Best summer books of 2024: Environmentwww.ft.com Pilita Clark selects her best mid-year reads
Henry Mance
Chief features writer, Financial Times
After Baillie Gifford, who is ‘clean’ enough to fund the arts?www.ft.com The campaign against the asset manager has left festivals struggling to adapt to a new age of protest
Farmer Minette Batters: ‘When are we going to take food seriously?’on.ft.com [FREE TO READ] The former NFU president on feeding 70mn people in the face of climate change — and the genius of Jeremy Clarkson
Is there a middle way on children and smartphones? This researcher thinks soFinancial Timeswww.ft.com Social psychologist Sonia Livingstone says there are alternatives to banning the young from social media
Economist Joseph Stiglitz: ‘Trump is what neoliberalism produces’www.ft.com Nobel laureate claims fall in inflation vindicates his position but global events challenge other views
Israeli Artist Shuts Venice Biennale Exhibit, Calls for Cease-Fire in Gazawww.nytimes.com Ruth Patir, Israel’s representative at the event, says she won’t open her show in the national pavilion until Israel and Hamas reach “a cease-fire and hostage release agreement.”
AI keeps going wrong. What if it can’t be fixed?www.ft.com Pessimists warn it could wipe out humanity. Optimists hail a medical revolution. Henry Mance meets the sceptics who argue that the technology is simply flawed
Historian Avi Shlaim: ‘I remain hopeful Israel will start to act rationally’www.ft.com The Oxford professor, born to a Jewish family in Baghdad, argues that Joe Biden can force change by threatening to slow military aid
The Zone of Interest is about the danger of ignoring atrocities – including in Gaza | Naomi Kleinwww.theguardian.com If Jonathan Glazer’s brave Oscar acceptance speech made you uncomfortable, that was the point
A Very Private School — Charles Spencer’s privileged but painful educationwww.ft.com A heartbreaking memoir of a childhood endured at a boarding school ‘without love’, where abuse was shockingly commonplace
Gender theorist Judith Butler: ‘What are they frightened of exactly?’Financial Timeswww.ft.com The philosopher on what defines a woman, the scapegoating of trans people — and why it’s OK to stumble over pronouns
Chancellor’s fiscal drag act leaves Tories no better off than beforewww.ft.com Budgets are sometimes described as politicians bribing people with their own money
‘We cannot be an instrument of government’: BBC chair asks ministers to back offwww.ft.com Elan Closs Stephens says diminishing institutions such as the public broadcaster weakens the fabric of the state
The Settlers review – Leone-inspired western packs a venomous bitewww.theguardian.com A landowner in Tierra del Fuego sets three men to clear a ‘safe route’ through native lands in this menacing shakedown of colonialism and its revisionists