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
      • 'For the Conversion of Kashmir'
      • 'I shall paint my nails with the blood of those that covet me'
      • Freda Bedi looking 'From a Woman's Window' on Kashmir
      • 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
      • 'New World'
    • Clerkenwell >
      • Popular Politics and Social Structure in Clerkenwell >
        • The Residents of Clerkenwell
        • The Occupational Structure of Clerkenwell
        • Clerkenwell and Reform
        • Fenians, Reformers and the Clerkenwell "Outrage"
        • Clerkenwell: Socialism Finds a Niche
        • Clerkenwell: Not Forgetting the Anarchists
      • Red London: radicals and socialists in late-Victorian Clerkenwell
      • Patriotic Club
    • NW5 and Around
  • Voices
    • Partition Voices >
      • Partition Voices: L.K. Advani
      • Partition Voices: Ram Advani
      • Partition Voices: Qazi Ghulam Ajmiri
      • Partition Voices: Angela Aranha
      • Partition Voices: Helen Baldwin
      • Partition Voices: Bali family
      • Partition Voices: Edward Behr
      • Partition Voices: Benazir Bhutto
      • Partition Voices: H.K. Burki
      • Partition Voices: Sailen Chatterjee
      • Partition Voices: Pran Chopra
      • Partition Voices: K.S. + Ayesha Duggal
      • Partition Voices: Alys Faiz
      • Partition Voices: Jugal Chandra Ghosh
      • Partition Voices: Ashoka Gupta
      • Partition Voices: I.K. Gujral
      • Partition Voices: Syed Najmuddin Hashim
      • Partition Voices: Khorshed Italia
      • Partition Voices: Pran Nath Jalali
      • Partition Voices: D.N. Kaul
      • Partition Voices: Jolly Mohan Kaul
      • Partition Voices: Basant Kaur
      • Partition Voices: Betty Keyes
      • Partition Voices: Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan
      • Partition Voices: Usha Khanna
      • Partition Voices: Frank Leeson
      • Partition Voices: Abdul Ghani Lone
      • Partition Voices: Gopal 'Patha' Mukherjee
      • Partition Voices: Kuldip Nayar
      • Partition Voices: Amrita Pritam
      • Partition Voices: Francis Rath
      • Partition Voices: Annada Sankar Ray
      • Partition Voices: Bhisham Sahni
      • Partition Voices: Sat Paul Sahni
      • Partition Voices: Sir Ian Scott
      • Partition Voices: Sir Paul Scott
      • Partition Voices: Sheila Sengupta
      • Partition Voices: Mahmooda Ahmad Ali Shah + Sajida Zameer Ahmad
      • Partition Voices: Bapsi Sidhwa & Urvashi Butalia
      • Partition Voices: Air Marshal Arjan Singh
      • Partition Voices: Bir Bahadur Singh
      • Partition Voices: Karan Singh
      • Partition Voices: Khushwant Singh
      • Partition Voices: Shingara Singh
      • Partition Voices: H.S. Surjeet
      • Partition Voices: Ben and Marguerite Suter
      • Partition Voices: Leela Thompson
      • Partition Voices: K.B. Vaid
    • Kashmir Voices >
      • Kashmir Voices: Asiya Andrabi
      • Kashmir Voices: Mirwaiz Umar Farooq
      • Kashmir Voices: George Fernandes
      • Kashmir Voices: General J.R. Mukherjee
      • Kashmir Voices: Abdullah Muntazir
      • Kashmir Voices: Ali Mohammad Sagar
      • Kashmir Voices: Syed Salahuddin
    • Communist Voices >
      • Communist Voices: Manmohan Adhikari
      • 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: Indrajit Gupta
      • Communist Voices: Chris Hani
      • Communist Voices: Lionel Martin
      • Communist Voices: Vishwanath Mathur
      • Communist Voices: Geeta Mukherjee
      • Communist Voices: E.M.S. Namboodiripad
      • Communist Voices: John Rettie
    • Political Voices >
      • Political Voices: Sally Alexander
