When the ravages of Alzheimer’s leave an elderly woman marooned in painful memories of October 1950, her grandchild comes up with a creative strategy.

New releases from Simone White, Brass Funkeys, and Souad Massi 

Is this the way to rehearse industrial relations? SCOTT ALSWORTH immerses himself in a roleplay game that is being offered as an education tool to unions

In this comparison of Britain pre- and post Thatcher, WILL POMORE applauds the analysis, but distrusts the solutions offered

SUE TURNER is compelled by a history that shows how far a country can turn in on itself to collude with abuses of power

RON JACOBS is persuaded by the parallel drawn between Charles Manson and Donald Trump

ANDREW MURRAY welcomes a fascinating account of the struggle in Puerto Rico for democracy and independence

MARIA DUARTE, SCOTT ALSWORTH, ANDY HEDGECOCK and ANGUS REID review The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford, Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway, Time and Water, and Strictly Ballroom

MARIA DUARTE defends a solid, late-career Spielberg conspiracy flick that calls for empathy in a hostile world

Chris Searle speaks to former bandmate CHRIS BISCOE about the committed socialist jazzman, Mike Westbrook

STEVE JOHNSON recommends a beautiful album of songs that celebrate summer, from May Day onwards

by Monica Manolachi

New releases from Joe Wilkes, Honey and the Bear, and Hannah James and Toby Kuhn

While people keep pigeons around the world today, new evidence suggests this tradition is millennia old, says WILL SMITH

Reviews of T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, Tamikrest, and Dub Colossus  

BOB NEWLAND recommends a radio play about the covert action against the apartheid regime

Given the power of the live experience, MIK SABIERS recommends Jon Spencer’s new album

BOB NEWLAND appreciates an important contribution to the debate about how slavery helped to build the wealth of Western companies and states

WILL PODMORE admires an account of the liberation of Berlin that overthrows the conventional US army-inspired account

MARJORIE MAYO recommends a highly useful guide to the benefits and hazards of different approaches to immigration

PAUL DONOVAN recommends a thorough explanation of why Starmer’s Labour travels light on policy, and bending to knee to neoliberalism

KENNY MONROSE recommends a new exhibition that highlights the significance of Black British music

CAYENNA PONCHIONE-BAILEY celebrates a new recording of all the surviving works of a great female composer and equal of Mozart

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

The bard celebrates two other fine practitioners of the art, and laments a lost brewer

MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja

ANGUS REID is bowled over by an exuberant film about the making of Keith Jarrett’s legendary concert

CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician

by John Chinaka Onyech

TONY BURKE speaks to Malian singer, songwriter and guitarist FATOUMATA DIAWARA

SUSAN DARLINGTON is fascinated by an exhibition that explores a colonial display to reveal the overlooked histories of migration and protest that continue to shape Bradford today

FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within

KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters

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

New releases from World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation, Bjorn Meyer, and Luca Longobardi  

New releases from Rosa Walton, Paul McCartney, and Aidan Thorne & Jason Ball

JONATHAN TAYLOR reviews a collection of short stories wherein news - and the absence of news - changes lives

On the centenary of her birth, JOHN GREEN celebrates the life — and politics — of Marilyn Monroe

NADIA JOSEPH welcomes a survey of the role that TV played in the debate over apartheid and race relations in Britain

ALEX HALL welcomes the memoir of a prominent British academic of Ugandan/Zimbabwean heritage

JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip

RON JACOBS welcomes a sharp, intelligent and witty exposé of the corruption and right-wing politics that have taken over international professional football

GORDON PARSONS is disappointed by Kenneth Branagh’s lightweight Prospero in an ambitious rendition of the play

MARIA DUARTE, JOHN GREEN and ANGUS REID review Power Ballad, Landmarks, My Mother’s Wedding, and Fairyland

MARIA DUARTE recommends a truly immersive crime thriller that explores the consequences of creative paralysis

Chris Searle speaks to bassist PAUL ROGERS

by Abeer Ameer

MARJ MAYO recommends a well illustrated and very positive account of an extraordinary period in local government history

RITA DI SANTO takes us through the prize winners, and takes the temperature of a festival that prioritised narratives of exile, state violence and class division

Do frozen colonists carry the virus of empire? Why is monstrosity a great way to describe capital? Was God a dustman?

