STEVE ANDREW enjoys an account of the many communities that flourished independently of and in resistance to the empires of old
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A rip-roaring historical romp through the author’s ancestors
The Burning of Washington (and the White House) on August 24 1814, illustration by Paul de Thoyras
[Library of Congress/Public domain]
TOM STONE urges you to catch the last dates of a New York singer/songwriter, never afraid to challenge her audiences musically or politically
JAN WOOLF examines work that aims to give viewers a material experience of the environments in the polar north and Britain equally affected by the climate crisis
The bard recalls advice received 50 years ago from his TRB muse, and sorts out appropriate legislation for football club ownership
MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Facing War, Kontinental ’25, Bugonia, and Relay
MAYER WAKEFIELD is frustrated by a production of Ibsen’s classic study of an anti-heroine that fails to elucidate her motivations
PETER MASON tunes his ear into the domestic affairs of a Carribbean couple with a troublesome son
The Broken Boy
by Patrick Cockburn
OR Books, £14.53
PATRICK COCKBURN is well-known as a Middle East war correspondent. He was left with a limp after falling victim as a child to the outbreak of polio in Co Cork in 1956.
His 2005 memoir of the epidemic has been republished, and includes a perspective on Covid gleaned from his observations of the spread and treatment of the “Kent variant” from his home in Canterbury.
His account of polio conveys powerfully the sense of panic and fear among parents, and the traumas suffered by children in isolation hospitals under the care of often insensitive and even cruel nursing staff.
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JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a history that excavates the enormous role played by agricultural workers in recent times
WILL PODMORE recommends an excellent and useful introduction to a lesser-known giant of the scientific revolution in Britain
JOE GILL welcomes a helpful, if incomplete, guide to the the native and Islamic struggles against imperial and colonial powers in north Africa
HELEN MERCER welcomes an account of how US labour leadership collaborated with the state and betrayed their membership