Magazine Issues

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Issue - 415

A crisis for the ruling class

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In this issue

Obituaries

The Norman joke

The death of billionaire landowner and Duke of Westminster George Grosvenor was announced on 10 August. John Newsinger reminds us where the wealth of such parasites came from in the first place.
12 August 2016
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Reviews & Culture

When Adam Delved and Eve Span

The revolt of 1381 by tens of thousands of peasants shook England’s rulers. This new edition of Mark O’Brien’s short but powerful book recognises the importance of this entry of the poor into English history. England was dominated by the king; lords and the church reached into every area of the peasants’ lives. The authorities...
28 June 2016
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Reviews & Culture

Five things to do or see this month

The Battle of the SommeOut nowThis astonishing 77 minute film gets a centenary rerelease. It was shot a few days before and after the initial attack on 1 July 1916 by Geoffrey Malins and John McDowell, the only cinematographers allowed anywhere near the front line. It was released in cinemas on 21 August 1916 and an...
28 June 2016
Reviews & Culture

Hopelessness

In a year that has seen many great artists pass away, those still living and working among us can be overlooked. One such artist is Anohni, whose work under her former group Antony and the Johnsons has attracted international acclaim with albums such as the Mercury Prize-winning “I Am a Bird Now” and “The Crying...
28 June 2016
Reviews & Culture

Three Films by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani

This month sees the re-release of three movies by Paolo and Vittorio Taviani. As ever this dual format box set is grotesquely overpriced (the same films are available in the US at less than half what Arrow Films are charging). Nonetheless these are three superb movies from two of the heavy-hitters of Italian left wing...
28 June 2016
Reviews & Culture

The Threepenny Opera

“Food first, morals later” declares Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum in the shattering second act finale of Bertolt Brecht’s musical play, a satire of bourgeois ethics. Brecht shows us the would-be bosses grubbing and grasping for every penny in order to rise out of the poverty of the mass. The story, told with the help of a...
28 June 2016
Reviews & Culture

Tate Modern Switch House

The new extension to Tate Modern is an art world success story. Expansion was always part of the project, but visitor numbers have been more than double expectations since the museum first opened 16 years ago. Director Nicholas Serota brought forward his plans and reunited with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron, responsible for the...
28 June 2016
Reviews & Culture

Superwoman: Work, Build and Don’t Whine

This exhibition documents women in Russian art and society from the great advances of the 1917 revolutions through to Perestroika in the 1980s. It identifies the double burden of oppression which women experienced in Stalinist Russia: exploited in the workplace and bearing the brunt of household chores and child rearing, all under the banner of...
28 June 2016
Reviews & Culture

The Hard Stop

In August 2011 the taxi 29 year old Mark Duggan was travelling in was forced to stop by police on Ferry Lane, Tottenham, in north London. Four seconds later he lay dying on the pavement, shot in his arm and chest by a firearms officer. This killing of a black man lit a tinderbox which...
28 June 2016
Reviews & Culture

Imperialism in the 21st Century

Everyone remembers the 1,133 deaths from the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse. But who knows about Bangladeshi workers who earn just one euro cent for every 18 T-shirts they make, and take home €1.36 after a ten or 12 hour day? Ultimate villains of this “super-exploitation” are corporate buyers from the Global North and race-to-the-bottom capitalist...
28 June 2016
Reviews & Culture

Splinternet

Malcolmson’s history of the development of the computer and the internet, going as far back as the abacus and punched cards for weaving looms, is readable and informative. But the text keeps jumping out at you with bald assertions such as, “Industrialisation did not lead to war, which had always existed” and “most human activities...
28 June 2016
Reviews & Culture

Left Field

Left Field is a thoughtful and gentle memoir. Born in 1945, David Wilson “had contact at a young age with people who’d led dangerous political lives”, such as the Danish doctor who helped Jews fleeing the Nazis. His father had radical views and had witnessed the horrors of war and fascism first hand, being one...
28 June 2016