prejudice
An outcast among outcasts: Katerina, by Aharon Appelfeld, reviewed
A peasant girl flees her abusive home, to find happiness working for Jewish families in the lush Carpathian countryside – until anti-Semitic pogroms change everything irrevocably
Victims of a cruel prejudice: the last two men to be executed for sodomy in England
Chris Bryant describes in painful detail how James Pratt and John Smith, working-class men from the Midlands, fell foul of the ‘bloodthirsty English justice system’ in 1835
Prejudice in Pennsylvania: The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store, by James McBride, reviewed
Inspired by his own family history, McBride explores the problems faced by a Jewish shopkeeper and her black neighbours in the small town of Chicken Hill in the 1930s
A real game changer
The moment before the fall of women’s football can be precisely dated. On Boxing Day 1920, Dick, Kerr Ladies FC…
From nomads to emperors
This is the best of times to be writing history, since so much of what has been taken for granted,…
The battle still to come
In Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders, the social historian Jane Robinson — whose previous books include histories of suffragettes and bluestockings…
How apartheid poisoned the world
Around 1970 I was labelled ‘Public Enemy No. 1’ by white South Africa’s newspapers for leading militant anti-apartheid protests which…
Life is tough at the bottom of the equality heap
The incident I am about to recount I make no judgment about, other than that I believe it tells us…
Tales out of school
In 1952, the five-year-old Michael Rosen and his brother were taken on holiday along the Thames by their communist parents.…
Islam’s squeezed middle
Is there a future for a moderate activist group fighting anti-Muslim prejudice?
Autism and the Turing Fallacy
When I first heard the story of Alan Turing in my late teens I made what must be quite a…
Life as an outsider
The Emperor Waltz is long enough at 600 pages to be divided, in the old-fashioned way, into nine ‘books’. Each…
Mockers and moaners
Books by bellicose columnists with the initials R.L. are like buses — none comes along for ages, then two come…