      • Political Voices: Lou Appleton
      • Political Voices: Murray Bookchin
      • Political Voices: Fenner Brockway
      • Political Voices: Tony Cliff
      • Political Voices: Nellie Dick
      • Political Voices: Leah Feldman
      • Political Voices: Jeffrey Hamm
      • Political Voices: Denis Healey
      • Political Voices: Eric Hobsbawm
      • Political Voices: Ian Mikardo
      • Political Voices: Mick Mindel
      • Political Voices: Adrian Mitchell
      • Political Voices: Phil Piratin
      • Political Voices: Betty Reid
      • Political Voices: Fermin Rocker
      • Political Voices: Ralph Russell
      • Political Voices: John Saville
      • Political Voices: Alfred Sherman
      • Political Voices: Screaming Lord Sutch
      • Political Voices: Dorothy Thompson
      • Political Voices: E.P. Thompson
      • Political Voices: Tom Wilson
      • Political Voices: Harry Young
      • The Land Song
      • Harry Pollitt on disc
    • The British New Left >
      • New Left: T.J. Clark
      • New Left: Chuck Taylor
      • New Left: Headopoly
    • South Asia
    • Burma
  • Collecting
    • Political Pamphlets
    • Political Journals
    • Political Badges
    • Political Tokens
    • Political Ephemera
  • Radio Gems
    • 'What's Left of Communism?'
    • 'India: a people partitioned'
    • India's Minorities
    • Documentaries and Features
    • From Our Own Correspondent >
      • FOOC: Working at Westminster 1990
      • FOOC: Ulster's Talking Shop 1991
      • FOOC: House Rules at Westminster 1992
      • FOOC: India's Red Fort State
      • FOOC: Keeping Kosher in Cuba
      • FOOC: Italy's Gourmand Communists 1992
      • FOOC: Scoundrel Politicians - 1993
      • FOOC: Kashmir's New Puritans 1993
      • FOOC: The Rajah of Bihar 1993
      • FOOC: Bringing the Gospel to Mizoram 1993
      • FOOC: Netaji, India's Lost Leader 1994
      • FOOC: A Self-Respect Wedding 1994
      • FOOC: The Miseries of Manipur 1994
      • FOOC: Village Bangladesh 1994
      • FOOC: Calcutta's Communists Discover Capitalism 1995
      • FOOC: Localism in Ladakh 1995
      • FOOC: Bhutan, not quite Paradise
      • FOOC: Crime and Indian Politics 1995
      • FOOC: Sonia Gandhi 1995
      • FOOC: Sri Lanka's Missing Leaders 1995
      • FOOC: India Votes 1996
      • FOOC: Communism Revisited 1996
      • FOOC: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan 1996
      • FOOC: Kerala's Jewish Community 1996
      • FOOC: India's Corruption Scandals 1996
      • FOOC: The Maldives Crowded Capital 1996
      • FOOC: India's Polluted Capital 1996
      • FOOC: Jinnah, Pakistan's Quaid 1997
      • FOOC: Mauritius, an Indian Ocean melting pot
      • FOOC: The Hijras Blessing 1998
      • FOOC: Massacre at Baramulla 2003
      • FOOC: An Old Photo from Kashmir 2007
      • FOOC: Prosperity Driven from Detroit 2008
      • FOOC: An Atheist in MLK's Atlanta2013
      • FOOC: San Francisco's City Lights 2014
      • FOOC: Kashmir Revisited 2014
      • FOOC: By Ferry in Burma 2014
      • FOOC: Toyah's Grave 2017
      • FOOC: The Tibetan Colony in Kashmir 2017
      • FOOC: Stars of Tamil Politics 2018
      • FOOC: Koreans in Chennai 2018
      • FOOC: Epitaph to Empire 2019
      • FOOC: Armenians in India 2019
      • FOOC: Lahore's Bradlaugh Hall 2020
    • What's your favourite political song?
    • London Snapshots
  • Writing
    • Bibliography
    • Tramping Artisans
    • Working Class Housing in Jericho, Oxford
    • New Statesman
    • The Freethinker
    • Outlook
    • Asian Age
    • Indian Express
    • miscellaneous writing
  • Gallery
  • Contact




