School libraries: Labour’s plan is not ambitious enough
I learned two things this morning that came as a surprise. The first is that there are 1,700 primary schools in England that do not have a library. And second, under the law, every single…
Articles by admin
Gaza: Is there a way out?
My first article for Byline Times is here.
Why street protests matter
Do street protests matter? Many people in the UK are still stung by how gigantic demonstrations two decades ago could not stop Tony Blair from joining the US-led invasion of Iraq. And today in Israel,…
The one person Starmer should have sacked
In the course of Labour’s first year in office, Keir Starmer has been very energetic and effective in one particular area: he’s very good at getting rid of people who fall out of favour for…
Welcome to Europe
For many years, people in the U.K. could comfortably boast that unlike continental European countries, we didn’t have Nazis. We had a far Right, of course, but even that struggled to win seats in Parliament. …
Review: Lenin in Zurich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
I first read this book nearly half a century ago, when it was published in English. At the time, I remember not liking it very much — and I had loved pretty much everything else…
Review: I Rediscover Russia, by Isaac Don Levine
Isaac Don Levine had a remarkable track record of writing breakthrough books about the twentieth century, routinely missing the main point. His 1917 book on the Russian Revolution failed to mention Lenin and the Bolsheviks….
Lenin in Zurich – 2025
A little more than a century ago, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and his wife Nadezhda Krupskaya left their two-room apartment at Spiegelgasse 14 in Zurich, never to return. They travelled to Russia through Germany at the…
“Anti-Israel” does not equal “left-wing”
I was talking the other day to a young man who was patiently explaining to me that to be “left” is to be “anti-Israel”. There was no difference at all in his mind. And he…
Ninotchka
To mark my birthday, we invited several dozen friends to join us yesterday in watching the 1939 film classic “Ninotchka” starring Greta Garbo. We rented out a local cinema for the occasion. Here is what…