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Most of us know Peter, the little rabbit in the blue coat. Beatrix Potter’s tales of his exploits have populated many of our childhoods, mine included – a particularly prized cup with him on was a source of contentious between my sister and I every tea time.
These stories are held to be decidedly British, believed to have sprung from the mind of Potter who was inspired by the rolling green countryside of north-west England and her pet rabbit Peter. However, while researching the African-inspired folk tales of Brer Rabbit, the post-colonial litearature academic Emily Zobel Marshall thought, “There’s something very similar going on here.”
A few Potter scholars had noted this before but not made too much fanfare. Closely reading Potter’s letters, biographies and books, Marshall argues that Potter’s Peter Rabbit tales owe a great debt to Brer and the enslaved Africans who retold these stories on plantations in the US – a debt she never acknowledged publicly but that should be now.
If you’ve many under-25s in your life, you might have noticed a trend for dressing in all sorts of wild ways. “Anything can be clothes if you want them to be and there are no rules,” is what they seem to be saying. Think keyboards as tops – yes, the ones you type with. Even if electronics as accessories are too much, there’s something freeing about bucking sartorial rules and dressing however you want. So this weekend why not try dressing outside of the
lines?
While many of us might be jealous of Gen Z’s ability to express themselves in such ways, this generation is missing out on a lot of things that seemed guaranteed to generations before them. One big thing, for instance, is home ownership.
In the UK, ownership rates among 25-34 year-olds have halved to 30% in less than two decades, and it will probably be even lower for Gen Z. They seem doomed to rent, and in the UK this option is riddled with problems – from declining supply and quality to rising prices. Susan Smith writes about what can be done to help this dismal housing situation.
This week we also wondered what aliens learn if they observed the Earth, whether anything can make Trump supporters change their minds, and why weightlifting could be good for menopause.
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