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
The enduring Flannan Isle mystery
[Marc Calhoun/Creative Commons]
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
ON Boxing Day 1900, the lighthouse tender Hesperus arrived at the Flannan Isles — the site of one of Britain’s most remote lighthouses.
The Hesperus had attempted to set sail six days before — but the severity of the Outer Hebrides weather put paid to that. A steamer on a passage from Philadelphia to Leith had logged that the lamp appeared not to have been lit in poor weather conditions, and lighthouse authorities had been sent to investigate.
What they found would form the basis of a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. The station’s flag had disappeared, and there was no sign at all of the three resident lighthouse keepers. Had they perished, or escaped to a new life?
Similar stories
Heart Lamp by the Indian writer Banu Mushtaq and winner of the 2025 International Booker prize is a powerful collection of stories inspired by the real suffering of women, writes HELEN VASSALLO
A beautifully-crafted documentary from Sinéad O’Shea
JOHN GREEN recommends that rare thing, a British novelist who is politically aware, entertaining and who writes to the moment