Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tobias Hillenbrand, PhD candidate, Innovation, Economics, Governance and Sustainable Development, UNU-MERIT, United Nations University
Across the EU, immigration is one of the most divisive topics in politics today. Germany, a country once known for its “Willkommenskultur” (welcome culture), is a case in point.
The German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, has recently said that Syrians no longer have “grounds for asylum in Germany”, and that they will be encouraged to return voluntarily. Some could also be deported in the near future.
Polling suggests that tough approaches to immigration resonate well with the public, reflecting a broader shift toward more negative immigration attitudes.
What determines whether people in a host country like Germany welcome or reject refugees? This is what my colleagues Bruno Martorano, Laura Metzger and Melissa Siegel and I sought to better understand in a recent paper.
Through a survey experiment, we tested how different factors would affect whether participants express concern for refugees’ wellbeing, or consider them a threat.
The study was designed to assess the effects of different factors on people’s attitudes towards refugees. For example, whether a participant held humanitarian values (is committed to help fellow humans in need). We measured this based on their responses to a frequently-used set of four questions. Humanitarian considerations have received little attention in earlier studies in this area.
We also measured if people’s views changed depending on the amount of adversity refugees faced (such as whether they were fleeing war), and the personal characteristics of the refugees – their age and gender, and whether they were part of families.
We surveyed more than 2,000 participants in 2023, using short, professionally-produced videos about Syrian refugees in Turkish refugee camps.
Some participants watched a control video, which provided only some background information. Others watched one of four videos: two emphasised the humanitarian situation of Syrian refugees in refugee camps in Turkey, the other two stressed challenges that the immigration of these refugees may imply for German society.
One of the “humanitarian message” videos and one of the “threat message” videos focused on families with small children among the refugees. The other two highlighted young refugee men.
After they watched the videos, we surveyed respondents about their views and concerns about the refugees.
Humanitarian compassion
On average, respondents overall showed a moderate level of concern for the wellbeing of Syrian refugees. They were somewhat more worried about the impact on Germany’s welfare system, security and cultural life. Fears that refugees might take away jobs were less common.
We identified a strong correlation between how humanitarian someone generally is, and the compassion that respondent expressed toward the refugees. We also found that exposure to short videos highlighting the humanitarian plight of refugees made participants care significantly more for most aspects of refugees’ wellbeing, compared to those who only saw the control video.
Additionally, we gave participants the possibility to sign pro-refugee policy petitions within the survey. Only a quarter of respondents overall signed a petition calling for increased funding for Syrian refugees abroad. An even smaller share supported a petition for more admissions of Syrians to Germany. But highlighting the humanitarian plight of refugees largely increased the share of respondents advocating for more support for refugees abroad.
The limits of this kind of messaging were also apparent. Watching the humanitarian videos did nothing to reduce immigration-related fears, nor did it increase acceptance for allowing refugees into the country.
Scepticism of (some) refugees
Those who watched videos of young male refugees were significantly less likely to support allowing more refugees into the country. Our data suggests that this is likely due to heightened concerns about negative cultural effects among those who viewed a video featuring young refugee men, rather than economic concerns or participants feeling more physically threatened.
Those who watched the videos highlighting families were more concerned about the refugees’ safety. Yet, they also expressed greater concerns that refugees may represent a burden for the welfare state.
The videos did not impact all respondents equally. For example, among respondents who identified as politically leftwing, seeing a video with a humanitarian message was associated with fewer cultural concerns about immigration, compared to the control group. For right-leaning respondents, we observed the opposite: seeing one of the humanitarian videos was associated with more concerns.
In addition, it was remarkable how differently east and west Germans reacted to our experiment. The political legacy of eastern Germany – the region which used to be the socialist authoritarian German Democratic Republic (GDR) until 1990 – is relevant in explaining persistent differences between the eastern and western German populations. It has been well established that east and west Germans differ in their values, preferences and voting behaviour, including support for the anti-immigration party AfD.
While similar at baseline, we found that exposure to the four videos affected the views of east Germans more negatively than those of west Germans, regardless of the exact message or the group of refugees the video highlighted. For example, focusing on refugee families largely boosted the share of west Germans who supported increasing support for refugees abroad. Among east Germans though, it had if anything the reverse effect.
It was remarkable how different these populations reacted to the very same message. Their reactions diverge more strongly than across any other divide, such as age or education.
Taken together, our results suggest that people’s opinions on immigration are more complex than a simple pro- v anti-immigration split. Whether a political message is effective or not – that is, whether it changes minds – depends on the framing of the message itself, as well as the views and values held by the people receiving that message.
Tobias Hillenbrand does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
With flu season arriving early and NHS leaders encouraging people with symptoms to wear masks in public, a question arises: do masks actually work against the flu?
The short answer is that the evidence remains surprisingly weak. Studies conducted before the COVID pandemic generally found that masks made little to no difference in the spread of flu in everyday settings. There is little reason to think this has changed, although the COVID pandemic has taught us more about when masks can be helpful in reducing the spread of respiratory diseases.
This matters because flu cases began rising earlier than usual this year and are higher than we would normally expect at this point in the season.
While the number of people being admitted to hospital with a diagnosis of flu is still at moderate levels, the number of daily admissions is increasing. There are real concerns that we are heading towards an especially bad winter. This year, Australia suffered its worst flu season in at least 20 years.
Crucially, this strain is quite different from the one used in this year’s vaccine. This means the vaccine may be less effective at preventing infection, although it should still help protect against severe illness.
Against this backdrop, Daniel Elkeles, the chief executive of NHS Providers, told Times Radio that if you’re coughing and sneezing “then you must wear a mask when you’re in public spaces, including on public transport, to stop the chances of you giving your virus to somebody else”.
The government guidance is less forthright, with a government spokesperson stating that people should consider wearing a mask in such circumstances, not that they must wear one.
Before the COVID pandemic, there had been several studies investigating the benefits of face coverings for respiratory viruses, including influenza. The most thorough of those reviews concluded that overall, masks made little or no difference to the spread of flu, either in the home or in public places.
They also concluded that N95 masks (tight-fitting, high-filtration masks) were no better than surgical masks in everyday settings. However, the authors were only able to identify a single low-quality study to support this finding.
In real-world studies, N95 masks perform no better than surgical masks. Maridav/Shutterstock.com
In a review my colleagues and I conducted on the effectiveness of masks on the spread of respiratory infections prior to COVID, we found a similar poor effect overall. But individual studies in the review often gave very different results to each other.
Weaker studies were more likely to suggest masks work
Some studies suggested a strong protective effect, while others showed greater infection risk when people wore masks. Better-quality studies, such as randomised trials, generally found little or no benefit. In contrast, weaker study designs were more likely to suggest that masks worked.
