When the ravages of Alzheimer’s leave an elderly woman marooned in painful memories of October 1950, her grandchild comes up with a creative strategy.
Latest editorial
Ambridge it ain’t
ALEX HALL revels in the fascinating details of village life unearthed by a model of local history research
TOP-PRESS EXCLUSIVE: Public phone, located in Kington St Michael, almost certainly used by Jeremy Corbyn to receive socialist instructions from Aneurin Bevan
[Maigheach-gheal/CC]
New releases from Simone White, Brass Funkeys, and Souad Massi
SUE TURNER is compelled by a history that shows how far a country can turn in on itself to collude with abuses of power
RON JACOBS is persuaded by the parallel drawn between Charles Manson and Donald Trump
In this comparison of Britain pre- and post Thatcher, WILL POMORE applauds the analysis, but distrusts the solutions offered
MARIA DUARTE defends a solid, late-career Spielberg conspiracy flick that calls for empathy in a hostile world
The Kingtons: A History of the Ancient Parish of Kington St Michael with Kington Langley
Louise Ryland-Epton
Hobnob Press, £14.95
IN 2015 members of the national press descended on the small village of Kington St Michael in Wiltshire looking for dirt on the then leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn. Alas for them there was little memory of the socialist family that had lived in the village in the 1950s. While a Cllr Corbyn had left their mark in the minutes of the parish council, the family had moved out by the time young Jeremy was seven.
Had the press decided to do actual research they might have found numerous more interesting stories of life in this slightly isolated rural parish that stretches back 1,000 years. Louise Ryland-Epton does the hard archival work in this excellent book and uncovers real lives and a changing community with a degree of granularity that bigger histories often overlook.
Similar stories
ALEX HALL is amused at the way the UFOs appear exactly where commercial interests, conspiracies, militarism and right-wing media overlap
ALEX HALL is fascinated by a lucid and historically convincing account of how rent has dominated capitalist economies from feudalism to modernity
MARTIN HALL welcomes a study of Britain’s relationship with the EU that sheds light on the way euroscepticism moved from the margins to the centre
BEN CHACKO reports on the struggles against sexism, racism and the brutish British state that featured at Matchwomen’s Festival this year