​Andrew Whitehead's
Blog

'Tomorrow Night' ... 20,000 nights later

30/1/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
The first album I ever bought - apart from cheapo assembled chart hits and that sort of thing - was 'Death Walks Behind You' by Atomic Rooster. It was released in September 1970, when I was fourteen, and charted in a minor sort of way. I still have the record, as you can see.

I'm not quite sure why I bought it. The heavier side of hard rock is not my thing, and death metal - which Atomic Rooster was edging towards (put it this way, not many of their numbers are happy ones) - is absolutely not me. Perhaps it was the William Blake artwork on the cover.
Picture
The motive force behind the band was the keyboard player, Vincent Crane - he's in the middle. John Cann, the guitarist on the left, also wrote quite a few of their numbers. Paul Hammond was the drummer. 

As you#ll have spotted, this morose band photo was taken in a burial ground. Sadly, but perhaps not surprisingly, all three of these seminal members of the band are dead.

I never saw Atomic Rooster at the time. They were on the bill of a festival I went to, but if I saw them I remember nothing about their set. 

But Atomic Rooster goes on, after a fashion, fronted by Pete French whose association with the band dates back to 1971. I went to see them at the cellar that is the 100 Club on Oxford Street last night - this is them performing the group's biggest hit 'Devil's Answer' (which reached number 4 in the charts back in 1971).
So it's taken me more than half-a-century to catch Atomic Rooster live! And if you want to know what they were like in their heyday, this is the band in the Crane/Cann era playing 'Tomorrow Night' on Top of the Pops back in February 1971.
The band played 'Tomorrow Night' last night - it's taken me 20,000 tomorrows to catch up with them.
0 Comments

The 'fellow travellers' at the Bush House Club

29/1/2023

0 Comments

 
PictureUndated photo of Salima and her father
This is a snippet about that remarkable institution, the Bush House Club, the subterranean bar which was a focus of life in the BBC World Service back in the day when we were based in The Strand. But first, the context ...

I am working on an oral history of the British New Left and for that I recently spoke on Zoom to Salima Hashmi, one of Pakistan's best regarded artists and academics and a prominent progressive public intellectual. She spent much of the 1960s in the UK - first studying at an art college in Bath and later teaching while her husband was enrolled at the LSE. Her mother, Alys Faiz, was an English leftist; her father, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, was a widely revered Urdu poet and a progressive journalist.

During my conversation with Salima, she mentioned that during the Sixties she briefly worked at Bush House and that her father loved the Bush Club. With her permission, I'm posting here an extract from what she told me.

​

​'[Faiz's] favourite haunt [when in London] was the BBC Club. So he’d be found at the BBC Club in the evenings, inevitably –

'Was that Bush House?

'Yes, that was Bush House. I used to do a programme there for – the Urdu programme for children, which was called Shaheen Club. I used to do that weekly – or perhaps it was fortnightly. I think weekly. And I started the Shaheen Club. They decided that I should have a shaheen, a falcon, on my hand. BBC took me off to this farm somewhere in Dorset, someone who used to rear falcons, and I had this photograph taken of a falcon sitting on my hand. Also for a while, I did a disco music programme also – pop music, also in Urdu, which the BBC thought was a good idea so I did that for a bit.
​
'But certainly Bush House was very much the haunt of a large number of leftists or fellow travellers who would congregate there every evening, many of them after they finished their programmes and they used to move downstairs. So - you met all kinds of people, not just Pakistanis but people from all over the world really from the various programmes who used to come there, and quite a few Indians who knew my father and used to have long discussions there.'
0 Comments

The great and the good, the grand and the Guildhall

27/1/2023

2 Comments

 
Picture
You can't get grander than the great hall at the Guildhall in the City of London. It's where the Lord Mayor's Banquet is staged. And the other day was the venue for India's Republic Day celebrations.

Quite a statement to celebrate India escaping colonial apron strings and becoming a republic in a building so commemorative of Empre.

Take this - the over-grand classical style memorial to Nelson ...
Picture
However you look at it, it's in your face.

The great hall was built in about 1440 and was titivated up a couple of hundred years later after the Great Fire of London.
Picture
And of course if there's a Nelson commemoration, then Wellington can't be far away ...
Picture
Wellington of course was a prime minister, but he commanded an army in action so he was familiar with the battlefield.

​You can't say the same for Pitt the Younger. But yes, he's here too ...
Picture
And there's more - a mausoleum of empire! The Guildhall's guilty secret.
Picture
Picture
2 Comments

My Musical Back Pages

16/1/2023

1 Comment

 
Picture
Picture
So, during the pandemic I rediscovered vinyl. With generous domestic encouragement, I got a half decent deck which I could plug into our TV soundbar, and retrieved what was left of my record collection from the loft.

And I've now (just about) played them all - only a few dozen albums, but it's taken me months to get through them in a rather haphazard fashion.

Quite a bit of my vinyl has vanished over the decades - lent, taken, sold, lost. And after the vinyl era, I have bought lots of CDs. It's not that my musical tastes simply got frozen in time in 1973. Honest!

