At school in Germany in the early 1980s I had a classmate with an appalling grasp of maths and sciences but a comprehensive command of the English language. He used to embroider his conversation with quotes from Shakespeare or Milton and manage to make the rest of us feel poorly versed in the ways of the world. He reached the peak of urbanity when lighting one of his Turkish cigarettes and pulling out a crackling copy of the Guardian Weekly. He then proceeded to educate his spellbound audience about recent events as reported by a paper that really mattered.
Inspired by his example, I cultivated a habit of buying the Weekly until taking out my first subscription when at medical school. I kept it going when I moved to Cape Town in the early 1990s and then to Britain in 1997, where I worked as a GP in Scotland and England, met my Dutch wife and started a family.
When I moved back to Germany a few years back and into a new career as an occupational physician, the Weekly remained a central pillar of my intellectual routine. I first scan it from cover to cover to get the “lie of the land” and whet my appetite. Some articles from favourites like Larry Elliott, Gary Younge, Jonathan Freedland or Oliver Burkeman I usually read in full during that first survey.
Quite frankly, I cannot imagine life without the Guardian Weekly.
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