DAVID YEARSLEY is fascinated by the account of four composers who transformed their experiences of the second world war and the Holocaust into deeply moving works of art
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Nothing is just black and white
SUE TURNER recommends a book that charts engagingly the history of black people in Britain
Billy Waters, a one legged busker, in a crowded London street, coloured aquatint, 1822
[Wellcome Collection.org/CC]
PETER MASON thrills to the sound of south London-born Yussef Dayes, and the galaxy of musicians drawn into his orbit
From post-human revolution in Puerto Rico to trans poetics and queer mythmaking, these three books that imagine new ways of being together
JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
Re-releases from Iain Matthews, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and The Charlie Daniels Band
JAMIE BRITTON recommends that we all buy at least two copies of a remarkable book of poems
Black England: A Forgotten Georgian History
by Gretchen Gerzina
John Murray, £20
BLACK England is the result of a brief exchange in a London bookshop between the US writer and academic Gretchen Gerzina and a shop assistant who told her there were no black people in Britain before the Windrush generation.
Knowing this was not the case, Gerzina set out to write an accessible account of the long-standing history of black settlement in England, set in the wider context of the struggle against slavery.
Her aim in writing the book is to tell a history through the eyes of those who lived it, from well-known figures such as Dido Belle, Ignatius Sancho and Olauda Equiano to more obscure people with a fragmentary historical record.
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GUILLERMO THOMAS is persuaded by a scathing critique of the Church of England and its embeddedness in imperialism
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