A few of the albums fell flat. But more gave real delight - not simply nostalgia, though there's plenty of that, but fine music too.

On this post, I'm sharing a selection of my musical back pages - a vinyl blast from the distant past!
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
1 Comment

The oldest building in Islington

13/1/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
Canonbury Tower is by quite a comfortable margin the oldest building in Islington.

It's early Tudor and was constructed by 1532 - though bits of it are a little later. The building was designed as a rural retreat for the canons of St Bartholomew's priory in Smithfield (hence Canons' Burgh from which comes Canonbury).

I had the privilege today of a tour round, organised by Islington Guided Walks. The building is privately owned - by the Marquess of Northampton - and I couldn't photograph the two splendid, wood panelled rooms which are the highlights of the interior (though there are some photos on the Wikipedia page).

​But the outside is the real joy - once part of a much bigger suite of buildings and designed with quasi-regal panache.
Picture
At the rear, you get a glimpse of what would have been the courtyard, complete with a mulberry tree planted, so we're told, by Sir Francis Bacon 400 years ago. That may be a bit of a tale, but it's certainly true that Bacon lived here.
Picture
Picture
The gardens of Canonbury Tower were long since built on - and very stylishly too. But the two octagonal pavilions at the end of the grounds survive - and have been adapted as part of later structures.

You can see one of them here - the ground floor brickwork is quite probably the original sixteenth century construction.
Picture
The tower itself is basically a staircase, leading to a small flat roof which commands spectacular views. Take a look!
Picture
This is facing south towards the City, with the Shard in the distance ...
Picture
... and here we're looking out west towards Islington's Upper Street ... 
Picture
... this view is looking to the north-west. You have Union Chapel on the left of the photo, and on the skyline to the right is Hampstead Heath and Highgate hill ... 
Picture
... and to the east, you have on the right, an adjoining building which is in part of Tudor construction and is now a school.

But it's the view overlooking central London which is the most striking, especially with the sky as it was this morning!
Picture
0 Comments

A shopfront for Malta

4/1/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
The ancient walled city of Valletta, the capital of Malta, boasts fine Baroque architecture, the most ornate cathedral I have ever seen, imposing maritime forts and beautiful small gardens.

​But explore the maze of streets, and tucked away you find quite a few traditional family-run shops with old style shopfronts.

So let me introduce you to another side of one of Europe's most beautiful cities.
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
0 Comments

Introducing Saint Agatha

2/1/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
This holy trinity of suffering saints adorns the ancient Maltese city of Mdina, an ancient walled city - largely Baroque in architecture - which has a population of under 300. It remains the seat of the Catholic archdiocese of Malta, and has seven churches - most of them still in use.

Of our saints, this post is about the one on the right - St Agatha.

She is a Sicilian 'virgin' martyr from the mid-third century. The story goes that she resisted the advances of the local Roman governor, who then informed on her as a Christian. She was tortured and imprisoned, and died in jail. 

At one time during her religious persecution, Agatha and some friends escaped from Sicily to Malta, and stayed in a small crypt in Rabat (adjoining Mdina). She only spent a short time in Malta, but that accounts for the particular reverence of her on the Maltese islands. The church that the statues in Mdina overlook is dedicated to St Agatha.

She is one of Malta's patron saints and it is said that her intercession saved the island from Turkish invasion in the mid-sixteenth century.


Squeamish readers should perhaps stop here. The story of St Agatha's sufferings is not pleasant; and the manner in which they have been represented in sacred art is excruciating.
Picture
Picture
According to the church, St Agatha's tortures extended to the cutting off of her breasts with tongs. (I did warn you!) This is depicted in the painting above and in stained glass in Rouen cathedral in France.

These are, as you can see, fairly graphic. But even they are nothing compared to the Mdina statue. 
St Agatha is depicted holding one of her severed breasts in the tongs that we used for the amputation. 

What is it with religion and the fetishising of suffering and martyrdom? We have paintings of St John the Baptist with detached head - so many likenesses of Christ crucified, with a bloody gash in his side - and here a mutilated young woman.
Picture
Agatha is the patron saint of rape victims, breast cancer patients, wet nurses, and (due to the shape of her severed breasts!) bellfounders.

This painting shows her in jail before the tongs were applied - 
Picture
But if you think that we have now plumbed the depth of the meeting ground between the macabre and the sacred, I have to inform you that in religious art of the early modern period, St Agatha was often represnted carring her breasts on a salver. 

