From London’s holly-sellers to Engels’s flaming Christmas centrepiece, the plum pudding was more than festive fare in Victorian Britain, says KEITH FLETT
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Charles III is a gormless halfwit whose coronation bears witness to a failed revolution
Britain is humiliated, infantilised and disgraced by its enduring tolerance of the monarchy. Any talk of progressive reform must include the abolition of this semi-feudal farce, writes JOHN WIGHT
Making matters still more abhorrent is the fact that King Charles inherited £650m tax-free from his mother, gets £350m a year tax-free from the taxpayer and has an estate worth £22 billion that’s never taxed — yet the still man can’t pay for his own coronation
Once the bustling heart of Christian pilgrimage, Bethlehem now faces shuttered hotels, empty streets and a shrinking Christian community, while Israel’s assault on Gaza and the tightening grip of occupation destroy hopes of peace at the birthplace of Christ, writes Father GEOFF BOTTOMS
From a lockdown digital project to a vital tool for class solidarity, ROBERT POOLE and HENRY FOWLER reflect on half-a-decade of struggle
After years hidden away, Oldham’s memorial to six local volunteers who died fighting fascism in the Spanish civil war has been restored to public view, marking both a victory for campaigners and a renewed tribute to the town’s proud International Brigade heritage, says ROB HARGREAVES
The June 2025 attacks on Iran have heightened the risk of a wider war, exposed the fiction of a rules-based international order and left ordinary Iranians trapped between external aggression and internal repression, says the Committee for Defence of Iranian People’s Rights
While pretending to seek peace, Europe is heading toward a collision course with Russia – using security guarantees, troop deployments, expropriation and censorship as tools, writes SEVIM DAGDELEN
A WWI hero, renowned ornithologist, medical doctor, trade union organiser and founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain all rolled in one. MAT COWARD tells the story of a life so improbable it was once dismissed as fiction
THAT most famous anti-monarchist and defender to the death of democracy and meritocracy, Thomas Paine, was not a man who was minded to pull any punches when it came to his excoriation of the existence of a hereditary monarchy:
“Kings succeed each other, not as rationals, but as animals. It signifies not what their mental or moral characters are. Can we then be surprised at the abject state of the human mind in monarchical countries, when the government itself is formed on such an abject levelling system?”
Over £100 million of taxpayers’ money is being spent, but not on feeding the hungry or housing the homeless, of which there are millions across a land whose apologists never miss an opportunity to wave their Union Jacks while boasting that Brexit has made Britain great again.
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STEPHEN ARNELL wonders at the family resemblance between former prince Andrew and his great-uncle ‘Dickie’
