Fownhope’s Heart of Oak Society traces its roots to the age of friendly societies, when communities provided their own safety net. Its anniversary celebrations reveal a tradition still very much alive, says MARK SEDDON
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At 80, Westbrook in tune with the modern world
Chris Searle on jazz
ANGUS REID explains the significance of Cuba’s egalitarian in letter and spirit Family Code and the pertinent lessons it holds for democracies anywhere in the world
Special report by PEOPLE’S WORLD
NICK WRIGHT considers how the isolation of Israel and a new film on the controversial Italian communist leader are creating new reference points for Italy’s left
CARLOS MARTINEZ says Cuba’s achievements in the face of a criminal blockade are startling, but the island’s future if the United States succeeds in crushing it looks bleak
AMNON BROWNFIELD STEIN reports that far-right MPs who mobbed the event organised by Hadash may have helped raise awareness of the brutality of the Israeli right
Mike Westbrook and the Uncommon Orchestra
A Bigger Show
(ASC Records, CD162-163)
In their new double album, A Bigger Show, Mike and Kate Westbrook together with the 20-piece Uncommon Orchestra introduce us to all the propositions, juxtapositions and contradictions of the “showground of life,” a sonic venue of our planet where “Hot-shot cash-back with steady-growth gilt-edge must lie/ Self-absorption will with free choice and knowledge grope and sigh.”
It is our 21st-century world in miniature, a “waxeywork show” of the grotesque and the beautiful, the tender and the brutal, all sparking from this “jazz-rock oratorio.”
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