The man accused of the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox stored books about German military history on a bookshelf topped with a gold-coloured Nazi eagle and swastika, the Old Bailey has heard.

The neatly arranged books were discovered by police when they began searching the home of Thomas Mair shortly after Cox was shot and stabbed to death.

The court heard on Monday that beneath the bookshelf in a bedroom in Mair’s home were drawers that contained books with Nazi and white supremacist themes.

The jury was shown photographs of some of these volumes, which had titles such as SS Race Theory and Mate Selection Guidelines, The Politics of the Holocaust and March of the Titans: A History of the White Race.

A photograph of books the court heard were found in Mair’s home. Photograph: West Yorkshire police/PA

Police also recovered from the house a newspaper cutting from the Daily Mail about Anders Breivik, the Norwegian neo-Nazi who murdered 77 people in 2011; a printout of an article in the Guardian, written jointly by Cox and the Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, calling for British military intervention in Syria; and a column that Cox had written for a local newspaper, the Batley News and Spenborough Guardian, in which she expressed support for the campaign to remain in the EU.

Elsewhere around the semi-detached house, police found a draw-string bag containing stones bearing rune symbols, and a computer printout concerning the extreme rightwing South African organisation Die Blanke Bevrydingsbeweging.

A photograph of runes said to have been found in Mair’s home. Photograph: West Yorkshire police/PA

The court heard that an examination of the computers that Mair used at his local library showed that he had been reading about the British National party; leading German Nazi figures; Dylann Roof, who has been charged with murdering nine people in a shooting attack at a church in Charleston; and individuals executed for treason.

The court has previously heard that Mair had been using the computers to read about the Ku Klux Klan, matricide, and a page that offered answers to the question: “Is a .22 round deadly enough to kill with one shot to a human’s head?”

The prosecution alleges that the murder of Cox, 41, was politically or ideologically motivated.

The jury was shown a series of photographs of the interior of Mair’s slightly sparse but very orderly home, including one of the inside of one of his kitchen cupboards, where he had lined up tins of baked beans, strawberries and evaporated milk, in regimented rows, their labels arranged to face precisely the same direction.

A photograph shown to the jury of the inside of a kitchen cupboard in Mair’s home. Photograph: West Yorkshire police/PA

The court heard that Mair remained completely silent during three and a half hours of police interviews, the day after Cox was killed. “He didn’t answer any questions, and simply remained silent,” said DC Roger Williams, in a statement read to the jury.

Cox was killed on 16 June in Birstall, West Yorkshire, a market town in her Batley and Spen constituency. She was on her way to a meeting with voters, and had been due to attend an event to raise support for the campaign to remain in the EU, a week ahead of the referendum.

Thomas Mair. Photograph: West Yorkshire police/PA

She was shot twice in the head and once in the chest, and stabbed 15 times.

Mair, 53, an unemployed gardener from Birstall, is charged with her murder and the grievous bodily harm of Bernard Carter-Kenny, a pensioner who was stabbed in the stomach after going to the MP’s aid.

He is also charged with possession of a firearm with intent to commit an offence, and possession of a dagger. The court has heard that the attack was captured on CCTV.

He declined to enter pleas when he appeared at the Old Bailey for a preliminary hearing last month. As a result, not-guilty pleas were entered on his behalf.

The case continues.



