ANDREW WHITEHEAD
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Enthusiasms
    • London Fictions >
      • Alexander Baron
      • A walk round Baron's manor
      • John Sommerfield >
        • John Sommerfield Archive
        • John Sommerfield's Spanish notebook
        • John Sommerfield, 'More Room for Us'
      • Lynne Reid Banks
      • "Against the Tyranny of Kings and Princes": radicalism in George Gissing's 'Workers in the Dawn'
      • 'Beyond Boundary Passage'
      • 'London' by Dorf Bonarjee
    • A Mission in Kashmir >
      • Full text: A Mission in Kashmir
      • 'The People's Militia: Communists and Kashmiri nationalism in the 1940s'
      • The Rise and Fall of New Kashmir
      • The Making of the 'New Kashmir' manifesto
      • Kashmir 1947: Testimonies of a Contested History
      • Kashmir @ 70
      • Kashmir 47 Images
      • Kashmir 47 on film
      • Kashmir 47 in fiction
      • Father Shanks's Kashmir 'Diary'
      • Krishna Misri: 1947, a year of change
      • Shanti Ambardar: Kashmir 1947
    • The O'Brienites >
      • Martin Boon
      • Dan Chatterton
      • George E. Harris
      • John Radford and the Kansas colony
      • Edward Truelove
    • Clerkenwell >
      • Popular Politics and Social Structure in Clerkenwell >
        • Clerkenwell: Socialism Finds a Niche
        • Clerkenwell: Not Forgetting the Anarchists
      • Red London: radicals and socialists in late-Victorian Clerkenwell
    • NW5 and Around
  • Voices
    • Partition Voices >
      • Partition Voices: Helen Baldwin
      • Partition Voices: Edward Behr
      • Partition Voices: Benazir Bhutto
      • Partition Voices: Alys Faiz
      • Partition Voices: I.K. Gujral
      • Partition Voices: Khorshed Italia
      • Partition Voices: D.N. Kaul
      • Partition Voices: Betty Keyes
      • Partition Voices: Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan
      • Partition Voices: Kuldip Nayar
      • Partition Voices: Amrita Pritam
      • Partition Voices: Francis Rath
      • Partition Voices: Mahmooda Ahmad Ali Shah + Sajida Zameer Ahmad
      • Partition Voices: Bapsi Sidhwa & Urvashi Butalia
      • Partition Voices: Karan Singh
      • Partition Voices: H.S. Surjeet
    • Communist Voices >
      • Communist Voices: Jyoti Basu
      • Communist Voices: Brian Bunting
      • Communist Voices: Guillermo Cabrera Infante
      • Communist Voices: Benoy Choudhury
      • Communist Voices: Anima Dasgupta
      • Communist Voices: Sailen Dasgupta
      • Communist Voices: Denis Goldberg
      • Communist Voices: Grootvlie miners
      • Communist Voices: Chris Hani
      • Communist Voices: Lionel Martin
      • Communist Voices: Geeta Mukherjee
      • Communist Voices: John Rettie
    • Political Voices >
      • Political Voices: Fenner Brockway
      • Political Voices: Jeffrey Hamm
      • Political Voices: Denis Healey
      • Political Voices: Ian Mikardo
      • Political Voices: Adrian Mitchell
      • Political Voices: Ralph Russell
      • Political Voices: Screaming Lord Sutch
      • Political Voices: Dorothy Thompson
      • Political Voices: E.P. Thompson
      • The Land Song
      • Harry Pollitt on disc
    • South Asia
    • Burma
  • Collecting
    • Political Pamphlets
    • Political Journals
    • Political Badges
    • Political Ephemera
  • Radio Gems
    • 'What's Left of Communism?'
    • 'India: a people partitioned'
    • Documentaries and Features
    • What's your favourite political song?
  • Writing
    • Bibliography
    • Tramping Artisans
    • Working Class Housing in Jericho, Oxford
  • Gallery
  • Contact




​Andrew Whitehead's
Blog

A term in Chennai: finding the Light

29/1/2017

0 Comments

 
I'm in Chennai (Madras as was) - spending a semester teaching, and getting familiar with the 'big four' Indian city I know least well.

