Bulletin from another world
One quirk of publishing a magazine that is proudly “last to breaking news” is that you sometimes produce an issue that captures the world just before it was knocked off its axis.
It happened two years ago with Covid-19: issue 37 of the magazine was delivered to locked-down readers across the world in March 2020, when there was round-the-clock coverage of a fearful pandemic. It contained almost no mention of the situation.
“A very handy reminder that there was a time before #coronavirus, even if we cannot (as yet) be sure there will be a time after!” tweeted one reader at the time.
Such is the case with this issue, covering October to December 2021, which has nothing on Russia’s horrifying invasion of Ukraine. It’s a missive from the days when Kyiv’s basements housed bicycles not residents and Servant of the People was just a lightly amusing Ukrainian sitcom rather than a vital historical document.
Our coverage of Ukraine will come in issue 46 in which we’ll offer our Slow perspective on this devastating conflict.
In the meantime, let us take you back to the tail-end of 2021, when we were panicked about the emergence of Omicron (see p078), inspired by the launch of a space telescope (p104) and haunted by the murder of a British MP (p026). In Chile, another charismatic young president took on a daunting challenge (p090) and in London a husband starved himself on the pavement to save his wife from unjust detention in Iran (p032) in a story we reported on for five months before their joyous reunion.
We hope you enjoy the issue. The profits from its newsstand sales will go to the Red Cross’s Ukraine appeal.
Rob and Marcus, editors
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