The COVID pandemic added new evidence. The most robust recent review of masks and COVID in the community concluded that mask wearing was associated with a reduced risk of COVID transmission outside of healthcare settings. There was insufficient evidence to comment on the relative effectiveness of N95 respirator masks compared to standard surgical masks in public spaces, but in hospitals the balance of evidence was that there was little difference between the two types of mask.
These real-world studies contrast sharply with laboratory studies, which have generally found masks to be highly effective at reducing the amount of virus people release into the air and showing that properly fitted N95 masks are more effective than surgical masks for COVID and flu.
In the flu study, the researchers reported that a properly fitted N95 mask reduced the amount of flu virus released into the air by more than 94%. However, a poorly fitting N95 mask performed no better than an ordinary surgical mask – a crucial finding that suggests the gap between laboratory and real-world effectiveness may come down to how people actually wear masks.
The COVID lesson
Some of the most convincing evidence for the effectiveness of masks at preventing COVID was the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) COVID infection survey. In this survey, up to 150,000 people were screened every two weeks for the virus whether or not they had symptoms. For part of the time, the survey also collected data on mask wearing.
My colleagues and I analysed data from the ONS survey and concluded that, in adults, always wearing a mask at work or in enclosed spaces – or both – was associated with about a 20% reduction in the risk of catching COVID during the time the delta variant was the dominant strain of the virus. But after the appearance of the omicron variant, there was little if any reduced risk in mask wearers.
In children, mask wearing was associated with less of a reduction in risk of testing positive for COVID, and during the omicron period there was even a small increased risk.
Evidence for the value of masks for flu remains less clear, suggesting little if any benefit. Nevertheless, I would still encourage people who are at risk of severe disease if they catch the flu to wear a mask in crowded indoor environments – especially if they have not yet received the vaccine.
If someone is ill with the flu, it is best that they should stay at home. If they have to go out into crowded indoor environments, then I would also encourage them to wear a mask. I would not encourage mask wearing in children, given the lack of clear benefit and potential for improper use.
For most people, the overall evidence does not support routine mask wearing. I would also not encourage the general public to wear N95 masks because these masks need to be properly fitted for them to be effective. Nevertheless, wearing a mask is a personal decision, and people should be free to decide on what makes them feel most comfortable.
Paul Hunter consults for the World Health Organization. He receives funding from National Institute for Health Research and has received funding from the World Health Organization and the European Regional Development Fund
Cannabis is often seen as relatively harmless – but the latest figures tell a different story.Julian Wiskemann/ Shutterstock
Cannabis dependence is on the rise, according to the latest data on drug use and dependence published by NHS England.
Although cannabis use has remained stable over the past decade in England and Wales, dependence on the drug has risen significantly. In 2024, 6.7% of people aged 16 to 64 showed signs of drug dependence – compared with only 3.8% in 2014. This rise in drug dependence has mainly been attributed to an increase in the number of adults reporting cannabis dependence.
In England’s substance misuse treatment services alone, 86% of children aged 14-17 enrolled in treatment between 2024 and 2025 were there for cannabis problems – making it by far the most commonly used substance among young people.
Trends are slightly different in adults, with 21% of those in treatment reporting issues with cannabis use alongside opiates. Among people entering treatment for substance misuse, 22.2% were there for cannabis problems – continuing a steady climb since 2022 (20.9%).
Cannabis is often seen as relatively harmless, but these figures tell a different story. For some, cannabis use becomes difficult to control – interfering with work, relationships and mental health. It can also lead to cannabis use disorder, a serious condition that, due to its relatively mild perceived physical harms, receives far less attention than other substance use disorders.
Cannabis use disorder is defined by symptoms such as difficulty cutting down cannabis use, spending excessive time using or recovering from use, and continuing to use cannabis despite negative consequences. These problems can affect education, employment and relationships, and are linked to mental health issues such as psychosis and depression.
Despite these risks, cannabis is often perceived as “safe” compared to other drugs. The perception that cannabis doesn’t cause serious problems increases the risk of use and decreases the motivation to stop. This perception may partly explain why treatment services are now seeing such high numbers of young people with cannabis-related problems.
The latest ONS figures highlight a persistent public health challenge – one that requires more than just awareness.
Can cannabis use disorder be treated?
Treatment for cannabis use disorder isn’t straightforward. Unlike opioid dependence, there are no approved drug-based treatments for cannabis problems.
Current UK clinical guidelines recommend psychosocial interventions, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, as first-line options. But the evidence base for these therapies is surprisingly thin. Studies are small, inconsistent and often measure success in different ways – making it hard to know what really works.
In England, 85% of young people in treatment programmes were there for cannabis problems. 2Design/ Shutterstock
We found that while psychosocial approaches such as cognitive behaviour therapy (teaching people practical strategies to change unhelpful thoughts and actions and boost motivation) and acceptance-based approaches (teaching skills to manage difficult emotions, accept challenging thoughts and stay focused on the present moment) show promise, the benefits are modest and vary widely between studies.
Other psychological strategies such as contingency management (offering rewards for meeting treatment goals) have shown some success for other substance use disorders (such as cocaine and amphetamine). But the evidence for cannabis is limited.
The benefits of prescription drug treatments for cannabis use disorder remain uncertain. No drug that has been investigated to date, including antidepressants and cannabinoid agonists (which mimic the effects of cannabis), have produced convincing results.
In short, while there are some encouraging findings, the research base is still too limited to draw firm conclusions about which interventions work best. This leaves doctors and patients with uncertainty and limited guidance on treatments.
Where do we go from here?
The rise in cannabis-related treatment demand comes at a time when recreational cannabis use is highly common and high-potency products are increasingly available. This means that it could become a more common problem, which is why developing a treatment base is so important.
But a challenge researchers face in developing suitable treatments for cannabis use disorder is deciding what counts as a good outcome.
Many trials aim to have participants achieve abstinence (complete cessation of cannabis use) – but this isn’t always realistic or even what people want. For some, reducing use rather than stopping completely can still improve mental health and quality of life.
Yet there’s no universal agreement on what constitutes meaningful change. This matters because treatment goals should reflect what people actually value. If someone wants to cut down rather than quit, measuring success only by abstinence risks overlooking meaningful progress.
So until researchers agree on a core outcome set, comparing studies and developing treatment guidelines will remain difficult.
To ensure that support is based on robust evidence, we need more research, better and bigger trials and a clearer understanding of what works – and for whom.
The good news is that with growing recognition of cannabis use disorder as a genuine public health concern, researchers have an opportunity to shape a more effective and compassionate response.
