The bard celebrates two other fine practitioners of the art, and laments a lost brewer
Latest editorial
Memories of socialist Bulgaria still resonate
Jean Turner reviews Once Upon a Time in Bulgaria
This right-wing conspiracy theory is used to justify the coercive measures against gender, race and labour rights that best serve capitalism, attests GAVIN O’TOOLE
KENNY MONROSE recommends a new exhibition that highlights the significance of Black British music
ANGUS REID is bowled over by an exuberant film about the making of Keith Jarrett’s legendary concert
MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja
CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
Once Upon a Time in Bulgaria by Mercia MacDermott (Manifesto Press, £11.95)
AFTER participating in the 1947 and 1948 NUS youth brigades in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, and helped by her study of Russian and related Slav languages including Bulgarian, Mercia MacDermott took up a one-year English teaching post in Sofia in 1963.
Already familiar with Bulgarian history, as part of the British brigade in 1948 she had even met the communist legend Georgi Dimitrov, then Prime Minister of Bulgaria and universally loved and admired.
Similar stories
BRENT CUTLER is intrigued by the imperialist, supremacist and contradictory history of a word that is used all too easily
KEN COCKBURN relishes the memoir of a translator, but wonders whether the autobiography underlying the impulse would make a better book
From hunting rare pamphlets at book sales to online panels and courses on trade unionism and class politics, the MML continues connecting archive treasures with the movements fighting for a better world, writes director MEIRIAN JUMP