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ANGUS REID urges us to understand the persecution of Jason Arday from a political and historical perspective, and to see the victim in human terms
Book: Clearing the fog of a war
Jonathan Hicks, two-thirds of the way through a trilogy of novels on the first world war, tells Paul Simon why we need new perspectives on the conflict as its 100th anniversary draws near
Re-releases of the classics Gypsy Rhumba and Buena Vista Social Club, and a stunning album by Palestinian artist Faris Ishaq
Nothing, says ANDY HEDGECOCK, can rescue this undistinguished amalgam of ponderous melodrama and shallow philosophical speculation
JAMIE BRITTON invites readers to visit 3,500 locals as part of a marathon artistic pub crawl
JOHN GREEN welcomes a valuable and incisive analysis of a world become hyperpolitical but without the mass movement institutions to represent it
As well as being an emerging fiction writer of considerable talent, Jonathan Hicks is also head teacher at a Cardiff comprehensive and a military historian.
As such, he's as well entitled as any to voice his doubts about the perils of next year's centenary marking the start of the conflict.
"I do come across well-intentioned folk who want to turn commemoration and remembrance into something akin to popular entertainment," he tells me.
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GORDON PARSONS is intrigued by a pessimistic novel in which Hitler is removed from history, to little effect
FIONA O’CONNOR questions the achievement of this year’s Orwell prize winner for political fiction
In his fortnightly Borderlands column, MARK SEDDON visits overgrown forts along Offa’s Dyke and reflects on wars past and present