When he became Prime Minister in 1997 – when he was still young, fresh-faced and even idealistic – Tony Blair named William Morris as one of his three political heroes. The choice was admirable enough, though one wonders if Blair had read Morris’s utopian novel from 1890, News from Nowhere. For, in it, England is a communistic paradise, where central government has become redundant and the Houses of Parliament been converted into an outhouse, piled high with manure.
In Blair’s defence, his Victorian guru was so prolific in so many fields, it’s near-impossible to keep track of all he did. Morris is perhaps best known nowadays for his densely-patterned, curly-leaf wallpaper, so popular in middle class homes in the Seventies.
