No excuses can hide the criminal actions of a Nazi fellow-traveller in this admirably objective documentary, suggests MARTIN HALL
Britain’s first black Olympian
ALEX HALL is fascinated by the cosmopolitan life and internationalist values of the black sprinter and humanitarian, Harry Edward
STAR COMPETITOR: Harry Edward, English Athletics Championship, Stamford Bridge, 1-2 July 1-2 1922
PAUL DONOVAN relishes a fascinating exploration of the leading lights of the Labour right in the 1970s
BEN LUNN alerts us to the creeping return of philanthropy and private patronage, and suggests alternative paths to explore
A novel by Argentinian Jorge Consiglio, a personal dictionary by Uruguayan Ida Vitale, and poetry by Mexican Homero Aridjis
MIK SABIERS savours the first headline solo show of the stalwart of Brighton’s indie-punk outfit Blood Red Shoes
New releases reviewed by IAN SINCLAIR
STEVEN ANDREW is moved beyond words by a historical account of mining in Britain made from the words of the miners themselves
Harry Edward: When I Passed The Statue of Liberty I Became Black
Harry Edward, Yale University Press, £18.99
ALTHOUGH billed as a sports memoir, Harry Edward’s book is more a microcosm of the 20th century. Originally written in the 1970s, the manuscript was rejected by publishers until it was rediscovered by TV producer Neil Duncanson in the Amistad Research Centre in New Orleans. It is now published in full.
Edward’s father had come to Berlin in 1894 from Dominica to work in restaurants and cabarets; his Prussian mother was a teacher of piano. As such, Edward was born a British subject in Berlin in 1898, and had a very cosmopolitan upbringing, becoming fluent in French and German as well as his native English. He soon showed a remarkable aptitude for athletics.
World War I intervened and all British military-age men in Germany were interned as prisoners of war. Despite the harsh camp conditions, detainees established education, training and dramatic societies, preparing the men for their eventual release at the end of the war.
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GORDON PARSONS admires a version of Marlowe’s grim tragedy that strips it down to its gay essentials
LEIGH WILSON applauds the new translation of a novel from 1932 that is a hymn to values inimical to the forces that were growing in Germany in the early 1930s
JENNY FARRELL traces the critical role that the CPUSA played in the education of Harlem’s greatest man of letters
In the final part of a series taken from his new book, African Uhuru, ROGER McKENZIE discusses the work of black rights titans George Padmore and Marcus Garvey, plus the significance of the Non-Aligned Movement’s creation in 1955