms", Indian representatives on the councils - elected by a franchise so restricted and selective that only one in 250 Indians had the right to vote - would exercise control over subjects the British did not care about, like education and health, while real power, including taxation, law and order and the authority to nullify any vote by the Indian legislators, would rest with the British governor of the provinces.

Democracy, in other words, had to be prised from the reluctant grasp of the British by Indian nationalists. It is a bit rich to oppress, torture, imprison, enslave, deport and proscribe a people for 200 years, and then take credit for the fact that they are democratic at the end of it.

A corollary of the argument that Britain gave India political unity and democracy is that it established the rule of law in the country. This was, in many ways, central to the British self-conception of imperial purpose; Kipling, that flatulent voice of Victorian imperialism, would wax eloquent on the noble duty to bring law to those without it. But British law had to be imposed upon an older and more complex civilisation with its own legal culture, and the British used coercion and cruelty to get their way. And in the colonial era, the rule of law was not exactly impartial.

Crimes committed by whites against Indians attracted minimal punishment; an Englishmen who shot dead his Indian servant got six months' jail time and a modest fine (then about 100 rupees), while an Indian convicted of attempted rape against an Englishwoman was sentenced to 20 years of rigorous imprisonment. In the entire two centuries of British rule, only three cases can be found of Englishmen executed for murdering Indians, while the murders of thousands more at British hands went unpunished.

The death of an Indian at British hands was always an accident, and that of a Briton because of an Indian's actions always a capital crime. When a British master kicked an Indian servant in the stomach - a not uncommon form of conduct in those days - the Indian's resultant death from a ruptured spleen would be blamed on his having an enlarged spleen as a result of malaria. Punch wrote an entire ode to The Stout British Boot as the favoured instrument of keeping the natives in order.

Political dissidence was legally repressed through various acts, including a sedition law far more rigorous than its British equivalent. The penal code contained 49 articles on crimes relating to dissent against the state (and only 11 on crimes involving death).

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Rudyard Kipling, 'that flatulent voice of Victorian imperialism would wax eloquent on the noble duty to bring law to those without it'. Photograph: Culture Club/Getty Images

Of course the British did give India the English language, the benefits of which persist to this day. Or did they? The English language was not a deliberate gift to India, but again an instrument of colonialism, imparted to Indians only to facilitate the tasks of the English. In his notorious 1835 Minute on Education, Lord Macaulay articulated the classic reason for teaching English, but only to a small minority of Indians: "We must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indians in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals and in intellect."

The language was taught to a few to serve as intermediaries between the rulers and the ruled. The British had no desire to educate the Indian masses, nor were they willing to budget for such an expense. That Indians seized the English language and turned it into an instrument for our own liberation - using it to express nationalist sentiments against the British - was to their credit, not by British design.

The construction of the Indian Railways is often pointed to by apologists for empire as one of the ways in which British colonialism benefited the subcontinent, ignoring the obvious fact that many countries also built railways without having to go to the trouble and expense of being colonised to do so. But the facts are even more damning.

The railways were first conceived of by the East India Company, like everything else in that firm's calculations, for its own benefit. Governor General Lord Hardinge argued in 1843 that the railways would be beneficial "to the commerce, government and military control of the country". In their very conception and construction, the Indian railways were a colonial scam. British shareholders made absurd amounts of money by investing in the railways, where the government guaranteed returns double those of government stocks, paid entirely from Indian, and not British, taxes. It was a splendid racket for Britons, at the expense of the Indian taxpayer.

The railways were intended principally to transport extracted resources - coal, iron ore, cotton and so on - to ports for the British to ship home to use in their factories. The movement of people was incidental, except when it served colonial interests; and the third-class compartments, with their wooden benches and total absence of amenities, into which Indians were herded, attracted horrified comment even at the time.

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Asserting British rule during the war of independence, also known as the Indian mutiny, 1857. Photograph: Universal History Archive/Getty Images

And, of course, racism reigned; though whites-only compartments were soon done away with on grounds of economic viability, Indians found the available affordable space grossly inadequate for their numbers. (A marvellous post-independence cartoon captured the situation perfectly: it showed an overcrowded train, with people hanging off it, clinging to the windows, squatting perilously on the roof, and spilling out of their third-class compartments, while two Britons in sola topis sit in an empty first-class compartment saying to each other, "My dear chap, there's nobody on this train!")

Nor were Indians employed in the railways. The prevailing view was that the railways would have to be staffed almost exclusively by Europeans to "protect investments". This was especially true of signalmen, and those who operated and repaired the steam trains, but the policy was extended to the absurd level that even in the early 20th century all the key employees, from directors of the Railway Board to ticket-collectors, were white men - whose salaries and benefits were also paid at European, not Indian, levels and largely repatriated back to England.

Racism combined with British economic interests to undermine efficiency. The railway workshops in Jamalpur in Bengal and Ajmer in Rajputana were established in 1862 to maintain the trains, but their Indian mechanics became so adept that in 1878 they started designing and building their own locomotives. Their success increasingly alarmed the British, since the Indian locomotives were just as good, and a great deal cheaper, than the British-made ones. In 1912, therefore, the British passed an act of parliament explicitly making it impossible for Indian workshops to design and manufacture locomotives. Between 1854 and 1947, India imported around 14,400 locomotives from England, and another 3,000 from Canada, the US and Germany, but made none in India after 1912. After independence, 35 years later, the old technical knowledge was so completely lost to India that the Indian Railways had to go cap-in-hand to the British to guide them on setting up a locomotive factory in India again. There was, however, a fitting postscript to this saga. The principal technology consultants for Britain's railways, the London-based Rendel, today rely extensively on Indian technical expertise, provided to them by Rites, a subsidiary of the Indian Railways.

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Mother and children ... the British left a society with 16% literacy, a life expectancy of 27 and over 90% living below the poverty line. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

The process of colonial rule in India meant economic exploitation and ruin to millions, the destruction of thriving industries, the systematic denial of opportunities to compete, the elimination of indigenous institutions of governance, the transformation of lifestyles and patterns of living that had flourished since time immemorial, and the obliteration of the most precious possessions of the colonised, their identities and their self-respect. In 1600, when the East India Company was established, Britain was producing just 1.8% of the world's GDP, while India was generating some 23% (27% by 1700). By 1940, after nearly two centuries of the Raj, Britain accounted for nearly 10% of world GDP, while India had been reduced to a poor "third-world" country, destitute and starving, a global poster child of poverty and famine. The British left a society with 16% literacy, a life expectancy of 27, practically no domestic industry and over 90% living below what today we would call the poverty line.

The India the British entered was a wealthy, thriving and commercialising society: that was why the East India Company was interested in it in the first place. Far from being backward or underdeveloped, pre-colonial India exported high quality manufactured goods much sought after by Britain's fashionable society. The British elite wore Indian linen and silks, decorated their homes with Indian chintz and decorative textiles, and craved Indian spices and seasonings. In the 17th and 18th centuries, British shopkeepers tried to pass off shoddy English-made textiles as Indian in order to charge higher prices for them.

The story of India, at different phases of its several-thousand-year-old civilisational history, is replete with great educational institutions, magnificent cities ahead of any conurbations of their time anywhere in the world, pioneering inventions, world-class manufacturing and industry, and abundant prosperity - in short, all the markers of successful modernity today - and there is no earthly reason why this could not again have been the case, if its resources had not been drained away by the British.

If there were positive byproducts for Indians from the institutions the British established and ran in India in their own interests, they were never intended to benefit Indians. Today Indians cannot live without the railways; the Indian authorities have reversed British policies and they are used principally to transport people, with freight bearing ever higher charges in order to subsidise the passengers (exactly the opposite of British practice).

This is why Britain's historical amnesia about the rapacity of its rule in India is so deplorable. Recent years have seen the rise of what the scholar Paul Gilroy called "postcolonial melancholia", the yearning for the glories of Empire, with a 2014 YouGov poll finding 59% of respondents thought the British empire was "something to be proud of", and only 19% were "ashamed" of its misdeeds.

All this is not intended to have any bearing on today's Indo-British relationship. That is now between two sovereign and equal nations, not between an imperial overlord and oppressed subjects; indeed, British prime minister Theresa May recently visited India to seek investment in her post-Brexit economy. As I've often argued, you don't need to seek revenge upon history. History is its own revenge.

* Inglorious Empire by Shashi Tharoor is published by Hurst & Company at £20. Go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
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'But what about the railways ...?' ​​The myth of Britain's gifts to India

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Apologists for empire like to claim that the British brought democracy, the rule of law and trains to India. Isn't it a bit rich to oppress, torture and imprison a people for 200 years, then take credit for benefits that were entirely accidental?

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As a child Franklin Veaux recalls hearing his school teacher read a story about a princess who had a tantalising dilemma. Two male suitors had been wooing her and she had to choose between them. Franklin wondered why she could not choose both.

This early insight was revealing. Franklin has to this day never stuck to one relationship at a time. "I have never been in a monogamous relationship in my life. When I was in high school I took two dates to my senior prom. I lost my virginity as a threesome."

Today he lives with his long-term girlfriend in a home he shares with her other boyfriend. Occasionally his partner's teenage daughter also stays over. He is also in four other long-distance relationships, people he sees with varying degrees of frequency.

Franklin and his girlfriends are what's called polyamorous or "poly" as the community tends to call it. Being poly simply means you can be in more than one relationship, with the full support and trust of however many partners they choose to have.

Polyamory does not feature in any census tick box but anecdotal evidence suggests that it is on the rise. Some are even calling for it to be recognised by law following the legalisation of gay marriage in the UK and the US. All this raises of the question of whether the future of love may be very different from our current conceptions of romance.

