CATHERINE STEEL relishes a compelling novel about Augustus’s right hand man, but misses the politics, the cultural shifts, and more detail about his restoration of Rome
John Cooper Clarke
Albert Hall, Manchester/Touring
5/5
DR JOHN Cooper Clarke knows he has a new album anthology out — appropriately entitled Anthologia — but he isn’t entirely sure which of his compositions are on it.
He takes a good guess, though, closing his main set with Evidently Chickentown. It’s a song used on an episode of The Sopranos and one that fits in with the New York accent he drifts in and out of throughout the night.
The bard confirms that the right has a humour bypass, and replays the English Revolution on period instruments
ALAN MORRISON recommends a consummate, heart-warming collection about a working-class upbringing in the industrial north-east
RUTH AYLETT reviews two collections of outright political poetry
WILL STONE is impressed by a tour de force rendition of three decades’ worth of orchestral chamber pop