For those personally affected by cannabis use disorders, psychosocial therapies are still the most supported options. Opening a non-judgemental conversation, encouraging professional support and staying informed about what treatments are available can make a real difference.
Francesca Spiga is funded by the NIHR Evidence Synthesis Programme. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.
Monika Halicka is funded by the NIHR Evidence Synthesis Programme. The views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care.
Lindsay Zanno, associate research professor at North Carolina State University, with the Dueling Dinosaurs fossilN.C. State University, CC BY-NC-ND
In 2025, dinosaurs were everywhere. In May, the BBC revived their landmark series Walking With Dinosaurs, while July saw the release of Jurassic World Rebirth, the seventh film in the extinction-proof Jurassic Park franchise.
Rising auction prices for dinosaur skeletons were a rich source of media headlines and academic concern. And a record-breaking number of visitors (6.3 million in 2024–2025) flocked to the Natural History Museum in London, where dinosaurs are a key draw.
A golden era in dinosaur science is driving this fascination with dinosaurs. Around 1,400 dinosaur species are now known from more than 90 countries, with the rate of discovery accelerating in the last two decades. The year 2025 has so far seen the discovery of 44 new dinosaur species – nearly one a week.
Many new discoveries come from palaeontological hotspots, such as Argentina, China, Mongolia and the US, but dinosaur fossils are also being found in many other places, from a Serbian village to the rainswept coast of north-west Scotland. Even as a researcher, it is hard to keep track, but here is a personal view of some of the year’s highlights.
Zavacephale rinpoche
Some fossils are so exciting that when first shown at academic conferences, they draw audible gasps even from experienced palaeontologists. Zavacephale is one of these. The stunning skeleton of this one-metre-long plant-eating dinosaur was discovered in 110-million-year-old rocks in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia and described by palaeontologist Tsogtbaatar Chinzorig and colleagues.
Zavacephale is the oldest known member of the pachycephalosaurs, a group of dinosaurs famed for their domed skulls, probably used to butt heads like today’s bighorn sheep. Pachycephalosaurs have long been one of the most enigmatic dinosaur groups, and the discovery of Zavacephale is critical to understanding their early evolution.
Istiorachis macarthurae
Dinosaur fossils have been common discoveries in the rapidly eroding Cretaceous Period-aged cliffs of the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England, for nearly two centuries. Yet, even here, there is much to learn. Jeremy Lockwood, a retired doctor turned dinosaur expert, has since 2021 named three new species of large ornithopods, one of the most common groups of plant-eating dinosaurs. These new species are closely related to Iguanodon, a four-legged ornithopod from Belgium with a very distinctive thumb spike.
Lockwood’s latest discovery, the six-metre-long Istiorachis, is another herbivorous ornithopod with a striking sail-like structure running along its back. This sail may have been a display structure used to attract mates and to deter predators by making this 128-million-year-old animal look bigger.
Spicomellus afer
Spicomellus was named in 2021 based on an incomplete rib from 165-million-year-old rocks in Morocco. It is a rib unlike that in any other animal, alive or extinct, with a series of long spines fused to its surface. In 2025, I was part of a team led by researcher Susie Maidment that described a much more complete skeleton. It revealed one of the strangest dinosaurs ever discovered.
The new fossils show that Spicomellus is the oldest known member of the ankylosaurs, heavily armoured, low and squat plant-eaters described by Maidment as resembling “walking coffee tables”.
Spicomellus is characterised by its bizarre armour, bristling with long spines all over the body, including a bony collar around the neck with spines the length of golf clubs sticking out of it. Dubbed the “punk rock dinosaur” by the BBC, Spicomellus is changing our understanding of ankylosaur evolution, but also highlighting the importance of the Moroccan fossil record.
Nanotyrannus lethaeus
For many years, one of the fiercest debates in dinosaur palaeontology has been about Nanotyrannus, a 66-million-year-old predator from Montana in the US. Nanotyrannus was first named in 1988, and suggested to be a small tyrannosaurid, around 5m long, that lived alongside the giant Tyrannosaurus rex. But many other palaeontologists disagreed, suggesting that fossils of Nanotyrannus were just young individuals of T rex.
In 2025, palaeontologists Lindsay Zanno and James Napoli published a description of a new Nanotyrannus fossil specimen, preserved as part of the Duelling Dinosaurs fossil alongside a herbivorous Triceratops. They showed that this Nanotyrannus was nearly an adult, but also that it was different from T rex in lots of ways that cannot be explained by growth, including a longer hand.
A subsequent study on the original Nanotyrannus demonstrated that this specimen was also fully grown. Together, these studies end a 35-year-long controversy and reveal Nanotyrannus as a slender, agile pursuit predator, built for speed.
A pack of Nanotyrannus attacks a juvenile T. rex. Anthony Hutchings, CC BY-NC-ND
Huayracursor jaguensis
Gigantic, four-legged, long-necked, plant-eating sauropod dinosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, such as Brachiosaurus, were the largest animals to ever walk the Earth, weighing up to 70 tonnes (equivalent of 12 African elephants). The year 2025 saw many new sauropod discoveries, including a Jurassic Highway of trackways announced by our team from a quarry in Oxfordshire, UK.
Important new information on sauropod origins came from the Triassic Period rocks of Argentina, long a key source of dinosaur discoveries. The 2m long Huayracursor was described from 228-million-year-old rocks in the Andes, making it one of the oldest known sauropod ancestors. It has a much longer neck than other species from the dawn of dinosaur evolution, revealing the earliest stages in the evolution of the extreme neck elongation seen in later sauropods.
The year 2025 was another remarkable year for dinosaur discovery and 2026 will have a lot to live up to. But I’m looking forward to seeing what surprises the new year brings.
Richard Butler receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust, the European Commission and the British Institute for Libyan and Northern African Studies.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michal Chmiel, Senior Lecturer in Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London
The Christmas advert season has officially started, and Richard Curtis’s genius is all around – again.
From the carrot expressing love on a placard in the Aldi advert, to the moment when Keira Knightley finally says yes to Joe Wilkinson (and to his food) in the Waitrose commercial, the Love Actually film seems to be everywhere in Christmas adverts. The spending spirit is being neatly squeezed into our minds, just like the extra syllable in the original lyrics of the Love Is All Around anthem.
These adverts are trying to tap into our growing loneliness and desire for togetherness and to persuade us that the best way to get it is to spend money on gifts. In the Pandora advert, for example, the boy character plans a Christmas gift for his mother to the sound of the Beach Boys hit song God Only Knows, which could be intended to remind us of the ending of Love Actually in the arrivals hall at Heathrow airport.
