Magazine Issues Follow Follow

Wuhan Diary. Fang Fang Harper Collins £24 The diary of a Chinese writer living in Wuhan, China, following the unfolding coronavirus crisis which became a global pandemic, has become a bestseller. Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City documents what life was like in the area identified as a possible starting point for the devastating...

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1656) a baroque artist, has been rediscovered in recent years. Lorraine Huddle looks at her art.

A couple of weeks after all the furore surrounding its unveiling, I made my way to Newington Green to see the Mary Wollstonecraft statue for myself. It was smaller than I expected, no bigger than a person standing on a plinth. The bulk of it is a silvery, writhing, lumpy mass, reaching upward, with a...

John Lennon died on 8 December 1980 and would have been 80 this year. He was shot dead outside his home at the Dakota Buildings in New York by Mark Chapman, an obsessive fan who had moments before obtained Lennon’s autograph. On the fortieth anniversary of his death it is worth remembering the talented, mischievous,...

All Against All: The Long Winter of 1933 and the Origins of the Second World War, Paul Jankowski Profile £20 I don’t want to give this work a bad review, because I suspect it just isn’t written for me. But All Against All is an unrelenting tsunami of facts which totally overwhelmed me. At no...

Shakespeare in a Divided America, James Shapiro Faber and Faber £20 In two fascinating books, 1599: A year in the life of William Shakespeare and 1606: William Shakespeare and the year of Lear, Shapiro wrote compelling and highly readable accounts of the political and cultural tensions in the environment in which Shakespeare was writing. In...

Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide, Vincent Liegey and Anitra Nelson Pluto Press £16.99 That economic growth cannot continue indefinitely on a finite planet has been widely accepted for some time, and Exploring Degrowth is a compendium of every conceivable aspect of this theme. The book’s glossary includes terms such as decommodification, frugal abundance, pluriversity, relocalisation...

The Bloody Flag: Mutiny in the Age of Atlantic Revolution, Niklas Frykman University of California Press £28 In “the Atlantic’s great age of mutiny”, during the French Revolutionary Wars, between a third and a half of seafarers in all north Atlantic and European navies participated in at least one mutiny. The 1790s were “unrivalled in...

The Rhino Conspiracy, Peter Hain Muswell Press £14.99Peter Hain, former Labour MP, prominent anti-apartheid campaigner and close supporter of the African National Congress (ANC), has written a blistering attack on South Africa’s ANC government. The Rhino Conspiracy is not a political pamphlet or a serious theoretical analysis of the failures of the post-apartheid regime. But...

Cassius X, Stuart Cosgrove Birlinn £17.99 Cassius X is a superb piece of writing documenting a time when Cassius Clay got politicised by Nation of Islam and in particular Malcolm X. This is a fascinating period in history, not just in the boxing ring where the young fighter was preparing to fight Sonny Liston. Life...

Some of Millions: From Breakdown to Breakthrough, Edited by Jethro Bor. The Book Guild £9.99 Nearly half of adults believe they have had a mental health condition, but only a fifth of men and a third of women receive professional diagnoses. Mental distress is a collective experience, this accessible and compassionate book explains. But mental...

Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel, Rachel Holmes Bloomsbury £35 This book is a huge tribute to one of the greatest female socialist campaigners Britain has produced. Like her biography of Eleanor Marx: A Life, Holmes draws extensively on family and social detail to show the key influences on Sylvia’s extraordinary life as an activist who...