Confessions of an Uber driver (The Times)
In a few hours I will feel elated. Then despairing. But at 11am, as I pull out of my south London street in a Toyota Auris estate, I am trying to feel calm. It’s a new career. I’m about to start my first shift as an Uber driver. You don’t join Uber for a laugh,...
Is it OK if someone wants to live for years on a bench? (BBC News Online)
A large bulky object wrapped in a bright blue tarpaulin. It is sitting in the middle of the pavement. It could be an old piano, maintenance equipment, a delivery waiting to be unpacked. But then the tarpaulin starts to move, an arm appears and the cover is pulled back to reveal a man and a...
Lost at sea – what happened to the Ouzo? (FT magazine)
I remember the radio broadcast - three bodies found in the Channel, a yacht missing. But I only took a close interest a few days later when it was reported that accident investigators were examining the hull of the P&O ferry Pride of Bilbao.
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? You wait an age for the green man to let you cross Liverpool's Scotland Road.
Violent teens explain how they got into gangs (Guardian Weekend)
'They put a gun to the back of my head. I heard them cock it. It jammed'
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. On stage is Mark Lawson, the nation's undisputed master of cultural ceremonies, holding aloft a new book and chatting breezily to the thirtysomething celebrity author sitting alongside him.
About Tom
Tom de Castella is a freelance journalist based in London. Since 2002 he has written features for newspapers and magazines on subjects ranging from youth gangs and Mugabe’s Zimbabwe to Brian Clough and wild swimming. Between 2011 and 2015 he worked as a feature writer at the BBC news online’s Magazine section.
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