Magazine Issues

issue2345.txt
Issue - 393

WW1: A just war or imperial conflict?

Sign up for our daily email update ‘Breakfast in Red’

In this issue

The People's Republic of Amnesia
Reviews & Culture

The People’s Republic of Amnesia

In the days and weeks leading up to the first week of June this year, Chinese internet censors were at their busiest, blocking any words or numbers which had any reference to 4 June 1989. The attempt to wipe any discussion of the anniversary of Tiananmen does at times become surreal. Two years ago the...
07 July 2014
News Image
Reviews & Culture

The Honourable Woman

BBC2, Thursdays, from 3 July
07 July 2014
Reviews & Culture

In defence of Glastonbury

A decade has passed since the last time I attended Glastonbury. It seems some things never change, however. In 2004 England had just been knocked out of a major football tournament and concerns were being expressed that the festival had lost its cutting edge. As I pitched up at Worthy Farm this time, the media...
07 July 2014
News Image

The Honourable Woman

BBC2, Thursdays, from 3 July
07 July 2014
Reviews & Culture

Boyhood

This deeply moving coming of age film explores the life of an ordinary boy transformed by the world around him. Linklater uses the same actors over 12 years, allowing us to see the protagonist, Mason, literally grow up in front of our eyes. The character progression is seamless and going from junior school through to...
07 July 2014
Mr Burns
Reviews & Culture

Mr Burns

Almeida Theatre, London, until 26 July If you were given the task of preserving culture for future generations what would you save? Gilbert and Sullivan or Eminem? Shakespeare or the Simpsons? How much would you remember? And would you remember it right? Mr Burns is described as a post-electric play. It opens with the audience...
07 July 2014
Digital Revolution
Reviews & Culture

Digital Revolution

Barbican, London, until 14 September Digital Revolution opens onto a darkened room lit by code that drops Matrix-style towards the floor, the flashing of video games and the blinking of computer screens. Clips of music repeat over and over, competing with the 8-bit bleeps and bursts from early video games. It’s immediately loud, exciting, daunting...
07 July 2014
British Folk Art
Reviews & Culture

British Folk Art

Tate Britain, London, until 31 August Policing the borders of art is a tricky business. They’re porous, and they’re constantly shifting. What passes as “art” today may no longer pass tomorrow. It’s like nailing jelly to a tree. This is not a question that torments most of us. But the movers and shakers in the...
07 July 2014
Reviews & Culture

Documenting the struggle

Still the Enemy Within, the passionate, crowd-funded film about the 1984-85 Great Miners’ Strike, won the Audience Award at the Sheffield International Documentary Festival where it was premiered last month. The film combines a wonderful mix of elements to illuminate the strike. First hand testimony comes from ex-miners, campaigners from Women Against Pit Closures and...
07 July 2014
News Image
Reviews & Culture

Eleanor Marx

If you are looking for a book to take on holiday, then look no further. This is a book that is both politically important and enormous fun to read. Rachel Holmes obviously adores Eleanor Marx, or Tussy as she was known. It is hard not to. As Holmes writes, “If Karl Marx was the theory,...
07 July 2014
Reviews & Culture

A Terrible Unrest

There is a plaque on the wall of a house in Loutra, near Rethymnon in Crete, commemorating the birthplace of Louis Tikas, one of the leaders of the 11,000 Colorado miners on strike in 1913-14 against the Rockefeller-owned Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. Tikas was murdered in cold blood by the Colorado National Guard on...
07 July 2014
News Image
Reviews & Culture

The Last Asylum

In a culture where mental illness still carries much stigma Barbara Taylor’s memoir is an important book about pain and treatment. Taylor, a biographer of Mary Wollstonecraft, describes her agonising journey of mental collapse. In the 1980s she began psychoanalysis in order to seek help for her anxiety, depression, insomnia and drinking. She was admitted...
07 July 2014