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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Words as weapons, from ‘sexual harassment’ to ‘Karens’
Decades after Dale Spender’s groundbreaking work on how language embeds male dominance, the struggle to reshape words that accurately reflect women’s experiences remains both vital and unfinished, writes JULIA BARD
LANGUAGE BARRIER: Princess Margaret meeting pop group The Beatles at the 1963 Royal Variety Performance at the Prince of Wales Theatre on November 4 1963
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
THIRTY-NINE years ago, when the Jewish Chronicle was still recognisable as a newspaper, my partner and I sent a notice to the Social and Personal column announcing the birth of our twin sons.
The JC was happy to include our announcement, they said, but would need to edit our names, changing Julia Bard and David Rosenberg to David and Julia Bard-Rosenberg. We protested. They insisted. It was “policy.”
Couples with children, it seemed, had to have the same surname in case their readers suspected, God forbid, that they weren’t married. We were, as it happens (which is another story), and I kept my name.
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