​Last night - my first evening here - I chanced across an ancient and beautiful Portuguese church, the Luz (light) church, just a few minutes walk from where I'm staying. A service was underway, and the bright lights of this tiny shrine, living up to its ancient name, served as a beacon.

The '1516' date may not be the final word, but this is certainly a church of sixteenth century foundation - perhaps the oldest Catholic church in the city, and one of the earliest European buildings in India.
​
Picture
The church attracted me back this morning  - quieter now. More serene. An opportunity to be more attentive to the building and its monuments.
Picture
Picture
Picture
The Luz church has memorials in at least three languages - including one which I first took to be Armenian (there is an old Armenian church in Chennai which I visited when last here), but the church insists is Aramaic. 
Picture

​Aramaic is the language Christ is believed to have spoken. It is still used in the liturgy of a small strand within the Thomas Christians in India - those who believed that an apostle, 'Doubting' Thomas, brought the gospel to south India a few decades after the crucifixion. Thomas was, his followers insist, martyred near Chennai. The basilica which is said to mark his burial spot is only a mile or two distant. The Luz church, as you might expect of a Portuguese foundation, does not appear to venerate St Thomas. 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
 
From the Luz church in Mylapore, I headed the short distance to Chennai's crowning glory - the Marina beach. It's a vast slab of sand, once the venue of nationalist meetings, recently of angry demonstrations (against a Supreme Court ban on the traditional Tamil sport of bull taming - the protestors won) and now just a place to chill. Not that this is the word which most comes to mind when promenading in the full south Indian sun. Several of the most eminent Tamil political leaders - including Jayalalithaa, chief minister of Tamil Nadu who died a few weeks ago - are buried close by in what has become a place of pilgrimage. We'll come back to that theme in future posts.
Picture
This lone beachcomber was collecting some small molluscs in the shallow water - he showed me what was in his bag. They were still wriggling, and looked like fleshy, over-sized cockroaches. Perhaps, to be charitable, they were small crabs. And perhaps, to be even more absurdly optimistic, they are for use as fishing bait rather than in seafood restaurants. 

Picture
The saddest sight was this giant turtle - I thought for a moment, when I saw its gaping mouth, that it was still alive. But no. And it had been partly disembowelled. This pie dog knew it had found something of value, something which offered sustenance - but not what to do with it. And it better watch out. That turtle looks minded to deliver a sharp ankle nip. 
Picture
As to my principal purpose here, teaching broadcast journalism ... I meet the class for the first time tomorrow.
0 Comments

It's all Propaganda!

22/1/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture

To Huddersfield yesterday - I'll explain why in a moment - and the second time of late that I've been there on a Saturday and so shopped at the excellent tat stalls in the glorious town centre open market.

What you need to remember about flea markets is most of it is complete rubbish - bags of assorted screws, scruffy VHS copies of unsuccessful films, chipped coronation mugs. All those were there - plus some Northern Soul singles, a touch of militaria, and, and ...

Well, look above. I was well pleased to find this - a wartime propaganda leaflet, German, and dropped over Britain, says this specialist website, in June-July 1941, when it did indeed seem that we might be losing the war,

It's cleverly done - much more sophisticated than much wartime psyops material. It proclaims that German bombers and U-boats were decimating allied shipping across the Atlantic, and that as a result: 'If the war is continued until 1942, 60% of the population of Britain will starve!'

'All this means that starvation in Britain is not to be staved off. At the most it can be postponed, but whether starvation comes this year or at the beginning of next doesn't make a ha'porth of difference. Britain must starve because she is being cut off from her supplies.'

Did you pause on 'ha'porth'? Half-penny-worth. It will have struck readers then as now that the Germans were going to some effort to communicate in everyday language.

You do wonder how this fragile sheet of paper came to be picked up, kept (and well kept), and a lifetime later ends up on a stall at Huddersfield market. But whoever kept it safe for so many years. thank you! I don't like Nazi memorabilia at all - but this telling remnant of the most difficult days of the Second World War is a welcome addition to my collection. ​ ​
​
My other find was even more surprising - a Thatcher tea plate. There isn't much in the line of modern political commemoratives - lots of Gladstone and Disraeli, a bit of Lloyd George and Churchill, but little since. And Huddersfield isn't where you would expect to find it. The stallholder said she'd been given a bit of grief about it - it cost just £1. It's Royal Doulton, though hardly one of their classier pieces. 
Picture

And what takes me to Huddersfield? Watching Town, of course. It's an enthusiasm I share with my son. And yesterday they won 2-0 against Ipswich - thanks for asking! Huddersfield Town are currently standing third in the Championship. Third! Just one place off automatic promotion to the Premiership. 

