Britain is leaving the European Union. Donald Trump is the president of the United States. Palmyra’s monuments have been destroyed by ISIS. The Antarctic shelf is breaking up. The warnings, the debates, the arguments and the elections have all given way to reality. What happens on the ground once the news cycle moves on? How do we understand what we’ve done, and why? This issue of Granta looks at what comes next.

Don McCullin and Charles Glass return to a ruined Palmyra; Gavin Francis and Esa Aldegheri cross four Syrian borders on a motorbike; Jason Cowley on Harlow, a former ‘Mark One New Town’ where he grew up; Ben Rawlence on climate change relocation programmes.

Plus excellent new fiction, poetry and photography.