A Very British Coup, revisited
A re-reading of Chris Mullin’s 1982 tale of the left in power in light of Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign.
Literature
William Morris: Anarchy and Beauty
Notes on an exhibition tracing the work, ideals and lasting influence of the great Victorian artist, designer, poet, novelist and campaigner William Morris.
Introducing Sceptical Scot
Over the past few weeks I’ve been glad to help with the development of a new current affairs website, Sceptical Scot, which launched this week. The site hopes to bring more light than heat to the ongoing, intense discussion over the future of Scotland in the wake of last year’s referendum.
Mountain spirits
While absentmindedly surfing channels a few evenings ago I was fortunate to chance on what turned out to be one of the most compelling films I’ve ever seen: The Epic of Everest, a new version of a 1924 documentary recording one of the earliest efforts to scale the mountain.
10 books for 2015
There will be many others I don’t yet know about. And I’m sure I will not read everything listed below. But here are 10 books to be published in 2015 I’m looking forward to, summarised in alphabetical order.
Yes/No, Southern Gothic and the Architecture of Doom
I usually close out my blog for the year with a simple roundup of books I’ve particularly enjoyed. But 2014 has seemed a rather strange, transitional period, for reasons I’m still trying to define, so I thought I’d write a somewhat longer retrospective in the hope of making some sense of it.
A strange space odyssey
A brief review of a strange little space odyssey prompted by BBC4’s excellent documentary Cosmonauts: How Russia Won the Space Race, still available at the time of writing on the iPlayer.