It’s no surprise that advertisers use works of fiction to reconnect us with past memories of joy and happiness. Take Roald Dahl’s BFG, for example, in Sainsbury’s Christmas 2025 TV ad. During Christmas, when we listen to familiar tunes or watch films together, we often experience a sense of togetherness, recognising that we share more than we disagree on.
Love Actually is an example of a cultural phenomenon that many people in the UK share nostalgic feelings towards, which evokes a feeling of belonging in us. We often respond in the same way to the movements and dialogue of Knightley, Hugh Grant and Emma Thompson, and we seem to feel united in our responses.
Once we form a connection between Love Actually or BFG and pleasant feelings associated with watching or reading them, advertisers can use the familiar songs, scenes or characters to borrow the connected positive feelings and shape our responses to their ads.
This happens because of the wiring of the impulsive system, which is often referred to as the hot system, which is a metaphor coined by psychologists to explain why we respond with predictable actions or thoughts to familiar content. Much of human behaviour is automatic. In familiar situations, we tend to act in a routine or habitual way.
Just as a Christmas carol can make us nostalgic for past Christmases, the Love Actually scene in which Grant’s character dances to Jump (For My Love) after defending matters important to Britain can make us feel happy and proud. The feeling of moments that make us proud has been recreated by Google Pixel Ad in another attempt to invoke the spirit of Love Actually.
Our willingness to buy things to reconnect with positive memories from the past is not irrational. When we experience happiness, we want to hold on to that feeling, and buying goods is a way of prolonging this state, as one 2022 study showed. If something makes us happy, such as buying goods, we do exactly that.
All those familiar movie moments, tunes and purchases can make us feel united. The need to belong and feel connected is one of the fundamental human motivations. We need stable and meaningful relationships. Sadly, there are fewer chances to meet up now that more people are working from home. John Lewis’s advert offers us a way of reconnecting: buying a gift when “you can’t find words”.
The small but significant innovations that have shaped the way we spend our working days and weekends have also changed the way we communicate. Social media was another development of the first decade of the 21st century that seemed to enable social contact while exposing us to a new set of psychological threats.
One of these was a desire to feel popular on social media. This is why, together with media communication scholar Gareth Thompson, I coined the term digital peacocks. Just like peacocks, digital poseurs post content to attract attention and feel recognised.
The combination of focusing on ourselves and the need for recognition from others could indicate narcissistic tendencies, leading us to spend more money on unnecessary purchases. Why are we responding in this way?
One possible explanation is the feeling of exhaustion caused by information coming at us from all directions, and the experience of division and loneliness. According to a 2018 study, loneliness leads us to focus disproportionately on ourselves.
Adverts that we watch outside of the unifying Christmas period do not help with that. (You are unique! You’re so much better than everyone else – doesn’t that sound familiar?)
As a 2022 study of narcissists and their attraction to luxury goods found, the more unique we feel, the more we feel the urge to demonstrate this through unnecessary purchases. However, this is an attempt to address a psychological need with material items.
Gifts are fine but conversation is even better
It would be a mistake to think that social connections are only about having a lot of people around who are similar to us. Sharing similar values may be important, but what makes humans unique is the multitude of small differences.
Buying a gift isn’t the best way to get that sense of togetherness. Talking to other people and feeling listened to is what helps alleviate feelings of loneliness, even if we don’t necessarily agree with them.
Finally, Waitrose, it would only count if Keira said yes to Andrew Lincoln,
wouldn’t it? Readers, now I’m open to hearing your opinions – after all, we don’t have to agree on that.
Michal Chmiel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The holiday season brings celebration and gift-giving, but it also ushers in something less festive: financial stress. In the UK, retailers now shape much of the spending calendar, with Black Friday one of the busiest shopping events of the year.
This year on Black Friday weekend, Nationwide building society alone saw more than 31.2 million transactions, a 5.8% increase on last year. What’s more, households that usually spend around £2,460 a month (a typical amount in the UK) shell out an additional £713 (29% more) in the month of December.
This spending culture can lead to people worrying about their budget for December and January, and often pushes them towards borrowing just to take care of their household and family.
Some estimates suggest that three quarters of UK families rely on credit, including credit cards, overdrafts and buy now, pay later (BNPL) services, to manage Christmas costs. These purchases may feel harmless at the time, but they quickly add up.
The UK already has high levels of consumer borrowing. A report by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) found that 65% of UK adults (35.3 million people) held a credit card.
BNPL has grown especially quickly, probably because it feels effortless to use. In fact, research shows that BNPL use rose from 17% in 2022 to 27% of adults in 2023, with further increases in 2024.
For the moment, many BNPL products in the UK fall outside the Consumer Credit Act 1974 and therefore remain unregulated. But this is due to change – from July 15 2026 third-party BNPL products will be fully regulated by the FCA.
In terms of the cost to consumers of BNPL, a study from Stanford University involving 570,000 people found that BNPL users paid more overall due to higher overdraft fees, interest charges and late payment fines. These costs often become visible only after the holidays when many households realise that the supposedly cheap option was not cheap at all.
A recent report on financial capability in the UK suggests that low levels of financial literacy play into these economic difficulties around times of increased spending. Strikingly, these gaps are not limited to a single demographic – they appear across age groups and income levels.
Financial literacy is often misunderstood. Many people assume it is simply mathematics, yet it is far more complex. True financial literacy is about behaviour and confident decision-making rather than understanding complex products.
In a social and digital environment shaped by targeted advertising, limited-time offers and frictionless credit, even financially knowledgeable people can overspend. The problem is rarely numerical skill. It is the challenge of managing behaviour and emotion at the point of purchase.
What’s going on in your brain?
Behavioural economist Richard Thaler’s concept of mental accounting helps to explain why BNPL and credit cards encourage overspending. Thaler’s theory shows that people treat money differently depending on how they categorise it. Creating a category such as holiday spending makes it easier to justify purchases that would otherwise feel unnecessary.
Another concept, payment decoupling, also helps to explain the appeal of BNPL. When buying is separated from paying, consumers feel less of the “pain” of payment. Humans naturally prefer immediate rewards over long-term consequences. BNPL strengthens this tendency by delaying the moment when the financial cost becomes real.
Understanding these psychological processes can help consumers make more confident decisions.
Financial literacy has never been a core part of the UK school curriculum. Even where it appears, it is often presented as an add-on rather than a fully developed programme. The new skills for life and work curriculum in England aims to strengthen financial capability, but it remains heavily weighted towards knowledge rather than behaviour.
According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), financial literacy includes knowledge, behaviour, attitudes and decision-making. Many people will recognise the tension: understanding the sensible option, yet not acting on it.
