Teen gangsters talk life and death on our city streets
(Guardian)
'They put a gun to the back of my head. I heard them cock it. It jammed'
Shooting rapids in the suburbs (FT)
It may look like a sewage works on a choppy day but in the glorious jargon of London 2012 this is an "early legacy".
The first anarchic free schools
(BBC News Online)
In the 1970s, idealistic young activists created a wave of experimental schools - no compulsory lessons, no timetables, no rules. So what happened to the kids who attended these free-for-alls?
Life goes on?
(Independent on Sunday)
Up close it looks like a normal, if rather high-powered, literary event. We're in the hall of the British Library. Mark Lawson is holding aloft a new book and chatting breezily to the thirtysomething celebrity author sitting alongside him.
Across ring and board (FT magazine)
Only when his jab connects with my left cheek do I start to understand boxing.
Far from the crowds in Hardy’s backyard (Financial Times magazine)
In a pretentious moment, one might call Hardy a writer of terroir. Far From the Madding Crowd, while lacking the tragic grandeur of Tess, Jude or The Woodlanders, is the first novel to refer to Wessex by name.
On the edge (New Statesman)
That there were once 300 of these quasi-socialist experiments in public leisure, and that there remain fewer than a hundred, reveals much about how our municipal culture has changed.
Knut: a polar bear story (BBC news online)
Shortly after his birth, the German media reported that an animal rights campaigner was calling for him to be put down rather than brought up by humans. It prompted a huge groundswell of sympathy for the bear, which never went away.
From the frontlines of procrastination (Daily Telegraph)
Throughout this memoir, Egeland presents himself as one of the more assertive elements in the UN, who likes to "speak truth to power".
Deep waters (New Statesman)
It is hard to list all the adversaries that the American long-distance swimmer Lynne Cox has overcome. In the past 30 years, this real-life mermaid has battled sharks, icebergs, the KGB and the FBI, eight-foot waves, ten-knot currents and impenetrable fog.