​And what's particularly nice about travelling by train to Huddersfield is arriving there - one of the most elegant stations around. I've seen some Parliament buildings with less grandeur.
​
Picture
0 Comments

Skull, crossbones ... and a Cappuccino, please

13/1/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture

If you ever want to have a full English breakfast in a burial crypt, then St. Martin-in-the-Fields is the place to go.

​This iconic church overlooking Trafalgar Square - deservedly renowned for its work with the homeless - has a neat cafe underground. The crypt once housed the graves of the grander among the church's congregation. The bodies of the poor were disposed of with a touch less decorum in the adjoining burial vault. But as part of the renaissance of this church towards the end of the last century, all the human remains were removed and reinterred. The crypt doesn't have any whiff of the dank decay that you might associate with an underground mausoleum. As well as the cafe, the old burial vaults have been opened up into a bright and welcoming conference hall, chapel and public space. Quite a makeover!

​But the crypt, with its sturdy columns supporting an eye-catching brick-lined ceiling,  hasn't entirely turned its back on its old purpose. The stone flagged floor also features gravestones retrieved from the adjoining burial ground - an area long since redeveloped.
​
So while eating bacon and egg, or sipping a cappuccino, you can commune with the earlier occupants of this space. Such as Andries Baron, who 'departed this life' aged 37 back in 1777.
​

Picture
Photo from the church website
A detail from Baron's gravestone appears at the top of this blog (and you can also see it by the column in the photo of the cafe). It's not unusual to see skull and crossbones in gravestones of this period. But did you spot the spade and pick axe? I don't ever recall seeing a burial monument which features quite so graphically the implements with which the grave is dug. 

The crypt has other curiosities. There's a small vault with a part spherical ceiling which has amazing acoustic properties. If you are positioned right, then someone talking a feet away from you sounds so strikingly clear it's as if there's a tiny speaker lodged in your cranium. (You can't get away from skulls in this crypt!)

And then there's the whipping post. That's right, a post to which miscreants were once tied and then whipped. It was once positioned, along with stocks and a small jail, on the other side of St. Martin's Lane. Now it's slightly hidden away in a crevice of the crypt. It's curious that a place with such an emphasis on kindness and redemption should house an instrument of cruelty. But better to be reminded of past intolerance than to lose sight of how we once were. 
Picture
Picture

This whipping post dates from 1752 - the date's just about legible, and a drawing from the Survey of London gives a much clearer indication of the original design. And just as Andries Baron's gravestone bore the image of the skull and crossbones to which his body would quickly have been reduced, so the post records graphically the means by which those tied to it would be assailed.

Henry VIII passed the Whipping Act in 1530, according to a website which has an interest in such things. This decreed that vagrants should be ‘tied to the end of a cart naked, and beaten with whips… till his body be bloody’. Posts came to be used instead of carts, and over time victims only had to strip from the waist upwards. This public punishment was still occasionally used in the eighteenth century for drunkenness, blasphemy and slander, as well as petty theft and bigamy. It was finally discontinued in 1791 for women and 1837 for men.


And if the words 'Whipping Post' stir up some vestigial memory - yes, that was the title of one of the Allman Brothers most memorable numbers. This is how it went:​
Sometimes I feel
Sometimes I feel
Like I've been tied 
To the whipping post
Tied to the whipping post
Tied to the whipping post 

Good lord I feel like I'm dyin'
0 Comments

Hail Hackney!

2/1/2017

0 Comments

 
Picture
So, you don't know where Haggerston is? Neither did I! But it has a station - on the Highbury and Islington to West Croydon route, if you are wondering - so what better place as a starting point for some New Year psycho-geography.

It's in Hackney - sandwiched between Hoxton and Dalston. E8 is the postal area. Haggerston station was rebuilt and reopened six years ago, and in the bright winter sun looks rather fetching - as does the adjoining Stonebridge Gardens. 

