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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The Holy Man and Other Stories by Alexander Trocchi
Works by a neglected Scottish avant-garde writer reveal an acute eye for detail and formidable intelligence
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
“I THINK frankly that of what is interesting in the last, say 20 years in Scottish writing, I have written it all,” Alexander Trocchi remarked in 1962 in a now notorious spat with Hugh MacDiarmid at the Edinburgh Writers Conference.
Posterity has largely thought otherwise, Trocchi remaining a marginal cult figure in the history of 20th-century letters and barely warranting a mention in surveys of Scottish literature.
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