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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Left list speaks radical volumes
There was an astounding number of radical books published in the last 12 months and that looks set to increase in 2015, says publisher Ross Bradshaw
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
While the book trade debates whether the day of the celebrity biography has finally come to an end, some commercial publishers have started noticing that left-wing books sell well, with Allen Lane publishing The Establishment by Owen Jones.
This book topped the Christmas best-seller charts at Nottingham’s Five Leaves Bookshop and at News from Nowhere in Liverpool, coming second at Housmans in London only to its own Peace Diary. Allen Lane also published Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything, a book that places the blame for climate change right where it belongs — on capitalism.
At Five Leaves Bookshop, which has completed its first full year of trading, the only novel in the 15 best-sellers in December was John Harvey’s Darkness, Darkness, set during the miners’ strike, and two others on it were related to that defining part of our common history.
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On the 40th anniversary of the Wapping dispute, this Morning Star special supplement traces the long-planned conspiracy that led to the mass sackings of printworkers in 1986 – a struggle whose unresolved injustices still demand redress today, writes ANN FIELD
STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
At the very moment Britain faces poverty, housing and climate crises requiring radical solutions, the liberal press promotes ideologically narrow books while marginalising authors who offer the most accurate understanding of change, writes IAN SINCLAIR