CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Dr Who and the scourge of capitalism
JOHN GREEN surveys the remarkable career of screenwriter Malcolm Hulke and the essential part played by his membership of the Communist Party
MASTERMIND; (L) Jon Pertwee as Dr Who in Invasion of the Dinosaurs, 1974; (R) Malcolm Hulke on holiday in Pula, Yugoslavia
[Courtesy of the BBC; Courtesy of Jean Tate]
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
Things are not always what they seem: The Writing and Politics of Malcolm Hulke
Michael Herbert, Self-published, £21.99
MALCOLM HULKE was an active communist and a highly successful scriptwriter for theatre, television and cinema from the late 1950s into the mid 1970s whose work includes The Avengers, Danger Man and Dr Who.
As he noted in 1975: “During all The Avengers time when the most popular baddies were Soviet spies, my baddies were capitalists. No-one noticed. For seven years running I wrote subversive Doctor Who serials.”
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