Red Library: Modernist Architecture
A hundred years after its emergence, modern architecture is still controversial. Our Library this issue looks at how it came into being and some of its suppressed histories.
80 Articles by:
Owen Hatherley
Owen Hatherley is the culture editor of Tribune and is the author of Artificial Islands.
The Head Boy In the Bubble
Rishi Sunak might have grown up in an industrial city, but he spent most of his life in a bubble – made clear not only by the fact he never made any working-class friends, but that he seems to understand nothing about strikes.
Red Library: Korean Fiction
Amid a global wave of interest in Korean culture, Korean writers have created some of the most striking politicised fiction of the last few years.
‘I Was So Dissatisfied When Pulp Got Famous — It Didn’t Cause a Revolution’
Owen Hatherley interviews Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker about his upbringing, his politics — and what he kept that others might have thrown away.
Ian Svenonius’ Escaping Act
The records and books of Ian Svenonius exist at a silly-serious intersection of politics and comedy, revealing the potentials and pitfalls of their combination.
The Landscape of Treason
The Cold War ‘Red Scare’ went alongside a ‘Lavender Scare’, which saw the police ramp up their surveillance and blackmail of gay men. A new film inspired by the Cambridge Spies explores the relationship between the two.
When Networks Die
Elon Musk’s inadvertent mercy killing of Twitter raises again the question – why don’t we have a social media of our own?
Read Mike Davis
Mike Davis, the American geographer and historian, has died. There was no better socialist writer in the last four decades.
How the Picture Post Pioneered the Art of the Everyday
In the 1930s, Hungarian editor Stefan Lorant founded the ‘Picture Post’, which brought the radical ideas of post-revolutionary Central Europe to British newsagents – shown in its ‘inartistic’ stories of ordinary people.
Red Library: Red Ukraine
This issue’s Red Library focuses on the history of Ukraine.
Keeping Manchester’s Modernism Alive
The Manchester Modernist Society has spent over a decade popularising and democratising the neglected spaces of post-war modernism – but now they need our support.
A Revolution of Things
In the 1990s, artist Vladimir Arkhipov started to collect home-made objects in homes, markets, and junk shops. Today, his archive is both a document of poverty and a vision of liberated labour.
Doreen Massey’s Radical 1980s
A new collection of writings by geographer Doreen Massey features intense dispatches from the political battlegrounds of the 1980s, which remind us that even in eras of defeat, there are vital moments of hope.
Nostalgia, Nationalism and the New Russia
Russian socialist Ilya Budraitskis talks to Tribune about the war in Ukraine, the politics that produced that disaster – and the complexities of nationalism in Putin’s Russia.
Rosa Luxemburg and the International of Letters
A new book inspired by Rosa Luxemburg’s famous letters shows how dialogue can happen across a diverse and often divided international Left.
Red Library: Science Fiction
There has always been an affinity between socialism and science fiction, a genre that makes clear it is still possible to imagine new societies — however much our miserable politics might claim otherwise.
Against the Edgelords
Today’s far-right has been shaped by an online landscape of edgy content. But the solution isn’t to lament the internet – it’s to find a way to build antifascism in its image.
The Left Must Stand Against Putin’s War
The first task for socialists in the appalling war being inflicted in Ukraine is to provide unconditional solidarity with its victims.
The Battle for the Barbican
London’s Barbican and the adjacent Golden Lane estate are symbols of the two souls of post-war social democracy, and how it built for both the intelligentsia and the working class.
Busáras: Dublin’s Modernist Icon
Despite many decades of neglect, Busáras remains one of Dublin’s iconic modernist buildings – and its original design as an ambitious civic centre can offer inspiration to those trying to reclaim the city today.