The Bard stands with the Reformers of Peterloo, and their shared genius in teaching history with music and song
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A purpose to pleasure
Tate Liverpool's exhibition reveals the brilliance of Fernand Leger, one of the great painters of realist political art, says CHRISTINE LINDEY
ABC by Fernand Leeger, 1927
SUE TURNER is fascinated by a book that researches who the largely immigrant workforce were that built the Empire State
MARIA DUARTE and MALC McGOOKIN review Sirat, The Testament of Ann Lee, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert, and All You Need Is Kill
STEVE ANDREW recommends a Marxist analysis of the long chains of production that global corporations exploit
MARY CONWAY relishes the period detail but misses the drama in this unsatisfactory dramatisation of the subjugated life of George Eliot
IAN SINCLAIR welcomes a mainstream scholar to the ranks of left-wing critique of US foreign policy
PETER MASON is disappointed that the eponymous Count fails to put in an appearance
FERNAND LEGER (1881-1955) grasped life with insatiable optimism and a passion for ideas. He was born in Normandy to a belligerent cattle merchant who died during his early childhood, leaving an impoverished widow. She apprenticed the 16-year-old Leger to an architect, but, in 1900, he fulfilled his desire to study art in Paris, by supporting himself as an architectural draughtsman.
He had grasped the full significance of the recent revolutionary Cubist and Futurist innovations and used them to convey the modernity of urban life, with its simultaneous cacophony of sounds, speeding motorised vehicles and visual stimulation.
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Read Sisters, the journal of the National Assembly Of Women, below.