A further challenge we have found when conducting financial literacy workshops is that most teachers have never been trained to teach about money. They feel confident teaching literature or algebra, but not long-term financial planning, credit agreements, debt or interest.
In our workshops, teachers often report feeling unsure about how to discuss everyday financial risks with students. This matters for families too. Children usually learn financial behaviour from the adults around them. If both teachers and parents feel uncertain, young people receive inconsistent messages.
Our workshops also showed that young people are eager to talk about money when given the opportunity. They ask thoughtful questions that challenge assumptions that they might be uninterested in finances. They are quick to understand the emotional and psychological aspects of spending, demonstrating why financial literacy should be lived and discussed rather than memorised.
Financial literacy is not about becoming an accountant. It is about understanding why people spend the way they do and building the confidence to make decisions that support wellbeing, especially during emotionally charged or financially pressured moments.
This Christmas, the most valuable gift many people can give themselves is the space to pause before spending and the skills to avoid entering the new year in a buy-now-panic-later cycle.
Mohammad Rajjaque is affiliated with Citizen’s Advise Sheffield where he is Vice-Chair of the board of trustees. CAS is Sheffield’s largest provider of advice and advocacy services, including debt advice.
Olga Cam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Charlotte Ireland, Associate Researcher, Department of English, University of Birmingham
The bestselling British author Sophie Kinsella “peacefully” died two days before her 56th birthday on December 10, 2025. Across more than 30 books published between 1995 and 2024, Kinsella became one of the most commercially successful writers of popular women’s fiction. Her novels were the books readers packed for holidays, lent to friends and read on commutes – stories that created a sense of connection through shared experience.
Born Madeleine Wickham, she was one of Britain’s most successful novelist. She has sold more than 50 million books in more than sixty countries. Since her death, fellow contemporary writers Jennifer Weiner and Jenny Colgan, have shared tributes celebrating her impact.
Her death comes only three months after that of Jilly Cooper, described as the queen of the bonkbuster – popular novels featuring explicit sexual encounters and wild storylines. If Cooper defined the sexy, sensational bestsellers of the late 20th century, Kinsella did the same for the early 21st-century romantic comedy novel.
Controversy surrounds the term “chick lit” which has often been used pejoratively, implying that fiction about women’s lives is lightweight or disposable rather than culturally meaningful. Such dismissal rarely applied to male-authored popular fiction. The debate reveals how stories about women’s work, relationships and personal lives are routinely undervalued.
But, as fellow author Jennifer Weiner argues, being labelled “chick lit” carries advantages. The tag gives “booksellers and readers, a quick and easy shorthand with which to refer to books that feature smart, funny, struggling, relatable female protagonists.”
Alongside Helen Fielding (Bridget Jones), Candace Bushnell (Sex and the City) and Terry McMillan (Waiting to Exhale), Kinsella stands as one of the genre’s foundational voices.
What made Kinsella distinct was her focus on consumerism, finances and the stresses of modern work, shaped in part by her background as a financial journalist. In an interview with the Guardian, she described how shopping had become a national pastime, full of contradictions – the thrill of spending, the shame of debt – and “nobody has written about it”. So she did, blending the “funny and painful”.
Her most famous heroine, Becky Bloomwood, embodies this perfectly in The Secret Dreamworld Of A Shopaholic, which would be the first in the nine-book Shopaholic series and adapted for the screen as Confessions of a Shopaholic. Bloomwood insists: “They should list shopping as a cardiovascular activity.”
The line is typical of the voice that made Kinsella’s fiction so distinctive. Her writing was full of internal monologues that combine comedy with anxious, “Oh God, what now?” moments. Her heroines are flawed, panicked and often ridiculous – and it is precisely because of that, readers stayed loyal.
Kinsella’s novels are markedly contemporary, as she explained: “The world changes and I reflect the world. I’m writing about issues that didn’t even exist when I started writing.”
Transworld Digital
Her writing may look light, but in classrooms and scholarship alike, Kinsella’s novels demonstrate how comedy can carry sharp cultural critique. Her books have been used to teach students
about different waves of feminism, showing how humour can make social critique accessible. Her novels have also been linked with post-feminist discourse and compared to 19th century classics.
Kinsella’s stories interrogate (rather than simply embrace) the demands placed upon women. Her gift was balancing this critique with levity, allowing serious themes to coexist with warmth and wit. As she put it: “The best comedy comes out of truth. So, it can’t be just silly. It’s got to have a kind of underlying message.”
Kinsella’s final year also brought a different kind of visibility. In April 2024, she publicly shared her diagnosis of glioblastoma. She resisted the idea of a grand bucket list. She didn’t want to “swim with dolphins” or “meet a celebrity”.
Instead, she said, she wanted simply to “lead [her] life, but just make it a bit nicer,” with “a little treat here, a little treat there”. In many ways, this mirrors what her books offer readers: not grand transformations, but small joys, respites from pressure and moments of laughter.
In Shopaholic Ties the Knot (2001), Becky reflects: “We’re on this planet for too short a time … What’s more important? Knowing a few meaningless figures balanced – or knowing that you were the person you wanted to be?” It feels sharper in the wake of Kinsella’s passing. But her novels remain stories full of wit, resilience and warmth, still offering readers “a little treat here, a little treat there”.
This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.
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Charlotte Ireland does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Revisiting Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus is no small feat. Joe Barton, the writer behind Netflix’s Black Doves, has taken on the challenge of reworking Shaffer’s dense account of Mozart’s life and legend into a five-episode series for Sky Atlantic. It’s a bold move: the original play – and the 1984 film adaptation – already felt exhaustive, sometimes overwhelmingly so.
Yet Barton manages something unexpected. Shaffer’s monologue-laden tale of Mozart’s rival Antonio Salieri’s guilt becomes a sharper, more fluid exchange between two men bound by genius and self-destruction. This Amadeus is less about one man sabotaging another and more about two talents quietly collapsing under the weight of their own obsessions.
Less emphasis too is placed on Salieri’s ravings as “mad”, although his anguish is still front and centre. And because of the greater expressive range of both Paul Bettany as Salieri and Will Sharpe as Mozart, these performances feel more nuanced than their familiar counterparts from the 1984 movie. Bettany resists telegraphing Salieri’s insincerity towards Mozart in the way that his predecessor F. Murray Abraham does too often, while Sharpe is much more convincing than Tom Hulce in playing Mozart’s brilliance while maintaining his exuberance and obnoxious self-absorption.
The results are an essential binge-watch for the Christmas period. Barton fleshes out the drama with scenes such as a keyboard competition between Mozart and his senior rival composer Clementi (Richard Colvin), contextual scenes involving the Emperor’s (Rory Kinnear) military responsibilities when war breaks out and the infidelities of both Mozart and his wife Constanze (Gabrielle Creevy).
