This year’s Venice Biennale marks a major shift in European cultural politics suggests CLARE CAROLIN
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The common cause
RICHARD MURGATROYD welcomes the modern relevance of a history of the expropriation of common lands for private profit
LANDMARK PROTEST: 80th anniversary of of the 1932 Mass Trespass in the Peak District: Singer and broadcaster Mike Harding (centre), flanked by (from left to right) Kate Ashbrook, President of the Ramblers; Dame Fiona Reynolds Director General of the National Trust; Broadcaster Stuart Maconie and Harry Rothman, son of trespass leader Benny Rothman
ANGUS REID applauds the potential of an ambitious show about Gaza, and encourages it to keep its nerve
MATTHEW HAWKINS considers the opening offering at the National Festival of Korean Dance
ANDY HEDGECOCK welcomes an effective and entertaining overview of those who see erroneous ideas as self-evident truths
KENNY MacASKILL welcomes that rare thing: a readable analysis and explanation of the capitalist economy
The world of fake news, where people don’t believe what they are fed, will lead to a demand for authenticity, suggests PAUL DONOVAN
The War Against the Commons: Dispossession and Resistance in the Making of Capitalism
By Ian Angus
Monthly Review Press, New York, £18.99
A GOOD history book makes you think about the present.
On the day I finished Ian Angus’s The War Against the Commons I visited my local station ticket office. The queue was long and I had time to look around and reflect. Once all this great building, this marvel of engineering, this vital service, had been publicly owned, part of the modern “commons.” Even now in its privatised state there remained some good elements – like the expert and helpful staff in the ticket office which the train-lords and rentier bankers were planning to evict!
So, Angus’s book is timely indeed.
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