Seductive stories: why we embrace comfortable fictions

Nathaniel Tapley skewers Britain's self-proclaimed identity as "the cradle of liberty," tracing how English definitions of freedom have historically favored the powerful while restricting everyone else. From the Restoration of Charles II to Brexit and beyond, Tapley argues that Britain's aristocratic education system has produced generations of leaders who equate liberty with their own freedom to dominate others.

Peter Lawlor challenges our assumptions about learning from history, particularly questioning the value of historical analogies as predictive tools. While historical comparisons appear in nearly every newspaper article and policy discussion, Lawlor argues that we selectively choose analogies that confirm our existing beliefs rather than using them to genuinely discover new insights or challenge our perspectives.

Author Sarah Hall reflects on the challenge of writing amid ecological collapse, questioning whether dystopian narratives help or hinder our response to environmental crises. While acknowledging the ease of creating literary doom scenarios, she searches for meaningful alternatives that might inspire action, pointing to organisations like River Action as examples of effective resistance against corporate environmental destruction.