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
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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
TONY BURKE speaks to JOEL McIVER, co-author of the biography of bluesman John Mayall
A misfit couple unhappily ever after, a dead man walking, dodgy journos, and trench art trucking
New releases from Javon Jackson, IZE Trio, and Mal Waldron Trio
PAUL DONOVAN applauds an intriguing multi-layered depiction, dominated by a stunning impersonation of Marilyn herself
EWAN CAMERON marvels at the impossible ambition, realised with dreamlike finesse of translating Italo Calvino to the stage
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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