The London rapper calling time on knife crime

In 2000, 10-year old Damilola Taylor was murdered near his home in Peckham south east London. The killing shocked the nation. It made knife crime, and the problems of young people in gangs, front page news. Pigeon English is inspired by Taylor's story. Like Taylor, Harri is the child of West-African immigrants (Ghanaian rather than Nigerian), and like him he is killed by members of a local street gang who are children themselves. Kelman's novel demonstrates the ways that violence begetsA verb meaning to cause or bring about.  violence. When one of the Dell farm gang, Dizzy, tells Dean "I'll batter you", he immediately repeats the phrase to smaller children.  We see Miquita burn Lydia with a hair straightener. The novel opens with an image of the blood on the street and ends with the murder of Harri himself, as he too bleeds on the street. Violence in the novel is always repeating itself, forcing the reader to ask how anything could break the cycle.

Can anything be done? The statistics for people killed or injured by knives in Britain are horrifying. Idris Elba hopes his new campaign will reduce them dramatically.

Is there a solution? A new survey for the BBC asked 2,000 teenagers about their biggest worries and hopes. Many fear their concerns will not be addressed.

Is America ruled by fear? Four recent harmless mistakes result in four more horrific shootings. Why has the US become a place where people shoot first and ask questions later?

The title of Pigeon English is a pun on "Pidgin", the name for languages that develop when people who speak different mother tongues need to talk to each other. Such languages are often the result of colonisationWhen one country or region is controlled by another. , and can be found throughout the former British EmpireA group of countries that were once ruled or controlled by the UK, including Australia, Canada, India and large parts of Africa.. Throughout the book, language is part of how Harri builds a bridge between his old life in Ghana and his new life in London. He tells us "in England there's a hell of different words for everything. He uses the new words, but also holds onto his own Ghanaian ways of saying things. Harri uses Ghanain slang terms such as Hutious (scary) , asweh (I swear), and Adjei (a Twi word for pain or bad news). There are moments when failures to understand are very costly for Harri, and him not understanding the Dell farm gang is part of the tragedy of the book. However, the process of learning a language - not simply using the words of the new country, but figuring out how your old words fit into the new world, offers a more hopeful portrait of a multicultural society. We see Harri translating between cultures and blending them, offering the promise of a new, changed world.

Is this a good thing? Over the last century English has left all its rivals far behind. But some believe that its advantages are outweighed by the damage done to other cultures.   

Should we all invent new words? The compilers of the Oxford English Dictionary have announced the best examples from 2023 - but not everyone agrees with their choice.

Are we losing more than words? Linguists say the world's minority languages are going through a mass extinction event. This may make communication easier. But what else is lost?

Julius, the man dating Harri's Aunt Sonia, tells Harri: "The only friends a man needs, his bat and a drink. One to get you what you want, the other to forget how you got it." This image, in which violence and masculinity are bound up with solitude and silence, gets to the heart of what the novel has to say about manhood. Violence in the novel is a kind of failed expression of masculinity. Men commit acts of violence to prove that they are men. They are also constantly failing to find other ways to talk about their feelings. We see male abuse of women, as with Julius and Sonia, as well as Killa and Miquita. We see the violence between young boys, and we see how they express their contempt in gendered terms. Clipz calls Dean and Harri "Pussy boys", and other characters say not to be "gay". In the novel, to grow up to be a man is to accept the need for violence, but the suggestion is that it doesn't have to be this way.

Can positive role models turn the tide? New research shows that boys and young men are being exposed to a deluge of misogynistic content online. Some say we need to set a better example.

Knife crime, online safety and mental health

Are influencers to blame? Police say there is an "epidemic" of violence against women. Some are pinning the blame on TikTok stars who feed men a diet of resentment and sexism.

What does it mean to be masculine? Two moments frozen in time - one an epitome of humane kindness; the other an image of mindless crudity - sum up what many see as a societal catastrophe.

The structure of Pigeon English borrows something from detective stories. The point of this genre is to figure out who is innocent and who is guilty. But Kelman is concerned with a more complicated kind of innocence. Harri, who narrates the novel, is only 11. While we sometimes oppose innocence to guilt, we also oppose it to experience. Harri doesn't have very much experience. He is young, and he is new to London. He doesn't know much about it. But he already knows more than a child should have to. He has seen deaths. He has to deal with the domestic violenceViolent behaviour in the home. Often directed at somebody's partner or family. against his aunt, and the routine violence at school. At school, the children play a game called "suicide bomber", where they try to ram into each other. And we see the combination of innocence with too much experience. The name connects the game to a kind of violence that children shouldn't really have to know about, while also showing how little they understand about the horror of suicide bombing. It is the innocent perspective on violence that we see here. An acceptance of violence is combined with all the wonder at the world that any child shows when they learn new things.  While violence is normal in the novel, it is presented in ways that make it strange, because it is seen through innocent eyes, and which remind us that it doesn't have to be normal.

Can we turn back time? Mental health problems are shooting up even while literacy rates plummet. Some pin the blame on the little box in your hand. But can we do without them?

Should children have more say? Hannah Lowe says that her book is about the wit and wisdom of the kids in her school "who taught me so much". Yet children's views are often dismissed.

Should inaction be a crime? A group of young Portuguese children are challenging European governments over insufficient climate action. Some say this is the only way to halt the crisis.

Pigeon English is also a story about multiculturalismA society in which there are numerous different cultural or ethnic groups that are given equal importance and accommodation. and immigration. Harri comes from Ghana and has to make a new home in London. We see how, in many ways, that home is unwelcoming. His mother experiences racist prejudice against her during her work as a midwife. A Latvian boy named Vilis abuses him, and tells him that in his home country "they burn Black people into tar and make roads out of them". And yet, Harri finds a new home. He makes friends across cultures, with White English children and with Somali children. The novel offers a positive vision of cultures coming together, in spite of prejudice, to make a home of the place they live. But it is not enough. The cycle of violence ends by claiming Harri's life, and he is told that his true home is somewhere else. The pigeon, a recurring speaking character who adds a surreal touch to the novel, appears to him after he has been stabbed. Harri says "I want to stay, and the pigeon replies, "'It's not up to me. You've been called home."

Is this terrorism? Days of riots led by far-right groups have targeted mosques and refugees. But there is little agreement on how we should describe the terrible violence.

Do her views represent voters? After months of speculation and provocation, yesterday Rishi Sunak gave Suella Braverman the boot. Some think he played right into her hands.

Is this Britain's worst scandal? The UK government invited thousands of people to come from the Caribbean. Five years ago, it was revealed it had forced many of them to go back.