But love has always been the same, right? A man falls for a woman, they get married, pop out a few children and stay together in a harmonious and monogamous relationship for life.

Sorry romantics. This wasn't, and still isn't, always the picture of love. Polygamy - where more than one spouse is allowed - was the norm for many of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Monogamy started flourishing when our ancestors began to settle down. A preference for it then appears to have arisen, among many other reasons, for economic purposes.

As many as 83% of societies around the world allow polygamy

It made it easier for fathers to divide and share valuable commodities such as land with their children. Monogamy later got hijacked by romantic love by idealistic 19th Century Victorians. "The idea of sexual exclusivity started emerging fairly late in the game," says professor of law Hadar Aviram at UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, US.

Even today monogamy is the minority relationship style around the world. Cultural estimates suggest that as many as 83% of societies around the world allow polygamy.
True romance
Now there is a fairly new player in the relationship game, at least as far as the public are concerned. In the last two decades, sociologists, legal scholars and the public have shown great interest towards polyamory and it's making them reassess the very nature of romance.

The word polyamory was first coined in the 1960s and literally means "many loves" in Latin. That's exactly what it is, but talking to poly individuals makes it quickly apparent that there is no one way to be poly. There are no immediate rules. Some people, like Franklin have live-in partners with additional liaisons outside the home. Others have a mixture of short and long-term relationships.

Some live in a big group with their partners and their partner's other partner(s), so called "family style polyamory". You get the idea. The one thing they all have in common is openness, understanding, trust and acceptance from all involved.

As you might imagine these kinds of relationships take a lot of work to maintain, so being poly is far from an easy option. For starters, to keep more than one relationship going, small logistical matters require a lot of communication. "Our relationships are a lot more challenging," says Eve Rickert, one of Franklin's long distance partners and co-author of their polyamory book More than Two.

It took several decades for published research to appear into this way of life. "It called into question people's core values," says Terri Conley from the University of Michigan, who initially struggled to get her research published due what she felt was a pervasive bias in favour of monogamy. Her research is revealing - there are some clear benefits to polyamory.

To start with, in a 2014 review paper Conley found that polyamorous people tend to maintain more friendships as they keep a wider social network. They are also less likely to cut off contact after a break-up.

Monogamous couples on the other hand, often withdraw from their friends in the first, loved-up stages of their relationship.

Conley also found that individuals in poly relationships are better at communicating and that jealousy is often lower. In new research, not yet published, she even discovered that overall relationship satisfaction can be higher in poly relationships, though another earlier 2015 review found that satisfaction was similar among monogamous and "consensual non-monogamous" relationships.

Nor do they seem more likely to spread sexually transmitted diseases. Indeed, an anonymous online study revealed that openly non-monogamous people are more likely to practice safe sex than cheating individuals in seemingly monogamous relationships.

Taking all her findings into consideration, Conley says that married monogamous couples could learn from a poly way of life. They could use using similar ways to communicate and resolve conflict for example. "The idea is that we put too much stress on marriage and need to give it more oxygen by giving people more resources," she says. "A lot of the strategies used in poly relationships can map onto suggestions of how we improve marriage."
Social stigmas
Unfortunately, these positive experiences portrayed by the research do not always translate to positive perceptions of polyamorous people. In fact, poly individuals face many stigmas and one of the biggest misconceptions is that it's all about sex. More partners means more bed-hopping, right? This is a common view, much to Franklin and Eve's despair.

"I have been in committed long-term relationships that span decades," Franklin explains. "There are easier ways to find sex if sex is what you're interested in."

Eve agrees. "Poly is a lot of work. Having a lifestyle where you enjoy casual sex and hook-ups is a lot less work than maintaining five current long-term relationships." In poly relationships people aren't simply after a romp in the dark, but they make emotional and loving commitments to each other, taking in the good and the bad.

In her research Conley also came across other more subtle stigmas. "People have the sense that monogamous individuals are seen as better, that people are more committed to each other," she says. People even perceived monogamous individuals as being better at very arbitrary things, such as walking their dogs, paying taxes on time and that they are more likely to floss their teeth.

'Poly' people face the same kinds of stigmas that singletons might face

If you are enjoying this story, take a look at the other pieces in our Sexual Revolutions special series, including:

These are similar to the kind of stigmas single people face. This all points to the fact that there is an intense "pressure to pair". Monogamy is surrounded by a glowing halo and anyone who deviates from this norm seems to be viewed negatively, says Conley. "Even people who are in non-monogamous relationships rate monogamous relationships as higher quality. They have internalised this sense that this is not the best thing to be doing - which is kind of sad."

The problem is that these judgements do not only affect the adults in polyamorous relationships, but it seeps into their children. Maria Pallotta-Chiarolli of Deakin University in Australia, has done extensive research looking into the well-being of children in poly families, and says the main issue is what's referred to as "the deficit model". This simply means outsiders believe that children are affected by their parents' lifestyle in a negative way, which is not necessarily the case.

"Research shows that most children are really happy growing up with lots of adults, in fact most kids love it," Pallotta-Chiarolli says. They benefit from added support and time from any additional parental role within their family unit. "These children are more insightful and wise, and open to understanding diversity and many forms of religion and culture."

"The children see parents organising employment, health care, making lunch," she continues. "For them they see the whole gamut of living in a family, but externally, [many] think polyamory is all about orgies, and that's really hard for the kids."

None of which is to say poly families are always perfect - they face similar struggles that any family might face. Eve, for instance, still lives with her husband as a life partner, but is no longer romantically involved with him. Then, as well as Franklin, she has been dating another woman for four years. Franklin also divorced his first wife of 18 years. Like any relationship, break-ups can be difficult, and they are even more complicated if children are involved.

These types of stigmas will be difficult to overcome, in part because these family units are not supported by any legal recognition

Regardless, any type of judgement from the outside world can put an unwelcome strain on polyamorous families. If the children underperform at school it's often attributed to the fact that their parents are living in a non-monogamous relationship. The children in turn try to "compensate by being perfect poster kids", Pallotta-Chiarolli explains.

These types of stigmas will be difficult to overcome, in part because these family units are not supported by any legal recognition, such as marriage and child custody. The appetite is there though, Aviram discovered. She spoke to numerous poly activists in research looking into whether polyamorous marriage might ever legally be possible

A 2012 survey of 4,000 polyamorous people revealed that about 76% of the respondents would be interested in legal marriage if it were available, while 92% agreed that "consensual, multiparty marriages among adults" should enjoy the same legal status as marriage between two people.

This appetite for legal poly marriage may have arisen as a result of the support given to same-sex marriage, which is now a legal right in the UK and in the US, Aviram says. "It galvanized the poly activists." (The comparison has not always been welcomed by LGBT advocates, however, who felt like it muddied the case for marriage equality.) The question many people asked was why polyamory could not receive similar treatment?

The truth is that implementing poly marriage would be complicated, in part because there are so many different types of poly relationships. "No poly family is like the others," Aviram says. That being said, the family style units - where everyone is a member of the household with no relationships outside - should work remarkably like a conventional marriage, she says.

She plotted through how it might work. Parental responsibilities and home ownership could be legally divided and the biological status of any potential parent could also be taken into consideration. While these may be complicated cases they echo many of the hurdles adoptive parents face. Relationships outside the main home might introduce further complications but again, there are similar legal solutions for divorce and foster care.

In fact, Aviram says that a key challenge for now comes from the lack of legal protection - such as laws that prevent discrimination - for poly relationships. In the US Army for instance, adultery is even seen as a crime, meaning a person cannot be 'out' as poly if they are married.

For polyamory to be protected by law it will first have to be considered an orientation in the way that homosexually is. If, legally speaking, it is seen as an orientation, then the reasoning goes that poly individuals would be protected by similar anti-discriminatory laws.

Legal researcher Ann Tweedy, of Hamline University School of Law recently laid out an argument for why it should be considered an orientation. Sexual orientation, she says, is defined as attraction to either the same sex, the opposite sex or both sexes - but it could be broadened to include other sexual preferences that are entwined with identity.

This echoes what many poly activists say, Aviram found. "They tell you they have an innate sense that they are wired this way. That this is a natural way of being for them." If that is the case, these groups should receive special anti-discriminatory protection under law as well, she says.

However, even poly people say it is not clear cut. In small 2005 survey Meg-John Barker of the Open University in the UK, asked 30 polyamorous people how they identify to find that about half saw it as "a fairly fixed identity", while the other half saw as a choice, as "an ethical alternative to infidelity". Eve and Franklin also suggest it can be a bit of both.
Promiscuous apes
That some people choose polyamory in order not to cheat on their partner brings to light a striking contradiction about monogamy in the west: adultery is rife. Pallotta-Chiarolli points out the irony that mainstream media almost accept affairs as a social norm. "But when it comes to ethical non-monogamous relationships... this is considered [abnormal]."

Aside from that, most people are not monogamous in the true sense of the word: staying with one partner for life. You only need to look at divorce rates to see that about one-third of us practice what is referred to as "serial monogamy", where we change partners over time.

Monogamy is also extremely rare in the animal kingdom, as BBC Earth explored in detail. Even among apparently monogamous animals there are many "extra-pair copulations", or cheating. Our closest relatives, chimpanzees, bonobos and even orangutans all live in highly promiscuous societies, which suggests our common ancestor with chimps did so too.

In this view, "the idea that monogamy is 'natural' or 'normal' in human beings is hard to sustain", says Barker. "As with so many things, there is a lot of diversity in this area."

This all points the fact that just as there's not one set way for love between individuals to be expressed. What works for one person or society may not work for another.

