When I speak to people who grew up in Eastern Europe under Communism they tell me that it was not simply the falseness of the slogans that were so dispiriting, it was their relentless optimism. ‘Forward to a brighter future’ was a perennial favourite apparently. In this genre New Labour transcended Bolshevism in its commitment to a false progressive imperative with ‘Things Can Only Get Better’.
Read moreWhat Arnie Graf taught Labour
The 2019 General Election led to a major realignment in national politics that Labour must now resolve by bridging the divisions in the country and rebuilding its national coalition. The biggest class and cultural divide is between those with a degree who have a good chance of having a career in a well-paid profession, and those who do not and who are likely to be in low wage, low skill jobs with few prospects. To win an election Labour needs a politics that brings together these estranged, often antagonistic classes in a common cause.
Read moreReading in the time of Coronavirus - Part Six
Lockdown, for me, has been a time of great sadness and loss. My beloved friend Rabbi Pinter died of the virus and the sense of grief disturbed my soul. My oldest friend, Patrick, died far away. No funerals, no conversations. There is a dreamlike element to the length of this that fills me with dread; the idea that I will wake up and it will all be true. Netflix, Facebook and Zoom dominating social and working life, an utter dependence on my phone and the end of intimacy and real physical presence.
Read moreReading in the time of Coronavirus - Part Five
As a Francophile, I am cheered by Penguin’s decision (even though I have only just learned of it, some years after the event) to republish every book – 75 in all – in the Maigret series by Georges Simenon, all with fresh translations. Brought to life on screen in Britain by actors such as Michael Gambon and more latterly Rowan Atkinson, the terse, pipe-smoking detective made his literary entrance in the 1931 novella, Pietr the Latvian. A tale of international crime gangs, hitmen and familial love and revenge, all set against the backdrop of inter-war Paris.
Read moreReading in the Time of Coronavirus - Part Four
I can’t claim my lockdown has been terribly studious. My wife and I have been incarcerated with our daughter, who turned four during the crisis and enjoyed the controlled carnage of a video-conferenced birthday party with 20 other socially-starved preschoolers. Like parents everywhere, lockdown life has mostly consisted of an endless rota of work and childcare as my wife and I attempt to maintain our careers, the little one’s routine and our collective sanity.
Read moreReading in the Time of Coronavirus - Part Three
My lockdown joy has come in the form of a slim collection of British poetry of the 1890s, Poetry of the Nineties, edited by RKR Thornton and focused on what came to be called the Decadent movement. Featuring the likes of Lionel Johnson, Arthur Symons, and WB Yeats, and tempered by the less mournful Kipling and Housman, the collection is a portrait of a time seized by an apparent clash between cultural convention and free playing vitality.
Read moreReading in the Time of Coronavirus - Part Two
Last Friday, Jonathan Rutherford recommended the Russians Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam. The former reassured us from Soviet exile that, ‘In Petersburg we’ll meet again / As though it was where we’d laid the sun to rest.’ From our more mundane exile we can look ahead to reunions in our own Petersburgs. In the meantime I’ve been led to books whose vividness contrasts with this strange, sterile passage of time.
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