Last week, rioting and looting gripped England. At a time when many people are feeling in one way or another bad about our country, it seemed salient (and perhaps inevitable) to ask, if the UK were a fragile state, how would we approach the events of last week, their aftermath and the future?

Students in the Master of Fine Arts course at Slade, University College London, have put together a collection of their work. They chose the theme of conflict and all the pieces reflect on it in one way or another. The collection ranges from internal conflict to open war, from the personal to the political and back again. They asked me to write a foreword and as a result I had (the opportunity) to think about some things from the bottom up. Here is what I wrote:

The three weeks of what has become NATO’s armed intervention in Libya have generated far more questions than anyone could hope to answer. The uncertainties by no means overwhelm the case for intervention but they do add immediacy to the reservations expressed by the doubters and sceptics.

Only ten days ago, when UK Prime Minister David Cameron put up the flag for a no-fly zone over Libya, nobody saluted. Now the British and French are drafting a UN Security Council Resolution. After all, you cannot just sit and watch the dictator wield overhwelming force so he and his disgusting son can hang onto power and not think something should be done to stop him.

True enough – but you should think very, very carefully about what can and should be done.