What to read on Beacon, as well as the Ends of Britain

Beacon, which hosts my series the Ends of Britain – which last Friday looked at the controversy over whether an independent Scotland and the rest of the UK could share the pound – now has more than 70 writers. If you subscribe to one you get access to all.

To read the articles mentioned in this post in full, you will need to be a subscriber – but you can sign up for a 14 day free trial here. So why not do that, then come back and read the rest of the post?

This short guide to what to read on Beacon starts with Brian Blickenstaff, who mostly writes about German football, such as the national team’s super-organised approach to the World Cup, although with forays into other sports. One of my favourite articles by him is on sport and national mythmaking, where he compares American rags to riches sports stories to a German focus on doing a job increasingly well:

It’s difficult to think of anything Germans admire more than craftsmanship and the ability of a person, through hard work and careful study, to push his or herself a little bit closer to perfection. If you’re going to do something, do it right.

I mentioned Benjamin Reeves’ first Beacon piece on Santa Claus and corruption in Guatemala a few weeks ago. Since then, he’s argued that Latin America will be offended if Justin Bieber isn’t deported from the US to Canada, and last week published an intriging tale of driving around the country with a mysterious old American who claims to have made Guatemala’s first national map.

Dan Fletcher is one of the founders of Beacon, having previously worked at Time and as managing editor of Facebook. He has recently written about quirks of the social media economy, such as how a Facebook page about not touching hair, face or phone (followed by 8.2m people) appears to have been monetised in a rather less-than-transparent fashion, and how he used to game Digg when first working at Time.

Going further back, highlights from last autumn include Gaar Adams on the difficulties of establishing a mosque in rurul Wisconsin and Eric Randolph talking to then-leader of the English Defence League Tommy Robinson.

Or, why not explore for yourself?