Table of contents for 01/19/2026 in The Big Issue

→ London Art Fair returns in the coming days (21-25 January), bringing together a curated selection of leading modern and contemporary galleries from the UK and around the world. This Cecil Beaton portrait is among the works. It is a meeting of two significant artists: Beaton, one of the late-20th century’s most celebrated photographers, capturing Alberto Giacometti in his Paris studio in 1956, with one of the Swiss sculptor’s signature-style pieces. londonartfair.co.uk…

↓ GET IN TOUCH The Big Issue, 2nd floor, 43 Bath Street, Glasgow G2 1HW letters@bigissue.com @bigissueuk @bigissue.com @bigissue /bigissueUK thebigissue ISSUE 1700 Big Issue does such amazing work. @rufus_dayglo_art MY WORLD AS I FIND IT Turner round I was intrigued by Bird’s Words in the New Year Special Edition [Issue 1698, 27 December 2025-04 January 2026], but surprised to learn that he favoured Constable’s cosy pastoral paintings rather than Turner’s tempestuous approach to his canvases. I get the impression from Lord Bird’s articles that the latter approach would be far more his style when attending subcommittees and think-tank meetings, in order to shake successive governments out of their somnolent approach to homelessness and poverty. I have a vested interest in Turner as I recently reworked his monumental painting Slave…

Being a naturalist came from my dad. We had similar brains I think, quite neurodivergent, we had these little obsessions. He was into aeroplanes, I was into birds, but he taught me to look up, and he taught me to be a curious child, to pay attention to what was going on around me. I was on my own quite a lot. I was quite a loner, and I spent a lot of time wandering around looking for creatures, looking at everything from insects to newts. They were, I guess, my friends. It sounds very odd now, but I was looking for life. I learned the world was full of things that weren’t human, and I just grew to love them. I just thought these things were all really fascinating…

The latest update of the UK’s Biodiversity Indicators, published in December, tells a familiar and worrying story: we live in one of the most nature-depleted countries on Earth. Birds and butterflies continue to decline, while the condition of protected wildlife areas see virtually no improvement. Without a major shift in how we build and invest, nature will keep deteriorating with huge consequences for our collective future. Research shows the UK has just 53% of its biodiversity intact, placing us in the bottom 10% of countries worldwide – and the lowest in the G7. This means that one in six species across Great Britain is now at risk of extinction. These numbers are not abstract warnings; they represent quieter dawns, emptier skies and hedgerows, and rivers that fail to support even…

I had this great idea. I was going to launch a brand-new magazine. I had a name, a list of content, and all the writers and photographers I wanted to employ. I went so far as to mock up a cover. I was ready to fly into a new project in 2026, fuelled by renewed ambition and creative energy. It all felt so exciting, invigorating and new. Until it didn’t. After a few days of thinking it through, making notes and doing sums, I started to feel overwhelmed. Then stressed. And, eventually, despondent. In the end, I realised what had really been going on: I was not inspired to pursue a grand creative dream. I was just a bit bored. It was late December, I had a bit of a…

→ It’s really easy to take potshots at the government. Let’s give it a go. Mandatory digital ID – digital no IDea more like! Winter fuel payments – winter fools more like! Farmer inheritance tax – the plans make as much sense as a ploughed field! Apologies – I recognise these gags are becoming as strained as the government’s relationship with its own backbenchers… boom boom! The reality remains, though. Keir Starmer keeps making big pledges, then reversing. Politics is the art of compromise; he’s really taking that literally. While it’s mildly diverting making cracks at politicians, it’s running out of steam. Because eventually we all want to see things improve. We want to see the cost of living no longer being a barrier to just being in the world.…

There is no correct way to grieve. Loss is so personal and can feel so unfathomable, that no response to it, however unorthodox or unusual, is ever wrong. In their 2014 memoir, H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald details a year spent training a goshawk called Mabel following the death of their father. As a meditation on grief and the restorative power of wildlife and nature, the book was superlative. The haunting, lyrical portrait became a bestseller, readers drawn in by the honesty and descriptive brilliance of Macdonald’s writing. A new film adaptation starring Claire Foy is equally captivating – steeped in sadness, but always edging towards the light. “The privilege of my job is that you get to do these emotionally extreme things, which is sort of an exercise…

Some things are better left behind. Pictured right is Biscoe House, a key outpost of the Norwegian whaling trade on Deception Island off the coast of Antarctica, left deserted since the 1960s. The photograph by Chris James is part of Abandoned, an exhibition of international photographers at the Glasgow Gallery of Photography, exploring both the external and internal meanings of the word. Abandoned is on until 31 January glasgowgalleryofphotography.com…