Relationships are eclectic and diverse, and while legal recognition for polyamory may be a long way off, with greater awareness of our differences, love in all its many forms is surely set to change.

--
This story is part of our Melissa Hogenboom is BBC Earth's feature writer. She is Join 600,000+ Future fans by liking us on , or follow us on , , and . If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc.com features newsletter, called "If You Only Read 6 Things This Week". A handpicked selection of stories from BBC Future, Earth, Culture, Capital, Travel and Autos, delivered to your inbox every Friday. @melissasuzanneh on Twitter. Olivia Howitt is BBC Future's picture editor. She Tweets as @OliviaHowitt. Sexual Revolutions series on our evolving understanding of sex and gender.

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Melissa Hogenboom / Pictures by Olivia Howitt

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Polyamorous relationships may be the future of love

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As a child Franklin Veaux recalls hearing his school teacher read a story about a princess who had a tantalising dilemma. Two male suitors had been wooing her and she had to choose between them. Franklin wondered why she could not choose both. This early insight was revealing.

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Lots of people make New Year's resolutions that focus on conserving something. Some people pledge to eat less junk food. Others will commit to saving more money.

Columbia University law professor Tim Wu has a suggestion for something else people should consider conserving: attention. In his new book The Attention Merchants, Tim argues that our mental space is constantly being hijacked.

"You go to your computer and you have the idea you're going to write just one email. You sit down and suddenly an hour goes by. Maybe two hours. And you don't know what happened," Tim says.

"This sort of surrender of control over our lives speaks deeply to the challenge of freedom and what it means to be autonomous."

Companies ranging from Google to Fox News have found ways to grab our attention, package it, and then make money off it by selling it to advertisers. On this week's Hidden Brain, we discuss the strategies newspapers, television shows, and websites use to harvest our attention.
Hidden Brain is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Maggie Penman, Jennifer Schmidt, Rhaina Cohen, Parth Shah, and Renee Klahr. Our supervising producer is Tara Boyle. You can also follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain, and listen for Hidden Brain stories each week on your local public radio station.

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Lots of people make New Year's resolutions that focus on conserving something. Some people pledge to eat less junk food. Others will commit to saving more money. Columbia University law professor Tim Wu has a suggestion for something else people should consider conserving: attention.

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You're more likely to achieve the American dream if you live in Denmark

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Research has repeatedly shown the clear link between high levels of income inequality and low levels of social mobility.

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Picture the USA in late 1997, but with less boy bands and more post-apocalyptic desolation. That's exactly how Simon Stålenhag envisioned The Electric State, his upcoming latest installment to an impressive streak of successful artbooks, and we're completely lost in how fascinating it turned out.

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Girl And Her Robot Travel Through Wastelands In Alternate 90s USA In Chilling Illustrations

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Picture the USA in late 1997, but with less boy bands and more post-apocalyptic desolation. That's exactly how Simon Stålenhag envisioned The Electric State, his upcoming latest installment to an impressive streak of successful artbooks, and we're completely lost in how fascinating it turned out.

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The online eReader for language learners. Import other websites or novel length texts and read them in a distraction free environment with one-click translation. After reading, review the new vocabulary with spaced repetition flashcards.

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Few groups have enjoyed Donald Trump's rise to the White House more than Europe's far-right white nationalists, who have forged closer links with like-minded groups in the U.S. and benefited from Trump's perceived sympathy for strands of their radical politics.

But the right-wing terror attack in Charlottesville - and Trump's equivocating response, saying there were "very fine people on both sides" - has thrown up a paradoxical problem for a movement that believes it is having its moment. Charlottesville has given the radical right the international attention it craves (including from the president of the United States), while also nakedly exposing the ugliness of its beliefs.

"Obviously, this was a PR disaster," said Daniel Friberg, a prominent figure in the Swedish radical right identitarian movement, who attended the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville with a group of friends, including American radical-right leader Richard Spencer. Others in European far-right networks had voiced similar concerns about the "bad optics" from the event, he said.

" I saw a tremendous amount of violence," said Friberg. "It was not at all what I've ever experienced in Europe. " But instead of condemning his fellow marchers, Friberg sought to shift the blame for the violence to left-wing protesters and the authorities.

Like Spencer, with whom he co-edits a fringe right-wing website, Friberg is a clean-cut, smooth-talking far-right activist who describes himself as an identitarian. The French-originated ideology, increasingly influential among European far-right youth, argues for the preservation of a white or European identity, while, in theory, attempting to decouple from the overt racism, violence, and fascist symbolism that have been a barrier to the far-right's political acceptability in post-war Europe. He sees "identitarian" and "alt-right" as largely synonymous terms.

Few groups have enjoyed Donald Trump's rise to the White House more than Europe's far-right white nationalists, who have forged closer links with like-minded groups in the U.S. and benefited from Trump's perceived sympathy for strands of their radical politics.

But the right-wing terror attack in Charlottesville - and Trump's equivocating response, saying there were "very fine people on both sides" - has thrown up a paradoxical problem for a movement that believes it is having its moment. Charlottesville has given the radical right the international attention it craves (including from the president of the United States), while also nakedly exposing the ugliness of its beliefs.

"Obviously, this was a PR disaster," said Daniel Friberg, a prominent figure in the Swedish radical right identitarian movement, who attended the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville with a group of friends, including American radical-right leader Richard Spencer. Others in European far-right networks had voiced similar concerns about the "bad optics" from the event, he said.

"I saw a tremendous amount of violence," said Friberg. "It was not at all what I've ever experienced in Europe." But instead of condemning his fellow marchers, Friberg sought to shift the blame for the violence to left-wing protesters and the authorities.

Like Spencer, with whom he co-edits a fringe right-wing website, Friberg is a clean-cut, smooth-talking far-right activist who describes himself as an identitarian. The French-originated ideology, increasingly influential among European far-right youth, argues for the preservation of a white or European identity, while, in theory, attempting to decouple from the overt racism, violence, and fascist symbolism that have been a barrier to the far-right's political acceptability in post-war Europe. He sees "identitarian" and "alt-right" as largely synonymous terms.

"This is certain just to wake up a lot of people who are repelled by what they're doing."

But this image-sensitive, radical-right-wing group's association with Charlottesville - now indelibly linked around the world to a neo-Nazi terror attack, and the sight of crowds of angry protesters chanting "Jews will not replace us" - has given the lie to identitarian claims of respectability. That revelation has traveled across the Atlantic.

"The pictures from Charlottesville speak very loudly," said Daniel Wiklander, editor-in-chief of Expo, the publication of a Swedish anti-racism foundation, who said there had been a muted reception from the European far-right to the events in Charlottesville due to the potential damage it has done to the movement's political progress.

He said he was surprised that the members of the European identitarian movement, which had been trying to build respectability as a viable political brand, "thought it was a good idea to stand shoulder to shoulder with these open Nazis."

"They want to create a focal point somewhere where the conflict can intensify - but if that doesn't attract potential recruits, then what good is it? Because this is certain just to wake up a lot of people who are repelled by what they're doing," he said.

"Now all people are going to think of is this 32-year-old woman run over by a lunatic."

Friberg said he was "surprised" and "a bit disappointed" to see swastikas in Charlottesville, and that it was a mistake that neo-Nazi groups were allowed to participate in the march. He said he wouldn't make such a mistake at any event he was involved with in Europe.

"To identify as a Klan member or a neo-Nazi in contemporary society, this is sort of live-action role-playing," he said. "It means you're not serious about your politics."

"They don't want to be equated with the openly neo-Nazi and racist protesters."

As Europe's far-right picks over the potential impact of Charlottesville on their movement, self-reflection appears in short supply. Like Friberg, many throughout Europe's far-right so far have largely sought to deflect blame for the fiasco by pinning the violence on left-wing protesters.

In Poland, where a more unreconstructed form of ultranationalism has been ascendant in recent years, Jacek Miedlar, a fiery far-right activist and former priest posted an online rant in which he blamed the violence on police, anti-racism protesters and, ultimately, George Soros, who he accused of funding Black Lives Matter.

Rafal Pankowski, of Polish anti-racist organization Never Again, said American politics had gained a particular resonance in Poland after Trump's visit in July, which was viewed as a major win for Poland's staunchly anti-Muslim ultranationalists. Appearing in Warsaw before a crowd that included right-wing activists from around the country, and in which a Confederate flag was waved, Trump delivered a speech high on nativist rhetoric, speaking of God, country and a clash of civilizations. "They consider it a big success, the way he seems to endorse the Polish nationalist narrative," Pankowski told VICE News.

In Germany, an article featured on the German-language fringe-right site Blaue Narzisse sought to frame Charlottesville as a win for the far-right by hailing the way they were able to translate an online movement into large crowds on the streets, blaming the violence on police and antifascists, and accusing the press of "inventing" a neo-Nazi terror attack. One comment noted the regrettable presence of the Ku Klux Klan at the event, which "clouds the picture."

"It's like Trump's victory made these people bolder."

"They don't want to be equated with the openly neo-Nazi and racist protesters," said Christian Weissgerber, a former neo-Nazi turned anti-racism activist, who described the article as "a rather representative stance for most of the militant identitarians and alt-right in Germany and Austria."

The far-right's misstep in Charlottesville may ultimately have been a result of hubris; in its wake, the movement may adopt a more cautious approach to avoid a repeat of such damaging scenes, said Wiklander.

He said the European far-right had been emboldened by Trump's victory, and had successfully adopted many of the tactics of the U.S. "alt-right" - gaining online momentum through trolling the left and "triggering" liberals by pointing out the perceived hypocrisies of identity politics.

"It's like Trump's victory made these people bolder," Wiklander said. "They have the feeling of support from the government - that their politics are with the times."