And indeed there is a custom in some localities of Southern Europe of marking the feast of St Agatha - it's the 5th February, since you ask - by making breast-shaped pastries or buns. These are sometimes called the ​Minne di Sant'Agata ("Breasts of St. Agatha") or Minni di Virgini ("Breasts of the virgin"). Those shown here come from Sicily.
Picture
Picture
0 Comments

A New Year's stroll underneath the Thames

1/1/2023

0 Comments

 
Picture
What better way to mark the New Year than a walk through our splendid capital city. I went today with friends from the Greenwich Observatory - where this panoramic view was taken - over to Wapping on the other side of the river.

And we made our way across the Thames not on the water, or above the water, but below the riverbed.
The Royal Observatory at Greenwich marks the meridian line and gave its name to GMT, Greenwich Mean Time.

​The slopes leading up to the Observatory were also the location, on 15 February 1894, of an explosion in which a 26-year-old Frenchman, Martial Bourdin, died. He was, it seems, a 'propaganda-by-the-deed' anarchist carrying a bomb which exploded prematurely. He may have intended blowing up the Observatory.

This was the incident which Joseph Conrad transposed in to fiction in one of his greatest novels, ​The Secret Agent, published in 1907.
In the centre of Greenwich, there's the entrance to one of London's most curious transport arteries. The Greenwich Foot Tunnel under the Thames was commissioned by the London County Council and opened in 1902.
Picture
The tunnel stretches for 370 metres below the Thames at a depth of fifteen metres. It's open 24 hours a day - as is a similar foot tunnel a little further out in Woolwich - and is used by about 4,000 people daily. 
Picture
I'm surprised the foot tunnel isn't much busier - it's spacious and well lit and not in the least spooky. Honest!
Picture
Picture
On the north side of the river, you surface on the southern tip of the Isle of Dogs - once a maritime area of shipyards and wharves, and still bearing some reminders of its glory days.

The SS Great Eastern - the largest ship of its time - was built and (eventually) launched here in the 1850s.
Picture
Picture
Picture
And there are other reminders of the area's maritime past
Among the architecturally more intriguing buildings is a former Presbyterian church at Millwall, built in the 1850s and closed for worship in the 1970s, which is now The Space, an arts and performance venue.

​It's a bit cluttered in design but at least it stands out!
Picture
As you head up the west side of the Isle of Dogs and pass Canary Wharf, you reach Limehouse, and the magic of Narrow Street and its riverside tavern, The Grapes - and there are steps down to Ratcliff 'Beach'.
Picture
Picture
But our destination was a little further west, the excellent, and historic, Prospect of Whitby at Wapping. 
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
Cheers!
0 Comments

