Relationships and feelings are untidy, friends and family are those you only think you know, the libidinal is a minefield, mistakes and misinterpretations are made, regrets are buried and then – out of the blue, the unconscious or the cunning of reason – something returns, resurrected,  unwanted; the truth can […]

Nostalgia is one of those words that have slipped away from their moorings, tending now to being used loosely for wistful, dewy-eyed sentimentality whereas its ancient Greek origins suggest a more serious state of mind.   Text: Sean Sheehan Photos: Steve Pyke   From the Greek nostos (return home) and […]

Two notable series of photographs by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen capture working-class life in the north-east of England in the last quarter of the twentieth century: “Byker” (1969-83), named after a Newcastle neighbourhood, and “Writing in  the Sand” (1978-98) about taking time out on the local coast.   Sean Sheehan   She […]

The presence of classics in working-class culture, challenging its more usual role in the education of the ruling class, is inspiringly documented in “A people’s history of Classics” (2020), by Edith Hall and Henry Stead.   Sean Sheehan   It had been evoked earlier, in the opening scene of Brian […]

The creation of a West and East Germany did not come about by design. Stalin wanted a buffer between the USSR and the West, not a separate, self-governing German state, and he looked to German communists who had fled to Russia during the 1930s and survived his purges.   Sean […]