That feeling was reinforced Tuesday evening, when the President of the United States threw them a lifeline amid a storm of international condemnation of the movement by saying there were "very fine people on both sides" in Charlottesville, and that the "alt-left" also shared in the blame.

Poland's ultranationalist groups welcomed Trump's statement, said Pankowski. Krzysztof Bosak, a deputy leader of the far-right National Movement, even went so far as to slam Republican politicians John McCain and Mitt Romney on Twitter for their "disgusting treason" in criticizing Trump's account of the violence. "They stood on the side of violent antifa and against the president," he wrote.

Friberg, too, appeared validated, and said he was happy to hear the denunciation of the left from Trump - a politician he credits with having helped Europe's identitarians in their goal of moving what was considered politically acceptable in the debate on immigration.

"I was happy that he did that (blamed the left), because he at least shifted the narrative a little bit in the right direction," he said.

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White nationalists in Europe loved Trump's Charlottesville response

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Few groups have enjoyed Donald Trump's rise to the White House more than Europe's far-right white nationalists, who have forged closer links with like-minded groups in the U.S. and benefited from Trump's perceived sympathy for strands of their radical politics.

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How Charlottesville became the symbolic prize of the far right | Edward Helmore and Lois Beckett

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The white supremacists Donald Trump is loath to criticise made city's plan to remove a Confederate statue their rallying point

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Tim Smith-Laing reviews Emigrants: Why the English Sailed to the New World by James Evans
With all the political focus on immigration to these shores, it is easy to forget that anyone ever leaves Britain. But they do. Last year the Office for National Statistics recorded the emigration of 128,000 British citizens. Of course, that needs to be seen in context: out of a total population of 65 million, 128,000 is not even a fifth of a per cent. Which goes some way to showing how much of a decision it is to leave one's country and live elsewhere; even in the 21st century it tends to take a certain kind of person and a certain kind of impetus to do so.

The International Passenger Survey records reasons for leaving the UK under the four bland categories of "work-related" (50 per cent), "accompanying others" (just under 10 per cent), "formal study" (just under 5 per cent), and "other/not stated" (everyone else). A more imaginative officialdom might rename the same categories as "money", "love", "knowledge" and "mystery". That would hardly fly as a set of boarding-card labels, but - having been in the first and third categories, and as a beneficiary of the second category - I think it gets closer to the truth of things. We are talking about human motives, after all.

It is worth bearing in mind what it takes to emigrate nowadays when reading Emigrants, James Evans's engaging account of English emigration to America in the 17th century. If so few people are willing to leave Britain when most of the world is a few hours' flight away, what possessed them to risk it when a transatlantic voyage could take anything from five weeks up to eternity?

Credit: Universal History Archive/Getty Images

They did leave, though, and in droves. As Evans points out, figures are harder to come by for the 17th century, as no one was keeping track, especially not of those who counted among "the offals of our people", as one writer put it. But historians estimate that across the century an average of 38,000 people left England for America each year, from a population of around five and a half million.

That is a smaller percentage than today's figures, but it is, Evans notes, "a colossal number" in a European context. The so-called "swarming of the English" was twice as large as contemporary emigration from Spain, and 40 times that from France. In an era when England had no significant means of competing on the imperial front with France or Spain, we became instead "the pioneer of mass migration" - a move that cemented the "Anglo-Saxon" character of North America.

Evans is vivid on the risks of going to a land that, for a good portion of the century, had little to recommend it. The embryonic early colonies held only the most tenuous footholds there, and were always at risk from harsh winters, disease, justifiably antipathetic indigenous populations, or simply running out of food. Early America was far from a land of plenty. In Jamestown - eventually one of the most successful colonies - an original contingent of 500 settlers was "scythed down to only 60" in the winter of 1609-10 after falling out with the tribes they had depended upon for food; when ships brought more colonists and supplies, they also brought rats, "which competed for anything edible that might remain".

Credit: De Agostini Editorial

And yet, for many, America still seemed a better bet than England. For much of the 17th century, England was in a state of persistent crisis. Between religious ructions, civil war, plague and the recurrent crop failures that accompanied the so-called Little Ice Age, the mid-1600s must count in English history as one of the most difficult periods in which to survive.

And with each successive regime, Catholics, Puritans, and Quakers alike took turns to suffer the disdain of the authorities. Even if the would-be settlers were misled by hopeful rumour, optimistic prospectuses or outright deception about America, Evans suggests that few were actually desperate to make new lives there. "Most, in truth, were simply anxious to leave England."

With this in mind, Emigrants' approach to the motives of English settlers in the new world focuses on the "push" as much as the "pull" behind their leaving. The different driving factors, political and economic, are reconstructed in a series of thumbnail sketches of emigrants and their reasons for striking out to the new world.

Credit: Orion

There are some familiar figures, like the poet Anne Bradstreet, or John Rolfe (eventual husband to Pocahontas), and there are others of the kind history tends to forget, like the indentured servants Edward and Anne Furnifull. It is an ideal mode for this kind of history, especially given Evans's way with a character portrait. As I said, we are talking about human motives. Times have changed, but I couldn't help wishing that the International Passenger Survey had space for the categories of emigrant outlined by Evans' chapters: "Fish", "Gold and Smoke". "Equality before God", "King", "Fur", "Liberty", "Despair".

As readers of Evans's Merchant Adventurers (2013) will expect, the result is brisk, informative, and (though it does not necessarily break much fresh ground for those familiar with the period) eye-opening, too. Though there are inevitable quibbles over emphasis - Evans is, for my money, a little coy about the utter destructiveness of native-settler relations - Emigrants is a fascinating book that gives real insight into the age that birthed the modern West.

Emigrants by James Evans
336pp, W&N, £20, ebook £9.99

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What made 17th-century England so unbearable that thousands risked the voyage to America?

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Tim Smith-Laing reviews Emigrants: Why the English Sailed to the New World by James Evans With all the political focus on immigration to these shores, it is easy to forget that anyone ever leaves Britain. But they do. Last year the Office for National Statistics recorded the emigration of 128,000 British citizens.

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Author Sarah Hall on the short story's unique ability to challenge our expectations, our sense of order, and the world's 'given-ness'

Sarah Hall's career has been rich in recognition, going back to her debut novel, Haweswater, which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers' Prize. The British author went onto be named to Granta's coveted "20 Under 40" list, and in 2013, she won the BBC National Short Story Award for "Mrs. Fox" - which also happens to be the first story in her latest collection, Madame Zero, arriving on US book stands this week. In Madame Zero, Hall uses rich observations to explore the female experience in wholly original, thoughtful, and enticing stories. Throughout the collection, she weaves themes of resilience, finding your true self, and discovering how truth shifts over time.

We corresponded via email about what short stories offer that novels cannot, how ideas stand out and stick, as well as what we can learn from reading short fiction.

Adam Vitcavage: As a writer, what do you get from short stories that you can't get in a novel?
Sarah Hall: Short stories are such a different exercise, and testing in their own unique way. It's not that stamina isn't required - drafting and editing a story may take years - but they seem to have a different barometric pressure internally. The challenges are more about condensing a world and creating potency, creating consistency and purity across a narrative, and the drama is perhaps like a flash storm rather than the seasonal moods of long form. Sorry for the weather analogy - how English of me! Let me try sport instead...! The satisfaction of feeling you've written a successful short piece is a different kind of performance pride to the exhausted post-marathon elation (or sickness) of completing a novel. It feels a more schematic gymnastic enterprise. Short stories are an exacting, less forgiving art form, where, ideally, huge metaphysical references and questions are posed within a restrictive zone. It's harder to feel you've perfected a short story, but in the end they can feel more perfect, meaningful and resonant than a novel.
Vitcavage: What about as a reader?
Hall: This is where I feel short stories have huge appeal and value. Novels can make inquiries into subject matters and can illuminate subjects; they can feel like human journeys or journeys to other worlds, and they can offer extended reading intrigue and pleasure. Stories do that too, to an extent, but their peculiar quality of disquiet, of discombobulation, requires a reader to puzzle about the given-ness of what they believe to be true or right. We try so hard to order and create stability, but life is mutable, and the world is chaotic and vexing. I know no other form that so naturally seeks to challenge given-ness. How? Why? Maybe it's something to do with void, inference and microcosm-ing - the gap created, of what isn't there, what isn't explained, so even small, strange events can knock a reader for six. We have to interpret and bring to the experience all those unsaid but imaginable things, all those uncomfortable suspicions that we aren't in control. We must test our preconceptions and expectations and sense of security. I suppose I feel that short stories, even though they might seem to create an uncanny matrix, are like a pill that lets us see the real.

"I feel that short stories, even though they might seem to create an uncanny matrix, are like a pill that lets us see the real."
Vitcavage: I found the variety and scope of this collection to be intoxicating. Every story feels tethered together but completely fresh. Was this a conscious effort, or how did these stories come together?
Hall: Thank you. I think ultimately that's just how I work. Whatever I'm writing, I have to feel something is a new and separate and entire idea, even if the themes are similar to previous works. Without wanting to sound overblown, I also really try to create an artistic piece each time I write, that contains within it as much as possible (either actually or allusively). It's not to everyone's taste, such distinctively different pieces, and I admire writers like Díaz, Saunders, and Tessa Hadley, who create collections with more of a running DNA through the stories, because something greater than the component parts can be constructed overall. Madame Zero is the work of 5 years or so and over that time there have been preoccupations which I think moor the pieces together, albeit slackly.
Vitcavage: Numerous stories stood out to me, but I want to focus on the genesis and creative process of one (or two if you're willing). "Case Study 2" was stylistically refreshing and "Goodnight Nobody" felt like a story I needed in my life for years. Where did these ideas originally come from?
Hall: Thank you again. "Case Study 2" stemmed from my interest in psychology, particularly an interest in enmeshment within families and communities and how this might effect individuals, and might go on to define how successfully or unsuccessfully people form relationships in the wider world, outside the system that was formative. I think sometimes short story writing (any writing) can place an author through the looking glass. I had a happy rural upbringing - that wild kid on the moors with the snails and the geological knowledge is/was me, but Christopher isn't me, he's in another un-boundaried Cumbrian world, of neglect and chaos. With this story I also wanted to challenge myself stylistically. Case studies in psychology or medicine can often read like stories, and I was very interested in attempting the 'found poem/found document' model. The real challenge is making something 'told' feel activated on the page. And the genogram was hard as I'm completely technologically useless!