Picture
Picture
The whole point of these rambles it to discover the unexpected - and just three minutes stroll from the station is the delightful Albion Square, with a wonderful, almost tropical-looking, garden.
Picture
Adjoining the square, on Albion Drive, is the home of Iain Sinclair - psychogeographer extraordinary and author of Hackney, that Rose-Red Empire. And plumb in the middle of the gardens, deservedly listed as a local landmark, is a splendid granite drinking fountain
 The inscription, now hard to make out, reads: 'THIS GARDEN WAS LAID OUT IN 1890 FOR PUBLIC ENJOYMENT BY THE METROPOLITAN PUBLIC GARDEN ASSOCIATION ... AND IN 1910 THE SAME ASSOCIATION THROUGH THE GENEROSITY OF J PASSMORE EDWARDS ESQ WAS ENABLED TO COMPLETE ITS WORK BY ERECTING THERIN THIS DRINKING FOUNTAIN FOR FREE PUBLIC USE ....'
Picture
Venturing on, the real surprise of the ramble came - as so often - on a back street. This 'Gothic Revival spectacle', in Sinclair's judgement, was built as the Hamburg Lutheran Church, its foundation stone laid by the Duke of Cambridge in 1875. Apparently, its minister in the late 1930s was a Hitler sympathiser, and on the outbreak of war he headed back sharpish to Germany. The building is now used by a Pentecostal group, the Faith Tabernacle Church of God. 
Picture
Still more delightful is the array of adjoining buildings, tucked away from view - these are, or were, the German Hospital. 
Picture
The hospital was established nearby in the 1840s. These buildings date from 1864. Although intended for local Germans of all religions, the hospital also provided care for anyone who needed it. 

​By the 1930s, the hospital had almost two-hundred beds. But in 1940 the German staff were arrested and interned on the Isle of Man as enemy aliens.

​It became part of the NHS as a general hospital in 1948 later became a specialist psychiatric and psycho-geriatric hospital and eventually closed in 1987. The older, listed buildings now provide affordable housing.

Picture
Picture
Picture
The hospital into which this one was subsumed offered the only modern architecture of note (Haggerston Station apart) encountered in E8. Here's part of Homerton University Hospital - a splash of bue among the rose red:
Picture
On Shacklewell Lane, there were two memorable moments - a wonderful old dairy frontage ... and an old public wash house now done up as flats. 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
I had this vague sense as I promenaded along Shacklewell Lane that I was heading out, out, out - that Newham could well be next stop. Then I hit Stoke Newington Road. So I was about as wrong as could be. But taking to some of the back streets of good old Stokey, I still found some new places to ponder over.

On Walford Road, just two or three minutes from the main road, is a back street synagogue - and independent orthodox synagogue, according to its website, which dates back to the inter-war years, initially serving I imagine those Jews who moved out of the East End for a more comfortable life. Architecturally, it's distinctly drab - but nice that it survives, and as a place of worship too.
Picture
Zig-zagging to the south side of Abney Park, I chanced across Aden Terrace, which follows what was once the course of the New River,  the ancient waterway which once provided drinking water to the capital. And delightfully, where the river once ran there are now allotments. How could I have never spotted this before?
Picture
Picture
Picture
The course of the New River crosses Green Lanes on its way south and then once ran in the middle of Petherton Road, now grassed over and a long green snake of a dog walk. And on the one-time shopfronts facing the road, one last surprise - 
Picture
Picture
A fashionable restaurant has made a virtue of being located in a former garage - to the extent of keeping the old, fading signboard, complete with the three letter area code.

​This is CAN for Canonbury. CAN do!

0 Comments

    Andrew Whitehead's blog

    Welcome - read - comment - throw stones - pick up threads - and tell me how to do this better!

