Magazine Issues

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Issue - 453

How Labour lost, and how to rebuild

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In this issue

Reviews & Culture

Uncut Gems

There is a moment about half way through this panic-inducing film, where Howard Ratner’s (Adam Sandler) soon-to-be-ex-wife stares him in the face coldly and says, “I think you’re the most annoying person on the planet. I hate being with you, I hate looking at you, and if I had my way, I would never see...
31 January 2020
Socialist Review Archive

Trump’s deal is a disaster for Palestinians

With much fanfare and mutual backslapping, Donald Trump and Binyamin Netanyahu launched the US government’s “peace plan” at a glitzy press conference on 28 January. In addition to the world’s media, three Gulf states sent their ambassadors: the UAE, Bahrain and Oman (although the Omani ambassador confided to the Times of Israel that he didn’t...
31 January 2020
News Image
Reviews & Culture

Superior: The Return of Race Science

Many people assume that scientific racism and eugenics were dealt a death blow at the end of the Second World War when the nature and scale of horrifying Nazi atrocities were revealed. But Angela Saini destroys that myth in the most forensic of fashions. First, she shows the extent to which the Nazis were foreshadowed...
08 January 2020
Reviews & Culture

Five Things to do or see this month

Birmingham Revolutions: Power to the PeopleBirmingham Museum and Art Gallery, to 4 SeptemberThis exhibition explores the varied history of protest in Birmingham, and looks at the city’s part in the most crucial campaigns and movements in British history. It covers stories from the Priestley Riots of the 18th century to current campaigns for LGBT+ liberation....
08 January 2020
Reviews & Culture

Starts Again

After a globetrotting decade as a backing singer, Tawiah finally releases an album of her own. Ironically titled “Starts Again”, it is the fruit of collaborations in those years with Sam Beste and Alex Reeve of Hejira. She honoured Sam by singing the standard “For All We Know” at his father’s funeral last year. Other...
08 January 2020
Reviews & Culture

Heavy is the Head

When word dropped that Stormzy’s new album Heavy Is The Head would be released on 13 December there were, to my mind, three possible scenarios. Firstly, it would be the perfect toast to a stunning Labour election victory. Alternatively, it would offer consolation in the wake of a devastating defeat. Finally, the “Fuck the government...
08 January 2020
Reviews & Culture

Waiting Game

“Break down the walls til patriarchy falls” goes the line in “The Anthem” on Waiting Game, the new album by Terri Lyne Carrington and Social Science, a collaboration with Aaron Parks and Matthew Stevens. On No Justice (For Political Prisoners), the words of activists, newsreaders and prisoners echo. Since becoming the youngest union card holder...
08 January 2020
Reviews & Culture

A Hidden Life

Auteur director Terrence Malick commemorates the life of Austrian farmer Franz Jägerstätter who, when called up for his second round of military service during the Second World War, refused to pledge allegiance to Hitler. The film is a meditative hymn to commemorate Franz and the life he has with his wife, Franziska, and their young...
08 January 2020
Reviews & Culture

Oscar Marzaroli

Oscar Marzaroli (1933-1988) is, unquestionably, one of the finest photographers Scotland has ever produced. His pictures of Glasgow and its people, in particular, are an intrinsic and iconic party of the city’s self-image. It is extraordinary, therefore, that this brilliant exhibition in Glasgow’s pre-eminent photography gallery is the first major show of his work in...
08 January 2020
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Reviews & Culture

Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer is something of an anomaly in the upper reaches of the contemporary art world. In a period when the super-rich who set many trends favour the vacuous and decorative, his work engages with big ideas about society and history. He’s not shy of taking a political stand either: for several years he refused...
08 January 2020
Reviews & Culture

Charlotte Salomon: Life? Or Theatre?

Charlotte Salomon was born at the end of the First World War and grew up in Berlin with her Jewish parents. The work on display in this show is a history of her family before she was born and her own life story. However if you go to this exhibition expecting to be immersed in...
08 January 2020
Reviews & Culture

Mau Mau Interrogator

The 1950s Mau Mau war in Kenya was one of the bloodiest of the conflicts that ended the British Empire. The colonial authorities won, but the cost was too heavy to keep holding on. Still, the colonialists’ view of rebels as “debased creatures of the forest” became common. Historians have challenged this view. Caroline Elkins’s...
08 January 2020