JON BALDWIN recommends a provocative assertion of how working-class culture can rethink knowledge
Empire is without virtue
RON JACOBS recommends an exhaustive demonstration that colonialism is insidious, pervasive, positive and negative
British Royal Marine poses with two severed heads during the Malayan Emergency. This photograph was first published on May 10 1952, by the Daily Worker (Morning Star) in a frontpage article titled "This Horror Must End".
These are vivid accounts of people’s experiences of far-right violence along with documentation of popular resistance, says MARJORIE MAYO
The Star's critics MARIA DUARTE, JOHN GREEN and ANGUS REID review An Army of Women, Julie Keeps Quiet, The Friend and The Ugly Stepsister
GORDON PARSONS squirms at a production that attempts to update Shakespeare’s comedy to a tale of Premier League football
Above a Gothic bar just down from Brighton station, something spooky is happening, suggests JAMES WALSH
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MIK SABIERS enjoys the theatrical feminist six piece who have a lot of fun that the audience feeds off as the set rolls on
Empireworld
Sathnam Sanghera, Penguin, £10.99
POET and anti-war priest Daniel Berrigan wrote in his book The Nightmare of God: “We would like to think that the empire is virtuous. Or that it can be made so, converted, so to speak, by a large dose of civic virtue.” He concludes that it is not virtuous nor can it be made so.
I agree with Daniel Berrigan — empire is intrinsically without virtue.
In his newest book titled Empireworld: How British Imperialism Has Shaped the Globe, Sathnam Sanghera considers it at best a mixed bag, with the negatives outweighing the positives.
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