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SubscriptionsColumn / Investigation: Living History
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Resting Place: Marking My Grandmother’s Grave Helped Me Find My European Identity
Patrick Howse shares the story of three generations of his family – a tale of loss, discovery, conflict and plural identities
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‘They Have their Own Version of the Truth. We Are Living Ours’: Sandbagging in Odessa
Russian journalist Elena Kostyuchenko has vowed to be a ‘professional witness’ of the war in Ukraine. Here, she journeys through Odessa. Translated from Russian by Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse
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‘What Can We Do to Help?’: The Making of a Journalist’s Life
As war in Ukraine brings home the devastation faced by refugees and the need to recognise our shared humanity, Caroline Kenyon shares the story of her mother Barbara Brandenburger’s life – which placed helping others, even strangers, at its centre
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A Naked Interview with Mike Leigh
Chris Sullivan interviews Mike Leigh about the re-release of his film Naked and explores the creative process behind his more recent films such as Peterloo and Turner
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Colonial Amnesia: The Forgotten Victims of Transportation
Katharine Quarmby explores why Britain’s story of transportation – the biggest forced migration in its history – has largely been buried
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Playing With History Is Playing With Fire
The Coronavirus pandemic should have been the wake-up call to ‘Never-Gonna-Happenism’ and the lure of empty populism, says Otto English
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Fake History: The New Brexiter Great Crusade
In the second part of his look at Brexit ‘campaigning’ groups, Otto English explores the attempts of those trying to weaponise their versions of British history and turning it into an orthodoxy which cannot be challenged
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A Royal Cover-Up: The Hidden Hand of Monarchy Blocking the Public’s Right to See Lord Mountbatten’s Diaries
David Hencke reports on the long-running battle of historian Andrew Lownie against the Government over the release of documents which were bought on behalf of the public for millions of pounds by Southampton University The hidden hand of the Royal Family is behind the Government’s determination to stop the publication of some of the diaries…
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The History Racket: Blowing the Whistle on the Official Versions and Perversions of the Past
Peter Jukes and Hardeep Matharu explore the real threats to history – emanating not from ‘wokeists’ intent on rewriting the past but an establishment elite regularly burying inconvenient truths to maintain Britain’s mythic narratives
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Why We Need New Statues Reflecting Britain’s Diverse History
MP Preet Kaur Gill explains why she is backing a new campaign for public artwork commemorating people who are under-represented and forgotten in the country’s narratives about its past
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The Long 1980s
Writer and illustrator Joanna Walsh reflects on coming of age in the 1980s, the uneven distribution of progress, and the lasting impact of section 28, AIDs, queer iconography and silencing
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‘We Want the Ability, Space & Time to Retell Our Own History’
Melissa Chemam speaks to campaigners and creatives taking part in Black History Month in Bristol, where the statue of slave trader Edward Colston was brought down in June and discussions about past and present racism continue to run deep
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Fighting Fascism and Britain’s ‘Divide and Rule’
Jan Fuscoe, of the Brick Lane Project, tells the story of Balwinder Singh Rana, an Indian activist who has been fighting racism and structural attempts at division in Britain for decades
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A Blindspot in History: The Truth About Churchill
Churchill Fellow Nishtha Chugh argues that Britain will only truly understand its imperial history with a fuller appreciation of its wartime leader’s legacy
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To Alabama and Back: The Memorial that Holds Up a Mirror to Racism
Hannah Charlton takes a journey into America’s dark history of segregation and subjugation of black communities and wonders how Britain could do the same
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Infection & Revolution: What Can We Learn from the 1918 ‘Spanish Flu’?
From economic aftershocks to social unrest, racial discrimination and healthcare inequality, Otto English predicts a pandemic will transform this century just as it did the last
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Britain’s Chernobyl: COVID-19 and the Cost of Lies
Hardeep Matharu finds echoes of the nuclear explosion that helped end the Soviet Union and the UK’s response to COVID-19, which has resulted in one of the highest Coronavirus death rates in the world.
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The Myths of Immigration Just Don’t Add Up
Jonathan Portes, Professor of economics and public policy at King’s College London, on why the UK has long been a country shaped by immigration and immigrants – and how the reality of this is not as bad as the rhetoric portrays.
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Brexit and Empire: Nostalgia for a Nation that Never Was is Driving Britain over a Cliff
With the likely next Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, praising Britain today as the ‘Greatest Place on Earth’ all the unlearned lessons of Empire are coming back to haunt us.
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One Hundred Years On: Government Concerned about ‘Financial Implications’ of Apologising for 1919 Amritsar Massacre
100 years after the horrific expression of British brutality in India, the Government still appears unwilling to formally apologise for the killings in Jallianwala Bagh.
