---
title: "The Winter 2014 New Humanist is out now!"
date: "2014-11-18T09:53:05+00:00"
modified: "2014-11-18T09:53:05+00:00"
url: "https://rationalists.org.uk/2014/11/18/the-winter-2014-new-humanist-is-out-now/"
post_id: 6313
categories: ["Uncategorised"]
---

# The Winter 2014 New Humanist is out now!

![New Humanist cover](https://rationalists.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/images/NH-winter-cover.jpg "New Humanist cover")

The Winter 2014 issue of *New Humanist* is on sale now in High St branches of WH Smith and selected independent newsagents around the UK.

Live in the UK? [Get six months of *New Humanist* for just £1](/promo/NS6MWE14)! See below for details.

Highlights include:

- A new essay by **Philip Pullman** on reading, writing and the imagination:

> A wonderful mental freedom opens out in front of us when we discover what really enthrals us. The young boy or girl hearing the music that they’ll love for the rest of their lives – hearing it for the first time, whether it’s Bach or Beethoven or Chuck Berry or Miles Davis – what they feel at that moment is a sudden increase in freedom, a sudden widening of the horizons of possibility. Or the child suddenly intoxicated by catching sight of a painting which to the rest of us is familiar, we’ve seen it a hundred times, it no longer moves us – Van Gogh’s starry sky, for example – seeing it for the first time, and being thunderstruck. Or discovering with increasing excitement the worlds of biology, or architecture, or engineering, or mathematics, or becoming a passionate lover of poetry, as I did. It’s like suddenly becoming free, discovering a wide new world in which you are a native, a citizen, and you never knew it until now.

- From the Rushdie affair to the War on Terror: **Rahila Gupta** looks at the legacy of Women Against Fundamentalism
- **Charlie Brooker** talks to **Ariane Sherine** about satire, mental health and belief
- **Sarah Ditum** on Channel 4’s *Utopia* and other visions of the apocalypse
- How **Turkey**’s governing party has struggled to reconcile Islamic tradition with free market capitalism
- **Sally Feldman** writes a feminist history of the handbag
- Are Enlightment values truly global? **Jonathan Israel** reviews **Kenan Malik**’s history of moral philosophy
- What the movie **Pride** tells us about identity politics in modern Britain
- Ten hours listening to **David Icke** talk about lizards
- Why **Russell Brand**‘s revolution depends on divine intervention
- **Francis Beckett** on the shameful history of child abuse in the English Catholic Church
- Can we imagine a world without work?
- *New Humanist*‘s poetry editor **Fiona Sampson** on Chinese art and authenticity
- PLUS: Juliet Jacques on football; Shami Chakrabarti on human rights; Marcus Chown on the cosmos; Laurie Taylor on returning to academia; columns on the latest scientific discoveries, new poetry and book reviews

*Get [six months of New Humanist for just £1](/promo/NS6MWE14)! UK customers, direct debit only. After six months your subscription will continue at the annual rate of £27. You can cancel at any time. Overseas readers can [subscribe for £27 a year or take out a digital-only subscription for £10](https://t.co/JlFv56A34v).*