Where to run wild: UK playgrounds and skateparks to visit
From the first play street to a ‘junk playground’, there are many spaces old and new that offer kids the chance to let off steamJust south of Romford and born out of the skating explosion of the late...
View ArticleA monument to Scottish home life: why you should visit Tenement House
Agnes Toward’s beautifully preserved Glasgow flat tells the story of these buildings – not slums but hubs of vibrant communitiesMiss Agnes Toward was a hoarder. For more than 50 years, she filed away...
View ArticleAuthor Douglas Stuart on Glasgow’s ‘doocot’ culture
The Booker winner on the DIY pigeon lofts that gave the inhabitants of Glasgow’s estates something to call their ownI grew up in the east end of Glasgow and most working-class Glaswegians have seen a...
View ArticleWhat if a Mars rover landed in Leeds? Peter Mitchell’s best photograph
‘I wanted to give the impression that Nasa’s Mars probes had returned to Earth – and their rovers were now rolling through the streets of Britain taking pictures’I moved to Leeds in the early 1970s and...
View ArticleThe vital role of museums in building a strong civic identity | Letters
Local museums could help regenerate our dying city centres, but they need investment, says Ellen McAdam. Plus Nick Stevenson on the lack of representation of the working classesCharlotte Higgins is...
View ArticleBromley home of UK’s first Indian MP fitted with blue plaque
Dadabhai Naoroji was elected in 1892 and campaigned for reform of British rule in India and women’s rightsDadabhai Naoroji, who in 1892 became the first Indian to win a popular election to the UK...
View ArticleLessons by Ian McEwan review – life-and-times epic of a feckless boomer
McEwan takes aim at the postwar generation in this old-fashioned but generous and humane portrait of individual indecision against the backdrop of historyIan McEwan’s last book, 2019’s The Cockroach,...
View ArticleAmerica shows its true colours: early Mitch Epstein – in pictures
The pioneering photographer depicted his colourful home country during an era of sexual liberation and crippling war in Vietnam Continue reading...
View ArticleLucy Torode obituary
My mother, Lucy Torode, who has died aged 99, was a teacher and social historian who spread her enthusiasm and knowledge among pupils, the local history society she initiated and her family worldwide....
View ArticleSo which decade was better? Battle of the 1960s v the 1980s
Pattie Boyd, face of the swinging 60s, last week said that, in truth, the 80s were better. We asked two Observer writers who grew up in those decades to fight it out…In October 1962 the 60s began for...
View ArticleTo romanticise or demonise – not the only ways to frame working-class lives |...
A Chris Killip and Graham Smith retrospective from the 70s and 80s captures an absence of hope still felt todayAn old man walking between rows of terraced housing and, behind him, the sky erased by the...
View ArticleFirst aid kits, torches ... fairylights?: Britons prepare blackout boxes
Casting an eye back to the 70s power cuts, we test the conversational gambit for this winter, ‘what’s in your BOB?’For Steven Dowd, it’s four head torches and a handsaw. For Ian Welsh, a pack of...
View ArticleJeremy Gibson obituary
My friend Jeremy Gibson, who has died aged 88, was well known in the 1980s and 90s as the publisher, and usually the author, of pamphlets for family historians, revealing the potential of such sources...
View Article‘Who remembers proper binmen?’ The nostalgia memes that help explain Britain...
Idealising the past is nothing new, but there is something peculiarly revealing about the way a certain generation of Facebook users look back fondly on tougher timesAt 7.59pm on Christmas Day 2019, a...
View ArticleBaby boomers reflect on past times and future fears | Letters
Dr Richard JF Bewley on the benefits of growing up in a country with a more equitable distribution of wealth, while David Young reworks beans on toast. Plus letters from Richard Churcher, Jim McManners...
View Article‘Who remembers proper binmen?’ The nostalgia memes that help explain Britain...
Idealising the past is nothing new, but there is something peculiarly revealing about the way a certain generation of Facebook users look back fondly on tougher timesContinue reading...
View ArticleZadie Smith on discovering the secret history of Black England: ‘Into my...
When the novelist first read Gretchen Gerzina’s 1995 book Black England, she discovered the complex and unexpected lives of black people in England before the abolition of slavery. Two decades on, the...
View ArticleThe Thornborough Henges: drone footage shows enormous ancient burial site in...
Two enormous ancient monuments, part of a complex regarded as the Stonehenge of the north, have been given to the nation and will come off England’s heritage at-risk register.The Thornborough Henges,...
View ArticleGavin Weightman obituary
TV documentary maker who made the ground-breaking social history programme The Making of Modern LondonThe documentary film-maker, journalist and author Gavin Weightman, who has died aged 77 after a...
View ArticleThink women have never had it so good? You should take a look at medieval...
History shows that progress in gender equality is neither steady nor inevitableWhat was life like for women in medieval times? “Awful” is the vague if definite answer that tends to spring to mind – but...
View Article
