DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
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Class exercise
JOHN GREEN recommends an entertaining, if harsh and instructive, study of bullying, discipline and power dynamics in schools and at work
LABORATORY OF BULLYING: A scene from Ken Loach's Kes
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STEPHANIE BROWN draws attention to the hidden labour of the female embroiderers, and how a 19th century replica made no such error
MIK SABIERS revels in a band that ploughs an idiosyncratic furrow of expletive laden, guitar-driven alt rock
ANDY HEDGECOCK, MARIA DUARTE and ANGUS REID review Synthetic Sincerity, Our Hero, Balthazar, Heartstopper Forever, and A Year In London
The bard invites readers to a gig, raps for Clacton, and lays out the Burnham-Hurzeler conundrum
RON JACOBS recommends an important book that enhances the oppositional theories put forth by Fanon and, in doing so, remakes psychology itself
A Physical Education: On Bullying, Discipline and Other Lessons
Jonathan Taylor, Goldsmiths Press, £23
THIS is an unusual memoir-cum-educational treatise, examining bullying and power dynamics in schools and at work, both at an institutional and individual level, as experienced by the author. He relates first-hand the different forms bullying takes throughout his childhood into adulthood and what it reveals about the culture and society we live in.
Taylor says of this book: “I want to explore the hall of mirrors that is criticism and autobiography... I want to explore the uses and abuses of educational power from a subjective, rather than pseudo-objective, perspective.”
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