PAUL DONOVAN is chilled by the contemporary resonance of Harper Lee’s coming of age tale amidst racism and white supremacy in this excellent production
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How love bloomed in the rubble
SUE TURNER recommends Harry Leslie Smith’s account of finding his lifelong partner in the devastation of Hamburg at the end of WWII
GEOFF BOTTOMS recommends the unashamedly light-hearted escapism on offer in this stage version of the 1963 film
Full of mysterious religious references and radical sound design, the Scottish duo’s new offering is candidate for album of the year, suggests SIMON DUFF
MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
PAUL DONOVAN recommends the fine performances in this account of the pre-war meeting between the US president and the British king
TECLYN AROD relishes an intimate celebration of jazz improvisation that mixes local and national musicians
Love Among The Ruins: A Memoir of Life and Love in Hamburg, 1945 by Harry Leslie Smith (Icon Books, £8.99)
HAMBURG made a formal surrender to the British on May 3 1945. The occupying soldiers commented on the smell as they entered the city, with the stench of death seeping up through mile upon mile of streets buried in rubble.
After six years of wartime deprivation and allied air raids — the saturation bombing of 1943 ignited massive firestorms — half the city was rubble.
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