Book review – social history
Never pour scorn on Croydon
Much derided as a philistine wasteland, the borough has an extremely distinguished history and could serve as a microcosm of Britain itself, says Will Noble
Was there ever a time of equality in human society?
Living in open savannahs, men and women had no choice but to cooperate. But evolution caused men to fight and dominate, resulting in sexism and social hierarchy
How scary is dairy?
For tens of thousands of years, humans have been domesticating other mammals — cows, buffaloes, sheep, goats, camels, llamas, donkeys,…
![Photograph of an almshouse waif by Lewis W. Hine, entitled ‘Little Orphan Annie in a Pittsburg Institution’ (1909) [Bridgeman Art Library]](https://www.spectator.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/bookslead4aug.jpg?w=410&h=275&crop=1)
‘I am not a number’: the callous treatment of orphans
Orphans are everywhere in literature — Jane Eyre, Heathcliff, Oliver Twist, Daniel Deronda, and onwards to the present day. They…
The short step from good manners to lofty imperialism
In the gap between what we feel ourselves to be and what we imagine we might in different circumstances become,…
Did the Grenfell Tower fire put paid to the social housing ideal?
As a schoolboy, I used to go round to my best mate Mike’s home. It was a good place: a…
Cockney comfort food: eel, pie and mash to the sound of Bow bells
Cockney feet mark the beat of history, sang Noël Coward, as if he had ever been east of Holborn. Yet…
A strange vibration
Among the many curiosities revealed in this book, few are more startling than the fact that at the height of…
The dying days of the English country house
Contrary to popular myth, the exuberant flame of life in the English country house was not extinguished by tears at…
Life gets faster — as the Earth slows down
Modern life is too fast. Everyone is always in a hurry; people skim-read and don’t take the time to eat…
From Auden to Wilde: a roll call of gay talent
The Comintern was the name given to the international communist network in the Soviet era, advancing the cause wherever it…
What makes the white working class angry? Twits like Hsiao-Hung Pai
This is a quite remarkable book. Badly written, devoid of anything even vaguely approaching a methodology, patronising, hideously mistaken on…
Nessie’s enduring attraction
It wasn’t until I drove past Loch Ness a couple of years ago that I realised just how enormous it…
Older, more angsty...and maybe wiser: the new face of growing up
We live in an age of generational turmoil. Baby-boom parents are accused of clinging on to jobs and houses which…
Love child or bastard: the lottery of being born on the wrong side of the blanket
My father was handed over a shop counter when he was a day old. His aunt had tried to pass…
Life in the LA ghetto was nasty, brutish and short — until one brave detective took on the gangs
Los Angeles ghetto life — thrashed, twisted and black — is not a world that most Americans care to visit.…
Another enemy within: Thatcher (and Wilson) vs the BBC
In a ‘Dear Bill’ letter in Private Eye, an imaginary Denis Thatcher wrote off the BBC as a nest of…
Our leaders have betrayed the noble worker. Oh really?
Alan Johnson cannot accept that the best days of the British working class are over
Where artists went to drink and die
Once below a time (to quote the man himself) the bloated poet Dylan Thomas slouched back to New York’s Chelsea…
What nannies know
Soon after moving to London at the age of 20, Nina Stibbe wrote to her sister Vic saying, ‘Being a…