"Goodnight Nobody." This seems like one of the softer stories in the collection to me, which is odd because it comes directly out of a very turbulent patch of my life. My mum was diagnosed with a terminal illness when my daughter was 4 months old, and she died a year later. A few months after that, I became a single parent. The emotional storm of human incoming and outgoing and of personal redefinitions was pretty intense. So this piece is probably about me very gently (gingerly might be a better word) trying to find a way through all that trauma, loss and gain, which isn't to say I think writing is therapy - I really don't. There's a lot of negative space and unknowns and voids in the story, and really the catalyst for its writing can be found in the title. I was reading Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown to my daughter for the first time, and I hit that empty page with 'Goodnight Nobody' on it. Cue a total What-The-Fuck moment for me. Something coalesced, some kind of existential non-understanding, that I don't think I'll ever resolve, just like that page will never really make sense. And of course short stories trade so well in irresolution.

"I was reading Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown to my daughter for the first time, and I hit that empty page with 'Goodnight Nobody' on it. Cue a total What-The-Fuck moment for me."
Vitcavage: The short story writing and editing process is obviously different than a novel. How do you go about the lifecycle of a story?
Hall: Apologies, I'm very bad at describing my process. But I think I know when an idea has the potential shape to be a short story, so I usually set off with more of an idea of what it will ultimately be or become than I do with a novel. Generally a first draft has to be fairly 'clean-feeling' and 'true-feeling' for a story to go on and be a success, with a lot of up-front editing in the brain, as well as on the page. I tend not to leave anything lingering in unfinished states too long or it dies a death.
Vitcavage :In an interview with the Telegraph Vitcavage: Many of your previous works have been held in such high regard. Can you give any insight into your next project? in 2015, you spoke about how you want your work to speak to more than just women. I, for one, love learning a different perspective. What do you hope readers - both female and male, young and old - can learn from your writing?

Hall: Oh, I don't know. It's not for me to say really what others might take from the work, and I'm certainly not trying to educate. I just hope readers will be transported, be moved, and maybe will be left thinking over a subject. I feel like I'm on a journey of exploration when I write, and I can only hope that whoever - anyone, someone - feels companionability with that journey, because they're also interested in that subject, and are asking similar questions. I've never felt limited by age or gender, even as age and gender have helped form me, so I've never felt the work is directed towards a particular group. The one caveat there is I hope women readers especially find my women characters exhilarating and interesting, and I hope they recognise the wide spectrum of female capability and ambition. I know I would like to encounter more of that feeling as a reader!

Hall: A new novel is next. It's something a bit bonkers, if I can pull it off, but I'm in the early stages so trying to describe anything is probably unwise. And I'm writing more short stories. The form makes a lot of sense to me just now.

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A Good Short Story Is "A Pill That Lets Us See the Real"

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Author Sarah Hall on the short story's unique ability to challenge our expectations, our sense of order, and the world's 'given-ness' Sarah Hall's career has been rich in recognition, going back to her debut novel, Haweswater, which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

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The fault line of contemporary politics is between those that embrace globalization and those that fear globalization.

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Transcript of "Why Brexit happened -- and what to do next"

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TED Talk Subtitles and Transcript: We are embarrassingly unaware of how divided our societies are, and Brexit grew out of a deep, unexamined divide between those that fear globalization and those that embrace it, says social scientist Alexander Betts.

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Full transcript of U.S. President Donald Trump's address to the Muslim world from Saudi Arabia

I want to thank King Salman for his extraordinary words, and the magnificent Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for hosting today's summit. I am honored to be received by such gracious hosts. I have always heard about the splendor of your country and the kindness of your citizens, but words do not do justice to the grandeur of this remarkable place and the incredible hospitality you have shown us from the moment we arrived.

You also hosted me in the treasured home of King Abdulaziz, the founder of the Kingdom who united your great people. Working alongside another beloved leader - American President Franklin Roosevelt - King Abdulaziz began the enduring partnership between our two countries. King Salman: your father would be so proud to see that you are continuing his legacy - and just as he opened the first chapter in our partnership, today we begin a new chapter that will bring lasting benefits to our citizens.

Let me now also extend my deep and heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of the distinguished heads of state who made this journey here today. You greatly honor us with your presence, and I send the warmest regards from my country to yours. I know that our time together will bring many blessings to both your people and mine.

I stand before you as a representative of the American People, to deliver a message of friendship and hope. That is why I chose to make my first foreign visit a trip to the heart of the Muslim world, to the nation that serves as custodian of the two holiest sites in the Islamic Faith.

In my inaugural address to the American People, I pledged to strengthen America's oldest friendships, and to build new partnerships in pursuit of peace. I also promised that America will not seek to impose our way of life on others, but to outstretch our hands in the spirit of cooperation and trust.

Our vision is one of peace, security, and prosperity-in this region, and in the world.

Our goal is a coalition of nations who share the aim of stamping out extremism and providing our children a hopeful future that does honor to God.

And so this historic and unprecedented gathering of leaders-unique in the history of nations-is a symbol to the world of our shared resolve and our mutual respect. To the leaders and citizens of every country assembled here today, I want you to know that the United States is eager to form closer bonds of friendship, security, culture and commerce.

For Americans, this is an exciting time. A new spirit of optimism is sweeping our country: in just a few months, we have created almost a million new jobs, added over 3 trillion dollars of new value, lifted the burdens on American industry, and made record investments in our military that will protect the safety of our people and enhance the security of our wonderful friends and allies - many of whom are here today.

Now, there is even more blessed news I am pleased to share with you. My meetings with King Salman, the Crown Prince, and the Deputy Crown Prince, have been filled with great warmth, good will, and tremendous cooperation. Yesterday, we signed historic agreements with the Kingdom that will invest almost $400 billion in our two countries and create many thousands of jobs in America and Saudi Arabia.

This landmark agreement includes the announcement of a $110 billion Saudi-funded defense purchase - and we will be sure to help our Saudi friends to get a good deal from our great American defense companies. This agreement will help the Saudi military to take a greater role in security operations.

We have also started discussions with many of the countries present today on strengthening partnerships, and forming new ones, to advance security and stability across the Middle East and beyond.

Later today, we will make history again with the opening of a new Global Center for Combating Extremist Ideology - located right here, in this central part of the Islamic World.

This groundbreaking new center represents a clear declaration that Muslim-majority countries must take the lead in combatting radicalization, and I want to express our gratitude to King Salman for this strong demonstration of leadership.

I have had the pleasure of welcoming several of the leaders present today to the White House, and I look forward to working with all of you.

America is a sovereign nation and our first priority is always the safety and security of our citizens. We are not here to lecture-we are not here to tell other people how to live, what to do, who to be, or how to worship. Instead, we are here to offer partnership - based on shared interests and values - to pursue a better future for us all.

Here at this summit we will discuss many interests we share together. But above all we must be united in pursuing the one goal that transcends every other consideration. That goal is to meet history's great test-to conquer extremism and vanquish the forces of terrorism.

Young Muslim boys and girls should be able to grow up free from fear, safe from violence, and innocent of hatred. And young Muslim men and women should have the chance to build a new era of prosperity for themselves and their peoples.

With God's help, this summit will mark the beginning of the end for those who practice terror and spread its vile creed. At the same time, we pray this special gathering may someday be remembered as the beginning of peace in the Middle East - and maybe, even all over the world.

But this future can only be achieved through defeating terrorism and the ideology that drives it.

Few nations have been spared its violent reach.

America has suffered repeated barbaric attacks - from the atrocities of September 11th to the devastation of the Boston Bombing, to the horrible killings in San Bernardino and Orlando.

The nations of Europe have also endured unspeakable horror. So too have the nations of Africa and even South America. India, Russia, China and Australia have been victims.

But, in sheer numbers, the deadliest toll has been exacted on the innocent people of Arab, Muslim and Middle Eastern nations. They have borne the brunt of the killings and the worst of the destruction in this wave of fanatical violence.

Some estimates hold that more than 95 percent of the victims of terrorism are themselves Muslim.

We now face a humanitarian and security disaster in this region that is spreading across the planet. It is a tragedy of epic proportions. No description of the suffering and depravity can begin to capture its full measure.

The true toll of ISIS, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and so many others, must be counted not only in the number of dead. It must also be counted in generations of vanished dreams.

The Middle East is rich with natural beauty, vibrant cultures, and massive amounts of historic treasures. It should increasingly become one of the great global centers of commerce and opportunity.

This region should not be a place from which refugees flee, but to which newcomers flock.

Saudi Arabia is home to the holiest sites in one of the world's great faiths. Each year millions of Muslims come from around the world to Saudi Arabia to take part in the Hajj. In addition to ancient wonders, this country is also home to modern ones-including soaring achievements in architecture.

