Alan Rusbridger, editor
At the start of this year Jonathan Powell, a veteran negotiator of such things, outlined how peace would be negotiated over the war in Ukraine. No-one was talking about it at the time, but it was prescient in laying out exactly what would have to be on the table. It was, in that sense, a classic Prospect piece—taking something important in the news while giving readers the view over the horizon.
Ellen Halliday, deputy editor
As we come to the end of 2023, we’re still talking about migration, the government’s Rwanda policy and what Sunak and others call the “small boats crisis”. Our April cover by David Normington, who was a key figure at the Home Office last time it tackled a huge backlog in asylum applications, was a measured, nuanced and informed explanation of why “stopping the boats” isn’t the answer to the migration debate, and how diplomacy and proper old-fashioned resourcing of the Home Office could help get asylum waiting lists down. It’s worth revisiting.
I also want to give a special mention to Alice Goodman’s Clerical Life column—in particular her piece about abuses within the church, and the shame that clergy bear on behalf of the institutions they represent. In recent months, Alice’s writing has not failed to move me—it’s lyrical and frank and I always look forward to reading it.
Alex Dean, managing editor
Earlier this year we sent Bill Keller—former editor of the New York Times—on a tour of the English prison estate, where he found alarming signs of American-style dysfunction. The piece stood out to me for three reasons. First, Keller could make the comparison from a position of real authority: he is an expert in the US penal system and he knows what policy failure looks like. Second, he showed a reporter’s commitment to the truth, keeping an open mind about the nature of the problem and where blame lay. Third, he brought his immense experience to bear on a subject that could not be more pressing. You can judge a society by the way it treats its prisoners.
Peter Hoskin, books & culture editor
Gosh, this is awkward. I work only a few desks down from Sarah Collins, but otherwise try to maintain a frosty distance. Yet here I am, at year’s end, wishing that I could recommend all of her Mindful Life columns from this year—and disappointed that I really have to boil it down to one. Which? Her account, I suppose, of a high-rise panic attack above a Canadian mountainside. Sarah has a rare gift: she can write about some of the most difficult, darkest subjects—and powerfully—but always with humour and grace. Just don’t tell her I told you.
David McAllister, production & associate editor
It feels as if we’re constantly needing to stand up for the humanities. What is it for? What’s the point? Attempting to answer these questions in the face of more funding cuts and more shuttered university departments is enough to make anyone world-weary. Which is why I’m grateful for Priyamvada Gopal’s essay on the subject, from our December issue, for being so invigorating. While swiftly demolishing some of the old conventional wisdom on the subject—humanities grads do not have worse job prospects than their STEM counterparts, for one—Gopal also reminds us why the humanities are worth fighting for. Because to stand up for the humanities is to stand up for the value of public good over private enrichment, and because economic growth is a poor metric by which to determine what makes a subject “useful” to wider society anyway.
Sarah Collins, assistant editor
Tilly Lawless, who is a Sydney-based queer sex worker, was a new Lives columnist this year. Her column has been both lyrical and ranging: Tilly writes almost poetically on everything from grief to money to age. My favourite of her columns is a meditation on language in relationships, and how dating across a language barrier has been unexpectedly liberating.
Emily Lawford, assistant editor
How will the Conservative party heal from (very likely) electoral oblivion next year? Back in our July issue, David Aaronovitch went to the National Conservative Conference to hear thinkers and MPs on the right of the party argue for a set of socially conservative policies and ideals. Aaronovitch’s piece was clear-eyed, funny and a welcome antidote to the breathless frenzy—on both sides of the political aisle—about the emerging “new right”.
Danielle Han, social media journalist
My favourite piece from this year has to be Roísín Lanigan’s on the decade of the Cool Girl. Lanigan is great at toeing a line between amplifying and poking fun at the Gen Z voice—and I love how she folds meme culture into her text. Actually… same goes for her piece on the cult of Normal People, and for all the same reasons. I really enjoy the way Lanigan rinses these random popular culture corners via her sarcastic, prose-y—but super profound—commentaries, and can’t wait to read what we get from her next!
Tom Clark, contributing editor
Amid cancelled trains, chaotic governance and filthy rivers, we all have reasons to grumble. Yet there’s a world of difference between the majority of us, who can almost enjoy trading tales of chaos, and the growing minority being gripped by a poverty crisis. The street tents popping up everywhere—I saw one yesterday outside the Ritz—are merely the most acute symptom of hardship that goes far and wide. Prospect’s own Sarah Collins powerfully explored and exposed it in the corner of the heart of England she grew up in, the Black Country. She found inspiring volunteers, moving heaven and earth for their fellow citizens, but found even they were having to keep a certain distance; as one poignantly told her, “If I engage emotionally then I won’t be able to help people.” The routine privations of ordinary citizens she documented in the cafe and on the street speak volumes about the sort of society we have become.
