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How the Light Gets In

Sonia Purnell looks back on a year of travels which helped her reflect on all the UK still has to offer

Tobermory on the Isle of Mull has a population of 3,000 – and heaps of community spirit Photo: Vincent Lowe/PA/Alamy

This time last year, I spent a memorable 40 minutes in a recycled whisky barrel buffeted by a brisk winter wind wearing nothing but a swimming costume and a woolly hat.

It’s not quite as mad as it sounds.

Neck-deep in 40°C water laced with flakes of local Halen Môn sea salt, plus ochre fronds of bladderwrack (seaweed), I was looking out from the island of Anglesey over the narrows of the Menai Strait to the north Wales coast and the glowering mountains behind.

‘Hope for Cynics’ (and Everyone Else)

Being told to have hope when the world feels like a dumpster fire is a bit like being asked to admire the view while the train you’re on is visibly accelerating towards a cliff.
Kyle Taylor

‘History is Not History When It Is Happening’

Mainstream history rarely tells us what we actually want to know about the past; what it felt like to be there. It may give us facts, but it stops short of situating us imaginatively in the past.
Alice Jolly