I always think that the best non-fiction looks at specific elements of a subject, then draws links and resonances with more universal appeal. This week I’ve read two books that do exactly that with both skill and care. First up is Drifting North by Dominic Hinde. The author is an academic and sociologist as well as an environmental journalist, and he brings all of that experience as well as more personal observations to a book that manages to be both intimately moving and expansive in terms of its scope. The book is subtitled Finding a sustainable future in Scotland’s past, which only begins to describe the journey inside, a narrative that is a blend of a whole heap of genres. The central framing device revolves around Hinde travelling the length…

In a just and equal world, Roy Keane saying “stick it up your bollocks” would be up there with Lady Bracknell exclaiming “a handbag” or Prince Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy in the literary pantheon. Immortal lines that every actor might aspire one day to perform. Perhaps it will be now that Saipan is being released in cinemas. The film, starring Éanna Hardwicke (left) and Steve Coogan (right), tells the story of the Republic of Ireland’s team’s chaotic preparation for the 2002 World Cup, when captain Roy Keane and manager Mick McCarthy fell out in spectacular – and spectacularly quotable – style. During a fabled confrontation, witnessed by the entire squad and support staff at the Hyatt Regency in Saipan, Keane told McCarthy exactly where to shove…

I’ll admit that – occasionally – I write close to deadlines. Never for this column, of course. Well, maybe just sometimes. There’s nothing for productivity like the doing-your-homework-on-a-Sunday-night fear. Perhaps it was this energy that pushed the Hodge review – baroness Margaret Hodge’s independent review of Arts Council England (ACE) – into publication, shortly before the season changed and it missed its autumn deadline. The report, a year in the making, was damning: the ACE has been unnecessarily bureaucratic with too much emphasis on box ticking. Hodge – a Labour peer and former arts minister – recognised the damaging impact of Let’s Create, a 10-year strategy due to be in place until 2030, and recommended binning it in favour of something more streamlined. It was in the name of Let’s…

Every year almost 500 lives are lost in the UK to gambling-related suicide. Behind these stark figures lies a wider pattern of harm, including anxiety and depression, broken relationships and physical health problems among young people growing up in households affected by gambling. Despite this, gambling is still not properly treated as a public health issue in the same way as alcohol or smoking. That failure has consequences, not least for children. Last year, I organised a mental health conference in my constituency. One of the most sobering sessions was delivered by Gambling with Lives, a charity formed by families bereaved through gambling-related suicide. They shared stories showing how gambling is not just an adult problem. It rips through families, schools and communities, leaving lasting damage for young people. Children…

→ Because the public who give money to Big Issue vendors are not taking the magazine, the public are once again demonstrating their enormous power – to change businesses. We bring our vendors to the marketplace to trade but unfortunately they are being turned back into beggars. So 2026 is going to be our toughest of years. The Nobel Prize-winner for economics Joseph Stiglitz gave a lecture once about modern capitalism and I made an observation to him to respond to. I said by the way he describes the big cat billionaires they sneak into our houses at night and rob our wallets and purses. Yet the billionaires largely get their enormous wealth because they give the public services and products that they want. It’s so interesting that most criticism…

A few years ago my best friend Lenny and I went out to Copenhagen to play in a big backgammon tournament. It was open to anyone and had various levels of competition. We entered the intermediate tier and did... OK. It’s the taking part, right? The real highlight for us though was not the participation, it was joining the small throng of people surveying the elite players. Grandmasters, people who earn actual money from their command of the stones (‘stones’ is just gammonese for checkers). It was like watching a totally different game. After a match finished we overheard a conversation between two of these top guys where one of them was bemoaning the terrible run of luck he’d been on recently. He finished by muttering “But you know what…

1 Guards! Guards!by Terry PratchettPratchett’s first City Watch book in the greater Discworld series mashes up police investigator characters with the tropes of fantasy fiction, while taking a deeper look at the relationships between those in power and those they’re meant to protect. 2 Tourist Seasonby Carl HiaasenHiaasen’s novels are witty, bizarre; often concerned with environmental themes. His first solo novel, Tourist Season, focuses on a group of eco-warriors who kidnap a beauty queen only to realise they’ve bitten off more than they can chew. 3 Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agencyby Douglas AdamsMore famous for the Hitchhiker’s Guide books, Adams also wrote the self-styled ‘holistic detective’ Dirk Gently, who runs up enormous expenses investigating cases involving time travel, Norse gods and psychic powers. 4 Ripley Under Groundby Patricia Highsmith Not the most laugh-out-loud example…