It’s official: reading is on-trend. ‘Lit girls’ are the new ‘it girls’. BookTok is flourishing, launching new genres and bringing attention to forgotten classics. High street clothing emblazoned with bookish slogans allows you to advertise your allegiance to the clan. Far from being a solitary hobby pursued by introverts, this is reading as a social......
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Netflix’s new limited series Adolescence tells the increasingly all-too-familiar story of male youth violence in the UK. The series follows a family as they come to terms with the devastating crime their 13-year-old son Jamie has committed – murdering his female classmate, Katie. The series aims to explore not the often dramatised ‘did he do......
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Last December, I wrote a report called Marriage and the Stable Society affirming the importance of marriage. Many things struck me doing this, but one in particular was the juxtaposition of writing about the tiny marriage rate amongst young adults in the UK, whilst having friends marrying incessantly. It seemed two societies existed: one where......
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2024. What a year. Looking back, there’s not been much time for small-talk on our weekly Connecting with Culture blogs, with epoch-shifting elections on home turf and across the pond, riots and resignations, and systemic scandals in healthcare and the post service, to name just two examples. In fact, with such high levels of headline-hitting......
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Over one in three women globally will, at some point in their lives, experience gender-based violence. If that feels like an abstract number, think about it this way: how many women or girls are in your church, school, workplace, neighbourhood, among your family or friends? Now apply the one-in-three statistic. Elaine Storkey, former LICC Executive......
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On Tuesday, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, resigned. Following on from an 11,000-signature strong petition, his resignation came after the release of a report damning the decades-long abuses by Christian leader, John Smyth QC. While the abuse was before he was archbishop, Justin knew of the cover-up, failed to seek justice and protect victims,......
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My friend was walking into work when a builder crossed her path. As he did his toolbox broke and there were screws, pliers, and raw plugs all over the pavement. ‘Should I walk on?’ – always a dilemma – but she stopped, helped gather the scattered tools, and after a short exchange felt prompted to......
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Like many of my fellow Gen Zers, I love social media. I love my nightly TikTok scrolls, posting my Instagram photo dumps at the end of the month, and perfecting Pinterest boards filled with dream life visions. I can’t get enough of the Brat Summer videos or the Four Seasons Orlando Baby (iykyk*). Despite this......
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Or a flat that’s warm and mould-free and big enough to have a table to eat at? Well, actually, by God’s grace, I have a house. But over 8 million people in the UK live in overcrowded, unaffordable, or unsuitable homes. And that doesn’t include the homeless, or the 11% of young adults continuing to live with their parents well into their 30s because renting, never mind purchasing a perch, is beyond their means. In this context, the government’s plans to build 1.5 million homes in 5 rapid years are much to be welcomed. Volume matters...
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How did a Taylor Swift dance party tragedy in Southport degenerate into some members of ethnic minorities across the U.K. too scared to leave their homes? The news of rioting across the country has been hot in the headlines this last week. After the horrific stabbing of three young girls, thousands of men and women took to the street. The targeting of hotels, homes, and businesses believed to be owned or occupied by asylum seekers and refugees is parasitic upon Southport’s pain, opportunistically seeking to drive an anti-immigration agenda...
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