ANGUS REID recommends two very different, but very entertaining bands with their last live dates this week

Re-releases from Andy Cohen + Eleanor Ellis + William Lee Ellis, Leon Russell with Mary Russell, and Johnny Winter

MIRANDA RICHMOND relishes the gloriously liberated art of Roy Oxlade, and traces his method back to the thinking of David Bomberg, his acknowledged teacher  

Rita Di Santo speaks to Hungarian director LASZLO NEMES about his new film, a portrait of the French Resistance leader and hero, Jean Moulin

The Bard does Bearded Theory, and lodges a complaint about bandnames

GAVIN O’TOOLE recommends a methodical unmasking of the US media’s complicity in the Israeli genocide, that should be a template for what’s needed to bring Britain’s corporate media to book

ALEX HALL is amused at the way the UFOs appear exactly where commercial interests, conspiracies, militarism and right-wing media overlap

MARTIN HALL examines the way the Roman orator took on different schools of philosophy

TOMASZ PIERSCIONEK is intrigued by a the changing significance of its vast areas of forest to Russia’s history

MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Eagles Of The Republic, The Balloonists, Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan: Ghost War

ANDY HEDGECOCK is astonished by a portrait of contemporary Greece, complete with political protest, organised crime and people trafficking, told from the point of view of — wait for it — runaway poultry

by Idris Davies

CHRIS SEARLE recommends a new album featuring Pat Thomas and Ahmed, and marvels at the tempestuous power of a live performance

DENNIS BROE surveys the offerings made at Series Mania Festival

FIONA O’CONNOR casts a weary eye over a superficial and tonally complacent satire of US religious capitalism

GEORGE FOGARTY wallows in a celebration of music as a community practice

SCOTT ALSWORTH assesses the follow up to Disco Elysium, the first-ever genuinely Marxist videogame

MARY CONWAY is exhilarated by an outstanding production of Brecht’s study of the painful sense that working-class people make of war

RITA DI SANTO listens out for the undertow of political film-making at this year’s festival

New releases from Death Cab For Cutie, Kacey Musgraves, and Mountain Of Youth

ANGUS REID applauds the potential of an ambitious show about Gaza, and encourages it to keep its nerve

WILL STONE wallows in a triple helping of classic US protest music

This year’s Venice Biennale marks a major shift in European cultural politics suggests CLARE CAROLIN

MATTHEW HAWKINS considers the opening offering at the National Festival of Korean Dance

ANDY HEDGECOCK welcomes an effective and entertaining overview of those who see erroneous ideas as self-evident truths

KENNY MacASKILL welcomes that rare thing: a readable analysis and explanation of the capitalist economy

RON JACOBS welcomes a beginner’s manual in how to remove bigotry from our individual selves and society at large

The world of fake news, where people don’t believe what they are fed, will lead to a demand for authenticity, suggests PAUL DONOVAN

MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Northern Soul: Still Burning, The Christophers, Orphan, and My Father’s Diaries

LEO BOIX recommends a film that portrays how fascism feeds on ignorance, machismo and myth in isolated communities abandoned by the state

Chris Searle speaks to Syrian/French flautist NAISSAM JALAL

by Harry Gallagher

With thousands of AI‑written, edited or ‘polished’ books being sold, LAURA BEERS hears an eerie echo of Orwell’s ‘novel‑writing machines’

PAUL DONOVAN is intrigued by this depiction of the compromised loyalties of women, under the shadow of Henry VIII’s murderous court

Death comes for Liberals, entitled murder, Vatican hit squads, and fraternising with the Blitz killer

ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart

STEVE JOHNSON relishes the inspirational nature of an event which combined great songs with historical narrative

New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, and John Luther Adams 

GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men

Michael Rosen is in his element with a new show for kids, suggests PAUL DONOVAN

KEVIN DONNELLY outlines how the bourgeois institutions inhibit our ability to to view art in revolutionary ways, and suggests some tactics to overturn it

The Bard pays homage to Hull’s finest promoter and venue, and awards Douze Points to Laibach

STEVE ANDREW welcomes an autobiographical account of activism by a US Marxist journalist that is an inspiring introduction to the struggles of the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s

ANDY HEDGECOCK welcomes an accessible - and optimistic - take on our relationship to new technology

JOHN GREEN suggests that a new, biased, and highly readable re-hash of the story of the Cambridge Five be taken with a large pinch of salt

BRENT CUTLER welcomes a timely reminder of the long history of protests and the outdoor spaces in which they takes place

FIONA O’CONNOR and MARIA DUARTE review Romeria, Iron Maiden: Burning Ambition, Remarkably Bright Creatures, and The Sheep Detectives

LEO BOIX recommends a ravishing, full-bodied drama about the intensely demanding and emotional art of Kabuki theatre

On the day of the election, MARTIN GOLLAN reflects on the perennial relationship between the far-right and the back-hander

by Mohammed Yasser Al-Batniji

RUTH AYLETT recommends that this mixture of memoir, diary and poetry by a young Gazan writer be read as widely as possible

MARY CONWAY is gripped by the powerful emotional journeys portrayed by the parents of the perpetrator and victims of a mass shooting

FIONA O’CONNOR welcomes the the return of the Barbellion prize for disabled writers

ROBIN STYLES welcomes a boundary pushing work of fiction exploring the life and ideas of the godmother of modernism

LEO BOIX reviews a novel where shadows deceive and mortality looms, and a poetry collection that refuses to dim

ANGUS REID recommends that you discover a uniquely intimate community venue in central Edinburgh for an evening of beer and ambitious jazz

Reviews of Charlotte Cornfield, Michael Weston King, and Gun Outfit

Read this book and be aware that this is our history, says RUTH AYLETT

ANGUS REID appreciates the political candour expressed in Bansky’s latest and brilliant work of public art

ED WAUGH introduces a special event to commemorate the centenary of the 1926 General Strike

IAN SINCLAIR draws our attention to a film, available for everyone to use, to stimulate community discussion and active engagement in the climate emergency

JAMES WALSH previews the smorgasbord of talent and hilarity on show at the Brighton Fringe

PAUL DONOVAN recommends an energetic adaptation of Ken Kesey’s novel, that emphasises how psychiatry is a tool in the hands of a racist agenda

SIMON PARSONS recommends an outstanding revival of the musical based on Argentinian LGBT activist Manuel Puig’s groundbreaking novel

MATTHEW HAWKINS relishes the literary output of autistic writers, and recommends its insight to readers both including and beyond the community themselves

ALEX HALL is fascinated by a lucid and historically convincing account of how rent has dominated capitalist economies from feudalism to modernity

ELLIS RAE recommends a stunning history of the active role played by the British monarchy in establishing and profiting from slavery

GUILLERMO THOMAS is fascinated by a little known rebellion in the English colony of Granada, led by a mixed-race French officer and inspired by the French Revolution

MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Wild Foxes, Hokum, I’ve Seen All I Need to See, and Ada: My Mother the Architect

JOHN GREEN is riveted by the rare example of a disillusioned spymaster taking a swing at his paymasters and their folly

GORDON PARSONS is disappointed by the outdated form of a play set in Trinidad, whose subject is the switch from British to US imperial control

by Omar Sabbagh

by Omar Sabbagh

MARY CONWAY applauds the timely revival of Miller’s study of people fatally deformed by the economics of survival

JAMES WALSH revels in a miscellany of beautifully observed characters, ranging from the parodic to the frankly batshit

