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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Resonant reminder
It's difficult not to draw parallels between the insurrectionary attempt to overthrow the Scottish government in 1820 and today, says CALUM BARNES
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EWAN CAMERON marvels at the impossible ambition, realised with dreamlike finesse of translating Italo Calvino to the stage
The Fight for Scottish Democracy
by Murray Armstrong
(Pluto Press, £14.99)
FOR the last year, those who approach the Salisbury Crags in Edinburgh are met by a sign that bluntly declares: “Radical Road Closed.”
Given the recent electoral defeats of the left, it is difficult not to read this as a damning statement on our current political impasse. The story goes that this thoroughfare was laid at the suggestion of Walter Scott by unemployed weavers who had been part of the insurrection of 1820, a thwarted attempt to overthrow the government.
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