Category
Culture
From pit villages to retail parks: How the working class can win again
Andrew Hedges reviews a new book, published this week, that doubles as a portrait of his own County Durham and argues that the left must learn from Thatcher’s success at ‘subject formation’ if it wants to build one of its own.
Can anyone predict Britain’s political future? A new book tries
Richard Rose’s The Disruption of the British Party System offers a dispassionate, data-driven guide to a fractured political landscape, but its refusal to ask why things are breaking down is also its biggest limitation.
The father the FBI couldn’t stop watching
A new book uses declassified FBI files and a son’s own research to expose Washington’s decades-long campaign against Puerto Rican independence and the man at its centre.
The establishment’s fingerprints are all over the far right’s rise
A forensic new book by Daniel Trilling traces how Britain’s political establishment normalised the far right and asks whether it’s too late to reverse course.
Sportswashing, political footballs and the World Cup
With the football World Cup starting next week, Andy Walsh has a very timely review of a new book that reveals the dark underbelly of the beautiful game as it hits the headlines around the globe.
Learning lessons from the history of the British far left
A new book charting the history of the far left in Britain from 1956 to the present day offers the reader an illuminating analysis on the left’s strengths and weaknesses, says Clive Hedges.
Words of advice for the BBC’s new man at the top
The new BBC director general Matt Brittin starts work this week. Below, Granville Williams reviews a new book which contains 24 letters of advice to the BBC’s new man at the top.