Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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An album of pure jazz luminescence
Chris Searle on Jazz
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
Daniel Carter, Steve Swell, Tom Abbs and David Brandt — The Transcendentalists: Real Time Messangers (CIMP 264)
Daniel Carter and Reuben Radding — Luminescence (AUM Fidelity 025)
WHEN I was a student of English at Leeds University half a century ago, we studied a course on the “American Renaissance” in literature of the mid-1900. Among the prescribed oracles of this era were the “Transcendentalists” — writers from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Henry David Thoreau, and to Herman Melville and Walt Whitman.
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