MARJORIE MAYO recommends an accessible and unsettling novel that uses a true incident of death in the Channel to raise questions of wider moral responsibility
How an Oldham working-class hero powered to Jarama
COLIN TURBETT reviews a colourful account of the life and death of communist speedway star Clem Beckett
MIK SABIERS wallows in a night of political punk and funk that fires both barrels at Trump
Reasonable radicalism, death in Abu Dhabi, locked-room romance, and sleuthing in the Blitz
SIMON DUFF recommends a new album from renowned composer and oud player Anour Brahem.
JAMES WALSH has a great night in the company of basketball players, quantum physicists and the exquisite timing of Rosie Jones
A New Awakening: Adventures In British Jazz 1966 - 1971, G3, and Buck Owens
JAMES WALSH is moved by an exhibition of graphic art that relates horrors that would be much less immediate in other media
Clem Beckett – Motorcycle Legend and War Hero
by Rob Hargreaves
Pen & Sword Books £25
SOME readers may know of Clem Beckett from the wonderful Townsend Theatre Productions 2016 tour of Daredevil Rides to Jarama that told some of his story.
Despite its rather military sounding title this book tells a north of England story of working-class individualism and commitment to the cause of communism during the turbulent times of the 1920s and 1930s; as such it fills in the gaps of writer Neil Gore’s theatrical production.
Born in 1907, Beckett grew up in an Oldham terraced house and had to go out to work at the age of 12 to help support his family after his father abandoned them.
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Collective action offers the best political outcomes for the reversal of the unmitigated planetary disaster, writes COLIN TURBETT
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