    Andrew Whitehead's blog

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

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    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
    Bangalore
    Bangladesh
    Barbican
    Batley
    Battersea
    Battyeford
    Ben Chisnall
    Bernard Kops
    Bessie Braddock
    Bethnal Green
    Bill Fishman
    Bjp
    Blackberries
    Blackfriars
    Blackwall
    Bloodsucker Stanley
    Bloomsbury
    Blue Carbuncle
    Blustons
    Bob Dylan
    Boer PoWs
    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
    Captain Wimbush
    Carmarthen
    Cashmere
    Cecil Tyndale-Biscoe
    Charles Bradlaugh
    Charles Darwin
    Charles Dickens
    Charles Pooter
    Charlie Gillett
    Charlotte Despard
    Chartists
    Chelsea
    Chennai
    China
    China In London
    Churchill
    Clapham
    Clapton
    Clerkenwell
    Clive Branson
    C.N. Annadurai
    Cnd
    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
    Dan Chatterton
    Dante
    Dartmouth Park
    David Edgar
    Delaware
    Delhi
    Denis Healey
    Denmark Street
    Derby
    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
    English Civil War
    Ephemera
    E.P. Thompson
    Eric Hobsbawm
    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 Bostock
    Frank Kitz
    Freda Bedi
    Fred Bakunin
    'Freedom'
    Fresh Garbage
    Fulham
    Gallan Head
    GE2015
    George E. Harris
    George 'Jonah' Jones
    George Orwell
    Ghana
    Ghost Signs
    Gibbons
    Gildersome
    Glasgow
    Godstow
    Golders Green
    Gordon Brown
    Gospel Oak
    Graham Greene
    Grand Union Canal
    Granta
    Grateful Dead
    Greenwich
    Ground Zero
    Guardian
    Guy Aldred
    Hackney
    Hadleigh Castle
    Haggerston
    Hammersmith
    Hampstead Heath
    Hangover Square
    Harry Pollitt
    Headopoly
    Henry George
    Herbert Read
    Herons
    H.H. Asquith
    H.H. Champion
    Highgate
    Highgate Camp
    Highgate Cemetery
    Hindi
    History Workshop
    H.M. Hyndman
    Holborn
    Holloway
    Holly Village
    Holywell Street
    Hoopoe
    'HOPE'
    Hornbeam
    Hornsey
    Houndsditch
    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
    Jean McCrindle
    Jeff Cloves
    Jericho
    Jethro Tull
    Jill Mcgivering
    Jinnah
    John Cornford
    John Pym
    John Rety
    John Simonds
    Joseph Grimaldi
    Jyoti Basu
    Kamala Markandaya
    Karachi
    Karaganda
    Karl Marx
    Kashmir
    Kensal Green
    Kensal Rise
    Kentish Town
    Khorshed Italia
    Kilburn
    King Dido
    King's Cross
    Knossos
    Kohima
    Kovalam
    Labour Party
    Lahore
    Land And Labour League
    Land Song
    Las Vegas
    Latin
    Laura Del-Rivo
    Laurence Hope
    Lavenham
    Lawrence Ferlinghetti
    Leeds
    Leeds Postcards
    Leicester
    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
    Major Cartwright
    Malden Road
    Malta
    Margaret Harkness
    Margaret Thatcher
    Margaret Whitehead
    Marie Stopes
    Marques & Co.
    Marrakesh
    Martand
    Martin Boon
    Martin Carthy
    Marylebone
    Mary Wollstonecraft
    Maurice Margarot
    Max Bacon
    May Morris
    Michael Foot
    Mildmay Club
    Mile End
    Mirza Waheed
    Monopoly
    Monteath Mausoleum
    Moravians
    Morley
    Mortimer Terrace
    Mosque
    Mumbai
    Muridke
    Muriel Walker
    Museum In Docklands
    Muswell Hill
    Myanmar
    Nairobi
    Narendra Modi
    National Secular Society
    Nedou
    Nehru
    New Left
    New River
    New York
    NHS
    Noida
    Novotel
    Old Delhi
    Olympics
    Oral History
    Orange Street
    Orkney
    Oxford
    Oz
    Paintballing
    Parakeets
    Parkland Walk
    Parsees
    Partition
    Pat Dooley
    Patrick Hamilton
    Peeli Wali
    Peggy Seeger
    Pendragon Castle
    Penny Black
    Peter Kropotkin
    Peterloo
    Philip Spratt
    Poetry
    Political Badges
    Political Pamphlets
    Political Song
    Pondicherry
    Primrose Hill
    Pubs
    Queen
    Queen's Crescent
    Queen's Park
    Quiz
    Radio
    Raj
    Rajiv Gandhi
    Ram Advani
    Ram Nahum
    Ramsay Macdonald
    Rangoon
    Raph Samuel
    Reading
    Red Beryl
    Red Herring
    Red Kite
    Reform League
    Regents Park
    Rena Stewart