    Archives

    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010

    Categories

    All
    1857
    648
    A.A. Gill
    Absolute Beginners
    Adrian Mitchell
    Afghanistan
    Africa
    Agra
    Aird Uig
    Ajanta
    Akbar Khan
    Alan Dein
    Alexander Baron
    Alexandra Park
    Algarve
    Alys Faiz
    Amit Chaudhuri
    Amwell
    Anarchism
    Anc
    Andy Roth
    Anna Bhushan
    Annie Besant
    Anthony Cronin
    Anthony Kirk-Greene
    April Fool
    Archives
    Archway
    Armenian Church
    Arnold Circus
    Arnold Wesker
    Arsenal
    Arthur Conan Doyle
    Arthur Morrison
    Arthur Whitehead
    Atlanta
    Attia Hosain
    Ayahs' Home
    Baden Powell
    Badges
    Bangladesh
    Battersea
    Bernard Kops
    Bethnal Green
    Bill Fishman
    Bjp
    Blackberries
    Blackfriars
    Blackwall
    Bloodsucker Stanley
    Bloomsbury
    Blue Carbuncle
    Blustons
    Bob Dylan
    Bombay
    Borowitz
    Boundary Passage
    Boundary Street Estate
    Brendan Behan
    Brick Lane
    Bridget Riley
    British Library
    Britishness
    Broadway Market
    Bronterre O'Brien
    Burgh Castle
    Burma
    Burston Strike School
    Bus
    Bush House
    Buzzard
    Cable Street
    Calcutta
    Caledonian Road
    Camden
    Canvassing
    Cape Coast
    Carmarthen
    Cashmere
    Cecil Tyndale-Biscoe
    Charles Bradlaugh
    Charles Dickens
    Charles Pooter
    Charlie Gillett
    Charlotte Despard
    Chartists
    Chelsea
    Chennai
    China
    China In London
    Churchill
    Clapham
    Clapton
    Clerkenwell
    Clive Branson
    C.N. Annadurai
    Cochin
    'Cohen The Crooner'
    Colin Macinnes
    Colin Ward
    College Lane
    Common Wealth
    Communists
    Connaught Place
    Contemporary India
    Cormorant
    Covent Garden
    Covered Reservoir
    Crete
    Cricket
    Cricks Corner
    Cromer
    Cromer Street
    Crouch End
    Curious Kentish Town
    Cyril Satorsky
    Dalston
    Dante
    Dartmouth Park
    David Edgar
    Delaware
    Delhi
    Denis Healey
    Denmark Street
    D.H. Lawrence
    Dina Wadia
    Docklands
    Dorothy 'Dorf' Bonarjee
    Dorset
    Dr Quraishi
    Earl Cameron
    Earl's Court
    Easby
    Easingwold
    East End
    Edinburgh
    Education
    Edward Truelove
    Ela Sen
    Election 2010
    Emerald Court
    Emmanuel Swedenborg
    Ephemera
    E.P. Thompson
    Ewan Maccoll
    Fabians
    Facebook
    Fairport Convention
    Faith
    Faiz Ahmed Faiz
    Faroes
    Fergal Keane
    Fermin Rocker
    Fiction As History
    Finsbury
    Fitzrovia
    Fleet River
    Fortis Green
    Frank Kitz
    Freda Bedi
    Fred Bakunin
    'Freedom'
    Fresh Garbage
    Gallan Head
    GE2015
    George E. Harris
    George 'Jonah' Jones
    George Orwell
    Ghana
    Ghost Signs
    Gibbons
    Gildersome
    Glasgow
    Golders Green
    Gordon Brown
    Gospel Oak
    Graham Greene
    Grand Union Canal
    Granta
    Grateful Dead
    Ground Zero
    Guardian
    Hackney
    Hadleigh Castle
    Haggerston
    Hammersmith
    Hampstead Heath
    Hangover Square
    Henry George
    Herbert Read
    Herons
    H.H. Asquith
    H.H. Champion
    Highgate
    Highgate Camp
    Highgate Cemetery
    Hindi
    History Workshop
    H.M. Hyndman
    Holborn
    Holloway
    Holywell Street
    Hoopoe
    'HOPE'
    Hornbeam
    Hornsey
    Huddersfield
    Huddersfield Town
    Iain Sinclair
    Ian Jack
    Ibex House
    Iceland
    Igor Clark
    ILP
    India
    India In London
    Indian Students
    Indira Gandhi
    Ireland
    Ironbridge
    Islington
    Jack Kerouac
    Jago
    Jeff Cloves
    Jericho
    Jill Mcgivering
    Jinnah
    John Cornford
    John Pym
