Ian Brunskill - The Times Companion to 2017 - The best writing from The Times

COPYRIGHT

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First edition 2017

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eBook Edition: © October 2017

ISBN: 9780008262648

Version: 2017-10-12

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction — Ian Brunskill

Acknowledgments

AUTUMN

Meritocracy is the last thing Britain needs — Philip Collins

Jeremy Paxman: ‘I’m not ashamed to say I’ve suffered depression’ — Interview by Janice Turner

Bataclan: one year on — Adam Sage

You can’t trust the people with democracy — Roger Boyes

Burnt and tortured migrants filled decks as we rushed to help — Bel Trew

‘Tantrums and shocking racism’ of inquiry’s dysfunctional dame — Andrew Norfolk, Sean O’Neill

Middle-aged virgins: Japan’s big secret — Richard Lloyd Parry

Royal family are more secretive than MI5 — Ben Macintyre

Inside Britain’s only transgender clinic for children — Louise France

A bare-knuckle fighter in the bloodiest contest ever — Rhys Blakely

Leonard Cohen — Obituary

Let’s stop being so paranoid about androids — Matt Ridley

WINTER

Game’s soul is not at Lord’s. It is here — Mike Atherton

Confessions of a middle-aged man — Jonathan Gershfield

Terrible teaching is what makes Oxford special — Giles Coren

Children killed in Duterte’s drug war — Richard Lloyd Parry

Zsa Zsa Gabor — Obituary

Cash belongs in the past so let’s abolish it — Ed Conway

Wild swimming is a rare splash of freedom — Edward Lucas

Children of the internet are happy to live a lie — Oliver Moody

How I conquered my morbid fear of flying — Melanie Phillips

Year of revolution — Leading Article

The NHS is in need of emergency treatment — Janice Turner

The hedgie with a 99.9% success rate — Harry Wilson

Are you tough enough for ‘radical candour’ at work? — Helen Rumbelow

Our week: everyone — Hugo Rifkind

Tourist exodus leaves gigolos hungry for love — Jerome Starkey

Big brands fund terror — Alexi Mostrous

Being offended is often the best medicine — David Aaronovitch

Our magical Wembley moments — George Caulkin

Spinal column: I keep seeing the ghost of Melanie past — Melanie Reid

SPRING

Scraps, storms and trench hand all in a 23ft boat — Damian Whitworth

We all need to learn how to talk about death — Alice Thomson

What’s a nice Asian boy doing in a place like this? — Sathnam Sanghera

Giving birth is a lethal gamble in Venezuela — Lucinda Elliott

Chuck Berry was a political revolutionary — Daniel Finkelstein

On Westminster Bridge — Leading Article

It’s time to reclaim our rights from big tech — Iain Martin

Our addicts turn blue, then they die: the town at the centre of new US drugs epidemic — Rhys Blakely

This is the end of democracy, cry protesters as nation splits in two — Hannah Lucinda Smith

Drought casts the shadow of death — Catherine Philp

Nepal is back: ancient temples, mountains and Bengal tigers — Tom Chesshyre

Le Pen can be president if she plays the long game — Giles Whittell

Duke retires rather than grow frail in public — Valentine Low

Landslide for Macron — Charles Bremner, Adam Sage

Giving a voice to the lost girls of Rochdale — Andrew Norfolk

Queer City by Peter Ackroyd — Review by Robbie Millen

Watch out — here come the Bridezillas — David Emanuel interviewed by Hilary Rose

The 10 worst crimes in horticulture — Ann Treneman

Shock poll predicts Tory losses — Sam Coates

SUMMER

Investors priced out by the bank — Alistair Osborne

Election 2017 — Leading Article

Saved by friends from across the water — Patrick Kidd

US banned tower cladding — Alexi Mostrous, David Brown, Sean O’Neill, John Simpson, Sam Joiner

Helmut Kohl — Obituary

Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill: how civil servants lived in fear of the terrible twins at No 10 — Oliver Wright, Francis Elliott, Bruno Waterfield

Food and service in a time machine — Giles Coren reviews Assaggi

Sovereign wealth — Leading Article

The primitive lost society of love island — Ben Macintyre

Small acts of kindness that can save a life — Libby Purves

People thought I was mad to offer my spare room to a homeless stranger — Alexandra Frean

Pocket money, phone, rambo knife — Rachel Sylvester

The Dunkirk myth never told our real story — David Aaronovitch

My career’s in reverse and I couldn’t be happier — Emma Duncan

Puppy love — Caitlin Moran

The conservatives are criminally incompetent — Matthew Parris

Justin Gatlin reminds us that sport is not a fairytale — Matt Dickinson

Starting nuclear war is president’s decision alone — Rhys Blakely

‘We’ll never be able to stop the hunger for revenge here’ — Anthony Loyd

Photo Section

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

Like its predecessor this volume brings together outstanding writing, photography and graphics from a year in the life of the world’s most famous newspaper. It covers an eventful, unsettled 12 months, from September 2016 to August 2017. In a new-year editorial on December 30, 2016 (reprinted here on p125), The Times took stock. If 2016 had been a year of “shocks, setbacks and slaughter”, the paper thought it would also seem with hindsight “a year of revolution … part of a rolling transformation of political institutions, and of geopolitical shifts”. Britain’s EU referendum and the election of Donald Trump had been manifestations of a populist rejection of established elites. They expressed the deep-rooted grievance of millions of voters who felt ill-served by representative democracy and to whom the rapid expansion of global trade had not brought prosperity.