Daniel Trilling recently contributed a chapter to Broke: Fixing Britain’s Poverty Crisis. He was shortlisted for the 2023 Orwell Prize for Reporting Homelessness.
While far-right activists like Tommy Robinson may inflame a situation, the ideological fuel for the riots comes from ostensibly more respectable sources. Islamophobic, anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment has been a staple of Britain’s right-wing press for decades, but we are emerging from a period in which a Conservative government made right-wing populism a central part of its platform.
Andy Seaman felt out of place when, on 26 May 2022, he walked into the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith. Andy has little connection to Ireland; he’s from East London and his family’s roots are in Dominica. But earlier that day he had heard on the radio that the centre was hosting an event run by the organisation Troubles, Tragedy and Trauma. He told me that he felt...
Between 1881 and 1914, around 150,000 Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe settled in Britain, fleeing poverty and pogroms in the Russian empire. Most of them made their homes in the slums and tenements of London’s East End, but by the middle of the 20th century many had moved to Hackney, a few miles up the road. Hackney isn’t in the East End – to believe otherwise is, as...
The embassy official paused, collecting herself for a moment, before handing me the document. ‘Mr Trilling, it is an honour,’ she said. ‘This is in recognition of the great injustice done to you and your family. It should never have happened, and you should always have been a German citizen. I hope this brings you great joy.’ It was last October, and I was at the...
Tate Britain’s rehang, unveiled last month, aims ‘to show a broader, more complex picture of British art history’. Its historical galleries, arranged in chronological order from 1500 to the present day, present a fresh selection of artworks, with more women painters and a greater focus on ‘people and stories that have often been overlooked’.
Julia Ebner discusses her experiences going undercover in various extremist groups, including White Supremacists, German Neo-Nazis and ‘Trad Wives’, as described in her new book, Going Dark.
Read anywhere with the London Review of Books app, available now from the App Store for Apple devices, Google Play for Android devices and Amazon for your Kindle Fire.
For highlights from the latest issue, our archive and the blog, as well as news, events and exclusive promotions.