The bard pays homage to his two muses: his wife and his football club
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The disillusion of a top BBC journalist
JOHN GREEN is disappointed by a marred critique of the British establishment by someone who was part of it
AHEAD OF THEIR TIME: Shadow chancellor John McDonnell, deputy leader Tom Watson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn joins supporters as they hold up a banner at a post-Budget rally at the Bethel Convention Centre, West Bromwich in November 2017
MARY CONWAY is disappointed by an incoherent show that fails to question stereotypical assumptions about the Soviet Union
JOHN McINALLY welcomes a rigorous class analysis of the history and exploitation of sectarianism by the Scottish ruling elite
WILL STONE, JAMES WALSH and MARIA DUARTE review Souleymane’s Story, Sunlight, Good Fortune, and After The Hunt
ALEX HALL recommends an exhaustive investigation of the means by which the Starmer faction assassinated the left
DAVID MORGAN recommends a refreshingly inspiring novel that features encounters with some tremendous women
Strangeland – How Britain Stopped Making Sense
Jon Sopel, Ebury Press, £22
FROM the start, I was sceptical about this book. After all, someone like Jon Sopel, who was for many years a top BBC correspondent — for eight years its man in Washington — must be completely in tune with Establishment ideology or he would not have been given such a job.
Here he takes a critical look at a country that has dramatically changed since he left it in 2014. “Returning to the UK in some ways has been disconcerting,” he writes. “It is, after all, my home; a country I love and am proud of. But either it’s changed, or I have. Maybe both. It just feels like a strange land. This book is, I suppose, about Britishness — the values that have guided us.”
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