Jacintha Buddicom and George Orwell were childhood soul mates who lost touch until he was dying. A new postscript to her genteel memoir sheds a disturbing light on their friendship, finds Kathryn Hughes Kathryn Hughes Eric & Us by Jacintha Buddicom From the late 1960s my family spent every weekend and most of the summer… Read More Such were the joys
Germany is acclaimed for its efforts to atone for the Holocaust. But its method of repudiating the past has become a tool of exclusion… Last year, when the German state banned Nakba Day demonstrations, only days after the murder of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, police justified this suppression by claiming, in a familiar racist… Read More Bad Memory
First posted January 20, 2016 The non-violent soldier of Islam, Bharat Ratna, died 28 years ago, on January 20, 1988. The assault on the university named after him in Pakistan is yet another attack on his legacy. Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan (1890-1988) is better remembered in India as Frontier Gandhi, and in Pakistan as Bacha… Read More Mukulika Banerjee: Remembering Bacha Khan. The beleaguered legacy of Frontier Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan
Dear Colleagues and Friends, As a full month draws to a close since the tragic death of philosopher and teacher Samarveer, the words and the attached article below, supremely inadequate though they might be as tokens of remembrance, are nonetheless by way of a small tribute for him. I shall be grateful if the mail… Read More No Banner For Samarveer
First posted September 10, 2012 NB: This book is one of the most moving and illuminating memoirs I have ever read, its sad it’s not available in India. I hope a far-sighted publisher will publish it. And I am proud to say that the author has been a close friend of mine for 33 years.… Read More Yudit Kiss: The Summer My Father Died
First posted August 01, 2015 I got out my tape-recorder. My mum frowned. She wasn’t expecting that. “Is it for the Marx Memorial Library?” Because that was what old communists did: donated their body for medical research and their history for class analysis. But I just wanted to record what had happened. To remember Us.… Read More Jo McMillan – Lenin, mum and me: my communist childhood
First posted June 23, 2014. Reposted here in memory of Ranajit Guha (23 May 1923 – 23 April 2023). RIP Ranjitda NB: This was written for the International Encyclopaedia of the Social and Behavioural Sciences, 2001 edition. I had erroneously dated it in 2002). The review may also be read online here. An Indian school of… Read More Review of Subaltern Studies (2001)
Harry Belafonte obituary NB: He sang songs of plantation workers in the Caribbean, I remember hearing them through my childhood. What a great man. RIP Harry Belafonte (1927-2023) Harry Belafonte in a recording studio in the late 1950s. Photograph: Pictorial Parade/Getty Images Day O! The Banana boat song Day-o, day-oDaylight come and we want go homeDay,… Read More Harry Belafonte’s staggering musical and screen career
The labor historians of the 1960s were born into the culture of unity forged in the working-class movement’s classical phase, between 1890 and 1945. In one form or another, they told the story of this era, not realizing how radically it might come undone. Gabriel Winant Labor’s Mind: A History of Working-Class Intellectual Lifeby Tobias… Read More “Hurrah for the Time Man!” Tribute to David Montgomery (1927-2011)
After the truth-shower 