A new look at the Webbs

An on-line talk for the Socialist History Society by  Michael Ward, author of Unceasing War on Poverty : Beatrice & Sidney Webb and their World 

First broadcast on Wednesday 16 October 2024

This engaging biography of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, ‘Unceasing War on Poverty’, takes the reader into the world of the Webbs, the remarkable couple who changed Britain, inspiring a generation to fight for a better society. Read on ...

A Devilish Kind of Courage

The tale of a notorious 1911 London gunfight, the ‘Siege of Sidney Street’, and its consequences.

More details of the book on the publisher’s website…

On 3 January 1911, in the heart of London’s mainly Jewish East End, police discovered Latvian revolutionaries wanted for the murder of three officers. A six-hour gunfight ensued, with a fire consuming the besieged building. Read on ...

The Silence of Oppression

Hugh Brody and Merilyn Moos discuss how the experiences of imperialism and of exile from Nazism generate and rely on silences in both personal and political realms.
Hugh Brody’s books include Living Arctic, Maps And Dreams,The Other Side of Eden and Landscapes of Silence; his films include Nineteen Nineteen, England’s Henry Moore and Tracks Across Sand.
Read on ...

Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life After Consumerism

How the utopian tradition offers answers to today’s environmental crises
23 February 2023 on-line public meeting


Speaker: Professor Gregory Claeys

Our talk will be based on Greg’s latest book, Utopianism for a Dying Planet: Life After Consumerism. (Princeton University Press, 2022), which examines the ways the expansive history of utopian thought, from its origins in ancient Sparta and ideas of the Golden Age through to today’s thinkers, can offer moral and imaginative guidance in the face of environmental catastrophe. Read on ...