Egypt was a thriving center of learning and achievement thousands of years before other parts of the world. The wonders of Giza, Luxor and Alexandria are proud monuments to that ancient heritage.

All over the world, people dream of walking through the ruins of Petra in Jordan. Iraq was the cradle of civilization and is a land of natural beauty. And the United Arab Emirates has reached incredible heights with glass and steel, and turned earth and water into spectacular works of art.

The entire region is at the center of the key shipping lanes of the Suez Canal, the Red Sea, and the Straits of Hormuz. The potential of this region has never been greater. 65 percent of its population is under the age of 30. Like all young men and women, they seek great futures to build, great national projects to join, and a place for their families to call home.

But this untapped potential, this tremendous cause for optimism, is held at bay by bloodshed and terror. There can be no coexistence with this violence. There can be no tolerating it, no accepting it, no excusing it, and no ignoring it.

Every time a terrorist murders an innocent person, and falsely invokes the name of God, it should be an insult to every person of faith.

Terrorists do not worship God, they worship death.

If we do not act against this organized terror, then we know what will happen. Terrorism's devastation of life will continue to spread. Peaceful societies will become engulfed by violence. And the futures of many generations will be sadly squandered.

If we do not stand in uniform condemnation of this killing-then not only will we be judged by our people, not only will we be judged by history, but we will be judged by God.

This is not a battle between different faiths, different sects, or different civilizations.

This is a battle between barbaric criminals who seek to obliterate human life, and decent people of all religions who seek to protect it.

This is a battle between Good and Evil.

When we see the scenes of destruction in the wake of terror, we see no signs that those murdered were Jewish or Christian, Shia or Sunni. When we look upon the streams of innocent blood soaked into the ancient ground, we cannot see the faith or sect or tribe of the victims - we see only that they were Children of God whose deaths are an insult to all that is holy.

But we can only overcome this evil if the forces of good are united and strong - and if everyone in this room does their fair share and fulfills their part of the burden.

Terrorism has spread across the world. But the path to peace begins right here, on this ancient soil, in this sacred land.

America is prepared to stand with you - in pursuit of shared interests and common security.

But the nations of the Middle East cannot wait for American power to crush this enemy for them. The nations of the Middle East will have to decide what kind of future they want for themselves, for their countries, and for their children.

It is a choice between two futures - and it is a choice America CANNOT make for you.

A better future is only possible if your nations drive out the terrorists and extremists. Drive. Them. Out.

DRIVE THEM OUT of your places of worship.

DRIVE THEM OUT of your communities.

DRIVE THEM OUT of your holy land, and

DRIVE THEM OUT OF THIS EARTH.

For our part, America is committed to adjusting our strategies to meet evolving threats and new facts. We will discard those strategies that have not worked-and will apply new approaches informed by experience and judgment. We are adopting a Principled Realism, rooted in common values and shared interests.

Our friends will never question our support, and our enemies will never doubt our determination. Our partnerships will advance security through stability, not through radical disruption. We will make decisions based on real-world outcomes - not inflexible ideology. We will be guided by the lessons of experience, not the confines of rigid thinking. And, wherever possible, we will seek gradual reforms - not sudden intervention.

We must seek partners, not perfection-and to make allies of all who share our goals.

Above all, America seeks peace - not war.

Muslim nations must be willing to take on the burden, if we are going to defeat terrorism and send its wicked ideology into oblivion.

The first task in this joint effort is for your nations to deny all territory to the foot soldiers of evil. Every country in the region has an absolute duty to ensure that terrorists find no sanctuary on their soil.

Many are already making significant contributions to regional security: Jordanian pilots are crucial partners against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Saudi Arabia and a regional coalition have taken strong action against Houthi militants in Yemen. The Lebanese Army is hunting ISIS operatives who try to infiltrate their territory. Emirati troops are supporting our Afghan partners. In Mosul, American troops are supporting Kurds, Sunnis and Shias fighting together for their homeland. Qatar, which hosts the U.S. Central Command, is a crucial strategic partner. Our longstanding partnership with Kuwait and Bahrain continue to enhance security in the region. And courageous Afghan soldiers are making tremendous sacrifices in the fight against the Taliban, and others, in the fight for their country.

As we deny terrorist organizations control of territory and populations, we must also strip them of their access to funds. We must cut off the financial channels that let ISIS sell oil, let extremists pay their fighters, and help terrorists smuggle their reinforcements.

I am proud to announce that the nations here today will be signing an agreement to prevent the financing of terrorism, called the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center - co-chaired by the United States and Saudi Arabia, and joined by every member of the Gulf Cooperation Council. It is another historic step in a day that will be long remembered.

I also applaud the Gulf Cooperation Council for blocking funders from using their countries as a financial base for terror, and designating Hezbollah as a terrorist organization last year. Saudi Arabia also joined us this week in placing sanctions on one of the most senior leaders of Hezbollah.

Of course, there is still much work to do.

That means honestly confronting the crisis of Islamist extremism and the Islamist terror groups it inspires. And it means standing together against the murder of innocent Muslims, the oppression of women, the persecution of Jews, and the slaughter of Christians.

Religious leaders must make this absolutely clear: Barbarism will deliver you no glory - piety to evil will bring you no dignity. If you choose the path of terror, your life will be empty, your life will be brief, and YOUR SOUL WILL BE CONDEMNED.

And political leaders must speak out to affirm the same idea: heroes don't kill innocents; they save them. Many nations here today have taken important steps to raise up that message. Saudi Arabia's Vision for 2030 is an important and encouraging statement of tolerance, respect, empowering women, and economic development.

The United Arab Emirates has also engaged in the battle for hearts and souls-and with the U.S., launched a center to counter the online spread of hate. Bahrain too is working to undermine recruitment and radicalism.

I also applaud Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon for their role in hosting refugees. The surge of migrants and refugees leaving the Middle East depletes the human capital needed to build stable societies and economies. Instead of depriving this region of so much human potential, Middle Eastern countries can give young people hope for a brighter future in their home nations and regions.

That means promoting the aspirations and dreams of all citizens who seek a better life - including women, children, and followers of all faiths. Numerous Arab and Islamic scholars have eloquently argued that protecting equality strengthens Arab and Muslim communities.

For many centuries the Middle East has been home to Christians, Muslims and Jews living side-by-side. We must practice tolerance and respect for each other once again-and make this region a place where every man and woman, no matter their faith or ethnicity, can enjoy a life of dignity and hope.

In that spirit, after concluding my visit in Riyadh, I will travel to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and then to the Vatican - visiting many of the holiest places in the three Abrahamic Faiths. If these three faiths can join together in cooperation, then peace in this world is possible - including peace between Israelis and Palestinians. I will be meeting with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Starving terrorists of their territory, their funding, and the false allure of their craven ideology, will be the basis for defeating them.

But no discussion of stamping out this threat would be complete without mentioning the government that gives terrorists all three-safe harbor, financial backing, and the social standing needed for recruitment. It is a regime that is responsible for so much instability in the region. I am speaking of course of Iran.

From Lebanon to Iraq to Yemen, Iran funds, arms, and trains terrorists, militias, and other extremist groups that spread destruction and chaos across the region. For decades, Iran has fueled the fires of sectarian conflict and terror.

It is a government that speaks openly of mass murder, vowing the destruction of Israel, death to America, and ruin for many leaders and nations in this room.

Among Iran's most tragic and destabilizing interventions have been in Syria. Bolstered by Iran, Assad has committed unspeakable crimes, and the United States has taken firm action in response to the use of banned chemical weapons by the Assad Regime - launching 59 tomahawk missiles at the Syrian air base from where that murderous attack originated.

Responsible nations must work together to end the humanitarian crisis in Syria, eradicate ISIS, and restore stability to the region. The Iranian regime's longest-suffering victims are its own people. Iran has a rich history and culture, but the people of Iran have endured hardship and despair under their leaders' reckless pursuit of conflict and terror.

Until the Iranian regime is willing to be a partner for peace, all nations of conscience must work together to isolate Iran, deny it funding for terrorism, and pray for the day when the Iranian people have the just and righteous government they deserve.

The decisions we make will affect countless lives.

King Salman, I thank you for the creation of this great moment in history, and for your massive investment in America, its industry and its jobs. I also thank you for investing in the future of this part of the world.

This fertile region has all the ingredients for extraordinary success - a rich history and culture, a young and vibrant people, a thriving spirit of enterprise. But you can only unlock this future if the citizens of the Middle East are freed from extremism, terror and violence.

We in this room are the leaders of our peoples. They look to us for answers, and for action. And when we look back at their faces, behind every pair of eyes is a soul that yearns for justice.

Today, billions of faces are now looking at us, waiting for us to act on the great question of our time.

Will we be indifferent in the presence of evil? Will we protect our citizens from its violent ideology? Will we let its venom spread through our societies? Will we let it destroy the most holy sites on earth? If we do not confront this deadly terror, we know what the future will bring-more suffering and despair. But if we act-if we leave this magnificent room unified and determined to do what it takes to destroy the terror that threatens the world-then there is no limit to the great future our citizens will have.

The birthplace of civilization is waiting to begin a new renaissance. Just imagine what tomorrow could bring.

Glorious wonders of science, art, medicine and commerce to inspire humankind. Great cities built on the ruins of shattered towns. New jobs and industries that will lift up millions of people. Parents who no longer worry for their children, families who no longer mourn for their loved ones, and the faithful who finally worship without fear.

These are the blessings of prosperity and peace. These are the desires that burn with a righteous flame in every human heart. And these are the just demands of our beloved peoples.

I ask you to join me, to join together, to work together, and to FIGHT together- BECAUSE UNITED, WE WILL NOT FAIL.

Thank you. God Bless You. God Bless Your Countries. And God Bless the United States of America.

