Radical Object: The Common Man’s Gandhi Cap
The current Indian election has seen a re-invention of the country’s most politically iconic headwear. The old Gandhi cap, a symbol of India’s non-violent pursuit of self-reliance and independence, has been revived – not, as Andrew Whitehead explains, by the Congress party with which Gandhi was once associated but by a new, insurgent political party
Eric Hobsbawm: A Life in History
As a tribute to Eric Hobsbawm, BBC Radio 4 has rebroadcast Simon Schama’s interview with him, which includes excerpts from some of Hobsbawm’s earlier broadcasts
Radical Object: John Lilburne and John Wilkes
This political tract ‘The Tryal of Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburn’ links indelibly two of the most commanding figures in English radicalism, both of whom won key legal victories against the executive and so helped to establish greater freedom to publish and propagandise
The Purging of ‘Red Beryl’
The story of Beryl Lund, who was, in 1948, at the same time, an actor, a communist and a civil servant working on sensitive defence contracts
A Year of Limericking Dangerously
May 12th is World Limerick Day – more than that, May 12th 2012 is the 200th anniversary of Edward Lear’s birth. Mick Hodgkin (@Mickhodgkin) has been marking both events by a wonderful year long Limerickiad – find out more here!
The Observer’s ‘Ten Best Political Rivalries’
From Pitt and Fox to les freres Miliband – via Gladstone and Disraeli, Asquith and Lloyd George, Callaghan and Castle, Thatcher and Heseltine, Blair and Brown and more..
A Tale of Two Shop Signs
Andrew Whitehead on the reappearance – and disappearance – of old shop signs
“We knew we had lost”: Eric Hobsbawm Recalls Berlin in 1933
BBC World Service programme: Eric Hobsbawm recalls taking part in the last communist march through Berlin exactly 79 years ago – five days before Hitler became Germany’s Chancellor.
Eric Hobsbawm’s Verdict on 2011
Eric Hobsbawm’s BBC interview on the events of 2011, at the close of a year of revolutionary upheaval in the Arab world
Radical Object: Bust of Charles Bradlaugh
A ten-inch bronze bust that depicts Charles Bradlaugh, one of the commanding figures of Victorian radicalism.
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