The Joy of Six 1244

The media must start holding Reform and Nigel Farage to account, says Hardeep Matharu. The normalisation of racism and dog-whistles will only get worse if the press continues to treat Farage as an entertaining figure representing the 'real views' of the British people.

Imran Mulla and Peter Oborne examine Rishi Sunak's worrying links with India's far right.

"Compared to similar size towns in the UK, Clacton has a limited heritage and cultural offer. It has a wonderful but very small museum space run by active volunteers in the public library. There’s room for about five visitors at a time, and it’s open just twice a week. Sadly, other venues where Clacton’s hidden heritage was celebrated have shut, such as museum dedicated to Pirate Radio which closed in 2016." Tony D. Sampson and Andrew Branch argue that Nigel Farage’s populism distracts from what people in Clacton are really proud about.

"Across the world there must have been so many of us who experienced a similarly uncanny sense of déjà vu upon reading Nineteen Eighty-Four for the first time. That is because for those of us who come from “wounded democracies” or autocracies-in-the-making or downright dictatorships, Oceania was never some far-fetched dystopian land set in an unforeseeable future, but something closer, much more visceral. And frightening too. It was not even a prescient warning about where things might lead if politics went unexpectedly wrong. For us, Nineteen Eighty-Four was already here. It was already happening." Elif Shafak on the undiminished power of George Orwell's novel remains as powerful as when it w

Richard Williams pays a visit to Robert Wyatt in Louth.

The King's Cross district of London got its name from a memorial to George IV that everybody hated and which lasted only 15 years, explains Matt Brown: "The octagonal base survived two further years after the statue was removed. It served variously as a police station, beer shop and advertising space. When it was pulled down in 1845, few people mourned. Newspaper accounts of the removal were scarce and short."