Issue 1248

13 Aug 2018
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About this issue: Overview

Inspire your kids to put their electronic devices down and make beautiful – or slightly weird – things with their hands. Antonia Charlesworth gives you the slimy, rocky lowdown with a how-to guide to children’s crafts for the summer holidays.

With a Commonwealth gold and a world record in the bag, para swimmer Tom Hamer has every right to head to Dublin in confident mood for this week’s European Championships. But if he’d listened to one of his teachers, he’d have given up swimming a long time ago, finds Christian Lisseman.

The riots of 1981 marked the culmination of a wave of rebellion across the country’s inner cities. Playwright Ed Edwards tells Ciara Leeming how his new work starts with that tumultuous year but ends with the country’s first heroin epidemic and its “destruction of the working class”. And Eve Steele, star of the show, recalls her own experience of addiction.

Plus news, arts and entertainment – including reviews of new albums by Miles Kane and Tirzah – former Irish president Mary Robinson’s letter to her younger self and columnist Roger Ratcliffe on Coniston’s wonderful honesty shop.