Two sets of photographs 24 hours apart. One was at the Durham Miners’ Gala. The other was in Horden, a former pit village a few miles from where I grew up. At first glance they seem to tell completely different stories. One is a celebration of brass bands, banners and working-class history. The other has … Read more
I promised myself that the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference would be my last encounter with the organised far right for a while. Then I remembered that one of Britain’s oldest far-right religious organisations meets only a few yards from my house. For years the British-Israel World Federation held meetings in Durham. Today it meets … Read more
There have been some noisy headlines about chaos in councils where Reform won seats last month: resignations, council meetings in disarray, councillors disappearing on holiday en masse. Durham became a Reform-controlled council last year, and I finally managed to catch some Reform councillors in action. I had spent months trying to speak to, photograph or … Read more
The UK government is pressing ahead with plans for a new generation of new towns to tackle the housing crisis. The details are still emerging, but the direction of travel is clear: large-scale planned settlements, focused on sustainability, “gentle density” and transport links. The reasons are straightforward. Labour wants to build 1.5 million homes and … Read more
Durham is an odd place. Not odd in an exciting way — my kids always called it Dullham. But odd nonetheless. The city was shaped by two very different forces. The first is intellectual and religious. Durham is the shrine of Saint Cuthbert and the burial place of the Venerable Bede, home to an ancient … Read more