In the summer of 1924, a highly regarded painter falls – or is he pushed? – into the canal while celebrating his exhibition at the Venice Biennale. Two young women are heard running away into the night.

In this dazzling new coming-of-age story first published in the New Statesman’s summer issue, the award-winning novelist Jonathan Coe explores the relationship between artist and muse, female friendship and male cruelty.

Written by Jonathan Coe and read by Tom Gatti.

If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy Then Later, His Ghost: a short story by Sarah Hall.

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For those who leave the ultra-conservative Christian sect, separation comes at great personal cost.

The New Statesman’s assistant editor Pippa Bailey had always been curious about the Plymouth Brethren, ever since discovering that her maternal grandparents had left the group in the 1960s. What might her life have been like if they stayed? Who were the cousins separated by a doctrine of isolation from non-Brethren ‘worldlies’?

In this week’s deeply reported and moving magazine cover story, Pippa tells the story of the breakaway group, from its origins in 1820s Ireland to its modern-day incarnation as a global church and effective lobbyist. She speaks to former members, many of whom mourn the loss of family and friends to an organisation they consider repressive. It’s a fascinating journey, even if, as Pippa writes, her  grandmother has no interest in resurfacing the past: “After all, she says, it’s all part of the Lord’s plan, and He does not test us more than we can bear.”

This article originally appeared in the 25-31 August issue of the New Statesman; you can read the text version here.

Written and read by Pippa Bailey.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy How to build a language: inside the Oxford English Dictionary, by Pippa Bailey, or our reported feature by Stuart McGurk, A year inside GB news.

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What if the rush to war in 1914 had been averted? What if the Berlin Crisis of 1961 had led to nuclear war? What if the liberal revolution of 1848 had been successful? A new exhibition in Berlin considers a series of momentous what-ifs, an intriguing addition to the canon of counterfactual history. In this week’s long read, the New Statesman’s contributing writer Jeremy Cliffe assesses the value of such rival realities, as explored in fiction and, increasingly, on social media platforms and alt-fic online communities. In contemporary British politics, the tumult of the past decade has inspired a new cottage industry of counterfactual histories. 

Often derided as pure speculation, Cliffe makes the case for their usefulness and, from his home in Berlin, reflects on the city’s many ghosts. “History is about facts,” he writes. “But those facts include intentions, imagined futures and visions that shape actual events even when – much more often than not – they never come to pass.”

Written by Jeremy Cliffe and read by Chris Stone.

This article originally appeared in the 28 July-17 August summer issue of the New Statesman. You can read the text version here.

If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you might also enjoy Thomas Mann, German identity and the romantic allure of Russia, by Jeremy Cliffe.

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The novelist Ali Smith first came across the work of Simone de Beauvoir in an Inverness bookshop, aged 18 or 19, and was instantly compelled by her “tough, troubling” prose. In this week’s long read, Smith reflects on De Beauvoir’s 1964 memoir A Very Easy Death, a slight, visceral book about her estranged mother’s death. What happens when an existentialist, bound ethically to a thinking life, confronts the end of life and thought? Why does a writer who prides herself on uncompromising truth tell her mother she is not dying of cancer, when she is?

Smith blends the personal and the political in an essay that grapples with De Beauvoir’s power to disturb and provoke, sixty years on.

Written by Ali Smith and read by Anna Leszkiewicz.

This article originally appeared in the 28 July-17 August 2023 New Statesman summer issue. You can read the text version here.

If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you might also enjoy Karl Ove Knausgaard: a personal manifesto on the art of fiction.

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There is one question the environmental journalist and author George Monbiot is asked more than any other: how do you cope? When your job is to report on the climate crisis, where do you find hope? Monbiot’s answer is a very personal one: he goes sea kayaking – alone, often far off the coast, with (if he’s lucky) a pod of dolphins or a flock of shearwaters for company.

In this evocative essay from the New Statesman’s summer 2023 issue, Monbiot explores the sea off the island of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, his former home in Cardigan Bay, and his new home in South Devon – a coastline “featuring cliffs and rocky coves, clefts and chasms, reefs and skerries, sandy and shingle beaches and several estuaries”. He relives the dangers and joys of battling the waves in a very small boat, most recently with an underwater camera fixed to the hull. There is no permanent escape from ecological distress, he writes, from the warming seas and the waste pumped into them, “but for hours at a time, I lose myself”.

Written by George Monbiot and read by Chris Stone.

This article originally appeared in the 28 July-17 August 2023 New Statesman summer issue. You can read the text version here.

https://www.newstatesman.com/environment/2023/07/escpaing-climate-sea-kayaking-george-monbiot

If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you might also enjoy Rebecca Solnit on hope, despair and climate action.

https://www.newstatesman.com/podcasts/audio-long-reads/2022/10/rebecca-solnit-on-hope-despair-and-climate-action

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The Conservative Private Members Committee, informally known as the 1922 Committee (or the ’22), is the Tory confessional, its trade union and backbenchers’ common room. If that makes it sound chaotic (and it sometimes is) it is also the assassination bureau that felled Margaret Thatcher, and, more recently, three prime ministers in four years: Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Will it come for Rishi Sunak before the next election?

In this week’s richly detailed and highly entertaining long read, magazine writer Tanya Gold reports on the secretive committee’s inner workings, hearing from decision-makers past and present about what happens when a leader loses the party’s confidence. “The ’22 can be turgid for months, even years,” she writes. “But people talk about Committee Room 14 during a leadership crisis as they might about seeing Bruce Springsteen, or a riot.” And over the next 18 months, they could be busy.

Written by Tanya Gold and read by Rachel Cunliffe. 

This article originally appeared in the 21-27 July 2023 edition of the New Statesman, and you can read the text version here. 

If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy The making of Prince William by Tanya Gold.

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When Saudi cinemas reopened in 2018, for the first time in 35 years, they screened the Marvel movie Black Panther. Many saw parallels between the kingdom and the fictional world of Wakanda, as crown prince Mohammed bin Salman unveiled ambitious plans for modernisation and an economy that would diversify away from oil, investing in futuristic projects such as Neom, a half-trillion-dollar city.

Saudi Arabia has since sought to position itself as a global investment powerhouse, focusing on tourism, sports sponsorships, financial services, green hydrogen production, and the electric vehicle industry. Long dependant on oil, can the kingdom transform itself into a major global force in a post-carbon future?

In this week’s long read and magazine cover story, New Statesman contributing writer Quinn Slobodian explores the consequences of Saudi dominance on international politics, the climate crisis and our technological future.

Written by Quinn Slobodian and read by Chris Stone.

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Since 2018, prime minister Pedro Sánchez has led a surprisingly durable and impactful Spanish government, implementing progressive policies such as improved rights for abortion, transgender people and migrants. His coalition government has repositioned Spain as a European “pivot” state, a bridge between north and south, east and west. Its economy is predicted to grow faster than that of Germany, France and Italy.

But will any of this be enough to keep Sanchez in power after the 23 July general election? He faces significant challenges from the conservative People's Party, as well as new alliances on the left – an increasingly fragmented political environment that mirrors trends seen across Europe, as identity politics, the climate crisis, and demographic shifts reshape many once stable two-party systems. 

In this wide-ranging essay, New Statesman contributing writer Jeremy Cliffe reflects on what Spain and its election tells us about the future of Europe. By 2030, he writes, “politics in many states will be defined by the normalised collapse of the cordon sanitaire between mainstream conservatism and the far right. It will be a landscape in which the left can only win by forging broad and canny coalitions.” If Silvio Berlusconi’s divisive authoritarianism presaged our present moment, Sanchez and his battles could point the way to our European future.

Written by Jeremy Cliffe and read by Chris Stone.

This article originally appeared in the 14-20 July issue of the New Statesman. You can read the text version here.

If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you may also like A brief history of “woke”: how one word fuelled the culture wars.

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In recent decades, studies have shown a significant decline in sperm quality and count. The average sperm count has fallen by 62% since the 1970s, impacting male fertility – a factor that is often overlooked in the broader conversation about parenthood and the declining birth rate in developed countries. 

In this engrossing long read, New Statesman associate editor Sophie McBain talks to men who have faced fertility issues and the people exploring the contested science behind them. Are environmental toxins a key factor, or exposure to prescription medicines in the womb? Does a historic focus on female fertility mean our understanding of male infertility is relatively new? And why, given the potentially catastrophic consequences of a global baby bust, is there not more political will to engage with the science?

Written and read by Sophie McBain.

This article originally appeared in the 26 May-1 June issue of the New Statesman. You can read the text version here.

If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you might also Sophie's other article: How did parenthood become an unaffordable luxury? Listen here: https://pod.fo/e/183b9b

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On June 23 the New Statesman’s contributing writer Bruno Macaes visited Ukraine’s head of military intelligence Kyrylo Budanov in Kyiv. They discussed the progress of the war, Russian propaganda (Budanov had been declared dead or dying), the 2022 Nord Stream attack and Russian plans for an attack on Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Just three hours later, Yevgeny Prigozhin announced that his private military, the Wagner Group, would march on Russian army headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, as a punishment for its poor leadership. Shortly after midnight on 24 June, Prigozhin’s mutiny entered Russia and began marching on Moscow. By the end of the day, he had called it off.

Why did Prigozhin do it – and why did he stop? Was Putin’s authority terminally damaged? In this on-the-ground dispatch, Macaes looks at the roots of the mutiny, as well as what it reveals about the weaknesses of the Russian state: “It should,” he writes, “be regarded as a laboratory test for understanding Putin and his regime, and inform Western actions for what remains of the war in Ukraine.”

Written by Bruno Macaes and read by Will Lloyd.

This article originally appeared in the 30 June-6 July issue of the New Statesman. You can read the text version here.

If you enjoyed listening to this episode, you might also like What drives Emmanuel Macron? By Jeremy Cliffe

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