The Observer visits Bradford, a city transformed by mass immigration, but cited in a recent survey for its essential "Englishness" and ask what that means today; and they sold our streets and nobody noticed: Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First-Century City by Anna Minton argues that a flawed urban-planning strategy has turned our cities into unfriendly, suspicious places (and more and more and more). In place of strife: The British pub was once a mainstay of working-class morality (and a look at Britain’s colourful pub signs). Let's relax about fairness: This talk of social mobility is a poor form of radicalism, says Alan Ryan. A review of A Radical History of Britain by Edward Vallance (and more and more). Labour may be struggling but there is more intellectual energy on the left than for a generation. A review of Waiting for the Etonians: Reports from the Sickbed of Liberal England by Nick Cohen. A review of "There Is No Alternative": Why Margaret Thatcher Matters by Claire Berlinski. A review of Julia Stapleton’s Christianity, Patriotism, and Nationhood: The England of G.K. Chesterton. An excerpt from Jonah Raskin's The Mythology of Imperialism: A Revolutionary Critique of British Literature and Society in the Modern Age.
