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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Book Review: Dreams of Leaving and Remaining by James Meek
Brexit explored as the national symptom of a global malady
Anti-Brexit campaigners outside Parliament last week
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
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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
Dreams of Leaving and Remaining
by James Meek
(Verso, £16.99)
DO WE need more books about Brexit? Will they be trampled into the mud in the stampede towards a glorious post-EU future, mere outdated ephemera from a previous epoch? As crunch time for Brexit approaches, one would be forgiven for questioning why one would take time out from following the events unfolding in real time.
The publication of James Meek’s Dreams of Leaving and Remaining during this most auspicious of months in Britain’s protracted conscious uncoupling from the EU does not seek to intervene in the debate but give welcome pause for reflection on the origins of this debacle.
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