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Full transcript of Trump's speech to the Muslim world from Saudi Arabia

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Full transcript of U.S. President Donald Trump's address to the Muslim world from Saudi Arabia I want to thank King Salman for his extraordinary words, and the magnificent Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for hosting today's summit. I am honored to be received by such gracious hosts.

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"The United Kingdom is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its 20th century history," tweeted Liam Fox last March. The historical amnesia that afflicts the secretary of state for international trade is now on display in Whitehall, with officials calling their post-Brexit scramble for African trade "empire 2.0". I guess we should welcome their crude honesty, after all the leave campaign was based on a yearning for the days when Britannia ruled the waves. The only problem is that this kind of talk is as offensive as it is indicative of the arrogant hubris that is steering Britain on to the rocks of a hard Brexit.

Fox could not have been more wrong with his tweet. The problem is that Britain has buried a large part of its 20th century history, along with the rest of the country's tradition of brutality and crimes against humanity in building its empire. A period in which the nation enriched itself through genocide, slavery and colonial rule is somehow fondly remembered by a majority of Brits.

Outside the EU and devoid of colonies, Britain will find that any nostalgic visions of empire are a mirage

If we just look at the 20th century, notable atrocities include the coordinated famine in Bengal that killed 3 million people; the persecution of the Mau Mau in Kenya; and mass killings in the concentration camps during the Boer War. While this history should bring a measure of shame, upset and humility, it astoundingly manages to elicit feelings of pride in Britain. The fact that officials would even informally use "empire 2.0" shows how inadequate and insidious society's understanding of Britain's not-too-distant past is.

Empire was hallmarked by the noxious arrogance of the British elite that continues to turn people off from the political class today. Britain saw its role as shouldering the " white man's burden " to spread civilization to the dark and savage parts of the world. I recently had a conversation with a man affiliated to Oxford University who was shocked that I was not appreciative for all the development work that the British had done in Rhodesia.

I was unaware people still use Rhodesia more than 30 years after Zimbabwe's independence. Nevertheless, I was assured that even given all the brutality and underdevelopment that Zimbabwe (and the rest of the former colonies) suffered, they were better off because of good old Blighty. It seems that the student-led Rhodes Must Fall campaign has had little impact on the wider institution. Yet more evidence of the tone deaf echo chamber that produces the political class.

A spotlight has recently been shone on the influence that Oxford's politics, philosophy and economics degree has on shaping the political class. This is part of a wider problem as the exclusionary access into politics often runs through institutions that breed British colonial arrogance. It is not just that the students are empowered to feel they were "born to rule", embedded into education is the assumption of British dominance, a natural place as a leader in the world.

In the 21st century this colonial arrogance is having negative effects on the prospects for the nation. We are no longer in the 19th century when Britain controlled the seas and was one of the most powerful empires in history. Britain is not a military superpower and has to tag along with America to go on expansionary adventures across the globe. The empire is gone, as is most of the manufacturing base.

Meanwhile, the country has just voted to leave one of the most powerful economic blocks in the world. In order to build a prosperous future Britain needs to understand its place in the world; a small island desperately reaching out to countries it formerly ruled in order to try to maintain its relevance. No doubt the former colonies will be willing to trade with Britain. But the idea that these relations will represent anything like those in empire is laughable hubris. Nations no longer ruled by force and fear will not supplicate themselves to Britain because of misty memories of empire.

Due to the inadequacies of the school system, Fox and the government may actually believe that Britain gained its wealth from standing on its own two feet. But the truth is that Britain achieved all it has from standing on the backs of the colonies, enriched from stolen resources and exploited labour. Unfortunately, the nation has never come to terms with the loss of empire and the truth that without that great crutch there is little holding it up.

Rather than accept reality the government has deluded itself into thinking that Britain can just install an update for empire and return to former glories on the world stage. But outside the EU and devoid of colonies, Britain will find that any nostalgic visions of empire are a mirage, providing nothing to sustain it.

* This article was corrected on 7 March to make clear that Liam Fox's tweet was from March 2016
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Building Brexit on the myth of empire ignores our brutal history | Kehinde Andrews

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"The United Kingdom is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its 20th century history," tweeted Liam Fox last March. The historical amnesia that afflicts the secretary of state for international trade is now on display in Whitehall, with officials calling their post-Brexit scramble for African trade "empire 2.0".

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here is something deeply ironic about the wave of nostalgia sweeping political discourse in modern Britain. On one hand, it harks - increasingly since the Brexit vote - back to the age of empire. "A small island perched on the edge of the European continent became a leader of world trade," is how international trade secretary Liam Fox fondly described that epoch to a group of Commonwealth trade ministers. On the other, the supposed humanitarianism that accompanied that age has been swiftly forgotten.

While the empire was founded on racist beliefs about the supposed inferiority of the people it subjugated, humanitarianism was its proudly flaunted justification. This was manifested perfectly in Winston Churchill, who was able to boast of killing "savages" in Sudan, while also playing a leading role in creating the international humanitarian norms that many consider one of the great accomplishments of the 20th century. It's only a matter of time before Britain's membership of the Council of Europe - along with the rest of the European institutions developed by patriotic Brits who are keen to avoid a repeat of war - faces the same fate as our membership of the EU.

The idea that British 'culture' is somehow opposite to the presence of ethnic minorities is a historical nonsense

Likewise, humanitarian attitudes are in sharp decline. This was the resounding finding of today's Aurora Humanitarian Index - a project inspired by the legacy of the Armenian genocide, still one of the least-recognised atrocities of the 20th century. It's no surprise to learn that responses from 6,500 people in 12 countries, including the UK, US, Turkey and France, found a lack of confidence, compassion and leadership in response to the humanitarian issues of our time - especially the ongoing refugee crisis of north Africa and the Middle East.

But in Britain something specific is happening. The survey found that more than half of British people feel hostile not just to refugees, but to ethnic minorities - many of them British people themselves - already living here. This can be put down to various perceived economic and social threats - a quarter think immigrants take away jobs, and a third that they remove more from society than they contribute. But more sinister is its generality. More than half of the British people surveyed felt that people from ethnic minorities threatened their "culture".

This one finding says so much. It confirms what we all know, that "British culture" is perceived as something white. This was the dog-whistle narrative of the Brexit referendum campaign - apart from the appeal to imperial greatness, there was the demand to "get our country back". Few said explicitly that this meant make our country white again. But some heard it nevertheless. It was the surely part of the reason for the spike in racist attacks after the result, and why a cabbie told me I'd "be off home soon" as I rushed around on a referendum-related news story.

It was also the reason why, according to an Opinium poll, ethnic minority British people are now less likely to identify as British since the EU referendum. Instead, many are more likely to claim the identity of their ethnic minority heritage. British people who are not white feel less British now because that hostility is palpable, because there is an agenda of regressing to a time, before the European Union, that many remember not for the joys of complete sovereignty, but for the absence of protection from racism in the workplace, or at the hands of the police, or for being openly chased in the streets by white racists.

The idea that British "culture" is somehow opposite to the presence of ethnic minorities is a historical nonsense. Many of our most iconic cultural traditions are the products of immigration - such as fish and chips, an innovation of Jewish refugees from Portugal. Roads and cities were built by the Romans, banks were founded by Huguenots, a royal household established by a broad cross-section of European aristocracy. There were Africans in Britain, it's now widely accepted, before there were any "English".

No society ever has a perfect grasp of its history, and that doesn't matter, it's perceptions that count, and the harm that they cause. Britain's sense of self has become so warped, so divorced from reality, that it is demonising its visible minorities, including the 6 million or so British people of minority heritage among them. In this context, when I hear politicians appeal to patriotism, I feel very nervous. Not because there is anything wrong with patriotic feeling - like populism, it's a term that only becomes malign by its context. But because I know only too well what that current context is. And thanks to the findings of widespread hostility towards the impact of ethnic minority people on British culture, so should everyone else.

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Brexit is entrenching some dangerous myths about 'British' culture | Afua Hirsch

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here is something deeply ironic about the wave of nostalgia sweeping political discourse in modern Britain. On one hand, it harks - increasingly since the Brexit vote - back to the age of empire.

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IT was the year of years, the year of craziness, the year of fire, blood and death. I had just turned 21, and I was as crazy as everyone else.

There were half a million American soldiers in Vietnam, Martin Luther King had just been assassinated, cities were burning across America, and the world seemed headed for an apocalyptic breakdown.

Being crazy struck me as a perfectly sane response to the hand I had been dealt - the hand that all young men had been dealt in 1968. The instant I graduated from college, I would be drafted to fight in a war I despised to the depths of my being, and because I had already made up my mind to refuse to fight in that war, I knew that my future held only two options: prison or exile.

I was not a violent person. Looking back on those days now, I see myself as a quiet, bookish young man, struggling to teach myself how to become a writer, immersed in my courses in literature and philosophy at Columbia. I had marched in demonstrations against the war, but I was not an active member of any political organization on campus. I felt sympathetic to the aims of S.D.S. (one of several radical student groups, but by no means the most radical), and yet I never attended its meetings and not once had I handed out a broadside or leaflet. I wanted to read my books, write my poems and drink with my friends at the West End bar.

Forty years ago today, a protest rally was held on the Columbia campus. The issue had nothing to do with the war, but rather a gymnasium the university was about to build in Morningside Park. The park was public property, and because Columbia intended to create a separate entrance for the local residents (mostly black), the building plan was deemed to be both unjust and racist. I was in accord with this assessment, but I didn't attend the rally because of the gym.

