Oswald Mosley

As the United Kingdom sees a rise in anti-Semitism, Tracy-Ann Oberman, who plays Britain's first female Shylock, brings her passion project into the West End. It's grimly good timing, but history shows that man learns nothing from history. Oberman and her co-adapter, Brigid Larmour (who also directs), have reworked and truncated the performance, and Liz Cooke's greyed-out set was London's East End in 1936. The Battle Of Cable Street, where Jews, dockers, and communists barred Oswald Mosley's Blackshirts from parading through Stepney, is the backdrop. The interpretation comes home, aided by onstage projections and newsreels from the time; the parallels with today's anti-Jewish bigotry are all too apparent.

Why can you have a phobia about some things, but not about others?Why is 'Islamophobia' a word and an idea, in constant use, while 'Christianophobia' is not? For those that remain adamant, hostile condemnation of the Christian faith, its place in our society is gradually diminished every day, often as a result of official legislation by Parliament and the courts.

In one of the British political class's periodic bouts of self-righteousness, Thomas Babington Macauley, a 19th-century scholar, there is no spectacle more absurd than the British political class. Macauley was writing about the British tendency to slip prey to'sudden gusts of kitschy sentimentality followed by vehement protestation.' It was both ridiculous and'sinister.' Despite the fact that he directed his remarks at the wider audience, if he was present in the House of Commons today, where he may have described the ludicrous conduct in which he served as a Whig MP. The politicians have taken complete leave of their senses, not for the first time. They have managed to prevent the human tragedy from unfolding in Israel and Gaza from affecting them.