The truth of how adventurers became colonisers Empire is key to so much that we are reckoning with in the world. This week, I felt a hazy mix of this truth mixed in with memories from my last sojourn abroad to Portugal. I walked along the shoreline and sat in the winter sun, gazing at structures on the water as the sun dipped. Outside Porto, there was a solitary chapel on a bed of rocks, surrounded by beach, built with its back to the sea. In Lisbon, the monument to navigators (Padrão dos Descobrimentos) stood brutal and tall.

The excitement of discovering the world; the truth of how adventurers became colonisers and made their countries rich. I really enjoyed this collection of writing from Cabo Verde, a former Portuguese colony. The stories are translated from Portuguese and Cabo Verdean dialect, and range from a selection of writers and poets talking about identity, slavery, emigration, and myth. In Arménio Vieira’s poem from 1971, "Lisbon", a woman peddling apples is shocked to come upon Africans, destitute, on the shore: "In point of fact, Lisbon was not waiting there
[to greet us.

There we stood, at last, shivering, adrift."

Nabeelah, conversation editor Word Without Borders: ‘The Center of the World: Writing from Cabo Verde’ (reading time: as long as you like)
What do we do with ‘classic’ movies that are racist? There have been a lot of conversations this week about how we face the past. Statues have fallen. In the UK, an episode of the popular sitcom Fawlty Towers was pulled from a streaming site for using racial slurs, which sent many internet and television talking heads into a meltdown.

HBO created a similar conversation when it pulled Gone with the Wind from its online player. Never one for nuance, Ted Cruz protested: “STOP the censorship, you Orwellian statists!" This piece by Kate Knibbs delves deeper into the story to bring some much-needed nuance while arguing that cases like this are not censorship.

Sabrina, editorial assistant WIRED: ‘Gone with the Wind’s removal from HBO Max isn’t censorship’ (reading time: nine minutes)
Mr Rogers for president "You were a child once too." If only every adult conversation began with that sentence. Tom Junod’s epic profile of Mr Rogers, an icon of US children’s television, makes you yearn for a time in your life – and in the world – when innocence was still possible, and human goodness did not come with asterisks.

Junod, a cynical journalist struggling with his broken relationship with his father, develops the unlikeliest of friendships with Mr Rogers, whose educational show Mr Rogers’ Neighbourhood ran on TV for nearly three decades. Mr Rogers teaches him that life can be full without being complicated, and that when you are very angry, you can take it all out by pounding the keys of the piano.

On bad days, I drape the essay’s most beautiful line over myself like soft, warm wool: “Okay, then – tomorrow, Tom, I’ll show you childhood.”

Tanmoy, Sanity correspondent Esquire: ‘Can you say ... "hero"?’ (Reading time: 24 minutes)

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