I went because I was crazy, crazy with the poison of Vietnam in my lungs, and the many hundreds of students who gathered around the sundial in the center of campus that afternoon were not there to protest the construction of the gym so much as to vent their craziness, to lash out at something, anything, and since we were all students at Columbia, why not throw bricks at Columbia, since it was engaged in lucrative research projects for military contractors and thus was contributing to the war effort in Vietnam?

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IT was the year of years, the year of craziness, the year of fire, blood and death. I had just turned 21, and I was as crazy as everyone else. There were half a million American soldiers in Vietnam, Martin Luther King had just been assassinated, cities were burning across America, and the world seemed headed for an apocalyptic breakdown.

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The Brexit vote has not only exposed deep socioeconomic fractures in British society - it has also invented new ones. Identity politics has taken hold as never before.

Recently an Etonian called me (the daughter of a car mechanic) the elite. Apparently my ethnicity and London upbringing make me the enemy of the population that matters most right now: the white working class. This accusation was a reminder of how false and divisive these new labels are.

I grew up in east London, before it became the cool playground of hipsters it is now. It was a neighbourhood full of white working-class people (including David Beckham); and, while it wasn't perfect, the process of growing up together, hating the same teachers, dating each other (not David Beckham) and sharing in good times and bad meant that solidarity crossed race lines. Fast-forward 20 years, and I'm now told by Etonians the white working class see me as the enemy. Is this true?

On Tuesday, the Runnymede Trust and CLASS launched a series of essays seeking to examine the legitimacy and implications of this narrative. We conclude that the "white working class" label is not benefiting the white working class, or society more widely, and that many of the assumptions that underlie this narrative are just plain wrong.

Let's start with the accusation that the white working class are racist. In my essay, co-written with Ellie Mae O'Hagan, I recall the racism I faced at University of Oxford where my fellow students asked me questions such as: 'Why do black people cause crime?' The idea that racism is confined to the white working class is ridiculous, and akin to the idea that it is only the poor that commit crimes. After all, it is the white middle class that is in control of the public spending cuts that are disproportionately hitting minority ethnic women, and discriminating against people with African or Muslim names in the job market. Racists and racism exists across society.

Recent analysis from Policy Exchange highlights how using this false depiction of the white working class can lead us into dangerous territory. The authors of this study, David Goodhart and Eric Kaufmann, draw on a small survey of UK and US citizens to tell us that "racial self-interest" is not the same as "racism", concluding that it is fair for white Britons to defend white identity.

This is flawed logic. We wouldn't use a "religion's self-interest" argument to justify Islamic State. Wasn't "white self-interest" used to legitimise the slave trade? As well as being wrong, these ideas also justify the concerns about immigration on racial grounds, and suggest that our racial identity is our main group attachment. Brexit may leave the UK without a trade deal, but an equally important worry is that it turns back progress on community cohesion.

The second, related myth to dispel is that the working class is all white. A large proportion of the working class - often defined as those in manual or elementary jobs or on low incomes - are from minority ethnic populations.

My mother-in-law, a lunchtime play worker (or a dinner lady if you went to school before 2010), was made redundant alongside all of her colleagues this week. These dinner ladies - who represent the whole spectrum of race - are all in the same boat. Public spending cuts mean they are all losing their jobs, and as a group of women without higher qualifications they are all faced with dead-end, low-paid and insecure work. Why does it help to divide this group when they have so much in common?

This really gets to the root of why the white working class narrative is so problematic. It divides a group that when united and mobilised can be a real force for change.

Take the Living Wage campaign. It was started in 2001 by a group of low-income parents who were struggling to live on minimum-wage jobs, and quickly grew to include churches, mosques and a vast array of local community groups. To date the campaign has lifted an estimated 70,000 families out of working poverty. The white working class and the minority-ethnic working class aren't enemies - they are companions in a fight against economic inequality.

It's not hard, then, to see whose agenda dividing the working class is serving - that of unscrupulous bosses, CEOs now earning 386 times the national living wage and the policy-makers who are creating the conditions that allow this to happen. Not for the first in history, working-class people are being used as pawns to maintain privileges at the top.

This endless exercise of putting ourselves in boxes is not helping us to foster a broader and inclusive British identity, nor tackling the real problems that the whole working class face: finding good jobs, decent housing and having access to properly funded public services.

This week saw the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. We'd do well to remember how important language is in sowing seeds of distrust and hate. The "white working class" narrative is leading us down a road of nostalgia for a white Britain. We need to stop it in its tracks.
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'White working class': the label that seeks to divide and rule | Faiza Sheheen

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The Brexit vote has not only exposed deep socioeconomic fractures in British society - it has also invented new ones. Identity politics has taken hold as never before. Recently an Etonian called me (the daughter of a car mechanic) the elite.

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How do the largest community of British 'expats' living in Spain feel about Brexit? Britons living in Orihuela Costa, Alicante - 'effectively a British enclave' - give their views

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Post by theguardian.

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Richard Dawkins on Brexit: No, the British people have NOT spoken - Viewsnight

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After three years, A.I. will likely beat humans at Angry Birds, according to a major new survey of A.I. experts.

After four years, bots will likely be able to win the World Series of Poker.

After six years, they'll likely fold laundry better than the median clothing store employee - and beat us at Starcraft.

And that's just the start.

Researchers from Oxford, Yale, and the Future of Life Institute got 352 experts (who had published at recent A.I. conferences) to fill out surveys on the future of A.I. The results represent a major new perspective on a notoriously hard-to-predict subject. While there was a wide range of forecasts, the researchers highlighted when the median response put a 50 percent chance that A.I. would reach a milestone. After that point, the wisdom of this crowd suggests that A.I. dominance in a given task is likely - with the probability of dominance rising over time.

Looking ahead, after A.I. will likely be able to fake a Taylor Swift song (10 years) and work as a surgeon (37 years), we've got the point when unaided machines will accomplish every task better and more cheaply than human workers (45 years); when A.I. will match A.I. researchers (86 years); and when it will be able to take over all human jobs (123 years).

Here's the timeline:

Again, this is a hard-to-predict subject. Below is a chart showing the wide range of estimates for "high-level machine intelligence," with at least a few experts saying it's not likely in the next century:

For a little more on what beating humans looks like in various categories, we've pulled some details and specific median 50 percent estimates from the appendix:

Angry Birds: Play new levels of Angry Birds better than the best human players. Angry Birds is a game where players try to efficiently destroy 2D block towers with a catapult. 3 years.

Answer Factoid Questions via Internet: Answer any "easily Googleable" factoid questions posed in natural language better than an expert on the relevant topic (with internet access), having found the answers on the internet. 7.2 years.

Transcribe Speech: Transcribe human speech with a variety of accents in a noisy environment as well as a typical human can. 7.8 years.

Translate (vs. amateur human): Perform translation about as good as a human who is fluent in both languages but unskilled at translation, for most types of text, and for most popular languages (including languages that are known to be difficult, like Czech, Chinese and Arabic). 8 years.

Telephone Banking Operator: Provide phone banking services as well as human operators can, without annoying customers more than humans. This includes many one-off tasks, such as helping to order a replacement bank card or clarifying how to use part of the bank website to a customer. 8.2 years.

Assemble any LEGO: Physically assemble any LEGO set given the pieces and instructions, using non- specialized robotics hardware. 8.4 years.

Read Text Aloud (text-to-speech): Take a written passage and output a recording that can't be distinguished from a voice actor, by an expert listener. 9 years.

High School Essay: Write an essay for a high school history class that would receive high grades and pass plagiarism detectors. 9.6 years.

Answer Open-Ended Factual Questions via Internet: Answer any "easily Googleable" factual but open-ended question posed in natural language better than an expert on the relevant topic (with internet access), having found the answers on the internet. 9.8 years.

Answer Questions Without Definite Answers: Give good answers in natural language to factual questions posed in natural language for which there are no definite correct answers. 10 years.

Produce a Song Indistinguishable from One by a Specific Artist: Produce a song that is indistinguishable from a new song by a particular artist, e.g., a song that experienced listeners can't distinguish from a new song by Taylor Swift. 10.8 years.

Generate Top 40 Pop Song: Compose a song that is good enough to reach the U.S. Top 40. The system should output the complete song as an audio file. 11.4 years.

5km Race in City (bipedal robot vs. human): Beat the fastest human runners in a 5-kilometer race through city streets using a bipedal robot body. 11.8 years.

Translate New Language with "Rosetta Stone": Translate a text written in a newly discovered language into English as well as a team of human experts, using a single other document in both languages (like a Rosetta stone). Suppose all of the words in the text can be found in the translated document, and that the language is a difficult one. 16.6 years.

Go (same training as human): Defeat the best Go players, training only on as many games as the best Go players have played. For reference, DeepMind's AlphaGo has probably played a hundred million games of self-play, while Lee Sedol has probably played 50,000 games in his life. 17.6 years.

Write New York Times Best Seller: Write a novel or short story good enough to make it to the New York Times best seller list. 33 years.

Putnam Math Competition: Perform as well as the best human entrants in the Putnam competition - a math contest whose questions have known solutions, but which are difficult for the best young mathematicians. 33.8 years.

Math Research: Routinely and autonomously prove mathematical theorems that are publishable in top mathematics journals today, including generating the theorems to prove. 43.4 years.

Hello! You've made it to the end of the article. Nice. Here's a related video you might like: "This Is 'Flippy' And It's Pretty Good At Flipping Burgers"

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Experts Predict When A.I. Will Beat Humans In Everything

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After three years, A.I. will likely beat humans at Angry Birds, according to a major new survey of A.I. experts. After four years, bots will likely be able to win the World Series of Poker. After six years, they'll likely fold laundry better than the median clothing store employee - and beat us at Starcraft.