    John Rety
    John Simonds
    Joseph Grimaldi
    Jyoti Basu
    Kamala Markandaya
    Karachi
    Karaganda
    Kashmir
    Kensal Green
    Kensal Rise
    Kentish Town
    Khorshed Italia
    King Dido
    King's Cross
    Knossos
    Kohima
    Kovalam
    Labour Party
    Land Song
    Las Vegas
    Latin
    Laura Del-Rivo
    Laurence Hope
    Leeds
    Leeds Postcards
    Leonard Motler
    Leyton Orient
    Lgs
    Lib Dems
    Libya
    Limehouse
    Lincoln's Inn
    Liverpool
    Liz Rorison
    Lodhi Gardens
    Loft
    London Fields
    London Occasionals
    London View
    London Views
    Lost And Starving Dogs
    Louisiana Bayou
    Lowdham
    Lower Marsh
    Lucknow
    Madurai
    Mahatma Gandhi
    Malden Road
    Margaret Harkness
    Margaret Thatcher
    Margaret Whitehead
    Marques & Co.
    Martand
    Martin Boon
    Marylebone
    Maurice Margarot
    Max Bacon
    May Morris
    Michael Foot
    Mildmay Club
    Mile End
    Mirza Waheed
    Monopoly
    Monteath Mausoleum
    Moravians
    Morley
    Mortimer Terrace
    Mosque
    Mumbai
    Museum In Docklands
    Muswell Hill
    Myanmar
    Nairobi
    Narendra Modi
    Nedou
    Nehru
    New York
    NHS
    Noida
    Novotel
    Old Delhi
    Olympics
    Oral History
    Orange Street
    Oxford
    Oz
    Paintballing
    Parakeets
    Parkland Walk
    Parsees
    Partition
    Patrick Hamilton
    Peeli Wali
    Peggy Seeger
    Penny Black
    Philip Spratt
    Poetry
    Political Badges
    Political Pamphlets
    Political Song
    Pondicherry
    Primrose Hill
    Pubs
    Queen
    Queen's Crescent
    Quiz
    Radio
    Raj
    Rajiv Gandhi
    Ram Advani
    Ram Nahum
    Ramsay Macdonald
    Rangoon
    Raph Samuel
    Red Beryl
    Red Herring
    Red Kite
    Reform League
    Regents Park
    Rena Stewart
    Rent Strike
    Rethymnon
    Rhubarb
    Richard Carlile
    Richard Thompson
    Richmond
    Riff Raff Poets
    Rinkoffs
    Ripping Yarns
    Robert Blatchford
    Robert Bradnock
    Robert Owen
    Roger Casement
    Rosa Branson
    Rosie Hogarth
    Roy Amlot
    Rude Britannia
    Rudolf Rocker
    Sachin Pilot
    Saffron
    Sam Lesser
    Samye Ling
    Sanchita Islam
    San Francisco
    'Sapphire'
    Sarah Wise
    Sarmila Bose
    Sausages
    Scottish Borders
    Sekondi
    Sheikh Abdullah
    Shoreditch
    Sidis
    Sidney Street
    Simla
    Sir Francis Burdett
    Sir Frederick Sykes
    Slavery
    Smiley Sun
    Sobha Singh
    South Africa
    Southall
    Spanish Civil War
    Spinalonga
    Spitalfields
    Srinagar
    Stairway To Heaven
    Stalin
    Stanley Hall
    Stanley Menezes
    St Barnabas
    Stepney
    Steptoe And Son
    Steve Winwood
    St Giles
    St Martin's
    Stoke Newington
    Stork
    St Pancras
    Stroud Green
    Strumpet
    Stuart Hall
    Subhas Bose
    Susie Crockett
    Tate Britain
    Tazi Shahnawaz
    Thames
    Theosophy
    The Pamphleteer
    Thomas Paine
    Tibetan Muslims
    Tichborne
    Tom Mann
    Tommy Jackson
    Tom Paine
    Torriano
    Tottenham
    Toyah Sofaer
    Trump Protest
    Tube Disaster
    Tufnell Park
    Turtles
    Twitter
    Tyburn
    Uher
    Underground
    Unity Theatre
    Upper Street
    Usw
    Vale Of Health
    Victoria Cross
    Vikings
    Vinyl
    Vizag
    Walter Batty
    Walter Crane
    Walthamstow
    Wankers
    Warren Street
    Wartime Propaganda
    War Writing
    Waterlow Park
    West Bengal
    Whidborne Street
    White Heat
    Whittington
    Whittington Park
    Willesden
    William Morris
    World Cup
    World Music
    World Service
    Wren
    York Rise
    Zadie Smith
    Zainul Abedin
    Zina Rohan
    Zombies

