History from Below Is Where You Find It
Ignore the sepia filter — Call the Midwife, which returns in 2023, has long been one of the most radical programmes on British television.
11 Articles by:
Charlotte Lydia Riley
Charlotte Lydia Riley is a historian of twentieth century Britain at the University of Southampton.
The Ministry of Nurseries
Britain’s childcare system is appallingly expensive, complicated, and neglected – but for a time in the Second World War, public nurseries were considered part of the new welfare state.
Slum Diets
The pandemic has led to sudden changes in how we eat, from stockpiling to ordering from (or working for) Deliveroo – but it also showed the survival of a Victorian contempt for the ‘undeserving poor’.
When the British Empire Waged War on Free Speech
Today’s right-wingers cast free speech as a distinctly British value, but they have precious little to say about the history of the Empire – which mounted a brutal campaign to deny these rights to colonised peoples.
The NHS on Film
The launch of the National Health Service was accompanied by ‘Your Very Good Health’ – a witty, clever and progressive public information film that helped to win support for socialised medicine.
Reading Some Effing Orwell in the Empire
Tribune’s one-time literary editor has become a meme and a cliché, but he remains one of the Left’s most ethically complex writers – and nowhere more so than in his depictions of the British Empire.
Eccentrics against the Apocalypse
This year is the 20th anniversary of the end of the Greenham Common Peace Camp. It was not just a protest but a community trying to live a better world in the present day.
‘A People’s Art is the Genesis of Their Freedom’
The Notting Hill Carnival was established by two radical women as a pageant of solidarity against a wave of racist violence.
Use Your Head
Labour’s election posters from the first half of the twentieth century offer a glimpse into the better world it promised working people.
Museums on Trial
Activist-led tours of our major museums can help us to read history against the grain.
The People’s University
The pioneering Open University was Harold Wilson’s brainchild, but it was Jennie Lee’s social vision that brought it to fruition.