SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
What British people really thought
WILL PODMORE listens keenly to the people’s voice expressing support for the USSR and disdain for the political Establishment and the empire
Popular support for the USSR was emphasised by the Arctic convoys, bringing food and munitions to Murmansk from 1941 - 1945. The image shows members of the crew clearing the frozen focsle of HMS INGLEFIELD during convoy duty in Arctic waters; the inset image shows Scottish artist Frederick Donald Blake’s propaganda image for the convoys
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
RON JACOBS welcomes the translation into English of an angry cry from the place they call the periphery
GUILLERMO THOMAS recommends a useful book aimed at informing activists with local examples of solidarity in action around the world
HENRY BELL is provoked by a book that looks toward, but does not fully explore the question of who gets to imagine the shapes of cities to come
Our People’s War: Home Intelligence Reports and the Monitoring of British Morale, June 1941 – December 1944
Jeremy Crang, Bloomsbury, £20
DURING the second world war, the British government conducted a unique experiment in monitoring public opinion, carried out by Home Intelligence, a unit of the Ministry of Information.
The government needed to know what people were thinking in order to know how best to make them think the right way.
Regional intelligence officers created panels of regional “contacts” to gather the raw material from which they compiled their weekly reports on public opinion. These contacts were recruited, on a ratio of one to every 10,000, from among men and women who were “sensible” and “level-headed.”
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