The Carpathia isn’t coming to rescue this government still swimming in the mire, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Back to basics: euphoria and reaction in the ’90s
John Major’s moral crusade running aground defined the decade, but Labour’s ship had already taken on too much stagnant water, writes SOLOMON HUGHES
PEOPLE say to me: “Hey, older guy who had your finger on the pulse once. What happened in the 1990s? Was it all grunge and flannel shirts? Or flappy jeans and baggy tops and Madchester and the house music? Or did Britpop sweep all that away?”
And I say: “Yes, it was all those things. Wide eyes under Kangol hats, then boozed up nights in the Good Mixer. Ladettes and irony and Cool Britannia and Girl Power all entranced the nation.”
There was enough to fill dozens of cheap It Was All Right in the ’90s TV shows.
Similar stories
Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month
JESSICA WIDNER explores how the twin themes of violence and love run through the novels of South Korean Nobel prize-winner Han Kang
In an exhibition of the graphic art of Lorna Miller, MATT KERR takes a lungful of the oxygen of dissent
JAN WOOLF wallows in the historical mulch of post WW2 West Germany, and the resistant, challenging sense made of it by Anselm Kiefer



