Barbara Castle Articles

Barbara Castle could have been Britain’s first female prime minister. Born Barbara Betts in 1910 in Pontefract, her mother was a Labour councillor, her father a tax inspector. She later moved to Bradford, where she attended the girls’ grammar school, before attending...

If Clement Attlee was so great, then why is This Boy so sad? Alan Johnson’s memoir – out in paperback later this week – is a book of almost unbearable sorrow. Reading it was like unpacking a series of heavy crates; I kept having to stop and take a breath every few...

So now we know. Ever since he announced them, Ed Miliband’s opponents have attempted to portray his party reform plans as a rupture to Labour’s historic link with the trade unions and a severing of its relationship with millions of working men and women, who are...

Events, dear Boy, Events: A Political Diary of Britain from Woolf to Campbell is a very enjoyable book. Edited by Ruth Winstone who also edited Chris Mullin’s diaries it takes you back to the most amusing parts of a century of politics in the words of diarists from...