Culture

Otto Quangel is the foreman in a coffin factory. A mechanic, he is a small cog in the apparatus of death that was the Third Reich. Quangel and his wife Anna get notification of the loss of their son at the front. Their feelings of disengagement with the regime harden into opposition. They embark on a low-level campaign of resistance, writing postcards with anti-Nazi messages and leaving them secretly in the stairwells of Berlin businesses and apartments.

The Working Class Movement Library, in the heart of Salford, hosts a large collection of socialist literature and materials. Their latest exhibition focuses on the lives of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. There is a particular spotlight on the lives of the working class of Manchester and Salford in 1842.

Among the many photographs and examples of their writing on display, the library gives detailed accounts both of the works and personal lives of the pair.

Guerrilla
Out now on DVD
The six-part TV drama broadcast on Sky Atlantic in April receives a welcome DVD release. This flawed but fascinating drama centres on racial politics in Britain in the 1970s and follows the relationship of activists Marcus and Jas (Babou Ceesay and Freida Pinto). It looks at racist policing, the impact of immigration laws, and the angry responses of the communities they targetted.

If you’ve read Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, published in 1985, you likely will have called it to mind frequently in recent years — and perhaps especially since last November. The book depicts a fascist US society that responds to ecological destruction with oppression, using the language of Christianity to hide and justify the real structures of power.