The Communist Party Historians’ Group (CPHG) holds a paradoxical role in twentieth-century British intellectual history. It produced some of the most influential historians, including Christopher Hill, Eric Hobsbawm, Rodney Hilton, E.P. Thompson, Dorothy Thompson, Victor Kiernan, John Saville, George Rudé, and Raphael Samuel. Their archival expertise, literary creativity, and methodological innovations have significantly shaped social history and the “history from below” approach that persists today. However, they produced their work within the political context of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), whose agenda was influenced by the Stalinist bureaucracy’s nationalist leanings. Therefore, a thorough analysis of the Group should focus not on their “Englishness” or cultural perspectives but on the CPGB’s political program, which Stalin himself drafted, approved, and modified.

Bailey’s authorised biography epitomises the last expression of the mid-century liberal humanism tradition that viewed the writer as a sovereign individual, the literary work as an autonomous creation, and biography as a reflection of personal struggle rather than social contradiction. His approach, marked by exhaustive archival research, psychological realism, and a narrative of artistic triumph, belonged to an era when literature was still regarded as a privileged space of individual freedom. That era has been dissolving for decades, and Bailey’s story shows how far this decline has advanced. His publisher destroyed his biography after unproven allegations against him, none of which were tested in court and none related to the book itself. Liberal literary circles largely approved this destruction, viewing it as a justified response to unfounded accusations. This episode echoes Roth’s depiction of the “ecstasy of sanctimony” in The Human Stain, a stark illustration of a cultural shift away from liberal ideals and trust in their foundational assumptions.

NASA’s choice to include the device on Orion was deliberate. It involved a thorough, multistep safety review: turning off all radios, studying glass-shatter physics, testing the titanium frame in a vacuum, and confirming the phone wouldn't interfere with navigation systems. The device was simplified to just recording images and securely placed inside the astronauts’ suits. Its use remained strictly controlled.

The leaked Manchester City verdict, convicting on 114 of 115 Premier League charges, is more than a scandal; it uncovers deeper structural issues. It highlights how football operates as a mature segment of global capitalism, where sovereign wealth funds, private equity firms, and billionaire investors compete for geopolitical and commercial dominance. Meanwhile, regulators often act more like brand managers than protectors of integrity. This case shows that such practices are not anomalies but the norm, and that in this system financial capital, rather than sporting merit, influences outcomes.

The central weakness of the conventional narrative and the strength of Redmond’s departure from it rests on the assumption that religious division was somehow natural to Ireland. In reality, the decades after 1603 witnessed a profound social revolution. Following its famine-driven victory in the Nine Years’ War, the English state began systematically transforming Irish society through plantation. Ulster, confiscated after the Flight of the Earls, became the laboratory where land, labour, and political authority shifted from Gaelic and Old English proprietors to a new class of English and Scottish undertakers, servitors, and London financiers. Protestantism identified this class as loyal to the Crown, while Catholicism identified those dispossessed by it. Sectarian identity was not the cause of conflict but the ideological form through which a deeper struggle over property and power was expressed.

The press, including social media, has treated the discovery of a first American edition of To Kill a Mockingbird in an Oxfam on Portobello Road as a charming oddity, one of those soft-focus human-int...

The exclusion of Macklemore from Ed Sheeran’s 2024 Loop Tour, after his brief show of support for Palestinians, was more than just an industry controversy. It highlighted a key moment in how contemporary culture's political economy operates, showing how deeply the modern music scene has intertwined with corporate, financial, and geopolitical influences. Sheeran’s later comments, expressed through themes of “inclusivity” and "alternative methods of promoting peace”, were not merely neutral. They were ideological acts influenced by the structural pressures of a culture industry that views even minor dissent as a threat to capital.

In 2016, when Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf reappeared on Germany’s bestseller charts after the Bavarian state’s copyright expired, the German political scene responded with pride and complacency. The annotated edition by the Institute for Contemporary History (IfZ) was celebrated as a democratic milestone, seen as an educational achievement that would help the public engage with the origins of National Socialism under expert guidance. The book’s commercial success was viewed not as a sign of political risk but as a sign of civic maturity—suggesting Germans were now prepared to read Hitler “critically.”

The Maritime Proletariat and the Geography of Resistance