EWAN CAMERON witnesses a political farce that lacks a clear message
Failure to reconcile faith and reason at an individual or aggregate level
An absorbing metaphor for contemporary Western societies is recommended by PAUL SIMON
EWAN CAMERON picks out two fascinating music shows, fusing the Korean, and the Celtic, with the modern
BENJAMIN POTHIER suggests that Palaeolithic cave paintings in Spain point to the ceremonial use of hallucinogenic flora
The bard confirms that the right has a humour bypass, and replays the English Revolution on period instruments
MARIA DUARTE and ANDY HEDGECOCK review Sunny Dancer, Tony, Songs of Forgotten Trees, and The End of Oak Street
JOHN GREEN relishes a powerful and moving drama that explores the lived realities of west London’s Punjabi community
MARTIN HALL welcomes a plea for greater compassion between believer and non-believer via the framework of philosophical enquiry
The Kindly Ones
by Cliff James
Lethe Press £10.55
ALTHOUGH framed within the dystopian fictional tradition, The Kindly Ones is, in many ways, an analysis of contemporary US and indeed Western societies.
Set in an economically and environmentally devastated part of North America, Cliff James’s minutely observed second novel plots the trajectories of two very distinct groups of internal refugees.
Similar stories
MATTHEW HAWKINS welcomes an engaging and nourishing account of the queer subculture that flourished in London between WWII and partial decriminalisation
ALEX HALL welcomes a history of the Bund, and its emphatic demand for working-class solidarity across racial and ethnic difference
DOUGLAS FIELD relishes the hard-boiled language, satire and humour of the third and last of the Harlem trilogy
![[Pic: Andrew Wiard]](https://msd11.gn.apc.org/sites/default/files/styles/desktop/public/2026-01/19860503_a_wiard_0003.jpg.webp?itok=mR5zV0nE)
The once beating heart of British journalism was undone by technological change, union battles and Murdoch’s 1986 Wapping coup – leaving London the only major capital without a press club, says TIM GOPSILL