"If Brexit wins, it will be because a majority of British voters have simply lost confidence in the way they are governed and the people they are governed by. That loss of confidence is part bloody-mindedness, part frivolity, part panic, part bad temper, part prejudice. But it is occurring – if it is – in a nation that has always prided itself, perhaps too complacently, on having very different qualities: good sense, practicality, balanced judgment, and a sure instinct for not lurching to the right or left." Martin Kettle analyses why we have been brought to the verge of Brexit.
Bernard Aris says the Leave campaign has not thought about the implications for Ireland - north and south.
The good news is that expensive libel cases are in decline, says David Hencke. The bad news is that the rich are using the 'right to be forgotten' to effectively silence their critics instead.
Daniel Ralston tells the story of the fake Zombies - the strangest con in rock history.
York Stories visits the threatened buildings of Ordnance Lane.
Malik Jalal on what it is like to find yourself living on a drone kill list.
Eight Labour candidates are standing for the Northern Ireland Assembly. Stephen Glenn asks if it is time for the Liberal Democrats to fight those elections too.
Anthony Painter explains his conversion to support for Universal Basic Income.
"At the time of its Berliner re-launch, the Guardian had a daily sale of nearly 400,000. Ten-and-a-half years later this has slipped to 165,000." Stephen Glover speculates on the future of what is, for all its faults, my favourite newspaper.
Chris Heather uncovers a sad tale of murder and suicide in the National Archives.
"Alighting from Swindon station in 1910, she hired a driver to take her to Coate but before arriving was dropped off so that she could amble to the farm and reservoir and immerse herself in the sights and sounds of so-called 'Jefferies Land'." Barry Leighton introduces us to Kate Tryon, an American artist and admirer of Richard Jefferies.
Mark Pack blogs on the polling industry's inquiry into what went wrong with the polls conducted during the 2015 British general election campaign.
"Gould had long carved out an alternative viewpoint to that of Kinnock and Smith, putting forward arguments that were to look much wiser in retrospect than many were prepared to credit at the time." Alwyn Turner on Bryan Gould, who contested the Labour leadership with John Smith in 1992.
Niall Meehan on Morris Fraser, child abuse, corruption and collusion in Britain and Northern Ireland. Toni Airaksinen says you shouldn't report your professors' microaggressions.
The Hwicce of Rutland? Caitlin Green speculates on a possible Anglo-Saxon kingdom.
"Every paradise is lost. That’s kind of the point. Loss is the diagnostic feature of every paradise ever lived or imagined. But for five miraculous years and 120,000 miraculous words Gerald Durrell sustained a vision of paradise with joy in every day and every page." Simon Barnes praises My Family and Other Animals.
Earlier this week Newsnight reported on a mystery - you can see the report below.
On 11 December a man travelled from Ealing Broadway to Euston and then caught the train to Manchester. He then made his way to Saddleworth Moor, where his body was found the next day.
He has still not been identified, which is mysterious enough. But, as Newsnight reported, Greater Manchester Police have added to the mystery.
Perhaps fuelled by watching too many reruns of Lewis on ITV3, they have suggested that the man's death may be connected with an air crash that took place near where the body was found.
In 1949 a British European Airways Douglas DC-3 on a flight from Belfast Nutts Corner Airport to Manchester came down at Saddleworth. You can see some scraps of footage of the wreckage above.
The crew and 21 of the 29 passengers on board died. But among the survivors were two little boys. That is what interested the police. Could one of them be the mystery body, grown old and gone back for a final pilgrimage to the site of the crash?
The boy survivors were Stephen Evans (5) and Michael Prestwich (2).
Michael, the 2016 press agrees, died at the age of 12 in a railway accident. It sounds as though he did not have the misfortune to be caught up in two disasters but was hit by a train on the way home from school.
A search of The British Newspaper Archive does not reveal a report of his death, but does throw up headlines like 'Michael (2) gets family fortune' and 'Boy who survived air crash inherits £35,000,' because the rest of his family died at Saddleworth.
But could the body be Stephen Evans?
No. Because, as Newsnight revealed, he is now a distinguished professor and lives on the south coast.
The latest theory is that the mystery man is Hugh Toner from Armagh, who has not seen his family for 20 years.
The moral, as ever, is that the recent past is a stranger place than we think and that stories that once hogged the headlines are soon forgotten.
