Damson Idris and the Soft-Power Gambit: How a Peckham Kid Became the United Nations of Netflix By our London bureau chief, nursing a lukewarm Negroni and a deeper chill about the future Damson Alade-Bo Idris—yes, that really is his name, as if his parents anticipated LinkedIn’s fetish for multi-hyphenates—has spent the past decade doing something…
**The Last Briton Still Running Toward Empire: Dina Asher-Smith’s Global Sprint Through History’s Ashes** LONDON—While the United Kingdom busily dismantles its remaining international relevance with the precision of a drunken surgeon, one woman continues running in the opposite direction—quite literally. Dina Asher-Smith, the fastest human Britain has produced since the Empire’s retreat, represents something far…
Alison Hammond: Britain’s Human Diplomatic Weapon Quietly Conquering the Planet By Dave’s Locker International Desk When the history of the early-21st century is written, historians will probably dwell on pandemics, populism, and the slow-motion car crash we politely call “the climate.” Yet somewhere between the footnotes on supply-chain collapses and the chapter titled “Everyone Was…
Doncaster, South Yorkshire – 2:30 p.m. local time – and somewhere in the grandstand a sheikh checks his second passport while a Beijing syndicate updates its algorithm and a Kentucky bourbon heir pretends to enjoy the rain. Welcome to the St Leger Festival, the oldest classic on the planet, now streaming live to anyone with…
Weatherfield’s Latest Export: How Becky Swain’s Coronation Street Cameo Quietly Conquered the World By Ludo Voss, Senior Cynic-at-Large, Dave’s Locker Manchester—home of drizzle, industrial decline, and an implausibly resilient fictional postcode—has done it again. Becky Swain, the former head of learning at the Royal Shakespeare Company turned “script consultant” for Coronation Street, slipped into Wednesday…
Holly Willoughby: Britain’s Televised Comfort Blanket Exported to a World That’s Already Freezing If you have never heard of Holly Willoughby, congratulations—you have just proved you live somewhere beyond the gravitational pull of UK breakfast television, a place where the day begins without a saccharine smile and the faint whiff of mid-tier celebrity desperation. Across…
Sophie Willan’s Sewing Bee and the End of Empires By Dave’s Locker International Correspondent PARIS—In a dimly lit arrondissement café where the espresso is priced like a Tokyo studio apartment, the television above the bar flickers to life with the unmistakable trill of BBC One. A baker from Bury is trying to sew a corset…
**Last Orders for Civilization: How a Giant Pub in East London Became the UN of Beer** LONDON—While the rest of the planet stockpiles iodine tablets and rehearses nuclear evacuation drills, 50,000 optimists from 46 countries have spent the past five days queueing inside a former industrial warehouse to argue about hop varieties. Welcome to the…
Alexander Armstrong: Britain’s Smiling Reconquista of the Global Living Room By our International Bureau Chief (who once spent three hours in a Moldovan airport watching Pointless reruns on loop) It’s 3 a.m. in Singapore, the air is thick with durian and existential dread, and yet the hotel bar’s lone television glows with an improbable sight:…
**Skegness: How a British Seaside Town Became the World’s Cautionary Tale** The world has its share of glamorous destinations—Paris, Tokyo, the Maldives—and then there’s Skegness, Lincolnshire’s crown jewel of managed expectations. While international headlines obsess over Dubai’s latest artificial island or Singapore’s newest infinity pool, this modest North Sea outpost has quietly become something far…
Wetherspoons: The Last Honest Embassy on Earth An International Correspondent’s Field Notes from the Imperial Pub Chain by “Marlowe” – filing from the Salisbury, Fleet Street, over a £2.15 “breakfast stout” The United Nations has 193 member states, but only one issues its own currency in the form of laminated beer mats and calls its…
Merseyrail: How a 75-Kilometre Northern English Toy Train Became a Global Metaphor for Low Expectations By Our Correspondent in Exile, currently drinking instant coffee on a bench outside Liverpool Central In the pantheon of world transport, Merseyrail rarely sits beside the Shinkansen, the Paris Métro, or whatever fever dream Elon Musk is digging under Miami…
