Pregnancy in a polluted city

I’ve recently become obsessed with using London’s rental e-bikes to get around the city. These are electric bikes, provided by private companies like Lime and Forest, which you can find near your house, scan via an app to ride, and then drop-off almost anywhere. They get bad press due to blocked pavements and some terrible injuries—but these bikes keep me above ground with the wind in my hair and fresh air in my lungs.

I’d recommend that most able people give these bikes a go. Except, perhaps, if you are pregnant, and therefore remain bound to the dirty, polluted Underground, which leaves black gunk in your nose, and can result in turning up to an antenatal appointment with dangerously high levels of carbon monoxide in your breath. Before you know it, you’re being referred to a programme on how to quit smoking. You don’t smoke.

This cautionary tale comes from Prospect’s deputy editor Ellen Halliday, who is expecting a baby in the autumn. She experienced this scary carbon monoxide reading, and is now “rethinking” the cost of her daily commute. In her diary piece, Ellen writes that beyond the effects of pollution, commuting through London during numerous heatwaves doesn’t create the ideal conditions for pregnancy—“on public transport the line of civilisation is thin”, she writes.

One thing I am missing out on during my e-bike commutes is the chance to dig into a good book. But today’s book review from Oliver Soden is so compelling that I might even hop on the tube after work, squeeze onto a carriage like a sweaty sardine, and forfeit any attempt of not falling over so that I can use both hands to read the first few pages of Victor Hugo’s Ninety-Three in its new translation.

That sounds dramatic, but “until this year, Anglophone readers had access mainly to long-out-of-print translations from the 19th century”, writes Soden. The translator, David Bellos, who died shortly after completing the work last year, “so thrillingly conveys the novel’s humanism, and the simplicity and directness of its expression”, adds Soden.

In case you missed it, the latest Weekend Read was a piece from our 2024 archive on the decline of UK universities by Glen O’Hara. As a new wave of students received their A level results last Thursday, we thought it was time to reflect on why, if the nation’s universities are among the best in the world, so many appear to be on the brink of collapse.

Let me know your thoughts on commuting via tube or e-bike, or on the state of UK universities at kathryn.schoon@prospectmagazine.co.uk.