Issue 3 — May 2011
Driftwood on Portobello beach.
Image by Andrew Imrie
Driftwood on Portobello beach.
Image by Andrew Imrie
and penultimate issue of the academic year! We’re very pleased to be back in print again. You might have picked this up during the Word Festival, and we sincerely hope it will provide welcome respite from chatting up famous authors and rooting around for free stuff. Alternatively, you may have found this issue of The 4th Estate in the library, in town, or discarded and nearly indistinguishable from the granite. In any case, you’ve done your mind and the world a great service (and we’re working toward printing in colour).
Please, take a look at the stunning photography; revel in our fine examples of contemporary poetry; deeply consider the state of Britain today; and allow yourself to be infuriated by the countless offences against privacy, dignity, and joy foisted on humanity by Facebook. Then, you can ‘like’ us on Facebook.
If you’re thinking about submitting an original article, poem, photograph or piece of art (submissions@the4thestate.org.uk), don’t limit yourself to what you assume we might be looking for. As my esteemed colleague put it in the last issue, and which I have no shame in plagiarising here: we just want to be interested, and challenged. Yet again, we have no editorial hierarchy. We’re just an amorphous body of hardworking, interesting people, avidly committed to art and opinions. An amoeba of talent, if you will.
Word.
Liz Klein, for The 4th Estate
Has there been even a week gone by where some internet news source or other has not taken it upon themselves to castigate Facebook for their apparent abuses to privacy law? Many users have complained about such things as sharing private information with advertisers and market researchers (without user consent), the seeming impossibility of permanently [...] Read full article »
a few days ago we got lost in a forest. i have a hunch we did it on purpose, but nobody spoke too much. we did not care to spoil the beauty of plans spoiled; only in our minds could we admit that it’s much better that way, and only with looks could we tacitly [...] Read full article »
Cinderella by Jamie Sackett You could have thought of something better. It’s all you did all those hours dreaming that someday your prince will find you, that if only your father had better taste in women. First off, we dream those things we have yet to realize. So shall I decide your fate by stuffing [...] Read full article »
Yes Adarsh Makdani Despite what the papers would have you believe, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse (Muslims, Climate Change, Cancer and Princess Di) are not slipping into their jodhpurs. As a nation, we have a stable, liberal democracy. A coalition between two parties, roughly in the centre, that works (comparatively well). We might not [...] Read full article »