June 2020

June 2020 issue

What can we learn from seven centuries of disasters, can the WHO survive and should we have started testing earlier? Prospect provides answers to these questions and asks what the post-Covid world will look like. Plus: Barbara Speed goes in search of ...

Past issues

Essays

Illustration: Pete Reynolds

From the Black Death to Covid-19: what history can teach us about managing crises and coming out stronger

Margaret MacMillan

Covid-19 has exposed the weaknesses of Britain's food supply system. Mandatory Credit: Photo by Ray Tang/Shutterstock

From humble grocers to de-facto ministry: How supermarkets took over Britain’s food system

We had steadily become obsessed with sleep long before lockdown. Google searches in the UK for “can’t sleep” have been climbing over the past 15 years. Illustrations: Priya Mistry

How a global industry sold us a lie about sleep

© REX SHUTTERSTOCK

Globalisation after Covid-19: my plan for a rewired planet

How Bernardine Evaristo won the Booker

Medical employees demonstrate testing at a coronavirus test centre for public service employees in Munich, Germany © Matthias Schrader/AP/Shutterstock

Inside Germany’s Covid-19 testing masterclass

Stephen Buranyi

Attacked by Trump, underfunded by the world: Can the WHO survive the coronavirus?

Regulars

The Prospect editorial: Endure today, build tomorrow

Letters: June 2020

Hannah Berry's cartoon: Artisanal quarantine wine

Click to enlarge

Stephen Collins's cartoon: Dave's coronavirus briefing

Stephen Collins

The Prospect puzzle and crossword: June 2020

How can investors cushion the Covid-19 blow?

Illustration: Nick Taylor

Brief Encounter, James Naughtie: "I c*nt recall my most embarrassing on-air moment, but apparently Jeremy Hunt can"

Preparation at the ExCel centre. Photo:Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire/PA Images

The duel: Is it more important to save younger lives?

Peter Singer , Lucy Winkett

The three charts that show the economic impact of lockdown

Delegates attend the opening ceremony of the WTO General Council at the organisation’s headquarters in Geneva, December 2019. Photo: © SALVATORE DI NOLFI/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

The government's meagre attempts to manage the coronavirus trade shock

Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire/PA Images

Protectionism must not prevail

Opinions

Photo: Isabel Infantes/EMPICS Entertainment

How the state came to criminalise ordinary life

Photo: Nick Zonna / IPA/IPA MilestoneMedia/PA Images

Investment in the time of coronavirus: how to buck the bear

Photo: “Now we can look the East End in the face.” Buckingham Palace during the Blitz

Johnson and Covid-19: Can human suffering have political advantages?

Unflappable: Sweden’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell has become an unlikely celebrity during the pandemic © Jessica GOW / TT NEWS AGENCY / AFP

Will Sweden's herd immunity experiment pay off?

What might we also lose in a world of dial-in representatives? © Han Yan/Xinhua News Agency/PA Images/Prospect composite

A motion to regret virtual parliaments

Venus and Adonis by Titian Credit: Wikimedia commons

Shakespeare’s answer to the plague? More sex and comedy

Arts & Books

The Internet has normalised collective shaming. What are the political costs?

The best television in June 2020—Sky takes on Hillary Clinton and Netflix's Space Force

(200415) -- PARIS, April 15, 2020 (Xinhua) -- File photo taken on April 15, 2019 shows the Notre Dame Cathedral on fire in Paris, capital of France. The cathedral in central Paris caught fire on April 15 last year. (Xinhua/Alexandre Karmen)

Notre Dame—1163 and all that

The best theatre to stream from home in June 2020

Michael Coveney

Two men boxing after Eadweard Muybridge Credit: Wellcome Collection

Rebecca Solnit explains things to us

Clara Hernanz-Lizarraga

Bleached coral Credit: Wikipedia

In search of fossils from the future

Whose democracy? Indians in Kolkata protest at the new citizenship laws. Photo: Bikas Das/AP/Shutterstock

India's constitution isn't saving it from Narendra Modi's assault on rights

A 19th-century imagining of Shakespeare's family, with Hamnet and Judith Credit: Wikipedia

Shakespeare in grief

Light after the darkest hour Credit: leegenhyung, Pixabay

How a time of crisis can be enriching

The best podcasts in the UK this June 2020

Charlotte Runcie

Food bank usage is up during the Covid-19 lockdown Credit: PA images

How coronavirus could shift the toxic poverty narrative

The best online art exhibitions this June

Emma Crichton-Miller

No moral anchor: Machiavelli. Photo: © incamerastock / Alamy Stock Photo

What we get wrong about Machiavelli

Ferdinand Mount

The best classical concerts and opera to stream in June 2020

Alexandra Coghlan

The extraordinary mind of Frank Ramsey

How Bernardine Evaristo won the Booker

The best films to stream from lockdown

Venus and Adonis by Titian Credit: Wikimedia commons

Shakespeare’s answer to the plague? More sex and comedy

Society and Culture

Photo: Fri Tanke (Wikimedia Commons)

"I was amazed at how ignorant and sometimes plain stupid were the people who claimed to run the country"—Christopher Hitchens on meeting politicians when he was a student

Photo: Dana Hutchinson (Wikimedia Commons)

The "sourdough bro" and Marx: lockdown lessons in trying and failing to make bread

Illustration: Kate Hazell

Island lockdown—isolating in an isolated place

Illustration: Kate Hazell

Bring back Satan: what the devil tells us about the world we live in—and why we need him now

Caroline O'Donoghue

Illustration: Kate Hazell

Escaping with classics: the literature to help you forget about the lockdown

Charlotte Higgins

Illustration: Kate Hazell

Parenting in a pandemic—what home-schooling has taught me

Hephzibah Anderson