MARY CONWAY is disappointed by a three-hander that broaches big themes, but doesn’t transcend dry academia
Poetic licence to thrill
Benjamin Zephaniah's excellent autobiography allows him time and space to take stock of a hugely engaging life, says PETER MASON
Benjamin Zephaniah
DAN GLAZEBROOK eavesdrops on the bourgeois intelligentsia and the stories it tells itself at this moment of crisis
JAN WOOLF is bowled over by a major retrospective for the YBA artist
LEO BOIX, ANGUS REID and MARIA DUARTE review Night Stage, Two Women, Kim Novak’s Vertigo, and Fuze
KATHRYN JOHNSON recommends the work of Norman Kaplan that was a tool in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa
GAVIN O’TOOLE welcomes a bold feminist subversion of classic folktales that are ubiquitous in the Irish imagination
The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah
(Simon & Schuster, £20)
POET, playwright, novel writer, children's author — now we can add autobiographical skills to Benjamin Zephaniah's list of writing attributes.
This is a beautifully penned and highly entertaining account of an intriguing life, opening us up not just to Zephaniah's story but to a wide range of topics arising out of it, from death and racism to co-operativism and male infertility.
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