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
Latest editorial
With Hope, Farewell by Alexander Baron
Seminal novel on working-class Jewish life
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
IN RECENT times, there’s been a welcome resurgence of interest in the novels of inter- and post-war leftist Jewish writers.
London Books has been leading the way with the revivification of the reputations of the likes of Gerard Kersh and Simon Blumenfeld and now Five Leaves Publications is focusing on the no less impressive output of Alexander Baron.
Baron’s life seemed to mirror that of many second-generation British Jews. Radically left-wing in the 1930s — he edited Challenge, the magazine of the Young Communist League — he went on to front-line military experience in the second world war and thereafter a move into social observation before ending his working life as a scriptwriter on TV adaptations of classics such as Oliver Twist and Vanity Fair in the 1980s.
Similar stories
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
RON JACOBS welcomes a history of the Young Patriots Organisation that is also an organising manual with applications and implications for today
JOHN CALLOW introduces the work of Geoffrey Trease, who placed ordinary people at the centre of his historical fiction for children, creating adventurous stories to inspire the possibilities of social change
DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy