Jimmy watches Countdown and tries to ignore his bills, grief, COPD and frailty. Meanwhile, his carer walks a tightrope between kindness and reality
Latest editorial
An indispensable history of the SCRSS
CHRISTINE LINDEY marvels at a history of the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR
HERO'S WELCOME: Toasting Yuri Gagarin at the Society’s premises in Kensington Square, July 1961
[Courtesy of the SCRSS]
JOHN FLINT explores the Appleby Blue development, winner of the Stirling prize 2025
GORDON PARSONS enjoys the wealth of wisdom and the clarity of expression from a dialogue between Chomsky and Mujica
GUILLERMO THOMAS enjoys a survey of the current state of the CIA (aka Langley) from an expert and insider of sorts
MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O CONNOR and JOHN GREEN review The Choral, Belen, Dragonfly, and Colossal Wreck
WILL STONE is frustrated by a performance that chooses to garble the lyrics and drown the songs in reverb
RITA DI SANTO points out the social experience of exploitation and oppression that inform the popular winners at this year’s festival
An Unpopular Cause : A Centenary History of the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR 1924-2024
Jane Rosen, SCRSS, £15
JANE ROSEN points out that throughout its existence the Society for Cultural Relations with the USSR (SCRSS) has had to deal with anti-Soviet and/or anti-Russian propaganda in the mainstream press, lack of funds and varying degrees of invidious surveillance by the British authorities. Yet it has survived due to support from its members and sympathisers and even had periods of popularity, especially during WWII.
In 1924 only a few years after the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Labour government established diplomatic relations with the Soviet government and the society was founded that year by socialists and other progressives including EM Forster, HG Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Sybil Thorndike, Julian Huxley and JBS Haldane.
Similar stories
The creative imagination is a weapon against barbarism, writes KENNY COYLE, who is a keynote speaker at the Manifesto Press conference, Art in the Age of Degenerative Capitalism, tomorrow at the Marx Memorial Library & Workers School in London
ANDY HEDGECOCK admires a critique of the penetration of our lives by digital media, but is disappointed that the underlying cause is avoided
MAT COWARD recalls the occasion when the first man in space paid a visit to our shores in 1961
