STEVE JOHNSON speaks to DJ and singer/songwriter Mark Radcliffe
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An illuminating testimony by a wife and comrade
Biographies have been degraded by two opposing tendencies — hagiography or character destruction. This one has restored PAUL SIMON’S trust in the genre
JAMES WALSH takes advantage of an evening of comedy snippets to pick out which clowns will make it in Edinburgh
MAYER WAKEFIELD is swept up by the tale of the south London venue where music forged alliances across race, class and identity
MAYER WAKEFIELD applauds Rosamund Pike’s punchy and tragic portrayal of a multi-tasking mother and high court judge
FIONA O CONNOR recommends an unflinching depiction of child sexual abuse and its aftershocks, set in a working-class Liverpool family
New releases from Paul Weller, Wet Leg, and Dino Saluzzi
Reminiscences of Lenin
by Nadezhda Konstantinova Krupskaya
(Haymarket Books £16.80)
Quite rightly, the biographical genre has been treated with suspicion on the left. In principle, the focus on one “great” life or another usually exaggerates the accomplishments of the individual above those of the collective and the underlying economic and social forces.
In practice, the genre has been continuously degraded by two opposing tendencies — hagiography or character destruction.
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