CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician
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Janine gets it off her chest
One of the finest performers on the circuit has written a must-read on her battle against breast cancer
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 MET Janine Booth for the first time when she was 16 on April 16, 1983. I remember the date well because it was the day Brighton reached the FA Cup Final for our first, and so far only, time by beating Sheffield Wednesday 2-1 at Highbury in the semi-final.
Tumour humourist: Janine Booth
She’d come to interview me for her fanzine Blaze at my post-match gig at the Cricklewood Hotel in north-west London and I don’t remember anything about the interview or the gig because, understandably, I was far too pissed. But Janine and I have been great friends ever since.
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