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Enthusiasms
    • London Fictions >
      • Alexander Baron
      • A walk round Baron's manor
      • John Sommerfield >
        • John Sommerfield Archive
        • John Sommerfield's Spanish notebook
        • John Sommerfield, 'More Room for Us'
      • Lynne Reid Banks
      • "Against the Tyranny of Kings and Princes": radicalism in George Gissing's 'Workers in the Dawn'
      • 'Beyond Boundary Passage'
      • 'London' by Dorf Bonarjee
    • A Mission in Kashmir >
      • Full text: A Mission in Kashmir
      • 'The People's Militia: Communists and Kashmiri nationalism in the 1940s'
      • The Rise and Fall of New Kashmir
      • The Making of the 'New Kashmir' manifesto
      • Kashmir 1947: Testimonies of a Contested History
      • Kashmir @ 70
      • Kashmir 47 Images
      • Kashmir 47 on film
      • Kashmir 47 in fiction
      • Father Shanks's Kashmir 'Diary'
      • Krishna Misri: 1947, a year of change
      • Shanti Ambardar: Kashmir 1947
    • The O'Brienites >
      • Martin Boon
      • Dan Chatterton
      • George E. Harris
      • John Radford and the Kansas colony
      • Edward Truelove
    • Clerkenwell >
      • Popular Politics and Social Structure in Clerkenwell >
        • Clerkenwell: Socialism Finds a Niche
        • Clerkenwell: Not Forgetting the Anarchists
      • Red London: radicals and socialists in late-Victorian Clerkenwell
    • NW5 and Around
  • Voices
    • Partition Voices >
      • Partition Voices: Helen Baldwin
      • Partition Voices: Edward Behr
      • Partition Voices: Benazir Bhutto
      • Partition Voices: Alys Faiz
      • Partition Voices: I.K. Gujral
      • Partition Voices: Khorshed Italia
      • Partition Voices: D.N. Kaul
      • Partition Voices: Betty Keyes
      • Partition Voices: Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan
      • Partition Voices: Kuldip Nayar
      • Partition Voices: Amrita Pritam
      • Partition Voices: Francis Rath
      • Partition Voices: Mahmooda Ahmad Ali Shah + Sajida Zameer Ahmad
      • Partition Voices: Bapsi Sidhwa & Urvashi Butalia
      • Partition Voices: Karan Singh
      • Partition Voices: H.S. Surjeet
    • Communist Voices >
      • Communist Voices: Jyoti Basu
      • Communist Voices: Brian Bunting
      • Communist Voices: Guillermo Cabrera Infante
      • Communist Voices: Benoy Choudhury
      • Communist Voices: Anima Dasgupta
      • Communist Voices: Sailen Dasgupta
      • Communist Voices: Denis Goldberg
      • Communist Voices: Grootvlie miners
      • Communist Voices: Chris Hani
      • Communist Voices: Lionel Martin
      • Communist Voices: Geeta Mukherjee
      • Communist Voices: John Rettie
    • Political Voices >
      • Political Voices: Fenner Brockway
      • Political Voices: Jeffrey Hamm
      • Political Voices: Denis Healey
      • Political Voices: Ian Mikardo
      • Political Voices: Adrian Mitchell
      • Political Voices: Ralph Russell
      • Political Voices: Screaming Lord Sutch
      • Political Voices: Dorothy Thompson
      • Political Voices: E.P. Thompson
      • The Land Song
      • Harry Pollitt on disc
    • South Asia
    • Burma
  • Collecting
    • Political Pamphlets
    • Political Journals
    • Political Badges
    • Political Ephemera
  • Radio Gems
    • 'What's Left of Communism?'
    • 'India: a people partitioned'
    • Documentaries and Features
    • What's your favourite political song?
  • Writing
    • Bibliography
    • Tramping Artisans
    • Working Class Housing in Jericho, Oxford
  • Gallery
  • Contact