MALC McGOOKIN appreciates a graphic novel that records the history of the legendary peace camp and surveys the state of the right to protest in contemporary Britain

Although this account of the Beatles’ manager is exquisitely drawn, MARY CONWAY wishes it embraced the bigger picture of the band’s explosive impact

New releases from Otherlands Trio, Isabelle Bodenseh, Kris Davis and the Lutoslawski Quartet

SYLVIA HIKINS recommends a fascinating, revealing, superbly acted evening of theatre

STEVEN ANDREW praises a beautifully written and enjoyable read

ROGER McKENZIE suggest this book is used as a resource to help spark resistance to the rise of nuclear power

The allies of the US, like our own country, end up dominated and cowed, concludes ALEX HALL

LYNDA GRAHAM looks at how successive government allowed the water companies take us all for a ride

DAVID NICHOLSON relies on 10-year-old SKYLAR and nine-year-old BEHATI’s insights when recommending this pirate cum sea monsters romp

Read my lips: Tai Haf Heb Drigolyn (Uninhabited Summer Houses), Rethink Everything

In the interventionist spirit of of Atelier Populaire Mazen Kerbaj Gaza in My Phone ‘notebook’ deeply touches JAMIE BRITTON

SUSAN DARLINGTON enjoys an imaginative revival of the dance classic

GORDON PARSONS salutes the apt return of Brecht’s vaudevillian cartoon drama that retains the vitality of the boxing or the circus ring

MARIA DUARTE and JOHN GREEN review Michael, The North, Exit 8, Rose of Nevada

ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends a gripping and touching drama, based on a true story, about a Serbian refugee rebuilding his life in Bristol

New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, John Luther Adams

By Sally Spiers

CHRIS SEARLE talks to the celebrated saxophonist COURTNEY PINE

DAVID YEARSLEY has fun recalling George Harrison’s mischievous Taxman, which was released 60 years ago

Banksy’s identity may have been published – but was the investigation in the public interest, asks PETER BENGTSEN

IAN SINCLAIR recommends a documentary that highlights the multifarious benefits of legalising access to land throughout England

New releases from Kneecap, Sam Blasucci, and Juni Habel

DAVID NICHOLSON recommends the staging of this Wagnerian classic minus one or two insignificant quibbles

CHRIS MOSS joins the hunt in Argentina for the works of Poland’s most enigmatic exile

SYLVIA HIKINS welcomes a survey of successful contemporary worker co-operatives and economy-based co-operative systems

RON JACOBS recommends a book that charts the disparate circumstances that defined the lives of two prominent black Afro-Americans — one a communist, the other an anti-communist

JOHN GREEN relishes the record of a life well lived in the service of the fight for justice and socialism

EWAN KOTZ got to the Jacaranda Baltic in Liverpool only to be taken by strong songwriting of the emerging all-women Lime Garden

TONY BURKE talks to Garth Cartwright author of Princes Amongst Men — Journeys With Romani Gypsy Musicians

The Star's critics ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review The Blue Trail, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Colours of Time, Glenrothan

JOHN GREEN has reservations about a film that tries hard to rise above the cliches but in the end fails to do so

Reviews of a compelling account of a tragedy that shook Chile in 2005, a poetry collection about home and belonging, and a bilingual poetry collection on migration, fire, and art, drawing on the work of Hieronymus Bosch

SETH SANDRONSKY recommends a production that looks back at the political Tinseltown in the mid-1970s when US cinema ‘didn’t pander to trends’

CHRIS SEARLE on Mike Westbrook who died aged 90

FINOLA SCOTT relishes a collection of verse in Scots that, among other things, meditates on the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu

STEVE JOHNSON speaks to JIM MORAY about an album that marks 25 years since his first

by Chalice Am Bergris

SAHAR MARANLOU explores a novella, newly translated and republished in English that tells the history of Iran through women’s bodies

DENNIS BROE observes how cutbacks, mergers and AI create content detached from both reality and history itself