    Rent Strike
    Rethymnon
    Reynold Eunson
    Rhubarb
    Richard Carlile
    Richard Thompson
    Richmond
    Riff Raff Poets
    Rinkoffs
    Ripping Yarns
    Robert Blatchford
    Robert Bradnock
    Robert Owen
    Robert Peel
    Roger Casement
    Rolling Stones
    Rosa Branson
    Rosie Hogarth
    Roy Amlot
    Rude Britannia
    Rudolf Rocker
    Sachin Pilot
    Saffron
    Saklatvala
    Sam Lesser
    Samye Ling
    Sanchita Islam
    San Francisco
    'Sapphire'
    Sarah Wise
    Sarmila Bose
    Sausages
    Scottish Borders
    Sekondi
    Sheikh Abdullah
    Shetland
    Shoreditch
    Shrew
    Sidis
    Sidney Street
    Simla
    Sir Francis Burdett
    Sir Frederick Sykes
    Slavery
    Smiley Sun
    Sobha Singh
    Socialist Worker
    South Africa
    Southall
    Spanish Civil War
    SPGB
    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
    Tariq Ali
    Tate Britain
    Tazi Shahnawaz
    Thames
    Theosophy
    The Pamphleteer
    Thomas Bolas
    Thomas Paine
    Thomas Spence
    Tibetan Muslims
    Tichborne
    Tom Mann
    Tommy Jackson
    Tom Paine
    Torriano
    Tottenham
    Toyah Sofaer
    Trump Protest
    Tube Disaster
    Tufnell Park
    Turtles
    Twitter
    Tyburn
    Uher
    Ukraine
    Underground
    Unitarians
    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 John Pinks
    William Morris
    Woodberry Wetlands
    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
      • 'For the Conversion of Kashmir'
      • 'I shall paint my nails with the blood of those that covet me'
      • Freda Bedi looking 'From a Woman's Window' on Kashmir
      • 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
      • 'New World'
    • Clerkenwell >
      • Popular Politics and Social Structure in Clerkenwell >
        • The Residents of Clerkenwell
        • The Occupational Structure of Clerkenwell
        • Clerkenwell and Reform
        • Fenians, Reformers and the Clerkenwell "Outrage"
        • Clerkenwell: Socialism Finds a Niche
        • Clerkenwell: Not Forgetting the Anarchists
      • Red London: radicals and socialists in late-Victorian Clerkenwell
      • Patriotic Club
    • NW5 and Around
  • Voices
    • Partition Voices >
      • Partition Voices: L.K. Advani
      • Partition Voices: Ram Advani
      • Partition Voices: Qazi Ghulam Ajmiri
      • Partition Voices: Angela Aranha
      • Partition Voices: Helen Baldwin
      • Partition Voices: Bali family
      • Partition Voices: Edward Behr
      • Partition Voices: Benazir Bhutto
      • Partition Voices: H.K. Burki
      • Partition Voices: Sailen Chatterjee
      • Partition Voices: Pran Chopra
      • Partition Voices: K.S. + Ayesha Duggal
      • Partition Voices: Alys Faiz
      • Partition Voices: Jugal Chandra Ghosh
      • Partition Voices: Ashoka Gupta
      • Partition Voices: I.K. Gujral
      • Partition Voices: Syed Najmuddin Hashim
      • Partition Voices: Khorshed Italia
      • Partition Voices: Pran Nath Jalali
      • Partition Voices: D.N. Kaul
      • Partition Voices: Jolly Mohan Kaul
      • Partition Voices: Basant Kaur
      • Partition Voices: Betty Keyes
      • Partition Voices: Sardar Abdul Qayyum Khan
      • Partition Voices: Usha Khanna
      • Partition Voices: Frank Leeson
      • Partition Voices: Abdul Ghani Lone
      • Partition Voices: Gopal 'Patha' Mukherjee
      • Partition Voices: Kuldip Nayar
      • Partition Voices: Amrita Pritam
      • Partition Voices: Francis Rath
      • Partition Voices: Annada Sankar Ray
      • Partition Voices: Bhisham Sahni
      • Partition Voices: Sat Paul Sahni
      • Partition Voices: Sir Ian Scott
      • Partition Voices: Sir Paul Scott
      • Partition Voices: Sheila Sengupta
      • Partition Voices: Mahmooda Ahmad Ali Shah + Sajida Zameer Ahmad
      • Partition Voices: Bapsi Sidhwa & Urvashi Butalia
      • Partition Voices: Air Marshal Arjan Singh
      • Partition Voices: Bir Bahadur Singh
      • Partition Voices: Karan Singh
      • Partition Voices: Khushwant Singh
      • Partition Voices: Shingara Singh
      • Partition Voices: H.S. Surjeet
      • Partition Voices: Ben and Marguerite Suter
      • Partition Voices: Leela Thompson
      • Partition Voices: K.B. Vaid
    • Kashmir Voices >
      • Kashmir Voices: Asiya Andrabi
      • Kashmir Voices: Mirwaiz Umar Farooq
      • Kashmir Voices: George Fernandes
      • Kashmir Voices: General J.R. Mukherjee
      • Kashmir Voices: Abdullah Muntazir
      • Kashmir Voices: Ali Mohammad Sagar
      • Kashmir Voices: Syed Salahuddin
    • Communist Voices >
      • Communist Voices: Manmohan Adhikari
      • 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: Indrajit Gupta
      • Communist Voices: Chris Hani
      • Communist Voices: Lionel Martin
      • Communist Voices: Vishwanath Mathur
      • Communist Voices: Geeta Mukherjee
      • Communist Voices: E.M.S. Namboodiripad
      • Communist Voices: John Rettie
    • Political Voices >
      • Political Voices: Sally Alexander
      • Political Voices: Lou Appleton
      • Political Voices: Murray Bookchin
      • Political Voices: Fenner Brockway
      • Political Voices: Tony Cliff
      • Political Voices: Nellie Dick
      • Political Voices: Leah Feldman
      • Political Voices: Jeffrey Hamm
      • Political Voices: Denis Healey
      • Political Voices: Eric Hobsbawm
      • Political Voices: Ian Mikardo
      • Political Voices: Mick Mindel
      • Political Voices: Adrian Mitchell
      • Political Voices: Phil Piratin
      • Political Voices: Betty Reid
      • Political Voices: Fermin Rocker
      • Political Voices: Ralph Russell
      • Political Voices: John Saville
      • Political Voices: Alfred Sherman
      • Political Voices: Screaming Lord Sutch
      • Political Voices: Dorothy Thompson
      • Political Voices: E.P. Thompson
      • Political Voices: Tom Wilson
      • Political Voices: Harry Young
      • The Land Song
      • Harry Pollitt on disc
    • The British New Left >
      • New Left: T.J. Clark
      • New Left: Chuck Taylor
      • New Left: Headopoly
    • South Asia
    • Burma
  • Collecting
    • Political Pamphlets
    • Political Journals
    • Political Badges
    • Political Tokens
    • Political Ephemera
  • Radio Gems
    • 'What's Left of Communism?'
    • 'India: a people partitioned'
    • India's Minorities
    • Documentaries and Features
    • From Our Own Correspondent >
      • FOOC: Working at Westminster 1990
      • FOOC: Ulster's Talking Shop 1991
      • FOOC: House Rules at Westminster 1992
      • FOOC: India's Red Fort State
      • FOOC: Keeping Kosher in Cuba
      • FOOC: Italy's Gourmand Communists 1992
      • FOOC: Scoundrel Politicians - 1993
      • FOOC: Kashmir's New Puritans 1993
      • FOOC: The Rajah of Bihar 1993
      • FOOC: Bringing the Gospel to Mizoram 1993
      • FOOC: Netaji, India's Lost Leader 1994
      • FOOC: A Self-Respect Wedding 1994
      • FOOC: The Miseries of Manipur 1994
      • FOOC: Village Bangladesh 1994
      • FOOC: Calcutta's Communists Discover Capitalism 1995
      • FOOC: Localism in Ladakh 1995
      • FOOC: Bhutan, not quite Paradise
      • FOOC: Crime and Indian Politics 1995
      • FOOC: Sonia Gandhi 1995
      • FOOC: Sri Lanka's Missing Leaders 1995
      • FOOC: India Votes 1996
      • FOOC: Communism Revisited 1996
      • FOOC: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan 1996
      • FOOC: Kerala's Jewish Community 1996
      • FOOC: India's Corruption Scandals 1996
      • FOOC: The Maldives Crowded Capital 1996
      • FOOC: India's Polluted Capital 1996
      • FOOC: Jinnah, Pakistan's Quaid 1997
      • FOOC: Mauritius, an Indian Ocean melting pot
      • FOOC: The Hijras Blessing 1998
      • FOOC: Massacre at Baramulla 2003
      • FOOC: An Old Photo from Kashmir 2007
      • FOOC: Prosperity Driven from Detroit 2008
      • FOOC: An Atheist in MLK's Atlanta2013
      • FOOC: San Francisco's City Lights 2014
      • FOOC: Kashmir Revisited 2014
      • FOOC: By Ferry in Burma 2014
      • FOOC: Toyah's Grave 2017
      • FOOC: The Tibetan Colony in Kashmir 2017
      • FOOC: Stars of Tamil Politics 2018
      • FOOC: Koreans in Chennai 2018
      • FOOC: Epitaph to Empire 2019
      • FOOC: Armenians in India 2019
      • FOOC: Lahore's Bradlaugh Hall 2020
    • What's your favourite political song?
    • London Snapshots
  • Writing
    • Bibliography
    • Tramping Artisans
    • Working Class Housing in Jericho, Oxford
    • New Statesman
    • The Freethinker
    • Outlook
    • Asian Age
    • Indian Express
    • miscellaneous writing
  • Gallery
  • Contact