CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Requiem for free musical movement
At 11pm on December 31, an important part of my life in the form I choose to live it came to an end
Hamburg's FC St Pauli fans unfurl a banner in solidarity with Attila the Stockbroker
[St Pauli FC]
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
BEFORE 1992 and open borders I always toured mainland Europe solo as a poet and acoustic performer, although I had long thought of forming a band to play my songs.
My experiences crossing borders with other bands — the ludicrous, petty nonsense to which we were subjected for no good reason whatsoever, simply because we were punk musicians — meant that I stuck to my solo poems and songs and the minimal, though constant, nonsense I experienced travelling alone with a hand-held mandola and a rucksack full of merch.
The irony about border checks is that I have never taken illegal drugs. I have never smoked and hate pills and injections. I prefer beer.
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