We are fortunate that the three pillars of Tony Benn’s socialism — for the radical democratisation of politics, the Alternative Economic Strategy, and anti-war internationalism — were explored in so many of his articles, interviews, and speeches in Parliament, on demonstrations, at conferences, and on picket lines.

A recent piece of research commissioned by Channel 4 suggested that more than half of people aged between 13 and 27 would prefer the UK to be an authoritarian dictatorship.

During protests in the US in the middle of 2020, a Predator drone circled in the sky above Minneapolis. Some 20,000ft below, the cops got to play with their toys: Humvees, armoured carriers with turrets, stuff built for the military, used extensively in the Middle East and sold at knockdown prices to local sheriffs.

A poem in Durs Grünbein’s collection Equidistance, published in 2022, the year of his sixtieth birthday, evokes equidistance as a line passing through Berlin: “East-West-Axis”. So far, perhaps, so Grünbein. The axis configuring Berlin has configured the work of Germany’s most significant living poet in multifarious ways since he first emerged – pre-reunification – with Mornings in the Grey Zone(1988).

Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf’s fourth novel, was published on May 14, 1925. Released to coincide with the centenary of one of Woolf’s most popular novels, Mark Hussey’s analysis concerns a productive and prolific period in the author’s life.

In the autumn of 44 BC, after Julius Caesar’s brutal assassination, the ringleader, Brutus, was in Athens raising support for a full-scale conquest of Italy that would restore the values of the old Roman Republic.

Only when history is decarbonised and decolonised will we understand how architecture should advance. For the time being, the art and science of building design are additionally hobbled by ‘systemic’ gender bias and ‘western-centric’ chauvinism.

Rag rugs are friendly things. Made throughout history, some say as far back as the Vikings, they came to prominence in the 1840s with the arrival of jute sacks, and remained popular right up until the 1950s and the era of fitted carpets.

A new book has been published telling the story of the bizarre “Wallace & Gromit-style” DIY music studio that was a breeding ground for some of Sheffield’s most experimental future-stars of the ’70s and ’80s.

On 8 January of this year, the house I was renting in Altadena, California, burned down in one of the seven wildfires that ripped through the Los Angeles area that week. In the bigger picture, the loss of my house seems almost incidental.