CHRISTOPHE DOMEC relishes a dizzyingly precise fiction that relays the problem of reporting the truth

New releases from Claire Vine, Amy Leach and Alasdair Paul, Brooks Williams and Aaron Catlow

JENNY FARRELL recommends an earthy production, driven by two magnificent performances

MARY DAVIS welcomes a remarkable documentary about the general strike — politically spot on, and featuring accounts from the strikers themselves — that is available for screenings

New releases from Peruvian Ranil y Su Conjunto Tropical, Leve Leve: Sao Tome & Principe, and South African BCUC

SCOTT ALSWORTH revels in the political subtext and exquisite visuals of Cuba’s first-ever videogame

DAVID NICHOLSON applauds the revival of a joyous production that deals with choirs, competitions and communism

PETER MASON welcomes collected writings from Britain’s first black female publisher that focus on the place of black writers in literature

RICHARD SHILLCOCK examines an enjoyable, but philosophically conventional book, and urges Marxists to employ their capacity to embrace the totality in any explanation

BRENT CUTLER welcomes a book stands as a testimony to those who fought against the evil institution of slavery

MARTIN GRAHAM welcomes, with reservations, a scholarly addition to the unfinished business of understanding how capital works on a world scale

The bard tours Finland and tampers with the cuisine

MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review The Stranger, Undertone, and Outcome

MARIA DUARTE relishes the outrageous true story of two working-class lads from Dundee who conned the music industry

WILL STONE applauds the anniversary tour of Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches by Madchester icons, Shaun and Bez

by Reshma Ruia

JORDAN PHIZACKLEA-CULLEN reminds us of a sometimes overlooked political singer-songwriter, on the 50th anniversary of his untimely death

MARY CONWAY is compelled by the production but repelled by the sleaze in a revival of Christopher Hampton’s play

JAN WOOLF invigilates images that meditate on Palestine, and the people who witness them

A murderous convention of crime writers, a hymn to nursing, a monster hunt, and robber baron capitalism

BEN COWLES samples the many sonic and social therapies of Manchester Punk Festival 2026, and is ready again to smash capitalism

New releases from Brown Horse, Johnny Blue Skies & The Dark Clouds, and The Sophs

MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a three-hander that broaches big themes, but doesn’t transcend dry academia 

DAN GLAZEBROOK eavesdrops on the bourgeois intelligentsia and the stories it tells itself at this moment of crisis

DENNIS BROE relishes the working class characters of the BBC’s Can You Keep A Secret, and Hulu’s Sunny Nights

JAN WOOLF is bowled over by a major retrospective for the YBA artist

LEO BOIX, ANGUS REID and MARIA DUARTE review Night Stage, Two Women, Kim Novak’s Vertigo, and Fuze

MARIA DUARTE refuses to disclose the twist by which a conventional rom-com is undone by a universal US malaise

by Kevin Scheepers

CHRIS SEARLE relishes the relevance and sheer poetic dexterity of an excellent imagining of the divided destiny of the Levellers

KATHRYN JOHNSON recommends the work of Norman Kaplan that was a tool in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa

GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes a bold feminist subversion of classic folktales that are ubiquitous in the Irish imagination

A novel by Mexican Juan Pablo Villalobos, poetry by Mexican Ingrid Bringas, and a biography by Argentinian Mercedes Halfon

STEVE JOHNSON recommends an exceptional album that explores the narrative folk tradition often with a strong political message

ELLIS RAE is disappointed by the revival of a nihilistic play that fails to offer alternatives for social change

PAUL DONOVAN applauds an entertaining dramatisation of the famous dispute that gives insight into the struggle, and Murdoch’s unscrupulous mendacity

ALISON BAKER casts an appreciative eye over Dennis the Menace at 75

Reviews of Test Dept, Madli Marje Gildemann, and Heinz Holliger and Marie-Lise Schupbach

ROGER McKENZIE grooves to the message that jazz supports, expresses and sparks fresh political movements and ideas