The trailer for Amadeus.
Television writing allows the space for some longer, more intimate exchanges between the two composers. This time around, it’s clear that Mozart’s brilliance is genuinely misunderstood while Barton makes Salieri’s jealousy both artistic and psycho-sexual (a new conceit). The frank sexuality shown in Black Doves (2024) is present here too, this time showing Salieri engaging in kinky sex to help make his psychological torture physical. His mind is bleeding, so his body must too. Mozart also can’t resist screwing his way through life, his drinking and promiscuity leading to his dissolution and destitution.
Much of this is not true to life, however. Records show that Salieri was kind to Constanze after Mozart’s death and the younger composer was generally successful, though the frequent swearing in Barton’s teleplay reflects the coarse language found in Mozart’s letters.
But Barton is smart in acknowledging the mythology too. The final episode is dominated by a conversation between Alexander Pushkin (Jack Farthing) and Constanze Mozart about whether the rumour that Salieri killed her husband is true. Pushkin wrote a short play that inspired Shaffer’s version, and in the new Amadeus, Constanze says he’s welcome to write his version of events: she’ll take the truth to her grave.
It’s all invented, but that’s OK, Barton seems to say. Mythology is how we express our depth of feeling, not only for Mozart specifically but for transcendent genius in general.
Admittedly, there are some rough spots. I thought the conclusion of the Marriage of Figaro sequence, its premiere supposedly interrupted at the very end by protesters, unconvincing, and I’m afraid the opera scenes in general aren’t well designed. Implausibly, the backdrop for Figaro is the same for the first and final acts but suits the situation of neither. Nor are Bettany nor Sharpe convincing as orchestral conductors, and I was confused as to why the document purporting to be Salieri’s Requiem (but actually Mozart’s) played at his funeral was only a few pages long.
Musically, the film’s performances are also generally disappointing, the singing in particular falling well short of world class. In this, the new version seems weak compared to the 1984 film. A film about classical music’s OG should offer a much stronger soundtrack.
Nonetheless, when the focus is on dialogue, the show crackles along with extraordinary pace. Alongside Bettany and Sharpe, the ensemble cast is uniformly strong. Kinnear is ideally characterful as Emperor Joseph, foolish as a musician but credible as the leader of a major country. Creevy is especially strong as Mozart’s wife Constanze, popping up (like Bettany) in prosthetics to hear Salieri’s confession in old age. Enyi Okoronkwo offers strong support as Mozart’s librettist and best pal Lorenzo Da Ponte and Jack Farthing helps to carry the final episode as Pushkin, the playwright in search of a musical legend.
All in all, a smart and sexy triumph for Sky. If Mozart’s music itself doesn’t quite get the investment it deserves, Amadeus makes up for it by offering a compelling drama about the nature of the human spirit.
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Dominic Broomfield-McHugh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The Grinch is one of the holiday season’s most familiar icons. The grumpy, green, fur-covered misanthrope who plotted to sabotage Christmas in Dr Seuss’s classic 1957 work has now become a quintessential part of the yearly festive ritual he so despised.
But beneath that snarl and green fur, what kind of creature is he, really? Not even Dr Seuss really had an answer.
As an anatomist, I can’t help but wonder what the Grinch would look like on the dissection table – and what his skeleton, muscles and brain can tell us about his unique origins.
The skull
The Grinch’s most recognisable feature is, of course, his face. And underlying these characteristic features would be a unique skull – unlike anything you’d find in Whoville or on Earth.
Structurally, the Grinch’s facial skeleton would blend primate and canine traits: short, broad snout, high cranium and powerful jaws. It’s a face evolved for expression, adeptly capable of sneering, gloating and ultimately smiling with genuine warmth.
His zygomatic arches (cheekbones) are broad and flared to accommodate for the large zygomaticus major muscles needed to lift the corners of his mouth into his exaggerated, mischievous smirk.
Beneath his eyes would be a large bony canal, carrying nerves to his whisker-like facial hairs – granting exquisite tactile sensitivity to changes in air currents. Like a cat’s whiskers, they’d help him sense approaching Whos or dangling baubles – crucial for a creature who thrives on stealth.
His teeth would be similar to a chimp’s, with sharp canines for tearing through Who “roast beast,” sturdy molars for grinding tougher festive fare and incisors adapted for nibbling fruitcake or the occasional candy cane.
The upper jaw, or maxilla, would be robust and slightly vaulted, lending resonance to that infamous laugh echoing through Mount Crumpit.
The face
The Grinch’s yellow eyes, with large, forward-facing eye sockets, suggest a crepuscular lifestyle: most active at dawn and dusk.
Many animals with yellow eyes, such as owls and cats, are adapted to low light. The yellow pigment filters blue light and sharpens contrast, allowing movement to be detected in the half-light. Perfect for a nocturnal gift thief.
His nasal aperture would be tall and narrow, with a complex set of internal conchae (nasal bones) to warm the cold alpine air of Mount Crumpit. The constant twitching of his nose might indicate a highly attuned sense of smell to detect roast beast from a distance.
The Grinch’s expressiveness would involve a complex set of muscles – many of which would be unusually large so he can convey every scheme, doubt, pang of guilt and emotion he experiences. For example, he would probably have very distinct levator labii superioris alaeque nasi – “Elvis muscles” – so he can lift his upper lip sneeringly.
The spine
If you watch the Grinch walk, he’s upright but fluid, almost serpentine. His spine would probably resemble a cross between a gibbon and a cat – long, flexible and sinuous.
The lower back would be extended and highly mobile, allowing that characteristic slouch and coiled posture. The thoracic vertebrae (found in the middle and upper back) would produce a gentle outward curve – creating a hunched silhouette suited to skulking. His cervical vertebrae (neck bones) would be elongated, letting him tilt and crane his head with exaggerated expressiveness.
Like a cat, he’d be digitigrade – meaning he walks on the balls of his feet and toes rather than on the soles (as humans do). This stance softens each step – allowing for the quiet, agile motion needed to lurk through Whoville stealing presents on Christmas eve.
Though his pelvis supports an upright posture, his centre of gravity sits slightly forward and low — a design that sits somewhere between human and primate.
The brain
Anatomy often mirrors personality. Judging by behaviour, the Grinch’s frontal lobes, particularly his prefrontal cortex, would be on the small side – explaining his flat and small forehead.
Given this region governs planning, impulse control and moral reasoning, it would explain why he lacks these faculties at the story’s start. Having a smaller frontal lobe also explains his rash decisions and inability to foresee consequences beyond the next stolen bauble.
