Cricket historian, writer, surgeon, spy: the mad world of Major Rowland Bowen
An account of a life less ordinary.
Viv Albertine on Dating Again in Her 50s
A songwriter and musician, who was the guitarist in the punk band The Slits (first formed in the 1970s), writes about love and life in her 50s.
Farewell, Champions of Havana
The author visits Cuba on the occasion of President Obama’s historic visit earlier this year. He reflects on the country and its sporting champions as he tries to source a ticket for a baseball match organised to celebrate the visit.
The Living and the Dead
This story of the fierce battle to regain Mosul from ISIS is a feat of both reporting and presentation.
The White Darkness
This powerful and moving piece tells the story of Henry Worsley’s expeditions to the South Pole. They were inspired by Ernest Shackleton, a mentor he never met, and were each a study in human endurance and fortitude.
The Lottery Hackers: Jerry and Marge Go Large
The story of a retiree couple that succeeding in cracking the lottery, through a mixture of maths and the hard graft required to buy thousands upon thousands of tickets. It was almost plain sailing – until they ran into some competition.
Yearning for the end of the world
The story of life as a member of an underground church in 1980s Iran, waiting for the end of days and the promised Rapture.
Overlooked
An initiative by The New York Times aiming to address the imbalance of coverage in their obituary section starts with profiles of fifteen women who were overlooked at the time of their death. The set includes remarkable figures from many walks of life – from great writers such as Charlotte Bront‘ and Sylvia Plath, to the early civil rights campaigner and journalist Ida B. Wells, and to Henrietta Lacks, whose cells were taken from her body without permission and used for medical research.
She made a career out of studying the brain. Then hers veered off course.
The story of neuroscientist Barbara Lipska, who has spent much of her career studying mental illness, before suffering her own illness when receiving experimental treatment for brain cancer. This left her uniquely placed to see the “thin line between life and death, between sanity and insanity.”
The Real Story of the Hawaiian Missile Crisis
A story investigating what happens when over a million people get a mobile phone notification suggesting they have minutes left to live.