Category Archives: Uncategorized

When I started this blog, it was part of my intention to develop a broad overview of how contemporary British history is perceived in the media.  This includes both the presentation of recent history in documentary and drama and its reinterpretation through the print and broadcast news.  This should stand alongside the academic historiography in mapping how the present conditions our understanding of the past.

This monitoring of how the past is viewed in a present-minded way has not featured on this blog as I had hoped, so I am reinstating a weekly preview of relevant TV and radio programmes.

Whether I can keep it up remains to be seen.

A listing of programmes for the week to Saturday 29^th March can be found on the TV and radio pages

A review of Back in Time for Dinner.  First programme (of six) (1950s) shown on BBC2 8pm 17^th March 2015 and continuing.

A review of the first instalment of BBC2’s history of post-war Britain through its kitchens can be read here.

A review of the Channel 4 documentary Britain’s Racist Election.

This documentary, first broadcast on March 15^th 2015, looks at the Conservative election victory in Smethwick in 1964, a victory that will ever be associated with slogan “If you want a nigger for a neighbour, vote Labour”.

Read the review here.

This is a paper as presented to the Historical Materialism Conference, London, Sunday 9^th November 2014 (with footnotes included).

This is a relatively short paper with some preliminary research.  I am working on a longer and fuller version (but don’t hold your breath)

Click here to read the paper

Read this article here [this link now works]

With the by-elections in Clacton and Heywood & Middleton by-elections coming up, it will probably be time to take stock of some of the conclusions I have drawn about the rise of UKIP.  In the meantime, here is something that I wrote after the May 2014  European and local government elections, which in themselves were some second thought on a critical review of Ford and Goodwin’s Revolt on the Right I wrote earlier in the year. (read it here).  The results of those elections, particularly UKIP’s gains in local government, suggest that Ford and Goodwin’s view that UKIP could make considerable gains among working class voters was more prescient than I thought.

A view of John L. Comaroff and Jean Comaroff, Ethnicity, Inc. (Chicago: Chicago UP, 2009).

New review of an old book under the bookshelf tag. The reason for this reivew is it s review on the commodification of ethnicity and the potential impact of this on understanding multiculturalism. Click here to read the review.

Review of Hassan Mahamdallie (ed), Defending Multiculturalism: A guide for the movement (London: Bookmarks, 2011) (click title for review)

This is a new tab on this site.  The bookshelf if for reviews and comments on books that are not box-fresh.  In this case it is a book published by the SWP three years ago purporting to defend the SWP.  Actually, it says more about the politics of the SWP.

A review of Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin, Revolt on the Right: Explaining the Support for the Radical Right in Britain (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014) (Click on title to see the review)

Calder Walton, Empire of Secrets: British Intelligence, the Cold War and the Twilight of Empire, (London: Harper Press, 2013).  (Paperback edition published 2014) [Click on title to go to review]

An extended  review of Caitriona Beaumont, Housewives and Citizens: Domesticity and the Women’s Movement in England, 1928-1964 (Manchester: MUP, 2013) [click title to see review].

This is an extended review critically examining the ideas behind this book.  Particularly, it questions the degree to which mainstream women’s organizations like the National Council of Women and the Mothers’ Union can be considered to have bridged the gap between the first and second waves of feminism.  This is an incomplete draft, a fuller version will follow in the Spring