His temporal lobes, would be large and active. They process sound and memory – ideal for recognising (and despising) Whoville’s Christmas carols. They also house functional areas that process smells – important for sniffing out hidden cans of Who-Hash.
His occipital and parietal lobes would also be well developed, supporting the sharp vision, coordination and spatial awareness he needed to climb, leap and slide down chimneys.
The Grinch’s amygdala (also involved in experiencing emotions) would probably be hypertrophied – explaining his emotional volatility, paranoia and exaggerated reactions. Combined with his limbic system, part of the brain’s memory and emotion centre, creates a creature ruled by passion and reactivity.
The heart
No anatomical analysis of the Grinch is complete without addressing the moment when “his heart grew three sizes.”
Biologically, such a sudden expansion would be catastrophic. In humans and other mammals, cardiomegaly (an enlarged heart) is a dangerous condition linked to heart failure, arrhythmias and poor pumping efficiency.
A real heart simply cannot enlarge in an instant of emotional revelation. But the brain can change rapidly.
The Grinch’s transformation is probably better understood as a neurological shift – with increased activity and connectivity occurring between the prefrontal cortex (empathy and regulation) and the limbic system (emotion and reward). His “growing heart,” is probably not an anatomical miracle but a metaphor for his brain becoming more socially attuned.
Anatomy of a redemption arc
To anatomists, the Grinch is more than a Christmas curiosity. He’s a case study in form and function. And in his final form, anatomy and morality align.
The muscles that once powered a sneer now lift into a genuine smile. The hands that stole presents now carve roast beast. His limbic system now fires with satisfaction.
So perhaps the real message of the Grinch’s anatomy is this: change is always possible.
Lucy E. Hyde does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Ane Grum-Schwensen, Associate Professor at The Hans Christian Andersen Centre, Principal Investigator of "Fairy Tales and Stories – The Digital Manuscript Edition", University of Southern Denmark
Hans Christian Andersen is one of Denmark’s most cherished writers – a master of the literary fairy tale whose influence stretches far beyond The Little Mermaid, The Emperor’s New Clothes and the other classics many of us first encounter in childhood.
Born in 1805 in Odense, on the island of Funen, Andersen was the son of a shoemaker and an illiterate washerwoman who would grow into an author who wrote across genres – novels, travelogues, poems and plays. But in his short tales he created a form uniquely his own: emotionally daring, stylistically inventive and rich with both whimsy and existential bite.
His tales have been read aloud for generations, adapted into countless winter performances and films and returned to each year for their blend of wonder, melancholy and moral imagination. They remind us that the season is not only about sparkle and celebration, but also reflection, hope and the small fragile miracles of being human.
So, as the days grow shorter, we’ve asked four leading Andersen experts to choose one story they believe is perfect for reading – or rereading – this Christmas. Their selections may not be the Christmas tales you’ve come to associate with Andersen. But they showcase the author at his most profound and playful – and offer new ways into his writing.
The Story of a Mother
Ane Grum-Schwensen, associate professor in the Department of Cultural and Linguistic Studies at The Hans Christian Andersen Centre, University of Southern Denmark
Choosing a single Andersen story as a favourite feels almost impossible. There are so many remarkable ones and my favourite often ends up being the one I have most recently revisited. Yet some stories return to me repeatedly, both in thought and in research.
One of these is The Story of a Mother, first published in 1847. It is a fantastic tale in every sense of the word. It includes classic fairy-tale elements: a protagonist – the mother – leaving home and facing trials, helpers guiding her and an ultimate antagonist, Death. Yet Andersen challenges this structure: the helpers demand steep prices and the antagonist could even be seen as a kind of helper. The story also reflects the fantastic, as seen in modern fiction, through its dreamlike quality and its unsettling open ending, where the mother finally allows Death to carry her child into the unknown.
This story is profoundly moving. It portrays both the desperate lengths a parent will go to to protect a child and the crushing surrender when confronted with an irreversible fate. Andersen’s ability to capture this parental anguish so vividly, despite never having been a parent himself, is striking.
The theme of the dying child was common in 19th-century art and literature, partly because of the harsh reality of child mortality. In the early decades of the century, roughly one-third of all Danish children died before their tenth birthday. Andersen addressed this theme repeatedly. Indeed, his first known poem, at age 11 was written to comfort a grieving mother. Later, in 1827, another poem he wrote, The Dying Child was published anonymously and widely translated.
The language and narration in The Story of a Mother are quintessential Andersen. Within the first few paragraphs, the theme is clear and features his imagery-rich language:
The old clock whirred and whirred, the great lead clockweight slid straight down to the floor, boom! and the clock too stood silent.
Although Andersen had written about dying children before, he struggled with the ending of this story, even in the handwritten copy he delivered to the printer. His first version was what you might call a happy ending: the mother wakes to find it was all a dream. He immediately crossed this out and replaced it with: “And Death went with her child into the ever-flowering garden”.
Still unsatisfied, he changed “ever-flowering garden”, a synonym for paradise, to “the unknown land”. A Danish critic recently described this creative shift as “how to punk your sugar-coated sentiment into salty liquorice” – a fitting metaphor for Andersen’s refusal to settle for sentimentality.
Today, the story is not as well known as some of his other tales, yet its influence in its own time was undeniable. It was translated into Bengali as early as 1858 and became popular in India. When Andersen turned 70 in 1875, one of his gifts was a polyglot edition of the story translated into no less than 15 languages – a testament to its global reach.
You can read the full version of The Story of a Mother, here.
The Comet
Holger Berg, special consultant at The Hans Christian Andersen Centre, University of Southern Denmark
No spectacular comets appeared in the sky in 1869, but the year nevertheless stands out in literature thanks to The Comet. Andersen’s reflective tale of the cosmos and the soul begins simply. A boy blows bubbles while, by the light of a candle, his mother seeks signs about the child’s life expectancy. Childlike delight and superstition live side by side in their home.
The superstitious mother was an archetype, but Andersen’s depiction is shaped by memories of his own mother, Anne Marie Andersdatter. Illustration by Lorenz Frölich. The Hans Christian Andersen Centre. Public Domain.
More than 60 years pass. The boy has become an elderly village schoolmaster. He teaches history, geography and astronomy to a new generation, bringing each subject vividly to life. Science has not destroyed his wonder – it has deepened it. Then the very same periodic comet returns.
What allows The Comet to echo across the ages is, paradoxically, its quiet, unassuming form. In earlier works, Andersen confronted one of the great fears of his age: that a comet might strike the Earth and end human civilisation. He responded either with comedy or with factual precision, but neither approach proved moving.
