For Culture Matters, I’ve written a short essay looking at the descriptions of pubs and other drinking establishments in the works of George Orwell, beginning with his idealised (and thus imaginary) bar, The Moon Under Water. Here is my closing paragraph, which might convey the tone and direction of the piece:
“Even so, as we mourn the passing of the ‘third space’ — neither home nor work, a common place where people gather and mingle freely — Orwell’s ideal of the Moon under Water survives, if only in our daydreams. It is the bar that we wish other bars were, a place that we feel we have a right to but we never expect to find, a kind of side-street utopia. It is more than a bar; it is an image of community, of commonality, of connection — and most of all, of a society that values such things, along with opportunities for leisure, for simple social pleasures, and for the minor physical indulgences symbolised by a nice pint of beer.”
Separately, I was recently interviewed by Michael Stauch for the New Books Network, concerning Policing the Progressive City. It was a great conversation and covered a lot of ground, with particular attention to the ways the histories of anti-police and anti-fascist organizing converged to produce the uprising of 2020.
