New releases from Public Image Ltd, William Basinski, and John Luther Adams
Latest editorial
Maria Fyfe: A working-class hero is something to be
ANGUS REID recommends the brilliant memoir of a Labour activist and politician who never lost sight of her roots
INDEFATIGABLE: Maria Fyfe (far right) in front of Mary Barbour memorial
GABRIELE NEHER draws attention to an astoundingly skilled Flemish painter who defied the notion that women cannot paint like men
The Bard pays homage to Hull’s finest promoter and venue, and awards Douze Points to Laibach
KEVIN DONNELLY outlines how the bourgeois institutions inhibit our ability to to view art in revolutionary ways, and suggests some tactics to overturn it
ANDY HEDGECOCK welcomes an accessible - and optimistic - take on our relationship to new technology
JOHN GREEN suggests that a new, biased, and highly readable re-hash of the story of the Cambridge Five be taken with a large pinch of salt
BRENT CUTLER welcomes a timely reminder of the long history of protests and the outdoor spaces in which they takes place
Singing in the Streets
by Maria Fyfe
(Luath Press, £14.99)
IN TELLING the story of her life, from her birth in 1938 in the Gorbals up to the moment she entered Parliament in 1987, Maria Fyfe proves herself to be a writer of rare brilliance.
Her Glasgow memoir Singing in the Streets is fast-paced and dramatic, moving and extremely funny. Head and shoulders above others in the field of political autobiography, she has a poet’s eye for detail and deft picture-painting and a writer’s genius for telling an extraordinary story.
It’s a story of a working-class woman’s self-emancipation and commitment to the emancipation of others. And it’s a love story that is never sentimental but that makes you weep.
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FIONA O'CONNOR recommends a biography that is a beautiful achievement and could stand as a manifesto for the power of subtlety in art