In 1869, he shifted away from satire and intellectual argument and towards poetic prose. Meaning now emerged through suggestion rather than debate. He also abandoned the romantic mode of his youth, in which the moon, the morning star and other celestial bodies directly commented on earthly affairs.
Part of my fascination with this tale lies in the four surviving manuscripts. Andersen gradually developed his narrative from a quaint scene in a village classroom into a life story with genuine cosmological reach and this can be seen in each version of the story.
It’s often said that a human life is merely a glimpse when measured against astronomical time. In Andersen’s time, people quoted the Latin expression homo bulla: the human being is but a soap bubble. To this familiar poetic image, Andersen in his second manuscript added the comet. Against the brevity of the bubble, he set the vastness of the comet’s arc – and with it, the question of where the human soul travels once it leaves the body.
This print unites six of the largest comets known in 1860. Andersen had seen three of them. In late January 1869, he began the first full draft of The Comet. Engraving by James Reynolds in a copy at The Wellcome Collection. Public Domain.
Andersen achieved his narrative breakthrough in late January of 1869 through a shift in both theme and structure. In the third manuscript, he added a final paragraph nearly identical to the opening. This narrative circle matches the subject at hand: “Everything returns!” the schoolmaster teaches us, be it periodic comets or historical events. And yet the tale ends by imagining what does not return: the “soul was off on a far larger course, in a far vaster space than that through which the comet flies”.
Andersen invites us to gaze upward with the openness of a child. And raises profound questions about what it means to be human, both in this world and, for spiritually inclined readers, in whatever may lie beyond it.
You can read the full version of The Comet, here and listen to a podcast on the story here.
The Shadow
Jacob Bøggild, associate professor at The Hans Christian Andersen Centre, University of Southern Denmark
The Shadow by Hans Christian Andersen was first published in 1847. In some ways, it is Andersen’s darkest tale. The character the reader is led to believe is the protagonist is known only as “the learned man,” a figure never given a name, whereas his shadow – which breaks away from him – gives the tale its very title.
At the end of the story, the shadow has the learned man executed and marries the daughter of a king, implying that they will rule her country together. Thus, the shadow triumphs in the manner of a genuine fairy-tale protagonist, while his former master dies miserably.
But the tale is not solely dark and tragic. The scene in which the shadow separates from the learned man is perfectly choreographed in accordance with the way a shadow follows every movement of the body that casts it.
Afterwards, it irks the learned man that he has lost his shadow, but since he is visiting a country with a warm climate he soon grows a new one. And one reason the shadow can seduce the princess is that he is a wonderful dancer – he is, of course, ever so light on his feet. Throughout the tale, Andersen treats each impossible occurrence as though it were entirely natural, and the effect is extremely funny (as well as uncanny).
In traditional fairy tales, the protagonist often leaves home because some imbalance has occurred. Away from home, out in the wide world, the protagonist must accomplish a number of tasks. The happy ending usually means that the character finds a new home, often by marrying a princess and becoming ruler of half a kingdom.
In The Shadow, the learned man is already away from home at the beginning, visiting a country with a hot climate before returning to his own homeland with a cold one. It is here that his former shadow appears and manipulates him into exchanging roles, making the learned man literally the shadow of a shadow. The two then travel to a spa. The learned man is once again far from home, and it is there that he dies.
The shadow, on the other hand, begins its story “at home”, since its home is wherever the learned man is. It then separates itself, goes out into the world and becomes highly successful – albeit through mischief. Its ultimate triumph comes when it establishes a new home for itself by marrying the princess. The Shadow is a reversed fairy tale in every possible sense.
The way Andersen executes this reversal is a masterpiece and bears witness to his acute awareness of genre conventions and narrative structures – something that has, unfortunately, rarely been recognised as fully as it deserves.
You can read the full version of The Shadow, here.
The Princess on the Pea
Sarah Bienko Eriksen, postdoctoral researcher at The Hans Christian Andersen Centre, University of Southern Denmark
The Princess on the Pea has suffered the odd fate of being so popular that many people never bother to read it. This is an oversight. And given that it clocks in at about 350 words, or shorter than the article you’re reading right now, it’s also a problem that’s easily remedied.
The tale opens with a prince’s worldwide search for a “real” princess. He’s met plenty of hopefuls along the way, but they weren’t really “real”, and for him, only a “true” one will do. The words “real” and “true” (in Danish, rigtig/virkelig) appear in this tiny story a total of nine times — very much in defiance of certain truisms about good writing and the spice of life.
So when a prospective princess shows up to the castle one stormy night with rainwater gushing down her hair and out of her heels, she quite literally embodies the problem of how to tell whether something is real or not. Is it visible at a glance? Can it be observed through behaviour? Or must we simply feel it?
To see if their guest is the genuine artefact, the queen tests her with a bed fit for a princess: 20 duvets piled atop of 20 mattresses and at the very bottom, a single pea. Not a pearl or a diamond but the lowliest of domestic objects.
The guest, however, doesn’t miss a thing, awakening black and blue and worse off than when she arrived. The court is immediately satisfied – only a true princess could be so sensitive! – yet amusingly, the entire exercise brings them no closer to actually spotting one: it’s her powers of observation that pass the test, not theirs. The real, it seems, simply knows itself.
We can all guess what happens next, but what comes after the wedding? Here we find Hans Christian Andersen’s most innovative contribution to this traditional fairy tale: namely, that the pea gets its own ending, receiving a place of honour in the Royal Museum “where it can still be seen, providing no one has taken it”.
A Dane reading this story in 1835 couldn’t help but notice this nod to the 1802 theft of Denmark’s national treasure, the Golden Horns of Gallehus, from that same location. Less obvious is that with this reference, Andersen bursts the bubble containing all fairy tales and thrusts the pea into the real world.
Did we feel it? Perhaps not. But then again, it might have been stolen.
“Now, that was a real story!” the tale concludes, knowingly. Not a true story, mind you, but the impossible state of being “real fiction”. (And if we wish to test this for ourselves, it won’t be Andersen’s fault that the genuine artefact is missing from the Royal Museum.)
Unlike our princess, this tale offers no tidy resolution, which is precisely the richness of great art: it prompts reflection, hides wonder in the humble detail and is never truly finished, inviting us to play along in happily ever after.
You can read the full version of The Princess on the Pea, here.
This article was commissioned as part of a partnership collaboration between Videnskab.dk and The Conversation.
Ane Grum-Schwensen receives funding from Augustinus Fonden, Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond and The Danish Research Reserve.
Holger Berg receives funding from Augustinus Fonden, Aage og Johanne Louis-Hansens Fond and The Danish Research Reserve.
Sarah Bienko Eriksen receives funding from the Independent Research Fund Denmark.
Jacob Bøggild does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
