Best of British Longform: The fall out from Brexit, ‘gay cures’ and the Spice Girls
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How remain failed: the inside story of a doomed campaign
Rafael Behr, Guardian, 5 July
David Cameron’s failure to convince the British public it should remain in the EU will have repercussions for generations. Just how did team Remain manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? Rafael Behr’s lucid account is a fascinating insight into political hubris and miscalculation.
The ‘gay cure’ experiments that were written out of scientific history
Robert Colvile, Mosaic, 5 July
In 1970, a homosexual male codenamed B-19 lay with a female prostitute to have sex with “wires leading out of his skull”. It was part of a ‘gay cure’ experiment pioneered by a maverick psychoanalyst and deliberately forgotten by the scientific establishment. Robert Colvile unearths one of the strangest stories in the history of neuroscience.
Where are we now? Responses to the Referendum
Multiple authors, London Review of Books, 8 July
David Runciman, Dawn Foster, Jeremy Harding and James Meek are among the writers enlisted by the London Review of Books to try and make sense of the consequences of Britain’s historic, shock decision to leave the EU. Vital reading from some of our greatest writers on the biggest moment in British history for a generation.
Revealed: The Lavish Spending That Brought Down Britain’s Only LGBT Domestic Abuse Charity
Patrick Strudwick, BuzzFeed, 5 July
Lavish spending, inappropriate gifts, grants spent in 24 hours: this is the story of Broken Rainbow, the LGBT charity that “did a Kids Company” despite repeated warnings from its trustees and the Charity Commission.
Here’s the story, from A to Z: how the Spice Girls made Wannabe
Alice Vincent, Telegraph, 8 July
20 years ago, a pop group who would go on to define pop culture in 1990s Britain released what is still the most successful debut single of all time. This is the story of ‘Wannabe’, the song that changed the course of popular music and hardwired the word ‘zigazig-ah’ into the minds of a generation.
