Start The Week

The award-winning writer Jonathan Coe presents a portrait of Britain told through four generations of one family, in his latest novel Bournville. Set in middle England, in a suburb of Birmingham, he chronicles the years of social change post-war, and the events that both brought people together and divided them, from royal events and the World Cup to Brexit and Covid-19. The chocolate factory that features heavily in the novel, and was once at the centre of life in Bournville, has since been transformed in part into a theme park, no doubt offering an authentic chocolate experience. The journalist Emily Bootle turns her attention to what she sees now as an obsession with authenticity. In a collection of essays, This Is Not Who I Am, she unpicks the ideology surrounding the goal of ‘living our truth’ amidst the fakery of digital culture and the illusion of infinite choice. The award-winning saxophonist and rapper Soweto Kinch also takes a long hard look at the state of the nation for his latest album, White