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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The architecture of Irish partition is disintegrating
The people of the Irish Republic and their government have had a rude lesson in the politics of inter-imperialist rivalry, says NICK WRIGHT
Graffiti reading ‘No Irish Sea border’ Stroud Street in Belfast
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
GEORGE OSBORNE, the former Tory chancellor of the Exchequer, has downsized his portfolio career and gone to work for a boutique bank.
His parting shot as he vacated the editor’s desk at the Evening Standard was a reflection on the long decline of British imperialism centred on what he characterises as the errors and omissions of a ruling class to which by birth, education, wealth and high offices of state he is wedded.
In Osborne’s conspectus it was the policy failures of the Lord North, Britain’s premier at the time, that led to the loss of the North American colonies and similar missteps which weakened resistance to Irish home rule.
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