WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Bonding with others offers a level of freedom and strength
A recognition that individually we are powerless both politically and socially is essential, writes GORDON PARSONS
FEAR OF MULTITUDES: Policing overkill at a pro-Palestine march on March 23 2025
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
Multitudes: How Crowds Made the Modern World
Dan Hancox
Verso, £20
“WHY do we join crowds?,” asks Dan Hancox in his book examining the crowd in its physical, social and psychological forms. Mob, horde, rabble, mass, swarm — there is no shortage of denigratory terms to describe large gatherings of humanity, whether their communal purpose is to support their local football team or to celebrate in shared carnivalesque joy at the burgeoning music festivals but particularly to demonstrate for or against an infringement on their own or others’ freedoms.
Hancox claims that the crowd is “both the agent and the protagonist of history; the harbinger of change, the forcer of arguments.”
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