CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Beer and brilliant music from Merthyr to Flanders via Glastonwick. What's not to like?
Ones to watch: Thee Deadtime Philharmonic
KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters
FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within
Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst
SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change
JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip
I’M WRITING this on the coach to Calais, where 18 of us are beginning a two-day, 172-mile sponsored cycle ride to Antwerp in aid of Brighton’s award-winning Albion in the Community football coaching scheme for people with disabilities.
By the time you read this I’ll be charging through Flanders, fuelled by lovely Belgian beer. Wish me luck.
A few weeks ago, I had a great time at Merthyr Rising, a proper urban festival held in the centre of that compact, hard-hit but proud and spirited valley town. “It’s full of Leavers over there,” I was warned by various apocalyptic Brexit obsessives and so it is.
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