GLENN BURGESS suggests that, despite his record in Spain, Orwell’s enduring commitment to socialist revolution underpins his late novels
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Bonding with others offers a level of freedom and strength
A recognition that individually we are powerless both politically and socially is essential, writes GORDON PARSONS
FEAR OF MULTITUDES: Policing overkill at a pro-Palestine march on March 23 2025
CHRISTOPHER POLLARD explains how and why neoliberalism adopted the racist agenda common to the populist right of today
SYLVIA HIKINS recommends a sweeping survey of the world's biggest desert and the people who live there
GUILLERMO THOMAS is persuaded by a scathing critique of the Church of England and its embeddedness in imperialism
MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Materialists, Unmoored, Together, and Bambi: A Tale of Life in The Woods
TONY BURKE revels in the publication of previously unreleased tracks by the great US folksinger
GORDON PARSONS endures heavy rock punctuated by Shakespeare, and a delighted audience
Multitudes: How Crowds Made the Modern World
Dan Hancox
Verso, £20
“WHY do we join crowds?,” asks Dan Hancox in his book examining the crowd in its physical, social and psychological forms. Mob, horde, rabble, mass, swarm — there is no shortage of denigratory terms to describe large gatherings of humanity, whether their communal purpose is to support their local football team or to celebrate in shared carnivalesque joy at the burgeoning music festivals but particularly to demonstrate for or against an infringement on their own or others’ freedoms.
Hancox claims that the crowd is “both the agent and the protagonist of history; the harbinger of change, the forcer of arguments.”
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