DENNIS BROE notes the thin, unfunny and apolitical quality of the gruel dished up by the US networks and studios for mass consumption

BARBARA BOSWELL remembers South African poet, storyteller, publisher, editor and activist Diana Ferrus (1953-2026)

HELEN VASSALLO recommends a gripping Argentinian crime story about gender violence and the weaponisation of religion

GEORGE FOGARTY is unsettled by a brilliant concert that stands on the shoulders of immigrant Jamaican heritage without reaching out a hand to the Jamaican people

New releases from Steve Swallow, Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts, and Ady Johnson

When the ravages of Alzheimer’s leave an elderly woman marooned in painful memories of October 1950, her grandchild comes up with a creative strategy.

New releases from Simone White, Brass Funkeys, and Souad Massi 

Is this the way to rehearse industrial relations? SCOTT ALSWORTH immerses himself in a roleplay game that is being offered as an education tool to unions

In this comparison of Britain pre- and post Thatcher, WILL POMORE applauds the analysis, but distrusts the solutions offered

SUE TURNER is compelled by a history that shows how far a country can turn in on itself to collude with abuses of power

RON JACOBS is persuaded by the parallel drawn between Charles Manson and Donald Trump

ANDREW MURRAY welcomes a fascinating account of the struggle in Puerto Rico for democracy and independence

MARIA DUARTE, SCOTT ALSWORTH, ANDY HEDGECOCK and ANGUS REID review The Fall of Sir Douglas Weatherford, Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway, Time and Water, and Strictly Ballroom

MARIA DUARTE defends a solid, late-career Spielberg conspiracy flick that calls for empathy in a hostile world

Chris Searle speaks to former bandmate CHRIS BISCOE about the committed socialist jazzman, Mike Westbrook

STEVE JOHNSON recommends a beautiful album of songs that celebrate summer, from May Day onwards

by Monica Manolachi

New releases from Joe Wilkes, Honey and the Bear, and Hannah James and Toby Kuhn

While people keep pigeons around the world today, new evidence suggests this tradition is millennia old, says WILL SMITH

Reviews of T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo, Tamikrest, and Dub Colossus  

BOB NEWLAND recommends a radio play about the covert action against the apartheid regime

Given the power of the live experience, MIK SABIERS recommends Jon Spencer’s new album

BOB NEWLAND appreciates an important contribution to the debate about how slavery helped to build the wealth of Western companies and states

WILL PODMORE admires an account of the liberation of Berlin that overthrows the conventional US army-inspired account

MARJORIE MAYO recommends a highly useful guide to the benefits and hazards of different approaches to immigration

PAUL DONOVAN recommends a thorough explanation of why Starmer’s Labour travels light on policy, and bending to knee to neoliberalism

KENNY MONROSE recommends a new exhibition that highlights the significance of Black British music

CAYENNA PONCHIONE-BAILEY celebrates a new recording of all the surviving works of a great female composer and equal of Mozart

This right-wing conspiracy theory is used to justify the coercive measures against gender, race and labour rights that best serve capitalism, attests GAVIN O’TOOLE

The bard celebrates two other fine practitioners of the art, and laments a lost brewer

MARIA DUARTE, FIONA O’CONNOR and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Savage House, Enzo, Madfabulous, and Erupcja

ANGUS REID is bowled over by an exuberant film about the making of Keith Jarrett’s legendary concert

CHRIS SEARLE recommends a work of love and deep admiration for a great musician

by John Chinaka Onyech

TONY BURKE speaks to Malian singer, songwriter and guitarist FATOUMATA DIAWARA

SUSAN DARLINGTON is fascinated by an exhibition that explores a colonial display to reveal the overlooked histories of migration and protest that continue to shape Bradford today

FIONA O’CONNOR admires an ambitious first novel that loosens South Africa’s rainbow collective to examine the racial tensions within

KENNY MacASKILL relishes a fictionalised account of the life and death of the principled Irish anti-colonialist, executed for betraying his English imperial masters

Aussie mining corporation murder, Liverpudlian ex-cop amnesia, a naive vigilante tries to reset capitalism, and the riddle of the dead psychoanalyst

SYLVIA HIKINS is persuaded by an entertaining play that the true miracle of Lourdes would be for attitudes toward disability to change

New releases from World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation, Bjorn Meyer, and Luca Longobardi  

New releases from Rosa Walton, Paul McCartney, and Aidan Thorne & Jason Ball

JONATHAN TAYLOR reviews a collection of short stories wherein news - and the absence of news - changes lives

On the centenary of her birth, JOHN GREEN celebrates the life — and politics — of Marilyn Monroe

NADIA JOSEPH welcomes a survey of the role that TV played in the debate over apartheid and race relations in Britain

ALEX HALL welcomes the memoir of a prominent British academic of Ugandan/Zimbabwean heritage

JAMIE BRITTON recommends this fine analysis of the architectural, ecological and infrastructural destruction of the Gaza Strip

RON JACOBS welcomes a sharp, intelligent and witty exposé of the corruption and right-wing politics that have taken over international professional football

GORDON PARSONS is disappointed by Kenneth Branagh’s lightweight Prospero in an ambitious rendition of the play

MARIA DUARTE, JOHN GREEN and ANGUS REID review Power Ballad, Landmarks, My Mother’s Wedding, and Fairyland

MARIA DUARTE recommends a truly immersive crime thriller that explores the consequences of creative paralysis

Chris Searle speaks to bassist PAUL ROGERS

by Abeer Ameer

MARJ MAYO recommends a well illustrated and very positive account of an extraordinary period in local government history

RITA DI SANTO takes us through the prize winners, and takes the temperature of a festival that prioritised narratives of exile, state violence and class division

Do frozen colonists carry the virus of empire? Why is monstrosity a great way to describe capital? Was God a dustman?

ANGUS REID recommends two very different, but very entertaining bands with their last live dates this week

Re-releases from Andy Cohen + Eleanor Ellis + William Lee Ellis, Leon Russell with Mary Russell, and Johnny Winter

MIRANDA RICHMOND relishes the gloriously liberated art of Roy Oxlade, and traces his method back to the thinking of David Bomberg, his acknowledged teacher  

Rita Di Santo speaks to Hungarian director LASZLO NEMES about his new film, a portrait of the French Resistance leader and hero, Jean Moulin